Our Creative Evaluation

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Opening Sequence Evaluation

OPENING SEQUENCE EVALUATION
1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our thriller product incorporates generic conventions in relation to the professional thriller movies for example Inception. In our production we have clearly challenged and conformed to the psychological thriller genre. To exemplify one of our main conventions is that the protagonist endures a series of psychological and emotional distress rather than physical harm. This is seen whilst the main character under goes confusion and shock as she is not able to understand and is captivated in the antagonists games. This complements our sub-genre and indicates that our production is a psychological thriller. Soundtracks are an significant element of a thriller genre as they contribute to the overall tone and mood of the narrative. Black Swan was an inspirtational opening sequence to our initial soundtrack as it incorprated dramatic sound effects creating emphasis upon emotion and the captivation of the protagonist. Similarly we used dramatic and high picthed sounds to complete this sense of darkness and struggle to relate to our original choice of genre. The effective camera techniques used in Shutter Island encorouged our variation of shots. Close ups were used in bringing attention to our antagonists sinister appearance similar to how Shutter island incorprates close ups to reveal the identity of its antagonists. We were able to create a sense of ambiguity as what appeared on screen was not apparent to the other characters but only the protagonist. From research we were able to gather ideas and characteristics from other professional films influencing our narrative. For example the main character in Woman In Black suffers from hallucinations as he sees a spirit of a woman who is successful in distorting his life. Similarly, in our sequence the main character suffers from hallucinations as only she can see the antagonist. The reporter has fallen prey to its predator once she enters the psychiatric unit in a bid to re-open a closed and restricted file. The mind game that is played here is that the protagonist meets a demon soul who realistically does not exist in the eyes of the other characters. This concept builds enigma as the audience are certainly not aware of the on goings, this is an effective technique incorporated in many thriller conventions as it lures the audience in, attracting their attention and making them eager to find out the truth at the end.

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?Within the first few minutes of our sequence there are 4 characters that are introduced all of different racial backgrounds. This appeals to different social groups as it isn’t based on one ethnicity. The main character is of an Asian background, and is around 17-20 years of age, our antagonist is around 27-30 years of age this expands the age range and allows a variety of age ranges to watch our sequence but it appeals more to 16+ whom are our target audience. The female protagonist is dressed smartly and is well presented showing she is from a middle class background whereas our antagonist has rough hair, bad skin and is roughly dressed, but as she was a metal patient we can not stereotype her to a certain class but she has the stereotypical traits of a mental patient. Our characters fit well within the stereotypical traits of their representation. This fits in well with our target audience as from our primary research and character profile we created the character that attracts our target audience the most. In most thriller films, the dominant character tends to be male, so we decided to make the dominant characters in our opening sequence all females to stop any stereotypes linked to thriller films. When we did our questionnaire asking what the audience preferred in a psychological thriller film a lot of the females said they are bored of always seeing a male represented as the dominant character and the female represented as the passive character, so we thought we would take what they said into consideration and make the dominant characters in our opening sequence females.

3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?Our media product is a typical psychological based thriller which is similar to some products within the same sub-genre. For example, Shutter Island directed by Martin Scorsese or Black Swan by Darren Aronofsky. Our film could be produced by popular Hollywood studios such as Paramount Pictures or Fox Searchlight Pictures because they produce films like ours. Our film would be available at cinemas first and then available on platforms such as iTunes for Apple products and Play Store for Android products which would make it easily available to a wide range of individuals and finally TV. As a group, we recognised the fact that most people have iPads or Android products where they would rather watch movies on anywhere and at anytime of the day. We felt it would be a great idea to release the film on these platforms first before releasing it on TV and DVD. We would not be producing any form of merchandise because we do not think it would be necessary and appealing to our target audience. We asked a couple of people who said they enjoyed our media opening sequence and they said there would be no point making any form of merchandise because personally they won’t buy them as they have passed the age where merchandise is found attractive. So, we therefore decided to listen to our target audience in order to save money by reducing costs and avoiding a dicey situation.

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
Through extensive research (primary and secondary), we came to a conclusion that the best possible target audience that our film appeals to would included both males and females aged 16 to 45. The reason for this is that this target audience are specified as imaginative, creative and desire an experience of thrill. We got our results from the questionnaires we gave out, findings from the internet, creation of a pie chart and lastly a simple drawing done in accordance to the idea of how the audience would like the appearance of the main character. From the questionnaires we gave out, we discovered a lot about our target audience and what they liked. They stated that they preferred the psychological thriller sub-genre. Like the film Shutter Island, our main character is mentally disabled but is the antagonist and it also appeals to the exact age group. We realised that the people who would enjoy our film would mostly be students and middle aged adults. Most of them have similar hobbies and interests and this made us come to a conclusion that if we released our film in the cinema, they would view it there.

5) How do you attract/address your audience?
Nowadays, we always hear people complaining about how there are never any good films out so we asked random people what they preferred through questionnaires and surveys, so that we could be able to make something that they would like and would enjoy watching. We also wanted to make our film multicultural to prevent individuals judging us for not including people from different cultural backgrounds. We began to attract our target audience from the moment Nina Ward (the main character) was introduced to the audience in her room. We found out that our target audience believed women are always portrayed as passive in most thriller movies, so we took this into consideration by making our main character female and by giving her a complicated role as seen in the opening sequence. Although she is in a mental institution, she’s the antagonist as the audience see towards the end when she confuses the reporter who decides to pay her a visit.

6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
We have gained so many skilled from the process of constructing the product. We used a variety of technologies to create our final product. For example, we learnt how to use the video camera we were given, by playing around with the different buttons to see what the camera was capable of doing. We learnt how to focus, zoom and blur. We all had a go at using the camera from the preliminary task to the final production. We also used a program called Final Cut Express to edit our video footage. This was a bit challenging at first because it was new to us and there were so many icons available, but we were giving a set of instructions by our teacher which helped us to familiarize ourselves with the program. When creating the soundtrack for our animatic, we had to use Garageband. It was an exciting experience and also a very useful application because we were able to play around with the various sounds available on it to create our soundtrack. After uploading our footage and editing, we realized that our initial soundtrack did not match the edited video, so we decided to adjust it by taking bits out and adding new sounds to go with specific scenes in our opening sequence. We also used QuickTime to transfer the moving image for our production logo to Final Cut Express which was quite challenging until a member of our group was able to do it.

7) Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Since the creation of our preliminary task, we learnt a great deal of skills not only about filming and editing but also how to work as a team and also how to conduct different forms of research. The preliminary task was incredibly helpful when it came to producing our final opening sequence. We learnt how to use the camera and tripod efficiently, for example, during the preliminary task; we learnt how to handle the camera and how to record and rewind video footage's without connecting it to the computer. We also learnt how to attach and detach the camera from the tripod safely. We found the use of the two equipments easy which made the filming of our actual opening sequence straightforward and well-organised. The preliminary task also gave us ideas of what setbacks with might encounter and how we would have to deal with the problems. For example, we realised we might have problems with lighting due to the time of the day our filming would take place, also camera angles and not bridging the 180◦ rule. We realised that we broke the 180◦ rule in our preliminary task, so we tried our best to avoid that occurring during the actual filming process.
When it came to editing the preliminary task, we were exposed to a lot of effects and sounds that we liked and we thought we would most likely use in our final opening sequence. We also decided to get images that looked like what we were trying to portray in our final opening sequence storyboard compared to our preliminary task storyboard where we had bad drawings of what we were going to do. Overall, by accomplishing our preliminary task, as a group we feel it had a huge impact on how our actual opening sequence came out. The fact that we were exposed to the equipment and software early by practising with the preliminary task made our opening sequence a great success.

Poster/DVD cover for our film

                                  This is the front cover for our opening sequence.

Despite initially agreeing to release our poster in unison with the opening sequence we decided that by releasing it before hand will advertise and promote it before as this is how it works in the film industry. This will ensure that we appeal and attract our target market well before the release of it, but as it is not a full film and only an opening sequence we have still adopted the idea of promoting our opening sequence in order give it the full effect and advertise our whole narrative if we were to create a whole movie.
Just like we analysed different aspects to different films, i.e. Mis-en-scene, sound, camerawork etc we also analysed different front covers that would fit will with our opening sequence.
Initially we tried taking pictures from the actual sequence and trying to merge them together in order to give an insight of what the film would be like, but we then felt that this may give away vital scenes that should only be seen once in order to make the audience jump. Through this we came up with the idea of simply taking pictures of our antagonist and keeping it simple resulting in our audience wanting to find out more.
These were among some of the covers that inspired us with what we have created. The different styles of titles, text, pictures, backgrounds, the way the casts name is spread out etc

For our final poster we first thought about taking screen shots of some scenes out of the actual production, but we came across the issue of different lighting and positioning. So we did a small photoshoot of our antagonist as using shots from the sequence was a worry that vital scenes might be given away. We used the research from the target audience and created a character which appealed to thee. The three single pictures of our antagonist were taken at different angles and lighting, these were the ones we thought were the best out of all the ones we took. We decided to go with the picture on the top left as it made our antagonist look vulnerable yet mysterious. After selecting this we tried merging the image of a burning house and the antagonist together to try and explain the burn on her face, but we faced a lot of difficulties as the picture of the house would stand out too much making the other picture disappear, so we decided to play around with other backgrounds to see if it would work better. Then we came up with out first draft of the poster (the second one in from the left, top row). We thought this would work, but it failed to appeal to our sequence and our target audience as it didn't fit the genre. Again by playing around many different backgrounds on photoshop we came up with the final product to which we all were satisfied with. The final product didn't give away too much and gives a small clue to our target audience about what its about. By making it negative it makes more mysterious as throughout the opening sequence her full face again isn't visible.

Opening sequence for our thriller film

Opening Sequence Character Types

We have looked at different thriller opening sequences and what type of characters are shown in the first two minutes of the film. This gives our group some sort of idea as to what characters we should include in our opening sequence and how we should portray these characters to the viewers. In some opening sequences of films the characters that are shown are not portrayed as clearly as they are through-out the entire film which means its very important to give off the right impression for the viewers so it doesn't make things confusing for them.

Just because the genre of our film is thriller, that doesn't necessarily mean that the first characters you see have to be the antagonist or the villain, in fact the first character that the viewers see could be innocent and lovely characters which lead to the antagonists.

In these opening sequences that i found i will be explaining how they are all different in terms of what characters are portrayed during the first two minutes...

THE WOMAN IN BLACK

In the opening sequence of the film 'the woman in black', we the viewers are straight away introduced to three characters that are young girls all playing together with tea cups and dolls. Now this is what i mentioned earlier by the characters not always being the antagonist and in fact being the innocent characters that being grow to love through-out the film, however in this case the three characters sadly come to a fast end where at the end of the opening sequence they all jump out of the window, making the opening sequence such a extreme beginning to a film. However, at the very end of the opening sequence we get a glimpse of a dark figure in the corner of the screen, this character is the main character in the film and it gives the audience an idea of what kind of character to expect during the film. This character would definitely be classed as the antagonist.

By watching this it showed our group that you don't always have to start the film off with an negative character and that you can start off with the protagonist. But at the same time you can show the antagonist at the same time without giving to much away as to who the characters are in terms of what they are and how they are going to be during the film.



SHUTTER ISLAND

There are two characters in the first two minutes of 'Shutter Island'. The first is a character who when first shown is a middle aged man, wearing a suit, long coat and hat. This says that he is quite a high class man, also the fact that he is the first character we see in the film could say that he is an important character and could be through-out the film. However, this may not be true, he may not be important at all and may just in fact be a character to start the film off, but in this case he is the main character in the film. When he walks out to the second character shown in the first two minutes he seems on edge because of his sea sickness. The second character reefers to the first character as boss which tells the viewers that he isn't as important as the first character and is slightly lower down in class, yet he is wearing similar things to the first character in terms of suit, coat and hat. By only watching the opening sequence of the film we cant really tell what type of characters the two portrayed are or who they are in relation to the film, only that the first character seen is slightly higher in class than the second one and is the second characters boss. So saying this we cant tell as viewers whether they are the antagonists or the protagonists, this is yet to discover by watching the rest of the film. By showing these to men in the first two minutes it leaves the audience asking lots of questions in terms of who they are, why are they on a ship, where are they going etc.. This is like i mentioned earlier when talking about the 'The woman in black' where they are showing you the characters but they don't want to give to much away by showing who is the antagonist or not.



by watching these two opening sequences we can see that the characters can be whoever we want and how ever many of them that we want, just so long that we don't give too much away in the first two minutes of the film. The characters could be protagonists or antagonists, but you don't want to confuse the character for both otherwise it will make it confusing for the viewers through-out the rest of the film.

Roles and contribution to the production

While making the opening sequence everyone all wanted to take part in helping the production come together in one way or another, whether that was filming, editing, acting or just helping out with costumes. As a group we all thought it would be a good idea for all of us to do a part of everything and to really get involved, this also helped us share any opinions or ideas that we each had get put out there, because we were put into a group it wouldn't be fair to stop anyone from sharing what they thing about anything in particular so everyone in the group had their say.

We all had a turn filming different scenes, this let everyone see what angles or movements were being used and whether they worked or not.

When it came to editing we all sat around a computer and worked together as a team to put the opening sequence together so that we all knew that everyone was happy with the end result and also so that if anyone spotted anything that they didn't agree with or that they didn't like then it meant that we could easily change it because we were all there together.

With the costumes, Rabiha (reporter) wore some of her own clothing so that wasn't a problem, the issue we had was trying to find something that the two Patients and the doctor could where, this was where all of us as a group discussed what we thought would work best and we came up with the idea of using some of the science lab coats from school, of course we asked for permission and everything was fine. We made Fern (doctor) where the lab coat normally, seeing as she was a doctor and needed to look professional, then we made Marnie and Emma (the two patients) also wear lab coats but to wear them backwards to try and get the effect of a stray jacket, adding to the realism of the fact that they are both in an asylum.

To make the Make-up more professional and realistic for the viewers we wanted to try and find someone who knew what they were doing and who also knew how to do things like blood and scars, this is because the main character Marnie has been in an accident and we wanted to make sure that any injuries that she had we got across to the viewers. Some of the girls in the group knew a girl who was fantastic at doing gruesome make-up effects and making Marnie look disgusting, Nelly Stevenson said that she would be happy to help out with the make-up, she was also doing media with the year above as well which meant that she understood what kind of effect we were trying to get across. After trying to explain to her what we were aiming to do, she interpreted it into a work or art and we couldn't be more grateful.

When we told about the acting we were told that we didn't actually have to act at all and that we could in fact find people from outside the media class to do it for you, However most of us did want to act as that was we felt that we were completely involved n the opening sequence. Marnie was chosen to be the main character (Nina Ward) and she was more than happy to do it, Rabiha was nominated to be the second main character as the reporter. Emma wanted to be part of the film but she wasn't to keen on being a big role which wasn't a problem at all, so we all said that she should be the second patient (Fern Willow), this character doesn't have any dialogue she just had to stand there and look ill and she played that part brilliantly. We did have a bit of trouble finding someone to be the Doctor who guides Rabihas character to Marnie's character, but luckily we did find someone who was willing to play the role, this was Marnie's sister Fern. She had been doing acting and plays for most of her life so we thought that she would be perfect for a role like this and she was just what the group was looking for.

The music was something that we all again wanted to have a part in as it was quite an important part of the opening sequence, so like the editing, we all sat down together and went through all the different sounds and effects that we could use to make the sound that we were aiming for, it did take a while to put it all together, but because everyone put all their effort into making it the perfect soundtrack it was finished and ready to be put with the actual film.

So though-out the production of the opening sequence everyone in the group got involved as much as they could to make sure that it was the best of everyones abilities and that it was something that everyone was happy with.

Credits

(A BLAZE PICTURES PRESENTS)

CAST

Nina Ward - Marnie Ward

        Reporter - Rabiha Yackub

   Doctor - Fern Ward

              Fern Willow - Emmanuelle Ugbomah

EDITING

Emmanuelle Ugbomah

Marnie Ward

Rabiha Yackub

Saahirha Nadeem

DIRECTING

Emmanuelle Ugbomah

Marnie Ward

Rabiha Yackub

Saahirha Nadeem 

MAKE-UP/COSTUME

Nelly Stevenson

Marnie Ward

Rabiha Yackub

MUSIC

Emmanuelle Ugbomah

Marnie Ward

Rabiha Yackub

Saahirha Nadeem

THE UNSEEN CASE                       

As we are just making an opening sequence to a film and not the whole thing, the credits will be shown throughout the production, this makes it look more like a more professional opening sequence.

Research on credits

We did some research on the end credits in films so that we as a group could get an insight into what ww needed to include in the credits to make it look more professional. This meant looking at actual film credits and what was included in them. Here is what we found...

A ................ Productions presents (in our case BLAZE PRODUCTIONS)

A ........... Film

Cast (In order of main characters)

Make-up/costume

Edited by

Produced by

Directed by

Music

And the sometimes they would have the name of the film.

This gives us a rough idea of what is needed to be put into our end credits for our film to make it look more professional for the viewers, it also allows everyone to see who did what during the production that might have been mentioned or seen anywhere else.

Obstacles and disruptions during filming

While filming we did come across some disruptions or issues which did affect our first initial ideas for the film. It meant that because of some of the disruptions that we had to change what we were originally thinking of doing for certain scenes, at times we had to re-shoot some of the angles and movements that we used with the camera etc...

Here are some of the issues that we as a group came across:

STAFF

By staff we mean staff at the harvester which is where our film is set. One of our main scenes was going to be placed in the office of the harvester to make the scene feel more professional and realistic for the viewers. However, there was the problem that the staff did often come upstairs to use the office for their work so unfortunately we had the problem of having to wait for them to finish what they needed to do before we could film again, meaning stop and starting the filming. This effected time for shooting which we found was a massive issue that we had to in some way overcome if we wanted to carry on with the film.
                                                   
SIBLINGS

Along the same lines of people walking through the filming and getting in the way, as we were filming at group members house, her siblings were very intrigued into what we were doing and what to be a part of it just as much as the rest of us, meaning one of us having to keep trying to get them out of the way and occupied. Another issue we cam across with the children is that while filming the scene in a bedroom, the children were in the bedroom next door which was easily picked up on the camera, to try and overcome this issue we tried removing the children from the bedroom next door and taking them somewhere where the noises they were making wouldn't get picked up on the camera and eventually we managed to sort things out and carry on with what we needed to do.
                                                           
FLOORING

When we were discussing where is was that we needed to film and what worked best we thought that the main hallway in the upstairs would work well for the main ending scene. However, because the hall way is used by all the harvester staff constantly, the floor had started to make a creaking sound as you walked on it, and unfortunately it wasn't a little creaking sound either, it was clearly picked up on camera and sometimes it even went over the dialogue which caused a great deal of problems. We tried walking around the creaking parts of the flooring but it didn't seem to do us any favours, in the end we decided that actually we didn't need the dialogue and to just have music playing over film instead, the only piece of dialogue that we would be using would be at the end when one of the characters would have one line to say.
                                                             
LIGHTING

Now lighting is an issue that most people come across if they are filming a video or making a production, it was definitely something that our group were faced with quite a few times in the process of making our film. There was the incidental lighting we used as some of the lights were dimming lights, so while editing we did spot that sometimes the light was always at the same brightness throughout the whole thing. Also the natural light coming from outside was a major problem at stages during the production, we noticed that while filming the office scene that it was quite dark outside, whereas when filming in the bedroom it was bright daylight outside, so some changes had to be made there where we had to re-film certain scenes but as a group we managed to work through those issues.
                                                                 
MAKE-UP

With the make-up the issue that we had was that the person who created the make-up for our antagonist wasn't always able to apply the look whenever we needed her. So in that sense we had to work around when she was free and able to work with us. Fortunately she was very flexible and was able to work at times that was also good for our group, but by Nelly (make-up artist) not always being able to be there to do the make up for us we decided to get all of the parts where you could see the make-up in the film done and out of the way so that we new all we had to do was edit and put everything together.

When you first see 'Nina Wards' character you see her case file picture, in the picture it is supposed to be her from when she had the accident but had started to heal and recover from what had happened. For this make-up we did one whole side of her face severely distorted and severely bruised to show that she has been in a serious accident but was slowly starting to recover. All of the other times through-out the opening sequence when you see the antagonists character her face will be as if she has just come out of the accident, meaning that her face is very bloody and burnt, giving it a sinister effect 
                                                                 
SPACE

By space we mean that sometimes when were in certain rooms (bedroom), that it was at times a bit tight when it came to fitting everybody into the shot or being able to stand behind the camera so that we could see what we were doing, which meant that someone had to keep going back and forth to see if the camera was at the right angle and the lighting was appropriate for the scene. Fortunately it was only really the bedroom that we had the space issue with, everywhere else in the harvester ha plenty of space for us to use for whatever we needed to complete our film.

The four of us as a group all worked together and came up with ideas to overcome these problems that we were faced with.
                                                                          

Rough cut

After presenting our rough cut to our class we got feedback from 3 of the groups on how to improve our sequence we were given a set of questions that we needed to answer for each opening sequence the questions are as following:

1) How well have the technical areas been produced? (camerawork, editing, sound and mis-en-scene) 

2) How well has the genre characteristics been used? can you identify the sub-genre?

3) What do you like about the rough cut?

4) How can they improve the rough cut and what criticism can you give the group?

The first set of feed back we got was:

Group 1 feedback:

1) - Good Sound - Dialogue and ambient sounds were clear.

    - Location was good as the room was plain.

    - Low key lighting may of added to the mysterious feel.

    - Good use of make-up and costume. 

    - Camerawork could be more accurate.

2) The beginning of the rough cut is what gives the main characters of a thriller, it also helps to add    

    meaning and gives it an edgy feel. psychological thriller is easy to identify 

3) The makeup and costume is what makes the rough cut professional and realistic, the acting was on     

    point.

4) To improve the rough cut you could keep the camera still whilst in the hall way, 

    different shots need to be used. 

Group 3 feedback:

1)  The camera work in the first shot is effective and professional however the second shot is wobberly       

     and the harsh lighting takes the attention slightly away from the actresses. 

    Good acting. The zoom is blurry and slightly unclear.

    Good, effective, costume and makeup.

2) Psychological thriller is clear as we can see that the woman is confused about what's going on. The     

    mis-en-scene and camera work help to show the audience this genre as the characteristics are     

    realistic. 

3) The original narrative. The setting is professional and matches well. Costume and paper work props 

    work well.

4) Camera work needs to be steady and focused, lighting could be improved. 

Group 4 feedback:

1) Camerawork - good angles.

    Sound - Nice sound, we like the police siren added.

    Mis-en-scene - brilliant costume/make up and also good acting. 

    Editing - Smooth editing 

2) Psychological thriller, is obvious because of make up and acting. Also back of 'patient' builds  

    enigmas, white costume implies mental institution. 

3) We really like costume and make up. We are confused already and asking questions 32 seconds. 

4) Some camerawork was a bit shakes (the zoom) more explanations as to why its 'her turn'

    Make editing faster and a bit more slower at points.