Ameena Haq - Question 7. Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have leant in the progression from it to...

In our preliminary task, we were asked to film a conversation between two people using the 180 degree rule, match on action, and shot/reverse shot.
In our thriller opening we used:
Shot reverse shot, which was used to help indicate the flow of the images and the fact that the serial killer was staring outside the window, at the victim.

Ameena Haq - Question 6. What have you leant about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

• I-movie : By using i-movie I learnt how to utilise the basic aspects of video editing to create a more polished and powerful final piece.
• Photoshop: I learnt how to transform a quick hand-drawn sketch into a sepia effect design. This helped make it look more planned, and professional, and added a certain aged charm to it. It was inspired by a film called Dead Ringers, and the opening sequence of that.
• Blogger : This program has given me a direct outlet to share my media work with.

Ameena Haq - Question 5. How did you attract your audience?

The "weird" teenager is a role which may attract an audience because it is unique. Too often the image we see of teenage girls in the media is one of an anorexic, unhealthy, self-obsessed and unintelligent young woman. The creation of my charachter is a way of smashing my heel into this stereotype of teenagers, and creating a wider and more diverse record of the teenage experience. The role I created brought together various aspects of youth culture, and I aimed to present an image which could appeal to all teenagers and show that for all our cliques and imagined differences, we are all young adults with the same human needs.

Ameena Haq - Question 4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

• Teenagers: In some way or another, teenagers can relate to the killer, because adolescence almost always means a turning point in your relationship with your parents; which usually becomes significantly more strained.
• Parents: The parents of disaffected youth often cannot emphasize with their child due to generational differences, and this film may help bridge the gap by invoking a sense of empathy in the parents, and humanizing an extremely difficult teenager.

Ameena Haq - Question 3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

We have chosen to use a mainstream network to distribute our film. This is due to the fact that the conventions in our film are primarily mainstream according to the conventions of a typical thriller. We used things such as:

• Makeup to conceal the identity of the killer, the extreme excess of makeup also challenges, parodies, and critiques the way in which women are expected to look,
• Washing the hands symbolizes the lack of remorse of the killer, and the sense of a new beginning that washing her hands gives her. Water is a traditional symbol of new beginnings, for instance baptism.

Ameena Haq - Question 2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The image we tried to portray from our film, was that of child abuse.
The main part in the narrative of our film is the "punishment" that abusive parents should recieve.

Anam was pulling a young girl along the pathway. We hoped this would appear as though she were the child's parent. The fact that she is forceful towards the girl suggests the abuse the child is suffering.

Ameena Haq - Question 1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e of film openings).

"Once upon a time" is the title of our thriller opening. The title suggests a link between the storyline as it is primarily based on fairy tales and the subversions of it. The use of the title also suggests a strong link to the past and is also a subversion of a the fairytale format because is in fact more accurately described as a thriller.
It's filmed in the school because it suggests "the typical life of a student", and it challenges the stereotype of a school girl, as she is a supposed serial killer, instead a frivolous fashionista. The use of the serial killer archetype is typical to the thriller genre, and so manages to uphold the conventions.
The drawings of the fairytale charachters help to establish the narrative and the subversion of fairytales, because they are not photographic and they are products of my imagination. The opening establishes the protagonist and hints to the possible killing of a parent, which sets up the narrative.

Question 7 Holly Hunter-Brown

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

Since the preliminary task I now have a much more extended knowledge of how to use technologies such as the cameras and i-movie. An example of this is the use of auto-focus as for some shots in our preliminary task we forgot to use it, which meant that when filming our opening we knew to check every time that it was on.

I also learnt to use how to use transitions more effectively, we didn't use any for our preliminary task however, we used a variety of fades and washes in our opening in order to show the different times.

We also made more interesting use of shot-revese-shot, rather than just during conversation we used it while our murderer was watching her victim. This makes better use of it within the thriller genre.

Question 6 Holly Hunter-Brown

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

During the process of this project I have used a large number of technologies for the first time. These include:

• Blogger
• Photoshop
• I-movie
• Cameras
• Youtube
• Grab

I had the most trouble with the cameras and Photoshop; this is due to the fact I have never had to use them before. On Photoshop I had to edit the titles, drawn by Ameena. When we scanned them in they were in black and white however, we wanted them to have an older look so I had to change them to sepia as well as adding the titles.

I also found using i-movie very difficult during the editing of our opening. As I had never used effects before on sound or footage. In our opening we used black and white effects and slow motion for the memory to signify the difference and we made changes to sound for the same reason.

Question 5 Holly Hunter-Brown

How did you attract/address your audience?

In order to attract our audiences we used a number of techniques:

• We used other popular thrillers as inspiration and included similarities in order to ensure it would be enjoyed. For example; we decided each of the murders taken place within the film would be based on a different fairytale which is similar  to Seven in which the killer bases his murders on each of the seven deadly sins- trailer. We also took inspiration from Seven in the respect that his murders could be justified as moral killings, also seen in the Saw series, although we made it more central to the storyline. This is a narrative which is not often seen or developed in many films making it a Unique Selling Point. (Both these films were chosen as poplar in our audience research-http://group1productions.blogspot.com/2010/02/audience-research.html) In order to suggest her fairytale obsession in our opening we had her holding a fairytale book throughout:

• 
  
  We also used a teenage girl as the main character in order to allow the younger audience to relate and those with teenage children.
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  The use of the fairytale book as a motif could be used to attract those who read them as a child.
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  We also used the flashbacks in our opening; this would appeal to our audiences sense of nostalgia and create a sense of mystery to intrigue.

Question 4 Holly Hunter-Brown

Who would be the audience for your media product?

We initially decided to target our film at teenagers as they would be able to relate to the main character whilst still understanding the issue of whether or not her murders are justified. However we would have to tackle the issue of certificate as while it is a thriller, since our audience research told us that Saw was a popular film we chose to use more horror elements in our film which would make it difficult to determine whether to make it a 15 or 18.

Overall, it would attract any audience who is interested by current affairs and the problems in todays society. Due to the issues explored that we see in the news so often such as child abuse and disruptive teenagers.

Question 3 Holly Hunter-Brown

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

Our Production company name is H.B.N Productions we chose this very last minute as we had not thought about it previously; we used this as it was the initials of our last names. We didn’t come up with a logo as when we were looking for the order in which to write the names we saw that most productions companies do the same.

The production company is vital for the development, funding and production of a film.

For a film like ours we would find funding from the UK Film Council which gets funding from the institutions such as the National Lottery. By using them it would be easier for us to succeed as UK Film Council investments in British films have been hugely successful – for every £1 we have invested, £5 has been generated at the box office.

We chose to order our titles with the production company name first, then our names (as producers/directors) and then the film name. This is because when researching it we found that this was the order.

Our film would be similar to Seven institutionally with New Line Cinema distributing it as they are a mainstream company who produce many thrillers. We decided that our film would be mainstream due to the exploration of very mainstream issues explored in our society.

Questions 2 Holly Hunter-Brown

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Teenages- Our film centres around a teenage girl who was mistreated during her childhood. We showed her as very hurt, disturbed girl who has never recovered from the abuse. She is never shown with anyone in the shot which tells us that she is very lonely and isolated from society.

Parents- We chose to use to tackle the subject of child abuse and neglect as it is a current issue in the media and a problem that we see on a daily basis in the news. We only made a very sublte referance to it in our opening but did show a child being dragged by her mother.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/joepublic/2010/apr/29/baby-p-social-work-reform-backtracks

Question 1 Holly Hunter-Brown

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

Our opening uses conventions from real media products in the following ways:

• In many thriller the killer/villian wears a disguise to keep their identity hidden and create a motif that the audience will regognise throughout the film. This inspired us to do the same in ours, we spefically took inspiration from 'The Dark Knight' after our initail idea to use a mask.
• We also used special effects during the flashback in our opening, we included black and white and slowed it down in order to signifiy that it was a memory and create tension. In almost every film including a flashback there is use of special effects or Flashback Effects. An example of this is The Butterfly Effect and the use of blurs to signify the flashback.

• The title of our film, 'Once Upon a Time' is also very conventional in terms of thrillers as it doesn't give much away but still hints at the themes and motifs we used. It's similiar to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds which tells us the main subject of the film but without telling us the threat. It also implies the subversion of innocence, which is often explored  in thrillers such as The Omen.
• After the titles and flashback we introduce the action with an establishing shot of the school in order to show the audience where it will take place, used in almost every film for the same effect.
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  The sountrack to our opening is also seen in thrillers. It's very repetative which creates tension as seen in the opening of The Shining:

We also challenged and developed conventions of real media products:

• The use of faiytale images in the titles and throughout the planned narrative develops the creepy way in which fairytales are sometimes presented. We got inspiration from the scary forest scene in the Disney version of Snow White and developed the idea of the mistreated children in fairytales and how they can be presented in a scary way.

• The font we used challenges the conventions of real thriller films as we chose to use one which refelected the fairytale theme rather than one which implied the scary elements.
• The introduction of the villian first rather than the victim also challenges the conventions of usual thrillers and introduces our narrative which sees the murders from the killers point of view.

Question 7 - Anam Nasir

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

I have learnt a lot from our preliminary task and as we progressed to our full product.
In our preliminary task we didn’t use our storyboard effectively and filmed our shots too wide, which made the viewers concentrate on the surroundings more than the characters.
When we moved to our final product we made sure we included voyeurism in our film as Hitchcock has celebrated in his films, like Psycho and Rear Window.
To suggest violence we wanted to use a silhouette, however this did not work well with our film, therefore we used blooded hands washing against a pure white sink. This was to show that the sink had come against something impure.
We used the 180 degree rule in our preliminary task as the two characters had a conversation.

Within our 180 degree rule we did a shot/reverse shot to orient the viewer so they can see a relationship between the two characters.
We included a match on action shot in our film, this worked well as we had a mid shot of Victoria Jones turning a page in her book, then it cuts to a point of view shot of the character continuing to turn the page. This worked well as we edited it to create a sense of continuity.

Question 6 - Anam Nasir

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

We used a range of online and computer programs:

Youtube: to upload our two preliminary tasks, our rough cut and final cut.

Blogger: to write down the process of making our thriller film opening

iMovie: we used this to import and edit our film. We also edited sound through this software, as this was easier than using Garage band.

Photoshop: to edit our titles, we changed the colour of our scanned drawings and added the titles through photoshop and saved the images as JPEG.

iTunes: we used this to import our music to be able to use it in iMovie.

Using this function on iMovie we were able to edit the audio. We used this in the flashback scene. We applied the Reverb technique.



Here we can see the iMovie window; we were able to drag clips into the timeline to easily edit and move around clips. We were alos able to split videos and crop them easily with the iMovie tools.
We also used other technical equipment:

Camera: we used a Sony HDV Handycam, this was easy to use and record our film to.

However when recording our preliminary task we couldn’t function the focus functions, therefore our shots in the preliminary task were out of focus.

Using the camera on the tripod was much easier than a handheld camera; it was a lot steadier. We also used tracks for our tracking shot, this was difficult and time consuming as we couldn’t get the shot to be the same speed throughout.

Scanner: we used the scanner to scan our hand drawn images; this was simple to do but time consuming. In our test scan we have explained our difficulties. (Click here to see our test scan shots)

Question 5 - Anam Nasir

How did you attract/address your audience?


Here is my annotated version of 'Once Upon a Time'.

Question 4 - Anam Nasir

Who would be the audience for your media product?

We chose to make our thriller a certificate 15, as this would be suitable as we could relate to this certificate classification and know what is expected. We handed out 20 questionnaires to teenagers over 15.

This is Nida Kamal who answered one of my questionnaires. She can represent our target audience as she is very typical of our target audience. She enjoys watching thriller films in her spare time with friends. She doesn’t have much knowledge about genres of films, as when she was asked what thriller film was her favourite she answered, ‘Saw’, which actually is a horror film is. She stated this as her favourite thriller film because of the use of suspense. For our product we thought about our target audience and tried to create suspense throughout the opening sequence.

Question 3 - Anam Nasir

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


Our media production company name is ‘H.B.N Productions’, this was suitable as it made sense to name our production company with our initial in it. We did not make a logo for our production company, due to the amount of time we had. However if we did have time to design a logo it would most probably look like the Sony Pictures logo.

A production company is responsible for the development of a product. They may also be responsible for raising and funding for the product.
Using 20th Century Fox as my distributor would be suitable as they have distributed many successful thriller films like: Mirrors, Max Payne and Blindness.
Ideally I would think the money for a film like ours would come from the UK Film Council which awards funds from The National Lottery. They mention on their site that they “fund script development, film production, short films, film export and distribution, cinemas, film education, culture and archives, festivals and audience support schemes”. (Click on quote to visit site).
When ordering our films titles, we were confused about what appears on screen first. We looked at other film openings which help us decide what order to do this in. we came to a decision of having the production company’s name first and then the list of film makers and then finally the title of the film. We got this idea from the opening sequence of Se7en. (Click on the Se7en link to watch the opening sequence.)
Institutionally our film would be released in a similar way to the thriller films, Se7en and Final Destination; both have been distributed by New Line Cinema.

Question 2 - Anam Nasir

QUESTION 2
How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In the flashback the audience see Victoria Jones in a classroom wearing school uniform. Our target audience could relate to this as they could go through similar events she goes through in the film.

Question 1 - Anam Nasir

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings).


Conventionally a male character is most likely to be presented as the assassin.



Here we have ‘The Joker’ from ‘The Dark Knight’ alongside a picture of Victoria Jones in similar makeup.
The title of the film is ‘Once Upon a Time’ suggesting the film will have a happy ending like in fairy tales, and that the story of the movie will be positive.



The setting of our film is located in school, most shots are taken in the library, this is to show the murderers influenced by books, particularly fairy tales as she holds a fairy tale book.


Here we can see a wide shot of the books as the setting and we see a book in the murderer’s arms.
Using face paint on the murderer was used to create and edgy feeling for the viewers
Our first shot consists of a tracking shot across the book shelf in the library; this was to create mystery as the shot gets to the end of the bookshelf, the audience are unaware of what is expected. To show the separation from the flashback and real time we edited the colour of the screen to black and white. We also edited the music and made it more deep using the tool on iMovie. This made the film have a more deep feel and to create a sense of enigma.
The styles of the titles were alongside hand drawn images of fairytale characters suffering; this was to go with our fairy tale theme.


The opening of the thriller sets up the story of the film by giving the viewers a brief introductory of the characters past.
The genre of our film opening is a thriller. Our media product shows this with the use of dark mysterious music and doesn’t show any gory material, which separates thrillers from horror films. With a thriller genre in mind it was easier to think of a narrative.
Victoria Jones is introduced in the first shot of the film, staring in the camera, which can be intimidating towards the audience. The shot then cuts to a closer shot moving in gradually from a wide shot to a long shot to a middle shot, with the titles in between to give the viewer’s time to take in what they are long at. The use of this technique was to introduce the location of where the character is, then who the character is and lastly the emotion of the character.

1st Draft and Final Product

This is our rough draft, we chose to take out the rewinding scene as we didn't think it worked and while we were using it to disorientate the audience we believed it looked out of place. We decided to end it with the tap as it seemed a good place to leave it and introduce the beginning of the action.
We also made changes to the sound-how the non-diagetic music ended and left the diagetic souund of the tap.

30th March

Yesterday, after putting together our rough cut we found that it was not even a minute long and we had no more footage to add. To overcome this today we filmed additional scenes to make it longer and begin the narrative more effectively. After uploading it we found the shots we want to use and put some of them in a rough order so when we come to edit tomorrow we can concentrate on getting the timing right.

Then all we have left to finish is the sound and titles, we have planned to do our voiceover tomorrow at lunch as we had to delay it due to the fact we were unable to find someone with the right voice to do it. Once we have done the voiceover we will be able to find the right music since it’s difficult to know if they will sound right together and we only have to add the text to the titles, and then upload them on to i-movie.

17th March

Today we have a media synoptic day, We have made a plan for what we hope to get done.

Period 1: Drawings for the credits, look for music and preparing the script for the voice-over

Period 2: Recording the voice-over

Period 3 &4: Filming in the library 

Period 5: Uploading the footage taken in the library

Period 6: Filming in the classroom.

Period 7: Uploading

By Holly, Ameena and Anam

15th March 2010

 

Test Scan

We decided to test what the scans of our images for our credits would look and found that in order to make it more effective and look better on screen we had to use a thicker pen and scan it in a higher resolution. We also found that we had to scan it in landscape rather than portrait for it too take up all of the screen.

Test Shot

When we uploaded our test scan we then decided to see how it looked in a video format. We originally set the shot to 16:9, which left us with black edges to the shot, so we had to change the format so we got rid of the black sides. This made the film look more professional.

By Anam and Ameena

Images

We have been looking at old fairytale images for the title sequence of our opening, we worried about images being copy-righted so to overcome this we will choose images and trace/copy them and edit them slightly. This will also ensure that the images will be big enough to look good on screen and all be of the same quality and similar style. We will have to use 5 images overall for each title.

2nd March 2010

Today, we looked at images from the internet to inspire us with the look we were looking for by looking at images on Google of different face paintings.

We looked at images of circle eye contacts that might fit for our finished look for our serial muderer as worn by Lady Gaga in her Bad Romance Video.

We also thought about having an extreme close-up of the eye like in Psycho (1960), to make the scene more dramatic.

Product Research

Blue Velvet Opening Scene

• Camera tilt from blue sky to picket fences and open bud roses-representing new life and birth
  Red fire brigade suggests a sense of danger or fire.
• This contrasts with the man on the fire brigade smiling and waving at the camera, (the villagers).
• Kids passing by a zebra crossing suggests innocence
• An old man watering plants- stereotypical for someone to be doing this in the suburbs.
• Woman inside watching a film on TV - a man with a gun in the film she’s watching this suggests possible violence involved later in the film.
• As the hose water pressure gets high-the tension in the scene builds up as does the music.
• A knot in the hose with the branch could relate to the man suffering with a knot in his veins.
• The branch represents life as the knot ties the branch it’s coming to an end for the branch- relating back to the man watering the plants.
• Camera tracking into grass at the end suggesting discovery, exploration and examination.

Treatment

Victoria Jones didn't grow up like a usual child. She was mistreated by parents and foster parents, moved from home, to care home, to foster home, to care home and never stayed in one place for more than two months. The only time she was ever happy was when she was reading her old fairytale book. In a world of happy endings and princess’ treated no better than her.

At the age of 16 her hatred and resentment for her abusive parents and carers reaches a peak. She needs revenge. Creating her own vicious happy endings with equally as vicious parents like her own. But are they inhumane murders or just punishments?

Audience Research

We asked what our audiences interests were to try to gain a better understanding of how to target them effectively. This means that when deciding on characters we are able to create a protagonist that the audience will be able to relate to. Overall, our results told us that our audience we interested in music, this means that with an effective use of music we can target them correctly.

We also asked them which genre they prefer to watch; when choosing a film and our results told us comedy and romance were most popular. This means that we be able to target our audience even more effectively by including elements of these genres.

We also asked them to state their favourite thriller film and found that out of all our questionaires the films chosen the most were 'Seven' and 'Saw'. This means that when we come to deciding on our narrative we can use them as influences. Although 'Saw' is a horror rather than a thiller it tells us that our audience are not that sure on the difference between the two genres so we can include elements of horror in our opening.

Audience Research

In order to understand our Target Audiences requirements, we asked twenty 15-21 year old males and females to fill in a questionnaire to learn about their intake on films. We asked questions to see how much they were interested in films and what they expected in films in order to understand how to make our opening thriller scene suitable for our Target Audience. Here are some of the results we collected; this will help us process our film making. Because they watch quite a lot of films, we know they would have high expectations of the Opening Thriller.

When making our Thriller Opening we would need to concentrate on using techniques with

- Camera angle/movement

- Mise-en-scene

- Narrative

- Editing

- Sound

to help us develop a creation of mystery, as this is what is conventional for a thriller film.

Story and Charcters are main elements we would need to consider when making our Opening Thriller as these are the two essentials our Target Audience are interested in.

Our questionnaire has helped us develop more ideas on how to make our Opening Thriller suitable for our Target Audience.

Product research-Dead Ringers ((BY AMEENA))

Mise-en-scene- The red background in the title sequence, has violent yet lustful, and passionate connotations to it. It relates to the narrative, as the medical instruments hint at the violence. 

Font- The white font stands out amongst the red background. It may suggest the purity, or lack of it as there is only a limited amount of the white colour in the title sequence. 

Music- The music in the title sequence, seems quite subtle. The music doesn't seem to suggest anything about the film, as it seems normal. There isn't really anything sinister about it. The music also seems more bass, then stereotypical thriller films, which generally use high pitched violins and staccato notes, to relate to the narrative. 

The use of the images, in the title sequences, such as the one particular image of the two babies inside a womb, is symbolic to the narrative. 

The thing we would like to include in our thriller opening from the Dead Ringers opening, is the symbolic images/use of symbolism, and the colour red, because of the connotations it suggests. 

BY AMEENA : ) 

[sorry i couldnt connect it yet.] 

Product Research-Sin City

Mise-en-scene-All scene is black and white excluding the women's red dress and lips. This is used in order to suggest the themes of the narrative, e.g. love, passion, violence-connotations of the colour red. Her eyes also briefly turn green when he mentions them which suggests the type of character she was and emphasises his dialogue which hints at his character type.

Sound-Voice-over's are used for two character's in the opening and after the credits. By doing this it indicates two possible protagonists and suggests the tone of the film. There is also two different types of music played at different points; the saxophone (before the titles) hints at the tone and setting of the film as it connotes 50s hollywood glamour, the music used after the titles creates tension as it almost seems to be building up to something.

Camera-The man in the scene is shot at a high angle which gives the audience and idea of his importance. The birds-eye view shot of the two characters which pans out into a shot of the city implies that although it was the opening scene it will not be that significant within the rest of the narrative and the setting is of higher importance.

Titles-Colour-red on black which connotes a dark narrative, creates tension as the audience will then expect something 'dark' to happen. Give an idea of the pace and structure of the film as they resemble a graphic novel or comic book due to the images and typography used. (the film is based on graphic novels by Frank Miller).

This is an image of the illustrations of the character's from the novel and used in the titles.

Possible Ideas-The use of a black and white mise-en-scene could be used in our own thriller opening as it is effective in creating atmosphere and suggesting themes without being to difficult. The use of a voice-over is also a possible idea as it effectively introduces the character and combined with the right music could create tension.

(written about first 5 minutes)