Evaluation.

Here is the final product for our practical coursework. We converted it into Quick Time and also posted it onto YouTube.

Evaluation of finished production.

Our media product does use and develop some of the forms and conventions of real media products. Contrapuntal music is used as the soundtrack. It is a haunting piece which is played throughout, and sounds out of place with the past happy scenes. This hints at the later subverting of this happy image - in which one of the girl's is seen lying dead on the floor after being killed by her best friend. This murder is a commonly used thriller convention, basing the film around a crime committed; again murder being the most exploited concept. It could also be argued that our thriller has a complex narrative structure including false paths at the very beginning of the production (at the beginning it seems that the girl is mourning the loss of her friend, but instead she is reminiscing over the murder she committed to her friend). The title also recognises the psychological state of the protagonist as the victim comes back to haunt the killer for 'Revenge'.

The media groups represented in our thriller are mainly teenage girls. It can be seen as stereotypical as the girls are seen to have held strong grudges against each other - suggesting that females' actions are emotionally-orientated. As seen in our production, this can lead to tragedies/disasters such as murder as the emotional thoughts are acted out in physical violence. No other groups are being represented as such in the thriller. However, a positive aspect of teenage girls' lives are being reflected in the on-screen performance of the happy, 'best-friends-having-a-good-time-together' scene in the park. Girls are typically known for having close emotional bonds with other girls, however it is later shown that these emotions can become extreme.

One media institution which might distribute my production could be Hammer Film Productions. This is a production company whose focal point are distributing thrillers, horrors and science-fiction films. This is good, because this means that the company have well-developed experience in how to distribute a thriller successfully. Some of the psychological thrillers also distributed by this company are known to be low budget and in black and white - features that are also reflected well in my own production.

The audience which we aimed our project at would be between 16-25 year old male and females. Any younger and it could have been too scary or haunting for the children and this would not have been acceptable. We had considered our target audience when carrying out the questionnaire made before finalising our collaborated ideas.

To entice our target audience we centralized our plot/storyline around teenage characters. This hopefully means that the audience can, to an extent, can relate or understand what is going on. Also, with good times showing groups of best friends together at the park can also reflect a lot of youngsters lives/social lives. Having a focused character age range could draw the attention of teenagers as they do not want to have to be concerned with the responsibilities of adults (no interest). This could have been a reason for the huge success of the TV drama Skins, which has recently received a BAFTA. So a thriller with similar conventions could reach the target audience as successfully - but in context of a film not a TV Drama.

Throughout the process of constructing this product I have learnt a great deal about technology and the way things work whilst constructing my own production. From the beginning, each stage has offered different aspects to work with and develop on. Since I directed the whole of the thriller project, I gained valuable experience of how to work with the camera and learned how to move the camera. From panning and tilting camera movements, to zooming in and out of selected objects/props; I learned how to improve smoothness of these camera techniques. Also, through hours of solitary editing, I started understanding how to use and test the software we used (iMovie). Making sure the scenes were cut down to exactly the right moment for the following scenes to flow was the most challenging part, but after some practise it all worked out just fine. Using transitions and effects discovered helped the production to flow more, unless jump cuts were needed for a certain effect for the audience.

All of this could not have been done as effectively if it was not for the trial and errors encountered when creating our preliminary exercise. The problems included a poor continiuity following, meaning the action did not flow (one shot showed actors in one position, next shot was completely different). Seeing this made me realise that we needed to be more careful in the positioning of our camera each time we moved it. For it to be successful, we didn't want it to be completely out of place if it wasn't necessary.

Overall I think it came out better expected, as my idea of the camera moving into the frame then following through straight to the past was rather difficult - and it seemed at times it might not work. However, with the extra hours during lunch and after school, all the hard work came together quite well. More clips could have been added, but due to the time constraint we left these out.

Discussion of appropriate technical competencies

Holding a steady shot.

This wasn't too bad as we had the tripod to keep the shot level, however, we did encounter some difficulty with keeping the smoothness continued whilst panning and tilting the camera at the same time. Our hands were slightly out of balance trying to do it all at once but we tried our very best with it. After a bit of practice though our techniques did improve.



Framing a shot.

This was quite simple as we had already planned most of the shots before we had started filming. We already organised what kind of shots we were going to use and what was going to be placed in the screen. Each shot was going to be a different frame, keeping the audience tense and unexpectedly waiting to see what was going to happen next. We had to make some minor adjustments from our animatic as the location chosen did not quite fulfill all of our expectations and needs as we wanted the haunting victim to be standing behind the camera. However, this could not be done as a bush was directly behind the bench, meaning it was impossible for her to stand there - so we moved her the left of the screen.

Shot distances.

Throughout the filming process, we used different shot distances to explain the different emotions trying to be exploited to the audience.
An example of this would be when we had an extreme close up of Grace's eyes looking sorrowfully down into the picture frame, as it looks like she is looking down into her past memories.
The extreme close up is further used in Paris's (victim) eerie smile as she knows she is about to avenge her own murder.

Shooting appropriate material.

Before filming started, we planned everything that was going to be in the frame. The first scene opens with a close up of a cross, and slowly zooms out to reveal the church setting and later on Grace (murderer) sitting down on the bench reevaluating her past memories. The opening view is appropriate as the church and cross connotes death, which is significant as the thriller is about the death and resurrection of Paris (victim).
Later on, as Grace is seen walking away from the scene of the murder and walking down the stairs, I thought it would be a good idea for a dutch tilt shot to be used here as it emphasizes the disturbed and unsettled state of mind of the murderer.
Also, in the park scene, the camera focuses mainly on Paris and Grace (not Tara and Grace C) as the other two are not really that significant with the storyline that is being presented.

Editing, transitions and effects.

The majority of cuts are straight cuts, keeping in mind that the nature of a thriller is not to be calm and peaceful, but to have a set pace in the product to help add to the needed suspense for the audience. However, cross-dissolves and fade transitions are also used to keep the past 'happy' memories consistent and flowing. Only when the mood of the memories begin to change does the straight cuts have a purpose in creating the pace of the thriller. Although, a cross-dissolve transition is also used at the end when the 'ghost' of the victim runs at the killer. It is used because as the victim starts to run, you can still faintly see her standing still in the background. This further emphasizes the fact that she is a ghost of her former self.
We only used these specific transitions as we wanted to make sure the transitions from scene to scene looked realistic. Unnatural transitions would have only made the production look fake and tacky. This was not ideal.
Black and white effects are used in the scenes showing the friends together and the friend dead because it shows that this has all happened in the past, and the full-colour scenes are actually happening in the present day.

Mise-en-scene.

We had the murderer wearing all-black clothing as the colour black connotes death, grief and darkness. In the black and white scene, although it is hard to tell, but the murderer was actually still wearing black clothing, but also wearing a red hat. The colour red connotes blood and danger - which is seen to happen later on in the sequence.
The victim was wearing a white, flowing dress - as white connotes innocence and also a ghostly manner. Angels are shown in mythology and readings as wearing white gowns, this could foreshadow the fate of this character. However, this angelic connotation is slightly subverted in the fact that she has come for revenge.
Nearly everything we have chosen to be put into the frame has been put there for a reason - especially the backdrop of the church and cross (death).
The actual picture frame was especially made for this too. By making it looked battered and worn, it creates the effect of time passing since this happy, joyful picture had been taken.
Looking closely at all of these factors, each section helps forebode the nature and story of this thriller. As a thriller should "show and not tell".
It took careful planning to try and get it all just right.

Using sound with images.

Most of the sound heard is a non-diegetic soundtrack which sets the mood for the production. It is a mellow piano piece with a haunting side to it, emphasizing that there is a twist in store after the friendship memory in the frame.
However, near the end of the production, we overlapped the sound of a scream which leaves the audience questioning what has just happened to them both as the last thing we see is the victim diving at Grace. Then after the scream, a sign saying "Is there more to life than this?" is flashed across the screen - leaving the audience in more shock and left on edge.
In addition to this, there is a faint, overlapping heartbeat sound effect which can be heard once the memories are over and the ghost is standing beside the other girl to get her revenge. This is meant to be the sound of the murderer's heart as she gets overwhelmed by the memories and drops the frame which smashes.
This was quite simple to do as we only had to download the music from akmmusic.com and rearrange the sounds on the timeline of iMovie. I had to lower the sounds when the heartbeat comes in as it was too low to be heard of the piano music. However, apart from this (and making sure the scream was in sync with the action), it all came together quite easily.

Graphic match.

The graphic match used in our production was zooming into the frame, and then dissolving it to match with the past scene in the park. I thought this looked really effective, as it seemed like Grace was looking down in her memory of this time. It wasn't to complicated to do, as I took a picture (with a normal camera) of the first 'pose' of this scene just before I filmed them. We made sure that this was the first scene shot, so I could print off the picture and place it into our especially designed frame. Then we just had a 'point-of-view' shot slowly zooming into the picture.
The only difficult part was to make sure we cut and dissolved it at the right time so that it matched as well as it could have done.

Coursework complete.

Today we have spent a few hours tidying up our transitions and adding the music I have found from www.akmmusic.co.uk.

Luckily I found this website as we still hadn't received the tracks we ordered from the mobygratis website. However we did have to pay for this music as other websites were not copyright-free which is what we needed. (I paid for the music). This saved us valuable amounts of time which we would have had to use up trying to create our own soundtrack on GarageBand. It also sounds more professional than it would have done with our own.

We kept the diegetic sound of the killer screaming at the end as she realises the victim has come back to haunt her. We have also used a track from GarageBand, which is the heartbeat effect. This is played near the end as the tension builds when the victim is watching the killer.

After all this has been completed, the thriller has been uploaded to youtube and later on to my blog - when I will start the evaluation.

All that is left to do now is to go through the checklist of the blog to make sure I have fulfilled every task and make sure everything is up-to-date. This has to be done for friday.

The total duration is just under two minutes (virtually less than one second lower than two minutes). This is good as the specification required the coursework to be only two minutes long.

Final Editing Completed.

During our media lesson today we have finally finished the editing of our thriller project. This took time as our transitions and clips needed to be reviewed for improvement. We did, however, encounter some problems as some of the clips were too short to be able to add a transition effect to it. We did find a way to overcome this though - we re-uploaded some of the shots we filmed from the camcorder to replace the clips that weren't able to add transitions. This worked because these clips were longer and were able to adjust to the transition.

We also added the title screens and the credits to the beginning and end of the sequence. This included all of our names and our candidate numbers beside it. At the end we had 'R3V3NG3' spread across the screen.

The penultimate task that is left to do now is to add the soundtrack. Although there are still problems with this as mobygratis has not returned our pending request for a track from their website. However, alternatives have been discussed if we still cannot get the track. This is that we will use GarageBand to create our own original one from scratch. This will take up more of our extra time but hopefully it will be worth it.

The final task is to complete the blog and the evaluation of our project. This can only be done once the thriller has been completed.

Mobygratis

There still has been no reply from the mobygratis website in response to our request for one of the songs to use for our media project. Unfortunately this means that if we still have no reply within the next couple of days, then we will have to find alternative soundtracks to our thriller.

One alternative that we most probably will follow through with will be to create our own soundtrack from scratch on GarageBand on the computer. This will not be too bad as we have already had experience with the equipment. We also used it for our preliminary exercise.

Editing - First Cut.

Now we have finished filming our media project, the next step was to edit it.
The first thing we done was to upload and save the individual scenes onto the iMac
computer onto the old version of iMovie ready to prepare for editing.
The second thing which we had to do was to complete a title screen. This included the school's name, the course and our names along with our candidate numbers. We had to put this in first because otherwise, if it was put it last, then it would completely throw the non-diagetic soundtrack out of sync alongside the clips.

The next step was to figure out which order each scene was going to be placed in. After this was decided, we then started individually placing the shots on the 'timeline'. As we ordered each one, we cut down the scenes to the duration of time which we wanted them to last for. We had to keep an eye on the total duration, as the completed task should be no longer than 2 minutes overall. We had to make sure that the following sequence did not look completely out of place with the previous one. The scenes have to flow smoothly.
This is also where the transitions come into consideration. The transitions have to be subtle, so that it is not completely obvious - the eye must just be able to easily watch it without unrealistic disruptions.

Also, the past scenes have been edited to be in black and white to show that they are events that have already happened, and the girl in the clip is looking back on it as a memory.

After a while, our first cut has been completed. No sound has yet been added, but it has been requested from www.mobygratis.com , we are just waiting for approval. This first completion has just been a first attempt - now that we know exactly what we are doing, it should not take too long to make improvements developing on the plan of the first cut.

So far, no complications have been found.

Next step is to improve and complete the final thriller coursework piece.

Filming.

Throughout the two weeks of our Easter holidays, we have used our time productively by filming our thriller project.

Using the location shown in the previous blog, Tara, Grace and myself managed to complete the filming part of our coursework. We also used a park, again, near my house; which is where our 'past, happy scenes' were set.
However, we did come across some minor problems with our set, as the church location did not fully accomodate what we needed to be able to fulfill our plans. The idea was to have the murderer sitting on the bench in front of the church, whilst later having the dead girl/victim appear standing behind the bench and murderer. This was a problem because the bench was secured just millimetres in front of a big bush, so there was no way that we could film the situation as we had planned, so we just had to adjust the positioning slightly. We feel it still has the same effect though.

After much more thought into the final product, we realised that, for the sequences to make as much sense to the audience as it did for us; we needed to add in extra shots which hint at the murderer killing the innocent girl - but not actually showing it fully of course.

With this filming now complete, all that is now left to do is to edit the final scenes and then add sounds (diegetic and non-diegetic) on top. This will take place once we return back to school on monday.


Actors :-

(We had to change our previously cast dead girl Stacey Reading as she wasn't able to film when we had planned to).

Murderer = Grace Heather

Dead Girl/Victim = Paris Jones

Friend 1 = Tara Hussein

Friend 2 = Grace Cridland



Directed and Edited by Jessica Tilley