Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule.
Brief for Main Production Task:
Must produce the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of 2 minutes.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For our main task media film, The Vision, we had hoped to use and possibly develop a lot of the typical conventions of a thriller that we had researched. Our preliminary task was a chance to test out a few basic forms and conventions to see if we could put together a short clip with an atmosphere similar to that of a thriller. If it had not given the intended effect then we had something to work from for our main task.
For example, in our main task, our group edited all the shots that we had filmed into a flowing sequence. But after watching it through and referring to our notes that we had taken whilst watching the opening of other thriller films we decided that something needed to be added.
The music that we overlaid onto our 2 minute opening gave a more apparent thriller feeling. One of the typical conventions of a thriller is the music. Whether it's fast paced (e.g. for a chase scene etc...) or it builds up during the scene like ours does. It's done to give a feeling of almost panic and suspense as you're expecting something to happen as the music builds in volume.
Another way our media product uses the conventions is the way in which we used the lighting in our film. A lot of it was filmed in semi-darkness like during the part where Lizzie King is running down a corridor, or complete darkness at night when we filmed Lizzie Mclean collapsing etc... We managed to position Lizzie Mclean under a street lamp so that you could clearly make her out and that she cast a slight shadow which can add effect. During the corridor scene we chose a corridor that had very little light at one end (there were no windows at this end) but that had windows at the other end so that what was shown on screen was Lizzie running towards the light. But the aspect, meaning and use of the darkness was still felt. We felt that the mise-en-scene was fairly well planned where the lighting was concerned.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?:
Our opening begins with a teenage girl coming into frame. She's dressed fairly normally. She does not appear in any way to be a "gangster" or "chav". We decided that by representing a typical normal teenager it would be more relatable to real people; real teenagers. The film goes on to show the seemingly "normal" girl having a vision of some sort. We believe that this adds a bit more of an edge to our film. The fact that there is nothing out of the ordinary about this teenager makes the vision that bit more unexpected.
Who would be the audience for your media product?:
Our film was not created for family viewing. When we started out planning for our media film we had decided to aim for a 15 certificate. But we had researched the certificates above and below that incase the content we ended up with was not appropriate for a 15. If the certificate was to be based purely on the content of our opening, I think that a 12 certificate would be more suited. But if this was to be expanded and the rest of the film planned and filmed I think that the 15 certificate would stand. We did not use a lot of strong language or any nudity or sexual references. Therefore it is not needed to be classed as an 18. I think that because it is a 15 it will be available to a wider audience and that it will attract more people. Also because of the genre that we chose I believe that we will get a lot more interest as from our survey it came up on top.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?:
I've learnt that making a film is harder than it first seems. Getting used to using the camera was one thing but actually being to film decent shots of what you needed what another. The bizarre positions I had to get myself into the be able to film walking or dropping cups were worth it thought to get what we needed. I never imagined it would take so long to film everything you need for a 2 minute opening that you've planned out. You imagine it to be one or two takes per shot and that you can just throw it together on some editing software and you're done! But the amount of time and effort I feel that our group put into planning, shooting and editing the opening is ridiculous. It took so much concentration to be able to time all the music as well as you could so that it suited the moving images. It never seemed to flow as well as you wanted it to. Perfectionism is a flaw that I think our group possess.
We encountered a few technological problems along the way of making our films. Mainly it was to do with the editing software. It was suggested that we use Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 which is supposedly very advanced and would help us immensely with our editing. But we had many problems trying to upload our footage to the computer using this programme. It took 2 hours to upload 5 minutes at which point the computers froze and we had to start again. We gave up with that idea as it was just taking up too much time and we switched to using Windows Movie Maker. We had less problems with this software. Although there was less of a choice of transitions to go between clips that looked good enough and professional enough for a thriller film.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?:
When you compare our original preliminary task to our main task you can see a vast improvement. The editing is much more fine cut with a better flow to it and we've also used a lot more complex camera angles because we had become more comfortable with what was expected from a thriller film.
On our preliminary film we had decided to not put any non-diegetic sounds or music onto it as we were happy with the diegetic sounds that currently existed. But when you watch the opening to thriller films there is always some sort of musical score laid over the top to create a more intense atmosphere. This is one thing that we decided to bring into our main task film. Although the music we chose to use is a common choice for a lot of thriller films and not particularly original, I feel that it was best for our task as it gave a sense of building panic.
The difference in editing is, I feel, extremely good. In our preliminary the film skips and jumps all over the place as we had cut it to often and in the wrong places. With our main task we kept reminding ourselves of what had happened to our preliminary and tried to cut the film only when necessary. By doing this we reduced the jumping and our film flows a lot better. We also tried different effects on parts of our film including the black and white tone and the changes in speed.
I think that what we've included in our main task that we missed or overlooked in our preliminary shows just how much of an improvement we've made. I would put this down to us watching our preliminary film a few times and noting down what went wrong and the more research that we did into thriller films. We really paid attention to what conventions are most commonly found in thriller/horror films and we tried (and hopefully succeeded) in using them to our best advantage in our own film.
Overall I am happy with the amount of progression that we have made. I think our final film piece has turned out well and I am pleased with it.
Theories:
Whilst we were planning and filming our main and preliminary tasks we were looking at a number of theories. We were looking at how the audience is affected by the films that they watch and how ideas are put in place. We wanted to know how our filming tasks could affect our audience.
One theory we looked at was the Hypodermic Syringe Theory. This theory suggests that an audience can be "injected" with the ideas that are put in front of them by the media product they are consuming. E.g. if someone was to watch a violent film then they too would become violent by association. Studying this theory made us think about how our media product could "inject" our potential audience. Our film does not include a lot of violence or any sexual activity, so we were unsure of how this theory would work with our film.
Another theory we studied was the Culmination Theory. This theory describes how, unlike the Hypodermic Syringe Theory, watching or absorbing one media text of some kind can not affect an individual but years and years of watching the same kind of thing can. E.g. if someone had watched a film about murders and violence once then this would have little or no affect on them. But if this same individual was to continuously watch the same type of films for many years then they would be more influenced and more likely to go out and commit the same crime that they had been watching. Our group agrees with this theory more than the Hypodermic Syringe Theory as it seems more reasonable that an individual would be more influenced to commit a crime after more than one viewing.
