Final film - Kathryn Davies and Natasha Kendall

This is our final film.

Audio Trailer - Kathryn Davies and Natasha Kendall

This is the audio trailer for our film.

Evaluation

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

The media product i decided to produce for my media coursework was a film, that showed the issues involved with mental disordered such as dipolar. The film was of a thriller genre and the lead character was a girl that suffered from dipolar disorder and other mental disorders. This was convention of most thriller films as they often have a female heroin. This heroine often defeats the enemy and are at first seen as innocent or weak but become strong throughout the film. Some examples of films that show this are When a stranger calls, All the boys want Mandy Lane and final destination 3. Below is a video in which John Papsidera the casting director for final destination 3 talks about why he choose Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the heroine for the film.

Our film goes against the stereotype of the average heroine in a thriller film, as our heroin is not strong she is overwhelmed by the troubles that face her. Another convention of a thriller film is that they often use flashbacks or flash forwards to give the audience more of an insight into why it is happening and what’s going to happen next. It also makes the audience more interested as they want to know how the flashbacks link together. Below is a scene from the film Saw in which you can see examples of flashbacks. This is only a link as the embed option is disabled.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW2kAQAg738

Our film follows this convention and has flashbacks to the girls childhood as she recalls it in a therapy session. I cannot split the film to show you specific sections as i am doing this at home and the films is on the college computers, but below is a link to the youtube video and at the time 1.40 to 2.00 you can see a flashback.

Our film also follows convections of thriller films by the use of black and white or greyscale editing to show flash, backs or purely to show something bad is happening to the character in the film. Below is a screenshot from the short film i analysed called ‘Twisted’. Twisted use’s greyscale throughout to show something sinister. Our film doesn’t use it this way our film uses greyscale to show that something terrible happened to Scarlett our lead character.

Often in thriller genre films the characters suffer from mental disorders, some films that show this are Donnie Darko. This film shows a teenage boy that suffers from Schizophrenia and see and talks to an imaginary man dressed in a clown costume. Our lead character also sees an imaginary character, Scarlett sees a clown that taunts her throughout the film.

1) How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?

The ancillary texts i created to go with my main product was a film poster, and a film audio trailer. I created my film poster in Photoshop elements 8. Below is a screenshot of my poster in photoshop elements.

I portrayed the main image of the clown and the picture of a scrabble board as the background image, this reflects to the audience the main characters and props that they will see throughout the film. This helps them relate to them later on in the film. The clowns eyes have been blacked out this works well with the film, as it means the audience will already know the clown is evil and there won’t have to be as much emphasis on this at the start of the film. The audience then see the clown as a bad omen throughout the film. I had difficulty creating my poster as the only pictures of the cast i could get where stills from the film, so the film poster isn’t as effective as i’d have like it to be. However this has helped a little as the audience for the film will recognise the stills as they watch the film. I believe my poster reflects the film well and is very effective in showing the audience what too expect. I have used a tagline to try and give the audience a clue into the plot of the film and make them more interested. The poster also has all the necessary information such as actors names production company etc that an audience may be interested in and that may persuade them to go see the film. However i don’t think it is very effective in it’s appeal to our target audience specifically it has nothing on it to signify the lead character in the film is a young adult and therefore the poster may appeal too an older audience too.
I also created a film trailer to do this I used garage band on a mac computer and a zoom recorded to record the necessary voice over.

Our audio trailer had to be completed in a short space of time so it wasn’t as well edited as i would have like it to be, if i was to do it again i would make sure i had more time. I would also have looked into using a different piece of software for the voiceover, as we original wanted to edit the voice to make it sound deeper and more creepy. This would have made it reflect our film better. I would also look into using better recording equipment as the zoom recorder didn’t have very good sound quality. Besides this our audio trailer does reflect our film by using sound clips of the characters from the film. This helps the audience recognise the characters.

1) What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I gained audience feedback for the film both on youtube and with a link on facebook. Below is a screenshot of my results.

The audience feedback shows that the audience where confused my the storyline and the flashbacks. As this is our first time using effects in film such as flashbacks it was obvious we wouldn’t get it perfect, if i was to do it again I’d change the storyline to make it more understandable and only have one flashback. One of the youtube comments also say the editing is a little ‘chessy’ to avoid this again I’d not use any overly obvious effects on the film such as any transactions. One of the youtube comment also sad they props and make up needed working on, however we had very limited resources and had to work with what we had

Critically evaluating video production - Kathryn Davies

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


With our film, we tried to use the conventions of thrillers and of films with similar content. Before we started the project, I analysed a short film called "delayed diagnosis" which was about a girl with bipolar disorder. I tried to use similar features in our film to help our film to fit in with the genre. One main similarity between the two are the opening titles. These are the titles from our film



While the opening titles from "delayed diagnosis" look like this















Both sets of titles are in white, fade in and out, and appear on the screen while the film is playing, rather than having a separate frame for individual titles. We decided to do this as when i was researchin opening titles, I found that titles running adjacent to the film kept my attention more than ones that were framed seperately and detracted from the action of the film. Another reason we did this was because it is only a five minute film, we didn't want to spend too much time just showing opening titles as there would be less time for the plot.


Another convention we used in our film was the use of colour. When analysing "Delayed Diagnosis", one of the main features I noticed was the use of colour, going from colour footage when everything is normal, to black and white in a flashback, and even using a red filter when the protagonist is angry. 

We decided to use colour in our film to help show the protagonists (Scarlett's) feelings, and to show how she sees the world. We decided that any footage before the death of her father should be in colour, showing how everything is normal. Then once her father died, we decided to make the footage black and white as a metaphor to show how Scarlett's happiness had been drained away. To show this metaphor, I used key framing while editing, so as Scarlett is being told about her father passing away, the colour image slowly desaturates, showing how these two events are linked. 

Finally, when Scarlett sees Jester the clown, we decided to pick out the red hair, showing that something about Jester is not right, and suggesting that Jester is a figment of Scarlett's imagination. We decided to pick out red particularly as it has connotations of danger. This concept was also used in Shindler's List, where a girl was wearing red to convey an important message in the film.

Another convention we used in our film was breaking the 180 degree rule. We did this to show Scarlett's mindset, and how confused she feels. This is also a feature that appears in "Delayed Diagnosis" and the "Saw" series, both of which use this effect to show confusion.






















We also decided to use jump cuts in our film for the same effect, to show how Scarlett is confused, although this seems to challenge conventions as I havn't seen jump cuts in any other short films.

The film "delayed diagnosis" uses a lot of close-ups to show the characters reactions. We decided to use more varied shots, again to enforce the idea of confusion and of there being something not quite right.


In our film, we also decided to use similar titles to the ones used in "Delayed Diagnosis". Again, we did this to try and keep to the conventions of similar films, and to help the product fit it's genre.

These is a screenshot of our end credits.

And this is a scrennshot of the end credits from "Delayed Diagnosis"

We decided to make our credits slightly bigger, so would be easier to read from a distance, especially as our film would be shown in an independent cinema.




Moreover, we used cantered angles in our film, again to show that something is wrong, and to continue building up tension, although this is used more in horror films rather than thrillers, but we thought it was appropriate to use in our film.

Our film should fit in with the thriller genre. When researching thrillers, I learnt that they focus on building up tension before the pivotal event, and usually end with a twist. I think our film does that as the majority of the film is explaining Scarlett's condition, and from the audience feedback we have been given, many people feel that the end was a surprise and that they didn't expect it.




In terms of audience pleasure, we looked at different media theories before creating our product. We started by looking at Vladimir Propp's Theory of Narrative. Propp came up with seven different character types that appear in media products. We looked at these character types to see if our character ideas matched these, however none of them seemed appropriate to our story or plot. We then looked at Modular Narratives in Contemporary Cinema by Allan Cameron. Cameron identified four different types of narrative: Anachronic, Forking Path, Episodic and Split Screen. We were originally going to use the Forking Path idea, but due to the time limit on the film, decided to only use the perspective of the protagonist.


Finally, we looked at Richard Dyer's theory of entertainment. In our film, we used the theory of energy, as our editing is quick-paced and is likely to make the audience more energetic, and some intensity, but rather then having both great highs and lows in the film, we concentrated mainly on the lows.


How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillery texts?

When creating our film, the main aims were to entertain our target audience, while both sticking to and challenging conventions of thrillers. I think we managed to do this well in our film as we used many conventions of popular thrillers, whilst trying to challenge some conventions such as breaking the 180 degree rule. This is similar to our poster, but when making our poster we decided mainly to stick to the conventions rather than challenge some of them, therefore attacting a large audience to our film as they would know what to expect from it. We had a slight problem with our audio trailer however, as when I looked at thriller trailers, they all used mens voices and made them sound deep and dramatic. This was our original intention, however could not be carried out as we only had a limited time to record our trailer, and could only use a female voice. We tried to alter this when editing our trailer, but when changing the pitch it affected the sound quality, and made the voice sound heavilly edited and unrealistic.


Whilst we had several problems, I think the ancillery texts sell our product quite well. 
Firstly, I think that my final poster is effective as it doesn't give away too much information, yet tells the audience enough about the film to make it interesting. I also like the fact that it is mostly in black and white, which if displayed at a cinema would probably make people look twice as it would be different in comparison with posters for childrens films and comedies which tend to use bright primary colours. One thing I would change about my final poster is the font used. I prefer the "Scramble" font I used on my first poster design, but unfortunately could not find or import that font into Photoshop Elements 8. The main problem I had with my final poster was that although i emailed my half of the group poster several times, the other half wasn't completed as of a couple of hours before the deadline, so I had to change my second poster design into the final design.




The radio trailer also sells the product well as the sound clips and music we took from the film make the trailer sound intriguing, and the voiceover gives the listener all the information they would need to know about the film.


What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When asking for audience feedback we decided to ask people via the internet, We did this to make sure the feedback would be varied and the film could be accessed by any age group, gender etc. I posted the film on youtube to gain comments and then posted links on twitter, facebook and yahoo answers to try and gain a large number of responses. These are the comments we were given.

Most comments we received were positive and expressed that they enjoyed the film and the plot. Some people left feedback saying that there was a good variety of camera angles and good editing techniques. A few people strugged to understand the mid-section with the clown doll, but I think that was because we had a scene missing when we needed to gain feedback, so with the added scene, I'm confident the film will make sense to our target audience. The only negative comment we got was regarding the acting in the film, but I think that the acting doesn't hold back the plot or film in any way.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?


When planning, I learnt how to do call sheets, as I have never filled one out before. This was useful as it let everyone in the group know when we were filming, where, and what euipment we would need. I have also learned how to use a blog. Before this project, I have used a blog before, but I had never used pictures, videos or other multimedia functions. However, one problem with blogger was that on the run-up to the deadline, Blogger blocked my blog and threatened to delete it due to me editing and adding too many posts. The blog was eventually unblocked, but I was unable to post for two weeks, and it caused a lot of stress. Other problems I have encountered during the planning and research include other group members not completing work on time, not completing work at all so I have had to do more than my fair share of work.


When we began filming, we were using different cameras and tripods to the one's we used for our AS media project, so I learnt how to set up the new equipment, and how to use the menu functions, such as the sound settings, white balance and resolution settings. We also used new digital cameras when taking our location and props photos, and I learnt how to transfer these images from the camera onto a computer.


I had to learn how to use the computers too, as I usually use a PC but for out project we had to use Apple computers. 
We then started editing and I learnt how to use both Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro. After only using IMovie last year, these programmes seemed complex at first, but i soon managed to work out how to apply extra features to our film, such as key framing, colour correction, reframing and desaturating.

< Desaturation

 < Colour correction

 < Key framing

We edited the majority of our film on "Final Cut Express" but to acheive the black and white footage with red picked out, we also had to use "Final Cut Pro"


When using "Final Cut Express" I decided to have a look at other features we could use on our film, and I found a zoom feature. Instead of using the camera's zoom in one scene, I decided to use the zoom whilst editing to gain more accuracy and to make the zoom more steady and at the same pace. I did this in the below scene. (STARTS AT 19 SECONDS)






























This is the editing I am most proud of, and I think it looks very effective in the film and helps to explain the plot to our audience.
When filming this, I had to make sure everything was in the same place, which was difficult as the actor had to get changed between the two takes, however I think the match on action works very well.




When trying to gain audience feedback for our project, I learnt how to upload videos to youtube and embed the videos on other websites, such as"Facebook". I have also leaned how to use Yahoo answers, again asking for audience feedback.




When making my poster, I learnt how to use Adobe Photoshop Elements. I had never used photo editing programmes before, but I was given a tutorial on how to use the programmes and some basic effects that were useful when creating a poster.

When making the final ancilley text, the radio trailer, I learnt how to use a H4 Zoom Recorder and was given an instruction leaflet to help me use it properly. I then learnt how to use Garage Band properly. I used it last year to create a short composition for our project, but I had never imported my own sound clips before.

During the course, I went on a trip to the set of a short film, where I watched some scenes being directed and learnt about different important aspects when creating a film. 

One of the most important aspects was the continuity, so when filming our project, I made sure a made a note of any variables, to make sure there was continuity in the film.

This is an example of continuity in our film





These are some of the notes I made on each take

Audio trailer analysis - Kathryn Davies

As I couldn't find any audio trailers online, I decided to analyse the trailer of the thriller "Shutter Island"







The trailer includes certain information about the film. This trailer includes:

• The director
• The name of the film
• The website
• The month of release
• The production company

We should try and include this information when we make our trailer.

The trailer also includes sound effects, for example screams. This is to build up tension, help the film fit with it's genre, and to make the audience curious as to why a character is screaming.

The trailer shows the main actors in the film. As this is a hollywood film, the actors are recognisable, quite well known and probably don't need introducing. This differs from our film as our actors aren't well-known, and cannot be seen due to the fact it is an audio trailer, so we should introduce them to the audience when making our trailer.

The trailer uses clips from the actual film too, to give the audience an idea about what will be in the film, and to try and interest them in the film. I think we should do this in our trailer to try and interest our audience.

The trailer for "shutter Island" uses a lot of flashes with sound effects to show the passing of time, and to seperate the trailer. Although we can't use flashes as ours is only a radio trailer, I think we should use a similar sound effect to show time passing.

Dramatic music is used in the trailer, again to build up tension and to interest the audience. This is another feature I think we should use.

Difficulties in filming - Kathryn Davies

When we were filming our project, we encountered a number of problems.
One main problem was our group member and actress Lucy. Although she came up with the main idea for our film, we struggled with filming as she constantly had doctors appointments or was ill. This prevented us from filming on a lot of occasions, and also caused another problem as we couldn't get in touch with our other actress Kelly, as the only person in contact with her was Lucy. This then caused further problems when shortly after christmas, Lucy left college all together, leaving us with only two group members and no contact with her for any extra work that needed doing, like costume and props photos, photos for our posters and extra voice clips for our radio trailer.

Another problem we had whilst filming was the video cameras we were using. We set the white balance on the camera before filming but when we uploaded the footage on to the computer, the background looked more yellow than cream. We managed to rectify this by using the colour correction feature on Final Cut Express, which was also helpful when we forgot to set the white balance on a few scenes due to waiting around for actors being late.

I think within our group there was also a lack of time management skills, as a lot of work was left until the last minute rather than being completed early on in the task. It didn't help that we were also re-sitting our coursework from last year, so lesson times had to be split between both AS and A2 work sometimes.

Radio Trailer Script - Kathryn Davies

This is a second draft of our script for our radio trailer
Words in capitals show certain words and phrases that will be emphasized

Voiceover

Coming September 2010

The music track from the film begins

Voiceover

From the directors of "Test Subjects"

Clip of sound from our film

Voiceover

Comes the hit thriller, PSYCHOSIS CIRCUS

There is a slight pause

Voiceover

Starring LUCY SHEPHERD

Clip from film of Scarlett

(played by Lucy)

Voiceover

...and KELLY SMITH

Clip from film of Jester saying "i'm your only friend now"

(played by Kelly Smith)

Voiceover

Only at The SHOWROOM CINEMA in SHEFFIELD

Music fades out

Voiceover

Visit www.psychoproductions for more information

Sound effect from film.

Equipment for Audio Trailer

This is a picture of the zoom recorder, microphone, headphones and microphone cable we are using to create our audio trailer. We used the zoom recorders on our first year project and we will also be using them to record some audience feedback. However in the previous experience I've had with the zoom recorders, i realized the sound levels and quality of the sound on a zoom recorder wasn't very good. I then asked a music student if they knew of a better alternative. They told me the zoom recorders where good recorders it was the internal microphone on the that was the cause of the problem, and that i could get round this by pugging a seprate microphone into the bottom of the zoom recorder. I decided to try a Yoga DM-330B dynamic microphone. Here is a link to a tutorial i looked at for more information on using a zoom H4 recorder

ZOOM RECORDER TUTORIAL