Question Seven Evaluation

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

I feel that I have progressed a huge amount from when I started media and recording my Prelimary task compared to now. For example, the differing amount of camera angles that I am able to identify and use, compared to the simple ones that I was using at first, they were extremely basic and shaky. But now I am able to use a range of close-ups and I am aware more of how we can move from shot to shot effectively and I also included things such a mid-shots, long-shots and pans. These shots may still include a small amount of shakiness but it is of very little quantity and is barely noticeable. The lighting was where my group and I struggled when it came to our filming process and it even lead to us having to re-shoot the whole of our opening titles again with brighter lighting. But because of this we then learned how to edit the lighting with Imovie and this allowed us the set the tension within the scene that we preferred to have. The music that we had in my prelimary task didn't really suit the film itself and was only actually played at the beginning of it. Whereas if you compare it to the soundtrack that I used in my opening titles you can see a huge difference, the music matches the film perfectly and sets the right amount of tension at the right times. Within my prelimary task, we used next to none of the transitions that were provided for us, which made my prelimary task look of poor quality, and so were the actual titles of it, we just used the ones that were provided for us. Whereas if you compare that to my opening titles and transitions of my film there is a huge contract. The transitions are all well timed and in the right places at the right time so that my film does not look jumpy and the opening titles are all of matching font and suit the genre of the film incredibly.

Question Six Evaluation

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

I think the main thing that we have learnt and possibly struggled with in our filming process would be the editing and getting our clips to the right speed and length by either shortening them or speeding them up or slowing them down. We also learnt how to work Sony cameras to record our film, but we had to do a re-shoot of our filming process due to the fact that the lighting was bad on our first attempt, so we also learnt how to use brighter lighting but then also how to edit the lighting to be darker on Imovie on the Macbooks. For the sound in our opening titles we use non-diagetic music, but we also included some diagetic sounds of our male characters speaking. We also had to silence one of our clips because we included swearing and we thought it'd be more effective if we had it silenced but it still managed to show the characters rage. The main transitions that we used within our editing process are fade out clips, the most effective time that we did this was at the end of our opening titles, where it has the actual title of our film. Because our film is called His Lady In Red, we had most of the font in black other than for the word Red. We then had the background of the Title to fade to black but left the word Red there to emphasize it.

Question Five Evaluation

How did you attract/address your audience?

I believe we have attracted our audience in various different ways, for example we have used the sense of curiosity straight from the start of our film. Because of the way normal films start with the victim and not the killer, this adds confused to the viewers. We have the viewers questioning: why is he doing this? What is he going to do next? We used the idea of physical violence on our main character at the end of our opening to show that he is mentally unstable, this could cause the audience to sympathise the character and even perhaps like him, due to the fact they're questioning why he feels the need to hurt himself and why he is alone in a room. We used non-diagetic music, to give our film more of a creepy tone, to add tension for our viewers and also dark lighting and disturbing images to set the scene more. We have overall made our film idea quite in depth and complicated and I think this will make our film highly attractive to our audiences. 

Question Four Evaluation

Who would be the audience for your media product?

I think that the audience range for our media product would be 18-40. The reasoning of this is firstly because decided that we would age classify our film for years 18+ because of the fact that we have taken the risk of adding disturbing content, for example the images that we used to we thought it would best suit this age range. We decided that we would have more of a storyline to our film rather than lots of "hard hitting" action. We believe that our film may have the chance of attracting more to males than females due to the fact that because the male is the superior within the film, it may offend some women. 

Question Three Evaluation

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

The institution that i feel would be best for my film would be Cipher Films and Limelight. I think this because I believe that because of the films that they have contributed with in the past for example Kidulthood and Adulthood, it shows the gritty types of films that they would be best involved with and this would do my film justice, I also thought these because they were both highly popular and successful in the British Film Industry. I think the distribution company that I would like my film to be joined up with is Pathe Distribution, because this also distributed many successful films.

Question Two Evaluation

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We represented particular social groups by firstly focusing on the popular genre of thriller films. We used the male character as the lead role to represent masculinity and the obsession with women through the colour of red. This adds to the idea of the male character having mental health issues. We reinforced this idea by the way we'd provided props such as the folder that he uses, we used scribbles such as "sins" and stating the seven deadly sins, so show that he feels that he is doing wrong but can't control it.We also used a notice board full of a girls schedule with also contributes to this idea, and the fact that he was on the internet looking at disturbing images, this makes him voyeuristic. 

 Because we have used a male we have clearly shown who will have the power within the scenes. We also used the main character to be young, this is because it will represent youth and attract a younger audience. We segregated our main character to just one bed room, this reinforces the idea of mental issues, to show that he isolates himself. It also gives the viewer more of an opportunity to make a judgement on the character.

Question One Evaluation

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

The existing media conventions that we have used for our thriller two minute film opening are the typical camera angles. The camera angles that we have used are close ups and then we have also used point of view camera angles to show a closer meaning to what our character is actually looking at and his interests. We have also used typical titles, with the font cracked, which provides the thrilling theme through-out the opening and the colouring of red and black which conotates the feeling of death and blood. We also used the colour red because it is a psychopathic colour and is the colour that is typically linked to a killer. We also used dark settings, by editing the lighting of our filming because we believe that this will captivate our audience. We have used the typical transitions such as cross dissolve and fade outs and used music that we found via youtube, which sets the scene with a creepy tone. All of these things that we have used are typically provided within other thriller films. 

We used influences such as One Hour Photo, Seven and Red Road for our opening titles because these all suited the aspects within our film, such as the opening titles for Seven used murder and showed his victims within a book. We got one of our main ideas from here and this is where our film idea progressed. We also used the idea of the male character, this shows that we are tending to 'stick to what we know', whereas we could have developed this idea by changing the gender of the character to a female, which is what red road is based on.We used One Hour Photo as inspiration, but developed it in the way that, in One hour Photo the male character uses photographs to follow his 'victims' whereas, in our film we used the idea of a laptop. This shows the development of technology and we used this to our advantage to be able to connect to our audience better.

The way we developed our film idea from other thriller films is by the way we decided to focus on our killer straight away, this allows the audience to gain an understanding about the stalker and begin to empathise him rather than empathising the victims. We also developed it because we only see the male character in his own living environment, this allows us to gain a deeper meaning for him but also shows what he does behind closed door, such as gaining an unlimited access to watching people via the internet. We also see instantly that our main character is a young male character, whereas people normally associate stalkers with old, perverted men. 

Final Draft

This is our final draft of our two minute film opening.

Production/Distribution of Red Road

I also looked at the production and distribution of the film for Red Road.
The Film Red Road is a part of a unique three-film concept called Advance Party. It is produced by Sigma Films in Glasgow and Zentropa in Denmark.

The Advance Party means that is it the same group of characters would be given three different directors. The different directors would each have to develop a film around thos characters. The the films would shoot for the same length of time within the same City, Glasgow. Signma and Zentropa had decided to use the first time directors paired with the first time producers.

The film Red Road was distributed by Tartan Films. Tartan Films is a US and UK film distribution company, founded by US-based Palisades Media Group to take over the film library of Tartan Films after it folded in Summer 2008.

Production/Distribution for One Hour Photo

Now that we have completed recording ad editing our two minute film opening we then began to look at how the films that had inspired our film opening and genre and how to distribute/produce them. The first film we looked at was One Hour photo.

One Hour Photo is a 2002 American psychological thriller which was written and directed by Mark Romanek, and starred Robin Williams. The film also starred Connie Nielsen, Michael Vartan, Gary Cole, and Eriq La Salle.

The film was then distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures in the United States. One Hour Photo opened to generally positive reviews, earning raves from Roger Ebert, Leonard Maltin, and other noted critics. Ebert called the film "profoundly creepy". The film had a limited release which began on 21st August 2002 and it only opened in seven theatres. The film's opening to a $321,515 weekend, with an average of $45,930 per theatre. Its wide release began on September 13th, with a 1,212 theater count. Still, the film made just over $8 million that weekend, and went on to gross $31,597,131 in the US, with an additional $20,626,175 in overseas territories, for an international total of $52,223,306; this was a moderate box office success, as the budget was around $12 million.

Romanek intended the film to be much longer, but the studio ordered it to be cut shorter, and elements rearranged out of concerns about commerciality. The beginning, for example, was moved to the end. Also, several of Sy's narrative monologues were removed, and several scenes were re-shot with fewer lines. The original version also has older musical scores that were not used in the final product.

This was the first draft of our media. We decided once we had edited this that because of how dark the video is that we would re-film it all. We tried to higher the brightness but this just made the filming look more blurred.

Font Styles for the opening titles

The font that we have chose for out opening titles is cracked. We chose this font because we felt it suited the type of thriller genre that we have chose. We then decided that we could try and change the font to a "Type Writer" kind of font. We got this font off www.dafont.com. To do this we selected the clip that we wanted it to be on, and selected where we wanted it to go, we then turned that section of the clip into a freeze frame. We then selected "grab tool" on the Mac's then went to Capture. This allowed up to have a "print screen" effect of the scene, we then saved it and began editing the font that we had chose.

This is our draft of the font


But we had problems with the font. It ended up looking pixelated on the screen so we changed the idea back to having the cracked font. The colours of the fonts that we used are the same as the ones above, using the typical colours of Red and Black. This is because of the decision of the film title being "His Lady In Red" we thought that we would need to stick to this theme through-out the film opening process. We have no outlines on our fonts.

Voiceover Idea

From the beginning of our filming ideas we had always included the idea of a voice over from the male character in the film, talking about his victims. We had this idea to allow the film to have an autobiographical effect on the audience. We thought that the voice over effect would allow the audience to have a clearer and deeper insight into the characters inner thought track. However, once we got into the editing process we added a soundtrack to our film opening, this allowed us to realise that if we included that it would not be best for us to include the voice over, due to the fact that the soundtrack was powerful enough for the film opening and fit to it perfectly, and if we included the voice over, there would be too much going on.

Soundtrack

We decided that we wanted a "creepy" soundtrack for our 2 minute film opening. So we searched on youtube and found a video that someone had made with a freaky soundtrack to it. We decided on this because it would set the scene more to our film opening. We edited the soundtrack by using "Garage band". We shortened the track to the 2 minute time slot that we have and then set it so that it would fade out at the end rather than just cutting off.

Beginning the Editing stage

Today my group and I worked on the editing of our film opening. We have tried to fit it all together the best we can but we think that some of the camera work was shaky. This was because somebody else had booked out the tripod so we had great difficulty trying to keep our shots stable.
The end result of our editing process is that we have decided to re-record it, to improve the camera work and lighting because it is blurred on some of the shots.

Today we began our filming

We began our filming at Max's house today. It went really well and we recorded everything. I think that we did quite well, but I am worried about the camera work, I fear that it could be quite shaky and that the lighting was too dark so the focus of the camera could be blurred.

Deciding the location

Before we began filming we decided that we had to choose the location for where we were going to film. We discussed various different locations and which parts we could use to our advantage. At first we though we could use my house, but after some consideration we thought that Max's house would be more appropriate due to the style of his room. At first we were going to have our male character on google maps trying to locate his victims place to live, but we decided against it in the end. We decided on Max's bedroom because we thought it would show a deeper meaning into the background of the male character.

Opening Title Sequence Planning Sheet

This is our Opening Sequence Title Planning Sheet. We used this as a kind of guide line for our two minute film opening. We did this because we found it easier to have all of the key information down on one sheet. 

Photos of prop ideas for film opening

This is the first of our prop idea's. This is the folder of the killers victims. We wanted to make this folder look as scary and a psychopathic as possible, so we used the colour of the red folder to conotate death and then used a black pen to scratch in words such as death, pain, murder, sins and the seven deadly sins into the folder to make it seem like the murderer had a sense of remorse and to show the process of how he has slowly lost his mind.

This is the the folder when it has been opened. Here there are different disturbing images to show that the male character has lost his mind, but there is also the same writing as there was on the front of the folder to show how his through stream continued.

This is the male characters back for the ending scene of the opening titles. We did this by using felt tip pens and make up and smudging it together to make a scar effect on his back. We made it lines to show that he would have been able to used a belt for the process of the scarring.

This is the notice board that we are going to use. It includes the four of the past victims and their scehdule via the calendar and different post-it notes. 

More of our film props

BELT

The image above shows the prop that we use in the final shot of our opening titles. We didn't show this prop directly on the screen in the shot but we used it for non-diagetic sounds in our shot. We did this by the character snapping the belt together. 

CHARACTERS BACK- CREATED THROUGH MAKE UP + PEN

The image above shows the characters back, this is also for the final scene of the opening scene. We created this effect by using a felt tip pen and a deep red eyeliner and smudging it together to make the scars. We showed this on the final shot with the showing of the belt to show how the character acquired these scars.


LAPTOP

For the scene with the laptop on, it will contain names of folders of the names of his victims. The male character will then enter one of the folder and open it to find a image of a dead body. When we were filming we discovered a slight difficulty with filming this, because whilst recording the screen it was having a flashing effect on the camera. We used the idea of the laptop to show how technology helps towards stalking in this modern day and age.

FOLDER/BOOK

The image above shows the book that we used in our filming. We have added both disturbing images but also images of the male characters. We decorated the book in a way that we believed a stalker would, by writing things like "death", "pain" and "sins'.

Prezi on research and planning aspects

Two Minute Film Opening. on Prezi

Target Audience Planning

What is the target audience?
The target audience for a film is a specific group of people with the target market of which the film is aimed at. There are all different target audience which can range from age, gender, marital status etc. The production of a film depends largely on the target audience that it chooses.


So we decided that our two minute film opening will be for the ages of 18+. Because of this I have researched into the different age ratings for films. I found that the best website for this would be the British Board Of Film Classification.

Here is some of the conditions that I found on this website for the film:

• where the material is in breach of the criminal law, or has been created through the commission of a criminal offence
• where material or treatment appears to the BBFC to risk harm to individuals or, through their behaviour, to society – for example, any detailed portrayal of violent or dangerous acts, or of illegal drug use, which may cause harm to public health or morals. This may include portrayals of sexual or sexualised violence which might, for example, eroticise or endorse sexual assault
• where there are more explicit images of sexual activity which cannot be justified by context. Such images may be appropriate in ‘R18’ works, and in ‘sex works’ (see below) would normally be confined to that category.

For more information go to this link:

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/18-2/

We also did a questionnaire on Thriller films and here are some of the results that we have gained

 This is the original copy of the questionnaire. 

These are the results that we got off people.

Second Story Board Idea

This is the second story board. We are keeping the opening titles in the same places as the original but this is our final idea for our whole opening titles. The main changes that we have made to the story boards is the idea of the male character smelling the clothing and the idea of at the end of the scene having the camera in the same position as the start. We decided that the door would then close on the male character with his back to us. He will be holding a belt and he will snap it twice at the door begins to close then we will hear cries of pain to show to everybody where he got the scars from.

Conventions of Psychological Thriller

Further into my research I have decided to look at the conventions of Psychological Thrillers, I have listed some of them below:

• Elements that are related to the mind or processes of the mind; they are mental rather than physical in nature. Sometimes the suspense comes from within one solitary character where characters must resolve conflicts with their own minds. Usually, this conflict is an effort to understand something that has happened to them.   We have tried to use this convention within our opening , as with the ending shot we have tried to create mystery, as the viewer will see cuts on our male charcters back and wonder what happedned to him,we leave the viewer with ' the effort to understand something that has happened to the charcater'.

• Thriller – Generally, thrillers focus on plot over character, and thus emphasise intense, physical action over the character's psyche. Psychological thrillers tend to reverse this formula to a certain degree, emphasizing the characters just as much, if not more so, than the plot.

• Psychological thriller – Characters are no longer reliant on physical strength to overcome their brutish enemies ,but rather are reliant on their mental resources, by battling for equilibrium in their own minds.a

Inspirations for opening from film trailers

Over view of the film:
Funnyman Robin Williams steps out of character in this tense, low-key thriller that marked the feature-film directorial debut of music video veteran Mark Romanek. Semour "Sy" Parrish (Williams) runs the photo processing department at a large discount store; Sy is dedicated to his job, and takes great pride in his work. Sy's favorite customers are Nina and Will Yorkin (Connie Nielsen and Michael Vartan), an attractive and cheerful young couple with a nine-year-old boy, Jake (Dylan Smith). Sy dotes on the Yorkins and their son whenever they drop off film to be processed -- something they've been doing quite often ever since Jake was born -- and Nina and Will are indulgent of Sy's attentions, regarding his as a harmless eccentric. What the Yorkins don't know is Sy is a desperately lonely man with no real life of his own, and he's been obsessively making copies of their photos, for years, imagining himself to be "Uncle Sy," a member of the family. Sy's tenuous hold on reality begins to collapse when he develops a roll of film brought in by a new customer that suggests Will has been unfaithful to Nina; the notion that his ideal family may be falling apart is troubling enough for Sy, and when he loses his job, Sy reaches the breaking point. 


We used One Hour Photo as one of our inspirations because alike to "Sy" in the film, we decided that we would use the theme of stalking alike to this film and that our stalker would be male and be interested in photographs of his victims. We have made our character not seem to have much of a life alike to the character in One Hour Photo also. 

Red Road Over View:
A woman paid to watch others begins stalking one of the men she's been trailing in this thriller from Scotland. Jackie (Kate Dickie) is a woman who has buried herself in her work with a security company since the death of her husband and child. Jackie's work involves monitoring a crime-ridden corner of North Glasgow with a bank of closed circuit television cameras; after her shift is over, she either goes home or has an occasional assignation with a friend from work who isn't happy with his wife. While watching the comings and goings in a run down apartment block, Jackie spies Clyde (Tony Curran), a handsome former jailbird who shares a shabby flat with his buddy Stevie (Martin Compston) and April (Natalie Press), Stevie's girlfriend. Jackie becomes fascinated with Clyde, and after carefully following his routines through her cameras she meets him face to face at a local bar, and soon lures him into a relationship. However, in time Clyde discovers neither love nor lust is the motivating factor behind Jackie's actions.


This is the second film that we used as inspiration, we used this because alike to One Hour Photo this film includes the theme of stalking which is what we have based our two minute film opening on. We have used this film because she female character in this film tends to know the man that she is stalking's whole daily schedule, and we are going to use a similar theme of this in our film.

Seven Over View:
Set in a hellish vision of a New York-like city, where it is always raining and the air crackles with impending death, the film concerns Det. William Somerset (Morgan Freeman), a homicide specialist just one week from a well-deserved retirement. Every minute of his 32 years on the job is evident in Somerset's worn, exhausted face, and his soul aches with the pain that can only come from having seen and felt far too much. But Somerset's retirement must wait for one last case, for which he is teamed with young hotshot David Mills (Brad Pitt), the fiery detective set to replace him at the end of the week. Mills has talked his reluctant wife, Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow), into moving to the big city so that he can tackle important cases, but his first and Somerset's last are more than either man has bargained for. A diabolical serial killer is staging grisly murders, choosing victims representing the seven deadly sins. First, an obese man is forced to eat until his stomach ruptures to represent gluttony, then a wealthy defense lawyer is made to cut off a pound of his own flesh as penance for greed. Somerset initially refuses to take the case, realizing that there will be five more murders, ghastly sermons about lust, sloth, pride, wrath, and envy presented by a madman to a sinful world. Somerset is correct, and something within him cannot let the case go, forcing the weary detective to team with Mills and see the case to its almost unspeakably horrible conclusion.


We used this for our third film inspiration mainly because we got the idea for the opening titles from this film. For example at the beginning of the scene there are various shots of the "murder" forming a book of his victims. This is where we got one of the main ideas for our film opening from. Below is the opening credit for the film where we got the inspiration from.

Story Board for Opening Titles of film opening

This is the first of our story boards.

Planning and research for our 2 minute filming.

We decided to change our idea for our media ideas. We decided this because of the fact that our other idea seemed to have too much going on for it to be an opening. We decided to change our idea to a opening based around a psychotic stalker who has murdered his previous victims.

Opening Titles-

We are going to incorporate our opening titles into filming. Our first shot will be moving the camera towards a door, the door will then open to reveal a man pacing around his room. He then approaches the notice board to pin a picture of our female victim. There will then be a close up of the notice board to show his victims daily schedule. This shot will contain a name for the beginning of the opening titles. He then walks towards the computer screen and then he is seated on the floor. We will then do an over the shoulder shot to reveal the content of his interests on the screen. Here we will see, several folders of which turn out to be his previous victims. There will also be another opening titles on the screen. We will then pan round to show a book that has a name on the cover.

First scene-

Our male character will open the book which reveals disturbing images of his victims. Here we will have a voice over of his stream of thoughts which will connect to each individual picture. Whilst our male character is reading the narrations we will have some non diegetic music playing in the background.

The narrations to each individual picture:

Emily Weston – She was my first embrace, the first time I found myself. She was a difficult one, she was the screamer I soon put an end to that. A tongue on the floor says it all.

Julie Andrews- Second was Sparky. She was a sight for sore eyes as her body lit up with volts.

Mary Anne- The tool. She was a vain one, she knew she could get whoever she wanted, so I soon used a tool on her. A screwdriver to the temple and a hammer to the head took care of her vanity.

Amy Brooks- The sizzler. Burning flesh smells so unique just like her. Petrol   buried her scent, so I buried her beneath the flames.

Charlotte Hale- She will be my fifth lady in red. My Sistine chapel, my current addiction, maybe she will be different, she just might listen.

Second Scene

The male character then shuts the book, he then gets up and exits the room. The next shot will show our male character in the garden, in which he will then climb a fence and look through binoculars, we will edit black circles onto our filming to show that he is just looking at her. To emphasise that she is the most important person to him. We will film from a distance towards a window, which will show Charlotte in her room.

The name for our production company is

JMP PRODUCTIONS

We have also changed the title to HIS LADY IN RED

Research and Planning For Coursework

For my coursework I am working with Paige and Max. I firstly asked the group what their idea was, and they said that they wanted to show a girl that had been beaten up. So I suggested that she could be looking at herself in a mirror trying to cover up bruises. We then decided that we could then show a flash back to show how she got the bruises.

The genre that we decided is that it is going to be a thriller and is going to include the themes of prostitution and drug use, even though you don't see either actually occur on screen.

For the first scene we decided that we would have an establishing shot of a basic room with a girl sitting in front of a mirror. We would then pan round to look at her, to prevent seeing the cameras reflection in the mirror. We decided that we would have an extreme close up of her eyes, so show that she has a black eye. We did some research into how we could use make up to show the bruises via youtube.

After the extreme close up on that bruise, the camera will then track out and show a bruise on the girls shoulder. She will then cover the bruise with her rove and close her eyes.

This is where the flash back will begin. We will show the change in time by either editing it into black and white or increased brightness. The flashback will show the girl getting ready to go out, again in the same mirror as before. She will be putting on red lipstick and we will have her kiss the mirror. The camera then will cut to her leaving the room and seeing the door close. It will then cut to show a man taking her into a room. All the camera sees is the door shut and then we begin to hear the bangs and the screams for help. The next scene is the girl then re-entering her room. Here she is holding money (fake money) and will be carrying her clothes/shoes whilst wearing a coat. There will then be a shot of her going through her bag, there will be a close up of the bag, to show the contents of what is inside. This will include a rubber band, serringe, underwear, a spoon and a small plastic bag containing a powdery substance. We researched into how we could show the drug scene and based it on a scene from the film Pulp fiction, but without showing the serringe actually entering the skin.

 After taking the drugs we decided the character would  fall to sleep and then open her eyes back to the original time. After this happens we then show the character looking at herself then smashing the mirror that she was looking into. She goes on a mini rampage then falls to the floor. She picks up a piece of glass and looks into her reflection into it. We researched also into making fake blood, for the character to gut herself on the piece of mirror.

We decided that we would have a shot of after the girl cut herself, show her relief from the pain.

The name that we've decided for our film is

THE LADY IN RED