TASK 7 - Progression from preliminary task to thriller

                                                          My Main Task 

My Preliminary 

After watching our prelim task which we created in October 2012, I realised how much my skills have improved in filming and editing. The camera work in our prelim is effective and we had a wide variation; each shot made sense with the dialogue, e.g. shot reverse shots, wide shots, and close ups to show expression and emotion. However when watching our thriller that we created a lot more recently, the difference is very clear as it is much better. In the thriller our use of camera work was a lot more advanced and professional, for example, we opened it with a tracking shot that I filmed on tracks, it is a good establishing shot to introduce our thriller. For our thriller we filmed hand held for a lot of the action; such as the chase scene between Anna and the assasin, to add more realism and a distressed feel to the action. We also had close ups to show emotion and create more emotion and feeling to the characters, and make the action more realistic; such as a close up of Anna as the speed and pace slow down, creating more tention as she looks scared during the chase. We also had close ups of the surounding, such as the suroundings, eg the emphasis of Paul locking up the cargo container, this also was good as it creaded a wider variaty of shots making our thriller more visually pleasing.

Prelim:

Main Task:

The M-E-S was not effective in our prelim as we were not really aware of what the story line really was and just randomly chose to work with the equipment we had in the room at the time. We were given a simple script just to practise filming dialogue, it helped a lot as we learned about the 180° rule and shot reverse shots, etc. We used the sound system equipment as a headset and controls to portray a storyline of the woman being commanded by the man to send a signal or explosion somewhere. The story line was quite vague which I think this made the prelim quite unclear and not very enticing. However in our thriller we had a lot more time to think about the story line and we created several story boards and pitched our ideas , which made us have a lot more thrilling, convincing story that would attract an audience a lot more. The M-E-S for our thriller was perfect, it happened to have snowed the night before and in some parts of filming it was snowing which made the setting look a lot more mysterious and exciting, suiting our thriller, action genre. We also had very good props, the car was dirty and old, suggesting it had been stolen as they were on the run, the guns created dramatic tension and suited the action thriller genre. The costume for the prelim was not thought through as we quickly filmed on that day and did not change the actors' clothes; however for our main task we planned their costume and appearance in a lot of detail, as we wanted to portray Anna as sophisticated and sexy and Paul as cool and casual, we achived this through their clothes well.

Prelim:



 Main Task:

The editing in our prelim was pretty basic but worked very well with the actions of the two characters; when the man sat down on the chair, the camera cut to a closer shot of him sitting about to say his line. When she responded to him we cut to her face and then again to his reaction. At the end we did a low angle shot looking up at the man as he delivers his last line, sinisterly; this angle suits this as it makes him look in control and the powerful one. We also added text as subtitles as they spoke in Russian, I found this complex at first as it was time consuming but after a few times I realized I could copy and paste the text and then change the words which was faster; the text looked very effective. Even though the editing was good and suited the prelim; comparing it to our thriller, you can see how much more adventurous we were with the thriller. We had a variety of shots that we cut up and edited together to keep the action up, changing angles and close ups frequently. We also created a moving title to end the opening which looks very professional and finishes it off well. When editing we also did a lot of special effects from the guns and blood which took a long time but look really great and make the action more intense and realistic. Looking back at the prelim, the pace is very slow, making the scene quite dull, however when editing our main task we increased the varaiation of editing a lot. At first it was slow paced as we opened the thriller to introduce the surroundings and the characters; however the shots sped up to match the music creating more tention. When the action kicks in we editted the shots a lot faster after watching an action, chase scene in the  Terminator as we liked the result it gave. This made our thriller a lot more action and tention building with a thrilling storyline, and the faced paced ,sped up shots created confusion and anxiety; we sped up some of the shots to add more speed to the thriller, keeping it intresting.

Prelim: 

Mail Task:

For our prelim we only had the diegetic sound from the dialogue which was not very exciting; we also didn't alter the sound channels of the left and right speaker. However in our thriller I spend a long time making sure that both of the speakers were the same sound at the same level. I did this by listening to both and choosing which was best and using it for both speakers, and levelled it out. I also had to cut out some background noise and replace it with sound that was more appropriate; I also did this for some of the dialogue that was too quiet and muffled by choosing the sound from another clip. We also created our own music from a song originally from the music from the program; we then cut out the bits that we liked from the song and lengthened them and cut them together, creating our own mix. We also added sound effects to go with the special effects such as glass smashing and gun shots; this made the action very believable and increased tension. I feel we have improved so much in all aspects and have become a lot more advanced.  

 



TASK 6 - Technologies we used

We annotated our thriller on youtube, describing the technologies we used.

TASK 5 - How we attracted our target audience

 

 

TASK 4 - The audience for my film

Audience

Our target audience will be women as the main character is a woman who is powerful and insperational. However it will also appeal to men as they will find the woman sexy and appealing, they will also be targeted from the action/thriller genre with violence and tention throughout the film. The age of people we will target will be around 15-25. We were going to make the age certification 18 like Kill Bill, however when I researched into SALT we found out it was only a 12A, so decided to make ours a 15 which does not limmit our target audience so much. We feel like the age of the main charecter's in the film will also atract an audience of the same age as they relate with them and inspire to be them. 

My pertfect audience for our film would be around 18-25 years old. They would either be in collage, uni or in the first stages of work. They would spend their free time with their friends, relaxing by watching a film, having dinner, or going out to clubs and parties. They would spend their money mainly on clothes, food, music and films.



They would listen to popular music played on radio one or capital, such as, Rihanna, Jay-Z, Ed Sheeran and Swedish House Mafia.






They would watch channels like E4 and MTV, and series like Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents, Friends, Skins, Misfits and New Girl.     





They would watch psychological thrillers such as Inception, Shutter Island, Salt, Kill Bill and Hanna. They would also watch rom coms and comedies.

Secondary Audience

Our secondary audience is over 25 ranging to around 50. These adults will be intellectual and have a good, well paid job. They would like our film as it contains spy/assassin elements and contains action and tension, but also intelligent twists and a fast paced story line. They would properly go to the cinema to watch this film, or buy the DVD once released and watch it with their family.

I researched SALT on IMDb to see the type of audience that it appealed to. This is useful information for our group as SALT is a similar type of film, so will attract the same type of audience as our thriller.
It attracted both men and women, however considrably more men than women went to see it but on anverage they rated it the same, at 6.4. Most of the audience were aged 18-29; this fits in with our target as we are also aiming for a younger audience.

TASK 3 - Who would distribute my film

As our film will be a small independent film in Britain we will not be looking at big, global production companies like Warner Bros, Universal or Fox to distribute our film. Instead we looked at Vertigo, BBC films and Film 4 to make our film as they are more suited to our scale of film. Vertigo was good as it took small budget films and made them successful, such as Bronson, The Firm and Football Factory; however target at a male audience, whereas our thriller would target women more than men due to the positive representation of our main character, the woman.

This is why we decided to have BBC films and Film 4 make our film, as they have a very open target audience and appeal to a lot of people. They are well known for typical English classic films, such as An Education, Billy Elliot, Trainspotting and This is England, which also appeal to an American audience as they are interested in England's history and culture. The Iron Lady, made by Film 4, is another English history film, but in some ways is similar to our story line as it represents Margaret Thatcher as an intelligent, strong, independent woman; this is how we wish to portray our main character, which will appeal to a female audience as it is inspirational.

However they have also been known for thrillers, such as The Lovely Bones, The Awakening and We Need to Talk about Frank. Our thriller will fit well aside these types of films as they are psychosocial and complex in their story lines, making the audience think.

Our film will fit in the ethos of the institution as it is British and Film 4 and BBC films often invest in low budget films, by first time directors. They would market our film mainly by DVD and make money from selling it mainly to the British public, who are aware of previous Film4 and BBC films or people who watch channel 4, E4, BBC 1,2 or 3, etc. They would also make money by premiering/airing it on TV and by the adverts that played during the film.

BBC often targets an older, mature audience, who are interested in politics, world news and current affairs, watching series such as The Hour, set in the 50’s, containing political drama, action and violence. Channel 4 have aired similar series such as Secrete State, about a Prime Minister and involves assassinations, spying and secrets. However channel 4 also target a younger audience, of boys and girls, towards teens and young adults who watch series such as Skins, Misfits and The Inbetweeners, as they relate to them. This will attract them to watch a Film4/BBC film, especially as it is a thriller, which is a popular genre amongst the younger generation. The main characters will be young adults which will also appeal to people the same age as they will relate to them; however this will also attract an older generation as they are interested in people of this age and life style. We will attract a secondary audience of around 30+ from the psychological/ spy/assassination thriller perspective. 

TASK 2 - Representation of particular social groups in our thriller

I have chosen to represent gender and ethnicity as the social groups in my thriller opening. 

Gender is the main focus as we have subverted the stereotype of the man being the heroic action figure; our story line is the complete opposite, as our main character is a female. Just in the first few minutes of the film Anna manages to get help from Paul to escape on the run, kill an assassin and leave Paul on the side of the road, successfully getting away as originally planned, not faced by the events. She is represented as a powerful, successful woman who is completely independent and reliant on no one to succeed in life. She has a very harsh attitude of survival of the fittest as she does not have time to wait around for people; she has to fend for herself. This is a different portrayal of a woman compared to most action thrillers; typically the woman is the pathetic, scared, damsel in distress who needs saving and looking after b the man who is the main character and is portrayed very positively, unlike the woman.  

In many respects our female lead can be seen a s a binary opposite of how women are often portrayed within the media.

Stereotype of women                                                    Our character

Blonde                                                                           Black haired

Submissive                                                                    Dominant

Weaker than men                                                         Stronger than the male

Caring                                                                           Assertive

Not good with machinery                                             Using firearms

Looks after the family/parental                                   Strong single woman

Our film draws on representations in the media of stronger females such as Angela Merkel Chancellor of Germany who leads one of the most powerful nations on earth and thus demonstrates that Woman can have powerful jobs. Within films and TV Spooks, The Long Kiss Goodnight and Hanna all have positive representations of women as strong characters.

On a more negative note our film much like these representations also falls into the classic trap of showing women’s strength  only through their ability to not need men. Rather than demonstrate women’s role as a pillar of strength within the community, work or at home we have demonstrated it through their ability to behave like a man. Therefore in some respects you could say our representation is negative as women are not men and women holding a gun does not equal a phallus to quote Lacan.                                                                           

Although Paul in fact is represented as the weaker of the two as he is killed off in the opening, unaware of how dangerous Anna is. The dialogue represents him as weaker as he asks her to help him carry a crate to the car. When Anna apologies for dragging him into this, it becomes clear that he is out of his comfort zone, he is just there as he is too nice for his own good and wants to help Anna escape. Paul is therefore represented as a weaker male and in binary opposition to Anna’s strength and is a subversion of the stereotype of men in action films. For example The Bourne Identity, Skyfall and The Dark knight rises. All these male characters are heroic whereas Paul is represented as servile and weak.

Anna is portrayed positively due to her strong, powerful character; however also in a negative way as she appears heartless and cruel for leaping out the car as soon as she sees the gun man and only saving herself. She also appears cold blooded after killing the assassin; she casually strolls over to Paul and pulls him out the car, driving away as originally planned. However this is debatable as before she pulls him out the car she takes a moment to show remorse for him by stroking his hair tenderly. This suggests that she did have strong feelings for him and was not just using him, but she has got a harsh life so does not need to show sadness for his loss in such a dramatic way as some might.

We represented ethnicity in the film opening as well as Anna played a Russian spy/assassin running away from her boss. Russian’s are often portrayed in films stereotypically as spies as they seem very mysterious and sly. Anna really suited this role; we got her to portray in even more by her glamorous look; her fur jacket and wedged trainers suggested that she was an action figure but still cared about her appearance and her job was effortless. The film SALT was inspiriting as Angelina Jolie plays a Russian assassin; watching her in it inspired us to create Anna’s character to have a confident, smooth and effortless attitude.

TASK 1 - How our product uses, develops or challenges conventions of real media productions

Account of editing

After our day of filming we went into the editing suite and uploaded all of our footage we had filmed. The next day we started sorting through the footage. We divided the clips up into folders; creating a folder called 'rushes' where we put the shots we did not want to use in, a folder called 'logs' where we put the good shots, and inside logs we also made 'use' which were the clips that we used. We discarded about half of our footage as we mainly filmed each shot twice when filming, just in case one was bad. I am pleased with the ones we ended up using, as together they created a good, mysterious narrative and suited the action, thriller genre.

Our story board helped us when putting the clips together, as it showed us roughly our storyline and order of each clip. While editing we had to keep an eye out for any continuity errors, for example cutting from a shot of Anna loading the car (with the door shut), they to a shot of Anna walking back with a bag but the car door is not open. We avoided these errors well on the shooting day, however the main one we found while editing was when Anna drives away Tom the assassin is no longer there. After discussing this problem as a team, we decided to cut the frame, zooming in closer so you could not see where he should be anymore.

We started with a slow tracking shot to introduce the setting and the characters; we felt this was a good way to start the thriller as it looked professional and added a variety of shots to our thriller. We then cut the shots of Anna and Paul going back and forth loading the car; we used shot reverse shots and close ups. I enjoyed editing this as it was our first use of advanced editing. Using the match on action technique, we varied between shots of Anna and Paul, cutting up each shot and switching between the two. I especially liked putting together the sequence of Paul locking the cargo container up, as we cut up three different shots of this motion, each one getting closer and closer, making the simple action more visually pleasing. Using this technique, our aim was to build tension through small actions in the opening sequence before the main action scene.

As it had snowed we wanted to get snow in the shot, as it suited our thriller genre and made the setting appear more mysterious. We edited the shots to emphasise the snow by adding a colour contrast to the footage making it look harsher. When editing the scene of Anna and Paul in the car we started to make the shots a bit faster; in contrast with the previous shots which we made longer to create suspense and to open the film to avoid jumping straight into violence and action.

The dialogue in this scene was very quiet and muffled therefore I looked through the clips from the rushes folder and cut the sound from those clips and replaced them, as the speech was clearer and louder. However, when we reviewed the new clip we decided to increase the volume of their speech to emphasise the dialogue and help the audience connect with the characters.

After this short scene of dialogue we felt we needed to pick up the pace; we achieved this by adding the next shot of the assassin arriving unexpectedly. We then cut to the reaction of Anna and then again to outside the car where Anna quickly rolls out while the assassin shoots Paul. However, when we replayed it we felt this action sequence was quite slow paced. We researched some action thrillers, where we were inspired by the incredibly fast action scenes as they were edited into short clips and put together. This technique is very effective as the scene just before was often a lot slower, making more impact when the action occurred, dramatically changing the pace.

We decided to use the short, sharp editing techniques like in other thrillers. When readjusting the shooting scene we made these clips 20% faster than usual to intensify the action and make the audience more engrossed as the action picks up. We continued interspersing quick shots of Anna and the assassin from different angles. Contrasting between the different paces and emotions of the characters; creating a visually dynamic scene. We also edited in a lot of the hand held filming scene as it created more realism and made the scene even more frantic. This was also helped by adding in some close ups of the guns and close ups of their faces, restricting the audience from seeing the whole picture to create a gripping and bewildering atmosphere. I found editing this scene more challenging than the others, due to the fast and complex cuts. However it was a lot more fun and exciting as we got to use different techniques and experiment with putting different clips together.

After Anna shoots the assassin we felt we needed to slow the pace back down so the audience could digest the action that had just taken place, and make sense of it all. This is why we slowed down the speed of the shot of Anna pulling her gun away and bending into the car to stroke Paul’s hair in a medium close up. We really wanted to emphasise this action, so the audience would focus on the affection and understand that Anna did have feelings for him but still had to run away without him.

We felt like we needed to show the aftermath of the deaths of the two men; Paul and the assassin. We chose an extreme wide shot to show the result of the action scene and slowed this shot down slightly to emphasise their deaths. We then cut to a wide shot of her dragging the victim out the car; which appears quite heartless, however she needed to escape and she shows remorse. Showing Anna in both lights portrays a more realistic, human character who the audience can relate to.

We finally decided to finish the thriller with a medium wide shot of Anna driving away in the car leaving the bodies and the destruction behind. When she drives away we added a final shot filmed from the ground, showing Paul’s dead body in a low angle shot making him look pitiful and emphasising his naivety. In contrast, Anna drives off in the background introducing her as the powerful and dominant main character.

After we were pleased with these shots we then uploaded it to high definition so it was in the best quality before adding some special effects and sound. We worked on Adobe After Effects software to create muzzle flashes, blood and shattered glass in our footage. I found creating these very complex and intricate, but they were very effective one we completed them. The only downside was that they looked quite fake, so we then edited them making less vivid by fading the edges using blending modes to alter the density and colour, making them look more real and effective. We also had to mask out and draw around any objects in front of the blood or explosions, which was quite time consuming as we had to do this for every frame needed. Especially for Paul’s arm which flails across his body as he is shot, meaning the audience should not be able to see the blood coming from his torso. We had to draw round his arm for every frame, it was a long process as his arm moved a lot, but once finished it looked very realistic and accurate. For the glass, we scaled and rotated the window so it would smash directly over the Anna’s head, looking very convincing. When the assassin is shot we added a gun wound to his face as he fell to the ground. We chose to add this near his eye as we had to create it for each frame and needed somewhere obvious so it was easier to place it in the same spot each time to ensure continuity.

We chose sound effects and backing music that were appropriate for the actions in our thriller, from Sound Track Pro and selected gun noises etc. We edited the selected backing track and combined it with our own music, making it unique and original. This was really fun and we worked very well as a group helping each other with creative ideas. I then personally went back and made each sound from our footage equal on both the left and right speaker. I did this by listening to both the left and right sounds, choosing the best one, and copying and replacing it for the other side. I then levelled them so they would play equally. This was a long process and was quite tedious, however it was successful as when I listened to it with headphones before it sounded odd, but afterwards the sound was stronger and more effective.

Overall I really enjoyed the editing process as we worked really well as a team and all contributed fairly and equally, incorporating everyone’s ideas and letting each person have a turn at it all. At first I was quite overwhelmed by the software as it was intricate and complex, however once I got used to using it I did not find it so difficult. It was really exciting to finally see our original idea from paper turn into an actual thriller opening and I am very pleased with the final result and of all the techniques and skills I have learned!