ROUGH CUT - Miss Georgiou

ROUGH CUT

Audience feedback is important to a production because it helps us as a group identify the strengths and weaknesses of our opening sequence. Another reason why it is important is because we can then think about what is the most important parts we need to change and can help us plan when we will re do these.

Our group received various amount of feedback in various different ways.

We as a group screened our production to the class so we could receive feedback on what worked well and what improvements we needed to make. We received verbal feedback from the class and found this was very effective. We received feedback of our focus group which meant from ages of between 16-17, which was good for us as our opening sequence was rated at 15+. With this feedback it means that the target audience was hit and we would be receiving accurate feedback. We also received feedback from YouTube, this was after posting our opening sequence. Any member of the public could watch our post, like and comment, giving us as a group feedback. We found that all these ways were helpful for putting new ideas into our minds and highlighting to us what does not work so well and what does.

The public giving me and my group feedback meant there would be another set of eyes analysing the opening sequence and maybe seeing things that we don't. This also shows to us that one small change could make a large difference.

From all three ways of feedback we found that there was many positive amounts of feedback. The first main positive piece of feedback being the editing; the audience found this was very good and stood out. The editing was a huge part to our opening sequence and too get good feedback was great. The large amount of editing which we gained good feedback from was the section in the opening sequence where the mask appears. The lighting was just right for them to see the mask in a quick flash on the screen. However the music behind this section could have been bolder and louder, catching the audiences attention just a little bit more. When adding these filters we made sure that they were all in timing and were the right brightness and opacity so there was a constant flow throughout and you couldn't notice any small blips in the camera angles or that all the scenes were filmed on the same day. Another positive we received from screening our production is the amount of conventions of a thriller that were used, for example; low key lighting, female victim and hidden identity. The female victim meant there was more suspense and tension brought towards the audience and they found that a larger relationship was created between the two, which is what we intended to happen, and found as group from the feedback that we was happy and it was the right choice to make. Mine and my groups peers found that the low-key lighting left them waiting for more and in suspense about what was going to happen next, as not much evidence and clues were shown on screen. The class also liked the fact that the opening sequence was left on a cliff-hanger, from this they found that the concluding narrative was interesting and wasn't boring for them to watch. All of these main positive pieces of feedback has shown to my group that the story boards when planning was important and helped to maintain the good narrative that was noticed, as well as editing skills and conventions.

The main constructive feedback we received firstly was the title frame which was shown half way through the opening sequence. Me and my groups peers found that the title worked well and the music fitted in well, also blending in and out well to match the next up coming scene. Although some improvements could be made on the opening scene after the title, we as a group found that the lighting was quite dull and needed to stand out more to the audience, as well as adding some more dramatic music to show to the audience that the scene is concluding soon. Although apart from this, us as a group were happy with the ending scenes. The feedback about the opening credits we received was varied, although as a whole we received feedback that they wasn't on screen long enough and were just a little too small to read quick enough, although we had already discussed this as a group and were happy and conclusive with the feedback given. 

When receiving comments and feedback, positive feedback is useful and helpful to as it has given our group an insight of what elements do not need any additional changes and why they have helped to make our production successful. We have taken these comments from both the screening of our production and the comments left on the YouTube video that we uploaded of our thriller opening sequence rough cut. Firstly our feedback suggested that our transitions were well selected, in the way it wasn't too obvious that we were transitioning into the next scene and swiftly changed into the next scene keeping it professional looking. Another comment made was the fact it was clear in what our narrative was. I personally think we spent alot of our time making sure it was clear for the audience to understand the order of our thriller and what the narrative was, so this feedback was very helpful showing that our work in trying to reach this has worked. Another positive comment from our feedback from our YouTube video was that the sounds that we ended up using on our opening sequence, which were many overlapped created a good effect. 

The changes we make to our thriller opening sequence will be based on the comments and amounts of feedback given, we will make sure all pieces of feedback are taken into consideration are taken and changes in places we as a group feel is right. We will change the font sizes throughout and think more closely about our music; changes in the right places e.g. more dramatic and concluding music will need to be used. Overall asking for feedback from varied places has helped us see from different perspectives, looking from a different point of view on what does and doesn't work well.

PRODUCTION ROLES - Miss Miller

PRODUCTION ROLES

• Each person must have a role allocated to them
• To explain why they've been given this specific role
• Evaluation of how they did in this role (what went well, could have gone better) and why

People need to be allocated specific roles when creating a film as it enables every member of the production to contribute especially towards one area, making every member of the production team to have a significant role in production. The main roles that are necessary for creating a film consists of;

Producers - Hannah, Ollie, Ella
Directors - Hannah
Actors - Ollie & Ella
Director of photography - Hannah
Music Producers - Ollie
Screen play writer - Ella
MES Co-ordinator - Hannah, Ella, Ollie
Editors - Ella

Deciding on production roles before we start filming our opening sequence will help us stay on track and help prevent any mistakes when filming. For each eight roles we have at least one person, our first role is producer. A Producer a person responsible for the financial and managerial aspects of the making of a film or broadcast or for staging a play. A producer helps to prepare the whole film, including the narrative. When planning we all decided and contributed on our narrative, so we was all happy with the final ending decision. We decided that every person in our group ( me, hannah, ollie) will all be a producer, this is because we all put input into what we are going to include in our opening sequence and how it will work well. All of our input has worked better than just one person being a producer this is because we worked together well and came up with better ideas on how and what to film, we had weekly discussions had produced our opening scene together as a team. A Producer is the most important job in film making and we came to the decision that we are all important in our group. We have all planned our own ideas for editing, music and mise-en-scene and this all comes under being a good producer. If we selected one person from our group to be the producer then this may has caused friction between the group as the decisions haven't been made together and discussed properly, i found that in my own opinion because neither me or my group members had been a producer in any production before, working as a team worked best as we learnt of each other and took it in turns to take the lead, this way it was fair.

The second role of producing a film is a director. A film director is a person who directs the making of a film. Directing is a large part in film making and without the director nothing would really take place. As a group we decided to make Hannah the director. We chose to do this as she took media at GCSE and was a director here. She has learnt all the techniques and is good at taking charge of situations. Her role as a director means that is the boss of the film and has to direct everyone in the right direction. Her skills will help us explore new ways into creating a better thriller films and add different touches to any other normal thriller. As a director Hannah will be in charge of nearly everything in the scene, e.g. deciding on whether the shot taken looks right and needs to be taken again, this will help us with the best possible outcome and engage with the audience well. After our first day of filming I found that Hannah was a good director and gave clear specific instructions on what do to. I found that this helped as we didn't miss any of the scenes out and each scene we filmed was filmed well with good structure. Hannah made sure the background scene usable and worked well with the atmosphere we wanted to create. In my opinion I found that Hannah didn't do anything wrong, the planning before hand helped us to move on faster and not forget about anything that needed to be included, although after a group discussion we found that Hannah needed to come to conclusions about finalising scenes before, and not make new decisions In the middle of filming, we found that this wasn't a large issue but did cause a little concern at the start of our filming.

The actors in our opening sequence was myself (Ella) and Ollie.
An actor is a person whose profession is acting on the stage, in films, or on television. We as a group have chosen to use two actors for our filming. Our first actor is ollie, who is playing two parts in our opening sequence, he is going to be the antagonist aswell as a victim. His role as a antagonist will mean he will have a different personality than to the victim. His role as a antagonist means his personality will be very masculine and tough. As an actor ollie will have to use his acting skills to play both the parts very well and not show to the audience that it is the same actor playing two parts as this is important and one thing that me and my group are worried about. We felt that ollie has a strong charachter and would be good as an actor, he uses alot of expression in his tone. The other actor we have discussed as a group to use is myself (ella). We as a group decided to use myself as our second actor as i express qualities that would be good for a young vunrable female victim. Our actors both show good qualites that will show strong emotion to the audience and intrege them into what is being shown.

The third production role is director of photography. This simply means the person filming the whole scene/production. Hannah has taken on the role of director of photogrpahy as this is because she took media at GCSE and has learnt about the camera skills before, so could suggest to the other members of my group what camera angle/technique may work well in a particular scene and why. The director of photography can look through the camera and decide what looks good and what dosent when filming a scene, similar roles to a director. I think in my own opinion that this is a very important role as without this role the opening sequence wouldnt be filmed as well as not being filmed to a high enough standard as what hannah produced. When filming we found that hannah done a very good job of filming, she used all camera angles which we discussed that we was going to use and the quality of filming was excellent. Although we didnt try using two people as our director of photography so we couldnt compare the quality of filming, we didnt find this a problem but next time we feel we should decide afterwards.

The fourth production role is music producers. This role allows the allocated person to pick certain sound effects and music for scenes in our thriller. For this role we as a group decided that Ollie would be the music producer. Before filming as a group we researched conventional sounds that aure used in thrillers, these sounds build up tension and suspense and the typical convention such as a heartbeat. It was very hard to pick sounds before filming as we didnt know how our filming was going to change and could excatly decided so we waited until afterwards. After fully filming our opening sequience ollie took on the role of looking at specific scenes and deciding what sound effects should go where and why. Ollie decided that a run through of the music would play throughout aswell as other sound effects ontop. For example; when the antagonist is on screen and seen to be surrounding the victim, a heartbeat will be played to represent the victim and how scared he is, this will create a relationship with the audience, creating tension and making them feel vunrable of him. Music makes alot of difference in thrillers as it can sometimes build up more tension than what is actually shown on the screen, this is why it was important for ollie to get things right. Overall i feel in my own opinion that ollie has done well, he has picked conventinal sounds that are well known to the thriller audience and are well known to making the audience feel scared and nervous. Although, i feel he could have researched further and maybe have used sounds that appear out of the blue and arent well-known, creating our thriller opening sequence to be different to anyone elses.

The fifth production role is screen play writer. This the credits shown on the screen. Obviously because we are only creating an opening sequence the credits will be shown the whole way through at the beginning and not the end, just to show to the audience who is in this opening sequence and what roles people have taken on. I (ella) have been selected to be the screen play writer. We decided this as a group as

OPENING SCENE NARRATION - Miss Miller

OPENING SCENE NARRATION

Our opening sequence will be from 2-3 minutes long, and will include different techniques from cinematography, sound, editing, miss-en-scene and conventions.
Our opening sequence is a thriller production.

Our opening scene begins with a black screen, this lets the audience listen to what the opening scene is and what is going to happen throughout. Over the black screen, a voice over will be heard, this is a lady with a deep loud voice reading a news report,the news report opening (tune)will be played first to indicate thenews has started. Her voice is loud and bold and attracts the audiences attention easily, as she speak clearly about the latest headline on the news. The opening sound to the news lets the audience engage quickly, as its catchy and is known to the audience as the opening to the daily news. The scene then slowly arises and opens to a new scene, here the lighting is low-key and very minimal. The background shows a dimmed sky. The front room scene contains a mid-shot of the window and the top half of a brown sofa in the room. The two girls sitting on the sofa discuss the news report and general activities in their life styles. The night begins to darken in and the two girls discuss taken her dog out for a walk. Whilst this is taking place, the antagonist in a white scary mask, appears at the window. The antagonist is wearing a mask, black dark clothing. This protects the antagonists identity and keeps the audience intrigued. The antagonist at the window is only seen by the audience and not by the characters on scene. This is the first showing of the antagonist to the audience and may cause some surprise to the audience. The cinematography used in this scene is zooming in and and a close up, the close up shows the importance of the mask and why it is there to create suspense for the audience. We chose to used a close up and zooming in as the slow gradual zoom grabs the audiences attention quickly, instead of a normal shot which will leave the audience bored and constantly waiting for the next scene to take place. Zooming in also shows the apointed image faster, working better in thriller films, e.g. a ticking clock or ringing telephone, but in this situation a mask. The scene soon fades by either using an transistion or effect so it fades slowly and smoothly, this will then show a scene change to outside. This scene will be gradually getting darker, we chose as a group to use the sunset sky as it is a convention in thriller and felt that from previous research it build tension and brings suspense to the audience. The two main girls will walk down the road with her dog, the cinematography used will be a hand held camera, this will give an instance to the audience that the antagonist is following these two girls and tension will begin to rise on the scene. Everything in this scene (mise-en-scene) will be dark and gloomy to give the effect to the audience that the two girls are vunrable and there is no escape from what they are being surrounded by. The two girls will walk off the screen heading for a dark surrounding forest. This will be a long shot showing the victims full bodies, aswell as the background. We found this would work well as showing the background shows to the audience where they are going, this helps the audience elaborate on the story line. The entrnce to the forest is an impotant scene asthis is the scsne for the rest of the opening sequence. he fores scene will be shown iin many cinematogrpahy uses, for instance the next scene shows the antagonist entering, here will b a mid-shot and a slight zooming in whe the antagonist looks back and his scary mask is shown. A scary mask in a thriller film is a typical convention as it can scare the audience quickly and easily. An editing skill used here will be montage, throughout m and my groups openin sequence will be a montage, this is quick flashes of different scenes, this will show to the audience that the antagonist is approaching and the audience should feel scared and victimised. The opening sequence soon begins to speed up and the pace of the film increases, the audience now know what the antagonist looks like and should feel scaed for the victims, as they have no idea what is following them. A long shot is then used to sow the two girls screaming as the are approached by the antagonist, feeling patronised. This impression is shown to the audience that something really bad has happened, this will also be heard with a back sound track of eerie music, this will be playing throughout the whole opening scene narration aswell as other soun effects/music over the top. Screaming is a convention of thrillers and we as a group decided to use this as it brightens up the whole scene and brings thrings alight to the screen. Music throughout being played in cnoventiona as it grabs the audiences attention more, especially erie as it is creepy and intreging. The lighting in our montage scene reflects to the sounds being used, a bright ligt is going to be shown when flickering from scene to scene so wehave decided to use a loud gushing sound which will reate to this. After this a fliker of the antagonists face is going to be shown iin a tree, here there wlll be an over the shoulder angle used, this shows the victims point of view and eye shot to the audience, giving them the impression that they are in their shoes, feeling wha they are feeling, which is what we want to create. From this short clip we now know that there is no escape from the antagonist and he is surrounding the forest, although to conclude his actions we have included small flashes of another victim, this was a last Minuite decision as we found this brings more suspense to the screen if we introduce a vunrable young boy who has recently gone missing, this audience picture the puzzle together and finally realise that the news report at the beginning of the opening sequence is about him. The boy will be shown on the wet, dirty, muddy forest floor, tied up to a tree. This will indicate that is he secluded by the antagonist and he is almost hunting down his pray. An editing skill used on this will have a blurred effect around the victim and his face will be bright and very noticeable on the screen, this will show his facial expression; scared and patronised. The use of zoom on will also show this as it will show to the audience the intricate detail of what he is feeling and why he is feeling it, making the audience feel more involved. The scene is finally coming to an end and we see the antagonist exiting the scene. The calmer angle is very low and shows an image of leaves and partly some of the upper scene, in this clip you see the antagonist walking away from the camera dropping his mask Infront of the camera, not giving away his identity but the dropping of the mask will be close to the camera, almost asif he has just dropped the camera as he is finished with his victims. The sky will be dark as it has fallen darker from sunset when the victims first entered the forest. Carrying on with our short clips of montage, after this scene we will include another flash back scene of the pictures being burnt on the wall, almost as a montage of the same clip repeated as it is flashing on screen to give a sense of enigma as this confuses the audience as they do not know what is happening.  The final ending scene is

GROUP STORYBOARD - Miss Miller

     GROUP STORY BOARD

After planning our individual story boards and agreeing on our final decisions, together as a group we have created a group story board, of 20 frames.

 A group story board helps us to create final ideas and conclude on what final techniques we will be using. From our individual story boards we each came up with different ideas and putting them onto our own story boards, from this we used different features from each of our group members frames and drew the final frames onto our story boards. From looking at different features we found that the different ideas helped us to come to a conclusion quicker, and helped us to listen to each other more carefully.

In our first story board we have created four frames, these four frames include pictures as well as specific details about the scene. Our opening scene shows a black screen ( low-key lighting), this is because there will be a sound recording in the background of the news, revealing to the audience that there have missing people in the area. Without any picture on the screen this will immediately alert the audience watching and create a sense of eagerness of wanting to watch more. We found that from all of our individual ideas the back screen as an opening would work best as it doesn't give away any clues of what could jump out on the screen next. As the scenes move on the scene soon opens and shows the living room of one the girls houses. Here there is low-key lighting, two characters present and slow zooming in to create tension and suspense. In the third frame there will be eery, slow music that will build tension on the screen. The quiet music will be unexpected and will gradually build faster and faster as a third character (antagonist) appears at the window. The low-key lighting is conventional and easily adds tension to the scene. The low-key lighting in our film is showing to the audience that its night time, an easy time for the antagonist to arrive. A small whistling noise will be present whenever the antagonist is around in the opening sequence, although he may not be present on the screen, it will not only scare the audience but the characters in the film too as the noise will be present in both.

 In our second story board, again we created four frames. Although in this story board the scene changes and the main key lighting changes. In our first frame we  have the ending scene of the front room, here the lighting is still the same and includes all three of the main characters. This scene is shown differently to the audience than to the characters. The audience see the background behind them (antagonist) whereas they don't, building suspense on the screen, creating a relationship between the audience and the characters as they will be eager to tell them that there mystery killer is behind them. The second frame changes the scene quickly, and this is where the flashes of montage begin to appear on the screen throughout. The road ahead shown on screen is long and conventional for thriller as there is a long shot shown of the characters showing to the audience the darkness and what danger they are really in. In this scene natural lighting is used (darkness with small amount of lighting), this captures the audiences attention more as they can see more on the screen and most of the characters clothing and facial expressions.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

 In our third group story board we started going into more detail as more things were starting to take place at the same time. All of these frames are filmed outside, although with different settings. We are using flashbacks of different photos e.g. in this we flash back to the antagonist drawing all over the pictures of the victims he has in his sight, this will scare the audience, as the chartacters dont see what they are seeing and almost feel patrinised. Each of these scenes will happen fast, short and snappy, this will create the audinece to feel scared and waiting for the next arrival on the screen. Another scene which we found from research which works well is frame 3, where we are burning paper ( pictures of victims ). The background will be low-key lighting with only the fire light showing what is taking place, this brings tension and suspense to the audience watching. The fire will represent what the antagonist is going to do to the victims and represent to the audience who his victims are. The Montage around the tree will slowly show one of the antagonists victims tied up to a tree, this will be a quick flash and will not show much to the audience, making them more intrigued as they feel that they have to watch closely.


The fourth storyboard we then created as a group began with the two girls in the forest wondering around, which immediately creates a sense of foreboding as two vulnerable, young girls are in the middle of an isolated setting without any escape or anybody near by to there them if they are in danger. This gives a sense of an isolated scene, leaving the characters feeling venerable and needing help, giving the audience the chance to create a relationship with them, 

Overall, I think that our storyboard works well as the scenes flow well after eachother. There is a range of different camera techniques throughout the opening sequence, including a long shot, point of view shot and a high angled shot so it is not one continuous mid shot scene.

FILM SCHEDULE - Miss Georgiou

Film schedule

·       Why is a filming schedule important to have?

·       Did you follow the schedule while filming, or did you make any changes?

·       Include your filming schedule

A filming schedule is important to have as it allows me and my group to plan before we start filming and ensure we have all the necessary equipment ready, for example a camera fully charged or the planning for that specific scene.

A a filming schedule is also important as it helps me and my group to meet deadlines of when we need to have filmed a certain scene, this helps with the editing phase as we will not be behind with work, and means we can put a lot of time and effort into our work.

 A filming schedule meant that we planned to film on 5 days overall, these would not be full days but would ensure that it would be roughly about 2-3 hours on each day. This amount of time meant that we could film before it got dark and meant we had enough time to film each scene properly without rushing. 

We originally began filming with sticking to our filming schedule. The first scene that we shot was of the two girls walking out of the house taking their dog out for a evening walk. This night we also shot the scenes of the girls entering the forest, and also of the antagonist walking into the forest. However, once we reviewed the scenes we realized quickly that they were too dark and needed to be re filmed. At this point we had already not followed our filming schedule precisely. 

Although the weather started to affect our filming and meant it was hard to film in the times that we wanted to. During this time we decided to film inside the scenes were the antagonists sets alight the pictures of the protagonists. This was originally meant to be filmed last, but we changed the order as this time was more suitable and convenient and could be then out of the way. This was a good use of our time as during this time the weather cleared up, after allowing us to go out into the forest when it wasn't raining. After the weather changed we was then able to film the scenes we wanted to and use our time wisely. When filming in the forest we found that the floor was slightly muddy from the rain, we then re scheduled to do some scenes e.g. Leaves russling on another day as it would be easier and found would create more atmosphere on the screen.

Overall I feel that planning a filming schedule helped with planning ahead clearly and helped me and my group make time for filming. Our set dates meant there was no complications.