Kim’s Weblog

Evaluation of IM

April 22, 2009 at 8:01 pm (Main Task, Media coursework)

Evaluation

 

For the main task we had to continue with our previously chosen brief, for me this was video, I had chosen this path as it appeared to be a lot more interesting and creative. We also had to remain in our current group to, this I didn’t mind as I get on well with my team members and we all have different aspects we are well suited to in film making; the brief stated that for our main task we would have to create an opening sequence and titles for a non-fiction film that lasts to the maximum of two minutes. Throughout the task I also continued to keep a blog of what happened in each media session (kimriw.wordpress.com).

 

This brief meant we were allowed to pick any genre we wanted, with any storyline and anything could happen within those two minutes, however we combined the brief with our previous knowledge of what worked well before in the preliminary task and what wasn’t as successful and used that to get together and discuss our creative ideas. We had already decided after completion of ‘Desperate Measures’ that we didn’t want to use any extras and very few actors if any at all, we also wanted to do something of the thriller genre that would play with our audience’s heads, with this in mind, we began to think of potential ideas, these where: ‘When Trolleys Go Bad’ which was our slightly unachievable yet interesting idea, this would have involved a lot of trolleys which are alive and attack local citizens, straight away we knew this wouldn’t be our final choice but we still included it in our presentation, our next idea which wouldn’t of required any actors was ‘Mind Games’ for this we were going to have a dark room or black screen and the sound of a person screaming, then a quick cut to an everyday situation, I feel this idea would have worked really well, it wouldn’t of required much filming but a lot of editing but on the other hand no actors.

  Our third idea was ‘Instant Messenger’ which we thought we could shorten to IM to alter the meaning of the title from Instant Messenger to Instant Murder, but this would of given the plot away straightaway, however for this sequence initially we wanted to have a predator watching two school girls on the computer talking to someone and then arranging to meet then a flash to the girl running from him, later in construction we decided this didn’t meet the brief, however we continued to develop it until then. The fourth and final idea consisted of our trusty drugs situation, we always come back to; however we adapted it to meet the brief, although undesirably this would have required many actors and specialist vehicles as we wanted to start with the results of an overdose from a wild party, we thought this was a good idea as it would have intrigued the audience, however it was out of reach, in regards to resources and time span, I also believe it would have been hard to make look good with amateur actors.

 

We collectively decided we wanted to pursue the idea of ‘Instant Messenger’ therefore we could channel our research into specific areas such as the representation of the predator and victim, age ratings of films, our target audience, what happens in general during an opening sequence, for this we watched YouTube videos, went on the official rating site and talked about the issues our film we raised therefore we knew who to aim it at. The results of the research showed that during an opening sequence, there isn’t necessarily any speech, as music is used to create an atmosphere also, it tends to either be setting the scene and beginning the story or it’s just after an incident has occurred in which the audience has to guess what happened. We also decided to aim our film for teenagers as it is an issue frequently in the media; safety whilst online, therefore they would be interested in watching the film and also find it easier to understand and feel empathy for the girls. The film rating research backed up this idea as it stated for a 15 rating, the film is allowed to show mild violence, strong language and horror, however in moderation, we believed that as the film progressed it was likely some of this may occur, therefore we met the criteria.

 

Next we had to construct a presentation of our ideas for our peers to watch and feedback to us their opinion of what might work and any improvements we could make to our ideas, for this we created questionnaires that they could fill in afterwards. The results showed that ‘Instant Messenger’ was the most popular idea, mainly because we had developed it most by the time presentation time came, however if we hadn’t of done this, we would have seriously been kept behind the rest of the class, as the deadline for research kept getting extended, and this was not to our favour as technically we were meant to wait until the class gave us feedback then choose our idea and made story boards, scripts and auditions. Thankfully we took it upon ourselves to develop the concept so that as soon as we had feedback we would be able to go straight to filming.

 

To do this we had many group meetings, where we all noted down the plans for the sequence, such as what would happen in each shot (so I could draw the story boards), what would be said in the script, what type of characters we wanted and how we wanted to represent them, we also spoke about potential locations we could use, which Elliott, Rosie and Christina later took pictures of the decided two, these were a park in Harlow near the college and Christina’s Dads house and the river in front of it. But beforehand I had drawn out the storyboard with the aid of Rosie’s notes on what we wanted to occur in each shot.

Christina then wrote the script so it would sound like two school girls talking about an attractive male they had met online; we also decided to use this script for the auditions. Also for the sequence we had to create to Facebook accounts therefore we could make the characters talk to each other, to do this we used one of Christina’s spare email accounts and the email account we had made for the group and then proceeded to create profiles, with typical characterisations of teen girls, like posy pictures and status’ saying how much she loves her friends and for Danny we found an online picture of a male, which many girls would add, purely based on his looks, although from the sequence it is clear that Danny is not the same man as pictured on his Facebook, which is the way we wanted to show him.

 

Before the auditions, we were advised that it would be beneficial to identify areas of the film we could each monitor therefore, each person was in charge of something and the workload was shared more, this was also to aid being organised, we assigned Elliott as Editor and sound, Christina as Director, whom we later switched with Elliott to do sound, Rosie was monitoring continuity and editing and I was the Producer. We also needed to create posters and as Christina is the best with Photoshop she was assigned this duty, and to show continuity of the film’s theme we used a print screen of a Facebook text book and then overlaid text. 

 

As Producer I had to book all the equipment and collect it so the team could use it, which I did, although it wasn’t very helpful when the designated media technician allowed me to book equipment during his lunch break, when we had scheduled auditions, to overcome this we collected the equipment after lunch and instead of rebooking the auditions we improvised and used the female members of our group, as a result I was cast as Ruby and Rosie was cast as Emily, this worked to our advantage as we wouldn’t need to make sure our actors were free to film, as we could just go when we wanted and were allowed.

 

We then got together to discuss filming dates, where we were filming each day, who was doing what in which costume and how to get to the location, I then booked went to book the HD cameras, however we were informed that we might not be able to use them as there were many people who wanted to also use the cameras that day, I then informed my tutor of what was said, and he advised that I told the Vice Principal who told me that I should use the journalism cameras which the library supplied as they are better quality and that they are more reliable. So I booked equipment from the library  for us to use when we did our first day of filming.

 

On the 12th March we collected the equipment and took the bus to Hertford, I specified which shots we would be filming, whilst Rosie and I changed into our costumes, Christina and Elliott set up equipment and the scenery, for example, we placed texts books and folders on the dining room table, we did this so that the scene wold look realistic, as if the girls had actually came home from school and carried on with their homework whilst talking on Facebook messenger.  First of all we filmed the two girls sitting in the room, doing their work and acting natural.We did this through a window, we found this gave the connotations of them being watched and being trapped at the same time, we kept a conversation flowing although no one would hear it, then Elliott and Christina moved into the house to film, this required sound, which with previous knowledge from the preliminary task,  Elliott advised Christina on working the camera, whilst she listened to the sound he picked up on the microphone through headphones, to ensure the sound and footage went together well, we then filmed the girls talking to ‘Danny’, for which we used one of our friends to act as him and talk for us, we briefed them on what to say and when, however we found that this wasn’t a very good idea as sometimes they took a long time to reply or said the wrong thing.  We then planned to film the rest and edit on Tuesday.

 

However in our next media lesson, we raised the issue that we hadn’t actually met the brief and we needed to re-think our filming, we decided that if we had carried on with our current story line, then we would have created a sequence that resembled more of a trailer than an opening sequence, as it gives away pretty much the whole story and too much action happens within the space of two minutes for it to be an opening sequence. Therefore we decided it was time to redraft the stories boards and talk about how we were going to make a good film, the results of this were that Christina swapped to being on Sound instead of Director, and I redrafted the storyboards so that it cuts off at the part with the girls inside, and added in a few shots featuring ‘Danny’, we also took away the script as we felt we would use music to create an atmosphere instead of relying on speech to tell the story. When reviewing these changes we much preferred them and instantly got more motivation to complete the task to a high standard, we decided to film again that week on Thursday, so I went through the same processes of booking the equipment and filling in personal release forms, location release forms, call sheets and risk assessment forms( for which samples can be found on my blog). 

 

This time filming went a lot better, the only issue we had to deal with was the weather conditions which proved to be unpredictable, which made continuity hard, however in a bid to overcome this, we made Rosie walk with an umbrella just incase it decided to rain, as I was acting I couldn’t monitor what Elliott filmed and what he didn’t so I gave him the storyboard to work from, which was annotated with camera movements and types of shots to use. Firstly we filmed the footage inside where Danny is at the Mac searching for Ruby online and leaving her a comment, we then went outside and filmed from one side of the river, of what Danny could see, we then swapped to the other side of the river so that we would film the girls walk and their point of view, Elliott also spontaneously filmed extra bits just incase we wanted to use them, which we did in the end. 

 

We finished that day of filming positive and feeling as though we had made an improvement not only on our preliminary but on the main task we had already drafted, we decided we would edit the footage in the next lesson, we began by capturing the footage onto final cut pro, we experienced great difficulties as when it tried to compress the files it kept stopping, we overcame this problem by changing the settings on the camera. When it had finally captured only Christina and I were left to begin editing, knowing how important this stage was, we didn’t want to leave it until the next time we were all together, so as a team we began to find music and edit the first shots up to James sitting on the bench, I felt for a first attempt we had successfully chosen good items of footage and had edited them well with good transitions and the music went well with these items. We then met up in the half term to finish the editing, which we all did as a group, choosing our favourite pieces and deciding on the best transitions to use, where to put the music and cut down scenes and also where to add in the titles. We thought we were succeeding and had edited really well, when the programme decided to crash; we had not saved our work for a couple of hours in that time we had completely finished our work, as a group this disheartened us and the motivation and ability to take the work seriously disappeared, but Christina tried to explain the advantages of this happening, as it meant we could make a better version, although Elliott and I weren’t so sure about this we continued to edit until the piece was complete, we then burnt it to disk and immediately distributed it, by using youtube and Facebook, many of our friends were interested to watch the film and generally gave back good feedback. However I found the more I watched it, the more errors and imperfections I could spot for example, the camera is rarely steady, the editing isn’t smooth when ‘Kimberley Grant’ comes up on screen, the picture quality is much poorer on a big screen although we used a higher quality camera, James walks for too long and where we had to turn sound volumes up as they were inaudible, when burnt to disc they are very loud.

 

 I created surveys so we could get feedback from our audience, the question included  closed and open ended questions, that were on the topics of, location, camera, continuity, actors and sound, we found that the participants rated the film from between 7 and 9 out of 10, 75% of people said our music was a good choice and all commented on how it made them feel nervous and anticipation and although they thought the camera work was good to average they couldn’t spot any problems apart from the mentions of it being a bit jumpy and resembling ‘Blair Witch’. One person commented on how the location was good as it seems like a nice area where this situation wouldn’t occur, they also said that it was edited well and we represented the characters well as they looked like who they were meant to be and that overall we had met the brief to a good standard.

 

Overall, I feel we have met the brief, however there are many aspects of the film I don’t like, such as the fact our camera is a bit all over the place,I feel if we had used steady cam it would be more likely to have a professional finish, however I am glad we realised we  didn’t meet the brief before it was too late as I think the second time round we had a much better story line and footage that met the brief. In comparison to Desperate Measures the sound and picture quality is much better which adds to the quality of filming, it seems that the sound is a main contributing part to how good the film is, as it is responsible for the atmosphere throughout, which represents the girls as vulnerable and the predator as sinister and like he is preying on the girls, in the beginning it creates enigma code  as you wonder why Danny picks up and camera and then gradually it is pieced together, which is what an opening sequence is meant to do. However I’m not to sure of where we put the titles, we couldn’t decide whether to put them at the beginning or the end, although the are well suited where we placed them I feel our sequence ends to abruptly, also when Danny is walking it takes a long time, we probably should have cut this down further, also during this part of the sequence sunlight is visible as it gets caught on rain smears from the rain that happened during filming, I don’t like the effect this gives it as it appears to be poorly constructed, however we put a lot of effort into it; for which I am proud of the final product minus the imperfections, I am pleased we created a sequence that fits the brief and is an improvement upon our preliminary task.

 

I think that 20th century Fox would produce a film of this genre such as Taken and The League of Extraordinary Men, unlike Universal Studios who are more likely to produce comedies and this is not the genre of our film, therefore I do not believe they would produce our film. I find that our film represents young teen girls as naive and easily led as it is clear that Ruby has got herself into this by her quest for love and attention, we have also shown the predator as an everyday person yet dressed dark and shadowy so that it would create negative connotations for our audience. We decided to stick to the conventions of the film as we wanted to portray the thriller genre and stick to the typical style of an opening sequence so that it would be easily recognisable and fulfill it’s purpose. From constructing this film I have learnt how to edit; I learnt how to capture footage and edit it, I learnt how to cut it, overlay music and add titles also in the process of this I learnt the importance of saving as you go along as Macs can prove unpredictable, also that we made the right choice using the better quality cameras as they produced a clearer picture which in turn makes the film look better despite the poor camera work.

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Main Task- Planning..

March 28, 2009 at 3:14 pm (Main Task, Media coursework)

 

 

In order to film, I had to fill in many forms so we could, I had also done this for the preliminary task, below are scanned in images of the completed forms. These include the personal release form, which Rosie, I and James had to fill in, location release form which Christina filled in on behalf of her dad (which he signed), the risk assessment form, which identified a few risks such as alcohol (as we were filming in someone’s home) however we didn’t do anything about this as we wouldn’t be going down the cupboards  looking for it or using it in the sequence, also items we were using were flammable however this was not a problem as we wouldn’t be using anything that could cause a fire within the house and finally for our outside scenes we would be filming near the river, however to prevent risk we used our common sense and just stayed away from the edge. I also filled in a call sheet so that the crew and cast knew where to meet, how to get to the location and who was needed for what, a shot list of all the shots we used in the film was neccessary.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Main Task,Production Log Entry Two-Planning and Construction

March 14, 2009 at 8:28 pm (Main Task, Media coursework)

 

10^th March 2009

 

 

 

 

 

 

As a group we got together again, to discuss how to further our production, as we had received the feedback from our peers, which meant we could now move on and begin filming.

We decided that we should start filming this week as the deadline is at the end of April and we have a two week half term, where it’s desired that we write our evaluation therefore we needed to complete the filming as soon as possible.  As production manager I noted down all issues and goals arisen and discussed how we could film such as what times, where, with who and what equipment we needed to book and from whom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We decided that we would film scenes that take place in Ruby’s house on Thursday 12^th March with the permission of our tutor, during our Thursday session we would get the bus with the booked equipment to Hertford and spend the afternoon filming then on Monday or Tuesday edit the footage we acquire and then on Tuesday, whilst Elliott and Rosie edit, Christina and I can film the park scene as it doesn’t involve that much work.

 

Once this was planned, I went about booking equipment with the camera technician, however he told us there wasn’t a guarantee that we would be able to get a camera for Thursday as lots of people also wanted them, we then informed our tutor, he said we should take the matter to the vice principal- which I did and he advised that we booked equipment through the college library instead.  So I went to the library at lunch time to speak to someone and she told us we would have to sign terms and conditions and get Renier to speak with her, and then we could collect it and take it off site.

 

Between Tuesday and Thursday I tried to fill in all the forms we’d need, especially the location release form for the property, personal release forms, call sheets and risk assessment forms- however some of this proved difficult as I had forgotten what to write, but filled in the majority and will go through them with Andreas at a later date to ensure they are complete.

 

12^th March 2009

Following a conversation with the director (Christina) in the morning, we came to the decision we needed a new script and I had the feeling to draw out new story boards, however to stick to the same story line but just draw the shots in more detail. We created a new script as the previous one seemed a bit to forced and not a natural conversation between two school girls, so we changed it to Ruby sitting at the computer on Facebook, giggling and smiling to herself, whilst Emily gets on with her school work, after the messenger pops a few times, Emily turns to Ruby and asks

‘Who you talking to now?’

‘Oh just Danny’ (smiles to herself and laughs)

Emily looks at ruby with a puzzled face, as if she doesn’t know who Danny is at all

‘Remember the one I told you about…’ (Turns back to computer)

‘Oh, yeah’

‘Oh my god, look what his just asked me!!’ Ruby and Emily look at each other excited as Ruby quickly replies that she wants to meet him.

We thought this was better as we don’t need much speech as it’s more about what’s typed on the messenger, therefore the speech between the two girls just reinforces what the audience will see on screen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At morning break, Christina and I went to collect the equipment from the library and then to Brendan to get a boom Mic, and he also gave us a mini-tutorial on how to work the camera as it is different to the ones he supplies which record to hard drive, whereas the ones from the library record to tape (my friend gave me one to use). Finally with all the equipment collected we got the 524 bus at 11.45 to Hertford, where we walked to Christina’s house, and whilst she cooked us lunch, we set up the equipment, Rosie and I changed into our costumes and I made sure all the forms that needed to be filled in on set were there like the shot list and also the story board so we could follow our main ideas. I also arranged the scenery so that her living room looked like two school girls had just came in from school, to do this I put my college bag on the floor and got my English folder out and opened it on the table, put lots of random papers on the table and each girl had a drink and also left the girls jackets on the sofas, Rosie then ensured we took a picture of how everything was left for continuity just in case we need to record more footage.

  First of all we started by filming the peering through the window at the girls, for this Elliott helped Christina as there wasn’t any need for sound, therefore he used his previous knowledge from the preliminary task to advise Christina, while they filmed Rosie and I, acted natural but stayed in character – I sat at the Mac and was on Facebook so every now and then I would turn back to type and then talk to Rosie and she would do the same just with her ‘school work’. Then came the conversation first of all Christina filmed it as a medium two character shot and then she filmed over my shoulder at the conversation taking place on the Mac and between Rosie and I, being careful to obey the 180 degree rule. Whilst doing this scene, we encounter a problem, Christina only had one computer in her house, therefore we asked one of our friends back at college if they would sign in as Danny and talk to Ruby which they agreed to, only thing was they were a bit slow to reply, so Rosie and I had to improvise with speech, however this can be cut out when it comes to editing.

 We finished filming by about quarter to 3, so we packed everything up and got the bus back to college, and when we arrived we returned the equipment to Brendan and the library, my thoughts on the day of filming we had, we’re too positive it was becoming apparent that it seems like we are making a trailer to this film by using flash backs and also I think when filming it would have been a good idea to use Rosie’s idea of filming me and her walking by the river to the house and filming it so that they are being watched and have someone run by an alley way, as this could of lead onto the girls being watched, which I feel would have been better than using flash backs or we could of even of had Ruby get up to pull the blind down which is white and we could of cleverly edited this to fade into the Mac screen where the titles ‘Instant Messenger’ would be typed, as I am production manager it is my job to ensure that the group has the equipment they need to produce the finished product not to change the film, however I will mention my thoughts in the next meeting, and as a group we can decide on the next steps.

 

17th March 2009

We got together to speak about the footage we had already filmed, and all members agreed we had not met the brief for the main task. Therefore we changed the story boards, decided to film next thursday (26th March) and in order to reach the brief, we realised we needed to include the online predator, therefore we asked one of our friends in the class to act as him for the purpose of our opening sequence, which he agreed to. We also decided that we didn’t need a script for the new story board, therefore we got rid of all spoken discourse from our film.

Christina also swapped with Elliott, now she is on sound and he is directing and editing the film, however i’m sure they will work as a team to film.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

26^th march 2009

 

This was our second attempt at acquiring footage, as the time before t became apparent that we had not met the brief, whereas this time we had the exact idea and motivation to make a good opening sequence.

Therefore at 10.45 I went to the library to collect the equipment and met the rest of the group back in the canteen and took the 11.45 bus to Hertford so we could film.

 

Whilst, Rosie, James and I got changed and into character, Elliott and Christina set up the equipment and the scenery for the first shot, this included making a bedroom in her house really dark and moving the Mac upstairs.  After this, Elliott filmed the first shot; this was a POV of Danny on Facebook looking at Ruby’s profile, we then filmed him picking up his camera and placing it in his bag, being careful to follow the story board.

 

After this we positioned ourselves by the river, while Rosie and I walked along the bridge down to Christina’s house Danny watched and took pictures through his camera, this took many shots to get right and we also found it hard knowing when to walk, therefore I stayed on my phone to Christina during shot, this was still realistic and fitted in with the mise en scene as it was in context.  During this shot Elliott did some shots of our feet walking, POVs of Ruby and Danny, over the shoulder shots, even if we don’t use all of this footage it was still good to get it so we can play around with it when it comes to editing.

 

 

However the weather today seemed to prove problematic, not only with continuity but the equipment, we didn’t really want to get it wet and also we wanted the footage to have the same weather conditions whereas when it was stop start raining this was hard to achieve so we kept taking breaks when it was pouring of rain, but other than that it was perfect weather for the setting, as it was overcast and not too sunny which creates happy connotations which we did not want to give our audience.

 

Overall I think filming went a lot better this time round, we captured good footage and actually put more effort in and genuinely had the motivation to make a good opening sequence (this was from seeing AS film students’ work), however  the thing that makes our film really good will be the editing techniques we use. Elliott and Rosie will be editing next Thursday.

 

 

 

 

2^nd April 2009- Editing

 

 

 

 

In this session, we decided that Elliott and Rosie would begin to capture and edit the footage we had filmed whilst Christina looked for music we could use with the footage and I continued to fill in forms.

 

As we used the cameras that the library let us take out, which are normally used for journalism, we experienced difficulties uploading the footage, as it would capture all of the first days filming (the footage we didn’t intend to use) but when it would reach the footage from the second day and it would stop, however determined to get it to work we kept trying and after lunch we changed some of the settings around and fortunately this enabled all the footage to be captured.  Whilst this was occurring we noticed that it’s likely that we will have continuity errors due to the weather conditions as it rained so the pavement became wet, also some of the footage was filmed at an angle instead of being straight, however we will not know how much of an issue this is until we begin to edit.

 

After lunch Elliott had to leave us as he was involved in a charity fundraiser for the college, therefore when we had captured all the footage Andreas had to teach us the basics (Christina and I, as Rosie left to watch the fundraiser).  After the briefing we began to edit by dragging the footage onto the timeline and cutting out the bits we didn’t require and using fades to help the shots flow, we also dubbed copyright free music Christina had previously found of a piano playing slightly eerie music, the reason we chose it is that it is like our film, as each shot is like part of a jigsaw and the music builds up a few notes at a time, therefore we thought it was appropriate.

So far, we managed to edit about 20 seconds of footage, which includes a close up of the ‘predator’ picking up the camera, a POV of him going on Ruby’s profile and commenting her picture, a pan up from his feet to the mouse and then another POV of him exiting Facebook and an over the shoulder shot of him looking in his bag at the camera, however these will need further attention from Elliott and Rosie as they are in charge of this duty. We are next meeting on Wednesday to continue editing.

During the half term all team members came in on the 8th of April to continue editing, whilst Christina looked for music, Elliott and Rosie edited the film and I gave my opinion to what they were doing. We followed the story boards and tried not to use too many transitions or stills, however the stills where necessary in order to make it appear that Danny was taking photos of the girls. Up until lunch time we had saved our work, but when we came back we continued to work until 3 o clock where we had pretty much finished the whole film and were just adding in the title, but final cut pro occurred an unexpected error and had to close, losing all the work we had done after lunch. We found this very frustrating and hard to get back into the flow of editing, but slowly we continued to try to recreate what we had already created. Finally at about 4.30 we had finished all editing to a standard where it was ready to be burnt to disc which we did today (9th april 2009). 

During editing we came across problems with the stills and the titles, we found that although we used transitions it would still appear quite jumpy, to overcome this we cut out footage and tried to use different transitions. We also found that we had to turn up some of the volume controls so that the audience would be able to hear them, however once burnt to disc it became a lot more audible.

We then uploaded it to YouTube and it can be found at this link :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBpDUPBXQkI&feature=channel_page

 

When watching this film I noticed that when the music changes it gets a lot louder, too loud, however when editing this sound was inaudible so Elliott had to turn it up, also when the freeze frames the image appears pixilated, we asked our teacher about this, but he said it was because we were watching it on a much bigger screen therefore this would occur, also when James begins to follow the girls, where it had previously been raining, some rain had got onto the lense and this shows up when the sun shines on the camera as it tracks after James. I also noticed that the camera is barely held steady at all times, it frequently tilts or is filmed at an angle, its not too bad, however it wasn’t done on purpose or desirable for our film. However I prefer how this film has turned out a lot better than our previous one, as we can hear everything we are meant to, the story line is much better and the music really adds to the atmosphere, as in the beginning it makes it tense and scary, which continues until the girls enter the shot, where it changes and the music makes me begin to feel sorry for the girls involved.

 Heres a few screen grabs from editing and the film playing:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is our first and establishing for this we used  a still of James’ camera and some tense music to set an atmosphere that would intrigue our audience. We also used the typewriter feature on Final Cut Pro for the titles, to keep the theme of technology within the sequence. Personally this is my favourite shot as it is filmed really well and cuts off in the right place the transition to the next shot also works really well. Also the camera shows that our ‘predator’ is quiete experienced as the camera is of good quality.

 

 

  This was the shot we experienced most troubles with when editing, we decided to use it for titles, to show my name as I stop at the bridge, however it was tricky to get it to look smooth, because the girls had stopped walking and we wanted to use a still of this, therefore when we added in a transition trying to aid this issue and the freeze frame so we could edit my name onto the sequence, it appeared jumpy and undesirable, however we tried as hard as possible to get it to look acceptable, now it appears like a double take of the girl , which could fit in with the story line, as it is a POV shot and ‘Danny’ could be checking that he is taking pictures of the right girl. Also as you can see we made the girls wear school uniforms not only to fit in with the context but it represents their age and vulnerability.

 

 

 

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Production Log One- Main Task Research and Planning

January 22, 2009 at 3:13 pm (Main Task, Media coursework)

15th and 22nd January 2009

To complete the main task it was stated we would have to make the opening of a fiction film with titles. We noticed that this gave us a broad amount of options to choose from relating to genre and what to put into the opening, therefore we got together as a group to discuss these options and combined them with our previous knowledge of what worked well and what didn’t work so well in our preliminary task, we decided that we wanted to make a film that required minimal actors, locations that were easily accessible and of a genre like horror or thriller, with this in mind we came up with the following ideas:

• ‘When Trolleys Go Bad’, this film would have been about trolleys, that become violent and attacked the local citizens. We thought this idea was comical and would have used minimal acting however it would have been difficult to film as getting permission to use locations would have required speaking to many managerial positions to acquire such footage. We decided against this idea as was very hard to take serious and not very realistic.
• ‘Drugs Situation’, for this idea we would have had a person who had taken drugs at a party and as a result died, this then follows with a police inquest.  Although this is a good idea as it gives us the opportunity to use lots of editing techniques and camera angles, this would have involved using ambulances, members of police and lots of extras as well as actors and from our experience we learnt it was not a good thing to have a lot of extras as some can become unreliable which can jeopardise the film.
• ‘Mind Games’, the concept of this film was to confuse our audience making the film more desirable and intriguing, creating enigma code, to do this we were going to have a dark room with a mentally ill person inside having crazed fits, we would then use a jump cut to switch to an everyday situation such as the hustle and bustle of an ordinary day. We thought this would be a good idea for our film as the audience would be left wondering what had just happened and looking for an explanation into the reason for the beginning scene of darkness.

• ‘I.M’, this idea is based upon the idea of meeting people online, we would begin by peering through blinds at a girl and her friend talking about a young attractive man on a that she has met on social networking site, we’d then see the conversation and the words from him ‘Do you want to meet?’, we’d then have a flash forward to her running or the man standing watching her and then flash back to his face on her screen. For the titles of the film we decided to use a play on words IM which is commonly used for instant messenger, however we decided to change it to instant murder, and to carry on the technological theme we would have this typed on the screen and then backspaced to say murder instead of messenger.

We collectively decided to use the ‘IM’ idea as it was intriguing and addresses an everyday situation that our audience (young adults) would understand, we also we had a more in depth idea of the type of camera angles and characters we would use. For this we chose our target audience to be 15+ as it will contain a murder and some challenging concepts, the reason for this choice is backed up by the presentation we gave to our class peers as they would be our potential audience as they are all over 15. With this decision we then began to research, for this we looked on YouTube at the opening scenes of films, this was quite hard as there wasn’t many online, but the ones we found set the scene and included something intriguing for the audience, we then looked for films about online predators to see which camera angles they used to represent the victim and the predator. These showed the predator as mysterious and lacking in identity and we decided we could apply this to our film. The victim which was stereotypically shown to be female was shown as a naive young person, however when trying to include this video in our presentation we found the link had been removed, therefore we found new videos. This was called ‘MySpace Crisis Part One’ this film had the similar idea to ours, however theirs was a fully developed story line, the opening sequence for this, established all the technologies that can be used for communicating with others such as, iPods, mobiles, cameras, instant messengers and social networking sites, however we were more interested in the way that the predator and victim talked on these sites which is shown at 3 minutes in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-SPU68W57g

 

 

The opening scene we saw was for a film called ‘Momento’, from watching this we found that they used music to introduce the film and create an atmosphere which makes a scenario within the audiences mind, the photograph developing with this music creates enigma code and then the film seems to play backwards as the man puts the undeveloped Polaroid back into his pocket and then a shot of blood trickling backwards up a wall. This opening scene doesn’t show much about the film and just creates curiosity which can be applied to our film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=-XzNIUt1dBQ

 

 

In the lesson of the 22nd of January, we began to create a presentation that we would show to our class, also our potential audience, this presentation will feature the ideas behind each creative idea and why we believe it’s a good idea, it will also show them the research we have done and other plans we have begun. This will be shown to the class on the 5^th March; afterwards we will hand out questionnaires and discuss the ideas with our peers within the class. (The results of these will be written up on the 5^th March).

Main Task Ideas

 

For further research we investigated into who our audience would be and why, we had already decided that it would be a more appealing story to girls as it is a situation that is well known amongst young girls, however, if we create a good enough open sequence it can also be attractive to boys and overall have a rating of

 15 + due to the content, for this we looked up the age rating system and found this:

Theme

No theme is prohibited, provided the treatment is appropriate to 15 year olds.

Language

There may be frequent use of strong language. But the strongest terms will be acceptable only where justified by the context. Continued aggressive use of the strongest language is unlikely to be acceptable.

Nudity

Nudity may be allowed in a sexual context but without strong detail. There are no constraints on nudity in a non-sexual or educational context.

Sex

Sexual activity may be portrayed but without strong detail. There may be strong verbal references to sexual behaviour.

Violence

Violence may be strong but may not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. Scenes of sexual violence must be discreet and brief.

Imitable techniques

Dangerous techniques (eg combat, hanging, suicide and self-harming) should not dwell on imitable detail. Easily accessible weapons should not be glamorized.

Horror

Strong threat and menace are permitted. The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable.

Drugs

Drug taking may be shown but the film as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse.

(http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/c_15.php) 

 

29th January 2009

Whilst waiting to present our ideas we collectively chose the film, ‘IM’ for our main task, therefore in this lesson we held a meeting as a group to discuss the characterisation, location, script, shot types and the story line of our chosen film, which in my role as production manager, had to make sure these were realistic. We decided that the story line would consist of a young naive school girl-Ruby and her friend- Emily who get caught in the trap of an online predator who calls himself by the name of ‘Danny Jefferies’, in the opening scene we will see the camera pan up from behind blinds, which gives the illusion of the characters being watched and then goes through the blinds to see Ruby at the computer, she then calls Emily over to see the social networking profile of Danny and his new photos. Then the camera looks at the screen and his pictures, they then exchange dialogue, there is then a flash forward to a swing swinging in a dark park to show that the girls are just children and still vulnerable, it then cuts back to present time where she is arranging to meet up with Danny, then another flash forward to her running distressed through a public place occurs and then another flash back to present day with Ruby saying how she can’t wait to meet Danny; during this sequence we will have the names of the actors appear on the screen as each character is introduced and at the end of the sequence the title of the film will be typed on the screen. We thought this sequence would be effective as the flashbacks create enigma code and an exciting beginning to the film, also the shots we’ve chose will give the atmosphere of the girls being watched and the story could be carried on in many ways, however I think that we have possibly tried to fit too much into the opening sequence, but we can film all the footage and decide at a later stage if it is all required.

 

We then decided that the locations we could use would be a classroom in the college for the girl’s bedroom or the peering behind the blinds shot, another option was to use a member of the group’s houses, however this will depend on the actors we use. For the public area we would use a public park in Harlow which later in this lesson Rosy and Elliott went to look for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

29th Jan

 

We then wrote the script:

[turns to Emily , calling her over with her hand.]

Ruby : Oh my god Ems , come and look at this , I’m on Danny’s profile , and he’s uploaded new pics!

[Big smile travels across her face]

[Shocked but happy facial expression]

Emily: Wow, Ruby, you’re so lucky , he is gorgeous!!

Ruby: Ahh , he is talking to me again , i think he really likes me !

[Excited tone in voice]

[Camera looks at computer screen ' do you want to meet up?]

Ruby: Do you think i should?

Emily: Yeah, defo , you have to meet up with him!

We decided to use colloquial language such as ‘defo’, ‘pics’ and ‘yeah’ to show that the two girls belong to the same social group and have an equality of power between them and shortening Emily to ‘Ems’ shows that the girls are friends and are comfortable with each other.

With the script in mind we began to think about the type of sound we would like to feature in our film, for the beginning we thought a sombre music would set the scene and shows it’s not going to be a light-hearted film, then we thought that Naive by The Kooks would be a good song to play in the girls room as the song lyrics relate to her current situation, however due to the film having to contain original work we cannot use the exact copy and decided to find a cover of this song online or ask a friend studying music at the college, for the next scenes are just sound effects such as the swing creaking, heavy distressed breathing and crying and two sets of footsteps, which we are likely to record separately then edit into the scene.

And created Facebook profiles for Ruby and Danny as in the next lesson we plan to create audition posters in order to find Ruby and Emily and Danny.

 

 

 

 

I began to write storyboards for the film also, for each box I wrote what we wanted to happen in each shot, the sounds that would be apparent and camera movements.

 

 

 

 

12th February 2009

In this session we had another meeting to discuss creative ideas for our audition posters and the next steps in our production, this included assigning production roles to ensure that our film runs smoothly and that each of us have specific items to monitor; these were as follows:

This role involves organising the equipment, actors and location and also filling in all forms.

• Director and Camera Person- Christina.

She will make sure the scene, lighting, sound and overall filming goes to her liking.

• Sound and editing- Elliott.

He will monitor sound and work with Rosie to edit.

Continuity and Editing- Rosie.

She will make sure that the film is continuous and edit the film when we finish when we finish.

The reason we decided it would be a good idea to define and delegate roles was although in our preliminary task we worked as a group and looked out for everything collectively, it was suggested to us that to produce a better film it was favourable that we had specific duties and responsibilities so each of us could monitor certain items within the film.

We made the audition posters from a print screen of a Facebook profile to show continuity of ideas and the theme of the film. We arranged the auditions for the 26th February for 1pm in the sixth form block. We printed off many posters advertising the need for two female actresses and posted them around the college.

Audition Poster

 

To the left is the image of our audition poster, primarily Elliott came up with the idea of making it involve Facebook and then as a group we developed it into a poster which was made by Christina in Photoshop. We took a print screen of a comment box on a Facebook profile and then in Photoshop Christina typed in the information that our potential auditionees would require, we then posted these up around the sixth form building.

Then as production manager I needed to book a camera and tripod for the auditions that are going to take place on the 26th February (For more information on how Christina made the poster, see her blog http://christina1200.wordpress.com/).

Smart Targets

These targets are going to be similar to the previous SMART targets we set for our preliminary task as the same things need to be done,

• S: Come up with creative ideas and develop, then research into other media products related
• M: When it’s finished and it’s a target that can be monitored
• A: Once everyone in the group has agreed with the idea and what we have achieved
• R: It’s easily achievable
• T: The first couple of weeks

• S: Create storyboards, script and recruit actors and extras, find a location and inform the owners of the dates it is required
• M: We will know as the work will be completed and we will know which actors we want and what they should be saying.
• A: Once everyone is happy with actors, storyboards, the scripts and location
• R: Its easily achievable and needed, otherwise the task cannot be completed
• T: 2-3 weeks

• S: Film
• M:When completed to an acceptable level and all possible shots and scenes are filmed to a good quality
• A: When everyone is happy with the outcome
• R: Needs to be completed in order to complete the coursework
• T: 2-3 weeks

• S: Edit all filming where needed
• M: When the film is completely finished
• A: When everyone thinks the film is complete and no more filming or editing is required
• R: It will get the desired outcome
• T: 2-3 week

It will easy to monitor these targets as, as a group we have meetings to look at the progress of the creative idea and how we can further it and the steps we can take in producing the film, for example we discuss what we would like in each scene the characterisation of our actors and how this effects the way they will speak in the script.

 

 

Characterisation:

Girl one: Ruby Partridge

Either wears a white top to show innocence or a school uniform to also suggest the same meaning.

She would be a typical girly teenager interested in clothes , make-up and boys

Girl two: Emily

Has the same characteristics as Ruby as they are of similar personalities.

The predator: Danny Jefferies

He will pretend to be 18 years, when he is actually 30/40 years of age.

On his profile there would be a picture of him posing in the mirror, which are typical profile photos found on social networking sites.

26th February 2009

In this lesson we had planned to show the class our presentation but our tutor gave us an extra week to complete this so we added some extras to this, afterwards I informed the tutor on what we had done and asked him what our next steps in the production should be, fortunately he pointed out we hadn’t researched into our audience so we began this (which I have added into the research section at the beginning). We also intended to hold auditions at lunch time, but due an uncooperative camera technician in the college, he had allowed us to book the cameras during his lunch break, therefore we could not pick up the equipment in order to hold these auditions, instead of re-arranging them and potentially falling behind with our progress, we decided to improvise and audition the three girls in our group (Myself, Christina and Rosie) we collected the camera after our lunch break as it was guaranteed that the technician would have returned by then, so we set up in the college as took in turns to play each part and alternated within the group and then uploaded this to the Mac.

5th March 2009

In this session we showed the class our presentation of our ideas to the class, after this followed a questionnaire which people filled in to give us feedback for each of our potential ideas.

 The results showed that ‘Instant  Messenger’ was the most popular, followed by ‘When Trolleys Go Bad’ I believe the reason for this is that the idea is abstract and members of the class wanted to see how we would develop this idea into a film, however we didn’t get any votes for  the ‘drugs situation’, I think this is because we discribed it too vaguely therefore our peers couldnt see the potential.

We got 5 votes for when trolleys go bad and the reasons listed for this selection were that it was different and would be interesting. 6 votes for I.M as it seemed interesting and achieveable, our peers also noted that it was the one we had put alot of work into already, however as previously mentioned, there were no votes for the drugs situation and only one vote for ‘mind games’ as it seemed intrigueing.

 

 

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