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

In the progression from my preliminary task to our final media product, I learnt a great number of things.

My preliminary exercise was my first go at anything of this nature - I had worked on film sets before as a camera trainee but never used the specific cameras we used or  how to work in a group of this size - I was much more used to groups of 30+ than the 2 we had. This was a useful exercise for me as I knew that I would be working with the same people in the actual thing, which gave me an opportunity to understand how the group dynamic played out and how each of our roles would affect the way we worked together.

I was already fairly experienced in use of camera and editing equipment, having used a variety of cameras and being proficient in a range of softwares from Premiere Pro and After Effects to Garageband, some of which we used for our final media product. However, I did not know how to use the sound equipment at all, and the preliminary task helped with this somewhat although I still did not learn how to use all the equipment until we got to recording the foley sound separately - it was only then that I realised how to set levels etc. for proper sound recording.

I think the preliminary exercise was really too short for learning all of this properly. It is for this reason that our media studies teacher set us an extra task, called The Package. The brief was to make a short 2-3 minute film about taking a package somewhere, which had to create tension. During this task, I managed to lose the SD card with all our data, which meant we had to reshoot - my group weren't very happy, but at least it meant we wouldn't make that mistake again! This taught me the importance of proper data management, and to always have backups! For our final media product, we made sure to back up all of our footage to an offline storage location in case of system failure, so that we wouldn't have to reshoot or re-edit.

For our final media product I had to learn a number of special effect techniques including how to efficiently execute the pleasantville effect - the red highlighted against the black and white. I had previously learnt how to do this a number of ways, but all were immensely time consuming. The method we settled for was least time consuming of the few I knew, but still took up most of the time in post processing as there was no way to perfectly match the range of colours we needed for her coat.

I also had to learn how to use our Steadicam-style stabiliser, as I had not had very much experience in using them, especially without an arm and vest, which made it a lot harder to use than I was used to. Hence (if you look carefully) some of our shots are at a very slight dutch angle, unintentionally. However, this would have been much worse at the time of our preliminary exercise as you can see from this shot from The Package - bearing in mind this was on a tripod!

In terms of colour correction, I have come a long way - my colour correction skills during The Package were somewhat limited, as you can see above - they consisted of placing a filter over the footage which, in hindsight, looks awful. We spent a long time working with colour in the final product and I believe now that I could do a much better job of it than I could 8 months ago.

My partner handled most of the organisation for this project, although it was useful for me to see what she was doing and how she achieved it, as she seemed to be very proficient in this area. It was interesting to learn her techniques for storyboarding and making a shot list, a part of film production I had not really been involved in before.

The preliminary task was very useful for my development as a filmmaker, as I could see easily the areas in which I needed to improve and subsequently worked with my peers to create a finished product which I am genuinely proud of.

What have you learnt about technologies through the process of constructing this project?

In the creation of our film we used all variety of softwares such as...

• Final Cut
• After Effects
• Garage Band 

My partner already owned a Canon HF G25 that we made use of and we borrowed a Røde NTG2 microphone to record our diegetic sound from school.












To clearly answer this question we decided to create a short film with a voice over to clearly display all of the many technologies we made use of in the production our film.

Evaluation Question 6 - What Have You Learnt About Technologies From the Process of Constructing this Product?

For this question we decided to create a short film to clearly display all of the many technologies we made use of in creating our film.

Evaluation Question 5 - How Did You Attract/Address Your Audience?

To show how we decided to maximise our film's appeal to an audience we decided to create a directors commentary, explaining shot by shot our methods of attracting an audience.

Evaulation Question 4 - Who would be the Audience for your Media Product?

We want the target age range for our film to be 15- 25, as can be seen from the results of our first questionnaire the majority of people who answered were in the 11 -17 age bracket. As people aged 11 - 14 would not be old enough to view our film, since it has a 15 age certificate we decided to hole a film screening accompanied by a questionnaire for people aged 15 - 25. We will show them our 2 minute opening and then present them with a questionnaire to see if from that they would like to watch the rest of the film and find out if so why or if not why not?

Below can be seen a copy of our questionnaire that we handed out to everyone at the screening.

Questionnaire

Please feel free to leave a comment under any of your answers.

What is your age?

☐ 16-25

☐ 26-35

☐ 36-45

☐ 46-55

☐ 56-65

☐ 65+

Have you seen any of the following?

☐ Vertigo (1958)

☐ Silence of the Lambs (1991)

☐ Se7en (1995)

☐ Mr Wrong (1996)

☐ Drive (2011)

☐ The Woman in Black (2012)

What is your opinion on psychological thrillers?

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

We will now ask you some questions about our opening.

Did you understand the opening?

Yes ☐                         No ☐

 ……………………………………………………………………………………………….

Did you like the ident before the start of the film?

 Yes ☐                         No ☐

 ……………………………………………………………………………………………….

Did you like the titles/graphics, in particular the way that they look and the way they are positioned on screen?

  Yes ☐                         No ☐

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

Would you want to see the rest of the film?

   Yes ☐                         No ☐

 ……………………………………………………………………………………………….

If not why not, if so why?

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

We managed to have a good crowd at the screening, filling the room, with each group bring 5/6 people to watch our film openings. It all went smoothly the openings played one after the other with our audience filling in each questionnaire after that film was screened. Here is photo of everyone deep in thought as they worked their way through the questions.



After the screening I collated the results, displaying them graphically in charts, to make them visually appealing as easy for an observer to understand.

• As can be seen from these results, similarly to the result in the first questionnaire, psychological thrillers as extremely popular in the 15 - 25 age range, which is very helpful as our film fits well amongst this genre.
• The majority of people could easily understand our thriller and those two who could not it would likely become clear in a second watch or if they were given more than just the first two minutes to watch.
• Again most people commented positively on both our titles and ident, giving us feedback such as "I LOVE THEM" and "they are AMAZING"
• Finally 93% of our audience responded that they would like to see the rest of the film,  commenting on our effective methods of building suspense and intrigue, which has been our goal create from the initial idea, as tension is needed in any successful thriller.

Overall it can be seen from the results of our questionnaire that we have chosen the correct target audience 15- 25. This is because not only would the majority of them be open to the idea film, since a large percentage of them enjoy psychological thrillers, but they appear to be intrigued enough by our actual opening that they would actively want to watch the rest of it.

Evaluation Question 3 - What Kind of Media Institution might Distribute your Media Product and Why?

Here is a power point I created to look into the pros and cons of six different distribution companies, to see which would be the most beneficial for our film.

Evaluation Question 2 - How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

Our media product shows the representation of gender and age, in the struggles that all young girls go through in todays society in simply walking home by themselves. The paranoid nature of the main girl, while can be viewed as extreme, it is common amongst people of her demographic in this day with terrifyingly high statistics of muggings and rapes on the street. 1/5 Women will experience some sort of sexual assault in their lives with 30% of them experiencing domestic abuse. As well as this mugging rates are nearly reaching 400,000 a year across England and Wales. In contrast to our representation of the victimised young woman we display a negative male representation of the malicious man with harmful intentions. Our decision to dress the male all in black immediately highlights him as a dangerous figure and someone to be vary us, especially as the audience is not able to see his face, giving him a sense of humanity. This stereotype of men being dangerous whilst women are always the victim is actually very incorrect in todays society with 2/3 of mugging victims actually being male.

To display this information creatively and look into similar films who have also tackled the topic of stalking with a variety of genders I have created a short animated video which can be found here.

My free trial for the animation software has now ended, to access it please log in using the following
Username: emma.3000@btinternet.com
Password: alleynsmedia

Evaluation Question 1 - In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products?

I have made a prezi to compare my film opening to real films that have made use of similar techniques as my partner and I did.

Certification

Classification of a 15 According to the British Board of Film Classification

• Must not endorse discrimination
• Drugs may be shown, but may not promote them
• Should not focus on how dangerous, harmful beavious such as sucide could be copied
• Very strong language is allowed
• Nudity is allowed if there is little detail when it is in a sexual context 
• Sex may been shown and referenced but not in strong detail
• A strong threat is allowed as long as it is not of an extremely dark or sadistic nature
• Violence can be strong as long as it does not linger on the infliction of pain

We had originally planned for our film to be a 12A, but it is clear to us now after filming that the strong messages of threat and possible mugging conveyed would raise the rating to a 15. This is actually beneficial to us as the majority of people in our questionnaire said that a 15 was their preferred age certificate

Finished Film

Here is the final cut of our finished 2 minute thriller opening

Editing - Titles

We used After Effects to create all of our titles, using their built in track points so our titles followed the camera movement. We used the same font as for out end title, True Lies, in red, adding to the limited colour in the film, putting emphasis on them as they contrasted the black and white behind. We had several difficulties with the titles, such as with our main actor's name, as it is  "Ruby Ballantyne" which was far too long too fit anywhere in the opening, so after trying many places without success we were forced to make the decision to change her name so it would fit in. We also deliberately decided to not give a credit to the actor who played the following man to add to the feeling of uncertainty whether he is really there, or simply a figment of not only the young girl's imagination but yours too as the viewer.

Editing - Colour

My partner and I had the challenge of removing all colour except the girl's red coat and a few other chosen red objects. This proved to be far harder than we had expected because of all of the other slightly red objects such as buildings and skin tones in the background of nearly every shot. We counteracted these problems by having to use a series of multiple colour and shape masks in every shot, to restrict the red to only the few places we wanted it. This initial problem did give us the idea to leave in the occasional other flashes of red, for example leaving in the red bus and postbox. This adds to the style of the film and is a constant reminder of the imminent danger.

Editing - Soundtrack

My partner and I used garage band to create a soundtrack to our film, we imported a low resolution version of what we hope to be the final cut of the film into garage band then began to create the music, to match the edit. We first added two different bass lines which we looped throughout to create a base layer for us to work on, picking out two of the default built in loops. We then added a drum track which was once for looped. Finally we composed our own melody using a variety of string, brass and woodwind instruments, making sure for the brass to come in every time St. Pauls is revealed to the audience. We also used the music to pick out crucial parts of the film, by adding a key change when the follower is revealed to the audience. Finally we added a memorable jingle to go over our ident at the beginning and created a creepy, eerie sounding ending to go on top of our title.

Rough Cut 4

Here is our fourth and final rough cut

What have we done since the last rough cut?

We have focused mostly on the sound

• We have mastered it all, making it sound far more appealing to an audience
• As well we have synchronised all of the diegetic sound that was recorded after the main filming 

Also we added a large amount of shape masks into multiple shots to make sure the coat is the sole thing in colour, apart from a few carefully selected other things

This can be seen here...
Before

After


Finally we sorted the shot of Ruby's feet, deciding to make part of the shop in the background in colour, to ensure we had some red in every shot
Before

After


Final Things to Improve

The same as in the last rough cut we still need to

• Add the rest of the titles
• Fix the shade of the red

Rough Cut 3

Things to Improve

Add the rest of the titles - in this rough cut we trialled a few of our titles to see if they worked, for the most part we liked them, however our main actress' name, Ruby Ballantyne was too long to fit so we will have to swap that for a different name in the next rough cut

Fix the shade of red - as the exposure was different in each shot we will have to individually go through and match the shade of red of the coat, to make them look the same.

Fix the sound - Not only is it unmastered but also me need to synchronise all of the non diegetic sound that we recorded after, such as the footsteps and the gasp with the visuals

Add more shape masks - this needs to be done in shots such as the shot of the left below, to make sure that nothing that we do not want to be red is in colour.

Sort out the feet shot - this can be seen below on the right. It has proved very difficult so far as there is none of the red coat in the shot and there is a large amount of red in the background, so we need to decide how we want to deal with this.

Rough Cut 2

Here is the rough cut of our film...
This rough cut we arranged an audience viewing for it see what people liked so far and find out any ideas they had for how we could improve it.

Things our Audience Liked

• Thought it was very stylised
• Really liked how it was edited, with us removing the colour apart from the red
• Commented on specific shots they thought were clever and the angles we used, such as the low down shot of the footsteps

Things to Improve on

• Sort out the diegetic song throughout
• Either remove the footstep noises or put them for all footsteps
• Maybe re film a shot or two of the friend for the beginning to make the audience be able to relate to her more and slowdown the pace
• Add a fade from black at the start of the film, again make the beginning less sudden

Rough Cut 1

Here is our first rough cut that we completed, all the clips have been placed in order but the sound and the colour still needs to be sorted
Below you can see a quick trial of the Pleastantville effect that we have been experimenting with

Filming Process

We arranged to film Saturday the 21st January, we first ordered two coats and a pair of gloves from amazon for under £50. We then borrowed a boom mic, a digital audio recorder and a S60T Stabiliser from school and used a canon G25 that my partner already owned. We met our three actors in Paternoster square where we had planned to film our opening shot, at 2:30, so we would be able to film through the golden hour. We at first encountered some problems as we were told we were not allowed to film there, or on the millenium bridge, our other main location. However, this ended it up working in our favour as we realised smaller, quieter, back alleys would suit the mood of our film much better than the busy millenium bridge, as these would be a far more likely place for an attack to take place. It also helped us avoid getting other people in the film which would make the continuity hard to keep and we still managed to get a very cinematic shot of St Pauls in the background of the girl crossing the road.

Shot List

Shot #	Loc	Info	Shot Type	Camera Movement	Shot Description
SC.1	1
1		EXT EVE	CU/Mid/Wide	CU->Mid->Wide on stabiliser	Friend taps GIRL on shoulder. (GIRL is in group talking to friends, tracking around)
1b		EXT EVE			Alt. shot GIRL is in group talking to friends, tracking around
SC. 2	3
3		EXT EVE/ NIGHT			GIRL begins to walk home
4		EXT EVE	Wide	Side Track	Side Tracking, FOLLOWER walks in
5		EXT EVE	Mid	Tracking backwards, GIRL walks towards camera	Shot In front of GIRL looking at face
6		EXT EVE	C/U	No.	Track feet
SC. 3	2
6		EXT EVE	Mid	Tracking behind GIRL
7…			C/U		ALL SORTS OF BITS, Man’s body and girl’s face. Editing speed picks up.
13, 15		EXT EVE	Mid		FOLLOWER is not there
14		EXT EVE	C/U		GIRL looks scared, looks behind
16		EXT EVE	C/U		Match on Action, GIRL looks behind
17		EXT EVE	C/U		Man’s Hand on Girl’s Shoulder. Mirror of first shot. Right hand right shoulder. Cut to Black.

1 – Paternoster Square

2 – Millennium Bridge
3 – Street

Font

Aharoni is the best font 

for our purposes - it is 

bold and clearly readable, 

whilst not being too 

obnoxious or weird.

We also liked The Quick, 

but decided that it did not have a serious enough 

tone for our film.