From Whence He Came - Final Film

                                                                 
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From Whence He Came - Poster

Evaluation Question 7

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

Our preliminary exercise was a task to help improve our use of continuity. This involved 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.

When we started on this, we were new to college and hardly knew anyone. Me and Kyle both knew each other from previous forms of education, but Ross was a person who we had only met in college and as such we didn't know each other. This exercise not only served as a way to improve continuity, it was also for developing our team working skills. As none of us had taken a media course before this, we were all lacking experience. The preliminary task also gave us experience and prepared us for the two minute film; such as how to write a script.

While learning about the new rules and shots, we were also learning about the equipment and software that we would use. It served as way to learn on how to improve for the next thing that we were to do. An example of this would be when opening doors. We had to retake the shot because the actor opened the door differently in shots; with the handle and with his hand in the next. We also learned how to fix the mistakes from filming in editing, by covering it up with cuts and such.

I'd say that the thing we took the most from the preliminary exercise was to be a perfectionist, as editing is much harder without good footage. We did this by retaking some shots multiple times to make sure that it would be perfect. For example, in the montage we retook the shot of me taking the hat off of the table multiple times (probably around ten in total). Even though I found that to be quite tedious, I believe that it was worth it. Although we didn't retake all of the shots in the film, most of them were taken at least twice and we got some really good shots from doing this.

I think that I have improved with my filming skills most of all. Before doing this, I had practically no experience with filming (although I had filmed things before). After completing this I felt that I knew much more about it; such as how to reposition the camera while it was still on the tripod and how to change the depth of focus.

From this project I have gained a lot of experience that I could carry over to other areas or future projects. I have learnt a lot of things that have a variety of uses, such as which angle would be the best for a shot. This means that filming wouldn't be as hard as I would know what would be the best option for what I'm doing. I'm satisfied with the end project, but there are a few scenes which could've been redone.

Evaluation Question 6

6 What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

What have I learnt?

Although I had done some filming before I started this project, it was only with a digital camera or something similar. Now that I finished this project, I would say that I’m used to using more professional cameras as I can adjust the settings to my taste. I am proficient at most aspects of it, like transferring the data or changing the focus. This was also the first time for other programs or websites, like Blogger or Final Cut. I have never been interested in blogging and I rarely look at the blogs of other people. Although I haven’t been particularly bad with English skills, I feel that this has helped me fine tune them. For the editing side, I have even less experience. The closest that I’ve been to editing before was watching and helping Kyle edit videos in Sony Vegas Pro 12. Even though these two programs are clearly different, I feel that I can carry over the experience that I gained with Final Cut over to other programs and I believe that it has helped me get used to editing.

What key decisions did you make during pre-production about technology?

Even before we started thinking about the plot of our film, we had all wanted it to be a horror film. I used Blogger to post a simple idea on what the story could be. The three of us then pooled our ideas together to create the story that we ended up with. The script was then rewritten using Celtx. Celtx is a program that is used to write up storyboards in the same way that professionals do. After this, we wrote more posts about the prop list and shot list needed for the film, amongst other things that we needed for the film.

What key decisions did you make during post-production about technology?

Once we had finished recording all the scenes for the film, we used Final Cut Express to edit the scenes and piece them together. The internet was used to find sounds and music for our film as it sounded rather bare without any. Examples of the things that we used would be ‘Stinger’, the music used during Volnus’ scene and the sound of the ticking clock used during the montage. However, these along with the edited scenes, were lost close to when we were about to finish after the Mac we used to edit the film on broke and the IT technicians didn’t retrieve the lost data. Because of this we had to re-edit the film in a small amount of time. However, we still had all the scenes on the tape and we only had to retake one voice clip. Re-editing the film didn’t take as long as the first time, but it still felt tedious to do. After finishing the film, we uploaded it to YouTube and linked it on Blogger.

Technology during production

The film was captured on a SonyHD1000 camera, which we got as a rental from college. Thanks to this, our footage was of high quality and as such it looks more like an actual film. The scenes themselves were edited to change how they look to better match the setting. An example of this would be for the shots of Volnus. The lighting in the room was too dark, so we had to adjust the focus so that it set on specific things with manual focus.

Another thing which we used technology for during production was a sound recorder. For the parts that were voiceovers, we couldn't record them as part of the scene so we had record them separately. The raw recordings of the voices didn't exactly fit with the scenes, even though they were of high quality, so we had to edit them in Final Cut Express to get them how we wanted. Even though the voice clips were edited, I think that they still sound like diegetic sound.

Evaluation Question 5

Link to question 5

Evaluation Question 4

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Age

For our film, I’d say that it would be age certificate 15. This is mainly because of the contents of our film, especially as it is a horror film. According to British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), a 15 rated film may contain:

•         Strong violence
•      Frequent strong language
•      Discriminatory language or behaviour
•      Drug taking

As our film contains no nudity or anything to do with any sexual activities, I won’t need to factor that into the age rating. 15 rated films are allowed to have some strong violence, to some extent. This will be good for our film because we have a murder in the opening and there would most likely be more in the full film.

Gender

Personally, I don’t think that gender will have much of a difference with whether the film will be enjoyed or not. However, I think that males will end up liking the film more because all of the characters so far are men. This is because they would end up bonding with the characters more as they can emphasise with them.

Habits/Lifestyle

Our film is more likely to appeal to adults, as students may not have as much experience with detective thrillers. However, as a horror movie, it may appeal to teenagers. Students would be more likely to watch the movie in the cinema, as cinemas have student discounts among other factors. Adults however may be inclined to purchase it as a DVD or rent it online. The audience would probably either be specifically into horror as a genre, or just be looking to be scared by the film.

Ethnicity

I believe that people from a wide variety of backgrounds will want to watch our film. However, I believe that our film would appeal to a mainly white/British audience, as that is where the characters originate.

Pre-production Research

Before we had finish filming of the film, we created a questionnaire for an overview of the film. We handed the questionnaire to several people and filmed their responses. The questions we asked included things such as “What do you think this film would be rated?” and other similar questions.

How we used it

When asked about the location, people suggested that it should be in a dark place or room. We achieved this by getting a large room in college and turning down the lighting.

Evaluation Question 3

Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Company: Warp Films

•Warp Films is an English based company that has distributed a wide variety of films; ‘4 Lions’ and ‘This is England’ are the most notable examples.

•I think that Warp Films would be a good choice for our distributor because they are known to work with relatively unknown titles; such as ‘Submarine’, there would be a better chance that they’d work with us.

•Also, as Warp Films are an English company, it would be better to go to them as their films are all filmed in the UK and they stay in that area, whereas bigger companies would go outside the UK and therefore would be difficult to work with.

•Warp Films has also worked on a wide variety of genres; such as comedy or horror, so a film like ours wouldn’t be too different from what they’re used to.

Similar Films Distribution: Scream

•Scream was distributed by Dimension Films.

•Dimension Films has worked on a large number of popular movie franchises; such as Spy Kids, Scary Movie, Scream and Halloween.

•I think that Dimension Films would be a good choice for a distributor as they have distributed a large number that are the same genre as our film; horror.

•However, unlike Warp Films, Dimension Films is based in America so it would be harder to reach them. For this reason, I believe that Warp Films would be a better choice as they are also more likely to choose a lesser known film as a project.

Evaluation Question 2

2 How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Age

Will and Frank are around the mid twenties age wise. However, generally in detective films the inspector or similar person is well season; normally seen as a gruff man in his 40s or older. With this portrayal of the classic character type, it will attract a new audience to our film as it appeals to a new age group and the different take will also intrigue new people. Volnus however never has his age revealed, as he is a mystery. Although he never has it revealed, people can guess that he’d be the same age as Will or similar at least.

Gender

As we only produced a small section of the full film, only the male characters were shown. The only reason why no females were shown was because the film never got that far. However, as there are no females as of yet, the film so far would probably appeal to men as they would be able to relate to the characters more. It may end up alienating female viewers, which is not what we want.

Social class

Social class isn’t represented that much in the film, so there isn't really a specific social class that this film could aim at. However, Volnus is shown to have an accent that makes him seem of a high social class. This may not matter too much, but it may attract more people who are of a high social class.

Mise-en-scene

In our film, the costumes that the characters wear are much more than clothes; they reflect the personalities of the characters. For example; in the first scene where Will is shown, he is wearing casual wear. However, later in the film (when he is getting dressed) he wears a police uniform. This change symbolises his determination to catch Volnus, as a cop would be able to do it.

Evaluation Question 1

Make your own mind maps with Mindomo.

Evaluation Question 7

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

Our preliminary task was a 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 they would exchange a few lines of dialogue. We were tasked with demonstrating a match on action, shot reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

At the time of doing this, we had no experience and had to work with new people. I had known Jonathan previously, however we had both only met Ross so this wasn't just developing our media skills but also our team skills and co-operation so that we could work consistently together. It was a bit intimidating being tasked to do this task as none of us had done a media course prior to this and had only just learnt the basics. By doing this, we would be prepared to work on a two minute piece based on a script of our own which would be the opening sequence to a new film. This included the titles and setting the basis of a storyline. 

As we learnt these new rules and shots, which were basic and would set us up to learn the rest of the key shots to produce the next piece, we also learnt how to operate the equipment and use the editing software. From making this, we were able to see where we went wrong and could learn from these mistakes. For example, one of us spotted that the shot where we attempted to do a match on action went wrong due to the fact the male actor opened the door with the handle in one shot and then simply opened it with his hand in the next. Due to cutting out certain parts of this shot during the editing stage, this was solved and was helpful to teach us what to do when we went onto the main product. It also taught us that even if we made a mistake during filming, by doing several takes and the use of some sneaky editing cuts we could easily fix it.

So during the preliminary we learnt how to do a Match on action. As previously mentioned, we had a little bit of difficulty when doing this so we took what we had learnt from our mistakes and applied it to all of our filming time. We heavily insisted on doing a shot over and over again and although  this took a lot of time I believe it was worth it.

For example, while we were filming the montage, there was a particular shot that I may have gotten a little out of hand with.(Shot above). I near forced my colleagues to retake this shot a total of 7 times just because i felt there should have been more flow to it. In one case, the hat dragged the table cloth with it and off of the table. Looking through all of the shots during editing however, I did the right thing as we were able to find the best quality shot out of a large pool of shots. We did this for near all of the shots we took for our film and I think that is why we were able to take some very good shots.

One thing I personally have improved at is using the Final Cut Express editing software. By doing the preliminary exercise, I wasn't going into editing the film "Blind" and had a little bit of experience in my belt so I didn't have to spend time learning how to do the basics of the software. I definitely used more techniques during editing the film, such as varying how loud the sound was for the radio broadcast, as you can hear it slightly fade out as Will walks out of the door and away from the radio. I have definitely improved at using the software and recording equipment since doing the preliminary task, just with using it more I have found the varying ways they could be used and have found out what they do in more depth.

One method that we used was parallel editing during the scene where Volnus called Will. We showed not only what Volnus was doing at the time, but also showed what was going in around Will at the same time; showing Will typing previous to receiving the call and his reaction to what he could hear going on where Frank and Volnus were. We were able to maximise continuity throughout the film due to our previous experience and could do it with more precision, being able to make the film seamlessly switch from shot to shot, allowing it to flow without the audience noticing.

I have come away from this with more knowledge and experience than I ever could have hoped for and feel I would be able to apply this experience to future projects. I have learnt a lot about which type of shot would best fit certain scenarios and am more accustomed to the creation of a film, from start to finish. This has allowed me to be more confident when editing personal projects and have a knack for knowing if a shot is one or two frames too long or short. I am very happy with our end project and know where we could improve such as shots that are slightly blurry or too quiet. I look forward to more experiences like this where I can learn more and improve my skills.