Evaluation Post 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The opening to 'Shadow of Your Past' challenges certain conventions of the crime/thriller genres, while using and developing others, such as the narrative and style of the genre. We did this to make sure that our sequence felt fresh, but was easily identifiable as part of it's genre.

The narrative of 'Shadow of Your Past'

'SOYP' tells the story of successful lawyer Shania Mollcott who is being stalked by the just-released rapist Jeff Richardson who she helped convict. When Richardson finally manages to capture Molcott he keeps her locked up in an abandoned shack and threatens her. She almost manages to escape, but is captured once again. The police find out where Molcott is being held and start to plan how to get her out. They burst in and have a shootout with Richardson which he manages to escape from. By the end of the film Molcott has had to relocate and change her name, as Richardson is still on the loose.

Form

My opening sequence uses many conventions for film openings, such as introducing the main character, by focusing on Shania Molcott's morning routine, and establishing the location, which is done through the shots of the home and the street. This is shown in the stalker film 'P2' (2007), which starts off with one long unbroken establishing shot of the garage setting before introducing the main character.

Our sequence is also conventional in that it sets the tone for our film, with it's tension and threat. This is common in films of all genres, and is shown aptly by one of our main inspirations, thriller 'Se7en' (1999), where the titles are shown over disturbing music with dark and disturbing visuals.

       

Overall, I believe my opening sequence does an apt job of using the typical conventions of an opening title sequence by introducing the  main characters, the London setting and the tone.

Genre

The following presentation focuses on crime/thriller conventions and how we attempted to implement them into our sequence.



Narrative structure

The presentation below looks at the way we used genre conventions to create our narrative structure:



We also used Barthes codes to make our sequence more narratively interesting - for example by using the action code to create the red herring situation, as the viewer will assume due to the previous shots establishing Richardson's presence, that he is the person running up behind an unaware Molcott. Due once again to the previous shots the viewer assumes that Richardson is going to attack Molcott or harm her in some other way, therefore increasing fear levels and tension before it is dissolved by the reveal that the person running towards her is just a jogger.

Style

The style of our film is very much conventional of the crime/thriller genre in many of it's aspects. In terms of visuals it is desaturated in a way similar to films such as 'Se7en' and the TV series 'Sherlock'. in order to give the sequence a more serious and gritty look. The main colours of the sequence are washed out grey, black, white, brown and green colours, giving the sequence an overcast suburban feel.

Our soundtrack consists mainly of two different pieces of music from Freeplaymusic.com, 'Ever Evolving' and 'Codename'. These two tracks are very different to each other, with 'Evolving' being used during the calm waking up scenes and 'Codename' being used to increase tension during the 'red herring' scene. The music tracks both link with the pacie and rhythm of the scenes they soundtrack, with the longer, more intimate shots of Molcott having 'Evolving' playing over it, while the more intense outdoor scenes contain faster music which builds up to a tense climax in a similar way to the scene.

The titles in my finished sequence

The titles in our sequence were largely inspired by those of 'Se7en' and 'Shutter Island', due to their effectively unsettling and stylised movement and font.

Evaluation Post 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The main social group we are focusing on is that of black working women, a group which I believe is poorly represented in cinema, when they are represented at all. The Prezi I've created below explores this issue in greater depth:                  



The main inspiration I had for the character of Shania Molcott was Jessic Pearsonn from TV series suits, as she is one of the few black female lawyers presented in a positive light on a mainstream TV show. She is intelligent and works in a highly prestigious role, similarly to Molcott.








How we challenged these representations

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

We chose 'Summit Entertainment' as our distributor and 'BBC Films' as our production company.

This company is part of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which originally produced only television programs, but now produces both films and TV shows. I believe this would be a good production company to use, as they are experienced with making films with a strong British setting, cast and crew, and because they have successfully some thrillers that are similar to ours. Some examples of similar films are shown below:

Our distribution company is 'Summit Entertainment', a major distributor and part of the even larger 'Lionsgate' Entertainment and media corporation. I have focused on the company in more depth in the slideshow below:

I believe that this would be a good distributor for our film because they have experience with distributing low-budget thriller/stalker films successfully.

'Shadow of Your Past' could be marketed in a variety of traditional and new innovative ways, similarly to 'P2' which was distributed by 'Summit Entertainment'. An example of this would be through TV advertisements which show a variety of exciting moments from the film to drum up excitement and catch the attention of audiences.

A film poster that clearly presents the main appeal of the film would also be a vital part of a marketing campaign, likely containing a reference to the stalker aspect of the film and showing Shania Molcott in a state of fear. This would appeal to thriller fans who are experienced with the themes of stalking and fear, and if the poster was styled similarly to much loved, classic films in the genre to inspire nostalgia in the target audiences.

The 'P2' poster for example is heavily reminiscent of the poster for psychological thriller/horror movie 'The Shining', a film that many thriller fans enjoy, so these fans would associate the film with feelings of nostalgia and the aspects of 'The Shining' that they enjoyed, likely encouraging these fans to watch 'P2'.

Viral marketing would also be an option, as this has been incredibly successful in recent times with horror film 'Get Out' starting a viral trend powered by social networking sites vine and Twitter, known as the #GetOutChallenge. This trend helped the film to top the US box office and to increase awareness to the film, and I believe a similar viral craze could be extremely beneficial to 'Shadow of Your Past', although it is difficult to successfully push and successfully promote a trend of this nature.

'Shadow of Your Past' could additionally be promoted at independent film festivals - 'P2' for example, was supposed to appear at the FrightFest UK festival, but was ultimately withdrawn at the last minute. These festivals would give films an opportunity to reach an audience who may not have otherwise heard of the film - as they might have gone to the festival to watch another film and then discovered ours. It also allows the film to be directly brought to our target audience of thriller fans, as they are likely to attend a festival focused on this genre.

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

The main audience we had in mind when planning our opening sequence was that of crime/thriller fans, with the knowledge that due to the location and actors we used a British audience would be the best to attempt to appeal to. To try and figure out how best to appeal to a British audience I studied the BFI 'Audiences 2015' PDF, which is available online here.

Also notable from the BFI document is that while 15-24 year olds make up a very large portion of audiences, films with large amounts of this group in their audiences tended to be more light-hearted, fantasy/sci-fi based or action orientated, such as comedies '22 Jump Street' and 'The Inbetweeners 2'. However, there was a very large audience share for thriller 'Non-stop' (42% were in the bracket 15-24), so this may suggest that these audiences are still happy to watch more serious films as long as there is a strong action element.

The Prezi below looks at who our target audiences are and how we attempted to appeal to them.

Evaluation Post 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

My sequence makes use of the uses and gratifications theory, as shown by the mind-map below:



Other ways that I tried to attract audiences through the use of my sequence are:

- Playing on the audience's potential fear of loneliness and vulnerability through Molcott being stalked within her own home.
- Having smooth, accurate editing to preserve continuity, immersing the viewer in the film's world.
- Atmospheric music that adds to and enforces the tone of the scenes where it is present.
- Using the action and enigma codes to keep the audience interested:

ACTION CODE

Part of Roland Barthes codes of film, the action code is the idea that when a character in a film does something there will be a corresponding result. In my opening sequence the action code is used to create add tension to the jogger scene, as after seeing that Jeff Richardson is stalking Molcott and that he is attempting to get into her home, the audience assumes that the person running up behind Molcott will be Richardson, ready to attack. When it revealed to only be the jogger this gives the audience relief, but also adds more tension in the long run as the conflict between Molcott and Richardson has not been resolved.



THE ENIGMA CODE

This code was also theorised by Barthes, and is simply the idea that any kind of mystery or questions in a film will make the audience want to discover the solution or answer. This was used in my opening sequence through the character of Jeff Richardson, with the main question being what he is planning to do to Molcott. Other mysteries contained within the opening sequence are what the documents Molcott is signing relate to, who the person that calls her on the phone is and of course, what will happen after the sequence is over?



Audience feedback





To see how audiences reacted to our film the other members of my group showed our film to some people between the ages of 16-25, (our target audiences) and collected their feedback. From these test audiences and from feedback collected in written form from other members of the target audience, I have collated the following results:

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

During pre-production the main shoot the most significant technological skill I developed was working using my online blog. This blog functions  as a way for me to contain all of my inspirations and audience and institutions research within on e central hub. I have lots of experience with Blogger.com as a tool, and have had several blogs in the past, so I found it fairly simple to post whatever I needed to.

Throughout the process of filming and editing my opening sequence I learned a huge amount about all of the software and hardware I used, learning many new skills in the process. The new types of technology I used are shown and analysed in the presentation below:



Overall, I would say that I have massively improved at using the hardware and software I was provided with during this project, and I have learnt a large variety of important editing techniques such as grading, sound editing and how to create animated titles.

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

The brief for my preliminary task was: " Create a short continuity sequence that shows a character opening a door, walking across a room and exchanging a few lines of dialogue with another character." The finished continuity sequence is presented below.


I believe that since this preliminary project I have massively improved at every aspect of the pre-production, production and post-production process.

The brief for the main project was: "To produce a 2 minute opening sequence for a fiction film. All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music and audio effects from a copyright-free source. It should be clear from your sequence who the target audience is. Your sequence must include:
- Titles throughout
- Some form of copyright-free soundtrack including sound effects.
- Evidence of understanding of continuity editing
- clear genre conventions through character, theme, story action, mise-en-scene, dialogue, sound, camera, editing style etc."

Pre-production

Production

The prelim taught me some vital lessons to do with how to successfully run a shoot and stay on schedule. For example, the process of taking multiple takes of the same shot and taking the same shot from different angles was unfamiliar to me before I worked on the prelim project, but by the time I started on the test shoot for the main project I was already used to the idea. I also gained a greater understanding of how to keep on schedule by taking similar shots together even if they did not run side by side in the finished sequence: such as shooting the two kitchen-watching stalker POV shots together despite their separation in the finished sequence.

I also learned how to practically shoot certain types of shot and their role in the sequence during the prelim, for example the importance of master shots (Shown in both below.) and how to film continuity sequences.

                     

Post-Production

The editing process was fairly simple in the preliminary task, as all I had to was edit together the shots in a smooth way that maintained continuity. This helped to get me accustomed to the 'Adobe Premiere' editing software, which meant it didn't seem unfamiliar when the time came to edit my main project. I had to learn a wide variety of new skills during the editing process for the main project such as grading, sound editing and titling, but thanks to the prelim I had the basic skills I needed to be able to make a competent edit that maintained continuity.

An image of me editing the main project

Construction Post 10: Looking back - reflections on our final outcome

Our final sequence is shown below:


Overall, I am very happy with our final sequence and with the way the process of creating it went. We worked well as a group with very few tensions even when we were cooped up together in the editing room for long periods of time. The 3 shoots all went alright, with each one being better than the last in terms of the footage shot. My original visualisation of the sequence when we were at the storyboard phase was very close to what the final sequence looks like, and I am very happy with how it's turned out.

Construction Post 9: My technical learning curve (production and post-production)

As somebody with relatively little experience with shooting or editing using digital technology, I believe my technical knowledge has increased massively over the filming and editing process. The pre-lim had given me a small amount of knowledge about how the camera worked, but my first real tie using it to film with a tripod and sound connected was in the test shoot. I never found the camera or tripod particularly difficult or complicated to use, and would say I can now confidently use both.

Editing was slightly harder to get used to, as I had only ever edited very simplistic shots together on software such as 'Windows Movie Maker', so it was quite a big step up to start using more professional, complex software. That said, I didn't find it particularly difficult to start editing using 'Adobe Premiere', largely thanks to the software's clear menus. I found it simple to drag and drop footage, audio and titles onto the tracks, and also very simple to cut down the footage to the times I needed by simply dragging the end of the footage to where I wanted it.

Grading and audio work was more challenging, and I required the technician to show me how to change volume and to start the grading process, but once she had done this I was able to easily do both of these things. As with the camera I feel as if I can now confidently use this software.

Overall, I believe I have become far more experienced with both the hardware and software that we used, and I would be able to competently use it again with little worry or struggle. 

Construction Post 8: My personal contribution to the Edit Sessions

I had a hand in every aspect of the editing processes my group went through. During the test edit I mainly helped with putting the shots in the correct order and with sound editing, specifically the addition of sound effects and in helping to seek out 'Ever Evolving', the music track we used to soundtrack the bedroom sequences.

The video below shows me in the process of using 'LiveType' to create a title.

In the first edit week of the main edit I once again worked on putting all of the shots together, and additionally this time I spent time cutting down many of the shots to make the sequence as concise as possible and to avoid unnecessary uninteresting footage being kept in. I also helped to make some vital decisions regarding which shots we were going to use in the outdoor sequence, as we had taken several shots in a variety of different ways.

For the 2nd main edit week I did a wider variety of things, as although I still edited the footage down and worked on the sound levelling for certain sections of the sequence, I also carried out the majority of the grading and worked with my group on choosing what the titles would look like. 

Construction Post 7: My personal contribution to the Shoot Sessions

My personal contribution to filming during the test, main and back-up shoots was roughly the same across all 3 shoots. I filmed roughly one quarter of the shots directly as the camera operator, helped frame and direct roughly another quarter and monitored the sound for the shots where i wasn't doing either or acting.

I played the jogger character during the outdoor shots, so I had to make sure I was responsive to feedback from the other members of my group who were filming the sequences I was acting in. During these shots I still gave advice and direction for how to film or frame certain shots that I was in.

For the stalker POV shots looking into the kitchen I did the direction, framing, camera, sound and acting myself, as the other members of my group were indoors monitoring the lighting kit we required for these shots. Therefore, these shots are entirely my own in terms of visuals (Although we came up with them as a group) and camerawork.

Construction Post 6: Reflections on Edit Week 2

Our second edit week had several small issues but was otherwise very good and we managed to finish our edit to a high level of quality. Since we already had the backbone of the main shoot put together, it was fairly simple for us to replace the necessary shots in the kitchen sequence and to completely replace the outdoor sections of the opening. Once we had replaced all of the appropriate shots we modified the music and sound effects in order to make sure that these were still correctly in sync with the newly added footage.

Our 2nd edit week schedule

Next we used 'Livetype' on a Mac to create our stylised titles (Inspired by those in 'Se7en' and 'Shutter Island's opening sequences) which we did by adding a 'stagger' effect to our titles and increasing the blur and thickness of the fonts. We transferred these over to the PC using a USB and then used the titles to replace our original, more basic titles.

The final change we made to our edit was grading the sequence. In order to fit the look of our inspirations, we desaturated the colour in every shot to make it seem less bright and more gritty. We also used colour correction to tone down the bright orange colour of the kitchen lights in several shots.

Construction Post 5: The Back-Up Shoot

Our back-up shoot went much better than our main shoot, despite initially undesirable weather. When we began filming it was raining, so we quickly decided to film the kitchen shots first. These were shot far more successfully, with several changes made to the shots we originally had in the main shoot (For example the shot of the lawyer's reaction to the forms she was signing and that she now received a text message.).

When the rain had passed we filmed the outdoor shots, which were much better than the main shoot equivalents, as we had decided to re-shoot one of the takes we had had for the shot we had trouble with in the main shoot, but with much steadier camerawork (This shot being the jogger's POV, rushing towards the lawyer.). We re-shot every outdoor shot to make it easier to edit, and overall we certainly achieved what we had planned to do for this shoot - improve on the weaknesses of our main shoot.

Construction Post 4: Reflections on Edit Week 1

Our first edit week went well, and we carried out roughly the same processes as we did during the test edit. We started off by naming all of the rushes and then choosing the best takes and putting them into the correct order in the editing area of 'Adobe Premiere'. Then we edited them together, taking care to preserve continuity. We edited this down to as concise as it could be and then added i the music and sound effects. Finally, we added in our basic titles.

Our week 1 edit schedule

This edit made us realise we needed to carry out a back-up shoot, as certain sequences in the edit lacked clarity or could have been better framed. This was especially evident in the outdoor sequence, where the reveal of the jogger came too quickly to maintain the tension we were attempting to build in the scene though a 'red herring' situation.

Us editing the footage

That said, the bedroom sequence was exactly what we had wanted to achieve, so this edit was at least successful in this aspect.

Construction Post 3: Reflections on our Main Shoot Session

Our main shoot went decently well, and especially in terms of the actual content there was certainly an improvement. We filmed roughly in the same order as on the test shoot, with some minor changes based on changes we had made to shots. Below there are two of the pages form our main shootboard.

The bedroom sequence went very well, as we were able to successfully replicate and improve on what we had done for this sequence in the Test shoot. The set was dressed more neatly and more thoroughly and the outfit that our main actor was wearing was improved to be more professional looking.

Then we went outside to shoot the outdoor sequence. As visible from our main shoot board:

this sequence was drastically different from our test shoot equivalent. The location was an easier to shoot and tonally better-fitting street, the jogger's costume was far better - now with shorts, trainers and a T-shirt rather than a hoodie and jogging bottoms. We struggled to frame certain shots outdoors, notably the shot of the jogger running towards the lawyer character, which we took 10 takes of in numerous different ways. Other than this, this sequence was fairly simple to shoot.

After this we went back inside and shot the kitchen sequence, which was slightly frustrating to shoot, as minimal problems and distractions resulted in many takes becoming useless. Nonetheless, it was still improved from the test shoot, as the final footage was more coherent and better framed. The final shots we filmed were the stalker shots, as these required the use of the lighting kit. These shots went well, as it was fairly mild and grey outside, meaning it was easy to see into the comparatively well-lit house through the kitchen windows. These shots were far better than the equivalents from the test shoot, as they had less exaggerated heavy breathing and showed the stalker trying to open the window with it's handle, adding in more tension and fear. The video below is some of our raw footage.

Overall, we achieved most of our goals, as we re-filmed everything to a satisfactory standard. However, we could have been better prepared in relation to how we were going to frame certain shots such as the outdoor and kitchen based shots.

Construction Post 2: Our Post-production Kit

Our post-production kit is primarily a Desktop computer with Windows 7, and using the software 'Adobe Premiere'. This PC was fast and responsive, allowing us to quickly render and load our sequence and rushes. 'Adobe Premiere' was vital in creating the sequence, as it allowed us to do almost everything we needed easily and quickly. The interface is very user-friendly, allowing somebody with little experience with the software such as me to easily find and carry out the processes I required. The software allows for accurate and precise audio and video editing, so we could quickly change between the sound and visuals when corresponding changes needed to be made.

We also used an Apple Macbook Pro and the software 'Livetype' to create our final titles. The software allowed us to choose from a large variety of fonts and effects that were not available on the title editor of 'Adobe Premiere'. To transfer these titles from the mac to the PC we used a standard 2GB USB.

Construction Post 1: Our Production Kit

The kit release form we were required to complete

Our production kit included a camera, which was the most important part of the whole kit, as without it we wouldn't be able to shoot any footage.

Tripod: This was used to help keep the camera stable during static shots and to smooth out pans. It also allowed us to keep the camera in the same place between takes without having to put the camera down.

Microphone and headphones: This was used to capture diagetic sound and dialogue without picking up a large amount of background noise as would usually happen if sound was recorded with just the camera.

Dolly: We were planning to use this for camera movement but ultimately did not use it.

Lighting kit: We used this to light up the stalker shots from outside, looking into the house, as it was otherwise too dark inside to properly see what was happening. We used two lights to light separate sections of the room.