Final Task Feedback

YouTube

The comments we received from YouTube were praising but once again we got some good constructive criticism from a viewers perspective. The comments in blue are good and the ones in red are constructive criticism.

Class Screening and Feedback

(Best to view in window not full screen)

Theatrical Poster

Purpose

The purpose of this poster is to market and advertise our film, this poster could be placed online, in magazines, on television and other forms of media to raise awareness of our film to therefore attract a wider and larger audience to watch our film.

Detail

The street sign was created in Adobe Photoshop, we had to get the font Univers from an external source seeing as it is not easily accesible and is not integrated into any software packages outside of the media industry. It was then placed onto a white background in photoshop and saved as a photoshop layer so it could then be transferred to another document and all aspects of the poster could be compiled in on document. The 'LAND Productions', 'Edward Stephens' and 'Katrina Hughes' text was also created in Photoshop.

Improvements

If we had more time then we would have liked to have taken the background into photoshop to edit the white brick (mortar) lines behind the text so that the text would read better out of the background but unfortunately as we had been focused on completing our evaluation and final task we did not have the time to do this.

Location Shots

Evaluation

To create this video of the evaluation I used a powerpoint then exported the slides as .jpg files. After doing this I imported those slides into Photo Story 3, which is a free downloadable piece of software, this then allowed me to create timings for each slide, add transitions and a voiceover.

I used the first two options but chose not to use a voiceover as I felt my powerpoint was fairly self explanatory therefore it wouldn't add much to the content of my evaluation.

Final Task

Brief

We were asked to make an opening to a thriller film (approx. 3 minutes). We were expected to use camera angles/shots/techniques and any other knowledge of film making that we had acquired from the AS Media Studies course and our own knowledge as well to make the best film possible.

Construction
After sorting out our filming location and the other aspects such as who would be starring in our film we set to work on our final task. Our filming wasn't as fluent as our preliminary task due to the fact we filmed it over a couple of days at two different locations and we had to work round the arrangements of our actor and actress. This meant that the ease of editing our preliminary was decreased, therefore we had to spend more time on the post production. 

Our main problem was the scene on the rooftop garden, now obviously we can't control the weather and when the wind decides to pick up, so when we were filming it was hard to tell whether or not the wind was going to ruin the audio. To try and avoid this we also filmed an alternative inside scene with Katrina committing suicide so we wouldn't have to go back if the audio was poor outside. It all went well until we had to shoot the scene of Katrina on the floor in blood, we weren't able to film this due to the fact that we were filming inside the Blue Fin Building. This was because we couldn't clean up the fake blood sufficiently the scene therefore this meant we couldn't use the alternative scene and had to use the outside scene.

In our final task you hear the wind at one point quite loud, it was worse than this but with a bit of fiddling with the sound levels we managed to make it less of a problem. The only positive of this is the fact it shows how windy it is and that the weather is not particularly good which fits with our pathetic fallacy (Emily is unhappy = bad weather).

The other thing we found was that our shots were all very still and there wasn't much movement of the camera, we realised this about halfway through production, after filming the second half of the scene up in London so tried on our second day of filming to incorporate some shots with a moving/non-tripod based camera. A prime example of this is the point of view shot where Ed walks into the living room to find Emily has gone.

Film Title

With some thought and brainstorming of titles, we came up with lots of one word ideas such as 'Pursuit' and 'Chase' but none of them felt quite right, so we thought literal. What happens in our film? Where's our film set? This lead us to 'Suicide on Southwark Street' which also gave us alliteration to emphasises the title.

We created a title on Photoshop which we could use for any film related products such as a DVD cover or theatrical poster. The main problem with creating this sign was that Univers which is the main font used on street signs is very hard to get hold of so we had to find a similar font to it for our film title which was Univers. Unfortunately it's not able to be transferred into LiveType or iMovie so we couldn't use it in our final task.

Green Screen

We intended on having a cut scene whereby you saw Emily (Katrina) in front of sped up traffic for dramatic effect. To do this we needed to shoot at a green screen with Emily (Katrina) then film traffic for more time than we needed so we could speed it up. At the Blue Fin building we used a green screen but were left to our own devices without supervision to shoot at it. The end product after superimposing Emily (Katrina) onto the traffic and speeding it up looked good, the only problem with it was that we hadn't used bright enough lights in the studio therefore Emily (Katrina) body was almost strobing and sometimes the green screen bled through.

To solve this we tried to take the image of Katrina into Final Cut Express and clean it up with a chroma keyer then loop one frame continuously through the clip and add a video effect, this worked but didn't look very realistic and we decided it wasn't up to the standard of the rest of our work so did not include it in our final task.

Here's the final product:

Making Fake Blood

What technology have we used?

Filming Permission for Final Task

Above: Letter from the Facilities Manager of the Blue Fin Building
confirming permission for us to film.

Problems with Plot/Setting

To film at places such as Waterloo Station, Weybridge Station and on the train you need filming permission  so we set about it. I spent approximately 1 hour of time trying to find out who to contact on the phone to people from Southwest Trains and National Rail about filming permission only to get through to the person I needed and be told that they had 'too many requests at the moment, and that they could not provide permission for us to film at these locations or on the train. So we hit a brick wall with that part of our plot and setting!

This leaves us with the rest of the plot which we feel we can create our task without the train station and on-train footage as it isn't essential to the plot. This may however influence the fluency of our piece moving from the house to the building in London.

Target Audience and Rating

Our film like most thrillers, will not be suitable for young children, we have scenes of a disturbing nature such as suicide therefore these are not issues or events young children should be watching/experiencing. After looking on BBFC website and reading through the classification for each rating. We decided that due to scenes of imitable behaviour e.g. suicide, that impressionable people such as children could try and copy this and therefore we should rate it as a 15.

Our target audience will be people in their late teens as the actors will look similar to their age so they will be able to relate, this doesn't mean that older people are not in our target audience as they are very much included. This film will be suitable for everyone apart from people under the age of 15 years.

Final Task Costumes

Katrina and Ed were both dressed in fairly trendy clothes that make them look older than their age to fit in with the late teens/early 20's character we cast them as. There is no further meaning or purpose to these costumes as we want them to seem as normal/stereotypical as possible.

Final Task Plot

We brainstormed all of our ideas on an A3 sheet.

We had a variety of ideas for our plot:
   - Bullying
   - Arguments with family
   - Arguments with boyfriend/girlfriend
   - Family loss

In the end we went with the idea of an argument with a boyfriend/girlfriend and suicide. Although suicide may be interpreted as a quite dark and troubled matter, we thought it would give a slight edge to our thriller, this also allows us to stray away from the common stalker scenario that the exam board see every year. This allows us to use both genders and show the representation of them in different perspectives. 


Screenplay


Scene 1

A girl is on the computer while talking to her boyfriend in a different room. She gets a text which says "you'd be better off dead" , she grabs her work keys, runs out of the room, opens the front door and leaves, not shutting the front door behind her.

Her boyfriend hears this and sees the front door open, he realises something has happened and that her keys are gone so he grabs his coat and goes after her. Cuts to scene of her on the train and departing it.

TRANSITION SCENE - GIRL CRYING INFRONT OF TRAFFIC


Scene 2

She’s walking along the street, crosses a road and enters her work building. She then swipes her work keys and walks towards the lift.

She waits for the lift, inside the lift she is slumped in the corner crying. She then gets up and leaves the lift and turns the corner towards the balcony.

She then goes to the edge of the balcony  followed by her moving closer to the edge and looking over. Looks over the edge once again.

Audience hears her boyfriend shout her name. Brief dialogue (TBC at a later date) - outcome is he can't talk her out of it

Scene 3

Screen goes black

Face/body in mangled shape on floor, in blood. Boyfriend runs to her side and rings 999, brief call with emergency services. He then picks up her phone and reads the text (new one) that says "...knew she'd do what I told her". Boyfriend has vengeful look on his face as if he is going to go after the person harassing his girlfriend.

Final Task Setting

Blue Fin Building

(Location Works)

'The Blue Fin Building boasts a huge central atrium, very large 10th floor roof garden, winter garden coffee bar and a restaurant with views over the Thames. The building houses the headquarters of IPC Media, a leading UK consumer magazine publisher. The open-plan office floors have floor-to-ceiling windows with impressive views over central London and the City; facilities include state-of-the-art board-rooms, meeting rooms, theatre, wine-tasting suite, photographic studios, and test kitchens.'
(Location Works)

We chose the Blue Fin building for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it is my dad's workplace and I was familiar with the layout etc, therefore it helped when we created the idea and plot of our final task because I could visualize where we would film and what shots we could take. Secondly it is a particularly large building with 11 floors which fitted in perfectly with our plot, even better there is a roof top garden and a balcony, with the latter being an essential in our thriller.


As well as our school media equipment we also will have access to a green screen and possibly even a recording studio. We are considering using the green screen for a very short segment of our thriller and if we are able to use the studio we would record the girl's voiceover to give the most professional audio possible to compliment the video.


The Blue Fin building has been used for professional filming in films such as:
• You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (2010) - Woody Allen's new project
• Salmon Fishing in Yemen (2012) - a film starring Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt


TV Shows such as:
• Hustle - BBC Drama (2004-Present)

and even adverts such as Norwich Union (now known as AVIVA):
 

Below is a video that is shown to anyone interested in renting the Blue Fin Building for filming:

London
We have decided to film our thriller in and around London (except for the opening scene), In my opinion this was because London is an iconic setting that is often used throughout films and therefore we felt that filming in London would give us the best effect, suspense, tension and drama for our thriller.


Method Statement
To film at the Blue Fin Building we had to create a method statement to give to the Facilities Director Jenny. This basically just tells her how we plan to go about our filming, because there are no real risks to be taken, a risk assessment is not needed

Above: Method Statement

Preliminary Task Feedback

Having put our preliminary task on YouTube we received fairly good feedback, complimenting our variety of camera angles, use of sound and continuity. There was also some good constructive criticism in each of these users comments which you can see below:

Preliminary Task Outtakes

Purpose
We filmed our preliminary task in one afternoon and as with any filming process there were blunders, people forgetting their lines and people acting stupid, not realising the camera was still on! (Yes, Ellen)
So we put them together into a little outtakes video for your amusement.

Construction
We just chose the clips which we thought were worthy of an outtakes video first of all. We tried not to use too many transitions so any clips with the same background setting we cut straight onto the next one as it ran quite smoothly. There were some swear words used in the outtakes when our actors voiced their frustration at forgetting their lines (Yes, Ed) so we just simply detached and deleted the sound of that part of the clip and overlaid a bottle cork popping sound to replace the word.

Preliminary Task

Brief
We were asked to make a short film (approx. 1 minute) which included someone walking down a corridor, entering a room, crossing the room and engaging in a conversation. We did not use a corridor as this did not fit our opening so instead we used the river bank. We were also asked to use 'Match on Action', 'Shot Reverse Shot' and the '180° rule' which we included.

Construction
After digging out the outtakes and bloopers from our footage we set about creating our preliminary task. Our filming was fairly fluent which helped when constructing our 1 minute task because it meant there was less editing to do when we brought all the clips together. Our main problem was that we had people in our group talking over the filming without realising. To solve this, we detached the audio from the clip and then trimmed it to so we just had the background noise we wanted and placed it back on the video. We then used this audio over and over again in the opening sequence as it was a continuous sound of water gushing.

We then added non-diegetic background music while Ellen is walking along the riverbank to increase the tension and suspense in this part of the sequence as it seems she is being followed.

We added a video effect called 'Old World' to the clip of the newspaper being tossed across the table which darkened it making it seem dramatic and important and to finish off we added a 'fade to black' transition in the closing sequence as Ed stands up. This makes the viewer wonder what is going to happen next after he says "I think it's time this case was closed" as it is not stated although it insinuates that he is going to do something to close the case.

Location Shots for Our Preliminary Task

Here are just a few shots of us filming and working on-location for our preliminary task:

Camera Movements

Pan - A pan is a horizontal camera movement in which the camera moves left and right about a central axis.

Tilt - A tilt is a vertical camera movement in which the camera points up or down from a stationary location.

Dolly - A dolly is a cart which travels along tracks. The camera is mounted on the dolly and records the shot as it moves. It is quite similar to a tracking shot but is often defined as moving closer or further away from the action

Uses of Dolly Shots: Camera Moves -- powered by eHow.com

Tracking - As I said this shot and the dolly shot are very similar with the main difference being that the tracking shot is generally defined as being movement parallel to the action

Here is an iconic tracking shot from a scene in the movie 'Goodfellas'




(This was one of the only clips on YouTube of this great scene from 'Goodfellas' that would allow me to embed it, so sorry about it being in German!)


Zoom - Technically this is not a camera movement as the camera itself does not move but instead the lens zooms in or out. It can be combined with a dolly shot though to create an effective dolly zoom