Evaluation: How social groups are represented

Our opening sequence presents three character roles, each having different links to social groups.

Firstly, our Villain is presented in all-black, instantly creating a sinister disposition toward him while also connoting his evil nature. This draws on peoples attitudes and feelings about the darker side of society, with his mysterious nature further drawing on this fear of society's underbelly. But also, the use of the mask symbolises that he is also a member of a community, where is is recognised and known. His need for a mask shows that he wants to protect is identity, as his regular alter-ego lives a normal life. This instantly plays with peoples perceptions of the character; and teases that he may be laying in wait in the community, his evil side unnoticed by everyone, instilling a sense of unease as he may not be the generic, outcast and lonely villain as seen in many other films.

Another example of a social group are the detective characters. By having one appear more 'rough and ready', this could connote a more friendly and relateable persona, and yet also suggest an unreliable or untrustworthy character. Contrasting this with a tightly-dressed, 'by the book' detective, it allows audiences to see possible friction between the two protagonists, adding another social aspect of how this will come to fruition and be resolved. Also, by having two styles of detective personality, we have encompassed many of the stereotypical character types found in other thriller pieces, allowing audiences to be instantly familiar with the social group at hand.

Finally, our victim is portrayed alone as an inconspicuous, 'normal' woman, whose innocence is reinforced by the initial shot of her washing pots, an everyday occurrence for many people. This instantly represents, in varying degrees, many of our prospective audience's social class and group. By doing this, the killing is much closer to their lives, as it shows that it can happen to anyone, increasing the interest, tension and apprehension within the audience. But this character also juxtaposes the others portrayed in the scene, clearly showing the divides and possible prospectives between the various groups represented.

Evaluation: The BBFC and our Rating Choice

The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC)
Universal - All ages admitted, there is nothing unsuitable for children. Films under this category should not upset children over 4, for example Incredibles.
Parental Guidance - All ages admitted, but certain scenes may be unsuitable forchildren under 8, for example Toystory.

12A - Cinema only. Introduced in 2002. Films under this category are considered to be unsuitable for very young people. Those aged under 12 years are only admitted if accompanied by an adult, aged at least 18 years, at all times during the motion picture. However, it is generally not recommended that children under 12 years should watch the film. Films under this category .

.0.can contain mature themes, discrimination, soft drugs, commonly used milder swear words, and moderate violence/sex references.
12 - Home media only since 2002. 12A-rated films are usually given a 12 certificate for the VHS/DVD version unless extra material has been added that requires a higher rating. Nobody younger than 12 can rent or buy a 12-rated VHS, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, UMD or game. Films in this category may include infrequent drugs, infrequent use of strong language, brief nudity, discreet sexual activity, and moderate violence.

15 - Nobody younger than 15 can rent or buy a 15-rated VHS, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, UMD or game, or watch a film in the cinema with this rating. This rating is similar to the. Films under this category can contain adult themes, hard drugs, strong words, moderate-strong violence/sex references, and mild non-detailed sex activity.

18 - Nobody younger than 18 can rent or buy an 18-rated VHS, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, UMD or game, or watch a film in the cinema with this rating. Films under this category do not have limitation on the bad language that is used. Hard drugs are generally allowed, and strong violence/sex references along with strong sexual activity is also allowed. Scenes of strong real sex may be permitted if justified by the context.

Restricted 18 - Only adults are admitted, and can only be shown at licensed cinemas or sold at a Sex Shop. Films under this category have material the BBFC does not allow for its "18" rating, thus the violence and sex activity will be stronger in R18-rated VHSs, DVDs and films than those rated "18," however, there is still a range of material that is often cut from the R18 rating. This rating is similar to the American X rating. More cuts are demanded in this category than any other category.

We decided to aim our film to the age certificate 15, as this is where our mass audience is, we contemplated using certificate 12 to increase out potential audience but we felt that this would affect the content of our film. And reduce our ability to make an affective psychological thriller. We chose not to too aim the film at a certificate 18 as this would greatly reduce our potential audience, and would normally appeal to the age range 18. Looking into different films, we managed to gather information such as: How much swearing could be used, the amount of violence shown and disturbing images that could be recorded. By doing so, we are were able to maneuver scenes, adding violence and pushing the limits to attract the audience into watching our film. Teenager's love watching films that will scare them, make them jump and have an attractive and thrilling storyline. Aiming our film towards 18 would significantly lower our box office ratings and income as less people would watch it. We were amazed to find some of the material in age certificate 15’s had to offer to it’s audience and the ratings they receive.

Evaluation: What we have learned from the Preliminary Tasks for our overall piece.

Evaluation: New Technologies

Evaluation: Our chosen audience

The demographic which we targeted with our production, 'The List', was: The early-mid 20's, of any gender, although action-orientated films tend to be geared toward the male gender. Our prospective audience will want a film to entertain and excite them, but we have also included a psychological aspect to give the film's plot meaning and weight, appealing to those who want to enjoy the challenge of the enigma created by the film.
Our audience will clearly have disposable income as they have come to the cinema to see our film, so there may be a chance for us to expand on our film through merchandising. While this is another way to make money from the production, it was also be another effective marketing tool in raising awareness and creating a fan-base for our film.
Other films that our audience may have enjoyed are Panic Room, The Fugitive and Inception. These films have similar plot themes and genres to our production, are well respected and have large fan-bases, so any links to these films would be hugely beneficial for us. Also, the rise of big budget TV action dramas have increased interest in our chosen genre. 24 is a key example of this, once again following similar themes and ideas to our production. 24 has a large following, so fans of the series may take an interest in our film.
Overall, we have tried to create our film for a wide-variety of audiences to maximise our potential viewership, without focussing too much on one certain demographic, which may alienate and affect certain viewer's choice to watch our film.

Evaluation: Conventions and how we attracted audiences

In our opening, we have two clear sections and styles of filming, the first being the chase scene, and the second being the more storyline-focused detective scene.
Starting with the CCTV-style shot, we have used this angle and filter to create a sense of surveillance in the scene. Different style shots add variety for the audience, and keep them interested in the sequence itself.
The chase scene consists of fast-paced editing, a well developed technique in the industry, which adds pace and excitement to the scene, effective in symbolising the tense chase between the characters. We chose to limit the amount of zooms we used in the sequence to connote the sense of a "Fly-on-the-wall" point of view, to further symbolise that these events are happening within normal, everyday settings.
The second section of our piece is the slower paced 'Detective scene'. In this, we have chosen to use more longer, sweeping shots to place more emphasis on the setting of the crime scene. Shot-reverse shot also allowed us to construct effective dialogue, which are the key places where we advanced the storyline. Finally, by editing the filter and transitions used over certain scenes create the effect of a flashback. This allows us to create a non-linear timeline, an effective way of drawing our audiences into the story of 'The List'.

We have limited the use of special effects in our opening to help ground the piece in reality, allowing the audience to relate to it more easily. We felt that to achieve the 'gritty' feel we were striving for, SFX would detract from this. Any effects we included we tried to achieve with the camera itself, with its positioning and the angle of the shot.
There are exceptions, such as the slow-motion running used as the Top Billing names are introduced. We found this effect in the iMovie application, and thought it would be a great addition to our piece to add weight to the star names. Another effect is the 'flash' transitions used to symbolise the flashback scenes. We experimented with many ways of achieving the flashback effect , but we found that fade to white was most effective, and it also seemed to follow the conventions of other psychological films using a flashback storyline.
Finally, we used a variety of filters to create a sense of time, such as the 'bleach' effect over the flashback scenes. We found through audience feedback that filters were effective at creating the desired effect, while not being over-intrusive for the audience, something which we were keen to address.

One aspect where we felt we could have improved our opening was the introduction and presentation of our characters. With the limited amount of dialogue we have in our opening, the characterisation was difficult to portray, so we attempted to achieve this by focussing on the costumes of the characters. While both detectives are wearing suits, we have styled one to be very smart and 'proper', while the other is more relaxed and laid back. We feel that this could have gone into more depth, but with our limited budget we were unsure at how to do this effectively. Also, the lingering, contemplative shot of the more 'professional' Detective Mason analysing the body highlights his method of working, as opposed to the other's more 'rough and ready' approach.
But we were pleased with the way our villain was portrayed in the piece, especially with the sharp contrast of the pure white mask and the all-black clothes. The white of the mask almost 'pierced' each scene the villain was shown in, which we felt was hugely effective at highlighting the menace of his character. Finally, the way the villain removes his disguise throughout the chase hints that there will be a clue to his identity, connoting to the audience that he has flaws in his persona, which may be exploited.

The use of costumes in our film was one of the weaker points of our opening, but there were still positive points. The suits allowed the detectives to be recognisable and it gave them a higher status instantly, while the mask for the villian was especially effective in identifying him as the film's antagonist.
The genre we chose for our film is 'Action/Psychological thriller'. We initially chose this because they were the most popular choices in our initial questionnaire. This also allowed us to experiment with different styles of filming and editing, and allowed us more opportunities to have greater variety in our film opening. The initial fast-paced chase scene with low/high angles and action shots combined with the high-tempo music appeals to conventions in the action genre; While the slower paced nature of the flashbacks and twisted-frame shots in the detective scene in combination with the slow, 'scary' piano music provide a huge shift in tone of the piece, gearing it toward the psychological aspect of our genre.

The title font we have used in our piece is 'American typewriter'. We felt this connoted a strong link with the title, while being interesting and easy to read for the audience. We have made the names of our participants bold, to put emphasis on the 'star names', a common convention of title sequences as clearly seen in one of our inspirations, 'Panic Room'.

Evaluation: Our Publishing Companies

Our production company, "Monolith Productions", provides us with a personal identity to attract potential publishers. We chose 'Monolith' as it has an 'epic' and meaningful feel, which instantly portrays the group in a positive light. Its meaning of a large stone/artefact that is worshiped connotes how we want audiences to feel about or films too, but in a more effective, quick and interesting way.
We initially began with the film studio 'Lionsgate' as we felt that this company has a good reputation in the thriller genre, and has the resources as a whole for effective films. But then, through further research, we felt a more realistic choice of institution would be Film4 Productions. This is a UK production company, specialising in home-grown talent and providing a platform to reach much larger audiences.
An example case study of a Film4 production is '127 Hours', a British/American film directed by Danny Bolye, one of our inspirations. It was filmed with a comparatively low budget, appealing to our circumstances, and the very limited camera setup also appeals to the opportunities we had in our filming. Considering Film4 supported and published this production, we feel that they would be an ideal partner for our film.
We would also appeal to UK funding sources, such as the UK Film Council. This is a lottery-funded board which supports a variety of film-based projects, from big budget to small independent films. This would be an ideal place to receive backing from, and may also increase the exposure to our project, generating interest. An example of a film they have supported is 'Kidulthood', which became a huge success because of the increased budget and knowledge available, despite its 'newcomer' cast and crew.

Evaluation: Editing Process

In the beginning, we had trouble with our editing. We made sure we had enough clips to fill a five minute opening and decided on shots that we liked. After deleting unnecessary clips, we were still way over our allocated time and discovered that our opening didn't flow and make as much sense as we had originally hoped. We gathered up feedback and decided to re-film certain scenes such as the dialogue, hoping to make it flow smoother and more diligently. However this began to produce problems with editing. We would have to make the consistency of costumes, props and placement of acting.

After re-filming the scenes and speeding up actions such as walking or shot reverse shot scenes, our film was beginning to flow much nicer and more professional. However, there was still some scenes missing and actions to make our opening make sense. We then cut down further to a reasonable size and mind mapped more ideas based on our feedback once again. We decided to completely desert ideas and focus on making the storyline more interesting and gripping to the viewers. Finally we had re-filmed and made progress on producing more clips. Our feedback was excellent and our storyline made sense to all viewers.

Camera angles got easier throughout the project as we used more than one to take the same shot. This guaranteed that we got the perfect shot or the same shot from different angles to see which looked better or what effect it would give to the audience. By using different camera shots, we were able to give ourselves the opportunity to experiment with different locations of the camera to fill criteria and to generally make our film look the best it could.

Adding credits was not a problem using the imovie on the imac, we had already decided on the placement of the titles and based the font on the movie title, this would connote and mirror the effect of the whole concept of the title. Quite surprising to us, the credits seemed to be a missing puzzle piece that simply slotted in and complimented our work to it’s full extent. There was no struggle in editing the credits into the film, although our original idea of credits was abandoned due to lack of funds and equipment.

Sound was another key instrument to making our film opening a success. We had difficulties at first with the arrangement of clips and what worked well and didn't. In our rough cut we decided that a a scene could be shortened by a maximum of an estimate of 30 seconds, however the dialogue was very important. We decided to split the clip from the sound and use the sound elsewhere and this indeed worked extremely well and better than what we had hoped for. This clip can be seen in the mask dialogue. In the first scene where the antagonist is seen opening the door and look at the CCTV camera, there was a lot of background digetic noise of cars, the door and birds. This was very unrealistic and killed the tense atmosphere we had wished to create. We muted the clip, which instantly made a precise impact on the audience and what we hoped for.

Music was indeed significant to encourage our project to be the best it could possibly be. It was incredibly difficult to connote what our ideas suggested using garage band. We tried to edit in a fast paced, up beat, yet slightly chilling mood in the chase, to our music which then merges into a rather sincere and dramatic piece in the detective scenes. This took the team quite a few hours, trying to take on board constructive criticism people had to offer, and finally our hard work paid off. We received a lot of compliments towards the music in our film opening and positive attitudes about it.

Finished Version

Editing the rough cut gradually got easier the more we took audience feedback on board. We started to mind map more ideas that would improve the piece and started to film pieces several times to make sure that we got the perfect shot. By using the same recordings from differently placed cameras, we were able to select the best clip and edit them into our film. We changed clips completely or how we approached a scene. This is because we wanted to have the same impact on the audience as if we were the audience and watched it for the first time. We had the ideas, yet performing them was something of a challenge to the team. Some of ideas would generally be a different approach to the other so we would research and agree on which idea could possibly go into our film. We started to adjust clips, modifying them to suit the previous or future scenes. This began to get difficult as we had to speed up clips and cut precisely and accurately to merge scenes well with one another.

Watching and analysing the clip repeatedly, we thought as a collective team that the story could be made more interesting and understandable by having the detectives arrive at the house. This made the film flow much easier as you saw them arrive back at the crime scene. We received great comments from our peers quoting “It made it much clearer, more realistic and professional instead of a group of students with a camera.”

We re-filmed many clips to sort out any continuity errors and any clips that we needed to make quicker. We had trouble with time throughout the task as we had much more footage that could have been used effectively in a longer piece. We made the dialogue between the detectives faster to make the whole scene more realistic as if it were a conversation. The team pulled together the idea of the shot reverse shot technique making the audience see reactions and deciding for them how to react to that in our final piece, which I believe was executed perfectly to add pace to the conversation.

The List - Final Cut