Final Film

This is our complete film. It shows the first 2 minutes of a psychological thriller called quit whilst you're ahead. It stars Brendan Mcinerney as Harry, Rosanna Duggan as Olivia and Abby Wilson as Emily. Written and Produced by Group 22 from Barnsley College.

thoughts after having posted the end product.

So we finally got the film edited and uploaded.
After watching it im quite pleased with the result, it turned out a lot better than i thought it would and i think i speak for other members of the group also.
Certain aspects of it worked a lot better than we imagined, and most of it was great.
Despite the odd bit of desperate acting on my part i am proud of the groups effort into the film.
We did a decent job.

Final Evaluation Of " Quit Whilst You're Ahead "

In producing our film as a group i feel that we made a very good effort in keeping our continuity as a very high standard. When we were filming myself and others that were in the film made sure we wore the exact same outfit. We could have done better with the lining up of shots, as this was not always as smooth as we would have liked in the final edit.
However we did hit obstacles that deterred us from achieving the level of continuity we had originally wished for. We had a spell of really good hot sunny weather for a week or so, and we got a lot of our filming done in that time, but our luck changed when it came to shooting the final bits of footage for our film and we got a downpour of torrential rain.
This has affected the continuity of our film because the lighting changes from bright to quite dark,
The weather goes from sunny to pouring rain, the costumes and characters are all wet and the sound in the film is slightly disturbed by the rain.

We were disappointed that we had to film in such horrible conditions, but we knew as a group that we cannot always have everything go just the way we want it as it isn't how the world works so we got on with our work. On the subject of the editing of our film, although as i have previously stated that our shots weren't always in line with one and other, they weren't, that bad. The editing process of our film went great, all in all it worked quite well, regardless of the sudden change in weather, it was not really that big a deal in the end.

Our film fits the genre category of thriller. I do believe that our film suits the genre quite well through the plot of the film and the footage used. The introductory two minutes of our film reflect the category quite well i think. We start of the film with a scene with Harry and his girlfriend Olivia in bed together asleep. Harry is quite visibly uncomfortable and uptight in his sleep, we then flash to his nightmare that he is having.

From watching other films and analysing them we knew that lighting was a key element to creating the thriller type atmosphere. We decided that if we had a lack of lighting in the nightmare scene that it would help bring the effect of the horror in the nightmare and the help towards our film fitting the thriller genre.
(do sound at home)
The mise-en-scene section of our film was all looked at carefully.
When we created our characters we created them in detail, not just name and gender, we did the social group or the stereotypical group they belonged to and planned their costumes out accordingly. We looked at the group they belonged to and built up things that belonged to in the semantic field we were looking at.

The locations we chose were either through ease of access to the location or to the character of the location, for example, the graveyard; the graveyard had a strange look to it and was somewhat haunting but had a certain charm to it.
It fitted very well with the atmosphere we were trying to create and helped towards getting closer to the film genre we were looking for of a thriller.

The typography in our film worked well, it wasn’t too big but visible in the shots and was noticeable and readable. The font had a kind of rigidity to it, which I believe goes well with the genre of a thriller.

Our film had a lot of social representation in it.  We tended to base the social group in the ‘indie’ category. We based the costumes on this and the characteristics of the characters in the film on this also. In the opening two minutes we don’t see very much from the role of women apart from the vulnerability of them in Harry's nightmare.  The female characters do not have a big role in most of it and not many spoken parts either.  We leave the woman role to a minimum in the 2 minute introduction. However, the exclusion of the female role in the beginning and most the way through the film is highly significant. At a later point in the film Olivia, Harry's girlfriend becomes a crucial character, there is a fight scene towards the end of the film between Harry and the suspected killer.
Harry is fighting a losing battle and as the suspected steps up to finish him off when Olivia jumps in and kills him.  This contrasts with the lack of the female role throughout the film to show a woman killing a criminal and saving her boyfriend’s life.
The stereotypical view of women is that they tend not to be as strong and things as such.
But by having Olivia kill the criminal in the film we challenged that stereotypical view and pushed a new view for our audience on the women in the film and perhaps in reality.

We looked as a group to decide which film company would be best suited to distributing our film.
We came to the decision that Warp Films would be suitable to our film.
we decided that because they are a local film company and will be close to home, that it suits us perfectly. Also, they are a low budget film company and that is what our film would be as we are just students and the budgets we would have would be minimal.
Our film is a Thriller, however from studying the films that warp films make they tend to deal with everyday peoples families or people with a low income.
our film involves people who are just a normal family that are suffering due to the loss of a family member to the hands of a criminal.
our film also deals with the lack of faith in the legal and justice system. A common topic that seems to be at large in our area and others around. This is most likely a stereotype but if it will attract an audience i believe that warp films would find it an interesting aspect for a film and would consider distributing a film like it with such a spoke about theme in our county.
Warp Films have distributed many films and they deal with real life situations.
One film that i think is similar to ours due to the genre is ' Exhibit A'
this is a thriller type of a film with a scary element to it, this is very like our film in a way that there is a horrific side to it.

The audience we chose to sell our film to was people from the age of 15 and upwards. we did surveys and we collated feedback that suggested our chosen genre was a good choice as most people we asked liked psychological thrillers. The fact that it was a thriller was a selling point alone as they are many peoples favourite type of film.
We thought that with us being either 16 or 17 that our film would appeal more to people within ten years of our age. As the actors in it are still young. We studied other thriller films to give us inspiration for the story line and how we would go about choosing locations and what shots we would use etc.
We created questionnaires to gain information on what people like in films and what they would think of our film from what we could tell them.
We chose our audience, and then started to shape our characters relating to the audience we aimed our film at.
We knew that from college most people we knew acted and dressed a certain way and fitted to a certain stereotype. From this we made the characters fit the stereotype and become more relatable to the audience.

I believe that as a group we did reach our target audience, we did all we could to make our characters and genre and plot relateable to the audience and did as best as we could to make it appealing too.
When we were at the pre-production stages of our project we took into consideration what would appeal to our audience. We decided that if the characters were around the same age that they would be able to relate to them and also if the characters fit into popular social trends and stereotypes that they (the audience) were a part of or they knew of that they would instantly become attracted to it as that is how the younger population in society act and respond to social trends and things as such.
We tried to make it realistic also to make it relatable for the audience and we hoped that this would be a good selling point for our film.
One of the questions we asked in our questionnaire was ' what would be the unique selling point of our film? '
One of the answers we received was ' the unique selling point i think would be the realism of the film. It's not unbelievable like Hollywood films.'
From that answer alone i know that we achieved making it realistic and relatable to the audience.

According to our audience feedback our music and camera angles worked well. and some said the acting.
Some of the audience said the editing could have been better and the acting and also the story line could have been more detailed.
We took all the feedback and understood and agreed with it all.
There were aspects of our film which needed work and we knew that but we just did what we could in the time we had with the conditions we had also.

Thanks to the feedback we now know how we can improve our work. We know that we need to do a better job of lining up the shots so our editing will run a lot smoother. We also know that we need to improve our acting to make the films more convincing and realistic.
We realised that the story line we wanted to portray was not shown in enough detail in the 2 minute film. We did not show enough of the plot in the 2 minutes we had and we know that in future that is what we need to work on.

In the pre-production stages of the project, we used the Internet for research on genre and researching other films for inspiration. For this we used the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) this gave us ideas about the genre we wanted to do our film in accordance with and also gave us some sort of guidelines of what a thriller type film is like. We decided to use IMDb because it was well known and very reliable and had all the information we could ask for.

we then created an on line blog on Blogger. Throughout the process of making our film we updated it with all diary entries and other work and all the paper work side of the project.
This kept us up to date as to where we were and kept a constant record of what we had or had not done.

We then needed to make some scripts for the film. For this we used a product called Celtex this was used as it gave us the format for a script straight away and made it easy for us to create the script.

During the Production stage of the project we got to use a digital camera to do the filming o the scenes we needed to create our film. we had previous experience with the camera from our preliminary task at the beginning of the academic year in media so it was easy for us to get straight on with filming again.
Once we had filmed all the footage we needed to create our film we imported it using a USB lead onto the Macs at college. We then imported the footage onto our editing software, final cut express.
final cut is a professional editing software and is very good. By using this software we had a good finished product and it was high quality due to the quality of the software.
With final cut we added all the footage and cut it together to create the film. We then added things like a fade transition and use typography for the credits and things as such.

In the post production stage we finished our project and uploaded the final video on to YouTube. a well known on line website for on line video blogs and just general video. we then uploaded it to Blogger onto our blog to show the final product.

I feel myself that all of the new software we used was successful. excluding the odd technical hitch with blogger.

I have learned about all sorts of new technologies.
I have learned how to make a blog on Blogger and i have discovered Blogger.
I have learned how to use Final Cut Express much better, and feel more comfortable using the software.
I have also learned new ways of using social networking and seen other things they can be used for.

For the Preliminary task, the group all learned from scratch new camera shots, angles, rules in filming and more.
We learned how directors use representation and things such as Mise-en-Scene to suggest something and build up an idea for the audience.
I feel ive learned a lot about continuity, how hard getting lighting and other things perfect is and how that not everything we want can happen in media there are many things such as weather and things that will get in our way to reaching goals etc.
I feel i have grown more comfortable with the new technologies and with the softwares i have been introduced to in the past year and have got a lot better at using them.

I have got better at arranging the lighting for a film, i have got better at filming and feel more confident in my acting also.
I feel i am a lot more able with the software i have been introduced to and feel i can produce work a lot better than what i would have been able to do months ago.
I have got better at working as a team and i have got a lot better at overcoming obstacles when trying to reach a goal.
It is not just my production skills that have improved though.
When i came to doing my research this time i took a lot more in depth approach to it giving me a wider knowledge about what it was i was researching and gave me more to bring to the table when it came to brainstorming ideas.
At the beginning of the year i took a way more laid back and eased off approach to everything.
Where as at the end of the year i am a lot more hands on with the work and with my research etc.
Throughout the project i have gained so much knowledge and skills and its been a great educational expreience.

Evaluation part five.

We attracted our audience by constructing several questionaires and handing them out to people we knew, and asking them to pass them on to people they know.
I think we reached our target audience perfectly because the people we know are in our age range (teenagers) and are also from the North, and we included certain quotes in the film that we thought might grasp the audience's attention when planning our production.
We recieved a lot of positive feedback, things such as 'excellent storyline' were said a lot, and even though many of them admitted it wasn't their usual prefered genre of film, they were very excited about seeing it.
From our audience feedback, we learnt that the areas we chose for filming were very good. One person said that he really liked the idea of the house being so dark inside suiting the personality of Harry, contrasting with the brightness of the outdoors that the two characters looked so uncomfortable and unfamiliar with; he said it was little things like this that made the film.
We also learnt from our audience feedback that the voiceover of officer shades wasn't so great. The fact that there was no difference in the quality of sound of the voice or where it was coming from let the film down said one girl. We regrettably as a group thought that this might have caught the audience's attention because we simply didn't have the skill to master making it any better. But we understand that this isn't the end of the world and we will aquire this skill for the next time.

Evaluation part four.

I think that a good media institution that could distribute our media product would be WARP films.
I think this because it is not a big institution, it is an independent film production company based in Sheffield & London. It is also known for making fairly low budget films, and ones that are of selected taste - (i.e: four lions and this is england are not films you could watch with the whole family, and neither is Quit whilst you're ahead.)
Obviously our film is low budget as it is our amateur media product, and there are aspects of it that show clearly that it is imperfect, but that is the beauty of it as is the case with many of WARP films.
The target audience for our film is generally teenagers, and to be more specific, Northerners. This is another reason why I think WARP would be a good distributor because a lot of their films including This is England, Donkey Punch, Submarine and Four Lions are popular amongst teens and are set in the North, and therefore a lot of their audience will also be from the North.

Evaluation Part Three

There are a lot of vital camera movements that help define it's place in the catagory 'thriller.' The fact that Harry and his girlfriend don't exchange many words amongst each other and their serious, unsatisfied facial expressions shows they are deep people. The horizontal panning of the camera at the opening of the scene is quite vital as it presents the audience with an insight of Harry's bedroom, which as a teenager is basically an insight of his life. The close up of his face when he is tossing and turning in bed shows that he is unhappy and is clearly being disturbed by this nightmare he is shown to be having.
The close up/over shoulder shot in the graveyard scene is also really important as it allows the viewer to read what Harry is reading and puts you in his shoes for a moment.
The music we used I thought was really effective. We waited until after the phonecall scene (in which there was non-diegetic sound) to add music, and this was also non-diegetic. The music then continued right until the end of the five minutes, and the speech in the graveyard was heared over the music. The music was chilling and eerie, to add mystery.

Evaluation Part Two

I think that our film reflects the genre we are trying to pursue quite well. The scenes we filmed were set out specifically to match the personality of the main character - Harry, which is indie. We took special care in ensuring that the bedroom of which we filmed in was presented as Harry's would have thought to have been. Another thing we added was a ringtone of indie genre music (The Kinks - You really got me) But unfortunately, we had to edit this out for copyright reasons. This is another example of a problem we faced throughout the editing process.
We got a lot of our inspiration for this particular genre from films such as Rear Window, Fatal Attraction, Taxi Driver and Les Diaboliques. As a group we watched a couple of these together and some on our own and developed a passion for this genre of Psychological Thriller.
Our film is somewhat similar to those listed because they all have a sense of mystery. The audience are made to feel uncomfortable, unsettled and eager to find out what happens next.
We established the plot together as a group once we'd decided on the genre, and this flowed fairly smoothly. We didn't have any disagreements as such and everyone was happy with the roles. There was one instance of role swapping as Jess decided she didn't want to act at last-minute, and Abby stepped in and took her place.