Final Two Minute Film Opening

Evaluation Question 1

In what ways does your Media Product use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My media product challenges forms and conventions of real media products because I have kept to some of the conventions of a psychological thriller film, but I have challenged the forms by modernising a serious issue such as stalking. A convention that we followed, was the fact that 'suspense comes from within one solitary character, who must resolve conflict within their own minds'. We kept to this convention as we only cast Max to play our solitary male stalker. However we did challenge certain conventions, as when our two minute film opening  begins it shows our male character first, we created the notion that it is all about him, we as viewers are in his world. I believe that this sets our psychological thriller apart from the rest as we decided to focus on our killer straight away, this allows the audience to gain an understanding into his complex characteristics and therefore the audience will empathise with him, where as in other psychological thrillers the victims are showed first forcing the viewers to pity them. So by showing the perpetrator first rather than his victims, we have challenged this convention. However there are subtle hints that he does have these 'victims', but we thought that by not seeing the victims first this would surprise the audience in a way, and subvert the usual convention that we expect to see in a psychological thriller.


Another way that we challenged a convention is that we showed our killer in his natural enviroment, which was his room. This allows the viewers to gain a deeper meaning and understanding of him and to see the true nature of our characters mind. However we didn't challenge the stereotypical gender convention of stalkers. We stuck to what's expected by using a male stalker, as we thought that if we subverted the gender stereotype it wouldn't be believable and realistic. Also whilst on the topic of gender, we also kept to the convention of females being portrayed as the victims, we could have challenged this convention by making our stalker a woman, only I believe that if we used this idea and didn't rely on the gender stereotype, our opening would have been unusual and therefore unrealistic because people don't expect to see a female stalking a male.We have also challenged the another convention of the age stereotype of stalkers. People usually perceive them too be old aged perverted men, whereas in our opening we used a young male to surprise and intrigue our audience. 


As a group we didn't really challenge the camera angles you would expect to see in a psychological thriller, we stuck to the traditional angles, such as close ups, medium close ups, panning, tracking etc. We used the close ups mainly to show and emphasise the detail that our male stalker puts into his obsession with women. 


Films such as 'One Hour Photo' and 'Red Road' were the basis for our film opening. I  followed the conventions of the film 'One Hour Photo' most as I think it portrays an obsession quite well, also due to the way the character in the film becomes obsessed through the photographs, this was an aspect that we used within our film, as we used a notice board that displayed images of our characters previous victims. Also the films that I have listed previously gave us an idea of what kind of font we should for our titles. The film 'Seven' gave us a great basis of what style of font suits psychological thrillers, we then searched for this font on the programme 'Imovie', we used a font style called 'Cracked'. We kept to the colour scheme of red and black as these colours have connotations of death, lust, blood etc. Due to our title being 'His Lady In Red', we thought that the colour scheme would suit our title and we therefore put a lot of emphasis on the particular colour red. We did however stick to the convention of using dark settings and lighting to emphasise and signify the troubled demina of our characters personality. The dark setting represented his dark nature and this was something that we tried to portray within the lighting that we decided to use. We used transitions such as fade outs, and cross dissolves to add a modern look to our film opening, but to also keep within the creepy style we were trying to create.

Evaluation Question 2

How does your Media Product represent particular Social groups?

My media product represents particular social groups such as: psychopaths, people with mental illness,youths,males and people who are isolated from society. I believe that our film opening represents psychopaths as our male stalker is portrayed as having psychopathic tenancies, as he is shown to be a person with no thought for the rights of others and for the rules of society. Through the characters actions we can clearly see that he would be perceived by the audience as a psychopath. I also think that our film opening represents people with mental illness, as our stalker appears disturbed and unaware that his obsession with women is unnatural and wrong. The audiences will notice the pleasure that the male character is getting from him obsession which will highlight his mental state. 

Also our opening represents males and masculinity, through our main character being a male. Also the fact that he is a young male represents the social group of youths. Through the colour red we used a complex way to show how the character asserts his masculinity and how sure of himself he appears to be. Also through the ending shot, which revealed the main characters body whilst he was about to harm himself, we see that he is in a good physical condition which brings about the notion that his victims will be vulnerable and feeble compared to him. Which also backs up the idea of the gender stereotype that males are superior and stronger compared to females. 

 We dressed our character simply as we wanted to show that he has no interest in his aesthetic appearance, he only has interest in his unnatural obsession. The main prop being the notice board this showed and highlighted the fact that our male character is in fact planning to kill his next victim, so this was a way of representing killers and criminals. People who are isolated from society are also represented in our film opening. As our male character is portrayed as being alone and isolated, also because we filmed our male character in one location/setting which was his room, he never actually left his room, which shows how isolated we portrayed him be. So our male character can be generalised to all of the isolated people in society. This aspect makes our film opening more relatable and realistic. Also considering our storyline of a man being obsessed with a woman this could represent and signify the true and sometimes dysfunctional male and female relationships, and how in other media products they are sometimes glamorized. I believe that because our film opening depicts the notion of obsession, it reveals the true grittyness of it and how it affects people. This could relate to victims of obsession and the perpetrators themselves.

Evaluation Question 3

What kind of Media Institutions might distribute your media product and why?

After I conducted research into various different media institutions I decided that 'Fox Searchlight Pictures' would be best to distribute my film as it specializes  in independent and British Films alongside horror as well non English language films. Fox Searchlight blends speciality films with trademark art house fare, meaning it has solidified its position in the Independent film marketplace. So considering that our film opening is a British independent it would be distributed best by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Also the film 'One Hour Photo' which I have used a number of times for research was distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures , and this particular film was widely perceived by its target audience as it received no bad reviews. Proving it was distributed well by Fox Searchlight Pictures. I decided that I wanted my film to premiere to sky box office so that it becomes a well known film. I would then like my film to either go onto a Movies on demand service, sky movies or even straight to DVD sales, so that my film becomes well known globally and therefore recognisable.  

Evaluation Question 4

Who would be the audience for you media product?

The audience for my media product would be any one aged over 18, due to the research that I conducted via a questionnaire into the thriller genre we discovered that this age group are the main ages that watch thriller films. Also because our opening contains inappropriate images and swearing it isn't appropriate for anyone under the age of 18 to view it. However with the swearing element we were unsure whether we could include it so in the end we decided to mute in out in the programme 'Imovie' which we were currently editing our footage on.  I discovered the statistic that 6 out of every 10 people prefer to watch a psychological thriller rather than a horror. So this helped to me to stick to the genre that we chose, as it was clear that it is a popular genre and is widely liked amongst people. Also people with a high socio- economic status, so middle class people with high paid jobs, good incomes and a good education were the types of people that we tried to attract. The reason being is that we felt our film opening is complex and sophisticated so we thought that these types of people would understand it best. We also knew that because it was something that socio- economic people wouldn't really see everyday, the film would be unique, different and new due to the fact that its imaginative, creative, disturbing and complex, I believe that it offers a great sense of escapism to all those who watch it.

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/ address your audience?

Our target audience research informed us that we would be attracting and addressing anyone aged over 18. We attracted them through the use of our storyline, as we moulded but challenged the usual conventions of a psychological thriller. So viewers would be unsure and intrigued by what they were seeing as it wouldn't be what they expected. I believe that we attracted our audience because our character is sort of surreal and because he represents several social groups such as males, isolated people he is extremely generalisable to all, and therefore appealing. I think that because we tried emphasise dysfunctional relationships through the notion of obsession and the scenario of stalking, this will draw people in if it is of interest to them. Within our film opening we tried quite hard to use as many conventions as we could of an 18+ film, these include swearing and inappropriate images, however with the swearing element we decided to mute it out. Also through the of suspense and curiosity I believe that this will attract many people, as the film opening would cause them to wonder what's going to happen next further on into the film.


I think that the media element of our film opening will attract our audience, because we aimed to attract middle aged people as well as young, we used traditional way of stalking as well as a modern way of stalking. Through the use of the notice board, this portrays stalking through images and notes,which is a fairly old fashioned way compared to using modern day technology such as the laptop. The laptop emphasised how easy it is to stalk someone through the use of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The laptop is the symbolism of 'voyeurism'. Voyeurism is the sexual interest in 'spying and observing' others, the word 'Voyeurism' comes form the word 'voyer' which translates to watch someone. So we tried to signify this notion of Voyeurism through the use of the laptop and the interest and pleasure that our male character got from looking at the images that were on the laptop. Also I think that by using this contemporary technology we added a modern concept/theme to our opening which helped to attract and address  teen audiences that were over aged just over 18. Whilst we were trying to attract these audiences we realised the problems that occur due to Voyeurism, such as 'one nation under CCTV'.  A  statistic states that a person can be pictured on CCTV over 300 times a day.  Also the lighting , camera angles, storyline, the music and the mise en scene, makes the film opening intriguing and intersting which also helped us to attract our audience.

Evaluation Question 6

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

Through constructing this media product I have learnt a lot about the new modern day technologies that are available to me. I have learnt how to use a Sony hand held camera that has features I have never heard of before. I also learnt how to use  a tripod, MacBook computers, which I found difficult to use to begin with as there are many differences between the functions of them and normal everyday computers. Also I have learnt to use the programme Imovie when constructing my opening, I also found this quite difficult to use as I have never used a programme like it before, however when I was in the process of editing it became a lot easier to use. I did however find it difficult to continually connect the Macbook to the internet each time I used it, through the system and network preferences, I also struggled when trying to upload our videos to Youtube as we encountered several problems. Such as the Macbook would 'time out, insufficient memory space etc'. To solve this problem of uploading we attempted to upload the videos directly to our blogs, however due to the size of our videos this was also a lengthy process and often was unsuccessful. But with repeated attempts the videos successfully saved to our blogs.

I have also learnt about the process of blogging, I am computer literate but I had never used a blog before, so I found the layouts and hyper link buttons difficult to understand and use. The blog is very interactive and creative, I researched how to add 'Prezis' to my blog which helped me in other ways to import documents and images such as logos into my blog aswell. I also have learnt a lot about the video streaming website 'Youtube', I have learnt how to upload videos and add tags to them, which I could not do previously. I think that the biggest achievement I can say I have reached is learning how to edit and use more up to date programmes and software 'Imovie' which proved to be a great programme to use when editing our footage. As within 'Imovie' I learnt how to add transitions to our footage to add to the fluidity of the footage, I also learnt how to add a fade out to the end of our footage so that part of the titles stayed on screen to create a memorable effect. I also learnt how to speed up clips and slow then down which in the end created effective results. Also the other programme that I learnt how to use was 'Garageband', this programme was complicated as there were many functions and so much that you could do on the programme. I learnt how to import soundtracks and how to lower the volume in certain areas, mute parts and time the soundtrack with our film opening. 


Also because our group re- filmed our entire opening, I have learnt about the continuity of lighting and how on the programme 'Imovie' you are not able to brighten up your footage. Even though I had learned how to edit the colour, contrast and saturation of our footage, we were unable to brighten it up enough on the 'Imovie', which resulted in us re-filming it all to achieve a better overall quality.

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?

Looking back at my preliminary task, I can’t believe how much I have learnt and how much the quality and standard differed between my preliminary task and my two minute film opening. If you were to compare the two, you would notice drastic differences between them. I noticed that my preliminary task looked a lot less professional and the editing was jumpy and disconnected. This could have been because when I first started media I wasn’t confident with using up to date technology as Macbooks and software such as Imovie as I have never experienced them before. In my preliminary task I was unsure about camera angles and the effects they would individually create. So I think I have learnt a lot more about camera angles and which ones to use and where to use them. I also have learnt how to edit footage on Imovie which I found really difficult at first, but it got easier over time. In my preliminary task the editing was poor and it didn't contain any transitions, however by learning how to use Imovie, I was able to add transitions and improve the quality of my film opening. Also I think I have learnt how the importance of a good storyline can impact the quality of the finished product. For example in my preliminary task there wasn't much dialogue and the storyline wasn't direct and clear, however in my film opening the storyline and narrative are clear from the start. With my preliminary task I didn't really plan what to do and how to do it, where as I believe I did a lot of planning for my opening. I have realised the importance of planning and how vital it can be. For example I created a number of story boards to help the process of filming. I also feel that I have learnt the importance of titles how they benefit the footage. On the preliminary task we only had titles at the beginning and end of the footage whereas in my opening I incorporated them into the footage, as I had learnt how to do this in the process of editing. The quality of sound is something else that I learnt from my preliminary task, because we filmed outside in several scenes and this impacted the sound, so for this reason I stuck to filming indoors for my opening. So that the sound was understandable and clear. I also learnt that adding a soundtrack really does make the opening a lot better, it creates great effects and it adds a lot to the fluidity of the footage whereas in the preliminary task we didn't have a soundtrack which made it a little dull and boring. So I have learnt that in most occasions music really does benefit the footage and the way that it’s perceived by its audience. I have learnt that meticulous planning is important as you need to be aware of your audience and how to attract them, so this is why I conducted research into the conventions of psychological thrillers so I knew what my audience expected. Also I think I have learnt a lot about selecting the right clips to use, because with the preliminary task we never had a time limit so we could just film whatever, however with our film opening we could only go up to 2 minutes, so I had to select appropriate clips to keep our film opening direct effective and therefore memorable.

His Lady In Red (FIRST DRAFT)

The video above is our first attempt at our Two Minute Film Opening. I managed to upload it to 'YouTube' even after all of the technical problems I encountered. I have evaluated certain aspects of this footage previously, however I will go into more key detail about how we improved in my evaluation considering we re- filmed all of our footage.

Production and Distribution Of "Red Road'

I have also looked into the way in which the film 'Red Road' was produced and distributed.
The Production of the film 'Red Road:
The  film Red Road is part of a unique, three-film concept called Advance Party 

produced by Sigma Films in Glasgow and Zentropa in Denmark. The idea behind Advance Party is that the same group of characters would be given to three different directors who would each have to develop a film around those characters. All the films would shoot for the same length of time in the same city, Glasgow.  Sigma and Zentropa had decided to use first time directors paired with first time producers. 

The distribution of 'Red Road':

The film Red Road was distributed by Tartan Films. Tartan Films is a US and UK film distribution company, founded by US-based Palisades Media Group to take over the film library of Tartan Films after it folded in Summer 2008.

I have found this image by searching for it, in 'copyright free Google images'. I have found all of my other images through this process, by using Google copyright free.

Production and Distribution For 'One Hour Photo'

Now that we have finished constructing our two minute film opening we have looked into how psychological films such as 'One Hour Photo' are produced and distributed. 

The production of 'One Hour Photo':
The writer and director 'Mark Romanek' said his inspiration for 'One Hour Photo' emerged out of "a desire to make a contemporary film in the style of the 'lonely-man' films of the '70s." His influences were drawn from films like "The Conversation," "The Tenant," "Taxi Driver" and "The Passenger."

After completing the script, Romanek sent it to producers 'Christine Vachon' and 'Pamela Koffler' who instantly liked the story. Producer 'Stan Wlodkowski' joined the filmmaking team after learning of the project through a colleague. 

The team instantly set about the task of finding the right actor to fill Sy Parrish's shoes. Koffler says we needed someone with that kind of charisma willing to play a character probably unlike anything they'd ever played before." Whilst researching the production I discovered some interesting facts about the film such as: several of Sy's narrative monologues were removed, and several scenes were re-shot with fewer lines. The original version also has older musical scores that were not used in the final product. Also in accordance with photography being the theme of the movie, many of the characters in the movie take their names from photographers. Robin Williams prepared for the role by actually training for two and-a-half days in a Southern California photo development lab. 

The Distribution of 'One Hour Photo':

The film 'One Hour Photo' is an American psychological thriller that was distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures in the United States. The film's limited release began on August 21, 2002 in seven theaters, opening to a $321,515 weekend, with an average of $45,930 per theater. The film made just over $8 million that weekend, and went on to gross $31,597,131 in the US, with an additional $20,626,175 in overseas territories, for an international total of $52,223,306 , this was a moderate box office success, as the budget was around $12 million.

Problem that occured whilst uploading to 'Youtube'

This print screen above shows the problem that we encountered when trying to upload to 'Youtube'. Whilst trying to publish to 'Youtube an error occured that informed us that the connection has timed out and that our video did not completely upload to 'Youtube'.

The image above shows the pop up box that appeared when we were trying to upload our video. To solve this problem we thought that we could burn our film opening to a disc and then upload the footage from the disc to 'Youtube' and then to our blogs. To do this we will need to convert our video to an IDVD file. This will allow us to upload the footage to our blogs.

Publishing to 'Youtube'

Once we finished out two minute film opening, we attempted to upload it to 'Youtube'. We selected 'Share' on Imovie and chosen share to Youtube'. A pop up box came up and informed us that our movie was exporting and publishing to 'Youtube'.

Voiceover

We always knew that as a group we wanted to add a Voiceover, to our footage to add an autobiographical effect. We thought that by adding a Voiceover it would create a unique first person effect and give the viewers a chance to really understand our male character through his Voiceover. However whilst editing our footage and adding a soundtrack we decided that it was best not to have a Voiceover as it would be over powered by the music even if we lowered the volume in certain parts of our video. So as a group we have decided to just have a soundtrack on our movie rather than adding an autobiographical Voiceover.

Editing Soundtrack on Garageband

We researched and found a piece of music that we thought would go well with our footage. We imported it into a programme called 'Gargage Band', we edited the piece of music by fading it out and manipulating the volume in certain areas to create a great effect. We knew that our footage was only 1 minute 56 seconds long so we knew that we had to fade out the soundtrack before the end of the filming, so that the music doesn't just cut off.

Creating A Logo

LOGO DECISION

As you can see from the image above I have created a Logo for JMP Productions. We were going to add this to our footage so that it appears when the Production name is displayed at the beginning of our film.  However when we tried to add the fonts previously we encountered  problems when trying to add a still image to our moving footage. So as a group we decided against the idea of adding the Logo.

Change in Font Style

Even though I previously created font styles, they were too difficult to incorporate into the footage. So we thought that we would experiment by using a website known as 'Dafont'. We researched the fonts styles on this website and chose styles that we liked and therefore could use on our footage.  Our favourite style was called  'Travelling Typewriter' which I have shown above, we thought that this font would work well on our footage. However we came across many problems when trying to add this font to our filming. The freeze frame below shows the difficulties we faced when adding the font to our opening.

Dafont website Logo

The image above is a freeze frame that we captured when working on the Macs. We found it extremely difficult and very complicated to add the simple style text. In order to add the text , we need to open the font in 'Fireworks' make the background transparent by deleting the white space, and then adding this new font to our freeze frame that we captured from our actual moving footage. When in the process of adding the font we realised that it simply didn't appear the way that we wanted it too, so as a group we decided to use the simple fonts of the programme that were editing our footage on, which was 'Imovie'.

New Printscreen of His Lady In Red in 'Imovie'

The print screen above depicts the new footage that we have filmed. We have edited it on the software called 'Imovie'. We have changed many aspects of each individual clips. We decided to film our two minute film opening again due to the fact that we wasn't happy with our finished piece.  When we first began filming we didn't have a tripod due to there not being enough of them, also we didn't consider lighting and continuity enough, so if there is one thing that we have learnt from our previous filming is that we need to consider all of these things that contribute to the quality of our filming.

When we began filming again, we found it a lot easier as we knew exactly what we had to do and what shots work well in each scene. We took more care when considering continuity and lighting so we knew that the overall quality of our new footage would be better than our previous footage.

Once we re-filmed all of our footage we uploaded it to the programme 'Imovie', we also found it easier to edit as we had past experience. So we once again chose the clips and shots that we wanted to use in our finished piece, we edited them together and added transitions in certain areas to help add flow. We also edited the saturation of each clip, so the lighting looked even more consistent.  We did however have trouble reaching the time limit of 2.00 minutes as when we aded transitions these took away time not added it.

Once we were happy with the new filming, after we had edited it we began looking for the perfect soundtrack. Once we found the copyright free music we imported it into a programme called 'Garageband' and began to edit this certain piece of music. We then added it to our footage and played our filming once the music was successfully added.

Due to the problems that we had when trying to upload the previous opening to 'Youtube' we chose to abort this idea and burn our footage straight to a disc, by converting it to a DVD file.

Printscreen of editing 1st Two Minute Film Opening

This printscreen above is from a programme called 'Imovie', this is the software that we edit our footage on. The print screen shows the first draft of our two minute film opening. We imported the footage to 'Imovie' from the camera and created a new project on the Mac books so we knew that all of our work would be saved in one place.

We began editing by watching all of the clips that we had recorded and we started to select which clips we thought we could use. We then started to edit them together. We split clips, trimmed them, detached the audio, muted clips and we also manipulated the colour saturation and brightness on some of the footage as we thought that many of our clips were too dark and blurry.

Whilst we were editing we would continuously play our footage all the way through, in order to see what we had created so far. I found the software difficult to use at first but it gradually got easier over time. Once we were happy with the footage we decided to add titles. We stuck to the fonts that were already in the programme 'Imovie' as this made them much easier to add to the footage.

When looking through our finished two minute film opening as a group we decided that it was not up to the standard that we wanted to achieve. We knew that whilst filming we didn't pay enough attention to the continuity and lighting of our footage. Because we filmed on two separate days we didn't take into consideration how this would affect our footage.  As you can tell with the last shot of our opening the lighting is much brighter compared to the other clips. Also because we did not have a tripod the camera work is extremely shaky and it brings down the overall quality of our film opening.

So as a group we decided to re-film all of the footage, and think about the effect that the lighting will have on our filming. Also when re-filming we will use a tripod to prevent shaky camera footage.

My Prezi

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Two Minute Film Opening on Prezi

The Prezi above I have created, in order to show all the research and planning that I have done to complete our two minute film opening.

Conventions of Psychological Thrillers

Further into my research I have decided to look at the conventions of Psychological Thrillers, I have listed some of them below:

• Elements that are related to the mind or processes of the mind; they are mental rather than physical in nature. Sometimes the suspense comes from within one solitary character where characters must resolve conflicts with their own minds. Usually, this conflict is an effort to understand something that has happened to them.   We have tried to use this convention within our opening , as with the ending shot we have tried to create mystery, as the viewer will see cuts on our male charcters back and wonder what happedned to him,we leave the viewer with ' the effort to understand something that has happened to the charcater'.
• Thriller – Generally, thrillers focus on plot over character, and thus emphasize intense, physical action over the character's psyche. Psychological thrillers tend to reverse this formula to a certain degree, emphasizing the characters just as much, if not more so, than the plot.
• Psychological thriller – Characters are no longer reliant on physical strength to overcome their brutish enemies ,but rather are reliant on their mental resources, by battling for equilibrium in their own minds.

Second Storyboard

These images are of the second storyboards that we have created. We decided to make certain changes in some of the camera angles and shots that we decided to use. We are sticking to the style of the opening titles, so we are keeping them in the same postion and we are also keeping them on screen for the same duration of time. The main changes that we have made to the plan of our two minute film opening is the idea that the male charcter begins smelling some red clothing to create a disturbing effect. Also at the end of the filming we have decided to use the same shot that we used at the start as this will add a unique effect. We also have chosen to have an unusual ending shot of the male character with his back all scarred, we will create this scarred effect using makeup and red pen. The male character will be holding a belt and he will snap the belt twice and the door will begin to close, we shall then hear cries of pain. We have also decided to add the name of the film on the door as it closes, so that it is the last thing that the viewer will see.

Deciding on Location

Before we began any filming we decided where to actually film our opening. We discussed what areas and specific locations would be suitable for portraying the life of our male stalker. Max's house became most suitable, because we were going to have our male stalker search the internet on google maps and find our female victims house. Only we changed this idea and only filmed our male stalker in his room, as we believed this portrayed a more creepy and misogynistic person. Also I thought that Max's room would show a lot more about our male charcters nature then just following him to the victims house. So the Location therfore outlines the character and it has become a major aspect in our film opening.

This is an image of the Location that we plan to film, I have researched on Google Maps and uploaded a picture so that we know exactly where we are going to film our opening. We will be filming in Max's bedroom, as this was the most suitable location to film.

Changes of Cast

When filming we realised that the amount of footage we accumulated was already over two minutes. We had a group discussion and decided to only film Max Winnall in his room and try to convey his troubled mind without introducing any other characters. So we therefore decided not to film Charlotte in our opening, as we knew if we did the footage would be over 2 minutes.

Male Character - Max Winnall 

Casting our two minute film opening

Casting 
When casting for our two minute film opening, we realised that we only needed 2 characters, we needed a male stalker and a female victim. We decided to cast Max Winnall as our male stalker and Charlotte Hale as our female victim, they were both willing to play these certain characters. 

Font Research

I have conducted some font research for our opening titles. I have created three specific designs and as a group we decided on which design was our favourite. We used various fonts to create various effects. Overall we decided that 'Design 2' was our favourite, so we will apply this style to the text of our opening titles. The designs that I created are below. However we have taken into consideration that when we begin to edit our footage and add opening titles that the fonts may change as there may be better suited styles on the software that we will use to edit our footage.

Props to use for our Film Opening

NOTICE BOARD

Above is the image of the storyboard that I have created, to add to the mise-en scene of our filming. I have printed images of our male characters previous victims and I have also added notes about our female victims schedule. This notice board is an artistic feature that adds an extreme aspect of realism to our filming. We have used images of our female victims because they appear more effectective, than just their names which was our original idea. Also the images emphasise the misogynistic nature of our male character and how in fact he stalks and kills women.

FOLDER/BOOK

This image is of the book that we have used in our filming. As you can see we have added images of our stalkers victims and words suchs as: sin, death, pain etc, to add a disturbing effect. Our male character opens this folder and adds an image to it, we knew that we wanted to show this folder through the use of a close up, so the text had to be visible and readable, but still look effective.

LAPTOP

This picture is of the laptop that will contain the folders/names of the previous victims. This prop is vital as it is shows the main notion of technology helping a stalker. We want to have folders of his previous victims to reiterate the fact that he is obsessed with women. However whilst filming we discovered that it was difficult to read the names that were on screen as when the camera was pointed at the screen the screen began to flash and it therefore bought the quality of the footage down and made it difficult to watch. However we have still decided to use this scene as we think it shows alot about our male charcter and how he has used this piece of technology to his benefit.

More Props for our Film Opening

BELT

This image above is of a belt that we have used in final shot of our filming. We didnt show this prop on screen but we used it for the digetic and realistic sound it creates when our male character snaps it. The sound of the belt snapping, the scars on the characters back and the cries of pain make the last shot believable. 

 CHARACTERS BACK - CREATED THROUGH MAKEUP + PEN

This image above is of the male characters back, I created this scarred effect, by using red pen and make up to create the appearance of cuts and scars. This also makes the final shot believable as it adds a great effect. We tried to make them as realistic looking as possible and also quite bright so that they would be visible on screen.

Intial Storyboard

This is our first intial storyboard.We have mapped out the begining sequence to our film, but we will probably make subtle changes whilst filming if we discover things work better in another way.

Opening Title Sequence Planning Sheet

Here I have uploaded a Opening Sequence Title Planning Sheet. We used this as a kind of brief and specification as we found it much easier to have all of our information on one sheet. We have included the plot/outline and summary, mise en scene,locations, settings,props and lighting. We are going to take all of these aspects into consideration when filming our 2 minute opening.

British Board Of Film Classification (Age Rating of our film)

I have researched into the age rating of films and how films are actually rated. I found that the best website for this part of my research was the British Board Of Film Classification, I used the age guidelines hyperlink in order to navigate my way to the specific page. Because me and my group have decided that our fillm will be rated at an '18', I have linked only this part of the website to my blog below. We rated our film at 18 because the conventions of our film opening fitted the criteria on the BBFC website.

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/18-2/

Target Audience Research

What is a Target Audience?
The Target Audince for a film is the specific group of people within the target market at which the film is aimed at. A target audience can be formed of people of a certain age group,gender, marital status, and more. A Target Audeince is extremely important when producing a film, 'who will it be aimed at', 'who will it appeal to' are all common questions when producing a film.

Deciding the Target Audience for our film:
We conducted research via a questionaire into the thriller genre and what age group of people mainly watch thriller films. We discovered that the majority of people who watch thrillers are 18+, this age group is therefore our target audience. Moreover we are aiming our film at people with a high socio- economic status. So middle class people with a good education, a good occupation and a good income. This Target Audience research has also helped us to decide on the age rating of our film, which will be 18+ because we plan to include images that may be deemed inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18 to see, also we may include swearing in our film opening, so it was best to just rate our film as an 18.


Here are the examples of the questionaires we conducted and the results we recieved. based on our Target Audience and Age Rating.

This is the Original Copy of the Questionaire. We then gave the questionaire to three of our classmates to gain their preferences on thriller films and what they thought a thriller film should be rated at.

 

These are some of the responses we received when asking people to participate with our questionnaire.

Video Inspiration 3 (NEW CONCEPT)

The video above is the Opening Titles from the film 'Seven'. We have used this video as inspiration as we like the style of the titles. I like how they are incorporated into the filming, which is the style that we wanted to replicate. This adds a surreal and creepy effect to the footage. The font of the text / titles is a sort of scribbly, etchy handwriting style, this style of font suits the footage as it sort of reveals something about the nature of the film. We want our font style to match the footage that we record and therefore reveal subtle hints about the storyline of our film.

Video Inspiration 2 (NEW CONCEPT)

This is the trailer for the film "One Hour Photo'. This film is about a man who becomes obsessed with a family through developing their family photographs. The film is powered by the haunting and chilling performance by Robin Williams. Robin Williams fades away from our senses and slips into the ever so sweet and innocent yet psychotic role of a supermarket's photo developer.The way in which Stalking is represented in this film is somewhat different to the way I want to portray stalking in our two minute film opening. This film shows a man who becomes obsessed and begins to stalk a family after developing their photograpghs ,this is a fairly old fashioned notion of stalking someone. So like the trailer, (Red Road) I want to show stalking in a new and inticingly scary way.

Video Inspiration 1 (NEW CONCEPT)

This video is the official trailer for the film 'Red Road'. The film revolves around a ceratin type of obsession and stalking. The films plot is fairly unusual as the stalker in this film is actually a woman, this notion of a female stalking a male totally subverts and goes against the sterotypical norms of a man being stronger and superior to a woman. This feature makes the film fairly interesting and enticing. This video has inspired me to use stalking as a central theme, only I know that I want a male to portray the stalker in my film opening. The film shows how easy it is to stalk someone through modern technology devices that are easily accessable to anyone with a computer. So we want to use modern technology to emphasise this certain aspect.

Complete Planning For Our 2 Minute Film Opening

Opening Titles

We are going to incorporate our opening titles into our filming. We will begin filming by moving the camera towards a door, the door will open to reveal a man sitting down in a room. The man will then approach the notice board in order to pin up a note about our victims schedule. There will then be a close up of the notice board to show his victims daily schedule. This shot will contain a name for the beginning of the opening titles. He then walks towards the computer screen and sits down on the floor. We will then do an over the shoulder shot to reveal what he is looking at on the computer screen.Here we will see, several folders of names which are in fact his previous victims. There will also be another name which is part of the opening titles screen. We will then use a pannning shot to show a folder that will have part of the opening titles on its cover.

First scene

Our male character will open a folder which will reveal disturbing images of his victims. Giving the viewers an insight into his frightening nature. At this moment we will edit in a voiceover of the male charcters thoughts which will link to the images in the book.Whilst our male character is looking at the book we will include some non diegetic music playing in the background, to add a mysterious effect.

Male Characters Voiceover

( Dialogue + Script )

Emily Weston – She was my first embrace, the first time I found myself. She was a difficult one, she was a screamer I soon put an end to that. A tongue on the floor says it all.

Julie Andrews- Second was Sparky. She was a sight for sore eyes as her body lit up with volts.

Mary Anne- The tool. She was a vain one, she knew she could get whoever she wanted, so I soon used a tool on her. A screwdriver to the temple and a hammer to the head took care of her vanity.

Amy Brooks- The sizzler. Burning flesh smells so unique. Just like her. Petrol buried her scent, so I buried her beneath the flames.

Charlotte Hale- She will be my fifth lady in red. My Sistine chapel, my current addiction, maybe she will be different, she just might listen.

Second Scene

This scene will show the male charcter shutting the book and exiting the room. The next shot will show our male character in the garden, in which he will then climb a fence and look through some binoculars. We will edit black circles onto our filming to show an eye line match to show that he is only looking at her. To emphasise that she is the most important person to him. We will film from a distance towards a window, which will show Charlotte in her room.

Research into Stalking

In order to make the stalking aspect of our film opening as realistic as possible, I researched into the issue of stalking and how it effects people.

Stalking is a term commonly used to refer to unwanted and obsessive attention by an attention by an individual or group to another person.Stalking behaviours are referred to as harassment and intimidation and may include  following the victim or even monitoring them. Stalking can be defined as the wilful and repeated following, watching or harassing another person. Unlike other crimes they an be a one time offence/ act whereas stalking is a series of actions that occur over a period of time. Although stalking is illegal some of the actions that can contribute to stalking are initially legal such as gathering information, calling someone on the phone, sending  gifts, emailing or instant messaging. They become illegal when they breach the legal definition of harassment . e.g an action such as sending a text is not usually illegal , but becomes illegal when frequently repeated to an unwilling recipient.


When conducting my research I discovered that there are several types of stalkers. I have listed some of them below:

• Rejected Stalkers- pursue their victims in order to reverse, correct, or avenge a rejection, e.g (divorce, separation,termination of a relationship).
• Resentful Stalkers- pursue a vendetta because of a sense of grievance against the victim, the stalker is mainly motivated by the desire to frighten and distress the victim.
• Intimacy Seekers- seek to establish an intimate, loving relationship with their victim. To many of them the victim is a long - sought after soul mate, and they were 'meant' to be together.
• Incompetent Suitors-, despite poor social skills or courting skills, these type of stalkers have a fixation or in some cases a sense of entitlement to a relationship with those who have attracted them their amorous interest. their victims are most often already in a relationship with someone else.
• Predatory Stalkers- spy on their victims in order to prepare and plan an attack- often of a sexual nature on the victim.

I think that our male stalker will be most similar to that of a 'Predatory Stalker', as our male character spies on our victim in order to attack her and then eventually kill her like his previous victims. This research has helped me to pin the conventions and mannerisms of a stalker, to make the stalking aspect in our film opening more realistic and believable. 

Change In Film Name

Now that we have come up with a new concept we decided to change the name of our film, so that it suited the new concept and gave some insight into what the film would be about. We didn't want to change the title a lot , only a subtle change would benefit the new idea, so we changed the name from 'The Lady In Red' to 'His Lady In Red'. We believe that this name suits the new idea more as it suggests that the victim belongs to him (our male stalker) that she is his possesion. That she is in fact 'His' Lady In Red.

The new film name:   'His Lady In Red'