CASE CLOSED

Well, we're at the end of a journey. This project has been a lot of fun and it is now time to regretably say that this case is closed.

Evaluation Question 7

Personally I have progressed a lot since the preliminary task. I have done a lot more filming in this project, this is mainly due to the fact that I was acting in the preliminary task. I have enjoyed the creative freedom of this task compared to the first one as I enjoy creating artistic shots and doing something different. This has allowed me to express myself more and naturally be more of a leader and the project in the direction I envisioned it to look like. I am pleased with this as leadership is one of the things I have lacked in previous projects.




I now feel more comfortable behind the camera and my skills have improved greatly. I have been much more organised in during this project, this is shown by the orderly nature of my blog and by the that I contributed a lot to the research and planning stage for the group.

From the preliminary task I have learnt that it never harms to take more footage than you need as it gives you more options when capturing and editing. The experience that we gathered from our preliminary task about continuity aide us in shooting a flowing sequence with no obvious breaches of the rules. The example of continuity in our film is the gate sequence which flows seamlessly and shows many match on actions that match perfectly.

I am so pleased with the outcome of our sequence that I truly believe that there is nothing that I would change with the benefit of hindsight. This is backed up by the lack of negative feedback from our audience at the screening. The result is much better than our preliminary sequence, this may be due to the lack of creativity compared to the 'The Case', though.

I am now a much more rounded Media student with more experience in film making than I did prior to the coursework assignment. In conclusion, I am extremely pleased with our opening sequence and equally happy with my overall progress both in technical terms and in confidence that I can make a successful product.

Evaluation Question 6

Throughout this project I have learnt many things regarding the technology we have used. One of the first things we learnt was how to use Blogger. I had not previously used a blog before so this was a new experience. It proved to be fairly easy to manage, however, and had no problems with it throughout the process. I will now separate what I have learnt into different sections.


Theory

I have learnt a lot about continuity in film and all of the main rules. These included:

• Match on action


• Shot reverse shot


• 180 degree rule
  

These all proved to be really helpful when filming our sequence as it made it look much more professional. I also learnt the invaluable benefit of preparing all of the necessary paperwork before going out on a shoot. The storyboards and shooting scripts that we drew up proved to make the filming process run smoothly.

Filming


I learnt new techniques regarding the camera including how to do a smooth pan and other camera movements such as tilts and arcs. I also learnt about the equipment itself, such as how long it takes to charge a battery for our Canon Mini HD camera and how to correctly assemble the studio lighting kit. I had lots of fun adjusting the strength of the light and testing different filters. In the end we settled for blue which reminded us of moonlight. To make the audio perfect in our shots, whoever was taking the shot wore a pair of headphones to hear exactly what would be heard on the film. This reduced the risk of a re shoot.

Location

Arguably the biggest lesson I learnt was to make sure you have all of the factors secured before committing to an idea. This was sadly the downfall of our first idea, 'The Streets Run Red', which was going to be filmed at a location that was unfortunately unavailable. This is why we chose to play it safe and shoot at Nick's house for 'The Case'.





Editing and Software


While non-linear editing on the program Adobe Premiere Pro I learnt how to :

• Cut shots into segments using the razor tool


• How to use a vast majority of the audio and visual effects, i.e the three way colour corrector which I used to adjust brightness, contrast and saturation.

To create the logo for our production company we used Fireworks which is part of the Adobe CS3 package. I also learnt how to take a font from the Internet and install it onto the computer. We made our titles with this font and made them move across the screen using the motion keyframes on our timeline. This meant that we could accurately decide how far they were to fade.

Overall I have learnt a lot about the technology surrounding producing a film over the past couple of months.

Evaluation Question 5

To appeal to our audience we used a variety of techniques in our sequence. We never let go of the suspense by choosing to keep the eerie music going throughout. Many people thought that the assault was the main event of the sequence, this put them into a false sense of security and made the climax even more shocking. Many members of the audience told us that they found the sequence fairly scary. Factors that contributed to the fear factor were:

• The fact that it was shot at night


• The chilling music, especially the haunting strings towards the end


• The use of shadows

We used enigma is our film opening effectively. The main example of this is the gunshot at the end. The audience are not sure who fired the gun, this would be revealed later in the film as one of the major twists. By showing the opening though, the audience wanted to know what happens next which means that the film obviously attracted their interest.

We also addressed our audience by shooting at a normal house which would probably be similar to theirs. The garden is fairly basic which meant that the attention was not taken away from the character.

As I mentioned in the previous question we targeted our film at an audience that we knew would enjoy a film of this genre. We chose to not confuse the audience and keep our opening in one time frame and use seamless continuity. This way they would be able to enjoy it without thinking to much about what was going on. We also addresses the audience after the clip had ended by using the gunshot to suspend their disbelief that a gun has been fired. We also used our narrative image of the detective at the desk a lot in our montage sequence so people could relate to it easier and recognise it was our production.

Evaluation Question 4

I believe that the audience interested in viewing our film opening would belong to a similar social group to myself, but slightly older. Our sequence includes an assault and a a gun shot, these events connote violence. Many young men are interested in action packed films and that lots of their favourite films contain the ongoing theme of violence as it seems to exillirate them.

We found this out be noticing that on our questionnaires one of the most popular films from our target audience was 'The Dark Knight', which is classed as an action film. Our film has been compared to 'Sin City' which has been quoted in the Radio Times as 'Ultra Violent' and 'Blade Runner'(Scott, 1982) which is also violent and enjoyed by younger males. It then follows that males would enjoy our film more. This assumption is supported by the evidence from our audience feedback sesson that our male contigent rated the film higher out of 10 than the females.

Our film may also appeal to the mature, older person as well though as it has deep, tension filled plot. They would also know the stress surrounding a high pressure job which the protagonist has. All of this considered I believe that with our sequence our typical core audience member would fit this profile:

Name: John Smith

Age: 18-30

Job: Boring Desk job

Hobbies: Going to the Cinema

Favourite Film Genres: Action and Violence

Our secondary audience could inlcude men outside this age frame and people who work in the crime solving area, such as Policemen.

Evaluation Question 3

Our production would not be shown in cinemas and get long runs from establishments such as Cineworld or Odeon due to many factors:

• Our product is an amateur film opening of only a couple of minutes in length.

This means it would be lucky to achieve a screening at a film festival, such as the Raindance Film Festival. As it so happens we were limited to showing it in class time and arranging lunch and after school screenings which provided much audience feedback.

• If we were to make the rest of film it would almost certainly be considered as an independent film.

This means it would be shown only at independent cinemas and not nation wide chains. This would also suit the nature of our production company, Eyeless Productions, as it is an independent company that specialises in cult films.

• Film Noir is not a typical Hollywood genre nowadays so is more likely to gain a cult status rather than being a mainstream hit.

This is shown by the fact that our inspiration, 'Sin City', is very much a cult film based on the cult graphic novels of Frank Miller.

One way of achieving this status is the audience with an enigmatic narrative image that shrouds the film in mystery. We chose to do this by designing a film poster that we could put up in places that our target audience would notice. The copy included the name of our film, the location of our screening and the time it was taking place. Most importantly though we used a still we took on our shoot as the main image of our poster, which stood out and grabbed peoples attention. The fact that approximately 30 people turned up means that our idea was a relative success.

If we were an actual company we would design our own marketing campaign so that we could reach as many people as possible. This is not possible as we do not have a sufficient budget available.

There is one way at our disposal that we could make our product reach a large audience and that is the Internet. We have uploaded our sequence onto Youtube so that everybody in the world could potentially watch it. From there it could spread via word of mouth. So all in all this is the most effective way to get an optimal amount of people to watch our product.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5RmESOP37nY&feature=PlayList&p=0B967880EF22D557&index=0

Evaluation Question 2

The actors in our production are male and between the ages of 16 -20. This means that men in this age bracket will relate to the actors by wanting to be the characters they portray in the film. This is similar to the widely quoted line regarding the James Bond series of films, 'The men want to be him, the women want him'.



Boys between the ages of 12 and 16 might, however, aspire to be the actors and want to see the film. They would find difficulty watching our film, however, as would most definitely be rated an 18. The characters are meant to be slightly older than the actors at the about 30. The detective may well have come from a working/middle class background, which is the vast majority of the British public. This means that by casting actors from this background we are representing the biggest social group in the country. Both men are from a white Caucasian background which is the archetypal of the profession of detective so will seem familar to the audience.


If we were an actual Hollywood film production company instead of an independent one we may well have hired well known actors such as Johnny Depp or Bruce Willis who would suit our detective role perfectly.















This would naturally add star quality to our film and mean that we would gain extra audience members that the actors would bring with them. This could include people who :

• Enjoyed their previous films
• People of the opposite gender who find them attractive

By casting them it would please the audience and the social groups that relate to them.

Evaluation Question 1

I believe that our opening sequence sticks to the conventions of feature length films fairly well. This is because it all fits into one time frame and there are no apparent continuity errors. We chose to keep it simple like this in order to keep our product controlled and thought that it would be too complicated to break all of the convention of film.

We decided to make a film that fitted into the Thriller/Film Noir genre. Conventions of this specific genre include:

• Tension Building Music
  
• Use of shadows, mirrors, etc. as to not give away too much
  
• Lots of different angles and fast cuts to create an uneasy feeling
  

Our sequence follows these points to an extent. Our music (courtesy of http://www.freeplaymusic.com/) builds up in specific places where an important event is taking place, such as the head slam. I believe that we used shadows very effectively effectively to create some atmospheric and artistic shots. These are very iconographic, as the still from 'Nosferatu'(Murnau, 1922) has become. This shots almost become synonomous with the film and this was found out to be true as, when asked the viewers of our film remembered these shots very well. The two examples from our film are:

We used lots of different angles the montage section surrounding the desk. This shows the protagonist's surroundings and makes him seem isolated and vunerable. We chose to utilise slow cuts, such as dissolves, to create a calmer and suspenseful situation. One way that we may have challenged the conventions of film was choosing to have no dialogue. We made this decision as we felt it would ruin the atmosphere of the film and feared that it may make the film seem less professional without experienced voice actors.



Film Noir is often filmed in black and white, we wanted to create this effect, but also thought that the colour in our shots were effective. We, therefore, decided to challenge the convention and lower the saturation to have the best of both worlds. This gave our film a feel much similar to 'Sin City' (Miller and Rodriguez, 2005) which was our main inspiration.





Our film follows the classic narrative theory of Levi-Strauss who believed in binary opposites, such as good and evil. The characters in our sequence are a detective and it's antithesis, a criminal. This is a very convential narrative pattern for the Film Noir genre.