Note to Examiners

I hope you enjoy our film and my blog. When viewing any presentational devices I would recommend that you view them in full screen for more clarity and if you are unable to read any images clearly then you can click on them to view in full screen.

Thanks Andrew Roth

'FINAL STATUS' thriller opening

Preliminary Task (completed in January)

One mistake that was made during this task was the breaking of the 180 degree rule and the principal reason behind this was that in order to film from the correct plane, more space was required to place the camera in the correct position. Because of this, what you see in instead at 6-8 seconds is the reversal of planes. However, following further research into the 180 degree rule, it became apparent that this rule in today's industry is seen as more of a guideline as opposed to a 'rule'. The sole purpose of the 180 degree rule is to prevent the audience from becoming disorientated, thus breaking the immersive experience of the film/clip. It is one of the techniques used to establish a logical coherence between shots and is most commonly associated with conversational shots.

In this example, we see a clear violation of the 180 degree; it is far more applicable to conversational shots as there is no particular reasoning behind it. A breaking of the rule is usually for added emphasis. Ultimately the breaking of the rule in the preliminary task is far less intrusive than this example, mainly because it is a close-up and that the shot duration is only 5 seconds, subsequently making it harder for the viewer to notice the discontinuity.

Another, more minor mistake was the lighting issue that takes place from when the girl is walking to her seat at 12 seconds and the conversation which follows. As the girl is walking to her seat, we can see a fair amount of light being shone on her character with the use of the key and fill lights. However as she takes her seat, we experienced a significant drop in lighting and because of this, the light was compensated in post-production, by increasing the exposure levels. Despite losing added detail and an increased amount of noise, the lighting in the final clip seems to be relatively consistent.

This was my first experience working in a collaborative environment whilst filming, and the dynamics of the group was managed with significant ease because everybody was assigned a different shot to take. I was delegated the role of filming the first two shots and also playing the person who found the wallet. Having had previous filming experience, I decided to take a more directorial approach, outlining to my group where I felt the camera should be placed throughout the shoot. 

This was also the first time I had experienced a professional camcorder, but having my own camera was helpful in that I knew how to adjust the settings, e.g white balance, aspect ratio etc. My main issue was working with tape as opposed to an SD card. My initial problem was working out where to film from on the tape, for fear of overwriting previous shots, however this problem was only short-lived. 

In terms of meeting the deadline for this task, proceedings were fairly straight forward. We were given one, one-hour lesson in order to film all the necessary shots, and then the editing took place in the following week, where the group spent several hours over the course of two-days editing the shots together. 

As this task was filmed within the confines of the school, we didn't really come across any health and safety logistical problems. This task was shot in our media suite, so in terms of logistics, everything that was required for this task was already set up e.g. the cameras, the lighting and the editing software. 

Managing human resources was also straightforward. Because we had all delegated different shots to take amongst ourselves, that meant two of the four people in our group would have to act in the conversation. Costumes weren't used in the task and the only prop that was used was the wallet which was someone's from the group. 

As we completed this task from school, the cameras were already set up for us to use, however the settings needed to be adjusted throughout the shoot, for example the lighting difference between the corridor at the beginning and when the girl enters the room. Things like white balance and exposure needed to be changed, but this was handled well by our group. Also the placement of the camera was done with efficiency, for example changing the angle or the height of the camera or tripod. 

When managing the lighting, we used some of the lights provided for us in the media suite. We used two fill lights which were aimed above the characters because we didn't want too much light in the scene, in order to match the feel of situation. Because of this, we got some nice looking contrast, particularly on the girl.

The editing for this task was completed in Adobe after effects 7.0. I chose to use this program because I am familiar with its layout from other projects I have edited. For the final piece, I will probably use Adobe Premiere pro because as a group we need to all be able to use the same editing software. In terms of the editing itself, I cut the single raw file into the sections I needed for the task and overlapped them at the appropriate time in order to demonstrate the match-on-action cut. Apart from straight-cuts, the only other effect added was exposure compensation in the conversational shots.  

Project timeline 

As this was only a short task, the storyboard was fairly simple and only outlined a rough idea of what we wanted to achieve as a group. This was also due to the fact that this task requires a specific set of shots, so in this case we were limited to the kind of shots we took. Because of this, many of the specific shots we took were improvised, because we already knew which shots we had to take. In terms of the story itself, we knew we wanted to have some kind of an interrogative scene and made good use of lighting facilities that were available to us. The script only needed to be brief so for that reason, we only needed to write down a few lines for the actors to rehearse.

The digital technology available to us certainly helped us develop creativity because having the ability to cut clips easily with the use of the editing software not only allows for efficiency, but also the way in which the clips are cut helps for continuity, e.g. match on action as well as helping with the pacing of the clip. Through these techniques you can emit either a sense of danger (with fast cuts) or calmness with slow-paced cuts. The use of the cameras also helps to tell a story, for example in our task, we chose to track the girl throughout the scene, mostly with long and medium shots and we felt this helped to create a sense of tension and uncertainty, in particular the close-up on the opening of the door. The breaking of the 180 degree rule could also be interpreted as a way of emphasizing the importance of the door being opened; what is through the door?

In our piece, the girl represents the common behavior of people when in tense situations like being interrogated by someone. In a scenario such as this, humans have an innate inclination to deny an accusation ("is this your wallet") even if they know they are lying. As the story continues, we later find out that the wallet was in fact the girl's and that she had stolen it. She knew the consequences would be more severe if she didn't own up, yet she insisted on taking a risk and lying. It was this character trait that we were trying to represent in the piece. 

The realism in this piece is created through the girl's decision to deny accusations of stealing. There are many people who will watch this piece and relate to it; they are willing to take the risk of lying and not getting in trouble or being found out and landing in increased trouble. 

The mise en scene helps to further enhance the realism of this piece. The setting in a school helps to ground the piece in reality and make it more relevant to the audience. The actors are two college students which again strengthens the reality of the piece because many viewers will be able to relate to these two characters in their everyday lives. The style of the camerawork is conventional as opposed to using canted angles or abstract shots and this also helps emphasize the reality of the piece; the absence of ambiguity helps the audience to relate to the piece, like it is just an ordinary occurrence that anyone may experience in their day-to-day lives.      

      

Evaluation Question 7: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Evaluation question 6: What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Evaluation Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

VOICEOVER


Assuming we were working alongside our Production companies, in particular OpenRoad Films, there would be a budget used in order to advertise our film to people and hopefully attract a reasonable amount of viewers.

Some examples of where we may advertise would be on billboards, bus stops, cinemas and online services such as netflix, Youtube, Spotify etc. With the increasing growth of the online market, I think a larger distribution of the advertising budget would be channeled into this area, particularly since our film is not aiming to be shown in the big brand cinemas like VUE or ODEON.

Evaluation Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Evaluation question 3: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Evaluation Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The most important message we wanted to convey in our film is the idea that cyber bullying can affect anyone without us realising that it is even taking place. It is extremely difficult to identify those who are bullying and those who are victims of such abuse and we wanted to make this point in our film.                                                            

We believe in modern society there is very little one can do to identify someone who is being bullied online and this is why we made our actor dress up in a very typical outfit for someone who is aged 16-19. There was also the more in-depth decision to have our actor dress in red because we felt that was a good representation of danger within our film, hence why we chose the red car to be the one of key significance because it stood out from the rest of the cars within the frame. 

Typical teenage clothing often found in Topman, River Island etc. 

                                  

With the bully, again we felt if we were going to create a realistic depiction of bullying, we shouldn’t revert to creating a stereotypical image of one because we are trying to show that a bully and his victim are indistinguishable, which is why he is also dressed in typical clothing, though we wanted him to dress in darker clothing to perhaps make it slightly clearer to the audience.

There is also a height difference between the two characters and in this sense we are reverting to typical conventions of the genre in that generally speaking, the character with more power will be of a bigger physical presence. However as you see in the film, and in real life, one can not judge a person on face value and although our character Sean is smaller than his bully Ollie, the effects of abuse have taken its toll on him and despite perhaps being weaker he feels that he must carry out his revenge no matter what obstacle stands in his way.

This was the realistic mentality we were trying to capture in our film. If someone is being bullied, they often show a disregard for the consequences of their actions even though they may be harming themselves and those around them. In this case Sean does not think of the consequences he may face when knocking Ollie out because he is so overwhelmed with anger.  

Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

VOICEOVER (you may wish to turn the volume up and use full screen; the image has been cropped in blogger)

Audience feedback and Evaluation

After we had finished making the final product we organised an interactive feedback screening for our film. We made posters and put them around the school in order to inform people about when the screening would be taking place.

Here is a video from the screening session, unfortunately since I could not bring in my camera on the day of showing, we had to record it with Sam's iPhone and the quality is not particularly good, especially the sound, which is why I summarised people's comments in headings in the video. Nevertheless, the feedback which we were given for our film was very informative and helpful in identifying some of the things which could have been improved.



Some additional feedback which was given and not shown in the video included acting which the audience seemed to enjoy, particularly Elliot's performance as Sean. They also touched upon the POV shot towards the end of the film which one person really liked.

We also had two teachers viewing the film and they both really liked it, in particular commenting on the use of the sound score which they felt contributed extremely well to the action, and they thought that the audience were genuinely engrossed in the action.

One criticism they had was the use of the location in the school, but I argued that we wanted to create a real environment for the characters, who are teenagers so it isn't that surprising that we used a school. Also we made sure that we weren't filming there for a particularly long duration, with the main focus being on the garage scene.



The second part of our Audience feedback included a post-production questionnaire which we designed. Unfortunately we were unable to get as many entries as with the pre-production survey but regardless, the comments were still very helpful.

Even though we didn't get as many entries this time around, I believe similar results would appear had there had been 50 entries. It was clear that sound was a part which was very well utilised in our film and this backs up the views that were made in the audience screening. The results are quite ironic in that they differ vastly from the pre-production survey. Camerawork and sound were the two elements which people thought were least important when watching a thriller, yet they felt we carried it out the best.  

These results were very pleasing and I was happy that we received mostly 4s out 5 in all the cinematic elements, with the exception of the storyline which was perhaps the one result that didn't come as much surprise as I'll mention in the feedback section. The other results were not too surprising and this was a helpful bit of feedback.

Again these results instilled me with confidence about our film in that most people felt that it could go on to become a full length movie and that most people were engaged in the opening. 

Here is some of the specific feedback we received in a probing question. Some of the ideas are very interesting and certainly could be used as potential storylines. 

Overall, the feedback we received was very insightful and it was interesting to gage what a real audience thinks about your work because you can often make the mistake of thinking what you have done is good and in your head it makes sense but when you actually show it to an audience, they aren't on the same wavelength as you. This was evident with the storyline which perhaps in our heads was clear, but it wasn't explained as well as it could have been. Rather than use dialogue, we wanted our story to be told through social media devices because that is the most prominent theme in our film and the mistake we made was not making the screenshots or the text message stay on the screen for a long enough time. 

That said, it didn't seem to put off our viewers that much and it didn't detract from the overall feeling of tension that we were trying to give off and also since it is the opening to a thriller, there is certainly room for more development and understanding. The initial ambiguity is not atypical of a thriller, so this wasn't the worst mistake we could have made; nobody seemed to pick up on any particular technical issues which was good. 

post production storyboard

This is the final storyboard after post-production and it is interesting to see how things have changed from the original storyboard. The main reason for this was because of the change in location to a car warehouse so we had to alter the story in order for the location to make sense. However the main outline of the story has still been retained for the most part.


post production storyboard - slideshow

Production Schedule

During the filming process it was essential that we made a production schedule, otherwise shooting would have been completely disorganised, and it would have resulted in us having very little time to use our location.

That said, we were still on an extremely tight schedule, particularly in the warehouse, which, being our main location, we had to maximise and get the best out of it because we weren't given very much time to film there. Therefore it was extremely important we had a rough idea of how long things would take to arrange and the schedule was made in light of the fact we would be quite rushed. Overall we found this schedule to be invaluable in the filming process.

Production Schedule by armedia12