Final Version - 'Malice'

Preliminary Task

W.H

Evaluation Q5

Q5. How did you attract/address your audience?

To discover our audience's reactions to our film, we created a questionnaire for people of our own age to fill out, and we gave it to about 17 people. This is a clean copy of our questionnaire:

We annotated our film to clearly show the results of our audience displayed alongside the shots which were particularly successful/unsuccessful:

To see the actual annotations, you must click the link: 

Annotated Version

Evaluation Q6

Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this film opening?

After some practice in the lessons and using it to make our short film ‘The Package’ and our preliminary task, it was pretty simple and easy to use the camera and tripod. We only faced a couple of issues, one of which was sometimes it was extremely difficult to get a good pan that didn’t wobble which is something that happened a couple of times but we managed to cut these parts out in our actual film. Another problem we faced was remembering to get the shot level on the spirit level on the tripod as it was always annoying if we looked back on shots that weren’t particularly in line.

Although we planned to use lights in scenes that we thought would be too dark, we managed to use the natural light which actually gave a more gritty and British feel so was actually a positive. 

As we used little diegetic sounds whilst filming, we didn’t use the microphone a lot. One of the problems we faced when filming in doors was that it sounded very quiet on the microphone and very muffled. For this we used the sound from the camera which worked better as it was clearer and of higher quality. In the opening running shots, it was difficult to get a good background noise of high quality as there were always people talking in the background so we managed to find a good busy street sound effect on the website ‘SoundFX Now.’

            

We also used these types of websites for other sounds in our piece, especially the heartbeat and explosion noise in the flashback. We trawled through a number of different copyright free music websites to find the perfect piano piece which we finally found on www.freeplaymusic.com.

Both Bea and I were very used to Macs so it was very easy for us to navigate ourselves around the internet and files. However, neither of us had used Final Cut Pro which initially took some time to get used to as it was very complicated to get the exact effects that you wanted. However, after editing ‘The Package’ together, we were pretty sure how to use the basics and then we learnt specialized actions along the way whilst editing our final piece. 

Evaluation Q4

Q4. Who would be the audience of your film?

Towards the start of our planning, we decided our target audience would be people aged 15-24, therefore we decided the certification of our film would be a 15. We thought a 12A certificate would prove too young, as children under the age of 15 may be mentally not mature enough for the theme and idea of rape in our film. On the ‘bbfc’ website, it states that a film with the certificate of 15 must have ‘appropriate treatment’ for 15 year olds. It also says ‘No-one under 15 is allowed to see a 15 film at the cinema or buy/rent a ‘15’ rated DVD.  15 rated works are not suitable for children under 15 years of age.’

Works that are certificated as ‘15’ could include:

·      ‘Strong violence

·      Frequent strong language

·      Portrayals of sexual activity

·      Strong verbal references to sex

·      Sexual nudity

·      Brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence

·      Discriminatory language or behavior

·      Drug taking’

This is also stated on the ‘bbfc’ website as the official guidelines of a 15 rated film.

There would be a scene of Ally being raped in ‘Malice’, and although the audience does not get to see the full scene graphically and in detail, the scene would still be clear and what had happened would be obvious.

Another reason we chose the certificate 15 is because we want to attract an older audience, and we would not want them to be put off by a younger certification such as a 12 or a PG. If the film was one of these certifications, the audience may think the film would not be mature enough to qualify as a film they would usually like and want to see. 

To discover our audience's reactions to our film, we created a questionnaire for people of our own age to fill out, and we gave it to about 17 people. This is a clean copy of our questionnaire:

Evaluation Q3

Q3. What kind of institution might distribute your media product and why?

Bea and Willa's Evaluation Question 3

The institution that would most likely want to distribute our film would most probably be the Commercial Art House. 

Firstly, although the Commercial Art House cinema chain is actually quite popular and large, our film would require small screening places in comparison to the City Centre cinema style of Multi-Screen Cinema. This is because our film generally is aimed at a younger generation who are more interested in studying film than always going to see mainstream action thrillers in mainstream cinemas, and so therefore makes our audience much smaller and so probably would not attract enough people for a place in a huge cinema.

Secondly, because our film obviously is, and looks, low budget (especially as it is obviously shot in England without Hollywood actors), our film may not attract the larger audience for mainstream films, such as Drive. Therefore, if distributed in a Multi-Screen or Multiplex cinema, the majority of people who went there to see mainstream films would not want to watch our film.

Our low budget appeal also means that if our film was distributed in real life, it would be impossible to have enough money to advertise it on a big enough scale for it to feature in main-stream cinemas. Because of our low budget, we also would not be able to carry on distributing our film over a number of weeks in Multiplex cinemas that tend to show the same film repeated over a series of weeks. By distributing it within a 'indie', arthouse cinema, people would come to see it, knowing that it would be of low budget. 

Evaluation Q2

Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our thriller film opening represents particular social group in a subtle way. The main character in the film is Ally Quinn, who is a nineteen-year-old teenager. Our target audience age is 15-24, and our main character represents a member of our target audience. Our film is also probably appealing to around 60% female and around 40% male. The fact that our main character is female also helps to attract this audience. We are representing a middle class, comfortable group of young people, and the person who has committed the crime (Jasper Thomas) is also from this target audience.

It could be said that our media product presents teenagers or adolescents in a way that fits in with the stereotype of the idea that street crime and crime in general is mostly committed by men. However, we want the audience to be unsure as to whether Jasper Thomas has actually committed the rape or if he has just been falsely accused of committing a rape. Also, it fits in with the stereotype that it is usually younger men or teenagers that commit street crime.

Ally Quinn is a young, British, wealthy girl. If Ally turned out to be innocent and simply be the victim of a rape, the social group of young girls would represented in a rather stereotypical way in the idea that they are vulnerable, and targeted by rape and other crimes. However, if Ally turned out to be guilty of making up the fact that she had been raped by Jasper, she would portray the social group of young girls in a different way, and imply that they are prone to attention seeking and making up events or exaggerating events to make themselves seem like the innocent person in the situation.

If Jasper were to be innocent, his social group would be being presented totally differently to if he was guilty. It would make the group of young British wealthy males seem less threatening and more respectable and fair. This would go against many stereotypes of young males being irrespective of the law and committing crimes on innocent people. It would also go against or flip the stereotype of men generally targeting women.

Overall, our media product represents youth as prone to committing crime whilst also becoming the victims of it. However, we have deliberately left the question of whether Ally Quinn or Jasper Thomas is the guilty person in the scenario, which would determine whether the film went with the stereotype and represented males as more prone to committing crime or going against the stereotype, and having a female law breaker.

Evaluation Q1

Q1. In what ways does your film opening use, develop or challenge forms or conventions of real films?

Evaluation Q7

Q7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the final product?

When I filmed my preliminary task, it was simply to learn about the basic camera skills and shots that are necessary in making a film look professional. The briefing for our prelim included the basic shots such as shot/reverse shot, match on action and 180 degree rule, also as a chance to show mid shots, long shots and close ups. This gave me the opportunity to learn how to use the basic editing of Final Cut Pro and so therefore I learnt how to fluidly cut together the match on action and shot reverse shot angles. When we created our short film, ‘The Package’, I became much more comfortable with creating more interesting shots other than the ones we focused on in my prelim. It also allowed me to become much more confident in editing and creating fluid shots, especially when linking two different locations (for example when Bea goes through the door into the classroom) to make them look smooth and as if they are the same location which was useful as we needed this for our real film in shots of the Southbank Centre.

         However, when I filmed my preliminary task and ‘The Package’ there was little planning involved and so most of it was made up on the spot. To make sure our thriller sequence worked well and the narrative made sense, we created shot lists, storyboards and shooting schedules to keep us on track and clear on what we needed in the opening. We also created a video of our storyboard cut together to give us an idea of what the final product would look like. This really helped us in later stages because when we were editing the shots together we could see what our initial ideas were and could replicate these. It also helped as it taught me how to use still images to create a fluid video which was extremely helpful in later stages when creating our ident.

When looking through our shotlist, I initially felt quite nervous with some of the locations that we had to film. First we ran a recce in Southbank to make it exactly clear which locations we would use and to keep track of our ideas. In our recce we faced a couple of problems that would’ve come up in the real filming had we not tested it first. For example, when filming in the tunnel, we realized it looked extremely dark on the camera so we tested different distances of light and agreed that we would need to use a light tripod and a hand-held light to make it light enough on the camera. This recce also made me feel much more confident with the equipment as we could test it all out in the surroundings. Since we had problems with reflections in glass and windows in ‘The Package’ we decided to test out different ways of filming inside the car for the scenes where Ally and Jasper were driving to court. Since we found it impossible to keep the camera completely still while the car was moving, we decided to use the movement to our advantage as to make it look obvious that the camera should not be straight.

This similarly happened later in our editing when we came across some quite bumpy and blurry footage of Ally running. Since we couldn’t completely make the shot clear, we reversed this idea, making the shot look purposefully blurry. I learnt that it was much better to make the shots look purposefully out of focus or bumpy rather than ignore it and try to make it look normal instead.

When we actually came to filming, I felt prepared and confident with the schedule and equipment. After planning driving routes and specific locations, filming was extremely quick and simple as we knew exactly what we had to do. As we had such clear ideas of what it was expected to look like and how the shots would work with each other, we could try out different angles and shots for each scene on set to see if it may look better. I felt I had learnt a lot over the preparation and preliminary task so that I could work out which shots would be most effective and we ended up changing a lot of our initial plans. For example, we used a tracking shot in the flashback instead of straight, fixed angles which meant that we varied a lot of our shots and it looked more stressful and panicked which was the look we were going for.

Since we were planning for the majority of the sound of the sequence to be piano music, we didn’t much take into account the sound when we were filming which caused lots of problems for us later on in editing. However, after learning how to adapt tracks from iTunes on Final Cut Pro in ‘The Package’, I felt confident enough to add in pre-recorded sounds over the top of the footage. I also felt throughout the editing process I learnt a lot more about transitions and colouring of shots and how they could work in relation to the rest of the film. This meant I was a lot more confident and used a number of different transitions and colour filters like in the flashback sequence.

Overall, apart from improving my editing and camera skills I learnt the importance of planning before filming. By planning locations, times, costumes and call times for actors, filming ran extremely smoothly meaning that it was easier for us to edit when we had a range of successful camera footage to use.

Film Construction - Day 8

Today we completed our first rough cut of our film. After uploading all of our footage, we watched through all the shots we had taken and then cut out the bits that we thought really worked and pieced them together along with the rest of the footage we already had. Whilst doing this we realised that we needed to film a couple more shots and some of the scenes we shot on Sunday didn't quite work and didn't really fit the continuity of the rest of the sequence, for example, the final shot of Jasper and Ally walking into the court has to be reshot as we realised the mum and the lawyer just completely disappear! 

However, we were really proud of our flashbacks and spent a lot of time editing them to create the effect we wanted. First we put an effect called 'dream' over all the shots which made it clear that it wasn't part of the modern day sequence and to make it clear that it was a flashback. We then added flash transitions to make it speedy and quite panicky as well as playing around with the speeds of the shots to make it quite stressful and jumpy to make it seem like a distressing memory. Tomorrow we are going to look through some more sound effects websites to find a 'whooshing' sound to go with the flashes to make it even clearer what is going on as we noticed the second sequence of flashbacks is less clear because it is a slower paced sequence and less stressful for the audience. We're also going to play around with the order of the driving sequences of Jasper and Ally as at the moment its quite repetitive and needs a clearer shape to it. 

W.H.