Our Final Piece: Paranoia

^Above Is our final piece please click on the video to view it in full screen.

Media Evaluation

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Media Evaluation

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Final Production Changes

After we had recieved feedback we made our changes to perfect our final film. To begin with we changed our sound because it did not fit in with our genre/sub genre. This was hard because there are not that many sounds that aren't copyrighted. However we found a really good piece of music that really went well with the atmosphere of our piece. Then we realised that our film was just under the 2 minutes bracket and that we had to get a tiny bit of extra footage to make up for it. We decided not to add in any more titles or to fade to black and to instead show the viewers the next part to our story which was to do with our twist. We ended up shooting a shot that when from a ecu to a cu to ls and finally finishing on an els. We thought this to be a good idea because it set the scene for our next scene. Finally a couple of shots where a tiny bit too dark and so therefore not clear enough to see properly which didn't help our continuity luckily one of our team members new how to usea special editing software callld adobe after effects and was able to raise the lighting of the shots without us having to go out and re-shoot these.m Overall we as a group are very happy with our final piece especially me because i feel that we have used the thriller conventions correctly and effectively and I am pleased with our outcome of our hard work.

Editing Our Project

Overall we all had different tasks to complete for our project where we all helped with the puttting together of all of the clips that we shot. We also created our own titles with different effects for the titles that had our own names. We made sure that all of the group got a fair ammount of time with using the cameras, editing the footage and finally looking for sounds.

Filming Our Project Attempt Three

On the 30th January 2010 we went out to Iver Heath to go and film at Louise's house with all the group and our main character (Andrew johnson). We wanted to use the camera both to film inside and outside the house we wanted to give the effect of our main character being watched (the paranoia effect). We decided to film at Louise's because her house had the best street to film in where we had minimal interuptions and the street was great for filming our tracking shots.

What went well: we managed to use the camera effectively and managed to use almost all of the shots we filmed there in our final piece and didn't have to re-shoot any of our footage, The effect from shooting the shots from a window worked really well and really gave the effect of being watched by someone. Finally we filmed at the right time so our continuity was really good because we din't have things such as cars in our way.

What Didn't Go Well: We found it hard to do our shot from an upstairs window panning the outside area and so we had to use different windows to see which one was the best too shoot from to give us the best result.

Filming our Project: Attempt Two

For our second attempt in filming we decided to go to Uxbridge High Street (on the 23rd January 2010 with all the group). We were filming the main sequence of our film which again consisted mainly of constant tracking shots that walked through Uxbridge with different scenery. We decided to film in Uxbridge because we wanted to have a tracking shot however also have different backgrounds and Uxbridge was the best available place to shoot at. the shoot went how we pictured it would go.

What went well: what did go well was the fact that we got a variety of shots that were steady even though we were walking around a lot of the time. WE managed to get a variety of backgrounds. We found that holding the camera on the tripod upside down was really effective and we just rotated the footage once we had imported it. We picked the right time of day (early morning) because we were not interrupted by too many people.

What Didn't Work: We had a few times where we had people getting in the way and a couple of places such as in a lift where we could not film effectively. However other then that we managed to get some decent footage that wasn't too shaky or blurry.

The Storyline:

Our storyline is based on the story of a young newly wedded man who murders his wife in a crime of passion after discovering her in bed with another man. Getting away with his crime, the main character can not live with what he has done and can not face his family and his wife's family so he moves to a new city for a fresh start, during his time in the city he starts up a new life but thinks that everyone is watching him and that they all know his dark secret.

A New Idea: The Exercism OF Emily Rose

We have had to slightly change our idea because the feedback that we got was not positive because the only shots we had were different angle tracking shots. So we decided to do different shots of reactions like in the clip of the exorcism of emily rose (start at 8:30) We want to use a simular idea to this.

The Exorcism Of emily Rose: (2005)

Editing Our Project: Editing Attempt One

On the monday in lesson we uploaded our footage to a mac and had a look through what we had attempted to film.

What Worked: We found that just holding the camera and walking with it worked a lot better then expected. The setting was really good and made the film look how we had pictured it. Most shots weren't as shaky as we thought that they would be. Finally we picked the right time of day to film becuse the lighting was perfect. These worked because of our choice of setting and our time of day was really good and because we took so many attempts at filming single shots.

What Didn't Work: Our initial idea of using a skateboard din't work because of the surface, it made the shot all shaky and therefore useless. Some other shots with the camera held shots that werent very good but we got rid of these and are only using the decent footage.

Filming Our Project: Filming attempt one

For our first filming attempt we went to Gerrards Cross high Street (on the16th january 2010 with all the group). We were filming the very beginning to our thriller film which consisted of a constant tracking of a pair of legs throughout the high street. We decided to film in Gerrards Cross and do the oppening scene first because Gerrards Cross was a very useful setting and was easily accessible to us, we decided on filming the very start of the film because it was an easy shot to do and we had a great setting to do it in, exactly as we had pictured it.

What Went Well:What did go well was the fact that we managed to get a lot of different shots/ attempts of filming in different angles, we managed to find a quiet street with not too many interuptions and we didn't have anyone asking us to move or not to film them. These made our trip a lot easier.

What Didn't Go Well: We attempted to do a tracking shot on a skateboard however the ground was too rough so the camera was very shaky.

What Problems And How Did We Overcome Them: We were always going to have interuptions especially cars because we were on the high street and we wanted to film going across a road. However we decided to film early in the morning and on a quiet road for some shots to get rid of these interuptions. The only other problem was trying not to get too many other people in shot however because we were only doing tracking of a pair of feet this didn't really affect us that much.

Donnie Darko Analysis

Cloverfield Analysis

please click on the link to view the trailer full screen.

Main Character Sketches

Together we were trying to find what our main character would look like so that it would give us a good idea of who we should cast for the role. This is our idea of what the character should look like. We also where trying to play around with the stereotypes e.g. we wernt going to cast someone with blonde hair because they would look to inocent. We will select our main character soon and all the information will go on our shot list.

Camera Practice

heres us having a rough go to get the feel with a camera just so we could work out what was the best way to do the 180 degree shot.

First Shot,Prop and character list

This is our first initial shot list which gives us a rough idea of what we need and who we want to use and where abouts we will film. This list will get bigger as we start to film and it will also change in some areas.

First Draft Annamatic

Our Task:

Our task was to produce a rough animated storyboard containing cuts, fades etc for the first 2 minutes of our main project which included a title sequence. We firstly discussed and created a shot list which we then drew up a storyboard. This is only our first draft anamatic using all of our story board sketches that as a group we produced using combined ideas and cooperation. However we inverted the sketches to show our white images against a black background. We will improve our animatic until it is perfect then we can actually go out and start filming our proper piece. We only have a few improvements that need to be made which is included in the feedback. But overall our anamatic successfully displays our film in a rough way. However a shot that seems unclear is shot 10. This is because we are breaking the 180 degree rule and that is why the shot is so long. Our animatic was hard to portray because we only had still images to use however we added in a few effects and annoted shots such as shot 10 but otherwise everyone got the idea of our shots.

Our Piece:

Our Feedback:

The inverted images were very effective.

A wide variety of shots were used.

However, too short, we may need: longer shots

Missing titles: actors and actresses, the title of film, cinematography, editor, sound, producer, director.

Diegetic sound is needed

The pace of editing is good, a good sense of continuity

The Importance of Storyboarding, Sound And Colour

StoryBoarding: many famous directors (one of whom is M.Night.Shyamalan) use storyboards to get an extremely rough idea of what the film will look like before they actually go out and shoot the footage. Shyamalan says "storyboarding takes time, however it's worth it." He also says that "storyboarding is a chance to select and make specific props" for example in "The 6th Sense Shyamalan had a door knob made to shoot a specific shot where you could see the child's reflection in the handle and we can see his facial expression, this helps add to the atmosphere and pace of the movie. Shyamalan also says "it's a continuall point of reference". This can help guide you through a film even if it is a tiny guideline, it is still there if you forget what the original plan was.

Sound: M.Night.Shyamalan also says that sound is really important in his films. For "The 6th Sense he used a load of people and animals breathing to create the creepy music for the film which he said worked effectively because you couldn't tell. Also in "The Village" Shyamalan has taken a piece of sound and repeated and reverbed it. He says"sound is a character itself" and "you don't realise it's there as a viewer."





Colour: M.Night.Shyamalan also uses colour to help tell the story in most of his films, For example "The Village". Shyamalan uses the colour red to show the evil creatures (a symbolic sign of blood danger etc) and yellow to show the good and innocent people from the village. However there is a director called Wong Kar Wan who uses a lot of colour in the film "In The Mood for Love". For example the scene with the woman going down an alley to get her meal. Even though she is going down a dark alley Wan uses colours (the colour of her dresses) to show what mood she's in e.g. green, envy etc. Colour is very important in films because it helps by adding an effect to the scene.

Continuity Task

We were given our task which was to take 15 or so different shots of two characters (one enters the room). We had to make sure we didn't break the 180 degree rule and have shot reverse shot in our final piece. We used James's house as our location and we had james and Charlie in our piece. We did a quick storyboard and we created a quick story which we had 4 days to film. After we had filmed the shots and we were happy we had at least two good shots of every angle, we had to edit the piece together and add a tiny sound clip to complete our continutity task. What went well with our continuity task was the fact that we managed to shoot the shots, edit and add sound in a resonable ammount of time. However what was bad was the fact that I made mistakes such as being in shot when the camera was on and not realising that my reflection was in the window for one of our shots.

EVALUATION:

overall we got 32/60 marks. What was good about our work was: the effective use of sound (diegetic/non diegetic), our continuity and our framing. Our SRS was also good as was the fact that we stuck to the 180 degree rule.

To improve our work we should: use more CU/MCU which would have helped improve our piece a lot. Our framing in some areas was bad so we should improve on that. Our other target was framing to forground point.

Overall I think our piece was really succesfull.

Questionnaire Results