Our final production!

YESCOMPLETEDSWEETCAROLINE from Gabrielle Royle on Vimeo.

Looking back at our preliminary task...

On a more personal level, Ii think that our preliminary production definitely wasn't as good as our real production  in the sense that overall we simply worked better as a team, we knew how to use the equipment properly, especially the camera and tripod and I developed far more advanced skill levels with Pinnacle Studio HD15, our editing software.

The jump between the two was tremendous but I think the biggest change between the two was the sound editing. Whereas  in our preliminary production we did nothing to the sound except add a few effects, for example when the 'superhero' was sliding up the stairs, in our real production in nearly every shot we cut, dubbed, mixed and added a variety of diegetic and non-diegetic sounds and music to create the right atmosphere for our film. This enabled us to have it exactly how we wanted it in the sense that we imported different songs and then mixed in diegetic sounds such as heavy breathing and screams. I think this is the area where most of the skill had developed but we also improved our visual editing with better match on actions, graphic matches and use of slow motion and jump cut effects to show Molly was drugged. We also used lighting and colour effects to create a chiaroscuro thriller effect and to indicate our flashback narrative structure.

Furthermore, I think that as a team we worked harder because we had time limitations due to the fact we were filming in the dark. 

What have you learnt about technologies from the process?

Comparison to other films and audience response

The opening to our film could relate to the film 'Ills', as they both show a mysterious crime being committed, in which we never identify who the killer actually is, and in both films, the victim is a helpless female, alone in a derelict area, who dies within the opening 5 minutes of the film. We related our film to Ills as we thought it would attract a similar audience, as both openings leave the viewer wanting to find out more and asking questions such as 'Well, where can the film go from here?' and 'Who is the killer and why has he killed them?'.

When researching, we found that a lot of films use this method of starting with a disruption leaving the audience guessing, such as 'Face-Off' and 'Sixth Sense', where the disruption occurs within the opening title sequences, like our production. 
Disruption the occurs in 'Face-Off'
Face Off Distruption from Holly Entwistle on Vimeo.

These are images from Face-Off and show the young boy on the merry-go-round, to him being dead on the floor. This all happens within the first 5 minutes on the production.

 These images show the progression from unaware and in love, to protecting his wife from the crazy guy. Once again, this all happens within 5 minutes of the film starting.



During our production, the cheery sound of 'Neil Diamond-Sweet Caroline' plays whilst two girls sit and drink in a bar. This music could be said to be contrapuntal as we have previously scene the girl in question running for her life down an abandoned rail-way track in the dead of night, and we can hear the panic in her heart beat. We used this contrapuntal music as it juxtaposes the idea of the film, and when the song starts to turn slow and sinister, it notifies the audience that something bad is going to happen.

We got this idea from the film 'Face-Off', when the contrapuntal, happy music during the opening scene turns sinister when the boy is shot. We feel like this is the unique selling point of our film as the song which links in with our production's title is edited to sound dangerous and is heard in a way that it wont have previously been heard before. It also foreshadows that a happy atmosphere is about to take a turn for the worst.

When talking about synergy in the media, it means that teamwork will produce an overall better end product, than if each individual person in the group were working towards the same goal individually. Synergy applies to us as we split the work load between us, to achieve a better end product, than if we were to do it all individually. Media institutions recognise that audiences enjoy using converged technology, and want to consume media in a variety of different ways, for example: trailers, videos, jingles etc. This can be used to promote a companies film and to boost sales to create a profit. If we were wanting to promote our film, we would have to start off small scale, perhaps by creating trailers and posters. In the industry, if a film does well and creates a lot of sales, a company may wish to merchandise. This could be done by creating a game, a range of toys, or something along those lines.For example, Star Wars has created a range of computer games which has increased the films reputation. 

 
AUDIENCE RESPONSE FINISHED from Jodie Mountain on Vimeo.
We also asked people a few questions after we'd shown them our production and they had positive feedback to give to us;

How did you know it was a thriller? 
The scary music and themes accompanied by the font used. The content as well was a key feature, it’s also left on a cliff-hanger which would encourage people to go and see it at the cinema.
-Rachael Struthers

Can you give us some general feedback to our production, involving the range in shots and your overall understanding?
There was a good amount of camera angles involved in the production, making it appear more professional. I was very impressed with the thing as a whole because it doesn't look like something that AS level students would be able to produce. I understood the whole story line, and the titles at the bottom of the screen helped me to understand the flash back etc.
-Nathan Howe

Who would be the audience for the production?

What kind of media institution might distribute your media production?

How does our production represent particualr social groups?

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The main girl character, Molly, plays a similar character to that played by Maggie Grace in the 2008 thriller 'Taken'. Both characters/productions are similar as they both start off with a happy equilibrium event i.e. Molly is going for a night out with her friend, similarly Kim is going on holiday with the best friend.

Both girls dress in respectable clothing, are around the same ago and portray happy characters all of which builds up their vulnerable persona. Both characters are naivley preyed upon by a male character and unbenknown to them later are taken advantage of.

 

 OUR PRODUCTION

TAKEN

They however also have differences, a major difference is the resolution of the situations. Molly does not have anyone to save her in our production and end up being killed by the villain, however in Taken her father is trying to help her throughout and comes to her rescue at the end. Another difference between the two story lines is that Kim was not left on her own in Taken her and her friend got taken together however Molly is left on her own from the beginning which creates more tension from the audience.

Molly fits with the stereotype of a typical damsel in distress. She is a young female character, this portrays her as weak and helpless in the eyes of the viewer. She is an easy prey. We have dressed her is respectable clothing in order to show that this situation could happen to anyone and not just those who look more provocative. Doing this also surprises the viewer and plays against their expectations.

 Our male character is similar to that played by Michael Eklund in the 2013 thriller ‘The Call’.

The characters are similar due to the fact the both have similar dress codes, they wear shabby clothing, on our case he is wearing his work clothes and in The Call he is wearing casual clothes. Both men look like they could be ordinary men however inside they are both corrupt. Both men prey on girls that fit the stereotypical vulnerable, damsel in distress stereotype in order to then kill them.

They also differ, in The Call his character preys on a number of different girls in a number of different ways such as sneaking into their house or kidnapping them in a car park however in our production the male character only has one victim and he comes across her by drugging her in a pub. They both dress in similar clothes however the colours of the clothes signify different things, we dress our character in dark clothes to represent the evil character inside however in The Call he is dressed in pale creamy colours to make him look dirty and scruffy. These colours will show when he is sweating or dirty which will revolt the viewer and add to their dislike. He is wearing shabby,dark clothes and is a young male.

We have created him to follow the same patterns of the stereotypical thriller antagonist; a predatory man. We want to make it obvious that he is the villain in the film and that she should be wary. This builds the tension in the bar as the audience can predict what is going to happen before it actually happens. By dressing him in dark clothing it connotes his dark, evil character, using shabby work clothes also helps to create an lack of social standing, this is used in many films to create a motive for some villains.

Explanation and commentary of our production

COMPLETED COMMENTARY from Jodie Mountain on Vimeo.


Storyline The story line is about a girl going on a night out and getting drugged by a man who is in the same pub as her, this happens in the opening and the rest of the film is about what happened to him afterwards and whether he will get caught. The opening helps set this storyline up as it first explains whats happened and gets the audience involved with the action, it builds up their opinions on the character and then makes them want the male character to be found and punished for his actions. The whole idea of the opening is setting the scene and getting the audience involved with the story line in order to enjoy the film to its full potential.  

Genre The opening uses a lot of dark, chiaroscuro lighting and sinister background music, this all helps to build the atmosphere and tensions needed to a thriller film. How the characters are introduced The girl is the first to be seen, this is when she is running down the railway. Introducing her like this gets the action within the film started straight away and gets the viewer interested from the very beginning, it also introduces her as an endangered character so the audience knows what to expect from the very beginning. The first time the male character is seen is in the pub at the bar, here he is sat having a pint and is in his work clothes, portraying him like this makes him look like a normal person however the audiences opinion will soon change.

Evaluation of our shoot

Overall, shooting our production went really well. We started by filming the bar scene in one of our friends pub, although we did encounter a few problems. For instance, the lighting in the pub was too dark to start out with, but we overcame this minor problem by using the disco lights, which also gave the feel that the two girls in the frame were on a night out and it added a bit of life to a once boring shot. We also had the problem of background noise, as there were other people in the pub whilst we were filming so we could hear their conversations and the noise of the television. We over came this problem by deciding to play Neil Diamond's 'Sweet Caroline' as a diegetic sound track, as if it was actually playing at the time.

During the second shoot, we went to Holly's house to film the part of the girl running down the railway track, the fall, and the scenes of a mysterious figure with an axe. As it was night time by this point, we faced the problem of there not being enough lighting, so we had to use our own artificial lighting by using head torches, which was quite inconvenient and difficult as it was hard to make it look like natural lighting and not too staged, but after many attempts we managed to overcome this problem.

We also faced the problem of how to film the tracking shots without any of the proper equipment, and we needed to do this for the shot in the barn, where the camera blurs out and then focuses on the axe. After a number of different efforts, we came up with the idea to attach the camera to the tripod, place it in a wheelbarrow, and slowly but carefully move it in the direction we needed. It took a few tries, but we eventually managed to get a smooth shot that we were able to use in the production.

Another problem that we encountered throughout the filming of our production is conflict within the group, because obviously we all had our individual ideas of how things should/needed to be done. After listening to eachothers ideas opinions, we managed to compromise and take each other's opinions into account to avoid any falling out.

Availability was also a re-occuring issue within our group as we found it difficult to agree on a set time when we were all able to meet to film the production, due to illness, holidays and other commitment, so this really limited the time period that we had to film. Due to this, we were left with only three days to film our production, so in reality we were lucky that it all came together like it did.

Creating the Production Company Logo

For our production logo we discussed that we wanted something very simple, that would be catchy and easy to remember. To come up with out logo we looked-up other production companies to create a comparison so we could see which ones we actually liked. 

All of us found that we liked the 'Dark Room' logo's. Both of them are equally simple, to create a sophistocated approach. We did in fact decide that we preferred the colourless one because overall we wanted a simple professional looking logo and thought that the other logo looked more like it was advertising a night club, consequently edging us to opt for a simpler approach. 

From here we agreed on simply a black and white logo. Our reason for this was firstly to create the professional look we had aimed to achieved, but the secondary purpose was the fact that it linked to typical thriller conventions with the binary opposite colours - white and black. These colours mirror good and bad, so we thought it was appropriate for these colours to be chosen as it creates a tense, sinister mood and the genre can be slightly detected form our intentional logo. 

We then decided that the best company to base our design upon was 'The Weinstein Company'. They use a simple font, with a simple logo and retain the black and whit colour scheme which we had already agreed on. We thought the simple image created more without it becoming too cluttered.

From here we came up with the name 'DIAMOND PRODUCTIONS'. 

The font we chose was a 'serif' font to create a professional appeal to it, and we also chose the name 'diamond' because of this. We also decided to keep it simple, and we achieved this by the simple picture we then put underneath the name of our company. 

The diamond was complex for a diamond shape, yet one simple image. We decided that a simple image connected to the production company we based our logo on. 

Our completed logo looked like this...

We purposely added the white lines at the top and bottom to make it a bit more exciting and once again reinforce the crisp, smartness that we had aimed to achieve. 
Overall, the logo was just what we wanted to achieve in the sense that it was simple yet effective. Within our production we made it zoom in to the diamond so there was more to it visually.

Our production so far

Finished Production from Jodie Mountain on Vimeo.

Titles for our production 'Sweet Caroline'.

 Initially, we came up with a range of different titles for our production, but we thought they were all slightly cliché and we didn't want a title that appeared boring. So, we then decided to come up with something that was more ambiguous, mirroring the genre, that allowed the audience to guess what the film would be about instead of simply being told outright in the title. Consequently, we came up with the idea to call our production 'Sweet Caroline', which also helped us pick the diegetic music for one of our scenes where we used Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline as background music. 


For our production we wanted to create titles that grabbed the audience as opposed to plain, static titles.Here we discussed that we wanted to titles to be alike the ones used in the beginning of the film 'Se7en' - full of movement, out of place and eerie in order to reinforce the genre of the film.
Here is the video for the opening titles of Seven.

se7en titles from Holly Entwistle on Vimeo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-k2gsEI34CE
(the title sequence for the film Se7en)

 In order to achieve this we firstly had to choose the font style we wanted. We did, however, change the size of each letter and also the direction because we didn't want all the letters to be aligned perfectly and instead wanted them to be distorted and edgy. The layout of the letters was quickly decided, and we originally chose to do the titles in black and white, which mirrored out style model of 'Se7en'.

 Once we put it onto our production we thought black and white came across a bit dull, so we then decided to change it more to a red colour. The reason we chose red was due to the connotations that come alongside this fiery colour of pain and freight. After testing it out, we came to the conclusion that the red looked more striking, which was our original aim.

 Above are a range of screen-shots of our titles sequence and they show that we changed to colours slightly, to more bold colours then back to white. Furthermore, we also created a 'double-effect' where the titles appeared twice one below the other. We thought we achieved what we set out to achieve and our titles were highly affective in doing so.
  Our titles
Sweet Caroline Titles from Holly Entwistle on Vimeo.

Problems we faced during our production

Although overall we thought the production was a success, we did face a few problems along the way.
The main problem was the fact it was night time when we were filming, and we chose to do this on purpose because it set the scene and allowed us to incorporate the idea of pathetic fallacy within out production.
To overcome the fact it was dark we did bring torches but we mainly focused on getting our production in the natural light. We feel this showed in our production as the lighting changes quite dramatically throughout.

 On the picture to the left, the lighting appears to be natural light and appears to be early evening.

 But by the time we were filming the section to the left, the lighting had changed so we had to edit the scene so the audience could fully see what was going on at the time. 





To overcome the factor of light affecting our production, we had to film on consecutive nights at the same time each night in order for the lighting to be reasonably to same. 

Another problem we spotted once we'd actually finished editing our production was a continuity edit fault. Although extremely minor, we did spot it. Luckily it wasn't a key feature throughout our piece. 
 

 Here it shows us that 30 seconds in, his drink is nearly empty.

When we go another 3 seconds into the production he has a full glass.












 

This shows that the editing has gone faulty here. Thankfully though it was only a minor part of our production and wouldn't be spotted normally if it was watched leisurely and that only when you look in depth, that this fault can actually be seen.

Updated Script for our production

Once we began filming we decided that instead of having dialogue in our production (in the second scene), the ambiguity and mystery would be heightened if instead we blocked that out and had louder music with eerie sounds able to be heard in the background. We also changed to order of what happens when editing arrived, changing the end of the script completely.

UPDATED SCRIPT:

Scene one - train tracks Molly Diegetic sound: *heavy breathing*
Breathing continues to become heavier as she runs down the track and slowly fades quieter as she runs away from camera diegetic sound: *gasp* As she turns around and sees someone in the distance she gasps with fear. 
Diegetic sound: *falling against the floor* The sound created as she hits the floor

Cuts to flashback - loud music running throughout- diegetic and coming from the pub they're in of 'Sweet Caroline'. As she exits the bar, we hear louder music that is more demanding and louder (non diegetic), suggesting something bad is going to happen.

Graphic match to the next scene with the whole of the diegetic music from the bar being cancelled out and replaced with the non-diegetic loud, siren-sounding music. The scene plays out and at the end we hear the diegetic sound of the axe cutting through the girl followed by a diegetic *scream*. 

Story Board for our production!

Prop List for our production

Axe- the axe was used as our final prop and we thought instead of using a gun as the murder weapon, an axe is more mysterious and proves to be more of a dangerous, more gruesome weapon. 

Torches- we needed torches in order to actually film our production. Although they arent shown in the film, they were a necessity due to the face we were filming in the dark. They also proved to look like car headlights in the background of our opening scene. 

Shoes/bag/clutch- these three props were needed for the 'damsel in distress' in our production. These were used as extras to help make it a more realistic scene. When she's running away we allowed the fact that she was holding her coat and her shoes in the other hand to prove she was a girl running away and was scared.

Make up- we used make-up as a prop to ensure that it looked like the girl in our production was upset and had been drugged. We applied her make-up normally and then smudged it across her face to allow the idea that she was being chased to be represented in what she was wearing and looked like. 

Wine glass- the wine glass simply allowed us an opportunity for her to get drugged, and was therefore a necessity in our production.

Pills(tic tacs)- again, these were a necessity in our production as it's a key part when she does get drugged. Obviously we didn't have real drugs, so we used small mints in their place, which still looked effective. 

Pint of beer - having a pint of beer was only to enhance the atmosphere that we were in a pub. This created more of a realistic feel and we thought it was necessary as an alibi because otherwise he would have looked odd within the production if the man was sat there doing nothing. 

Mobile phone - the mobile phone was used to get the other girl away from the scene. 

Ketchup - we also used ketchup for the final scene to mirror fake blood. We spread it on the walls, but unfortunately it was hard to see due to the lighting as we had to film at night time. 

 

 

Original Script for our production

Scene one - train tracks Molly Diegetic sound: *heavy breathing*
Breathing continues to become heavier as she runs down the track and slowly fades quieter as she runs away from camera diegetic sound: *gasp* As she turns around and sees someone in the distance she gasps with fear. 
Diegetic sound: *falling against the floor* The sound created as she hits the floor

Cuts to flashback - the bar diegetic sound: Molly ‘ so are we going for some food then’ Friend ‘yes that would be great’ ... *phone rings* ‘oh! Just one moment’ *friend gets up and walks out* Hustle and bustle of bar and ‘sweet Caroline’ playing in the background

Cuts back to molly running down the track diegetic sound: Continuous diegetic noises of her running down the track and heavy breathing.

Costumes for our production

 WOMAN - In the bar

• Nice, classy, black dress
• High Heels

• Neat and tidy hair, up in a bun
• Red Lipstick
• Clutch Bag

Our reasoning for the girls outfit shows that we wanted her to be in normal clothes with a normal atmosphere because if we went too over the top then a sense of realism would be drawn out of the production we created. This allowed us to create a more realistic approach to our opening of the thriller which consequently connects with the audience because a relateable feel. 

 MAN  - in the bar and throughout

• Black jumper

• Black pants - maybe paint or something on them to suggest a regular, normal person.

•  Face (blurry throughout to ensure the mystery is constant and so we never find out who he really is)

We decided that the man would be dressed in black, with his face never shown to allow the mystery to be heightened to ensure we never find out who he is. Our choice for doing this was mirrored by a lot of thriller films where, in the beginning, the killer is never actually revealed.