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'.