Roles Of Group

Alexandra Haley - Costume and Set Design (mis-en-scene)/Actress/Director of Casting
Liberty Shaw - Director of Photography/Actress/Director of Music
Rosy Armitage - Director of Editing/Producer
Liam Hand - Director/Executive Producer/Actor

Extra People involved:
Samuel Snowdon - Actor
Kane Mitchell - Actor
Abigail Haley - Actress

Mis-en-scene

Set:

The setting we have chosen is located in the Buckden area of North Yorkshire, which is owned by a friend. It is an old, abandoned church which was once a school, with an abandoned morgue in an adjoining room. It contains old dusty furniture, with an old balcony at the back of the church, and ornate glass windows. These parts of the mis-en-scene will look odd and almost uncomfortable for the audience. The morgue looked like a perfect location for the idea of the death sentence/last words scene, and the church could be useful to set the scene with an old, eerie, lonely atmosphere. It is a stereotypical location for the genre we have chosen, as well as for more extreme horror genres. The setting of the opening is important because it will keep the audience interested for the rest of the film, and sets up the theme for the rest of the story.

Costume:

The teenagers in our idea will be in normal everyday clothes, so the audience can relate to them. The character being killed will be dressed in dark colours, to make him look mysterious and almost dangerous, which would make his last words more powerful. His killers will be dressed in lab coats, to make them look like the authoritative people in charge, as well as making it clear they are like 'doctors' or 'professionals' injecting him with drugs. The white coats will also contrast with the dark location, to make them look odd or out-of-place. To further show this, they will have very distinct make-up to make them look quite disturbing or uncomfortable for the audience, which would fit with our genre. I took inspiration from the film 'Insidious' with the smiling family, where they are made up to look like dolls, with exaggerated lipstick and eye make-up, and distinct but still facial expressions, to also look psychologically disturbing. This family are also in the astral plane setting of the film, almost a dream-like state, which is an effect we can try to create. 

Insidious - The Smiling Family scene

Genre/Narrative

We all agreed that the genre of our film piece would be a 'psychological thriller' because we thought it would be something challenging and interesting to work with in order to suit a target audience. We have been inspired by other films of this genre, or horror films that have a psychologically disturbing nature, because these types of films keep an audience drawn into the film because it keeps their minds wandering.

 Our idea for the narrative is inspired by films such as 'Citizen Kane', where the last words before death are revealed at the start, and the rest of the film is working out what the words meant. As we are only making the beginning of a film, we will make this clear in the title. 

Here is a short summary of our narrative idea:

•   A teenage, possibly drunken couple stumble into an abandoned church, looking for somewhere to possibly shelter, or to investigate it. There will be a few establishing shots of outside the church, and some over-shoulder shots, to introduce the setting, and give opportunity for the credits to start appearing. There will be eerie music starting at this point.
•   The couple enter the church and the music stops to emphasise echoes and sound effects, where there is dusty up-turned furniture, a high balcony, and old-fashioned windows, letting in just enough light for the audience to see the interior. There will be shots of each distinct 'disturbing' or 'unusual' part of the church, where credits will also appear. These clips or photos could appear with credits before the actual film sequence appears, in order to give the audience a sense of familiarity when the couple enter the church, and to set the scene more effectively.
•    The couple either investigate further, or hear a noise coming from another room, to which they walk over and peek around the door and keep quiet as they watch the scene inside, as more music begins to start and build tension.
•   The focus is taken off the couple and is drawn into the scene in the room, which looks like an old-fashioned abandoned morgue.
•   A man is willingly being strapped a stretcher-type bed or table almost ceremoniously, and the room is lit by candles. The people strapping him down 'look' strange and out-of-place to the audience, where they would look like 'dolls' in lab-coats with extreme make-up and facial expressions.
•   One of these people say to the man whilst smiling "any last words?" followed by a shot of a needle moving towards his arm.
•   There is a close up of the man's face as he shuts his eyes. The title screen then comes on, as he whispers his last phrase, which will also be the name of the title.

Half Term Research

The group all met during the half term holidays and had a 'film night' where we chose several films to look at and get ideas from for our film opening coursework. Two of the films that we included were 'Black Swan' and 'Sucker Punch', which have a psychological and in some ways disturbing genre to the film, a genre we are interested in, as well as having very distinct and effective opening scenes. We discussed ideas as well as picking up on some evaluation points for our first project 'Porphyria'. 

(Photo by Liberty Shaw: http://www.libertyshawmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/a-week-off-from-school.html )

Preliminary Project

Genre and target audience of our film clip

The genre of the opening sequence to our programme is based on comedy, which is juxtaposed with the actual serious topical issue shown in the clip. To add humour keeps the viewer's interest of the movie clip, as well as with the addition of tension to keep the viewer engaged. The target audience is teenagers, because the type of humour involved is fairly immature for adult humour, but humour more understood by people older than children. Also, the issue involved in the clip mostly affects the adolescent age group, and would be good to do from our point of view, considering we fit that group. The characters in the clip are also supposedly teenage age group, which the audience can relate to.

Narrative

 Storyboard

Characters

Character roles and analysis of each character in our preliminary video.

Taken from:

http://bentleynatassiamedia.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/preliminary-characters.html

The Old Guy.

 In the online conversations the Old Guy is pretending to be a 16/17 year old boy because he is a pedophile and is wanting to "pick up" young girls. In the flashbacks the Old Guy's text is displayed in blue as that is stereo typically a 'boy's colour' and he would use this to get across the fact that he really is a boy. 

 The Old Guy is dressed in a blue suit so the audience match him with the blue text, that way there is no confusion. The red tie symbolises danger, as he is a pedophile, but it also creates tension as it's quite a threatening colour. 

 When the Old Guy texts it subverts stereotypes because we see he is educated with using a phone and can do smiley faces which many of the older generation get confused with.

The Homosexual Guy.

 In the online conversations the Homosexual Guy is pretending to be a 16/17 year old girl because he is a guy and thinks pretending to be a girl will be an easier way of meeting a lot of boys. In the flashbacks the Homosexual Guy's text is pink because he is 'playing' a girl and feels that this will convince people that he is more likely to be a girl.

 He dresses in pink to link himself with the text from his online conversations but also to adhere to the stereotype that gay people always wear pink. 

 As a teenager he is very apt at texting and when he speaks he has the intonations of someone who is homosexual.

The Girl Who Wears White

 The Girl Who Wears White (GWW) is the only other character to have scripted dialogue so we may as well mention her. 

 She is wearing white as she is an innocent character; she doesn't have a intentional part in the Old Guy's/Homosexual Guy's meet up. 

 GWW is a very "girly-girl" and talks in the sarcastic way that teenage girls speak, she also storms out which is very dramatic and subverts the innocent stereotype but adheres to the teenage girl stereotype.

Propps' Character Types.

 There are no official characters who fit in to the theory in specific spots, however they can be placed into groups, although somewhat vaguely.

HERO: 

 You could say that both the Old Guy and the Homosexual Guy are Heroes, or more appropriately "Quest Goers" as they are both on a "quest" too meet each other and are not actually going to save anything.

VILLAIN: 

 You could also say that both the Old Guy and the Homosexual Guy are Villains.

 The Old Guy is a villain because he is in fact a pedophile and he is out to , most probably, kidnap the girl (boy).

 The Homosexual Guy can also be classed as a villain because at the end of the video he claims to have worked out that the Old Guy is a pedophile and so the meeting could have been a trap but what happens next is up to the audience to work out.

PRINCESS: 

 The only other character type I can think of fitting someone into is putting the Homosexual Guy into the Princess category. He is placed here because he is actually in dreadful danger of being kidnapped and taken advantage of by a pedophile and so he needs "protecting" and "saving" although not by our two Heroes in this clip.

 Shooting and Editing Schedule

Roles of Group

Rosy Armitage - Editor

Alex Haley - Director

Libery Shaw - Filming

Tash Bentley - Project Manager

These are our assigned main roles for the preliminary assignment, although we are all involved in the ideas and putting together of the clip, therefore we may take turns in certain roles. We all worked each at different things and together for the preparatory work.

Sound

In our clip we chose sound files named 'Danse Morialta' to set the scene, 'Rising' for suspense and 'Silly Fun' for comedy. We got them all off a website that issues free downloads of non-copyrighted created music.

Risk Assessment
In The Cafe:

Wet Floors - Make sure you don't step on wet flooring and if you see a wet floor, clean it up! 
Hot Drinks - Be aware of hot drinks around you and if there are any, make sure you don't knock it over. 
Tripping Hazards - Bags/chairs and tripods are tripping hazards. If anything is sticking out that could be a hazard, move it. If it can't be moved make sure everyone involved is aware of it. 


Outside:
Wet Weather - Because of all the wet weather, outside will be very slippy so be careful not to trip or slip.

First draft of our video

Here is the first draft of our video:

Feedback

Feedback we got from our first draft taken from:

http://bentleynatassiamedia.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/preliminary-feedback.html

We had 19 visitors come to view our draft video of 'An Online Web of Lies' in order to give us feedback so we could make improvements.

1. Do you understand the story line? 

18/19 Said Yes

However, the film was viewed twice and from the verbal feedback afterwards many people agreed that the second viewing helped them understand what was going on.

To improve understanding the first time around, we will add a statistic at the beginning about how many people hide behind fake identities online. We will also add in the scene where Alex walks into the cafe as we realised that it had been missed out and would help the story more.

2. Do you think the clips were edited together well and that the film runs smoothly?

13/19 people agreed 'yes' with no comments.

2/19 people agreed 'yes' but with a comment on improvement.

3/19 people said 'no' with comments on improvement.

1/19 people were unsure but gave us a comment.

The main issue everyone had with the editing was the part where Jacob walks up the ramp and into the cafe - the clip jolts almost and doesn't run smoothly. It is also blended weirdly with the clip before it. Another comment was that the part where Jacob's eyes move, after Rosy (that's me:D) leaves was too short.

To improve we will look at the section where Jacob walks in and see what's gone wrong there and make the 'moving eyes' section a bit longer - maybe from side to side instead of in a circle?

3. Do you feel the music fitted the clips?

14/19 people agreed 'yes.'

2/19 people agreed 'no'.

1/19 people said 'there needs to be more'

2/19 people agreed 'partly'

From this question there wasn't much feedback on how to improve. 2 people thought that the music didn't fit the surroundings and 1 person thought that the transitions were a little shaky.

To improve we will fade the music a bit more - we were thinking about this anyway! However, we're not sure about the comments that the type of music wasn't right as we feel it gave the eerie impression that something was going to happen.

4. Do you think the sound effects were effective?

19/19 people agreed 'yes'.

1 person gave us a suggestion - We were told it was very effective at the beginning but harder to decipher later.

To improve, we'll just watch it again and make sure the sound effects are clear but other than that we rocked this question!

5. Do you think the text idea was used appropriately?

18/19 people agreed 'yes.'

1/19 people agreed 'no'.

There were two slight problems with the text, one of which we had already considered and were planning changing. Someone commented that it was hard to read the light text on the against the background and another person suggested we don't make the text bounce as it makes it easier to concentrate if it's still.

To improve we will mess around some more with which colours stand out more on the background, we might make it slightly darker but not too dark. With the problem of the text bouncing, we are going to leave it. This is because the text doesn't bounce too much, it just pops up and it needs to pop up to make it more like an online conversation.

6. Overall, what did you think of our preliminary film?

2/19 people gave us 6/10

3/19 people gave us 7/10

9/19 people gave us 8/10

2/19 people gave us 9/10

2/19 people gave us 10/10

1/19 people gave us 11/10

We will improve by just going through the feedback and adjusting certain things, fine tuning the film.

Final Video

Here is our final video re-edited according to our feedback