Task 7. What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Task 6. What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

We started shooting on the 24 of January. As we were taught during media lessons in studio that for shooting we needed a tripod and a camera. We used a Sony NX5 camera for our thriller shooting. We made a plenty of shots, there were sets of middle shots, close-up shots and wide shots which then we can use to cut and made a thriller out of them. We set up the camera several times and changed some features as the different types of lenses, temperature and balance as we were changing locations during the process of shooting. Moreover, we have done the time lapses shooting with clock using s photo camera !The idea was to show the audience the time running.

We also used two different types of micro: a boom mic was used to make sure that any foreign noise would not appear and the micro on the top of the camera was the main, it recorded all the sound.

The next day after shooting we transferred our footages into computer Mac Pro and added them into the program me Final Cut Pro where all the process of editing had to take place. To make the process more easier and quicker we were told to sort out our shots and put them into bins which we named “log bin” and “rush bin”. In the rush bin we placed all footages which we decided to put into our thriller sequence. Then we needed to decide on the plan of editing process. Our group’s first decision was to make all footages together and then add tittles however after two days of discussions we came to the decision to make firstly all titles and then add in between them our scenes. This process can be seen as conjunction and scenes are used as a “glue” for our thriller.

The art of title is a very important and hard work so we spent mostly all the time messing around with it and trying many different things. Firstly, we searched in the internet for the information regarding titles. The length of the title on the screen is about 4 seconds and can be checked by reading in the head a title for 3 times. This is done to make sure that the audience will notice the name of a person and it will stay in mind. Secondly, we used jump cutting with different size, font and position of titles to create the effect of abruptness. We placed titles on a black basic background to make the audience pay more attention to what happens on the screen ignoring the surrounding.

After this we decided that’s time for music to be added. So, we searched for some tragic, scary and creepy sounds which can affect on our thriller and help us to create the whole feeling of the triller atmosphere. We add some similar sounds which suited out sequence and can be used as connotations of scenes. We used shortcuts as “B” for Blade, “ M” for Marker and “A” for Arrow to cut, separate or split the pieces of sound. After the creation of an absolutely new sound, we saved it as a wave product and opened in Soundtrack Cut Pro program. There we messed around with the waves of the sound and its amplitude, raised the cadence and add some effects. 

After this we put the new transformed sound on the timeline as a main sound in titles sequences however we needed the background music which would develop with the plot and would come to the end with the audience. So, we searched for another soundtrack and edit it in the same way as the previous one. After we put it on the timeline as the background sound and put the tone down in the bits where the titles appear on the screen not to distract the audience with a mess of sound.

After this we came to the main process of editing the shots we took. We used the same shortcuts features as “B”, “A” and a new one “TTT” which helped us to move the pieces of work to the left or to the right depending on where we needed more places for scenes. So, the idea was to put scenes in-between titles and their length has to be no more than 3 seconds. The effect which was used to create the effect of connotation is called the Kuleshov’s effect, so its main purpose is to make audience to create their own understanding of the picture and finish the plot. Our role in this was just to make the sound and the picture work together and make this effect.

Moreover, after this was done, we added an extra effect on the scenes “ Bad film” effect, which helped us to create a creepy image of crosses, graves and other pics.

Overall, the shooting and the editing process took about 1 month and we learned more about both of these processes, how to use the camera and edit footages.

Here is our final piece with annotations added.

Task 5. How did you attract/adress your audience?

TRANSCRIPT:

How did you attract/address your audience?

We have taken notes from other thrillers to include several conventions in our opening sequence. During the first few shots of our thriller a conventional close-up over the head shot is shown to suggest she is daydreaming or thinking which attracts the audience as she is looking directly in to the camera and engaging them in her thought process.  The titles we used are also seen to be conventional, as they are expected to be there in all movies not just the thriller genre. Another convention we used was to build suspense using sound, which is seen in nearly every thriller opening (look at films such as Inception and tv shows like American Horror Story).

Narrator-Plot/Enigma

Similar to Final Destination, a thriller based upon a girl who is able to foresee when people are going to die. Considering that the plotline and narrative are easy to follow, the same fan base that would find these types of supernatural movies exciting would hopefully find ours attractive too.

Shot choice & selection

We used a series of shots which would build suspense such as the shaky middle shot of fight, the tight close up panning shot of the girl dying on the road. Also, we used hand held shots to make it more disturbing and to create verisimilitude. Moreover, the Kuleshov Effect was used during the shooting, our plot comprised scenes which follow in a certain order, the implication was that viewers bring their own emotional reactions and connote the plot in the way they want. 

Use of sound

We cut the sound according to the credits. We added a second layer of sound to create a cut up and abstract sound track with an underlying and constant ghostly sounds. Also,we used purely non-diegetic sounds as we wanted to create a dream like and surreal sense for the audience. The sound reaches its climactic point right at the end of the opening, when the clock speeds up and arrows move furiously, the climax of the music stops as the screen blacks out, then the titles are shown in synchronization with the distorted sound again. 

Unique Selling Point

Our unique selling point in this thriller is definitely the storyline, as it is suspenseful, original and has a strong marketable theme “Mystical gift”.

What’s being represented?

Unexpected events which happen to everyone in this life, personal problems and their mystic dawn are shown in our thriller This girl seems to be ordinary however inside everyone has some difficulties which are not conceivable for society and she’s an example for this.

Task 4. Who would be the audince for "Charlotte"?

The target audience of a media product is the group of people that the programme-makers are trying to persuade to watch it.

Our thriller "Charlotte" is targeted on the audience of young people aged 16-25. This is the group of people with a common interest in cinematography.

Here are representatives of this social group, they form our potential audience.

1. The girl name is Amalie Denver. She is 24 years old. One aspect on which she's keen on is cinematography, especially thriller and drama genre movies.

2. The girl name is Maria. She is 16 years old. She's a media student and beleives that thriller is the most interesting and popular genre in cinematography.

3. The girl name is Ksenia. She is 17 years old. She is very polymathic and despite the fact that science is her second name, she's keen on films and prefers thrillers like "American horror story" to a chemistry test.

Task 3. What kind of media institution might distribute "Charlotte" and why?

Task3 from Dasha Zhukova

Task 2. How does "Charlotte" repsent particular social group?

Task 1. In what ways does "Charlotte" use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Convention: A widely used and accepted device or technique, as in drama, literature, or painting. 
 
  

Convention is one of the most important thing in creation and development of a film. Easier it can be named as the audience’s expectation. This connection is usually commonly agreed between producers of a media product and the viewer. Our thriller also involves certain characteristics of common features used in thriller genre. As an example we took an opening sequence of a tv-serial “American horror story”, this product is made in drama and thriller genre.  They used distorted sound which applies to images put in certain order. This effect was made by a Russian film-maker Kuleshov (an article about the Kuleshov’s effect was published previously in my blog). This effect they used to create a feeling of unexpectation, danger and fright.

The font has its own weight, we decided to put titles on a plain black background, so the white colour of font exude and moreover we add the effect of  “increase-decrease” for the font. So, titles in our opening sequence appear, move fast then they increase in their size and sudden decrease. All these if followed by distorted sound which we cut. All together these pieces of editing sum up and we receive many scenes which tie up together with main images and carry the main idea to the audience. This is the unique selling point of “Charlotte”. The audience by watching 3 minutes of this opening sequence will made their own decision and review.

Convention is made to ensure that audience gets the main idea, realises what type of genre the film is and makes certain that the movie will have success.  By convention producer makes sure that  the unique selling point is chosen wisely and correctly. In addition to the disordered sound and titles, we added the effect of cutting scenes, so the images are cut and tied together, the audience feels the effect of interruption into the plot.

 

The first day of editing

Today is the edit day so we had an opportunity to look at our footages and choose appropriate shots. We used Cut Pro program and made a folder where we put all sequences which we will use in future for our thriller opening sequence. Right now we have an objective to finish our editing in 2 weeks and while we’ ll do it, we need to produce the soundtrack for it.

Shooting day

Our shooting day was on the 24th January, however on Monday, the 20th January, we decided with Megan and Bella to shoot one scene because we were absolutely sure that we won’t have enough time on Friday. So, we went to the Cranleigh Leisure Centre and film one of the scene from our thriller, for this scene we used Go-Pro camera and film under water the scene of drowning. So now the process started. 

On Thursday we were a little bit in a rush because on Friday we needed to go to the cemetery and film there one of the next scene, the problem was in the lack of actors and we did our best to find them and ask their teachers for the permissions to miss lessons. 

The next morning I woke up in the morning thinking about all the props which we needed to get from Hurtwood theatre although I felt a little bit nervous I was ready for this hard-working day.

At 8:30 am we already were in the top-studio room and ready to go to the cemetery but suddenly the problem of getting there occurred, we did not know that there will be anyone to drive us there, in 10 min we dealt with this problem by asking Adam to go with us and he agreed. So, we went to the cemetery, the first place on the shooting day schedule.

The cemetery was located near our school so it took about 7min to get there. A local small church has on its area a small but with very old graves cemetery so this was out location for the second scene. The idea was to film people who came to the grave of their relative, they had to have flowers and put them next to the grave, the scene had to carry the emotional weight of loss, we had to shoot it in the way to show the audience feelings of relatives who sorrow. The main purpose was to shoot as many as possible good shots which can carry the main idea. So, we took about 20 different video sequences starting with a long and wide shot and finishing with many close-upshots of eyes, arm holds and faces in common. Also, we took several sequences of the cemetery in common, we used (перемещение камеры слева направо) to show the audience thу location go this ceremony. 

After this, the next location of our shooting was the studio in Hurtwood. We films in different places inside and outside, mainly inside however twice we needed the sheet location so we did the shooting in the back yard.

On the cemetery I was filming and Bella was directing and telling actors what to do, meanwhile Megan was responsible for props and she choose the location of filming, where it was more comfortable to put the camera. Also, Paul, who ruled the whole process helped us, he was not involved in shooting but he advised us how to film and recommended to shoot more sequences just in case.

When we arrived to the studio we changed with Bella and now she was filming and Megan and I were responsible for make-up, props, actors and locations of shooting.

The most tragic problem which we thought had been solved was in the lack of crew, we need more people to act in out triller. So, for the scene inn morgue I asked one of the fellow next to our school to get involved in our shooting and he agreed. The next problem occurred when we realized that the possibility to break the bottle equals to 0 if we will just throw it on the floor, so we spent a lot of time trying to do something with it, to break it and finally we broke it with a brick so the idea of a fall of the bottle with poison turned to be impossible and we rewrote it and shoot as the bottle was already broken when the police finds the dead person.

The most successful part of out shooting I found the cemetery scene. Actors were great and the location and props were just brilliant. Also, we took many legible and needed shots for our thriller so I went from there full of proud of our work.

Personally, I think that we could do more shots in the studio and work with them more properly, the scene on the street with a dead body was filmed in a big rush and I think that if we’ll be not pleased with how it’s done we will redo it one more time.

I enjoyed the most the scene in morgue, the lightning and the way of shooting we uses mainly close-up shots was amazing, I loved it and I was pretty happy the way we did it, we film several videos of different types of people whose faces a doctors was covering with a white sheet.

However, the idea of filming the fall of the bottle was spoiled, we managed to film the close-up shot of the arm moving in dying movements and I’m looking forward to see it during the editing process.

Finally, I can say that our team worked great during the whole week, we managed to do this work in a short period of time and I think that without helping each other, without our communications and  discussions during the lessons we won’t be so successful as we are now. Moreover, Paul’s job during this long shooting day was to help us to improve our skills in using the camera, setting up lightning, choosing better locations for our scenes and increase our perseverance during the shooting, so I think that during this day I learned many things which will be useful in my next shooting works.

Thriller progress

Our group instead of typing the whole story decided to make a video in which we tell all ideas previously made and which we've make few days ago. 

Final plot and structure of scenes

We have finally decided to shoot a sequence of shots that link together suggesting death scenes. It will start off with charlotte lying on the bed, she will then close her eyes and the sequences of scenes will flash one after another. It will end with Charlotte opening her eyes the audience sees number flickiring in her eyes.

Casting: 

Alistair Brook - Funeral scene and knife scene. 

? - Funeral scene

? - Funeral scene

Paul Wingfield - Funeral scene

Isabella Woolger - Charlotte

Ksenia Bakulina- Sheet gets pulled over 

Nj - Investigation scene and hoodie gang scene.

Simon Wood - Rat poisoning scene.

Caty Jacques - Rat poisoning scene.

Mikael Asaturov - Hoodie gang scene.

Habeeb Fasasi - Hoodie gang scene. 

Felix Knight - Hoodie gang scene.

Chris Alldridge - Victim of hoodie gang. 

Dave Fonseca - police man scene. 

Here are the different scenes that will be shown in the montage of shots:

Cemetery scene:

CASTING: ? - ? - Paul Wingfield - Alistair-Nj

PROPS: Flowers, Black clothing

ACTION:There will be four people stood around a tomb and one of them will lay a bouquet  of flowers on the tomb. The camera will then zoom in on the date of the tomb. 

This will be heard in as a diegetic sound coming from the priest while the camera zooms in on the date. 

"We are gathered here today in memory of (name on tomb) who died (date on tomb)".

Drowning scene:

CASTING: Isabella Wooger. 

PROPS: Go-pro camera, Clothes that can get soaked, swimsuit.

ACTION:A girl will be drowning underwater, screaming.

Death certificate scene:

PROPS: Death certificate, Lab coat.

ACTION: A close up of someone filling in the date of when someone has died.

Sheet over dead body scene:

CASTING: Ksenia Bakulina

PROPS: Sheet.

ACTION: Sheet gets pulled over a dead body.

Investigation scene:

CASTING: Nj

PROPS: Chalk, a gun.

ACTION: An dead body outlined with chalk with a gun by its side also outlined.

Rat poisoning scene:

CASTING: Simon Wood 

PROPS: A bottle with poison sign, table setting for two people (cutlery, cups, plates etc.) 

ACTION: Camera zooms in on a bottle of rat poisoning, it then cuts to a shot of a couple who are having dinner. The man then starts to choke, we then see a close up of the women smiling.

Hoodie gang:

CASTING: Mikael Asaturov - Habeeb Fasasi - Felix Knight - Nnamdi(NJ) - Chris Alldirdge.

PROPS: Pen knife, hoodies.

ACTION: four teenagres that are part of a "hoodie gang" start kicking and stabbing a younger boy.

Creepy knife scene:

CASTING: Alistair Brook.

PROPS: Knife, big black office chair, Fake blood.

ACTION: A back shot of Alistair holding a knife, he then swivels in his chair revealing him smiling creepily.

New ideas for Charlotte

Last week we had a meeting with Matt, Paul and Luke. We present our idea of the opening sequence. The idea seemed very interesting for everyone but the problem as they told us that these scenes need more investigations than we can afford and also the whole story is not suitable for filming in school conditions. So, Matt and Luke developed with us during this meeting three different ideas and asked us to forget about the scene of party which we planned. The main idea of Charlotte seeing dates of death is still the main thing in our plot however everything else will be changed. Matt suggested to put background voice of Charlotte explaining her special gift and her ability to see the numbers and Luke told us to search about Kuleshov's effect which we can use in our shooting and this will make our trailer more exciting.

The Kuleshov Effect is a film editing (montage) effect demonstrated by Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov in the 1910s and 1920s.

Kuleshov edited together a short film in which a shot of the expressionless face of Tsarist matinee idol Ivan Mosjoukine was alternated with various other shots (a plate of soup, a girl in a coffin, a woman on a divan). The film was shown to an audience who believed that the expression on Mosjoukine's face was different each time he appeared, depending on whether he was "looking at" the plate of soup, the girl in the coffin, or the woman on the divan, showing an expression of hunger, grief or desire, respectively. The footage of Mosjoukine was actually the same shot each time.

Kuleshov used the experiment to indicate the usefulness and effectiveness of film editing. The implication is that viewers brought their own emotional reactions to this sequence of images, and then moreover attributed those reactions to the actor, investing his impassive face with their own feelings. Kuleshov believed this, along with montage, had to be the basis of cinema as an independent art form.

So, since this meeting we started to think about the new interpretation of our idea and we took into account all what Matt, Luke and paul told us.