Evaluation Question 4 part 4

Final Cut Pro

In the construction of my short film the main technology that I used was Final Cut Pro. This software enabled me to edit and modify multiple video and audio clips to create the short film. The main tool used in this was the 'blade' tool; this was used to trim and separate different clips to put them in the correct order. the tool was particularly useful in separating and removing all outtakes and mistakes from the main footage. Another significant tool used was in the 'effects' tab' from here I could include different visual effects on individual clips such as 'Earthquake'. This effect would shake video files (controlled by a panel) to give a psychological and distorted feel to it. In addition to this to keep with the genre conventions another effect used was the image distort tool that can be seen mainly at the end of the short film narrative; this spun the image and warped the footage to make it seem as though the main character was falling into hysteria and made the audience feel 'dizzy' by the end.

Overall the most important tool used was the 'colour corrector' tool. I was able to manipulate the footage to have different levels of contrast, boosting the vibrancy of different clips and allowing more to be seen from the footage. Following this I could also darken certain clips so that certain items in the background could be completely blacked out and also invited a sinister tone.

When it came to sound I could also change the different levels of sound on the actual audio file where you can simply drag and either raise or lower the file. This allowed me to blend all the different sound files together and overall create an atmospheric piece.

Evaluation Question 4 part3

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Photoshop

The only hindrance with Photoshop was its lack of tool labelling in the sidebar, using this software was an easy and efficient tool to use once you had learnt it, but doing this took a few hours more than it should have done due to it being frustratingly difficult to locate certain tools at times. 

Evaluation Question 2 part 2

 How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

The physical technology that was used in the process of filming and editing were as follows:

HDV Camera:

 The HDV camera was helpful in creating our short film for a number of reasons. The first being that this camera allowed the footage to be recorded for much long that an ordinary camera and also gave a clearer image when played back onto the Mac computers. The limitations of this technology was that because it was new technology we were using different settings such as HDV and DV were hard to find and change, following on from this it hindered our ability to film. We filmed in the wrong format therefore meaning we had to re-film the entire piece again. Another set back to using these camera's was that it records onto a Tape rather that onto an SD card. This meant that we were then required to digitise the footage on a tape deck; this became a much longer process than simply downloading the video files from an SD card but in turn allowed for better footage.

HD Camera:

For filming my audience feedback and taking behind the scenes photo's of the short film, a handheld HD camera was used. This equipment was used as it was a very simple and effective way of recording vital information. In addition to this it enabled me to utilise a very fast way of uploading and installing footage for feedback as it all came directly from an SD card rather than having to digitilise footage such as it was on the HDV camera, furthermore this camera was also lightweight and easy to use in comparison with the HDV camera as the tripod did not encumber me as much. The only flaw with this technology is that the sound and image quality is not up to the same standard as a HDV but for its purpose of use in this circumstance it worked perfectly.

Halogen Lights:

The Halogen lights that we used were effective uses of technology. The lights gave us the power to create different forms of shadowing and lighting effects for atmosphere in the film. Using the reflectors different angles of light were able to present themselves on screen and show characters in different forms and allowed us to play around with the notions of 'good and evil' and contrast them with 'light and dark' as the main antagonist was always shown brightly lit. In addition to the lights being useful they also held us back at points with its limitations. For instance the lights become incredibly hot and overheat after a matter of minutes, making it hard for the actors to act and also to assemble and disassemble them afterwards as they become blazing hot.

Computers Used:

When it came to creating and editing our three ancillary texts (short film, magazine article and poster) I used to different types of computers. For the main film I used a Mac computer which was by far one of the easiest ways to edit the product. The use of effects was incredibly easy use and the whole product was easy to manage on it. The only thing that let the Mac down was human error as it was the first time that I had ever used one and so I started off at a slower pace than what I would have done if I had been using a PC.

When it came to editing footage for audience feedback, poster creation and the article creation the technology used was a PC. The reason behind this was that for things such as editing feedback it was very quick and simple to use as I could download the clips directly from an SD card rather than having to digitise the footage, furthermore when it came to the usage of Photoshop and InDesign they were easy to access and user friendly and helped me develop and further my skills with these software program. The only fault with the PC was that there was never enough memory on the computer to actually export and save the final products that I had designed, instead the use of external memory devices had to be used to save and export the products, taking more time to do so and being a frustrating inconvenience when I had finished products waiting to upload.

How Blogger helped in my use of exhibition

The website Blogger was a highly useful tool in the creation of both my blog and all research. In using this technology I was able to create and meet different criteria specified by the lecturer by creating different posts that consisted of ancillary texts, short essays answering questions using the insert video tool and image tool to embed different media onto the blog and overall create an effect coursework project.

Evaluation Question 4 part 1

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Here is a short tutorial on how to create the magazine article in Adobe Indesign. Using the text to and manipulating its size pull quotes and drop caps are made easy to use, following on from this using the rectangle tool images can be inserted and re-sized and the same can be seen in Microsoft Publisher in this short video tutorial.

Evaluation Question 3 part 2

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

From looking at my audience feedback for the short film I have learnt a number of things. The first being that the narrative twist at the end was effective in it being unexpected by the audience and in Jakiya's case she is still trying to figure out the ending, showing its ambiguity to be successful. My personal opinion on the twist is that even though to most it was unexpected I believe I could have presented it better when it came to dialogue and on screen directions. At some points the film felt unclear as to where this twist was heading and although I wasn't aiming to 'spoon feed' the audience the narrative the story could have been slightly clearer in its intentions so that it wasn't too difficult for the audience to follow. For future pieces I create, I will improve upon this by adding in more deliberate scenes that leave larger clues as to what is happening and furthermore add more in depth twists to keep the audience engaged.

In terms of the sound editing and use of sound I found that all of the audience members believed it to be an effect micro-feature used to generate a tense and disturbing atmosphere to the short film, which in itself can be seen as a success. But in contrast to this there was one fatal flaw to it, most of the audience feed back I received consisted of the music and sound effects were at some points too loud and that the problem with this is that it can take away from the overall short film. For example in some sections of the short film characters dialogues were drowned out by the backing soundtrack and some sounds were so loud that it cause discomfort in the audience's ears. From this I have learnt that the levels of control on the sound should be adjusted and lowered so that they still create an eerie tone but must not consume the film.

In terms of the genre, I believe that we met the criteria of psychological thrillers codes and conventions. I included the same style of internal interrogation such as it is in 'Fight Club'. Even though we did not ask the audience on camera what genre they thought the short film was, each member guessed correctly. From this I believe that we successfully created an effective genre, the micro features I used in the short film consisted of the tight close camera angles creating a sense of claustrophobic and kept a non chronological narrative to create the confusion and disjointed atmosphere.

In terms of enigma I believe that I created a strong one when it came to who the characters were, the idea of making both characters the same person was a very unpredictable narrative device and from the likes on Facebook the audience enjoyed it. As for narrative a sense of dislocation was achieved throughout the narrative creating a powerful and thought provoking narrative.

Evaluation Question 3 part 1

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 1 part 6

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

Length

The length of our short film was approximately 3 minutes 45 seconds long. This fit into the short film forms and conventions when it comes to time. The short film could have been made longer to create a larger and deeper story, but we had to stick to a time frame that was under 5 minutes long. With this short length of time that we had it made us focus more on what shots to use to tell the narrative and only use key information.

Storylines

In the storyline of Twisted we decided to go against the convention of telling the narrative through mostly non verbal communication and camera shots. Because the genre of our film is psychological thriller we decided to have the narrative progressing through the dialogue of the psychopath; this is due to most psychological thrillers usually having a central protagonist or antagonist that narrates the story and allows the audience to understand the plot as it moves along. So in the conventions of short film we decided to make it complex and difficult to follow at points to try and make the audience focus their attention even more on the events that were happening. But in this we still kept to the convention of a condensed narrative. Furthermore with this being a psychological thriller we decided to have the convention of protagonist meeting his antagonist face to face and having a confrontation, but decided to make this the main bulk of the film as it made the film have more grit to it.

Characters

In following with short film conventions we stuck to three main characters. Henry, The Psychopath and Mary. The reason for doing this was so that we could focus on the relationship between Henry and The Psychopath; we wanted to make the audience unsure of who was really the ‘good guy’ of the narrative and also what were both their connections to Mary. Whilst doing this we realised that we could make the distinctions between the two central characters blurred and make them question who was real and who was not. Like with the genre conventions of psychological thrillers the characters were shrouded in mystery, we didn’t know where they originated from or how they came to meet. In addition to this we also decided that the primary antagonist would be the omnipotent all knowing character to show who really had the power.

Twist

In both the genre of psychological thriller and short films a twist is usually involved to create an ambivalent ending where the audience are unsure as to the events that had unravelled. In Twisted we kept to this convention with the whole story revolving around this narrative device to generate questions as to what identity is and who is real and who is not. The twist in our short film was that both Henry and The Psychopath were one and the same which was revealed through flashback scenes where Henry believed The Psychopath to be the killer of his wife Mary, but in actual fact it is slowly revealed through the actions of Mary and the close ups that Henry was no longer married to her and in his rage he murdered her. We are then again taken back to the dark room where the two central characters are in a violent confrontation where Henry murders The Psychopath which then ends with Henry waking up with a knife in a nurse in a mental health hospital. So in this we conformed to the conventions of psychological thrillers and short films.

Budget and creativity

The budget for our short film was roughly £15.00 for the fake knife and shirts. Most short films only have very limited budgets for props, effects and equipment luckily we had the filming equipment for free from the college. Since we are first time film makers as well as being students we kept to a low budget as most short film makers do, this in effect is actually better than having a large budget as we had to focus the money on only the essential products needed for the film. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trutex-009659-Sleeve-School-Inches/dp/B008O39AQU/ref=sr_1_8?s=clothing&ie=UTF8&qid=1395663002&sr=1-8&keywords=white+school+shirt

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blitz-Sport-Standard-Rubber-Knife/dp/B001S3C7RM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395663038&sr=8-1&keywords=blitz+training+knife

As this film was intended to be released online and in small niche cinemas we were under less pressure to produce a work of art that would draw in large audiences. Having the film as a non profit product also gave us less pressure to produce something that would have to make big returns such as it is in box office films. The only restriction with the creativity of the short film was that it was a psychological thriller and therefore stuck closely to its forms and conventions, making it slightly predictable in its intentions as many psychological thrillers had be released before.

Distribution

With distribution of short films we did not have any companies that would mass produce and release our film. Instead we decided to use what most real products do and publish it to the internet on websites such as YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe_Y9MjNTGc which was our prime place to publish it. We could also publish it on sites such as Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/upgrade1v2?utm_source=search&utm_medium=google-upgrade1-brand_vimeo_alone_vimeo_exact-uk&utm_campaign=1621&utm_term=vimeo&gclid=CPCkxeqVq70CFWjKtAodQl0AiA&dclid=CJbZ-OqVq70CFQqR3godcTIAyw another place to release short films or enter in competitions such as the BFI completion. http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/competitions

Evaluation Question 1 part 5

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

In order to answer this question we must first answer what are the forms and conventions of short films.

Evaluation Question 1 part 4

Poster Continued

How did you go about designing your poster?

So from the codes and conventions of the psychological thriller posters I decided that I would first take close ups of the two main characters of the short film. When doing this I made sure that both were positioned exactly the same so that their faces would be aligned and I could then Photoshop the two faces together to make a double face. Upon doing this I realised that the image didn't look as good as what it could have been and decided to redraft the poster.

I decided to go against the usual conventions of what characters faces are expressing and went for ambivalent and mocking expressions to make it unclear to the audience as to who was the antagonist and who was the protagonist. Following on from this I decided that I would remove the background of the photos and using the threshold tool is Photoshop removed the entire colour from them making their portraits come out in a black posterize format. From this I then place one portrait landscape and the other inverted underneath it to create a sort of shadow effect to symbolise that the shadow of one character is his alter ego.This kept with the codes and conventions as they were dark and depressing with an enigma set.

From this I then took a background from Google images of a crumbling wall that had rot and decay setting in. The reason behind choosing this was that it conformed to psychological thriller conventions of being bleak and desolate; furthermore once this was placed in Photoshop I resized the image slightly de-saturated it using the contrast and brightness tool and then selecting the arrange tool sent it to the back of the poster so that it was set as the background.

In addition to this I decided that with the colour scheme the main feature of the film was blood being spilled and so decided to add blood splatters that were a deep crimson making it look fresh and stand out in the poster. This was the same for the main title which was created in a font creepy font website http://www.fontspace.com/category/blood  and downloaded. Furthermore the log line was in white font abiding by the codes and conventions and it also stood out more than the black text.

Finally I decided to take a page out of ‘The number 23’s’ book by adding a short extract from the logline and placing it in black and copying it all over the page to add the psychological theme to it. The information that I included in this poster was the title (which is essential) a logline and the billing block. I deliberately decided to not add the actor’s names to the poster because with short film the actors names are not used to attract an audience (such as in mainstream Hollywood with names such as Al Pacino) and also because it furthered the mystery as to who these people were.

Evaluation Question 1 part 3

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

Poster: How did you go about designing your poster?

 Before I began to create a poster for my short film I first looked at what the codes and conventions of psychological thriller posters are. Whilst looking I found these main features:

• Most posters go with a bleak and dark background that either has highly de-saturated environments or nothing at all
• Most psychological thriller posters also have the main protagonist on the front usually expressing fear, confusion or anger such as ‘Shutter Island’ ‘The number 23’ and ‘The Silence of the Lambs’
• Normally there is one object (usually a key element of the film) is only thing saturated in vibrant colour such as ‘After Life’
• The text used on the poster is usually red, white or black, or all three
• The title of the film is usually in a white colour that is in bold letters
• Finally the log lines are usually in a bloody crimson red

Evaluation Question 1 part 2

Magazine Article - Continued

Process of laying out the cover

Evaluation Question part 1

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

Magazine Article

How did you choose the name of your magazine and other miscellaneous?

When it came to selecting the name of the magazine I decided that the best course of action was to create a simple title that would go in the right top corner of the article and so I went for ‘NYC Times’ with the actual page being a film reviewing page simply called ‘New Films’.  Here I followed the conventions of traditional reviews in magazines by using devices such as drop caps when starting the article and in addition to this using multiple pull quotes. In using these I selected the best quotes to use in order to catch the reader’s attention and pull them in. In conjunction with this I also added multiple pictures to take away the plain feel of the magazine and instead liven it up.

Why did you choose the colour scheme that you used?

The reason I chose the pale blue colour scheme is because of a number of reasons. The first being that after I had read a number of different review pages I noticed that the articles that stood out the most were ones with bold writing and images that stood out from the background and so following this the background should be of a mellow nature putting the reader at ease and focusing more on the writing and images rather than being distracted by what was happening in the background. Furthermore upon asking fellow classmates as to how my background worked in contrast with my previous attempt (bright red) they said that it was clearer to read and much more welcoming to read rather than aggressive.  Also I decided to keep the bright red colour scheme for the star rating system as it contrasted well with the blue and made the article stand out from ordinary ones.

Final Edit of Short Film

Final Magazine Review Page

Links to surveys revolving around short films

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6QC9ZP6

Brief History of the Psychological Thriller

The Psychological Thriller genre has been constant, popular genre which we can see being used in some of the very early literature texts. It focuses on manipulating the audience, and the building of suspense. It has been popular with authors and film directors alike, as it captures and stimulates the audience in a way that is different to something of the horror genre, or the action genre. Psychological Thrillers, even if in a 'fantasy' setting, tend not to try and suspend the audience's belief of what is going on in the film. Thye have been known to commonly feature narrative points which are used to catch the audience members off guard; it builds up a high expectation, before making them feel uncertain of what they have just seen.

Examples in Literature:

The Count Of Monte Cristo (1844) is a swashbuckling revenge thriller in which the protagonist is betrayed by his friend and is sent to a prison in southern France from which he later escapes and seeks revenge. The story uses conventions such as revenge, power and betrayal which relate to the thriller genre.
Heart Of Darkness (1903) is a first person within a first person about a man who travels the who travels up the Congo River in search of an enigmatic Belgian trader. Layer by layer, the atrocities of the human soul and man's inhumanity to man are peeled away. This could be seen nowadays as a psychological thriller because of the psychotic theme and conventions it contains.


Examples In Film:

Aflred Hitchcock's first thriller was the third silent movie The Lodger (1926) which was a Jack the Ripper story. This film was a psycho thriller because it dealt with a psychopath murderer and so had a typical story line of this genre. Hitchcock also produced thrillers such as Blackmail (1929)- his first sound film, Murder!, Number Seventeen,The Man Who New Too Much. These were all suspense films.
The chilling German film M (1931) directed by Fritz Lang, told the story of a criminal deviant who preyed on children.
Theme of thrillers was the FBI/agent hunting a serial killer and the most famous example of this was the picture winning, The Silence Of the Lambs (1991) by Jonathan Demme. This was classified as a crime thriller but it also merged into the psycho thriller subgenre  as it dealt with a psychological issues. David Fincher's Se7en (1995) is another example of a crime thriller that was famous.

Final Poster

Demo of a magazine article

Behind Scenes Pictures from filming the Interrogation scenes

This was created from using the 'Make a GIF' website http://makeagif.com/

Sound Design

For our film production we are going to use a number of different soundtracks and sound effects and I will be layering these sound effects in order to generate a powerful and atmospheric vibe to the short film. Using these sounds from various websites such as http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?feels%5B%5D=Intense&page=5

and http://soundbible.com/2069-Realistic-Punch.html to help with this and further more I will also be using numerous sound effects from the video co-pilot files.