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

div class="prezi-player">

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.