Evaluation Question Two

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our film represents the social group of teenagers. This is because of their appearance, such as the way they look young, and dress casually in fairly plain clothing. This is also shown in what they're doing, such as the way they're gathered around a fire on a beach; eating, drinking, laughing and in general just messing around like the stereotypical teenager.

To analyse this more closely, we can look at our main character Amber:

We tried to make Amber representative of the stereotypical teenager in the media; she appears drunk, looks easily bored and impatient of her friend and looks fairly alternative in terms of her appearance. This makes her stand out slightly from the rest of the group, who are dressed fairly plainly and laughing and joking around. This shows that although she's different to the rest of the group, she's still a typical teenager, which makes her more relatable of people of that age group - which is also our target audience.

One character from another film that you can compare in ways to Amber is Wendy from Final Destination 3.

Although fairly different in appearance, a few similarities can be made; such as they're both female, dark haired and dress casually and in a modern way, although Amber does stand out more because she appears to be more alternative than Wendy.

Both Wendy and Amber appear to be control freaks, focusing more on themselves rather than other people. They are both shown to be typical teenagers in the events they both do; Wendy going to an amusement park with her friends and Amber going to the beach with hers. However both of these events end up badly, with both of the female characters getting away from their groups, and both escaping a gruesome death. 

Both are the main characters in their films, with the story and camera focussing mainly on them throughout. Another similarity is that the are both considered to be the last one standing (although in Final Destination this is left fairly ambiguous), as in our original plot we have all of the teenagers on the beach killed one by one until there is only one left - which would be Amber. 

By being typical teenagers both of the characters are relatable to the audience, however in the case of Amber this is slightly less in the beginning because of her moody attitude and the way she pushes away her friend who is just trying to help her. 

Evaluation Question One

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

Looking back at our research into the conventions of a thriller film, many comparisons and similarities can be made between what things are in a typical thriller film, and the things and ideas we included in our own opening sequence.
A link can be made between our opening sequence and the opening sequences of other films such as Silence of the Lambs. Although these are quite different in terms of their storyline, they both give an introduction to their character, show titles in a similar way and share some of the typical conventions of their shared genre.

As you can see both sequences take place in one of the most iconic settings for a thriller film; the woods. Both of the main characters appear at first to be isolated in the woods, both of which seem dark and eerie, which helps to create tension.
Both sequence involve the camera following behind the main characters through the woods, which helps to create the feeling that they're being watched. Both also include close ups of the main characters face, showing their emotion but also emphasising their isolation, creating a sense of paranoia about what might be there with them.
However in both situations it turns out just to be someone they know. The sequences start to differ here, as this is where in our film we create tension by making the audience believe that our main character Amber is about to be attacked, when it turns out to be her friend Evelyn. They then have an argument (although both show over the shoulder shots in both sequences of the conversation) and Amber walks off back to her friends, which is similar to the main character in Silence of the Lambs walking away from the setting of the woods back to her normal life.
Both of the main characters are dressed in modern seeming clothes, suggesting that both films are of similar times, although in Silence of the Lambs the female character is dressed more plainly and shows more independence, where as both of the female characters in ours seem more like the typical female characters you find in a thriller film - helpless and in need of rescue.
The titles in both are of a simple style, both of which roll over the top of the sequence and both show a similar sort of order (e.g. main actor first and director last).
By following both of these characters you can tell the story is following them, and by the use of the setting, light and feelings of being watched it helps the audience to identify the film as a thriller.

Some additional things we included in our film that don't appear in the opening of Silence of the Lambs was the murder of one of our characters straight away, flicking between beach shots of the group and the our character being killed to give make it appear as though no one can hear to help, and so all of the violence is implied, which helps to create a sense of mystery.
Being upfront about the killing in the first few minutes allows us to follow the story of what happens next, and who is next and why the character was killed in the first place. By going straight into the plot line it helps our film to be more exciting and engaging for the audience watching, rather than giving a slow build up of the initial death.
In our opening sequence we didn't really use special effects, as this isn't really typical of the thriller genre. Most thrillers tend to be more realistic which was an effect we tried to get in our film because the idea that this could be real and could happen to anyone makes it more scary - another classic convention of a thriller.
The only effects we added was to darken each clip using a 'day into night' effect so it appeared darker and more eerie (as though it took place at night) and a record effect which was essential to our plot line.

In short, we kept with a lot of the conventions of a thriller - such as the darkness, the mystery of the killer, close-ups, tension and eerie music to help the audience identify our film as a thriller. However we didn't use all of the conventions, such as shadows and ghosts, because this would have been a sort of overkill of the film, making the audience feel overwhelmed and confused at the plot. We used enough conventions to make the genre clear, but not too many to make it overwhelming.

Construction - Final Cut

Preliminary Task - Continuity Exercise

This is the preliminary exercise that was created as a group and edited by myself in order to practice camera, filming and editing techniques, but most importantly continuity.

Final Cut Feedback

After finishing our Final Cut and uploading it to Youtube, we wanted to get feedback on what our target audience thought. The picture above shows the reaction of the A2 Media class at our college.
We're really happy with this feedback as it shows that they liked the film overall, giving it a rating of 8/10. We're especially happy that they picked up on the continuity of the clips and sound, as well as the location because these were things we tried really hard to get perfect. We also tried hard to add more exposition into our film opening by adding in additional sound (see previous post about adding in voice recording of characters) as this was one criticising of our rough cut feedback. Luckily our audience picked up on this in our final cut and so our effort paid off.

The Music

As mentioned before, music and sound is one of the main ways tension is built in a thriller, and so it was really important for our group to find the right piece of music to go over our opening sequence. We looked into trying to make our own but decided it would be easier to find a high quality piece on Youtube.
We searched for key words like 'tension' and 'thriller' and one of the first pieces we came across was the one we used.

We decided to use this music instead of our original choice because it built tension a lot better, but was a lot more dramatic towards the end. In the middle of the piece there's a load bang which we managed to match up perfectly to when the killers hand touches the shoulder. It also sounds really creepy and chilling, which fits our genre really well.

Because it's Royalty Free we can use this in our sequence, because it won't break any of the copyright or licence laws, and we won't have to pay for it.

Production Diary Entry - 13/03/13

Today in class we were finishing our opening sequence ready for the deadline. Luckily for us we only had a few things left to do before we had completely finished and were ready to export.
To start with I finished editing the titles, changing the font to match throughout and adjusting the length of the titles to match each other, as well as adjusting where they were in the sequence, so they looked okay in the clip but were roughly the same length apart.
We then looked at changing the music to make it more dramatic at the end. While we were editing Faye looked on YouTube and found some royalty free music that we could use. We then matched this up to the sequence so that it would fade in where the character 'Evelyn' is left alone and attacked to the end of the sequence where the title of the film appears.
We then asked Michelle to look through our sequence and suggest anything we could improve on. She suggested a few things (post to follow) such as cutting a few of the clips in and making the noise build up in certain places.
Using this advice we cut down some of the action scenes so they appear for a lot less time, which adds to the drama of the sequence. We also added a forest noise track over the first part where 'Amber' walks into the woods and faded the sound out in the clip before to make it flow. We also added some sound effects over the top of the clips where someone sneaks up on 'Amber' and fading it out to trick the audience into thinking something bad is going to happen when it doesn't.

We then recorded us saying things to give it more exposition, explaining why they were there and why she walks off annoyed then added this over the top of the sequence and adjusted the sound levels so it sounded natural.
Our last step was adding in Shani's ident into the beginning of the sequence, which we then added a fade in between the end of the ident and the beginning of the opening so it doesn't jump to suddenly.
After finishing this we played it through, and adjusted the sound slightly in places so it fit and then we had finally finished, ready to upload.

Behind the Scenes

As a group we thought it would be a really good idea to get some footage of when we were filming, showing the process of what we were doing and how we did it. This inspired us to bring along an extra camera (and 16 batteries) to film what was going on, picking it up and recording the odd moments we could when the camera started rolling, as well as our attempt to build a fire. This was also useful because it gave everyone in the group a chance to do some of the filming, whether on the professional camera or the behind the scenes.
As a group we took it in turns filming, and because we were often running around setting up between takes or trying to walk down a slope some of the footage is a bit shaky and jumpy at points, which I managed to stabilises slightly but only up to a point. If we do this again I might see if I can get a steady cam to do the behind the scenes footage on. All of the footage was filmed on a Fujifilm Finepix S4000 and edited in iMovie.
The clips in this are filmed over two days, with the original clips of the beach footage cut out when we decided to film the beach part again after we realised the footage wasn't up to the highest of standards (previous diary entries explain why in detail).
Because of the plot of the sequence - teenagers on a beach gathering with cameras, we decided to use mine to record certain parts of the scene such as Faye and Beth hitting the camera away in annoyance because they don't want to be filmed, as well as a couple of shots of people messing around having and occasional shots of the fire. Some of this we used in the final sequence with a record effect over the top to give it an added effect and make it more obvious, but a lot of it was left spare for behind the scenes.
I decided to add a special thanks to our friend Beth at the end in the credits because over the filming of our project she was a massive help, this is because she stepped in last minute to star in our film when our extra cancelled as well as being willing to help again when we needed to re film. In short, she was just amazing throughout the whole thing.

Production Diary Entry - 11/03/13

Titles, Voice-overs and Behind the Scenes

Today in class we continued editing our opening sequence and adding the things that our audience recommended on our feedback.
We started by adding more titles to over the top of our sequence, including our cast, director, producer, editor, etc. We messed around with the positions of these titles on the screen and decided that instead of having them in the same corner of the screen we would alternate them between each title (so some appeared in the left corner, then the right corner, then in the middle right, etc) because we felt that this looked a lot more professional and overall a lot more interesting.
While finishing our editing we also looked for different music to put over our sequence, as our current was good in the sense that it seemed appropriate and did build tension, but it didn't seem that dramatic and it made the ending a lot less dramatic overall. Because of this we looked around on youtube for music we could use but so far we haven't found anything. We also had a look to see whether we could create our own on Garageband but none of the sound clips on their seemed appropriate for our sequence or genre. In the meantime we'll keep looking for music to include in own sequence, or a way to create our own.
We still need to add voiceover to our clip but we decided to do this on the break of our next lesson so we have an opportunity of a quiet, background noise free classroom. We also need to add Chloe's ident to our opening (we're using Chloe's because it's the first production company mentioned) and just adjust the clips and sound slightly in certain places to make sure there is a flow of both the continuity and audio as our audience mentioned some of it was out of sync.
Apart from these things we're really close to finishing our piece, and hopefully we'll be able to finish it slightly earlier to gain extra feedback.

As a group we thought it would be a good idea to create something showing the process of filming our piece, and so today I've also been working on the behind the scenes footage for our sequence and managed to finish it (post to follow with the video later today).

Title Sequence Changes

As a group we decided that our original idea for our title sequence (having an individual sequence at the end of our opening sequence) was too ambitious and unusual for a film opening, as usually the titles run during the sequence or right at the beginning, and it's rare that you see a title sequence at the end of the opening one.
On our feedback, one of the things that the audience mentioned is that the beach clips at the beginning ran on a little too long, but if we added the title into this part it would give it more of a purpose, thus making it more engaging.
However, we decided that we're still going to make our idea of the graphic match of the body on the floor at the end of our sequence, to the body on the backing of a police case file at the end because we think this is an interesting and unusual idea that would leave the audience questioning what is going to happen next.

Production Diary Entry - 06/03/13

Deadlines, Continuity and Extras

Today in class we finished our rough cut ready to be shown to the class. However before this we had adjusted a few extra things in order to make the whole sequence run more smoothly. We detached the audio from the sound clips and faded them out at parts in order to create better continuity of the sound.

By the end of this we had everything pretty much finished with the exception of a few titles and an ident. After searching Google Images for a record effect we realised there was one in final cut, which looked a lot more professional than the ones we found so we decided to use that instead. We found an instrumental song on youtube to play over the back on the final part of our sequence, although for our final cut we're considering changing this to be more dramatic. We added a filter over the whole sequence to make it look darker and colder, which goes well with the conventions of a thriller.

We were then ready to show our rough cut to our class.
A more detailed post of the audience feedback is on my blog but the overall view is they liked it, but we needed to add titles, tighten up the sound and make a few things clearer. They seemed to like the variety in shots, which was good because that was one of the things we tried hard to get while filming.
After our feedback we started to edit again, adding the title of the film at the end and starting to add in titles over the beach scene. We also decided to change our idea of the title sequence (post to follow).
In the next lesson we will continue editing and adding in the things that our audience said to improve on, such as more tension and in general just getting the continuity a lot tighter, as we only just realised that one of the extras took their coat off in between takes.
Judging by the amount of stuff we have left to do as long as we stay focussed and deligate the tasks between the group we should be able to get our opening sequence finished by next wednesday (the deadline for the final cut).

Roughcut Feedback

One of the important things about making and improving a film is audience feedback, after all the film is made for them. After finishing our rough cut we showed it to our Media class, this is because they're the right age for our target audience, so they're the best people to judge our film opening sequence and tell us what they think worked well and what we can improve on.

Heres what they thought:

• More titles at the beginning to make it clear it's a film
• Liked it - the sound is clear and effective
• Loads of camera shots/good variety
• Music is good/appropriate
• The ending where Beth (the character 'Evelyn') goes down could be more dramatic
• Dialogue is out of time in places
• Some points are confusing - needs more exposition (Why are they at the beach? Why does Amber look annoyed and walk away?)
• Camera stuff works well
• End section was good
• Cut down the first section we get the idea pretty quickly

What will we do?

It's not enough to just get the feedback, you need to listen to your audience and improve your piece to fit what they want. 

At the point we completed our rough cut, we hadn't yet finished everything completely. We still needed to add in our ident and finish our title sequence, so the first thing the audience said has already been thought through. We had the idea to run titles throughout the beach scene at the beginning, which gives it more of a point so we wouldn't have to cut it down, plus it's a lot more traditional than having it at the end of the opening like in our original idea.

We're going to look for different music and sound to put throughout the whole thing just to add tension into the sequence a bit more. This will make the ending a lot more dramatic which was mentioned in the feedback.

We've also started to edit the dialogue to be more in sync with the clips. During the editing we had to detach the audio and adjust it slightly to make it fit more due to background noise and the flow of guitar. This is probably the reason parts of it are out of place but this can easily be fixed.

To make it clearer why the group are there we're going to dub audio over the top of the beach scene at the beginning, giving the illusion that it's just one of the group speaking about something along the lines of "It's freezing, we're never going camping in the winter again." and to explain Amber's mood "She always gets annoyed when she's drunk."

Rough Cut

 

At this stage we're pretty much finished. We still need to add our ident and more titles but apart from that we're waiting for audience feedback to see what worked well and what didn't. This will help us for our final cut.

Production Diary Entry - 04/03/13

40 Minutes, a Hill and Some Aeroplanes

Today, after the loss of a camera memory card which contained 20 clips and had somehow dropped out of the camera bag by accident, and then my 40 minute walk to Sandbay to find it still lying in the sand we uploaded the footage from our refilm and started to edit it into our sequence. Like we thought at the time our footage turned out really well and everything seems to fit in well enough so that it's unlikely that we will have to film again.
Today for the most part we just spent time editing in the individual beach clips, fitting them into where there was a blank space for it in between the woods sequence and making sure that the flow of sound between the guitar, as well as the chatting was continuous throughout when it changed from one shot to another one. We also started looking for music to play over the end of the sequence (the part where Evelyn is attacked) and began thinking about the title sequence in more depth by looking up silhouettes of people that we could use while their name appears underneath. I suggested using silhouettes instead of actual characters because it gives the whole thing a greater sense of mystery and looks a lot more professional as a whole.

Something similar to this

We took turns editing the clips into the sequence and for the most part we're almost finished, we just need to add effects and filters, find appropriate tense music and finish the continuity of the sound due to several aeroplanes
We also need to add in our ident and title sequence, but again this isn't a lot to do and we should be finished by the rough cut deadline on wednesday.

Production Diary Entry - 03/03/13

Take Two, Action!

Today we went to refilm the beach scene for our opening sequence. We decided to get there at about half 3 because this is about the time that we filmed our woods scene, and it would give us time to set up and film everything before it got too dark like last time.
This time we had three more extras with us, as well as our friend playing 'Amber'. Shani filmed it all so unlike last time she wouldnt randomly be in a shot one minute and gone the next.
We also managed to build a proper fire this time, so it actually looked decent in comparison to our last attempt, which it's fair to say failed quite a lot.
This time we were definitly better planned and focussed. We aimed to get loads of shot with a lot of variety between so we would have enough when we come to edit the clips in. We had a lot of props with us, like food, a guitar and cups, but this time we actually remembered to set all of it out properly.
As well as this we gave a lot better direction to our extra and our group itself, making sure they were in the same position throughout the first part of our beach scene so we could get the continuity right, and I made sure to repeat the guitar chords again to help the continuity. For the most part we recorded the group randomly without telling them so they would act natural and wouldn't look at the camera too much or act awkwardly. This pretty much made it just like a real gathering, only with a camera or three.
In short our second attempt at filming the beach scene went really well, we got loads of shots and planned everything really well. All we need to do now is edit in the clips, edit the sound and add a few fancy filters and transitions and we're ready for our rough cut on Wednesday.