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

Our Continuity Exercise

What did we learn?
When doing our preliminary task we learnt about the 180 degree rule and this was really interesting because I didn't know that this rule had existed before. I also got to learn a lot more about how making a film works and also how it can actually be quite hard to create a piece of film and make sure that it looks right with no continuity errors at all. I was able to see that there is actually a lot more that goes into film making than I had originally thought and there is actually a lot more rules that you have to abide by.

We also focused a lot more on two shots and over the shoulder shots, so that we could see the full conversation. We used 'shot reverse shot' which is a very common editing technique used in film and tv to flick between the two people in our short clip to show that they were conversing with each other.

We also used a close up in our continuity exercise of Charlotte's face at the end of the clip. We did this so that we had a number of different types of shot, not just over the shoulder and two shot.

We also looked heavily at the clip of Charlotte running down the hallway and wanted that to be as smooth as possible when it came to how it was edited.

What did we struggle with?

At first we struggled with setting up the cameras and having them on at the same time so that they recorded everything a the same. We also struggled with getting the door part of our exercise right as it took a few takes and then trying to make sure it was completely smooth when we edited it was quite hard ant it took a while to get the continuity of it right. We also had a slight problem with the wideness of the shot at the beginning of the conversation between our two characters, however that was soon resolved and we simply edited the bit that had gone wrong out of the continuity exercise.

Our Main Film

When it came to the main film we used a lot of the things that we had learnt in our preliminary task. All of our camera footage was used with a tripod so we tried to stick to the 180 angle rule even though we didn't have any dialogue. There was one instance however that we used an over the shoulder shot and didn't stick to the 180 degree rule because it didn't look right when using the rile, also due to the fact that our characters were far away from each other, we felt that there wasn't any need for us to make sure that we stuck to the rule as you couldn't really tell the difference anyway.

We did however use a shot reverse shot for this particular part of the clip and out of the whole opening of our film it is my favourite part of it as the focus and blur of the characters when they are far away from each other.

Here are a lift of the different type of shots that we used:

For this one we used a canted, low angle to show our character running and to also add a sense of distortion to the scene which helped add to our thriller genre.

This one was a high angle shot. We used this to show our antagonist walking up the stairs after our protagonist Beth.

This is a high angle shot of Beth looking over onto the motorway below. We used this shot to show how busy it was below and how helpless she was at the top.

Overall we were really pleased with our entire film and the continuity helped us to learn a range of new techniques to put towards our final product. From the camera shots, the 180 rule and the editing that we used for the film brought it all together how we wanted it to be and it came out better than I thought it would.

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

Throughout the whole of our filming and editing process we have been constantly learning new ways to use technology to make our film.

Filming Equipment

To start with we decided on the three cameras that we were going to use, we used my Nikon D3100, Charlotte's GoPro and my Dad's JVC camera. We used all three of these cameras on our shooting day, however we then had a malfunction with the SD camera on my D3100 and lost all the footage. So the only footage we had left of the actual film was form my Dad's JVC which was really grainy when we uploaded it to the computer at school and we decided that we weren't going to use any as it wasn't as HD as the footage from my Nikon.

We then planned to re-shoot but we had a change of plans and so I decided to take my SD card to London Camera Exchange and see if they could get my files back, which they did. Due to this we were now able to use all of our old footage and we just had to film a few small bits with my Nikon that didn't take very long anyway.

After all of this we realised that we needed some footage for our flashback shots and so I then used my other camera which is a Sony A5000 to get really precise HD videos of the knife falling to the ground, the hand falling into the blood and of course the blood dripping which were all filmed at my home, by myself.

The GoPro was used for point of view shots and it was really easy to use because we basically had it connected to Charlotte's phone so we could see what we were filming and we just made Beth run up the stairs a few times like she was doing it normally.

The only real problem we had with the technological side of the cameras was of course my SD Card, we still don't really know what happened and it had recorded the footage but when I went to put it on my computer it said that it was completely empty after we had filmed about 50 things on it. The lesson that we learned from this was to back up our footage straight away as it was left a day before we tried to upload it.


We then also used 2 Tripods for filming, one of them was my own and the other one was Charlotte's that she had borrowed from her brother. We used them through the whole of our film on the Nikon and JVC and I then used mine with the Sony when filming the blood clips.

Communication

When communication with each other to sort our when we were going to film or to send each other work we used Facebook messenger, text and emails. This was so that we could constantly stay in touch with one another and plan ahead with our filming so that we could get everything done on time. We also used it to tell each other about any problems we had with the whole filmmaking process.

   

Editing

We edited our whole film using the Mac's at school and used iMovie to edit the film. It was a really easy software for us to use, partly because I had used it many times before but apart from very small things it was pretty straight forward to use and my experience with using it already helped us get off to an easy start after the delay we had had with our SD malfunction.

After being the only one who was able to edit I then showed Beth how to edit and we were then both able to edit separately and get the film done just in time.
The film came our brilliantly because we had such a good software to use.

Research and Documentation

Our main source of research methods was from the internet, we used sites such as google, Wikipedia and IMDB to find out things about our film genre and the type of people that liked the films etc. They also helped when researching the types of thrillers that most teenagers like and also the ideal location for a thriller film to be set. We spent many hours on google researching as much as we could so that our film was perfect for our target audience and exactly the way we wanted it to be.

To document the planning and making our film we used Blogger to create our blogs and show how much planning and effort we had put into the film making process but also to note down anything that had gone wrong or right with our filming and editing process.

Sharing our film

When sharing our film we uploaded it to YouTube so that it could be viewed really easily. The upload process was extremely easy and it took around 5 minutes for each video that we uploaded and each video is available in HD with gives the full effect that we wanted.

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

Once we had decided that we wanted our target audience to be the age range of about 15-18, I decided to take to the internet and look up the typical teenage films and see what I had found.. on a list that a 15 year old had made on IMDB some of their favourite films consisted of ...

You can see from this selection from the list that a large number of the films they had liked were thrillers or had a certain amount of thrilling aspects within the film. After finding this and noticing that a large number of teenagers really like watching thrilling movies, we decided to look at aspects of the film that we could make 'teenage friendly', in the sense that we would incorporate things into our film that we knew teenagers would like.

Characters

We knew that by having a teenage protagonist we would already be attracting teenagers to watch our film, so we decided that the whole film was gong to be based around one teenage girl and her friends. Also because the list above was made by a female, having a main character in our film who was also female would help to relate to girls with similar tastes to who the list was made by but to also draw more girls into watching our film.

With the antagonist, we tried to make them as mysterious as possible to keep our audience hooked but we soon realised that it was quite similar to the popular TV show Pretty Little Liars by having a hooded figure, like their protagonist 'A'. We decided not to change this because we actually thought it would draw more people into the film as we know millions of people watch the show (myself included) and really enjoy it. We thought that by having an antagonist like this we would attract more of our audience but we would make sure that we didn't seem like we were copying PLL, by making it a lot more gruesome and scary.

Setting/Props

We had initial ideas about setting our opening in a school, but then decided that would be far to predictable and probably make teenagers not want to watch it because it was so stereotypical. We thought that if we filmed somewhere that was a bit more uncommon to teenagers we would actually make it more interesting. This is why we chose the car park in our local shopping centre 'Cabot Circus' in Bristol. In some aspects the location we chose would also attract the audience because it is a large and very popular shopping centre in Bristol and teenagers that would watch the film could relate to being there.

Location shot: Top level of Car Park

Stairwell we used on shoot.

View from top of stairs, looking out to window.

Similar shot of stairs, like we used in the film.

We also used only one prop, but we thought it was very effective and would make our audience more intrigued. This was why we used a knife in our film to add some extra tension but to also hint to the audience what our antagonist had been doing.

Editing process

When editing our film, we decided to make sure that we edited it in in interesting and gripping way, whilst making sure that it all made sense. We wanted to make our editing interesting enough but easy to follow. We used a number of flashbacks in our editing and fade to black/white transitions to change things around a but instead of having straight cuts throughout the whole film.

Throughout the editing process we just wanted to make sure that we were keeping our audience interested, so the transitions and titles were where we put most of our focus on. As you can see below we added a number of different transitions to our film and especially focussed on the transitions with the titles. I think that out of the whole opening the most intriguing bit for our audience was the titles and the blood dripping, as said by the target audience that we asked on camera.

Here are some quotes from what our audience said about our film....

'I thought it was really thrilling'

'The flashbacks made me want to find out more, especially because they're so graphic, you want to find out what's happened and why she's running. It also builds up the tension.'

'I loved the blood dripping.'

'I looked the fact the titles were going against the blood and because the font was white it contrasted with the red.'

'The font showed that the atmosphere of the play was going to be quite dark.'

'Some films nowadays give too much away, but you didn't and I think that kind of helped.'

HD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxILkMv8fqs&feature=youtu.be

From looking at our audience feedback we were able to see that we had targeted the audience well and were able to make them intrigued to see more from our film. I also found it interesting that our female audience members had different views on the music we had used to the boys. Whilst the girls thought that the music was contrapuntal and went against the regular conventions of a thriller because it was played on the piano, the boys actually thought that it was typical of a thriller because it was quite haunting.

Overall we were really happy with the audience feedback that we got, everyone was really positive about the film and said that they really liked the way we had edited it, used the titles, music and the characters.

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

When planning for our film we decided that our target audience was going to be in the age range of 15-18, around the top end of the teenage age range. We decided on this age range because as teenagers ourselves we thought that we would have the best knowledge about what this group of people would want to see and enjoy.

When we started thinking about our film we thought about the audience and began to think about the characters we wanted in our film, due to the fact that our target audience was aged 15-18 we knew that in order to grab the audiences attention we needed to have a film based around teenagers so we included Beth in the film and came up with the plot that the film was going to be a bout a group of teenagers who are gradually - over the span of 8 days -  getting murdered, although one character (our protagonist) remains.

When filming and editing our film we wanted to make sure that our audience were continuously watching and gripped onto the opening. We thought about the fact that most teenagers have a short attention span and so we knew that we had to include something to draw their attention back to the film. This is why we included the blood dripping and flashbacks in our film because we thought that this would help to keep our audience interested.

When showing the film to 4 of our classmates.. this is what they had to say...

HD: https://youtu.be/sxILkMv8fqs

Evaluation Question 3 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

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

In terms of the distribution of our media product we decided on the production company Film 4. Although up against the American production company's they are small, In the UK they are a very important company in terms of the films that they produce and the reception from most of them. Film 4 is a British film company who are based in the UK and are a company owned by the Channel 4.


They have produced many famous and award winning films......

This is why we decided that if we could make our film on a large scale we would work with Film 4, not only because they have a very solid reputation in the film world but also because we really want to keep our film as British as possible and by working with a British film company we would be doing so.

We also though about the types of films that they make and how although some of them are comedies they have also made some extremely serious and dramatic films, for example 12 Years a Slave, Room, Never Let Me Go and The Iron Lady. All of these films have a very dramatic side to them and especially 12 Years a Slave, which also had a major theme of violence which would be prevalent in our film due to the fact that it is a thriller and our main character is running away from a killer.

We also decided on them because we want out film to be fairly mid budget in terms of the grand scale of films in the industry and Film 4 have made many films in the budget of between $6,000,000 and $20,000,000 which would be ideal for the type of film we want to make.

We also looked at the actors that we might have in our film and we decided on two main characters that are male and female.

Felicity Jones

               

William Moseley

We chose these two actors because we knew that we wanted our film to be predominantly english, also because Felicity and William have both played teenage roles throughout their career. Felicity has also been in a number of english films whilst she has been acing, like The Theory of Everything which won many awards and included her nomination for Best Leading Actress.

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

When we started planning our film we instantly knew that we wanted it to be aimed at teenagers so the obvious thing to do would be to have teenage characters. Of course in our opening we are only introduced to two characters, our main protagonist Beth and the hooded figure who's identity we do not know.

Protagonist

 

Name: Beth

When going with the name of the character we didn't really have a preference due to the fact that she wasn't going to speak anyway, so we just decided to use Beth's name to make life a lot easier and not waste time figuring out a name for our character.

Age: 16

Again, the age of our character was just by chance because that is how old Beth really is, however in the real film this would also be the case as we wanted a teenage character who was fairly in the middle of their teenage years, we wanted a independent teenage who had a lot of freedom so going with a 13/14 year old wouldn't have been practical enough for what we were trying to do with our character.

Race: White British

In terms of the race of our character, we didn't really think heavily about this as we had already decided that Beth was going to be the main character but race wasn't really a factor as to why we chose Beth to be in it. It was purely because Beth was up for being in it.

Class: Working/Middle Class

Although for me personally looking back I would possibly have people of a higher class in our film but we decided to use fairly normal teenagers who are in danger, however I think it would be effective if we used a group of rich kids who despite their wealth, were unsafe and being hunted.

Gender: Female

Despite the fact that our character was female simply by chance we also wanted to slightly conform to traditional thriller/horror movies and include a female being hunted but we decided to twist this on its head after originally wanting her to be quite weak. We thought that we could change ours slightly and have a strong independent female character who despite moments of weakness she is strong for her age and is able to give the hooded figure a run for their money.

Antagonist

Name: Unknown

Age: Unknown

Race: Unknown

Class: Unknown

Gender: Unknown

For all of these sections we decided that we wanted our antagonist to be completely unknown due to the common conventions of a thriller/horror film. Our plan would be for the antagonist to be revealed at the end of the film. Of course for filming purposes our antagonist was a white, female who is in the age category that our film is for. However if it came to filming the actual thing, this would probably be completely different and the antagonist would possibly even be male.

Characters that influenced our protagonist...

When looking at possible characters we focussed mainly on female characters that had played strong parts in some famous movies. Although we did not look at thrillers to do this, we knew the type of character we wanted out protagonist to be and most thriller films did not include this type of character.

Instead we focussed on sci-fi/action to find the type of female we wanted ours to relate to. We looked at characters like Katniss Everdeen (from The Hunger Games Trilogy), Princess Leia (from Star Wars) and Tris Prior (from The Divergent Series).

I chose to focus mainly on Princess Leia and look at her strong character and sense of humour throughout the films. Despite the fact that we were making a Thriller we still wanted our character to be resilient, maybe not extremely humorous, but like Leia we wanted her to be tough and ready for anything that was thrown at her, whilst still having some (but few) moments of weakness.

We thought the having a character like Leia would represent our female character in a very strong way. It would show women being strong and the type of character that people watching the film would look up to and want to be like.

However due to the fact that Star Wars is a completely different setting/genre of film there are of course some differences between our character and Leia.

Leia is a princess, and so has been brought up with a wealthy family and have obviously been trained to fight and protect herself because she is a princess.

Another difference is that Leia is not alone for the majority of the film and she is surrounded by other people in a team, although at the beginning she is alone.

Her clothing would also be a difference as we made sure that Beth was wearing clothes that would be worn by a teenager, however Leia is clearly not.

Overall I think that our film represents teenagers in a good light, our female teenage character is strong and resilient. Our antagonist however, is clearly not liked but we do not yet know what kind of social group they would be from so they don't currently represent any type of social group in a good or bad light.