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

Brief for Preliminary Task

A continuity task involving filming and editing:

• a character opening a door

• crossing a room

• Sitting in front of another character and exchanging a couple of lines of dialogue with them.

This task should demonstrate:

• match on action

• shot/reverse shot

• the 180-degree rule

 Brief for Opening Sequence

To produce a 2 minute opening sequence for a fiction film.

Your sequence must include:

• Titles throughout

• Some form of copyright-free soundtrack, including sound fx

• Evidence of understanding of continuity editing

• Clear generic signifiers through character, action, mise-en-scene, dialogue etc

Your sequence should be based on:

• A single narrative event or idea

• Only a few characters

• One location ideally
Introduction

It seems like a very long time ago we did are preliminary task however as I thought about this question I realised how much it has really helped me in the actual opening sequence task.. After completing the preliminary task I felt able to approach my main task more open minded and carefully. The preliminary task was very structured compared to how much choice we had with our main task therefore it was vital that I went through each stage carefully making sure I had learnt from the preliminary task and could improve on my work

Evaluation
• Overall without the prelim task I would have felt completely lost it really helped me to think about all stages of the process and made me work as a team again. The main difference between the prelim and main task was the amount of detail and freedom we got. But the prelim really made me think about everything much more carefully. We had to organise a feedback session for our final piece which we did not for the prelim, this gave us a lot more opinions and helped us improve further. The prelim made me work as a team and I have thoroughly enjoyed the whole process!

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

hen shooting and editing our opening sequence we have used a large amount of equipment and software which overall has helped us a lot. These clips show my group and I with the equipment:


The clip above shows all our hardware we used out on the shoot. When we were out shooting we faced different problems which in future we are able to learn from. The shed scene was extremely hard to get the lighting right in order to create the correct atmosphere and took a number of re-shoots to get it right. We used a pag light and filtered this light and closed the shutters and the front of the light to get a dimmed spotlight on me lit up in the shed. I think this worked really well and was pleased with the outcome. There were a number of things that went well and not so well on shoot:

PRODUCTION

WHAT I’VE LEARNT ABOUT SHOOTING

• I mainly learnt how much patience I need to get good shots and overall good footage.
• I also learnt that I need to be flexible with time and dates because re shoots are essential and its made easier if everyone is able to attend without major problems.
• Health and Safety is also very important while on shoot especially with weather and outside shots.
• As the shed scene was in a small space we had to learn to work around each other without causing accidents.
• Finally I think the main thing you had to do on shoot was be creative. When storyboarding it is obviously very different to being on set therefore you must think creatively and use all possible equipment to create high standard shots

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  By doing this project I feel I have learnt a lot more than I knew and I also feel I have progressed and improved lots of skills.
• There has been a lot to remember, I feel especially when it comes to editing as I find this the hardest skill.
• However I have overcome a lot and with help from my team members I’ve been able to push forward and enjoy the whole process

5) How did you attract/ address your audience?

From our audience feedback it seemed all our techniques and tactics paid off and we did attract our audience:

Attracting the audience

Adressing the Audience

• By choosing a set target audience at the beginning we then could focus our opening sequence at them by choosing techniques that would draw them

• We chose a horror film because this is best identified with young male adults and we chose to stick to key conventions of a horror film in order to gain their attention.

• We used Levi-Strauss theory of binary opposites quite significantly with the contrast of light and dark in the house and then in the shed. We had good vs. evil with the murderer and the victim and strong vs. weak with the murderer and the victim once again

                                            

(Dark Shed scene vs. Light Kitchen Scene)

• Our plot had a big twist in it. Too start off with normality in a modern house the audience soon realise he has a disorder and perhaps feel pity but then we show the calendar and play the radio clip their emotions of the audience are quickly switched from perhaps pity to anger and hatred and then we move from this to the scary disruption of the shed scene.

• We also used common themes that our audience would expect to see in a horror film e.g. muder, stalking, obsession and violence.

• We had key iconography in our piece e.g., clean modern kitchen where the murderer lives and where it’s suppose to be reality and then this is linked to the dark dingy small shed where the murder and entrapment takes place.

 

• We appealed their pleasures by doing exactly what they expect to see in a horror film we scared them as we slid into the shed, we expected to play on their emotions and for them to be scared for the girl. This leaves them asking questions and wanting to find out what will happen.

• We shot our piece during the day therefore this added to the emotions we wanted our audience to feel. During the day people usually feel much safer however we show the element of fear when in fact a girl is locked in the shed in broad daylight and nobody knows.

• We used narrative twists of showing the calendar with dates circled and the element of four throughout our opening sequence. We also played the radio new announcement in order to build enigma. This also kept the audience guessing and asking questions

• We got the engagement of our audience also through production and post production. By using a variation of shot types e.g. close ups we drew our audience closer to the action making it feel more real life

• We then used LS to pull them back out and see the wider picture

• By using creative editing e.g. the reverse shot we break the seamlessness of our piece leaving them at one point and then tracking all the way back through the house to a completely different story. This would leave our target audience intrigued as they are a clever audience they would want to work out themselves what’s going on.

• Our props in the piece e.g. the pictures with 1 2 3 4 written above them challenges our audience into linking his OCD and the way in which he stalks girls

Audience Feedback

• Here is a questionaire from the audience feeback we held on the 26th of March in the Media Block. From the turn out of around 65 people I feel we did attract and audience, however the age was a bit younger then we were targeting:

 

From looking through our questionaires I feel we really conveyed the genre and characters and people understood where it would be shown and who it's targeting:

1. The majority of people recognised that are film was targeted at males.
2. A lot of people said that are film was for young adults but a lot also said that it was for teenagers. This could potentially be good for us as we can entice an even larger audience
3. Our rating for our film ranged from 7 out of 10 to 10 out 10
4. Everyone understood the themes of OCD, stalking and obsession
5. Are few improvements were to perhaps speed up the first half of our opening and show more of the girl in the shed.
6. Everyone understood out sequence which was really good feedback and we feel we did reach our target audience

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our core market that we are aiming are film at our young male adults between the ages of 22 to 30 years old. We chose this market mainly due to the state of mind of the main male actor in our piece. We feel that in order to enjoy our piece properly you need to know about OCD and understand the mind of someone with obsessive compulsive disorder. When researching into audiences we felt that more males like horror film rather than females which is why we went for them as core market. We also feel because of the male being the main character this would appeal to more men.

Our secondary market would be females of a similar age as we do have the 4 girls being stalked as our main theme. It would also be something that girls could relate too as when you’re out you must always be careful and know your limits. Again we want the females to be educated as they need to understand the OCD

We believe our audience for the opening sequence would be a niche audience as we have chosen quite a limited age range and have not gone for the mass market which is teenagers.

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

• Our production company is Green Tree Productions they are a small UK based company that specialise in independent films that are low budget, intellectual, gripping and edgy to target young adults (22-30 year olds )

• The media institution that is distributing ‘FIX4TION’ is DBB they are also are a small UK based company that work with ‘Green Tree Production’ in a partnership. DBB’s main focus is distributing horror films and getting them circulated in the UK.

• This media institution is similar to ‘Dogwoof’ which is commonly known to back small independent films.

If we had made a huge Hollywood blockbuster we would expect to see it shown in mainstream cinema s such as the

• Odeon

• Cineworld

• Vue

In order to reach a mass audience to gain as much profit as possible. However ‘FIX4TION’ was made on a low budget and is an independent film therefore DBB would struggle to get it into major cinema due to budget and sometimes content. Instead it would be shown in:

• Small independent cinemas

• Arty cinema

• Exhibitions

For example ours could be given a screening in The Phoenix in North London.

http://www.phoenixcinema.co.uk/

We could also gain a mass audience via the web. If we were to place our film on sites such as YouTube I believe a student film like ours would gain success. It could also be shown on the independent film channel and shown at many different film festivals such as the Edinburgh film Festival.

A good example of a low budget film is ‘Paranormal Activity’ 2009 Peli. It was shown at scream fest horror film festival in 2007 and got a small release in around 9 cinemas in the US. However after Paramount a major distributor bought the domestic rights to the film off DreamWorks Productions it was only then that ‘Paranormal Activity’ gained worldwide succession and made a massive profit. Both DreamWorks and Paramount work in partnership just like DBB and Green Tree Productions. I believe if we did perhaps make our film with a larger profit a major film distributor like Paramount would get behind it as its unique and would gain a large audience and profit.

(Moodboard of Companys and Cinemas)

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups

Our opening sequence we tried to reflect different social groups in order to appeal to a wide range of audience. Two main ones that we included in our sequence was:


• The state of mind of the male protagonist

• The way in which we represented teenage girls

In our sequence we took a risk by making the main male character in our opening have Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). In order for us to represent this properly we obviously had to do research on it and really get into the mind and character of someone with OCD.

This was the OCD video that we really used for inspiration it really helped us to convey the state of mind representation. This is who we based our character on.

We then chose to represent teenage girls:

Question 2 Female Charc

• The protagonist in this film inspired us to do the OCD idea the way in which he cares for and obsesses over his victim is what we found very strange. In our sequence if we were to continue it he wants to get the 4th girl and he would look after her.

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

When we began researching into different genres and looking at lots of different opening sequences, we knew pretty much from the start that we wanted to a horror opening. From basic knowledge I knew major conventions that our always included in horror films e.g.: dark lighting, murderer (usually male), victim (usually girl). We began to focus our attention on finding horrors that we were able to draw inspiration on. We found from this that it was quite hard to distinguish between a horror film and a thriller film as they shared common conventions such as the dark lighting, victim, murderer as well as the horror music. Examples of film that really made me familiar with the forms and conventions of horror films were


• ‘Psycho’ (1960- Hitchcock)

• ‘Scream ’ (1996 Craven)





Scribd

Overall we managed to stick to a lot of the horror conventions making it obvious to the audience that it was in fact a horror film; however we used original twists to make the opening more exciting and to make it stand out.
Our opening sequence did useTodorov’s classic narrative Pattern. The beginning of our sequence started with an equilibrium as we had the normality of the house and the normality of his usual routine, however we also added a small disruption in the first 2 miuntes. This is because we wanted to make impact straight away so that the audience were hooked. The small disruption was only to introduce the narrative and we would have the major disruption later on.

In order to make our piece look professional we looked at the conventions of an opening sequence and included some of them for example:

• Titles (The Ring 2001-Verbinski)

• Introducing main characters (Legally Blonde 2001- Luketic)

• Music (Panic Room 2002-Fincher)

• Introducing a story plot ( Blair Witch Project 1999-Myrick)

• Themes in the film ( Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1974-Hooper)

 

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• I believe we used all of these in our opening sequence as we used blackouts with titles on them.
• We introduced 2 key characters that will be throughout the film.
•  We used music to create suspense.
• We introduced the story and the key themes of OCD, murder and stalking.
• This made sure that the opening followed a function and looked like a real opening sequence

• The overall style of our piece is quite scary and weird, we only have the small dialogue from the radio and instead we just see the characters actions to telling the story. The pace of our piece begins of slow and then becomes faster to create a build up. We used classic continuity techniques such as match-on-action, cuts, shot-reverse-shot and 30 degree rule. We used binary opposites such as dark vs. light, dirt vs. cleanliness, good vs. evil, murderer vs. victim and calm vs. fear.

Equipment

Equipment Used
On shoot:
Tripod
Sony mini DV Camera
2 batteries
Sound equipment
Microphone (shot gun)
Headphones
Pag Light
Clapper board
Production board
Storyboards
Pen and Cloth
Editing:
Software
Premier  Pro
After Effects
i-movie
Soundtrack control
Capturing
Rendering
Titles (on the Mac)
Timelines
Transitions-fades, dissolves, cuts
Razoring
Contrast
Brightness
Saturation
Sound-digetic and non-digetic
Linking and unlinking
Audio tracks
Speed/duration
Volume-adjusting volume and treble
Re-ordering
Parallel editing
Importing clips
Frames (zoom)

Plot for the final opening sequence and cast and crew

Introduction


Before I begin my evaluation of my overall opening sequence I thought it will be easier to understand if I give an outline of the film and the cast and crew members.

Opening Sequence

It begins with a close up of a man’s eyes in a deep trance we then see a kettle boiling and the time ticking to eight o’clock. As soon as this happens the man snaps out of his trance and we are left with what he had been staring at ; a shed at the end of a neat garden. He walks over to the cupboard and on his way switches on the radio at exactly the time the news begins. He gets to the cupboard and he opens and closes it 4 times whilst saying 1..2..3..4. He counts the cups in 4’s and there are only 4 mugs in the cupboard. He makes his tea in a similar way while we here on the radio about the disappearance of a third girl. We then see his calendar with 4 dates circled and these all match up with the dates the newsreader is saying. Immediately the audience know this man isn’t what we first thought. He then walks back through the tidy kitchen over to the window to look at the shed, drinks his tea and walks out. Then we rewind through the house back through the kitchen down to the end of the garden to the foot of the shed. We snake in and see feet tied up we then see hands tied up. It then becomes clear it’s a girl tied up to a chair in the shed and we slowly see her waking up. She begins to scream as we then see all round the shed 4 photos of 4 different girls lined up and she is the 3 rd girl. We are left with her screaming and crying in desperation to get out of the shed.

The Rest of the Plot

In the rest of the story, the third girl who we see manages to escape we then see her trying to find and hunt down the fourth girl to protect her and warn her. We also see the murderer trying to hunt her down and following her and we also get to see the police tracking down the murderer however he kills one of the police officers. The victim finds the fourth girl however the murderer has hunted them both down and he now has both of them trapped. The police are soon onto the case, he kills the third girl but never gets to the fourth.

Cast and Crew

                                   Alex Thomas- Murderer

                                 Ciara Borkowski-‘Hayley Summers’-Victim


Producer, director, editor, script, music-Spencer Wilkinson, James Hammett-Burke, India Downes and Ciara Borkowski

Location-James Hammett-Burke’s House

Date- Final Shoot -7th March 2010

Signed Off!

We've been signed off and it's all over. Im so happy with our final opening sequence and ive learnt so much along the way:

• I've learnt how to edit and add effects and titles
• Ive learnt how to use the camera properly and get good shots
• I've learnt how to be patient on shoot and while waiting to act
• I've learnt to work in team
• How important timing and planning is
• I've learnt how to properrly storyboard and get shots logs and shooting schedules compleleted

Overall I've really enjoyed this project and I couldn't have done it without my team who have been really good. However at least i won't be spending my life editing and stuck in the media block. I'm now excited for next years shooting and editing and hopefully my skills that i have improved from this project can be used again.

(the team)

Goodbye For Now

I am going on a geography fieldtrip this week which is also taking away India and James leaving Spencer to finish of our piece and make final ajustments. This week everyone will be getting signed off so hopefully Spencer will be ok and sort everything out.

I am really nervous we won't meet the deadline but we have had a group meeting and have sorted out all the jobs to do and we have made sure we know exactly what is happening so that Spencer won't have to make any crucial decisions.

Reshoot

We did a re shoot for my shed scene because our teacher didn't like some of the shots, and she felt we gave to much away of me in the shed. We used different lighting then last time so i don't know if our teacher will like it or not. We worked well however and got it done in a couple of hours. We lost the rope however so had to use tape so again have to see what our teacher thinks

Second Re Shoot

We did another re shoot of the shed scene, I guess 3rd time lucky! We changed the lighting back to dark and used a pag light. I again had to act and was so cold! But i actually really enjoyed todays shoot more then the others because we had a really good time and got on well. I hope this will be the end seeing James India and I are going on a geography field trip next week