Evaluation Question Seven

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?


When I look at my prelim task and compare it to my final film, I think that it is alot better and not only have my skills as an individual have improved but our skills as a group have improved also. I have learnt a great amount about time management which I feel has been one of the most important lessons and I have also learnt alot about a variety of different skills needed to create a professional looking film.

One of the things I learnt from creating our preliminary task, was to check for continuity errors as we made a noticeable mistake towards the end of our film. The image below shows the error we made and is indicated by the red arrow just to make it clear. What we did was leave the green wig on the side in shot, and then move it in the next shot because it was part of the scene.

Our prelim task also taught me to be careful with the text colour and effects we used in our titles. This is because our white text couldn't be seen against the light from the window and the effect we used on the writing meant that not all of the letters showed up which meant the titles couldn't be read properly by the audience. This is shown by the images I have inserted below. The text which should've read 'Camerawork' came out as 'Cam raw' which taught us to be careful with the text effects we chose, however it also gave us the name for our production company.

Our preliminary task also taught me many necessary skills for when we shot our final film. I learnt about panning in particular because in our prelim task. I used panning, however, I didn't use it well. I completed the pan successfully but moved the camera part way through the shot, this made the shot look bad and I learnt from this that I need to be more careful in the final film. 

We successfully learnt how to complete a match-on-action shot and I think that this is something which we have continued to get right and make sure it is perfect before we move on. We learnt to be careful where we were cutting our footage in order to not create a jump cut and were very careful when editing our final film to make sure nothing distracted us when watching it. We used a dolly in our final film which we learnt how to use a few weeks before we shot that scene, I think that learning to use the dolly was worth while because it allowed us to add an extra element in our film we wouldn't have been able to use otherwise.

Although I have previously mentioned the use of lighting and how we learnt to be careful, we did misjudge something when filming our final film. We used the three point lighting system when filming our actress against the black curtain, however did not use any lighting when filming the rest of the film. The use of the natural light did let us down a little bit because we knew that the shot looked dark, however, this did make our film feel more real than it would've done had we used extra lighting.

 

On the left it is clear that we have used extra lighting.

On the right it is clear that we have used natural light.

Overall, I have found working on my media task very enjoyable. I have learnt many valuable lessons along the way, yet still enjoyed every second of it!

• I have learnt that it is important to have individual roles within your production company, because this means that everyone has to pull their weight otherwise the final product doesn't get completed on time. It also means that no one is left to do all of the work by themselves.
• I have also learnt that time management is very important, a shooting schedule would be a necessity for me next time I were to shoot a film. This is because without this there is no real sense of urgency and some group members are alot more laid back than others.
• I have learnt that feedback is essential if you want to make sure that your finished product will be the best that you can possibley make it. Without it, you may not spot mistakes which someone else would and this can let you down.
• I have learnt alot of new skills which I didn't previously have and I hope to be able to put them to use in the future.

Evaluation Question Six

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?


Since I began constructing media products in my lessons I have learnt alot of useful skills to successfully create our end product. Technology has helped me to do this and there are alot of softwares and methods which have made the process of making our film easier. Below I have included some examples of the things which I have learnt about the different technologies which I have been introduced to and how they have helped me.

The first, and for me, most important thing which has helped me to make our film is the digital video camera which we used. This allowed us to capture out footage straight onto the Mac's and not have to have the problems that existed with previous video cameras, where the film needed to be developed. The use of digital video cameras has allowed the process of gaining the footage you have taken, so much quicker and easier.

The Apple Mac's have also been very important in helping us to create our final film. They have allowed us to use all of the software which we have needed (which I will discuss separately), and they have also allowed us to gain some real experience. Apple Mac's are used in the professional film making industry as there are less compatibility issues, using them to create our films has allowed us real industry experience which will benefit us in the long run if we choose to work in the film industry.

Final Cut Express has allowed us to edit our film with less hassle than if we weren't using software. It used to be that when editing a film, you had to take the film strip out of the camera, cut it up, and glue it back together with the changes and shots that you wanted. Final cut has allowed us to make mistakes and change them, whereas with a method like the one I previously described there isn't really any room for mistakes. Final Cut also allowed us to record sound into our film, so we were able to over-dub the scream in the graphic match which would not have been possible without this kind of software.

Soundtrack Pro enabled us to import copyright free sounds into Final Cut to be used on our film. This meant that there was less expense for us as we didn't have to buy a licence in order to use music on our film.

Our group didn't use Storyboard Quick when in the production stages of our film, however if we had have done then it would've saved us alot of time. We learnt how to use it, however felt that we could get better results if we hand drew our storyboard. Next time I know that I should use the software that I have at my disposal because it will save me alot of time and frustration when trying to scan in images and put them all together.

Final Draft AV was a very useful piece of software which we had access to. It allowed us to write our script and talk about the camera shot and action on screen which would accompany it. This meant that when we were filming we knew exactly what went where and when added to the use of our storyboard, they made filming alot easier for us and allowed us to concentrate on making sure our shots were of high quality, instead of worrying about whether or not we were filming the right things in the right place. 

Youtube allowed us to upload and share our videos quickly and easily. Without this piece of technology we would not be able to share our film with anyone else other than our classmates because we wouldn't really have a way of doing this with just one copy of the film.

Finally, Blogger has allowed me to document the processes that I have gone through as I have gone along and has been alot more beneficial than something like a scrapbook would have been. This is because I have been able to not only edit and correct mistakes in posts, but also upload videos, trial shots, and upload audio feedback from Scribd (which has also been a useful piece of technology I have had access to). Blogger has allowed me to document my journey of becoming a film maker in real detail.

The technology and software which I have had access to have really helped me on my journey of making our film and have allowed me to have a real experience of what film making is actually like in the film making industry.

Evaluation Question Five

How did you attract/address your audience?


My group and I had to make sure that our film appealed to our target audience. To do this we added a few things to make sure that we were addressing what we thought our audience wanted from a film in order to enjoy it. We were targetting 15+ year olds, right through to the mid-twenties and perhaps even some middle aged people due to the mystery element. We wanted to aim for a fairly large audience because we thought our film had the potential to appeal to more people. Below I have included six examples of things we added to appeal to our audience and who exactly they would appeal to.

 1. The blonde female we used was there to attract a male audience, both young and older. We researched the kind of women used in thrillers and found that almost every thriller gets an attractive female to star in their lead role. Films like 'Psycho' may be older films, but the actress who plays the lead is still attractive and despite the film being in black and white it is obvious that she has light coloured hair. 

We used a young couple in our film because most young people have been in a relationship at some point and most have had fall outs too. If they've not had fall outs with a partner then they have with their parents, so we hoped that the real life situation was something which they could relate to which would in turn appeal to the audience because they feel that can connect more with the actors on screen.

We included a car chase in our film and planned to include alot more action scenes if it were to be more than a 2 minute beginning. We added the action scenes because we know that alot of males in particular enjoy watching action films. This meant that our film was opening itself up to an even wider audience range.

We used the story line of going out and partying, coming back drunk and not remembering what happened the night before because we thought that it would appeal to the 18+ audience which we were hoping to attract, we also thought that it might appeal to some 17 year olds aswell, because although the legal drinking age is 18, underage drinking does take place. We included the idea that she may have had her drink spiked (to be revealed after the two minutes), because we wanted to include a real life issue and include a moral; to watch what you're drinking, who you're with and to not accept drinks from strangers because unfortunately, things like this do happen.

The use of modern technology, we thought would appeal to anyone who came to watch our film, but particularly our younger audience because they are digital natives. We wanted to show that although technology is a good thing, you also need to be careful with it because situations can get out of control. The use of a mobile phone targets anyone with a mobile because the storyline which we integrated into our thriller held a message of being careful who you talk to and give your number to, so we wanted to try to get that across and appeal to the target audience at the same time.

Our titles weren't exactly ordinary because we included the text which would usually be added to a shot, in with the storyline of finding out the ending first. We did this because we wanted to create mystery within our film and also leave the audience feeling a little disorientated and wondering what was going on. By doing this we were intentionally getting them to relate with the actress on screen because she too was left not knowing what was going on around her. By doing this, I think that we targetted our audience in a way that was not expected.


We targetted our audience in a few different way, the main way being to get them to relate to the actors on screen. By doing this we hoped that this meant that they enjoyed the film alot more than they would've done if they hadn't have been invloved and it also meant that we got them to empathise with the character and be even more shocked by the ending that we had planned.

Evaluation Question Four

Who would be the audience for your media product?


The target audience for our media product is 15+ year olds going up to mid-twenty year olds. We also hope to target middle aged people with the element of mystery that we have in our film. Our main target audience is males however, we do know that there are a selection of females who would want to come and see our film because they enjoy thrillers and action films, however some females would only come to watch our film if they were taken by their boyfriend or maybe their brother. Below I have included some images of what we think our target audience might be like.

This image shows a group of teens who I know and who are around 17/18 years old, these are our main target. There is a gender imbalance as there is only one female and the rest are males. The males in this image would enjoy watching our thriller and they would like to watch our film because of the action and also because of the young, attractive blonde female aho we have used in our film. The female in the image, would like to watch the film because of the action and mystery involved in the story line and also because she can relate to some of the stroylines included.

This image shows an example of a young couple between 17-19 years old. The male in this image would like to go and see our film because of the female actress playing the lead role in the film, whereas the female in this image would go and watch this film because she has been taken to see it by her boyfriend. Although the action and thriller elements of the film may not appeal to her, the real life situations and elements of mystery probably would.

The images show our main target audience. Although we aim to please middle aged year olds with our film aswell they are not a main target, so I have not included them in with the teenagers which I have shown. We would like the think that we have included enough elements to appeal to our target audience and I will further discuss these elements when answering question five.

Evaluation Question Three

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Our film is a British Independent film so would probably be distributed by someone who specialises in British Independent films. There are multiple ways to distribute films such as DVD, Cinema and Download. To answer this question in more depth, I have researched some companies who distribute shorts, as I felt it was necessary for me to discuss companies who distribute smaller films as opposed to only discussing large distribution companies who distribute films for production companies such as Working Title. I have included some companies which I found and an explanation of their company, below.

http://www.tri7entertainment.com/distribute.htm

Tri-Seven are a distribution company who add films to their website and they distribute them via a pay-per-download service. They take on shorts which are between 5-30 minutes long and prefer the film to have an inspirational message, however, as they only take films which are at least 5 minutes, I don’t think that they would distribute our film as it is, perhaps when finished if we could make it under 30 minutes, which is doubtful. They would be able to distribute our film via download so this would be a good option for us.

http://www.elypsefilm.com/

Elypse is a distribution copany which is based in Spain, but distributes films worldwide. They do not have an specifications for what kind of films they look for, but have a huge list of films in their catolgue which can be viewed on the website. They look like they are easy to contact and say that they will reply quickly. I think this company would distribute our film for us, both as it is and as a finished product.

http://www.shortsinternational.com/

Shorts International is based in London, however, also has offices in New York Los Angeles and Paris. I gather from their website that they have links to iTunes, which would mean that the films are distributed to a wide range of people. Their submission form gives the option to state whether it is a student film and if so, what school you attend. I think that this would mean that this company would accept our film and would distribute it for us, definitely as a finished product and possibly also as a 2 minute beginning as it is. 

http://www.omnifilmdistribution.com/

Omni Film Distribution Inc is based in California and distributes films and sells them on DVD. The description of the film can be found on the website and can also be purchased on the site. They accept films of all genres and lengths so I think that they would accept our film. This would be a good option for us as it would be a way for us to distribute our film on DVD.

I have found these examples of small distribution companies who may distribute our film for us, however, I think that because we only have a 2 minute beginning, the most likely place where we could get our film seen would be at a film festival. Although the Edinburgh Film Festival shows larger films, there are also film festivals which specialise in short films. I think this would be the most likely place for us to get our film seen by an audience.

Evaluation Question Two

How does your media product represent particular social groups?


Our media product represents a couple of social groups, we have done this with the choice of characters we have used in our film. Although we used only two characters in our film, I feel that the idea which we used allowed us to represent three social groups. Below I have included an image of each character and a description of who they are, what social group they represent and how they represent it.

This image shows the girl in the red dress. This character was used to represent the portion of teenagers and young people ( approximately18-25 year olds) who are party animals and like to go out and have a good time. The way this character is dressed shows her dressed up in going out clothes, not exactly provocatively, but not covering herself up either, this represents the section of young girls who like to flaunt what they’ve got and who don’t think about the consequences they may have to face from doing this. This issue would be tackled in the rest of our film when what actually happened to the girl would be revealed. 

This image shows the girl in the white dress. This character was used to represent young people who have psychological problems, as she was both the killer and the victim in our film, this meant that we could use her to represent youths as having stress to deal with and as having things to worry about. Although not shown in our first two minutes, the idea was that it would be revealed that the girl had had her drink spiked which is what caused her to go on her killing spree and black out. This would represent the things a party animal teenager would have to be wary of and also represents the real life issues which teenagers have to face. The fact that the people close to her have been killed would show that young people have to face death from an early age, despite the fact that they are care-free.

Although not very clear, this image shows the driver of the car, Ryan, whose face is not shown. This character, although not seen represents young males, again approximately 18-25 year olds, as being easily annoyed and not very rational. This character is seen driving away from his girlfriend who he has kicked out of the car, and not stopping to pick her up until she has screamed her lungs out trying to get his attention. This is an over-exaggeration of the small portion of overly protective, jealous young males who try to twist things around to make their girlfriend’s feel bad after an argument. I think that this would allow us to tackle a mild form of domestic violence in our film. The music which is played by this character also shows how angry he is for such a young person and could suggest that his anger stems from a previous point in his life, which is very common in many young people. 

We tried to use characters which the audience could relate to and empathise with. The female character is almost like two characters in one. The girl in the red dress is a party animal who every young person can relate to, and the girl when in the white dress is a character which the audience can empathise with because they will feel sorry for her after hearing her story; despite the fact that they will discover that she is responsible for the deaths of the people close to her. Finally the mystery character that is Ryan is a character which many people will relate to because at some point in their lives everyone has been angry and the background to him is something which the audience can keep guessing as to what has happened to make him angry and make him the way he is.

The stereotypes which we have used do only involve young people, however, I believe that everyone who watches our film will be able to relate to the characters. 

Evaluation Question One

In what way does your media product, use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?


Below I have posted two grids; one contains the conventions that my groups and I have used, developed and challenged in our film, the other contains conventions that are in existing films.

Pictures 1-3 on the grid represent conventions used. Pictures 4-6 on the grid represent conventions developed. Pictures 7-9 represent conventions challenged.

Conventions from existing thrillers:

Conventions from our thriller:

Below, I have explained what convention is shown by each picture in the grid:  

1. The colour red to represent violence

2. Female as victim

3. Action taking place at night in eery setting

4. Victim/killer as mentally unstable

5. Element of mystery is included
6. The end of the film as the start
7. Female as killer as opposed to a male
8. Male as victim as opposed to it being a female
9. Protagonist is also antagonist


In the video below my group and I further explain the thriller conventions in our film.

Final Cut

Our final cut is now complete!

We are very pleased with our final cut of the opening two minutes of our film 'Withheld'. We have added transitions at the beginning, which I think makes it flow alot better and adds to the atmospere of diorientation. We have also improved the scream by making it one scream which lasts for the whole of the graphic match which makes it alot better. Overall, I am pleased with our final version and I hope that people will enjoy watching it more now that it has been improved.

Target Audience Feedback

We have presented our film to the class and gathered feedback from them and our teacher. They have made suggestions as to what we can improve and also what they liked about our film. Below I have embedded a recording of our feedback.

 

At 1 minute 50 seconds, Sam makes the point that the scream in the graphic match needs to be worked on, we know this and will work on it, but Sam noticing it confirmed that we need to sort it out.

At around 3 minutes 30 seconds, Mr Hood suggests that we re-record the phone vibration, or drop the levels on it, this is something we need to consider because it is a tad loud.

At around 4 minutes, Mr Hood and Sam point out the swearing in the film, this is something which I didn't want to add in, but the other group members thought it added to the atmosphere for the script, however, we are not allowed to add swearing into our film so we need to over-dub this in order to remove it.

At 5 minutes 15 seconds, the group pointed out that the light on the shot was bad, this is because we were using natural light and filming into the sun, despite this we are going to keep this shot because we think it gives it a more realistic feel.

At about 7 minutes, the group stop us to say that there is something wrong with the dropping of the phone, we will ignore this because Mr Hood said he found no problem with it apart from the sound, which seems to be a recurring problem throughout our film!

Overall, the feedback our class supplied was very valuable and we will take it on board.

Aswell as this feedback, I also asked 30 people from our target audience 2 questions after watching our film, the questions I asked were 'Do you understand what is happening so far?' and 'Would you watch the end of this film?' I have presented my results in pie charts and included them below.

Yes - 19

No -7

Unsure - 4

Yes - 14

No - 8

Undecided - 8

My next post will be explaining the improvements we have made and explaining our re-editing process.

Rough Cut

Our rough cut is now complete and I have embedded it below so that you can see what we have produced. Obviously, we are aware that this is not a perfect film and we will be working on it further to get it to the highest standard possible.

We are happy with how all of the match-on-action shots have worked out and how the graphic match works, the only thing we are less pleased with is the scream in the graphic match, so we will be working on that. We are also not too happy with the lighting in the bedroom of the house. As we used the natural light, we think it looks like we shot it at a different time even though this is not the case. We are pleased with continuity because we are happy we have not made the same mistake as we did when filming our preliminary task. One thing that I, personally am not too happy with is the beginning of our opening sequence, I feel that it is lacking something, perhaps some transitions to give it an eery edge.

Overall, we are pleased with our efforts and are looking forward to presenting it to Mr Hood and the rest of our media class!

Editing The Footage

To edit our film we used Final Cut Pro. This software allowed us to import our footage, insert titles, include voice overs for any bits of sound which we weren't happy with and export our film as a Quicktime movie in order for us to upload it to Youtube.

Firstly we needed to import our footage into Final Cut, we had a problem because this couldn't be done at school as Josh's camera didn't want to work with the Macs at school, this meant that all of the editing had to be done on Matty's Mac at home using Final Cut Pro as opposed to Final Cut Express which is what the school uses. This made arranging times to meet very difficult, however, we did manage to do this.

Basically, we inserted our shots to match our animatic. We followed this because it showed us exactly where we needed to go next in terms of shots, however, our animatic did not match exactly because when filming we had to change some shots because they worked better. Apart from this our film follows the ainimatic which we made. We are now looking forward to presenting our film to our target audience, teacher and media group.

My next post will include my rough cut and a small evaluation and list of improvements.

Shooting On Location

Sunday 6th March: -Present at shoot: Me, Josh, Sam & Matty
On this day, my group and I shot a large section of our film. We shot all of the bedroom and bathroom scenes at Matty's house. We started filming at approximately 12 noon and finished at 4.30pm, although this was a fairly long amount of time, it was well worth the time and effort we put in.
We stuck to the story board and didn't need to change any shots or angles as everything ran smoothly. Sophie acted well for us and we only had to do a few takes on each scene apart from the ones more technically tricky. I had a problem with panning when tracking Sophie walking from the bathroom door to the mirror, this was mainly because there was a jump at the beginning of the pan which may have been caused by the confined space I was in, as I had to set the tripod up in the bath. The other problem we had with this shot was that the door needed to be part way open in order in the exact place in order for us to not make a continuity error; this meant that when Matty clapped the clapperboard he had to also stay in the bathroom which meant there was even less space and he had to avoid kicking the tripod whilst I was panning.
Overall, filming on this sunday went well and I was pleased with what we had shot.

Wednesday 9th March: -Present at shoot: Me, Josh, Sam & Matty
On this day, my group and I used our 2 hours of lesson time to film the scenes against the black curtain at the beginning of our film. Sophie came into school for us and we got all of the shots done that we wanted to. We made one change to one shot because we felt at the time that it was a good idea and added to the effect of the madness of the girl in our film. We had a few problems we had to overcome but I feel that we overcame them well.
The first problem we came up against was that we set up our equipment in the drama studio where we could use the spot lights and the black curtains, we got everything set up and our drama teacher came in to teach his lesson as he had forgotten that we had booked the room. This meant we had to move to the lecture theatre and change our plan slightly, we used the back of the red curtain at the front of the stage as it is black on the opposite side. This meant that we then needed to set up a 3 point lighting system which took extra time up. After we had done this we needed to set up the rails for the dolly to run along. The shot which we changed was the first part of the match on action where the girl screams into the camera, and this was due to the fact that after changing location we suddenly had a bright idea.
We felt that instead of the girl only screaming into the camera lense, she could turn around afterwards if we opened the curtains and scream at the empty audience in the theatre and we could just graphic match this to her back instead of to her face like in our storyboard. This to us felt like a better idea because by screaming to an empty audience she is showing that her madness is growing.
The final problem which we had was caused by the lighting against the white clothing Sophie was wearing. The light was reflecting too much, meaning that the camera wasn't picking up Sophie's face because of the glare, we needed to play around with the positioning of the lights because if they were too far away there was shadow on one side of the face, however if they were too close her face couldn't be seen.
Overall shooting was successful and although we had problems in the beginning we managed to get what we wanted done.

Monday 21st March: -Present at shoot: Me, Josh & Matty (Sam couldn't be with us due to unforseen circumstances)
This was our last shooting session as we only needed to do the shots with the car and Sophie running down the road. This was our trickiest shooting session because the traffic on the road was out of our control, this meant that we had to take multiple shots of each scene. The other main problem we came up against was the concern from the public, which I admit does sound strange. With having a young girl chasing after a car it was no surpise to us when several cars pulled over to ask if our actress was alright and wanted to make sure she was okay. Apart from these two issues, there were no problems when filming our final scenes for our film.


My next post will describe the editing process my group and I went through.

Preparing For The Shoot

Although we have everything we need on paper, before my group and I can begin shooting we need to make a few decisions. Firstly what equipment is neccessary for filming and seconly who will be taking on what role. I have compiled a list of what we will need and I will also add the decisions we have made on who is doing what.

Firstly, and most obviously we will be needing a camera to record our footage on. We are using Josh's camera as it is HD and will record the night scenes better than an ordinary camera. The memory is built in, meaning that we will not need to pick up a tape which is also one less thing for us to worry about.

Secondly, we will need a tripod in order to hold the camera steady. We have chosen to book the tripod which is easiest to pan on as this will make our panning smoother by us not having to worry about it jumping at the beginning of the pan. Our tripods also have a built in spirit level which will mean that our camera will always be level.

Thirdly, we will need a tripod adapter to fix the camera safely on the tripod.

 Finally, we will need tracking equipment. We will use the dolly and the tracks to allow us to create a zoom affect in the scene with the black curtain in the background.

We have decided who in our group will be responsible for what and I have included information below, about who is taking on what role.

Me: I will be responsible for camera work, helping with sound and also monitoring costume

Josh: Josh will be responsible for helping with sound, actors and distributing scripts, and he is also chief editor

Sam: Sam will be responsible for helping with sound, managing props and monitoring continuity

Matty: Matty will be responsible for helping with sound and he is also taking on the role as director

My next post will be a comment on how shooting went for my group and I.

Possible Shooting Problems

After completing our test shots I have compiled a list of possible shooting problems we could have which I have included below;

Weather
As we are shooting outside, the weather may restrict us whenit comes to filming. As we are also shooting at night, we will also need a clear night so that the light is better because we will not be able to use a three point lighting system. We will need to depend on the weather alot and check the forecast a few days before planning our shoot.

Shakey Cam
As I will be inside a car when filming, it will be difficult to keep the camera steady. A tripod would be useless, I feel, as it would still shake about due to bumps in the road, because of this I am going to just use hand-held shots because I think that this will add to the authenticity of the atmosphere and the feeling of the chase that is going on.

Using Mirrors
Just like in our Prelim task we are using alot of mirrors in our film. Although I have practiced the shots I will still need to be careful to keep the camera out of the shots at all times.

Actress Availability
We will need to tell our actress way in advance the days when we would like to shoot to ensure that she is available.

Continuity
Finally, just like in any film we will need to make sure there are no continuity errors as this could make our film look less professional and we will be less pleased with the end results.

Test Shots: 30.01.11

The videos below show some of the test shots we filmed when we went out on Sunday afternoon, not all of them have made it to our blogs as there were simply too many of them. The ones which we have included however, are the ones which are important as they are the ones we thought would be trickiest to film. They are the shots from inside the car, we came up with a problem because when we were trying to use the rear-view mirror the camera was seen all the time, so we had to think on or feet and have decided to use the wing mirror instead. The videos below show some of the test runs we took and what we plan to do.

Introducing: The Cam Raw Film Crew!

Since we went filming test shots on Sunday, we took the opportunity to take some photo's in order to introduce the team. The test shots will be uploaded soon, but for now, for the first time ever, here's Cam Raw...

Costume: Make Up Test Run

Our actress will need to look battered and bruised, for this we are going to use make up. To make sure that it doesn't look amateur I have carried out some research and a test run to find out how to do this. As the only girl in our group, it was my job to find out how to make the bruises, and as none of the lads were willing to let me put make up on them, I had to use myself as a model to test it too.

I started by going onto YouTube and finding tutorials for how to create a realistic looking bruise with make up. I found two videos which helped me and I have uploaded them below. The first one was the most useful, however I have also included some of the tips from the second.

After watching these videos I decided to have a go myself. I used mostly the technique from the first video, however I swapped the colour choice of eyeshadow from blue to dark purple. The picture on the left is my attempt. Please excuse my expression, however I didn't think I'd be smiling if I actually did look like this! I plan to perhaps add some yellow and/or green to make the bruise look a bit older. I feel this shouldn't be too difficult as now I have the basic skills I can now just change the colours which I use.

Props

I have come up with a list of the props we will need for our film. A prop is something which is used by an actor in the film, if it is not used then it just dresses the set. The list of our props are below:

• Knife
• Shoes
• Car
• Mobile Phone

Location Research; Bedroom

These are the kind of bedroom scenes we would like to go for. Messy teenager, yet neutral kind of colours as the female is not a young girl, but not grown up, so it would be neither too adult or too girly.

Animatic

We have created an animatic for our film, this allows us to show people what our film will be like and hopefully they will be less confused by our idea now they have something visual to look at. It also gives us a exact idea of how long each shot needs to be and the final length of our film.

Our animatic does contain an expletive which we are aware of, we have included this to make the film more authentic because we felt if this girl had infact been on a night out and woke up with a hangover she wouldn't just say "Oh dear" or something like this, so we chose to include this idea which can of course be removed if it is felt necessary.

Story Board

We have created a story board to help us when we are filming, this will show us how the shot needs to be set up, what type of shot it needs to be and also what props/costumes we might need in that shot.
Withheld - Storyboard

Film Script: Withheld

Withheld Script Final

We have now completed our script for our film. We are now going through the process of planning our filming to make sure we are going to have everything we need and have enough time to film the scenes necessary.

Final Treatment: Withheld

This is the final treatment for our film, the only thing we have done to it, is taken out the camera angles because we were happy with everything else.Media Treatment - Final

Film Treatment: Withheld

Media Treatment

Film Treatment Research

Before writing our treatment, I wanted to find out, 'What is a Film Treatment?' To do this I went to Wikipedia and found out a small amount of research.  



Taken from Wikipedia:
A film treatment (or treatment for short) is a piece of prose, typically the step between scene cards (index cards) and the first draft of a screenplay for a motion picture, television program, or radio play. It is generally longer and more detailed than an outline (or one-page synopsis), and it may include details of directorial style that an outline omits. They read like a short story, except told in the present tense and describing events as they happen. There are two types: the original draft treatment, created during the writing process, and the presentation treatment, created as presentation material.


After carrying out this research I feel that I will now be able to include better input into the writing of our treatment.

Our Final Film Idea

The final idea for our film has now been decided. We have done a lot of brainstorming and have come to a decision we are happy with. I have included the idea for our film in the rest of this post.

We plan to create a psychological thriller, however we will also include some elements of a mystery thriller.

We will begin with a girl, looking fairly battered, bruised and lifeless, standing in a dark room, with some source of light shining on her. She will start to tell her story, but after each sentence, the camera will cut to flashbacks The flashbacks inbetween her explanation will be the titles for our film, however they will also kind tell the story and trace back to reveal events that have happened to the girl. After she has finished explaining, she will scream and we will then include a graphic match. The girl will chase after her boyfriend who has driven off without her and we will have lots of different camera angles to show the action unfolding. We will have a lapse of time, and the girl will then wake up the next morning, for this part of the film her face will not be seen at all until she enters the bathroom and looks in the mirror. Before entering the bathroom she wakes up to a call from a withheld number. After going to the bathroom and discovering her bruised face she will attempt to call her boyfriend, friend & mom. However, all of the calls go unanswered. The viewer will then be left on a cliffhanger as to what has happened...

Our film is going to be called: Withheld.


The idea that we have for the first part of the film where she is explaining, is to have the shots very fast paced, almost like 'subliminal messaging' to hint to the audience what we are getting at. Conveniently as we came up with our idea, Coronation Street released their advert for the 50th Anniversary Tram Crash. I have posted the video below to give a better idea of what we hope to achieve.

We also had a very good idea of what we wanted out girl to look like. This was because we remembered the advert Alton Towers released for their ride '13'. I have posted the video below to show that this is the kind of look we would like to achieve. We want this part of our film to be fairly chilling as it is in the advert below.

I understand that our idea may sound confusing when written down, so I have already included our pitch for our film and I will soon be including our treatment, treatment feedback and script in order to hopefully make our idea more clear. 

Our Thriller: The Pitch

As part of 'Cam Raw! Productions' I can now reveal that my group & I have come up with the idea for our thriller. Below is an audio file containing our pitch & feedback from the members of our media class. The research that myself & the other members of 'Cam Raw' did, helped us to come up with our idea & decide what conventions to include/challenge in our thriller.

 

Basically, our pitch was to explain our idea to other groups in order to gain feedback & advice. I feel that this session helped us to expand & improve on our idea. From this session I found the following pieces of advice useful & I will be using them when we are planning, filming & editing our final 2minute opening.

- 9minutes, 45seconds: Mr Hood points out that we need to make clear to the examiner that the girl is going to be in a white dress in order to portray her to the audience as the victim.
-  11minutes, 20seconds: Mr Hood suggests that we use Prezi in order to film the credits which include the polaroids as this could help us overcome any camera problems we may come up against.
- 12minutes, 12seconds: Mr Hood points out that the condensation could be tricky to film as camera's & water don't really mix together very well. Suggestions for how to overcome this followed later in the discussion.
- 13minutes, 17seconds: Mr Hood makes the point that we need to experiment with the make-up before hand as if we get it wrong then it could look more comical than 'thriller-like'.
- 13minutes, 40seconds: Mr Hood tells us that we could have problems with the condensation shots because we could either write the writing backwards, or the writing will not be legible. One of the other problems we could have is that it might run before we get the shots of it. To overcome this he has suggested that we test out some shots before the real movie, in order to give us time to come up with a different idea.
- 14minutes, 35seconds: Adam suggests that we could fade the shot & colour the text in order to make the condensation readable for viewers
- 14minutes, 49seconds: Mr Hood agrees that this is a good idea & suggests that we might need to experiment with Motion if we can't find another way
- 15minutes, 30seconds: Final point! Mr Hood picks up on the fact that before our pitch their was slight tension between the members of our group, which has since been solved & all group members are 100% on board with our idea.
 

Group Brainstorming: Thrillers

Summary of Ideas on Prezi

Target Audience

I have looked at how films are rated using the British Board of Film Classification website. I have also used this website to decide on what age rating we should possibly give our film. Based on the guidelines set by the British Board of Film Classification, I have come to the conclusion that our film would be either a 15 or an 18. Below I have included the possible age ratings and a brief description of each:

 Universal - Suitable For All;

'U' rated films should be suitable for all audiences aged four years and over.

Parental Guidance;

'PG' films should not disturb any child around the age of 8 or older and unaccompanied children of any age may watch it.

Suitable For 12 Years Or Older;

The 12A category exists only for films in cinemas and it means that no one younger than 12 can see a 12A film unaccompanied by an adult. Violence, imitable behaviour, language, sex and drugs may be shown but must be brief and not be in detail.

Suitable For 15 Years Or Older;

'15' rating means that no one under the age of 15 can watch this film in the cinema. Once again, violence, imitable behaviour, language, sex and drugs can be shown, not in detail but in more detail than in a 12/12A rated film.

Suitable Only For Adults;

No one younger than 18 may see this film in a cinema. In line with the consistent findings of the BBFC’s public consultations and The Human Rights Act 1998, at ‘18’ the BBFC’s guideline concerns will not normally override the principle that adults should be free to choose their own entertainment. 

Restricted 18;

This rating is a special and legally restricted classification primarily for explicit works containing sex or strong material involving adults.

(I wasn't too sure whether or not to include this rating, however as it is listed on the BBFC's website, I decided that it was still a necessary piece of information to use).

Aswell as age ratings, we also need to consider the type of person who would like to come and watch our film. For example, a male may be old enough to go and watch a chick-flick, but just because he can doesn't mean that he wants to. This means that our film will be aimed at either 15+/18+ year olds (depending on which age rating our group thinks best), males and females as this would be a good film for couples to go and see together and other people their age who just love to go to the cinema. I feel that with the lead role being an attractive young female, our thriller would appeal more to males than females, because they will not only be going to watch the film, but also to check out the actress on screen. However, the mystery element in the film would hopefully appeal to more middle aged people aswell because they get to go on the journey with the actress piecing together what happened to her and her friends.