New Character

We we decided that we needed to re-shoot some shots from our opening, we also knew that we wanted some new shots to replace ones that we felt didn't work within our opening. As a group we decided that we wanted to show the letter that we had been using in more detail, as it is not really shown in our opening or when it is the audience may not pick up on it's significance. So we knew that we wanted to film a parent of our character holding the letter, so that we could do a close up shot of it, which would illustrate that it was important in our film.

We wanted our new character to be male and over 30, to make it clear to the audience that they were the dad of our character Callie. The actor did not need any acting experience as we only wanted a few close up shots of them holding and turning over the letter.

Evaluation of Film Shoot

When looking back at our film shoots, I have noticed how there are many things we could improve upon that would have made our filming days more successful.
For example, during both shots, I feel that we were not as focus as we could have been, I feel this is one of the reasons why we had to do a re-shoot day. We did not have it clear what we were aiming to do on our first day and we got distracted, this meant that we did not film all our shots.
Due to us not properly discussing what we wanted to do in our day we forgot what scenes we had shot. To improve we could have made a more detailed filming schedule, showing what scenes we were going to shoot first, the order in which we were going to film and at what times. If we had set ourselves a target to have certain scenes done by certain times, I feel that we would have stayed on track and would have been more focused. If this had happened we may not have had to do another day of filming.
After our first day of filming I created a new filming schedule that was more detailed. If our original filming schedule had been as detailed we may have had a more successful day of filming.

Planning Dates To Film

My group made a chat so we could communicate whilst not at school. We used it to organise our filming dates and timings, we did this to organise our main shoot and re-shoots.

Re-Shoot

Due to difficulties when we were originally filming we had to re-shoot some scenes and add some more in. We did this the weekend after and spent the week evaluating what we had done during our previous shoot and how we could improve upon it and find other ways to film certain shots that we feel did not come out the way we wanted them to.

For example we had previous filmed quick shots descending down the stairs, because we wanted to show how our character was moving downstairs. However when we watched back our scenes on Final Cut Pro, we found that it did not work with our film opening and didn't look right. This was one of the scenes we evaluated and re filmed. We wanted to change how we had previously filmed it, we knew that taking quick shots and moving down the stairs gradually didn't work so we tried a different technique. Instead we used a paying shot from the corner of the stairs and followed our character as she runs down the stairs. We felt that this was a much clearer shot and looked much better.

Started Filming

We started filming our main task today. We have been filming in my bedroom as it was the room we felt that fitted our story plot and character best.

We managed to get most of our shots done, however there were a few extra bits that still need to be filmed but due to other commitments we weren't able to film our 2 minutes all in one day. This was a little frustrating as we all wanted to get it done on one day, but we just decided on another date that we would have to complete the filming one; Sunday 17th January.

During our filming, we came across some difficulties when trying to film certain things, however we managed to come up with a solution that worked for us. We also did some experimenting with the camera and the different lenses, for example we were filming the fairy lights in my room and were testing different ways to film them and filming them in and out of focus.

Our day was successful and we mostly stuck to our storyboard, but did have to adapt and make a few changes that we feel would make our opening better.

Filming Schedule

We created a filming schedule to make sure that we had planned out our day and to minimise wasting the time we had so we could do all of our filming effectively.

10 am - Arrive at our location
10:10 am - Set up the equipment needed in our first location (the bedroom)
10:30 am - Practising our shots before we start filming (making sure we knew which shots to use and to see if they worked)
11 am - Actress arrives
11:30 am - Start filming
15 pm - Finish filming

RMA Research

Researching real media artefacts has helped me to understand the requirements for a film from the psychological thriller genre. I have looked at different film openings such as, 'The Machinist' and 'Memento' and they have shown me the stereotypes of film openings from this genre. They typically are very slow, this is to create tension.
They can have off key music or violin heavy music, helping to create tension and keep the audience on the edge of their seats.
The lighting is typically dark with low key lighting to accentuate the shadows, this can help to scare the audience and to keep them watching as figures can be hidden by the dark, so they need to keep watching to find out who the character is and their importance.
Costume and make up is not as important as the scenes can be very dark, or in films like 'Memento' the characters are not even shown in the first 2 minutes. However in 'The Machinist' the main character is revealed and costume and make up play a big role in presenting the character and illustrating to the audience who they are.

Overall, through my research I know have the knowledge on how to create a successful film opening for a film from the psychological film genre.

The Number 23 - Film Opening Analysis

The Number 23 is a psychological thriller. I have decided to analysis this film opening because my groups film opening is also a psychological thriller, so it will help me to understand the components of that type of film.

The first two minutes of this film opening contains the credits and music, however they still have psychological thriller elements. For example the number '23' is repeatedly shown throughout the credits and all the text is in the typewriter font giving it a old fashioned look and is in a deep red colour. As the opening titles continue blood splattering are shown over the pages and writing and more blood is shown on the pages as they progress.

The music used is orchestral but mainly strings, this type of music cause tension and suspense. Further on in the music drums and flutes are added but stringed instruments are still more dominant. At the very end of the credits the music stops as the number '23' is displayed and silence follows it, creating suspense. Typewriter sounds can be heard when credits are typed out, this adds to the effect of creating tension.

Quantitative and Qualitative Audience Research

We used different techniques for our audience research, we used quantitative and qualitative research, this allowed us to gain a wide range of information, which helped us when choosing our target audience.

Definitions:
Quantitative research
Quantitative research is ‘Explaining phenomena by collecting numerical data that are analysed using mathematically based methods (in particular statistics)’. The most common form of quantitative research is surveys (Focus Groups).
Quantitative research is useful for finding out specific information such as ‘Which is the most popular?’ The main benefit of quantitative research is that, if conducted properly, it can provide very accurate statistical information. However, one of the biggest shortcomings of quantitative research is that, whilst it can make it clear what is popular, it provides little insight into why something is popular.

Qualitative research
Qualitative research is ‘Research that is used to gain an understanding of underlying reasons, opinions, and motivations. It provides insights into the problem or helps to develop ideas or hypotheses for potential quantitative research’. The most common form of qualitative research is interviews. Qualitative research helps to address the why question: it is a means of speculating as to why something is popular. However, unlike quantitative research, qualitative research cannot be measured or quantified accurately.

We used the quantitative research technique when we made our focus groups and asked them certain questions such as, 'What is your favourite genre of film' and from this we were able to see how we could make our film more appealing to our target audience. For example we used a younger actor, this way the audience can relate to her more, rather than if it was an older actor.

We did some interviews/questionnaires to get a more detailed response from our target audience.  For example we asked people what attracts them about a psychological thriller that makes them want to watch. In response our focus groups said things such as, 'Lots of enigma and suspense, so there is a big jump scare'. From this we knew that our film opening couldn't give much information away to create enigma.

Focus Group Responses

Audience Classification

The need to define audiences has been driven by commercial needs.  Many media businesses need to deliver audiences’ eyeballs, or ears, to advertisers in order to be profitable and so the audience needs to be categorised.

Durning my audience research I found out about 'The Registrar General’s Social Scale', which is a scale that the British Government uses to define the populace through their occupation.

This social scale has benefits as it can help to companies to select a target audience which suitable for their film. However it can also be criticised and crude and rigid.
There are other methods of selecting target audiences, such as 'VALS' Values, Attitudes and Lifestyles or Selby's Psychographic Clusters. These can be a more effective way of deciding upon a target audience and are not as rigid or crude as The Registrars General's Social Scale.

Values, Attitudes and Lifestyles
These are psychographic (psychographics is the study of personality, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles) variables.

• Actualisers: Successful, wealthy, dynamic people for whom image is important as an expression of their individuality.
• Fulfilleds: Mature people who are well-educated professionals. This group values order, knowledge and responsibilities.
• Achievers: Successful and career-orientated people. They are politically conservative and value the status quo. Image is important to them and they tend to buy established, well-known products.
• Experiencers: Young, impulsive and rebellious. They like new products and styles but soon tire of them and search for new novelties. They spend as much as they can afford on clothing, fast food, music and films.
• Believers: Conservative people who believe in traditional institutions, such as the Church, and in the importance of the family and community. Their lifestyle tends to be very routine. Their income is small but sufficient.
• Strivers: Tend to be unsure of themselves and have a low income. They are striving for approval from others, which they feel they could gain by ownership of possessions, most of which they cannot afford.
• Makers: Makers are do-it-yourself enthusiasts and tend to live a conventional, family life.
• Strugglers: Strugglers are on the lowest income and tend to be loyal to their favourite brands.

Selby's Psychographic Clusters

This is similar to the VALs system, but the Psychographic Clusters is a system invented by Keith Selby. His categories include:

• Trendies: who crave the admiration of their peers.

• Egoists: who seek pleasure.

• Puritans: who wish to feel virtuous.

• Innovators: who wish to make their mark.

• Rebels: who wish to remake their world in their own image.

• Drifters: who are not sure what they want.

• Drop-outs: who shun commitments of any kind.

• Traditionalists: who want things to stay as they are.

• Utopians: who want the world to be a better place.

• Cynics: who have to have something to complain about.

• Cowboys: who want easy money.

This research has helped me understand how to pick out a target audience that would be suitable for my film opening. For example, as a group we knew we wanted to target a younger audience so the categories our audience would come under for VALS would be, 'experiencers' and maybe 'strugglers' as our target audience would be mostly teenagers, so they would be on a low income.

However The Registrars General's Social Scale had not helped me when choosing my target audience. This is because our target audience is 17 to 24 year olds and The Registrars does not cater for people who are not committed jobs/careers.

Film Treatment

Film Title: Minutes, Hours, Days.

Production Name: Rain Drop Productions

Film Duration: 2 minutes

Genre: Psychological Thriller

Target Audience: 15 to 24 Male/Female

News Article Used: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article4556983.ece
Man dies preventing suicide.

Character Breakdown:

Main character - Callie

• 17
• Female
• Student
• She was best friends with the man who died

Budget: £0

Props: - Laptop

• Letter | Envelope
• Clock
• Fairy Lights

Synopsis:

It had been week since Tommy had died saving Callie. She was in an emotional state, her head was spinning and she felt that it was all her fault. He had only died because of her. Time passed very slowly and she was getting lots of hurtful messages on social media because everyone thought she had caused his painful death. She was getting more and more depressed. Callie locked herself in her room and let no one talk to her, see her. She wouldn’t eat or drink anything, she would just lie in her bed crying for days.

A letter for Tommy’s funeral slid under Callie’s door, Tommy’s name and the 20th of January stood out on the piece of paper. As she read it tears dropped on the piece of paper. She read it and flew out of the room, angrily crying and running out of her house. As she was running down the road she dropped the piece of paper.

(Flashback) January 4th 2015. Callie was in a very bad place in her life, she had thought about many times when she could end her life, but today was the day she was going through with it. Callie hadn’t had a good upbringing, and she felt all alone. Despite being told on various occasions that they was always there for her and she would never face any problems alone.

As she was running up to the top of the building, Tom was chasing after her, shouting for her to stop, tears in her eyes she stopped at the edge of the roof and looked down. Making a heroic move, Tom pushed her from the edge on to the roof, he accidentally fell from the roof.

(Back to present) Callie ran into the woods and hid from the world, the only place she felt safe in the world, alone in the dark wood. No one could find Callie for days. She appeared in the paper several times “missing girl”, “girl missing after blamed for friends death”. 3 days had passed and Callie was nowhere to be seen. Her family were getting worried as she had been missing for so long. Everyone she knew were searching for her.

She turns up last minute at the funeral, and decides not to go in. she waits by a tree, the coffin comes out, followed by a group of people who she assumed were close relatives. She watched closely as the coffin with the body inside was being buried.

Callie started to walk, unsure of where she was going, she just walked and walked. She found herself at tommy’s house, where they were having a family gathering. Looking through the window from the road, Callie saw what she had caused. She saw a group of family and friends with a big part of their life that was missing. She knew what she had to do.

Callie got out her phone and checked her social media accounts. Lots of hurtful messages appeared. She dropped her phone on the ground, cracking as she ran away. Running home she finds her house empty, goes up to her bedroom and finds a paper and pen which is on her school desk surrounded by unfinished schoolwork. She quickly writes out a letter and seals it. Leaving it on the kitchen counter with “mum and dad” written on the front of the envelop. She collects what is needed and goes out of the house. With a tight grip surrounding whatever is in her hands, she leaves the house. Walking back the way she came, she ends up at the church where he was buried.

Walking over to his freshly dug grave, she kneels down beside it and whispers I am sorry. Releases her grip, exposing various pills and drugs in her dainty hand. It was obvious what she was about to do. The morning came around and Callie was found lying next to tommy, dead from an overdose.