What we could of improved....

During filming our movie and editing the frames we came across a few problems, weather it was technical, acting or lack of organisation. Whilst we planned our first filming session, our original date was 17th March, but due to the poor weather we were unable to film on this day as our majority of film is filmed outside, it was also a Saturday, as one of our main actors was at work- we again wasnt able to film. But we were able to arrange a date that was suitable for everyone and the weather was perfect.
   Whilst editing we were aware that the 'dead girls' werent good at 'playing dead' as we noticed that there was movement from an actor, its minor but could be noticable and unrealistic. The main actor that plays the murderer/kidnapper had difficulty wearing his dr Martins so we advised him to take them off when his shoes werent in the frmaes, but we were unaware of the fact that the shoes were visable in a frame. We should of been more observant when when filming. We were also aware as we did a long shot, the lighting behind me filming the frame projected a shadow of myself and the tripod onto the grass. It was inevitable but we could of edited this out as it is noticable and disfigures the shot.
  

Evaluation Questions

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


Our media product, 'Obsession' is influenced by the forms and conventions of real media products. The use of mis-en-scene in other media products helped us subtly denote the contrast of life and death, religion and obsession. Clothing was heavily used to do this as the dead, kidnapped girls wore white which signifies purity-which almost contradicts the other missing girl who is wearing black leather-this denotes that there is something unique about this one girl. The murderer is also wearing a denim spiked jacked, this connotes rebellion and almost supports fear. The dark lightening and eerie atmosphere  is heavily used in many thrillers, so we also used this to create the sense of a morbid and an uneasy atmosphere. Leading from the eerie features of thrillers (ransom notes, medication,etc) ours contained a shrine full of images of the three missing girls-some in black and white to resemble the lack of importance of the girls and the coloured photos being the latest victims or his 'favourite' signifies this. To emphasise the important factors of thrillers, sound effects and music is used, so we also put a few common sound effects like footsteps and creaking doors in our film- we also, to make the film memorable, used the song 'Obsession' by Tinie Tempah. This was all influenced by other thrillers codes and conventions.

The only challenges of thrillers is probably the the clothing on the characters of the missing girls. This is due to the controversy of the clothing, white clothes/black leather, the striking red/ginger hair symbolising danger or passion, a symbol of the cross on her fingers all amongst the atmosphere of death and murder. This challenges the codes and conventions of other thrillers as they often use clothing to symbolises or denotes subtle meanings or messages in the film. 

As the codes and conventions of thrillers were pretty simple to identify- we thought of developing one particular crime,action thriller, 'Taken' directed by Pierre Morel. A retired CIA agent travels across Europe and relies on his old skills to save his estranged daughter, who was kidnapped on a trip to Paris to be sold into prostitution. (IMDb). We took the idea of kidnapping girls from this movie and developed a brand new idea. The idea that a mental asylum escapee is kidnapping girls of a similar age in a local area, killing them but owning an obsession over them. This now leads onto identification of characters. Vladimir Propp a Literacy theorist, had the idea of clearly defining roles and functions of characters. So we took his theory of characters such as the villain and princess, this being the murderer/kidnapper and the three girl victims. We attempted to make the role as clear as we possibly can, I believe we have done a good job as we know who is more inferior and owns more power simply through actions of the kidnapper.

To conclude our film 'Obsession' uses mis-en-scene to create the thriller atmosphere that is commonly used (music and lighting). We also developed multiple ideas of thriller, particularly the thriller 'Taken' with a similar storyline being a kidnapping. We then challenged the codes and conventions by emphasising our mis-en-scene. 
   
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Gender: Thr representation of gender in our film 'Obsession' focuses on the stereotypical male villain-simple due to the face that our thriller surveys suggested that people prefer watching a man over a women. As many thrillers own the male villain it was safe to continue the popular demands instead of challenging the stereotypes. The authority that the male escappee owns in our movie is clearly superior over the victims. The victims in our movie are teenage girls who, again follow the helpless female sterotype in thrillers as they are kidnapped and defensively unconcious/murdered.

'US Kidnap survivor'

This is an actual artical featuring a real kidnapping in the Us, this relates well with the theme of our film as the there is a male kidnapper that was 'psychotic and had a sexual addiction'. It relates well as our villain in our film is an escapee from a mental asylum who owns a passionate obsession with females.

 Age: Age is represented through the stereotypical/assumed characters. The middle aged male is often featured throughout many thrillers, again we believed this was ideal to continue the predictable age as the public are used to seeing this, anything abnormal may be criticised. So we clothed the villain in denim and trousers to almost display an older image, the fact that the beginning of our film starts out in a car automatically suggests that he is not a young adult, the news report at the start mentions the words 'middle-age'. Although saying this, all four 'Scream' movies own countersterotypes as the villain is not normally the person you are lead to think it is but can range from parents to teenage students.  


'Disturbia'- middle-aged male villain



'Scream'- challenges the stereotype as the villain is a teenage student.

The age of the victims in our movie are all teenage girls. This, again, continues the stereotype of the defenceless, innocent girl. The clothing doesn't suggest age as the dead victims are clothed in white to connote their innocence, but the latest victim is in leather which connotes rebellion which can lead onto the fact she's a teenager. The news report and missing posters also mention that the victims were last seen leaving school, so this suggests that they are young enough to be students.

Regional Identity: The region of the characters aren't noticeable as we found that this wouldn't define the importance of the actual thriller. Although our news report at the very beginning mentions the face that one of the victims were last seen leaving 'Edmonton County School', this is the only factual evidence of the region of characters.


3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

As our film is produced by students, the institution that would distribute our movie would be a British independent distributor. This is because their low budget and film ideas are more suitable to our type of thriller-psychological thriller. Arrow films is one of the UK's leading independent distributors of world cinema, arthouse, horror and classic films. As they specialise in the horror sub-genre and our film contains some elements of horror; we thought Arrow films could appreciate our target audience and ideas.

   As Arrow films are based in the UK, but is internationally recognised, it could increase the popularity of our film as a thriller. We know that it would be successful as their films produced have been previously.  For example, Day of the Dead, directed by George A Romero. This owned all the horror codes and conventions- frightening scene, blood and gore. This gained success as a film and I know this as a sequel-Dawn of the Dead was produced. With a modest budget of $650,000 in the US, it also made a significant box office success for its time. So with successful boxsets of the movies this intrigues is as our movie could potentionally gain success internationally too. 

As for home entertainment and distribution to cinemas, Arrow films has again managed to be successful enough to distribute their products to the big-screen and to home entertainment. This then can broaden our target population of 15+ so that they can enjoy our films in cinemas or at home. To increase popularity, a minority of Arrow films have occasionally been on TV and classic film channels for further recognition and popularity. This means it could support our film and popularise the thriller genre and independent film makers. 'House by the Cemetery' directed by Lucio Fulci has been successful enough to be produced in !981 and to be the third instalment of the 'Gates of Hell' trilogy. This has been used as further exhibition on boxsets and then DVD's.

   To conclude, Arrow films would successful in  distributing our film due to their international success of being recognised, their specific genre being horror- which is closely linked to thrillers (supernatural/psychological), as it is based in the UK- the target audience means that their codes and conventions will be closely linked to ours as the audience will be from the same class. This is why Arrow films would distribute our film.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
5. How did you attract/address your audience?


Taking into consideration the certificate rating being a 15+, the audience of the media product has been carefully considered. We realise that there shall not be a large content of bad language, scenes of extreme nudity and extreme violence. The main class that we are going to target will be C1 (Lower middle class) downwards to E (lowest level of income), this will be because the people targeted in these boundaries are more likely to appreciate the genre of thriller. Our film will attract this class market by having the needed codes and conventions that the population of lower middle class-lowest level of income demand. So generally speaking tension, supernatural scenes and slight horror or action.

   The consumers of the Young and Rubicans that are most likely to appeal to our thriller would be main-streamers. This is because they follow a popular trend. This means that findings from the questionnaires we produced (favourite sub-genre of a thriller, content) can all be taken into consideration when we produced our key elements of our movie to give the consumers what they demand by, merging ideas and character types into our movie.
   With the information from the questionnaires, (the age and class that we will ask), we will use this to consider or reflect our original idea, mould our film idea into the others reflections of thrillers to give the audience the codes and conventions they expect to be in a thriller. Questions like 'Do you prefer a female or male villain?', will give us an idea of what main characters we should involve in our movie and whether or not its supports Propp's narrative theory of identification of character roles clearly.

   To conclude, our target audience will be 15+, teenagers- young adults. Their class ranging from C1-E. Or film will target main-streamers as the content of our film will be more appreciated. With help from questionnaire and influences from other thriller film content, we get an idea of the content expected in our movie.


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



During the process of creating our movie 'Obsession', I learnt more about using my camera and using the iMac- iMovie. I knew the basics of my camera (FUJIFILM), but during the filming process, I learnt about the multiple settings it owns (manual, automatic, shutter speed, shooting conditions) and the audio. With the knowledge of multiple camera angles/shots we previously learnt in class (mid-shots, over the shoulder, point of view, etc), we were able to create these with the use of a camera stand or zooming for close ups or long shots. This was helpful as we could take multiple camera angles/shots to create a journey that was more fluent throughout our film.

                                                   

   Although owning a iMac, I have never previously used iMovie and when it came down to the editing days this showed. But with browsing and experimenting the functions of the program we finally got the hang of it. We explored the sound effects (footsteps, opening credit sounds), learnt to import from my camera card on to the program-export to a disk, the use of slow motion which was used throughout our movie and the obvious transitions that created atmosphere through the edits. We also imported music 'Obsession' by Tinie Tempah, we had to edit the timing so it would fit the correct frames of the movie, this was trial and error. With the information we newly learnt we then edited  and constructed our product successfully.

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


The development from our original preliminary task to the end product, is huge. It's clear that our knowledge and ideas are now more structured and organised between the both of us in the group. This means we are more familiar with the multiple camera shots there are used to develop a fluent scene- therefore our terminology has increased. With our increased camera skills, we have also developed our film direction and our creative side are now more present. This includes producing characters, script writing, creating mis-en-scene and initial ideas of thrillers. We have also progressed in our editing skills, this covers everything from importing frames, transitions, sound effects, adjusting background noise to exporting the final product onto a disk. To conclude our progression from the beginning task to the final edit reflects our broadened knowledge and terminology of film making. Our friendship and reflections/decisions of ideas has also become a strength along the journey.

Editing our movie.....OBSESSION.

On Monday 26th and Tuesday 27th March, we were given a 10 hour period to edit our movie in the iMac suite in school.  Darcy and I were excited to finally piece our clips together to produce an outcome that we both worked hard to get! 

Monday...
But our excitement slowly faded as stress approached. Personally; when it comes to technology, I'm like a Granddad! So I was hoping Darcy would be much more advanced than myself. We planned that on the first day, we would edit the the news report , add images and sound effects to create realism, burn it onto a CD, then on Monday night continue filming in the garage the opening of the film.


Above is what we were hoping to do, when the newsreporter mention "Lee Street", an image of himself would be visible. Little did we know this was far too ambitious for us to do and the added stress meant that we now wasted almost 2 hours struggling.  We then came to a conclusion of adding his image at the end of the report, burn the contents onto a disk and play this disk on a laptop in the garage (we didn't have a TV to play this on so improvised).

After a break, we felt much more relieved that our film was coming together. We explored the sound effects, the transitions and many tools on imovie and, feeling confident, began to important the start of our many clips. We both agreed on the transitions as they gave the affect needed  (significant colours white or black, blurred) and played with the sound effects, so that the next day we could head straight in and complete our movie.

Filming continued... Last minute on Monday evening, we went back to Darcy's to film the opening of our movie. With panicking aside, it was worth the hassle of laptops charge dying, a broken tripod and an exhausted producers, because we were confident about the outcome! He took multiple photos and frames of the laptop playing the report, a slow horizontal pan so that the clip look like a point of view shot. We are happy witht the outcome of that!

Tuesday...

Last day of editing! We rushed in and got going, we finally got the hang of iMovie so everything just became much more simpler. 

After filming our opening credits, we were inspired by this credit opening of American Horror Story to recreate ours in a similar way, its strange, unique and perfect for the affect our film needed! So with all the clips we filmed the night before, we added them on iMovie, edited them in a similar way to this opening, additional sound effects and font and our opening was sorted! We chose a font that was edgy anf uneven to create an strange atmosphere from the very beggining, the body of the film will continue this.

After editing the body of the film, with the sound effects of footsteps, creaking doors all we needed was the music of the movie. As we named our film 'Obsession', Darcy's brother suggested the sound 'Obsession' by Tine Tempah....

The lyrics were well suited to the theme of our movie and with timing and the use of slow motion in our movie (from start to end), it came together perfectly! We used the last chorus and the remaining end of the song to add impact to the remaining images of the movie. (2.45-3.22).

Overall.... the last two days were a mixture of stress and success! All our frustration of the new technology was well worth our successful outcome! Me and Darcy were so pleased!

Filming and Preparation.

Our Storyboard....OBSESSION

Above is our simplified storyboard, we are aware that not all aspects of the film will be exactly like what we anticipate, but this is a vague idea of 'Obsession'.

Before we film, we had to prepare our props, actors, clothing options for actors and timing. We had to make sure that the props looked realistic, the theme of stalking and obsession was followed through-to do this we created a shrine with the photographs we produced and missing posters.

Me and Darcy producing the shrine in lesson.

This is the shrine. The black and white photo's act as a background, while the coloured photographs  are the significant latest victims to the plot. this was purposely done to add subtle importance to the film.

The two of us setting up the surroundings and placement of the shrine. We thought that the desk would be perfect as the light highlights the photos and will look great on film.

The desk, we have added a pic-axe type tool, which can also symbolise a upside down cross to connote  evil and the evil inside the murderers head.

As you can hopefully see the difference in this developed photo, we cleared the  bench  press and replaced white cloth to lay the victim on. This is to see the contrast between a morbid subject (the dead girl) and the innocence and purity of the white.

Darcy beautifully demonstrating the scene.....

SCRIPT

This is the only dialog in our film, it is a small piece that will be heard in the background of the opening credits.

"...Thank you John. I'm standing outside Edmonton County School where nineteen year old Isabelle Bascombe was last seen at about 3pm on Tuesday afternoon. Police are concerned of her whereabouts as it may be linked with previous kidnappings around the local area. Their main suspect is a middle aged mental asylum escapee, Lee Street. If anyone knows any information as to whereIsabelle Bascombe may be, pleasecontact us via the details at the bottom of the sceen. Im Grace Cush, back to the studio." 

Tuesday 20th March, the beginning of our filming.

Today we planned to film the news report, the script already previously wrote and to film the body of the story. As the latest victim 'Isabelle Bascombe' was last seen leaving Edmonton County school, we chose the outside building to be the area to film the report to add continuity. We filmed around 4.00pm after the building was empty. It took us at least half an hour to film a minute clip as we had to stop and start considering the traffic noise down the a10 and laughter of actors.

Another prop involved is a microphone for the news report. We borrowed a mic from a local DJ/Friend and I cut red cardboard out, made a rectangular like box and printed out the BBC news logo to add realism to the report. 

Make up is important to this thriller as the girls involved need to look as if they've been dead for  a period of time. To do this I used a white powder as the base of their face, black/brown eye shadow around their eye sockets and black eye liner to emphasise the depth of the socket and purple lipstick to look as though they have lost all circulation.

 

The final product. With the make up looking morbid, we then asked the girls to pain their nails  red as this colour connotes and is familiarised with love (obsession) and danger.  We have also continued the contrast of death and purity by clothing the girls in white dresses.


Filming continued...
At around 7.00pm we decided to film the body of the film on the 20th of March as the lightening was dim (dark enough to add the typical mood lightening), the weather on this day was fine, all the actors could make it and Darcy's house and Mum's car was available. It took an hour to film the necessary different shots to create the plot of the film. We considered extra lightening to highlight certain things (shoes) and any unnecessary shadows. I believe that it was successful and I am hoping the final product after editing will bring it all together.

Planning Our Thriller.

OBSESSION.... is the name of our thriller. It's the typical one  word movie like 'Taken' and 'Psycho'. Our film contains a mixture of original theory's of Propp and Barthes. The idea of clearly recognising the characters roles and the use of symbols and connotation. Our film will contain a Mental asylum escapee (played by Lee Street) who has an obsession with kidnapping girls in mysterious ways and killing them.  The film will contain previous victims (Amy Dunlea and Sophie England) and the latest (Isabelle Bascombe), themes of obsession, love and confusion will be displayed throughout.

Actors...

Lee Street




Isabelle Bascombe



Sophie England And Amy Dunlea

Locations...

This is the car that we are planning to use as the carrier of the dead/missing girls, we chose this car as it is spacious enough for the girls to laydown comfortably.





The seat have been taken out and pushed back in order to create more room.

 

This is the side entrance to the alley inwhich the murderer will carry the girl into the garden from the boot. The bins will be removed in order to create room and avoid any harm to the actors.



The alley heading into the garden. We will consider the positioning of the murderer holding the victim as there is quite a walk from the car to the garage.

This is the path that leads into the garage. This is where the murderer will walk down, still with the victim in his arm. There will be a number of different POV shots to establish a journey.

The door of the garage. It looks worn down and abandoned, therefore shall be perfect for the creepy appearence and happenings of our film.





The view of the entrance to the garage, as you can see it needs to be cleared out before filming in order to allow room.



This is the murderes desk, again this will be cleared and we will set up a number of items and pictures to set the 'obsessed' themed look.



As our film involves a dissapearence of three girls, to add to the affect we have produced missing posters. We researched appearences of them in order to create realism.

This is our cleared out version of the gargage, the bench press will be moved once filming begins.



Again we have cleared the entrance and the desk, now we can start placing items and shrines on to surrounding area of the desk.



Before we could make the shrine, myself and Darcy produced a number of 'stalker' themed photographs. This is because it will add to the effect that they have been watched before their kiddnapping and murder. We planned to take these photos down my road......

Outside my house.....

The involvment of the friendship group as the murders will be linked......

Jubilee Park, it was convenient and near.

One of the 'stalker' like photos, the girls are unaware of the photos being taken.



The friendship group (the main targets).



Another Example of stalking photography.