Final Film

The you tube video below shows the  final film for our A2 media portfolio.

Radio Trailer - The Last Shards

Media Essay: Q2 PowerPint

Media q2 from CreamCracker

Final Group Film Poster

Media Essay: Q3

After writing our synopsis for our film, before any filming, we went out into Barnsley Town centre to interview a variety of people from different ages, genders and occupations. We asked them their age, occupation, favourite genre, would they recommend our film and would they either pay to watch it, watch it for free or not watch it at all. Here were the results:

1. 17 year old male student. Favourite genre: Action. Would watch the film for free but would not recommend it.

2. 17 year old male student. Favourite genre: Tarantino. Would watch the film for free and would recommend it.

3. 19 year old female sales assistant. Favourite genre: Comedy. Would pay to watch it and would recommend it.

4. 40 year old male police officer. Favourite genre: Urban drama, such as "Brasses off". Would watch it for free but would not recommend it.

After looking at this brief, preliminary study, we found out that roughly, teenaged, females who like comedy would like our film the best. However after finishing the film, we found out males liked it the most and could identify its genre and could relate it to existing films. Having said that, their favourite genres were mostly comedy.

The audience we had in mind at first when creating our film was the people who you see normally at cinemas; teenagers. Therefore we studied genres and other films that appeal to teenagers. In one of our surveys, 5 out of 9 replies said their favourite genre was comedy and one said action. This is why we thought it would be ideal to include some Tarantino traits within our film; he can use comedy but still make a film serious and realistic.

The main moral of our film is to be yourself and the people who accept you for who you are, are your truest friends and to not be someone you’re not by doing things you wouldn’t normally do. This does not become apparent until the very end. The shock of this is designed to be memorable, hence why it is only obvious when Ella is killed. Throughout the film, it is a similar storyline to that of Cinderella; the audience are already expecting a typical ending and a typical moral. However life never goes according to fairytales, and with the official genre of our film being an urban thriller in the style of Tarantino, we wanted it to be as realistic as possible to help teenagers accept themselves for who they are and realise that it’s not all about being socially accepted.

When reading the feedback of our questionnaire, we discovered that a higher percentage of younger viewers knew the genre and morals of the story than those over the age of 35. This is probably due to social changes throughout society over the decades; although some teenage traits are timeless, culture and fads are constantly changing, therefore our film would be easily understand more by people around a relative age to the characters in the film.

Media Essay: Q4

Regarding digital technology, I used Final Edit for my film and radio trailer, Photoshop for my film poster and google for my questionnaire.

I liked using Final Edit because it is very detailed regarding the editing for continuity and rolling. The zoom in options and magnet are very useful for continuity and the roll on tool is useful for smooth match-on-action cutting. However, regarding effects, it was very restricted. There aren’t many fonts or effects for text as I wanted to use a similar font used for the introduction of Hugo Stiglitz; however it is not within Final Edit. The magnet tool was useful for dragging slips together and avoiding gaps and clips between scenes and cuts. Final Edit is also useful for layering text and videos on top of one another. The layering feature is limitless.

Final edit was also useful in helping me create a radio trailer with its layering features and audio effects which I also used within my film. There were many different effects such as echo and LPF’s and HPF’s which I used to make people sound like they were speaking over the phone. As radio trailers aren’t visual there needs to be plenty of dialogue so the listeners have plenty of knowledge on what the film could be about as most video trailers have no voice over dialogue at all. For this, I used AT&T Labs text-to-speech website. Although there’s a limited variety of voices and they aren’t exceptional quality regarding smoothness, there is no interference that would occur with a microphone, no feedback and no background noise and is therefore a clean voice over sound clear enough for anyone listening to the radio to here comfortably. It is easy to use and easy to download safely and to drag onto your inventory within Final Edit.

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Google was an excellent tool to use for my questionnaire. With it being on line, it is simple to use and easy for people to access and find. The spread sheet format is helpful to calculate your results and answers and are able to see them clearly.

I used photoshop to create my film poster. This software is useful for editing faces on posters as it possesses air-brush effects to smooth out pixelated images. It also has good layering effects so that you can include many images onto your poster without sharp edges or the poster looking too cluttered. It has unlimited effects and has photo editing effects for individual photos (especially for people) as well as mastering effects for an overall image.

 

 

We also used Microsoft Word to write up our scripts and used microscoft publisher to create our location assessments. Word was useful for scripts as it contains many diffeerent word layouts and is able to present it like a genuine script and is able to look professional. Publisher is more suitable for location risk assessments as you can place text anywhere on the page as well as photos as this software is commonly used for designing magazines.



Media Essay: Q1

Cinematography
Regarding continuity, we studied many other films to look for continuity errors and how to avoid them or correct them. Here, in Insidious, a male is sat downstairs with his shirt undone and a T shirt underneath. Then he’s seen running up stairs with his shirt fastened and a tie. This often occurs when a scene is being filmed over a period of days. To avoid this happening, we saved screen shots of our attire and wore the same clothes with the same hair/makeup on another day of filming.

 These scenes were filmed on different days

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMHjWiMqgQs

We used a variety of continuity techniques to help break up the film slightly and make it more visually interesting such as match on action, shot reverse shot, 180 degree line and eyeline match.
Firstly, we used a lot of match on action throughout the film to make the film smoother and easy to watch. Here are a few examples of our match on actions:

For conversations between characters, we used the 180 degrees rule and shot reverse shot to show each character's reactions from the other's perspective and view towards them. To achieve a successfully effective shot-reverse-shot, you must abide by the 180 degree rule, whereby the camera must be over one character's left shoulder and the other's right, otherwise viewing becomes uncomfortable and the location and perspective becomes confusing and the audience wouldn't know where to look. Here are some examples of shot-reverse-shot whilst maintaining then 180 degree rule:

However in one scene, we had to break the 180 degree rule in the bedroom scene between the mother and Ella. The reason being because due to the limited space within the room it was physically impossible to obtain the 180 degree rule. However because the room was small and you could see the majority of the room from most angles, it wasn't hard to watch and wasn't as noticeable as it would have been in a larger environment with many different features:

Mise en sene
Regarding mise-en-scene, this was an easy process mainly due to our foundation genre being a modern fairy tale of Cinderella. Our Cinderella charatcer was the obivously named "Ella". In the traditional Cinderella story, she's covered in ash and wears old, torn clothes. However with it being a modern version of the story, people who dress like that now are depicted as a totally different charatcer, such as homeless people or tramps. Therefore we dressed Ella in an old hooded jumper with plain leggins. She has no makeup on and does nothing with her hair. As Ella, like Cinderella, is meant to be depicted as intelligent and responsible and more interested in working that scoialising, we made her look like she wanted to make a slight effort with the modern leggins and jewellery probably given to her by family, but lacked enough motivation to attempt to fit in. properly with trendy clothes and hair styles as well as makeup. We chose to give her a blue jumper as blue represents sadness and emotion. At the end of the film, she is still wearing a jumper but a coral pink one, which is a lively, happy and bright colour to reflect her new found confidence.

Chez is the villain in our story. Today amongst youths, the largest icon for hate and dislike are chavs, as they are commonly associated with vandalism, violence and verbal abuse and are disliked by most teenagers. Since the film is an urban thriller surrounding teenage society, we thought that making our villain a chav would me the most appropriate. We looked at what chavs typically look like, such as Devvo, who is a famous chav character on youtube. He typically wears addidas jumpers with a cheap T shirt underneath and either cinos or trackie bottoms. We also looked at how Devvo spoke, normally with taboo language whilst mumbling and not pronouncing words correctly, which we used to inspire our own "chav". Chavs are also depicted as being violent and are infamous for carrying knives and are associated with knife crime, which is why Chez is seen with a knife in his pocket ready to stab Seth as his weapon of choice. We purposely chose to give him a green jacket as green represents jealousy, which is Chez's motive for his actions (he is jealous of Seth's relationship with Ella who is his love interest).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RBelz8BgX0

Our chav

Devvo, a famous chav

Next, we have Jessie and James. These are the bullies and the "evil step sisters" characters of the film who in the original story were shallow and only judged and cared about appearances and social status. Not only do we illustrate this through the script, but the characters are both wearing trendy, expensive and in-fashion clothes that are in date with today's teenagers including leather jackets (which are depicted as being expensive) but they are also black, to reflect the character's personalities and to show the audience that they are clearly antagonists. Jessie's dark, smokey makeup also helps represent this.

Lastly, we have Seth. Modern clothing amongst teens today is the "mosher" look with leather jackets, jeans and band T-shirts. People who wear this attire are normally pleasant and sociable and we wanted to make it seem at the beginning that any chance of Seth being interested in Ella would be hopeless to establish more shock at the end. Therefore we wanted him to look the opposite of Ella: fashionable, trendy and sociable.

The genre of our film was a modern fairytale. Obviously for it to be modern, we have altered typical aspects to make it appeal to our target audience, which is from 12 to 35 years of age, but kept some traditional aspects to make it quirky and memorable, such as cliché language and situations such as the villain fighting with the hero over a woman.

Our film’s target market is men and women aged between 15 and 30 as there is strong language as well as bloody violence. The language was deliberate; typical fairytales are typically clichéd and innocent, as they are not only intended for children, but are meant to communicate some spiritual morals into the audience. Our storyline and characters are similar to that of Cinderella, but to achieve our desired reactions of surprise and shock from the audience, we used strong and modern language amongst 15 to 30 year olds today. Our director influence was Quentin Tarrantino who takes historic or older genres and makes them modern through means of language, effects, non-diegetic music and titles. This technique is used by Tarantino. The strong, unusual language seems misplaced in the film; however should the situations in our film occur in real life, this sort of taboo language would be used, which makes the film seem more realistic and believable as well as shocking. Inspiration for this aspect comes from Inglourious Basterds and Kill Bill in the following sequences:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY2a72ouCT8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9tF3KgEdAI

In the Kill Bill scene, Beatrix is seeking revenge on the woman in the door, a former assassin, who betrayed her. During this scene, they call each other “bitch”. This is a very common, taboo word and, again, wouldn’t be typically used in a dramatic scene such as this as most directors would fill it more with emotion and depth with poetic dialect. However, in a fight between two women with a bad past between each other in reality, it would be the type of language used.

In Inglourious Basterds, the spies’ covers have been blown by a Nazi officer

but is being held at gun-point by one of the German spies. Typically, this

would be a dramatic, nail-biting scene, which it is, up until the point where

Stiglitz says “say Auf Wiedersehen to your Nazi balls” This is not only

unexpected, but creates black humour which will be memorable to the

audience. However, they are sat at a table and are aiming their guns at each other discretely; the only effective place to aim is at the genitals, thus being a realistic situation. Again, although not expected in a typical war film, it would probably

be the sort of thing a Nazi-hating German would say to a Nazi. This is a good

way of producing a shock factor whilst maintaining realism.

Lastly, regarding editing, we used a technique called Paralell editing used by Jonathon Demme in Silence of the Lambs whereby the FBI are knocking on what appears to be Buffalo Bill’s front door and when Buffalo Bill goes to open it, Clarice is there, and it turns out the FBI have gone to the wrong house. This is to create shock and suspension.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts1x6uADFtM

We do it with Chez looking at his phone cross cutting with a fair of feet in a solarized effect. I did this so that not only would the audience not know who it was, but to foreshadow danger which would include a knife, Chez and another character. The solarize was to symbolize that we would have no inclination as to who this unfortunate would be, as is revealed later as Seth and Chez fight, you assume it would be Seth, when in fact it was Ella who got stabbed with the knife.

Back to Tarantino, we have used inspiration from the use of titles. We gave Chez a title to indicate his importance and foreshadow his influence on the film’s events. Tarantino uses this technique in Inglourious Basterds and Kill Bill. We used the font and nick-name from Kill Bill where Tarantino introduces Elle, who is a future antagonist and plays a similar role, influence wise, as Chez. The music, however, I have used from Inglourious Basterds’ Hugo Stiglitz’s introduction. The strong, electric guitar sounds powerful, and is used to make Stiglitz seem powerful. Lastly, with inspiration from the Stiglitz clip, we filmed it so you do not see Chez’s face until he is at a close up over Ella’s shoulder which is at the same time of his “introduction”. This is also to make him seem powerful and mysterious. Although Chez isn’t physically powerful, he has full control over the situations throughout the movie through his actions and thinking. Whilst on the subject of music, when the title “The Last Shards” appears, also in the style of Tarantino in “times new roman” to match Chez’s title, this is during the bullying scene. The music is in a minor chord, which is associated with sadness. It is also in the style of disco/rock type of music. This is also used in Tarantino’s Kill Bill scene where The Bride is fighting O-Ren during a samurai sword fight. The music is similar to represent old, Japanese martial art video game music but it also makes the audience focus more on the elegance and power beheld by the two fighters rather than the emotions purged into it; we wanted to have the same effect. The music we used, however, was more modern sounding to represent youth culture, of which music is a big part of.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdlM2VZujOc

An effect idea we did entirely on our own was Ella’s death scene where there is a colour de-saturation and an echo. When people die, their senses deteriorate gradually one at a time. Hearing is the last to stop working which is why when the scene goes black you can faintly hear James calling an ambulance. We also shot this from Ella’s point of view to make it more realistic and for a variety of cinematography. When the camera was facing Ella, we kept the de-saturation to show her being more pale and dying more effectively. Lastly, we made some fake blood using a recipe from a youtube video using edible ingredients. We decided to make our own edible blood because when people get stabbed in the stomach, they start regurgitating blood, therefore to make it seem more realistic and serious, we decided to have blood coming from Ella’s mouth, thus having edible blood was a necessity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnHHhAmrRzE

Another Tarantino inspired shot is when James drops his can onto the floor when he sees Ella wounded, whilst Ella is brushing her teeth as it zooms in on the tooth paste and when Chez accidently picks up a banana instead of a knife and throws it down. This is to just cut the scene up a bit and add a small amount of humour. It is also very weird and makes the audience wonder why the camera has specifically shot that. Tarantino does it in Inglourious Bastards. Here, he unnecessarily has an extreme close-up on the cream being dished and put onto the pudding.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5z1y2jOofQ

Lastly, with our film being a modern fairy tale, we have tried to make that apparent through our characters; the heroin is a young, bright girl with hand-me-downs, put down by two of her peers, has a love interest and a fairy god mother character who boosts her confidence. However, taken from Tarantino styles, we have an unexpected ending where instead of living happily together after admitting feelings, the heroin is killed. The film’s main slogan “Get busy living or get busy dying” is not only our message and moral, but we’ve taken it from the film The Shawshank Redemption, a classic thriller. We did this because we didn’t want the film to be too much of a comedy/parody and wanted it to be taken seriously slightly to get our message across to the audience which is intended to be socially educational as well as morally. Regarding the theory of Utopian Solutions, this film would appeal to people who feel empathy towards Ella. This film contains knowledge, empathy or modern teenagers, community and romance; these aspects are what common teenage lives revolve around as they grow and discover more adult aspects of life which are new to them. Watching our film would satisfy a teenager’s needs and curiosity about such things and would put into perspective/or confirm the reality of teenage life. In comparison with our studies, most people who would watch and rate our film are people aged between 13-21 year old students.

Film Sound track

I chose the sound track for the first half of the film and composed the end track and the mother and daughter scene track. I used Tzvetan Todorov's theory of Equilibrium, whereby during the film there are 4 states; A state of equilibrium (as it should be), a disruption by an event, a recognition of the disruption, an attempt to repair the damage and a return to a restoration or a brand new equilibrium. Although i have missed out the last of Tordorov's points for a cliff-hanger  in my film, i have chosen music to accompany all of these states.  Using non-diegetic music, the opening music is lively blues music. Although the music is played in a major sequence and therefore a happy sounding track, blues music is ultimately sad and melancholy, which foreshadows tragic events, but not enough so the audience can tell there will be a sad ending. This is the music that represents the equilibrium; as it should be, it is sad, but as it should be in Ella's life. The same music is played when her love interest is introduced to show that her unrecognised feelings for him are sad, but at the end of the film, the audience realise he is the only positive thing in her life.

The music chosen for Chez has two tracks; one a composed and another non copy right track. The music i composed is the music used to introduced Chez, which has been inspired by the Inglourious basterds scene where Hugo Stiglitz is first introduced. As his title comes up, a single, strong beat of electric guitar comes up. I used this because it sounds powerful and it symbolises Chez as a powerful character, but i didn't want the audience to know whether he was good or bad, so the music i composed is neutral in that perspective; however i still want it to forshadow that he has influence over the following events of the film. The second music track is a bass line track. Bassline music is commonly associated with chavs, which is what Chez is. However it sounds menacing and tense, to foreshadow that something bad is about to happen. Additionally, the music slowly increases in volume

Because the film was inspired from Quentin Tarantino, i chose to do my version of the classical piece Un Amico to replicate the scene from Inglourious Basterds where Shosanna and Frederick kill themselves and have recorded it using ProTools. I chose this because the main character, Ella, reminds me of Shosanna, in the sense that she's trying to be different and become a different character to achieve her goals (in Shosanna's case, killing Hitler and in Ella's case, becoming socially accepted). When their plans fail and the moral of their stories come to light, Un Amico is played, and my cover version of Un Amico is played during Ella's death. This is also done purposely to remind people of Inglourious Basterds to show that we have took inspiration form that film as well as a well-respected director.

I 

Audience Feedback Results

Click for audience feedback results.

Audience Feedback Questionnaire

Link to feedback questionnaire

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1LZD69kLI12bqNX1DxiOiPCerhd9q4nkROa-hNBEOo3k/viewform

Quentin Tarantino - Reference Clip 1

Here, the audience is first introduced to Hugo Stiglitz. His introduction isn't very formal and sinister as you'd expect. Instead of him creeping around in the dark and stealthily killing his victims with spooky music, it's shocking the audience by showing them how much he enjoys it and how calm he is which goes against the murderer stereotype. However although it goes against the stereotype, this is the attitude you would naturally expect from someone who hates what the Nazis were doing to Jews.

Additionally, he's introduced with large bold text and modern music, which is probably for shock purposes. In our film,  the bullies are introduced with large bold text which doesn't make them appear as sinister but immature and pathetic, which in reality, is what bullies are. As well as this, you wouldn't expect a group of soldiers to have a name like "the basterds", therefore we've named our bullies "the bitches" for shock factor and to give them their own identity as a pair of characters within the film.

Quentin Tarantino - Director reference

Our director influence is Quentin Tarantino. This is a strange style of direction for our genre, but because it's a modern take on a classic theme, Quentin Tarantino's style would be appropriate and unique.

Quentin Tarantino's films are based on historical context and culture, for example: Inglourious Basterds (WW2), Django (Black African slaves in America) and Kill Bill (Japanese ninjas). He creates alternate realities to what we expect to see, making it unique and more interesting. He is also very revealing in his films. In Inglourious Basterds and Django, he doesn't hesitate to show what their attitudes and actions were really like back then and goes into graphic detail and deteriorates from typical movie techniques and styles.

Ignlourious Basterds is based in Nazi occupied France. The film follows the Basterd's and Shosanna Dreyfus' individual plans to murder the 4 Nazis of the Third reich. The second World War is a very emotional and fragile subject; however Tarantino focuses more on the violence and sadistic reality of the war, which isn't what you'd expect to see in a war film, but it's not unusual to see as he broadcasts the sort of antics that would be kept hidden from history, such as a group of blood-thirsty Jews with a taboo name scalping German soldiers. Although it's not common knowledge this happened, you can relate to their hatred, which creates an alternate reality that's never been experienced before, making it unique.

Our film is a modern fairy tale, but typical aspects of fairy tales are not included within our film, such as a happy ending, the hero being the female/damsal and the modern and taboo language used by the characters. However, to combine old fashions with modern, there are parts where typical, cliche language is used between the mother and Ella which is also a typical fairy tale aspect that an encouraging parent is involved. Lastly, following Tarantino's style in more detail, we've been very realistic regarding 

Sixth Sense End Scene

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj0JDnQIZf0

This is the link to the end scene of the Sixth Sense. At the end, the main character, Malcolm, realises he's been dead all along and the event of his death is fully revealed to the audience. Although he was shot and our character will be stabbed, he's laid down and the camera zooms out to establish the scene. When his wife turns him over, his back is covered in blood form the exist wound. This effect will be on the front of the character and when our character falls to the floor, they will be laid on their back. The zoom-out establishing shot is good for dramatic effect and establishing.

Captain Barbossa Death Scene - Pirates of the Caribbean (Curse of the Black Pearl)

We have chosen this scene to take inspiration for our death scene of our main character. The blood effect of the bullet passing through his chest will be similar to the stab wound our character will receive. We also want to apply the blood pumping effect which we will do by using a two-ended plastic pipe. Lastly, the camera position and movement when he realises he's been fatally wounded is good and effective, and we will use the same technique. It establishes the wound but also his facial features. The close-ness of the camera shows that his wound and his reaction (unexpected) is important to make the "twist" more powerful; as it will be in our film.

How to make fake blood

This is a video demonstrating how to create fake blood, how to alter it and how to apply it into your film. we have placed this vidio on our blog as we will requre to use something simailr in the final sceen of our film.

Synopsis Amendments

[We have made several changes to the overall synopsis and the name of some characters. Firstly, we have changed the main character's name from "Ava" to "Ella". We did this because the genre of our film is a modern version of the Cinderella story, therefore we thought it would  be an interesting twist and would make it clear to the audience as to what fairy tale this film is a re-make of. Secondly, the second character has a different name and relation to the main character. We've changed her name from "Ella" to "Nicole" because it would be easier if the character had the same name as the actress. We changed the relation also because it wouldn't make sense as the actresses don't look anything alike, Nicole is meant to be well dresses like other teenagers and isn't bullied unlike Ella and poorer families are more likely to have one child.]

Narrator Research

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xqr8yPipfJ8&feature=related

This clip is of the first episode of The Inbetweeners. Our film is a first person narrative therefore I have chosen the Inbetweeners for inspiration, as it is narrated by the main character, Will.

What i've noticed about this narrative is it firstly, it's a voice over. This helps to show the audience information whilst been told about it; almost like we're reading the character's mind. This makes the audience feel like they know more about the story than the characters themselves. Additionally, the film cuts between Will walking into the building (which is the present) and flash backs as he quickly reviews his life. This is for a change, also helps the audience know more about the character and situation, and the change of tense and scenery maintains audience interest.

Throughout the clip, the narrative leads up to the present to the point in which Will starts talking within the present tense. This helps the audience know exactly where they are within the clip and maintains continuity.

The structure of narrative begins with the character introducing themselves quickly, then leads on to tell the audience about themselves, using flashbacks as examples. Then it goes onto explain what has happened in their life to lead them up to their current position. This, also, helps with continuity, audience knowledge and interest. 

Final Poster Idea

I like this poster the best because

Shot List