Evaluation

Evaluation

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

Our brief was to create a two minute film opening in the style of a film noir so to do this I studied what the conventions that a film noirs process and how film openings work. I found out that films openings are used to draw in and capture the audience to make them want to watch the rest of the film I watched Se7en 1995 Dirc. David Fincher and this film uses enigmas very well to hook the audience so I decided to put this in to my opening, I kept “The Boss” characters face hidden so that the audience want to find out more about him and then I also used the flashbacks to establish the relationships between “Johnny”, “Rebecca” and “The Boss” but I chose not to explain them fully so the audience wants to find out more about what is going on. To research film noir I watched Double Indemnity 1994 Dirc. Billy Wilder, from the research I did on film noir I found that there and many characteristic that appear in most film noirs such as the Venetian blind effect, Flashbacks, Low Key lighting, Voiceovers and the typical noir characters which consist of the femme fatale and the fall guy. In my opening sequence I used many of these conventions such as Low key lighting, I used this to create shadows and keep the scenes with “Johnny” and “The Boss” dark and mysterious. I used a lot of different camera positions to help create a warp sense of prospective, to also confuse the audience I used a disjoint voiceover which doesn’t always match what is going on in the scene this helps to create “Johnny’s” sense of confusion and helps to distance the audience from “The Boss” character. Our characters are very typical of film noir as we have a femme fatale but we played on the typical portrayal of a femme fatale by giving her more casual clothing but we gave her the femme fatale attitude. We also have “Johnny” which is our protagonist, fall guy type character who gets himself into trouble trying to win “Rebecca” and trying to find out the truth this idea came from a film I watched called Brick 2005 Dirc. Rian Johnson. Our narrative is very typical of film noir as it is about the struggle “Johnny” has to gain “Rebecca’s” love and find out the truth and get her out of the mess she is in with “The Boss”. We chose our music because it added drama and emotion to our piece and wasn’t typical of a film noir but it worked very well. We edited our piece to fit with our music and when the flashbacks were happening the music became more dramatic this add emotion. I feel that the titles we used put a modern spin on typical film titles so over all I think we did use and challenge the forms and conventions of film noir.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our opening sequence contains all the typical characters in a film noir, We have the fall guy/ protagonist character who is represented as weakened around the femme fatale character and he gets himself into mess without meaning to and we use close ups and flashbacks to emphasise his vulnerability and that fact he is laying the foetal position on the floor also emphasises this. Our femme fatale isn’t a typical film noir type femme fatale as she isn’t dressed up to the nines but she does have the femme fatale attitude which you can see in the over the shoulder shot in the flashback sequence when she gives the “Johnny” character a seductive look over her shoulder. Our piece also represents teenagers and students as our piece is set in a school and the Mise-en-scene we used help to create the representation of teenagers, we used a bike shed for on location which shows that the characters are young and at a school which is very much like the film “Brick” which I mentioned earlier. Our “Boss” character is more stylistic that our other characters as you don’t get many people like that in everyday life but our the other characters are more realistic. Our representation of 18-25 year olds isn’t accurate to everyday life as not all teenagers are in to drugs and guns and don’t go around acting like gangsters but we had to use these ideas to help create a noir feel.

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

A smaller independent film company is most likely to distribute my product such as optimum releasing or metro tartan as my film is low budget film with more of a niche audience. It is also likely that my film would have a platform release at a few cinemas then would rely on word of mouth to get popular. My film is likely to get an audience at film festivals such as Raindance and Art house cinemas because it is smaller indie film and its needs to work up and audience and gain popularity. As our film is aimed at a young audience I would think that the TV channels most likely to show our film are channels such as FilmFour and BBC3 in the evening slot.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The typical audience for my film I think would be males aimed around 15-25 as it has a sensual woman and thrillerish tendencies which are more associated with a male audience but females may be attracted to the love story element of my sequence, I think that mainly lower to middle class people will be more likely to watch my films and from VALS (values, attitudes and lifestyles) think that experiencers and strivers are most likely to watch and enjoy my film. Our audience will be an active audience and are likely to use our film as a diversion to escape from their everyday life or they may use our film to connect with other people and use it to connect with people (social coinage) I think the BBFC will classify my film as a 15 as it only contains a few uses of demotic language and as it is context a 15 rating would be applicable, with this rating it opens up a whole three more years of audience compared to if it was rated at an 18.

How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted our audience by using young talent and using costumes to make the characters appeal to a teenage audience. We set our story in a college and used an actual college for our location this will also attract an audience. Our music is a relatively unknown piece of music so this is unlikely to attract an audience, our edit pace is medium pace apart from the flashbacks which are quite fast paced this give the audience a chance to appreciate what is going on. Our storyline is quite contemporary and we used a modern font style for the titles. Another device we used to create audience pleasure is enigma as it will entice the audience to keep watching. The audience will get emotional and intellectual pleasures from watching my sequence because it offers a puzzle and sense of enigma but it also plays on the audience’s emotions. Our film will be aimed at more of a niche audience who are looking to watch the film because of its genre and the noir characteristics and stylistics we used will attract a younger audience I know this because when I screened my opening sequence to my class everybody enjoyed the narrative and the shots we used. People especially said they liked our characters and our use of flashbacks and how the voiceover was disjointed, they also commented on how they could relate to our characters even the situation doesn’t occur in everyday life.


What have you learnt about technologies from the process of making this product?

In the research stage I used websites such as Wikipedia and YouTube I also did my blog on blogger.com, I used the BBFC website to gain knowledge of the rating system. In the planning stage I used a PC and Adobe Premier Pro along with paint to create my animatic and windows media and the internet to find my music; this has helped my research skills.
When I filmed my opening sequence I used a Canon HV30 DV camcorder, a Yoga shotgun microphone and boom pole and a Velbon DV-700 tri-pod we also used a 300W light to create our low key lighting and a Jib-Arm to create a bird view opening shot then after editing on Adobe Premier Pro we had to learn how to compress our file to make them easier to upload onto our blogs. I have also learnt how to edit film and how editing works to create a smooth finish, I also learnt how to fit a piece of music onto my opening sequence and how to record a voiceover.
From using all this technologies I learnt how cameras function and work, I also learnt how focus the camera and use different pieces of equipment to create different effects.

Looking at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full project?

I have most defiantly improved my technical skill since my preliminary exercise, I have improved on my rule of thirds and match on action, I am also much better at using a camera before my shots were shaky and distorted and now they are clean and precise. As the producer I did a lot of pre-planning work such as location finder’s checklist and risk evaluations and this has helped me to be organised and manage my time. My analytical skills have improved and I can now easily recognise conventions and how ECMS is used in creating a film. I have learnt that planning really helps your shoot go smoothly and that if you do all the pre-production work you can just get on with your shoot. I was surprised about the amount of work that goes into making a short opening sequence. In our final project we had to overcome a lot of problems such as one of our members leaving our group and me and Kamal having to work as a group of two and having four people work to do. The exchange project I did was the second practice piece I did and I learnt a lot about how characters work and that handles are need on all the shots you get because otherwise editing becomes very difficult. I have also learnt how RAILING and ECMS work to create a certain feel on screen, the second project I did which is called “The Exchange” helped me to in preparation for my film noir as I chose to practice recreating the film noir style, that piece was very stylised and this help me to decide I wanted a more realistic feel on my final project. My knowledge of the film noir genre is greater than what is was at the start of my course as I know all the conventions and character types behind a film noir.

The Long Run- Final Cut

Obtaining rights to our music -PRS

To get clearance for our piece of music we had to visit the PRS website and fill out an application, we have to do this because we are using a piece of music that has royalties and therefore you need to pay to use the music.

This is and example of the form your have to fill in:
Film Title- The Long Run

Brief Synopsis - Johnny struggles with being a teenager falling in love and dangerous encounters with the boss

Context of music use - As background music at the start of the film

Actors involved - Conna Cook, Nicola Wright and Chris Rathbone

Overall budget - £10

Territory of exploitation - worldwide

Rights required - Cinema, DVD and TV

License term - In perpetuity

Music Title - Somnus

Artist- Yoko Shimomura

Writer - Yoko Shimomura

Duration of music - 3Min's

this form is then sent of and PRS talk to the artist and decide of a cost for us to use their music.

What happend during editing

After we had finished filming we used Adobe Premier Pro editing software to edit our piece together first we logged our footage into a logging sheet we did this so we knew where the bits of footage we wanted to use where on the tape. we then used our logging sheet to find the exact pieces of footage we need and capture them to the computer.
we then put the footage into the order we wanted and added the voice over this was difficult as our voice over didn't quite match the action but we used this to our advantage and created a disjointed voice over which helps to distance the "Boss" character for the audience. we also chose to use dissolve transitions to make the move form shot to shot smooth. we then added our music and moved the voice over around to fit with then music and then we finished editing.

What happened during shooting

Our crew met at the studio at college and them we set up our equipment, then as art director make sure our talents costumes were perfect and i also did the make up for Conna who is playing Johnny. Then we set up our lighting, we used one lamp to gain a shadowy low lit effect. after we had filmed in the studio we when to Kamal's house and filmed the scenes with "Johnny" in bed and him embracing with "Rebecca" we decided to use natural lighting to add realism to our piece. we then filmed at the bike shed at college.

overall our shoot when well with no hiccups.

Animatic

Group Meetings

After Nick left me and Kamal were left to make some important decisions.
After the synopsis was finished we had to finalise our characters, decide on a title, costumes, props and how it would look on-screen.

We did a storyboard which was then turned into an animatic which i will post later,
then as i am in charge of mise-en-scene i decided on costumes i wanted to show the difference in personality between the boss and Johnny to do this i chose for the boss to be wearing dark clothes and for Johnny to be wearing light clothes. we also decided that we need a gun, rope to tie Johnny up and make up for the bruising and cuts on Johnny's face.

Kamal then chose music which we then argued over as i didnt feel that the music would fit with our piece but then when the animatic was done kamal put his music chose over the top and it worked very well so we settled on music.

We also had to chose location. we both agreed that we needed somewhere where the lighting could be controlled, this is when our teacher mention that the filming studio would be available to us. so we decided to use this location for the scenes of Johnny and The Boss and then use outside locations for the other scenes. We decided on the college bikeshed, Kamals bedroom and lastly Kamals hallway for the flash backs and bed scene. As producer i then did the paper work for each location including; Location Finders Checklist, Rick Evauation and Risk Assesment sheets

after all of these descisions we felt ready to shoot.

The Long Run- Final idea synopsis and treatment

This is the synopsis for our whole film.
we came up with the title, The Long Run.

This is set in a big bustling city, something like Los Angles or New York, the Ghetto/ Downtown areas. We follow a young late teen’s boy called John (Johnny) Nickel; he’s your average kid, just trying to survive in a neighbourhood, full of drugs, guns, and crime. He lives with his 40 year old father, Tom Nickel, who has a drinking problem, Johnny and him aren’t on the best of terms.
The story starts of as a normal day for Johnny, slowly waking up to another day of college, his phone goes off, which stirs him and he answers. It’s his best friend telling him that the teacher says he has 5 minutes to get there otherwise he is in detention. Realizing this he comically gets dressed, steals his father’s bagel and legs it out the door. Gets on his BMX and pedals as hard as he can.
Upon arriving he knows that he is already 10 minutes late, so he takes his time in locking his bike away. He then hears voices and sees a girl who to him is of absolute beauty, a Goddess if you will. Her name is Rebecca Soar, a girl the same age as him, they both go to the same college, but swim in different shoals. She has always been a mystery to him, and now he sees her holding hands with a man, he is in the light so Johnny can’t make out who he is.
Johnny gets into class and he gets a detention, throughout the day he can’t get Rebecca out of his head, including the mystery man. It’s the end of the day, and he goes to sit in detention, several other kids are there, however what strikes him the most is that Rebecca is there. He sits down next to her, nervous as hell, and jumps when she asks him his name. They get discussing, and she says she would like to meet up again sometime, and leaves him a note saying where a party is.
It’s the night of the party. Johnny arrives and he sees drugs everywhere, people doped up, high, hallucinating, having sex anywhere, as if he had stepped in Babylon. He feels uncomfortable, until he sees Rebecca, he sits next to her and she passes him a splif. Not wanting to look like a loser, he takes a drag, and a rollercoaster of a night starts.
He wakes up the next day, to find a random girl naked in his bed. He tries to remember the previous night, and all that comes to mind is him and Rebecca kissing, people laughing, screaming, and then a hand grabs Rebecca away from him, a man, he is all blurred, Johnny can’t make him out at all. He searches the house but to no avail he can’t find Rebecca. He asks one of her friends and they say to forget about it, she was his.
Johnny doesn’t understand, who is ‘he’? Was it the same guy as before? If so what is the connection between him and Rebecca? Confused, hurt, and angry Johnny decides to find some answers, fearing that Rebecca is in trouble. He heads off for her house, knocks on her door, and Rebecca answers. He is relived and surprised, and told Rebecca what he thought and who was this guy supposed to be? She looks around nervously tells Johnny to leave her alone and slams the door into his face.
Johnny wants answers, and if Rebecca wasn’t going to give them to him then he’d just have to find out himself. He heads off to the mall and finds one of Rebecca’s friends, and asked what was going on. After a lot of following and nagging, he finally gets her to spill. She says she doesn’t know who the guy is, but he has a connection to the dude who supplied all the drugs. He is to be found at the music store on 5th.
Johnny makes his way there and demands the dealer to tell him about who the mystery man was. The dealer refuses, laughs in his face and punches him. Johnny retaliates but, is quickly overcome by the dealer’s strength. In a final attempt he says that he will go as low as possible to find out the truth, and threatens to tell the police about the party, everything. The dealer succumbs and tells him all about the man, who is only known as ‘Boss’. Also that Rebecca got to know him too well, and he thinks that they are a couple, when all she wanted was him to pay off her debts, but things don’t go so easily, and gets caught up so deep in the plan that she can’t get out.
Knowing this information Johnny makes his way back to Rebecca’s house, to comfort her, to tell her that everything was going to be alright. He gets there and at the door she bursts into tears. The house is empty, and they become so emotional that they end up having sex. The next morning Johnny wakes up, and hears the shower running. He smiles happily that all was going to be well. He gets out of the bed and looks around her room, and sees all the pictures, he moves to her desk and opens the drawers. More drugs and photos of the like, till he gets to the last one, a gun. He turns around, only to be smacked on the head by something heavy, as he losses consciousness he hears Rebecca scream his name.
When he comes to he is tied up, on the floor of a place he has never seen. He sees someone sitting in a chair, however he can’t see his face and realises that this was the Boss.(We are now at the opening of the film). After the Boss mocks him and tells him its’ the end, Johnny blacks out again. He wakes up on a roof, stands up and sees the Boss standing there with a gun, and tells him to ‘walk’. Feeling betrayed by Rebecca he turns to walk off the edge of the building. Then he stops at the edge and turns around to look at the Boss, who laughs and tells him that he planted the gun not her, and now he was going to die for nothing, he didn’t even rescue her.
Boss raises his gun and a shot is fired. Johnny stands there, all is quiet, he looks down at himself and sees that there is no wound. He looks back up and watches the Boss slump down to the ground, dead. Who shot him? It was Rebecca, overflowing with tears. Johnny rushes to her, and they embrace, knowing that the nightmare is over.

The End

Opening Sequence
On screen you will see Johnny tied up in the foetal position on the floor
the boss moves around him and threatens him, while this is happening Johnny has flashbacks of him and Rebecca kissing, Rebecca and the Boss and then of a gun in the draw. then the screen fades to black and on screen Johnny appears laying in bed and his phone rings. throughout the action Johnny is doing a voice over.

Then after we came up with out synopsis we did a treatment.

Cinematography- With the opening sequence at the end, in a dark damp place with our hero tied up and at the mercy of the Boss. I want to try and achieve that sense of tension, fear, the disorientation in the beginning since Johnny has just become conscious . With close up’s of Johnny at all times, when it comes to the Boss, I want his face to always be in shadow, so that there is an enigma. With the Boss I want to create the dark brooding power he contains, with hardly any visuals on him. So that he becomes a presence at the back of your neck, always there but not.

Mise-En-Scene- I am going to have the first scene in a dark room which is very dimly lit the majority of the light being on Johnny. Johny will be wearing very light colours and have blonde/light coloured hair this will help to emphasise he vulnerability and his innocence and how he got caught up with a bad crowd. He will be laying in the Foetal position this will help to emphasise how scared he is.
The boss character will be barely seen by the audience we will use heavily contrasting shadows to hide the boss face and he will be dressed in dark clothing and a hoodie which will emphasise his bad nature and his control over everything the hoodie will also show that he is a teenager as the connotation of hoodies to the audience will symbolise a teenage male who is not to be trusted it also signifies gang culture. the flash backs in the opening sequence will be tinted in different colours, the flashback of the first kiss will be bright and warm in colour, the flashback of Rebecca and the boss will be in a washed out bluish tone and the flashback of the gun will be in grey tones.




Sound/Editing- we will be using a voice over this a typical noir technique and will help the audience to understand what is going on. we will be using a backing track this is non diagetic sound. When we edit our piece we will edit the colours of the flashbacks as stated in the mise-en-scene section.

Final Project- Group Meetings

For our final project we were put in to groups.
In my group there is Me, Kamal And Nick.
After we were put in to groups we had to come up with ideas for our final piece.
Our group came up with alot of ideas. we all had our own individual ideas and views about what we wanted to be included in our film noir.
we came up with this spider diagram.

Click on the image to view on a larger scale

We came with many good ideas but we couldn't all agree on one.
Some of our ideas were far too compicated and involved too many locations and whould have been confusing to the audience.

After a few lessons debating our ideas we came with the idea of a guy that was trapped by a big boss type character we kept expanding on our ideas and came with The Long Run synopsis by this time Nica had decided to leave college so Me and Kamal shared out his roles. We started dicussing possible locations and we found that the college studio would be the perfect place and Kamal's bedroom could be used for the other parts of the scene.

I took an a producer/director role and Kamal took on an Editor/Art Director role.
Then we filled in the appropriate paperwork such as a location finders checklist, Risk assesments and evaluation sheets.
Kamal did a story board which eventually turned into this animatic

[Insert Animatic]

Film Opening sequences

To make a successful film opening, you have to understand how a film opening works.

A film opening is used to entice the audience and hook them so that they watch the rest of the film. Enigmas are used to pose questions to the audience, these questions make the audience want to watch more so the questions they have in their mind will be answered. Opening sequences can also be used to establish a relationship with a character in the film, the opening sequence is also where the audience decides whether they like or dislike a character.

Kill Bill Volume One. Director: Quentin Tarantino, 2003.

Before anything appears on screen the audience hears the sound of heavy breathing this immediately sets up and enigma, Who's breathing? whats wrong? so this encourages the audience to keep watching. Then the first thing we see on screen is a close up of a woman's face and i can tell from the mise-en-scene that she has been beaten up, she is also wearing a brides vial which brings the connotations that she is a bride on her wedding day this shot answers the audience s questions about who was breathing and sets up new enigmas. There is pleonastic sound on the male characters footsteps this makes him seem ominous and dangerous and it also add dramatic tension to the scene.
In a close up shot of the females face the male character comes in and wipes her face with a handkerchief that says bill this is clever shot as it establishes who the male character is. Bill (the male character) also has monologue type dialogue which he uses to torture the female character before he shoots her then she reveals some information but the shoots her before she finishes this sets up even more enigma and hooks the audience.

Evaluation of the Exchange

The Evaluation
As a class we watched all the exchange projects and evaluated them
here is the evaluation of my groups clip.

The end shot from behind the grate was well done, the use of the handheld camera style as opposed to the tripod help to create and eerie and confusing shot which is essential in film noir.
The costumes-The female character- The heels show everything about her character they give away that she is a sexy strong confident woman the fact that she is wearing a long coat and black tights give and air of mystery and enigma to the piece.
Location- Our location was an underground car park, although different to what was storyboarded it gave and excellent feel to the project it helped to create a dirty and seedy atmosphere which is again typical of a noir.
Cinamatograpy- The grill shot and the heel shot are good and work well in the context of the genre we are trying to portray.
We have good framing (rule of thirds) especially in the over the shoulder shots and the walk towards the male character.
We also followed the 180 degree line rule well and all our cuts and edits worked.
Sound- We feel that our chosen music fits our project well and it is creepy and mysterious much like our femme fatale.
Our tiles are also good and work well in our genre and overall our piece is very noiresque.

We could have improved however, with more adventurous camera shots maybe with a dutch tilt.
The cigarette lighting shot was also awkward as the actress(me) had trouble opening the lighter and lighting the cigarette this could have been solved with a cut away shot to the male character and had we had more time we would have done that.

The Exchange preparation

As part of our course we were asked to do a preliminary exercise.
Our brief was to create a short 1-2minute clip showing an exchange with no dialog just music.

Before we shot this we were asked to do a rough synopsis and treatment as individuals and then collate the ideas as a group and pick out the best elements.

Here is my synopsis and Treatment-

Synopsis
A woman walks across a courtyard carrying a briefcase, to a man standing by the trees.
She puts the case on the floor and lights a cigarette.
He smiles at her looks around then reaches into his inside coat pocket and pulls out and envelope, he passes it to her, then picks up the briefcase and leaves. She stubs out her cigarette, puts the envelope in her breast pocket and walks off.

Treatment
The woman is a femme fatale type character that is commonly associated with film noir.
The weather will hopefully be wet or damp and the sky will be grey creating a unpleasant atmosphere.
The backing music will be eerie medium paced and shifty.

Before going out to shoot, i had to fill out paperwork to evaluate different aspects of my shoot, eg safety.

These are what i had to fill in-
* A location finders checklist - answering questions about the location (e.g. suitability and availability)
* A 10 shot storyboard - this is to help us get the shots we visualized in our heads onto film.
* A risk evaluation sheet - examining the potential hazards of filming in our chosen location such as noise, distraction and disruption from the public.
* A risk reduction sheet - actions we would take to reduce the risks that we found on the risk evaluation sheet.
* A call sheet - containing all the vital information needed for our shoot to run smoothly (e.g. equiptment needed, directions to our location and group member's phone numbers)
* A camera logging sheet* - used whilst editing the film to establish how long each shot is and what each shot contained for easy reference if need to find the shot on the tape again.