The final film- Jealousy

Thoughts on our final piece

After completing the final edit of our film, I am very happy with the final result. I believe that as a group, we achieved everything that we set out to do and we really put our knowledge and understanding of different camera and editing techniques to use whilst doing so.

I believe that the true narrative behind our piece was portrayed very well in the final edit of the piece. After creating the first draft of our piece, we were able to notice any continuity errors that we had made, and were therefore able to reverse these errors in the final edit of the piece. Watching through the first edit also allowed us to be able to see what other shots we may wish to include or any areas where we believed the shots we had used were not necessary. I think that creating the initial draft truly helped us to be able to create the final piece that we now have today, to make the piece as good as it could possibly be.

I think that our choice of music throughout the piece was very fitting and really helped to add to the narrative and feeling throughout the piece. The contrast between the two different sound items helped to define this difference of life Vs death that we wished to portray throughout. I also believe that our use of diegetic sound helped to intensify this sense of mystery felt as the arguments seen between Josh and I serve to produce a clue into the real reason for the murder/death of Jasmine's character.

I believe that the large use of shots that we included in the piece really contributed to the final effect that the film holds. The use of pans helped is to build tension and suspense and the use of close-ups/ extreme close-ups helped to build on this also. They did this by isolating Jasmine's character, making her seem lonely and vulnerable. I also really liked our use of the 360° shot as it allowed us to create an almost chaotic atmosphere, mirroring Jasmine's state of mind and the collapse of everything that she has known.

If we were to create this opening again, there would be a few elements that I believe that we could tweak to make the piece even better. Jasmine and I decided to create a video outlining our views on this which can be found below. 

Evaluation question 7

Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Evaluation question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Throughout there construction of this product, I have learnt about many different programmes and softwares that I have never had the chance to use before. 

Blogger

Before I began this project, I had never heard of blogger and had never had any experience with using
it. We used blogger as a way to keep track of our progress and to document our experiences and research that we had gathered throughout the process. Having now used it for our media product, I have become very confident with using the software as it is simple and user friendly. I can confidently apply different features to the blog and I can effectively design it to suit my personal preference. I have found using blogger very useful throughout this project as doing so has allowed me to keep all of my work together in one, easily accessible location. 

Prezi

I had never heard of prezi before i began work on this project. Prezi is a unique platform which can allow you to create a professional looking presentation which is simple and easy to follow. In the past, I have strictly used powerpoint to create visual presentations however, the basic layout of prezi is very unique and creates a different effect than a presentation created on powerpoint. Having now used prezi for this project, i am confident with the software and i will be sure to use it again in the future for another purpose.

Premier Pro

We used premier pro to edit our product together. Premier allowed us to really be able to put our own style into our individual films and gave us complete freedom to be as creative as possible. I have not had much experience with using editing softwares in the past so using this program was a challenge to start however, it was simple and straightforward which allowed me to be able to pick up on the different features more easily so that i could have a better understanding of what we could do with the footage we had gathered. Knowing how to program worked allowed me to be able to help Josh in the editing stage and allowed me to be able to make suggestions on how to final product should look.


Use of camera

Throughout the production process of our film, I have learnt many different camera techniques that I will be able to use throughout future projects. As I did not take media studies for GCSE, I was quite behind the rest of my class in terms of knowledge and understanding of the different camera shots that can be used in a project. I now have a far broader knowledge of the range of possible shots that can be used and also the effects that they can have on the audience's perception of the film.

Evaluation question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

Characters

Throughout our thriller opening, we ensured that we featured relatable characters to allow our target audience to be able to truly connect with the narrative. As our target audience for the piece was 16-19 year olds, including characters of this age range allows this audience to be able to relate more to the characters and the challenges that each character may face individually. Jasmine, Josh and I all acted in the film and each of us fit into this age bracket. Using actors of a similar age to the characters they are portraying helps to add to the realness of the piece, allowing viewers to become even more engaged with the piece.

Our film features many stereotypical characters in the terms of a vulnerable female (Jasmine) and a strong, dominant male (Josh). My character however, serves to break this female stereotype by appearing strong and independent. Including this character allows the piece to become more diverse, creating a more relatable, realistic storyline.

Narrative

To allow our piece to be more engaging for our audience, we ensured that some of the topics and issues raised were relatable to the target age range. The main theme in the piece is jealousy. Jealously is an issue that is faced in many teenage friendships and relationships, so addressing this topic would allow our audience to be able to relate to the issues that the characters are facing. A strong theme throughout the piece is also friendship, as suggested by the photo montage at the beginning of the piece. In the piece, my character also calls Jasmine to warn her about Josh's intentions but she leaves it too late. This shows the character's real bond that has sadly been allowed to be overshadowed by another person. This is a situation that many teenagers will be faced with on many different levels and it is important to bring these topics to light.

Editing

We also used different editing techniques to help to attract our audience to the piece. The opening of a film is where the tone of the piece is set so using the correct techniques is vital to keep an audience interested and to encourage them to keep watching. We used quick cut editing with a range of close up shots near the beginning, as the intensity of the shots helped to build the suspense for the audience as the death is revealed gradually through snapshots of the crime scene.

Sound

We used two separate sound items throughout our thriller opening. The first song used is called, 'Jealousy' by Frankie Miller. This song does not conform to the typical conventions of a thriller film as it is not particularly eerie or dark. We chose this track because of its lyrics. With very close reference to influence from BBC's 'The Missing', we wanted to give the audience a small insight into what the film was to entail throughout the title sequence. We found that the lyrics in the song linked perfectly with our narrative ad helped to strengthen our plot and storyline.

We used a second sound item called, 'G321-Thriller opening music choice 3.' This sound item was very typical of a thriller film. It included a direct contrast between high and low pitched sounds to encourage discomfort in the audience to help to build the tension. We used this track throughout the shots of Jazz's body, relating the sound to danger. The track coincided with the previous piece very well as it helped to display the direct difference between life and death in our piece. 

Evaluation question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

We carried out a survey at the beginning of the planning process of our film opening. Some of the questions included in the questionnaire were, 'What is your age?' and 'What is your gender?' The results of the survey were as shown below.

From the results gathered from the survey, we found that 40% of the people surveyed fit into the 16-19 age bracket. This age range was very suited to our piece as we all fit into this bracket as a group also. Targeting this age range in our piece was very important to us as being of similar ages would allow the audience to be able to engage more with the piece. It would allow the characters to become relatable to them, allowing them to truly become involved with the piece.

The results from the survey also showed a complete 50/50 split between both males and females. As a result of this ,we strongly featured both male and female characters in the narrative to allow the piece to be as dynamic as possible and accessible for everyone.

With close consideration to these results that we gathered, we made sure that we did all that we could to cater to this chosen age bracket to make the piece as suitable to them as it could possibly be. Doing this included choosing the appropriate film and distribution companies, to ensure that the piece is as relatable and accessible to people in this target age bracket as it can possibly be.  

Evaluation question 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

As a group, we decided that we would want the film company 'Film 4' to produce our film. We decided that this would be a very suitable company for many different reasons. After some research, we found that film 4 are very well known for the production of low budget, British films. They have also produced many thriller films in the past including 'Dead man's shoes' and 'Black sea' and also many other award winning films. As they have successfully produced films of this kind in the past, we are confident that they would be a very suitable company to produce our film. 

Film 4 is also a British based company. The idea that the company is relatively locally based, helps to support our interest in the company producing our film. The close proximity of the company allows for it to become far more accessible, making the choice a sensible decision, rather than choosing a company on a larger scale such as any of the Hollywood big 6 or companies that are centred elsewhere in the world.

As a group, we very much focused on the idea of making our piece available across different online platforms. We wished to focus on this point as we believed that this was the best possible way to reach our target audience as online streaming is very popular among our target age bracket (16-19 year olds). We decided that hybrid distribution was the route we wished to follow as we believed that this would be the best way to truly allow our film to reach as many people as possible. Hybrid distribution is where the creators keep the rights to their own film, allowing them to release their own products surrounding the product, but allows the film to also be used by specialist distributers to allow it to reach a larger audience. 

We decided that we wanted to allow our film to be distributed on the popular online streaming site, Netflix. The use of Netflix amongst risen dramatically in recent years, due to its convenience and low price, attracting students and other young people. As our target age range is 16-19 year olds, I believe that using Netflix to distribute our film would be the most tactful method as it would allow the piece to truly reach our target audience in the best way possible.

We decided that the best way to market our film would be throughout the use of social media. Social media has become a large part in the lives of young people so using this to our advantage would allow the word to truly reach our target age bracket. We would use social media sites such as Facebook, snapchat, media and youtube to promote our film. We could pay for adverts to be put on these sites to help to advertise our film to the age range that it is targeted towards. We would also use other methods of marketing such as word of mouth, that would also help to promote our film further. 

Evaluation question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Evaluation question 1

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

Media question 1 from Hannah Martin

What would we change?

After refection, Jasmine and i decided to create a video outlining our views on the final edit of our thriller opening sequence 

Storyboarding

What is a storyboard?

A storyboard is a sequence of drawings or images that represent the shots that have been planned for a piece of work such as a film or television programme. 

Storyboards allow creators to keep track of what shots they will need to complete their final piece of work. It allows them to be able to have a rough idea of what they would like their final piece to look like and will serve to keep them organised. We created storyboards at the beginning of the planning process of what we wished for our film to look like. These are pictured below.

Over time, our narrative changed dramatically as we began to explore the depth of the characters that we had created. We developed a clearer image of what we wished for the piece to look like so we created new storyboards in order to suit this new narrative. We stayed very true to these storyboards in order to achieve the look we wished for in our final piece. The final storyboards are pictured below.

Shot list

My role

My role within the group was co-producer with Jazz. As producers, it was our role to organise and arrange the filming process to ensure that everything went as smoothly as possible.

Prior to beginning filming, Jasmine and I began discussing possible filming locations for the piece, working closely with our storyboard to ensure that we chose the best possible locations. We decided we would use Josh's house to film as it is very spacious and is very accessible for us all to get to.
It was also our role to organise and arrange times for our group so that we can all be present whilst filming and planning.

It was mine and Jazz's role to ensure that we arranged to film on days that all of our group would be able to attend. We used a group chat on Facebook to coordinate times to make sure that we filmed at convenient times for everyone.

Throughout the filming process, it was our role to ensure that the piece ran as smoothly and as consistently as possible. This included ensuring the continuity of shots and props to make sure that the piece makes sense in the order that it is. We also had to ensure that the costumes being worn were worn in the right places throughout the film to allow the piece to flow in chronological order.

Prop list

We included many different props throughout our thriller opening. As a producer, it was my role to keep track of these props to ensure the continuity of our film. To do this, I decided to create a list to know exactly what props we needed to include in our piece. The props included in our piece were:

• Camera
• Tripod
• tablets/pills
• Mobile phone
• glasses
• Photos for the picture montage
• Ring
• Ring box

Draft shot list

We decided to create a draft shot list in order to know what shots we need to include in our piece and to create a checklist for ourselves to ensure that we film all of the shots that we wish to. 

Inspiration for the title sequence

After we began editing our film, we started to think about what we wanted our titles to look like. A member of our group suggested the idea of having a photo montage to open the piece. We really liked this idea as using photos would help to give the audience a small insight into what they are going to watch and would help us to link the storyline to the piece. 

We used inspiration from the BBC drama/thriller, 'The missing' to help us to create the montage. 

Filming locations

All of the shots included in our opening sequence were filmed in or around Josh's house. We chose to film in Josh's house as it is very spacious and was easily accessible for us all. We chose to film all of the shots around one location as this allowed for the piece to become more realistic, therefore allowing the audience to become more engaged with the piece. 

Locations used:

Garage

We chose to film in the garage as we wanted to create a dark and eerie atmosphere whilst filming the pans of Jasmine's body. We were able to create this atmosphere by adjusting the lighting so that the shots were only very lowly lit, creating a sense of suspicion around the death of Jasmine's character.

Hallway

We chose to film the argument between mine and josh's characters in the hallway of Josh's house. We chose to film here as we felt that it was a very fitting location for an argument to take place. The layout of the hallways also allowed for easy filming, and the placement of the mirror also helped to add some depth to the shots that we wished to capture. We also wished to create a complete comparison between the light shots in the house and the dark in the garage and filming in this area helped us to achieve this.

Garden

We filmed a range of shots in the garden. We filmed the low angle shot of mine and Josh's characters leaving the garage, the close-up of the garage door closing, the 360 shot of Jasmine and also the medium shot of Josh. We chose to film these shots in the garden as it helped to link the shots in the house and in the garage together, allowing the viewer to more easily understand that everything occurred within the same house.

         

Scripting

Picured below is the script for our opening of a thriller film. We didn't include much dialogue throughout the piece so we included information about sound, camera shots and angles and the locations that we used throughout the sequence.

Title

Deciding on a final title of the piece served to be a bit of a challenge for the group throughout the planning process for our film. 

Whilst developing the narrative, our opening piece was set to conform to the typical structure of a medical thriller, very much inspired by medical dramas such as casualty and Holby city. We had the idea of basing the piece around a single heartbeat that was set to flatline at the end of the opening, initiating enigma codes for the audience as to what has happened for that the occur. This lead us to coming up with titles such as 'Pulse' to represent the heartbeat. We also came up with the title, 'beaten', which would mirror what has happened to Jasmine's character throughout the piece however, 'Pulse' was our preferred title out of the pair. 

Throughout the planning process, the narrative of our piece changed and began to conform more to the typical conventions of a crime thriller. This change of narrative then lead to the title of 'Pulse' to become quite irrelevant to the path that our piece ended up taking. We soon decided that we wanted our title to very much resemble the narrative of our piece, inspiring the final title, 'Jealousy.' We felt that using this title was very suitable as it didn't only help to draw together both the title and narrative of the piece, but also helped to link in the music very well. 

Group roles

To ensure that our film will be as successful as it can be, we decided to allocate different roles within our group. This will ensure that each person will have designated tasks to complete which will help the process to run as smoothly as it possibly can. 

These roles are:

Director: Caitlin Elward

Editor: Josh East

Producers: Hannah Martin and Jasmine Greene

The first day of editing

We decided to begin editing the opening of our thriller film together. We have spent the last few weeks gathering a range of shots in different locations to give us a lot of footage to work with. We decided that we would use the facilities in the college to do this as the editing software that they have there is far better than the software that we currently have in school. The software we used was premiere pro. 

We followed the storyboard that we had created previously to ensure that we included all of the shots that we wanted to. As a group, we decided that Josh would be the editor for the piece as he was the most confident using the software.

Music

We looked on youtube for some music that we could use throughout our thriller film opening. We found track titled, 'G321-Thriller opening music choice 3.' We decided that this track would suit our piece very well as the contrast between high and low pitched synth sounds used is very common in thriller films. We will use it in the scenes where Jazz's dead body can be seen, encouraging a tense and eerie atmosphere throughout the sequence.

We also decided to look around for another song that would be suitable to use throughout our piece. We decided on the song 'Jealousy' by Frankie Miller. We decided on this song as the lyrics matched our storyline very well. It speaks of jealously within relationships which is a theme that our piece is very strongly based upon.

Permission for the music- Jealousy

Seeking permission for the use of Frankie Miller's 'Jealousy' served to be quite challenging. We tried on many different occasions to contact him, but we have not received a response as of yet. Jasmine found an email for him online so chose to try to reach him this way. We also found a verified Facebook page of his music so we chose to post on this also in hopes that we could receive a response. We are hoping that we will receive a reply soon.  

Permission for the music- G321-Thriller opening music

To gain permission to use this track in our piece, we chose to comment on the youtube video that we originally found the track from. We quickly received a response and were very happy with the reply that we received. 

Inspiration for our thriller

We took inspiration from different dramas that we have all watched on TV. These dramas include Broadchurch and paranoid. These dramas inspired the crime/murder element that is featured very strongly throughout our piece. We really liked the theme of crime as it allowed us to build up a sense of mystery throughout the piece. We represented this idea through the death of Jasmine's character in the piece and the mystery over which character was the true culprit of the crime.

We also took inspiration from the AS level thriller piece, 'Captive.' This is because of the mystery that is built up through the opening sequence. We see that the protagonist has been captured and tied up however, we are not told who has done it and it leads us to begin trying to work the story out for ourselves. We wanted to include this same sense of curiosity in our piece over the death of Jazz's character. 

Whilst researching ideas for our narrative, we also came across the film, 'Double Jeopardy.' The film is about a woman who chooses to run away once she has been framed for the murder of her husband. We saw inspiration within the film as the wife is seen to have been framed for murdering her husband. We very much liked the idea of including someone being framed for the death in our piece so decided that we would like to look into this topic further.

Creating the photo montage

We decided to create a photo montage to include in the beginning of our piece. As a group, we thought that doing this would give the audience a small insight into the relationships between the characters included in the piece. We felt that doing this would allow the audience to gain a better understanding of why the film ends up the way that it does and will give them a small look into what is to be expected from the film. 

We decided to only include images of Jasmine, Josh and myself in the photo montage as we really wanted to focus on the relationships between the three characters that are featured throughout the opening. As we have all been very good friends for a long time, we have lots of photos together so we decided to use these in the montage. We chose to use a range of photos of all three of us but we also used pictures of just two of us from the group at a time. We decided to do this as it would help to greaten the audience's understanding of the previous dynamics of the group and the relationships within the group that little bit more. 

Theorists in our thriller opening

Todorov

Our piece very much supports Todorov's narrative theory. At the beginning of the piece, equilibrium is displayed through the use of the photo montage. We purposely used photos where we were smiling and happy, to help to set up the relationships between the three of us and to display the strong bond that we held at the beginning of the piece. This equilibrium is them destroyed by the dark, pan shots of Jasmine's body in the garage. This shows that something bad has happened to Jasmine, representing the disequilibrium in our piece. Although the equilibrium is not restored in our opening sequence, this would be set to happen at the end of the final film, where all characters in the piece will have the ending that they deserve.


Levi Strauss

We also very much display the theory of binary opposition by Levi Strauss throughout our piece.

Good Vs Evil is very much displayed through the direct comparison between Josh and Jazz's characters. Josh is shown to be strong and powerful, whereas Jazz is left seeming weak and vulnerable under Josh's control. This is very much shown through the shot where we zoom into Jazz's eye and when the camera zooms back out, the character has switched to present Josh's character instead. The use of this shot displays this binary opposition by clearly displaying Jasmine's fragile facial expressions in complete comparison to Josh's harsh, stern expression, reflecting his anger and rage.

Life Vs death is displayed through the juxtaposition of light and dark shots throughout the piece. A main example of this is where we pan across the montage of bright, happy pictures but these are then directly followed by the dark, eerie pan shots of Jasmine's dead body in the garage. Placing these shots directly next to each other helps to highlight these differences very strongly, creating an unnerving atmosphere for the audience.

The first day of filming

We bagan filming on the 6th of January, 2017. After a lot of discussion, we decided to use Josh's house to film. We chose this location for many different reasons. Josh's house is very open and spacious. We felt that using a house like this for our opening sequence would work very well as it provided us with many different locations to film in to make the piece look as interesting as possible. Josh also has quite a large garage at the end of his garden which we thought would be perfect to use for some of the darker scenes in our opening sequence. 

We wanted many of the shots throughout our opening sequence to look quite dark and eerie as these are very common conventions of a thriller. We decided to take some test pictures of our friend Jazz lying on the ground as she would be in the final piece to test the lighting at different times throughout the day. The picture on the left was taken at around 4pm. We decided that it was far too bright for us to achieve the shots that we would like. The picture on the right was taken only an hour later at around 5pm. We decided that this lighting worked far better and would allow us to achieve the look that we would like. It did, however make us realise that we needed to be very careful with the continuity of lighting throughout the filming process. 

Production companies

We decided that making our film accessible through the internet would be the best way to ensure that our film reached its target audience. This is because many young people use popular online sites to stream movies such as Amazon prime and Netflix. I believe that this is due to the convenience of the streaming method and also the low costs, appealing very much to students and young people.

When we began looking into different TV companies, we found that film 4 and BBC three were companies that would very much suit our film genre and our style as a group. We decided that these companies would be very interesting to look into as they are both independent but hold very large audiences. After some research, we discovered that film 4 was well known for producing low budget, British films. This is very fitting to our piece and therefore would be a very suitable company to produce our film. Film 4 is also available online, which would be very appealing to our target audience. We also discovered that many of the films produced by the company are of the thriller genre. 

As a group, we began looking into the idea of hybrid distribution. Hybrid distribution is where the creators keep the rights to their film but you are able to sell them to other distribution companies who will them be able to help to distribute your piece. As a group, we really liked this idea as it would allow our film to be shown on a wider platform, allowing it to reach a wider range of people. 

As a way to distribute our product further, we decided that we would also make our film available on Netflix. This is because it is very suited to our target audience due to its convenience and cost. Netflix is a very well advertised company, and is known for promoting lower budget films in the past. I believe that making our film available on this platform will allow our film to be accessed by a wider audience.