CONSTRUCTION: EDITING

Both myself and Matthew took part in editing our film opening. 

For a convincing film, realistic sets are required, and these are achieved in different ways. For example, films involving crime will often require a news report, which is achieved using a Green Screen. After carrying out research of what needed to be done, we carried out our own Green Screen Shoot to make our News Scene look as authentic as possible.

                                                                                                                  

 In film scenes, occasionally a scene will change, with the voiceover continuing from the previous scene. If done properly, this can give a clean touch and make the film appear extremely professional.

This is the case for us - our next scene was our killer approaching the house, but the voiceover still played of the News Report. This worked well for us, as the second shot of the killer was a visual representation of what the News reporter was describing.

FEEDBACK

CERTIFICATION

I came to decide this age rating, mainly because there is a small amount of violence that occurs in the film, to the point where I do not think it would be very suitable for someone under 15 to watch. Also, some of the parts, such as the guitar playing scene may be confusing for some people of a younger age, specifically under 15 years old. I confirmed this by visiting the BBFC website, and reading about recommendations and guidelines for film age ratings.

 

CONSTRUCTION: FILMING

In our film opening, there is a CCTV shot as the killer approaching the house door, which looked really effective. It was shot from a high angle, and we edited it with a blue filter to look more realistic. Like many film productions, we shot our exterior and interior of the house in two different places, then edited it to make it look like it was all taken in one shot. 

Making sure it was dark outside when filming was important to us, to achieve the mysterious atmosphere that we envisioned. However, although we wanted it dark, achieving good lighting was always a priority, to make sure characters and actions could be seen properly.
In addition to this, we used two different houses - one for the exterior and the other for interior. We had to ensure to keep the (dark) lighting simultaneous for both shots for a realistic edit.

Our closing scene of the film opening is the killer playing his guitar, reflecting on the murder he just committed. The camera pans across the guitar, so we just see the hands. However, throughout this we have a voiceover of the killer talking/explaining his actions, to make it clear it is his guitar. We realised for a film opening, whilst we don't want to give too much away, what is shown must be clear for the audience to fully understand.
Throughout the guitar playing, we put together a montage of scenes from the killing, to edit as an overlay over the top. This includes shots of the killer laying the knife in the girls hand, and trying to clear his tracks after the actual murder. The overlays and voiceover implies the killer is having flashbacks of the crime scene whilst he reflects on his actions.

PLANNING: OUR COMP LIST

 FILM TREATMENT 

‘Classy’ girl around 20 years old murdered by a masked killer. News report. Halloween/Killer Clowns? Killer turns out to be a serial killer going for the whole family. Blood red dress, stabbed with knife. Steals precious ring? Killer is psycho, plays guitar to reflect once he has killed the girl. Plays the song Hotel California by The Eagles with flashbacks (overlays) of the murder. PLANNING MY AUDIENCE QUESTIONAIRE I am using Google forms to create a questionnaire for my target audience and send it to people who are likely to watch our film. I will ask questions referring to age, gender, what types of films they prefer to watch, what influences them to watch a film and where they prefer to watch it. Our production team want to make a film that would appeal to young people aged 15-35. Our questionnaire will be useful to ensure that our type of genre will appeal to this audience. Through the use of Google Forms, I will be able to collect this data. These are the questions I intend to ask: 1. What is your gender? 2. What age category do you fit into? 3. Which of these your film genres would you watch? Pick as many as you wish. 4. What was the last film you watched? 5. What platform would you most likely use to watch a film? 6. Which of these trailers have you seen? 7. Which of these platforms would you use to find out about films? 8. What is the most likely reason you would watch a new film? My results consisted of both genders, and most people were between the ages 15-24. Romantic Comedy and Action were the most popular film genres, and Netflix is where most people watch films. The majority of people watch new films either because it's a genre they enjoy, they are a fan of the cast members or they just want to keep up with the latest film trends. They would mostly find out about new films from social media, or TV adverts. 

REFLECTING ON OUR FILM OPENING

Towards the end of our film process, once we were editing our clips, we realised there were several errors made which needed to be fixed. Several shots were too different to each other, and because we had to keep it to 2 minutes our storyline became very unclear.

Our scenes with the killer in, were shot in two different places. Me and my team member filmed half of it each at our houses, and for my sections my dad played the killer. However, due to a lack of communication our killers wore different colours, making it very obvious there was more than one person as the killer character. We made sure our shots were relatively dark so both houses looked the same, but the costume was too obvious. To fix this, I reshot my scenes, and made sure my dad was in the same white shirt and tie as Matthew who also played the killer. On top of this, this time I took on the filming role as my sister acted as the victim. This gave me the freedom to film exactly how I wanted, including all different angles and precise shots. I created a detailed shot list before hand, so the filming was done more efficiently and we only got what was necessary.
  

Another error we made that had to be re shot is our opening scene, which was a news report. We got two of our school friends to be the newsreaders, but realised one of them were not playing the part how we wanted. Her tone was too upbeat and she looked too happy to be delivering the news of the death of a girl, so we re shot with just one newsreader. We changed the script slightly to make the entire storyline less confusing, and made the voiceover clearer.

SHOT LIST TABLE

Sound/Voiceover	Shot/Scene	Actor(s)	Props	Notes
Speech - News Report	News Shot	Olivia & Sam	Sofa	Sat in front of the green screen
Music in the background Footsteps through the stones Voiceover of news report	Killer approaching the house	Matthew	Killer Mask Knife	Night Time, Dark
Scary Music	Girl comes into hallway to apply makeup	Rebecca	Lipstick	Dark hallway
Scary Music	Killer slowly reveals knife from behind back. Close up shot of knife	Matthew	Knife
Scary Music	Girl spots the killer behind her in the mirror, knife is lifted and girl screams.	Rebecca Matthew	Knife Lipstick	Shot through the mirror
Scary Music	Girl lying dead on the floor. Pan up body as the killer takes her arms and crosses them over her chest.	Rebecca
Scary Music	Blood knife placed next to the dead girl, alongside a picture of her. Close up shot.	Rebecca Matthew	Knife covered in ketchup Framed photo
Scary Music	Killer goes to exits, but sees another framed photo of the girl’s sister. Black out, goes into a flashback of when the girl’s sister was killed	Matthew
Scary Music	Pan Across of killer playing the guitar to Hotel California by The Eagles. Overlay of flashbacks, including the knife and girl being stabbed.	Matthew	Knife Guitar Amp/Speaker Photo Frame Flowers

 

 

 

 

AUDIENCE PROFILE COLLAGE CONSTRUCTION: FILMING THE NEWS SCENE

Our opening film sequence involves a new scene, where the news reporters spoke about a recent death of a young girl in the woods. To film this, we used two people in our school year, Olivia Stocks and Sam Hartley, as the news readers. As they were already in business clothes, this role worked well for them and they speak nicely, which is important for a news reader. We moved the black sofa in front of the green screen, then tried our best to create an autocue so they could read their script whilst 'looking at the camera'. This was successful, they both played their roles professionally and it looks very convincing. When we begin to edit, we will turn the green screen into a news backdrop. We used a tripod and iPhone to film this scene, with myself and other team member directing. 

Unfortunately, due to our 2 minute cut off point we had to cut the news scene, as we felt other scenes would be more beneficial and make more sense to the film opening. However, filming and constructing these News Scenes was a good experience, and we learnt useful skills we will be able to use again in the future.

PLANNING: TOPLINE AND BIG QUESTION

I watched a presentation by Frank Ash. He is a creative consultant, who has taught storytelling and creativity techniques to teams across the BBC and beyond. It is important to focus on the audience, for example what will interest the audience? How will the narrative develop? For Frank Ash, film makers need to think of what the Top Line and the Big Question are. He calls the Top Line 'one elegant sentence', that sums up the story. He says we need to leave the audience wanting to find out more - which is The Big Question. Having learnt from Frank Ash's presentation on future learn, I decided to sign up for Future Learns Film Distribution: Connecting Films with Audiences. The Course promises to cover how our favourite films make it to our local cinema or television screen, through the film distribution process. The start date is 18th October 2021. 

My Top Line would be: A thriller film in which a young man, driven to distraction by jealousy, seeks revenge on the woman who he believes has betrayed him.

The Big Question would therefore be: Was he right to doubt her? We watch as he is drawn unwittingly into a web of deceit.