FINAL CUT

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?

preliminary task:

Personally, the main thing I gained through filming my Preliminary task was confidence in the filmmaking basics, most importantly in use of the equipment; setting up the camera and tripod and then using Final Cut during the editing stage. The task allowed me to practise these basic techniques in a less stressful environment, as the finished product wasn't to be marked, but was a helpful introduction into the film making world. The briefing for the Prelim Task was simple, we only had to include the basic shots like shot reverse shots and match on action, whilst sticking to the 180 degree rule, and were allowed to experiment with close ups and mid shots. The task allowed me to become familiar with the basics of Final Cut, in how to make sure a scene has continuity by cutting the shots correctly, and thus helped with our 'final piece' too as we knew how to cut together different shots in a fluid motion.

PLANNING: For the prelim above, in terms of planning there was virtually none done. I thought up the weird and random narrative on the spot and filmed the shots quickly, trying to tick all the boxes we had been allocated - match on action, shot reverse etc. This obviously is completely opposite to the amount of time I spent thinking up the plot to the opening of our thriller film. For the final piece, I devised a comprehensive narrative, and had clear ideas of where I wanted the opening to be shot (e.g. I knew I wanted a beach scene) and of the opening's style and tone in dirty, grimy London. In terms of progression within planning, obviously for our final piece there has been much more, but I think I could have done to a more comprehensive extent still. For example, the dance scene was excruciatingly hard to plan in advance, for so many different factors:

• we had no idea who would actually turn up, actors kept dropping out or had other commitments. 
• the shots we wanted for the dance scene were going to be so quickly cut that it was almost impossible to fathom what each individual shot would entail e.g. the impossible nature of predicting 0.4second cuts of closeups of strobe lights and lasers dancing on a wall.
• we weren't even sure where we were filming the party until around a week before, because every place we were looking into was booked by other school groups. 
• therefore, we couldn't really produce storyboards as what we were organising was completely unplanned and spur-of-the-moment, which is no doubt a completely idiotic way to work. 

However, I did try to work around our many problems and made a few sketches of what I wanted. In my head, I knew exactly what I wanted to shoot (e.g. slo-mos of creepy male in club trying to dance with lead actress) but I was aware that I couldn't predict how any of it would turn out on the day. In terms of music, I did plan ahead by making a playlist on spotify of as many songs that I could find of as close to 130bpm as possible, because that was the tempo of the song me and my brother were creating on logic. Therefore, during editing I thought it would be easier to cut together the shots to the audio track because the actors and actresses would actually be dancing "in time".

SOUND: For the preliminary task above I didn't use any external recording for sound, and just used the inbuilt microphone on the camera, which gave good enough quality for the purpose of what was simply a practice task. However, in watching the scene back there is quite a lot of background noise - e.g. some sort of whirring when Emma enters the large room - which could have been easily eliminated by highlighting different sounds that were essential, recording them separately and combining them on final cut. I took this on board when it came to recording our coursework:

• the beach scene: we recorded sound using a digital audio recorder at the location, with varying proximity to the sloshing waves. In final cut, I added some sample wave noises at a slightly higher volume just because they were crisper than the ones we had recorded, which also had quite a lot of background noise.
• the club scene: we actually did record some 'background' sounds of people laughing and talking in the moments between shooting, or when people went out for air (it got really hot in the room we were filming!). However, when it came to editing the recordings somehow didn't sound genuine and didn't fit with the loud dance music we had decided to put behind the scene. Therefore, for this scene we had no recordings taken at the location. I do think this makes the situation more immersive however, as the viewer can focus on the dancing and the loud house track, instead of snippets of conversations which would be disjointed as the shots are so quick.
• the walking home sequence: we had an absolute nightmare in recording sound for this portion of the opening, and it is one of the main things I regret/wish we could have re filmed. For some reason, and to no one's knowledge, the camera we had decided to use (and had been using all along - Canon 7D) had its sound recording turned off. Therefore, no sound was recorded at the location by the camera itself. Luckily, Blake had been using the external audio recorder to capture most of the sound, but some of it was missing - for example in one of the final shots we used him as our actor to walk ominously down the alleyway (leaving no one recording the sound). As we began to edit the shots to our horror we realised that about half of the dialogue we wanted had been recorded. It took a lot of hard work from us to match up the audio we had with the shots, there were only fleeting moments where the two coincided. Therefore, to my dismay the ending of our opening looks reasonably disjointed and slightly ridiculous. This, I would see as a failure, because I should have checked prior to the day we were filming whether the camera was actually recording. If the deadline for filming was further away I would have loved to re-film it but we had no time left and it was extremely difficult getting all our actors from across London in the same place, wearing the correct outfits, at the right time in the first place.

Therefore - within the realms of sound - it feels, in a way, like I have gone downhill from my preliminary task. However, I do think it took a reasonable amount of skill to extrapolate as much as we could out of the walking home sequence. And, in terms of music I am quite proud of what me and my brother have produced on Logic, I think it really encapsulates the tone that I wanted to procure right from the planning of our opening. Also, no non-diegetic sound was used in my preliminary task, and in our coursework we used quite a lot; in post production beach waves as well as recording seperately the sound of Helena's phone dropping to the ground. 

CAMERAWORK: I think I have really improved in my camerawork from my preliminary task compared to our coursework. This is mainly due to the wide variety of shots I was able to employ in the opening, varying to the few shots I actually took in the prelim. I think I have really 'mastered' certain types of shots. For example, my task opens with a weird shaky zoom depicting Emma walking towards the camera. I was able to build on my camera holding skills and employed a pan in our actual coursework, which ended up to be the opening shot of our opening 2mins because we all thought it was just really nice. When I was filming the actual shot at the beach I tried to do it with extreme care, hoping not to shake or jar the camera even slightly - and I think the end result is quite professional (!) I also executed a reasonably steady pan for the dance scene, which reveals different characters within a group of people dancing at a party. In the club scene we also incorporated lots of point of view shots which we hoped would heighten the verisimilitude for the viewer. 

MISE EN SCENE: In my preliminary task I didn't experiment with pretty much anything within the realm of mise en scene, apart from the fact that I made the room in which Emma enters quite dark, just as something to play with at the time and to make it slightly more interesting. I had no control however over what Emma wore, of the setting, and didn't really give any direction on facial expressions etc. Nor did I experiment with altering the colours in post production on Final Cut. However, in the coursework I feel like I embraced the components of mine en scene, especially within the opening beach scene and the club scene. Although the opening shots at the Southbank were golden and shimmery at the time because it was around 4pm and the sun was coming down, I further enhanced them by playing with the colour palette in final cut; increasing the saturation and warmth. I did this to achieve an almost dreamlike sense, as the main protagonist gazes across the water reminiscing the night before and the tragedy that occurred. I directed our actress in this scene to look 'upset' and tortured due to her friend's untimely fate, which I think is construed in her pained facial expressions, and leads the viewer to beg the question - what has happened? For the dance scene and walking home sequence, we wanted the colours to be darker and grimier as the opening becomes more horrific. We had lots of ideas for the lighting in the club scene and arranged for friends to bring in laser/strobe lights to help us achieve the late-night clubbing feel we were going for.

EDITING: There is a stark contrast between the amount of editing done in my preliminary task compared to our coursework. With the prelim hardly any post production editing was done other than simply splicing the various shots together, whereas with 'STROBE' we incorporated graphics, idents, slow motion, fade ins and outs, a swipe transition as well as generally taking much more care in how each shot interacted with those around it. I found the titles and text really interesting to create whilst making sure they kept in line with the tone of the opening. For example, the letters of names of our actresses appear on screen in an almost twinkling effect, which mirrors the tone of the beach scene; the shimmering reflection of the setting sun on the water and the lapping of the waves on the shore. Therefore the transient nature of the titles is parallel to the transience of the situation; sunset, waves. For the prelim I made no attempt at ident because it wasn't required, but for the actual coursework I had lots of fun in attempting to make a clean, simplistic and minimal ident incorporating our production name in a cyclical effect found on Motion. For the dance scene, I think my skills in editing greatly improved due to the many different things we wanted to depict:

• because we wanted to create a chaotic environment, the shots had to be cut together in an extremely quick manner. This in itself was quite a challenge, collating all the material we had recorded on the day of filming into chunks of video no more than a second long proved to be quite difficult.
• because the scene is actually a flashback, we wanted to portray a dream like quality. I think we achieved this by incorporating most importantly slow motion. Not only do I think this achieves the dream like/music video esque quality we were aiming for but also creates moments of clarity for the viewer, hidden amongst chaotic cuts of less than a second long.
• to make the scene seem even more chaotic I interspersed shots of people dancing/drinking etc with random offcuts of shots, e.g. I cropped and zoomed in on a shot of a strobe flashing and cut it down to about 0.2 seconds, before placing it at almost random intervals throughout the scene. 

To conclude, I have learnt lots from producing both the preliminary task and our coursework. I think I have learnt valuable lessons from both e.g. check whether the camera records sound (!) and they will help hold me in good stead for whatever I create next.

EVALUATION QUESTION 6

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



To conclude we have learned a lot about the technologies from the process of constructing our product, as many we had never used or had little experience with before.  Our greatest advancement in skills was with Final Cut Pro, as we quickly learnt the most effective and coherent ways of editing our film. However we also learnt a great deal from the cameras, aiming for the most visually stunning shots using the rule of thirds and shooting from various angles.

While filming we struggled the most with lighting, as the batteries ran out very quickly. Luckily, due to our past experience, we remembered to bring multiple battery packs, which allowed us to continue filming.

Reflecting on our filming day 2, we also greatly struggled with sound as we found out after the shoot that our camera had not recorded any. This made us realise the importance of using an external mic recorder, to have a clearer, extra layer of sound.

From our experiences in the project, I believe that we have learnt a lot, and so in our future ones we will not make the same mistakes.

EVALUATION QUESTION 5

How did you attract/adress your audience?

TRANSCRIPT:

Our scene opens on a beach, this immediately attracts our audience as the setting is pleasant and the sound of the water is soothing, fitting with the calm tone of the production. By opening the scene with a soundbridge of the lapping water we felt the viewer would feel more included in the situation - thus heightening the verisimilitude. We use shots of the water going back and forth on the beach to further create the appearance of calmness, ambient sounds of the water further builds to this calmness. 

Long shots of our character sitting on the beach with members of the public in the distant background hint at her detachment from reality at this moment. We also use a female actor in an attempt to draw sympathy from the audience, as audience members will be more likely to sympathise with a crying woman than man.

Cross cutting into the club scene juxtaposes the setting and the tone, further drawing in attention. We attempt to create an image of reality, to make the scene appear similar to any experience an audience member has experienced in a club, dancing, drinking, and many POV shots to make the audience feel as part of the production, this is vital due to the audience gratifications theory where people are most likely to watch a film where they can envision themselves in it, seeing as our target audience is 15 - 25, this is the age where socialising in clubs is popular, therefore it is key that our verisimilitude is high therefore the audience will relate with the scene and therefore enjoy it more.

We included many shots of people finishing their drinks, combined with a shaky handheld effect to create the illusion of intoxication. We use quick short shots in order to keep the audience interested, constantly using different coloured lighted shots to appear more party like.

A girl throwing up immediately following the club scene suggests these particular girls are heavily under the influence of alcohol, again, a situation our target audience will be able to relate to. Having to take care of drunk member of the group may appear almost comical to our audience, as they will further be able to imagine themselves as part of this group of people. Our atmosphere following the club scene is eery and ominous. This is done to create a tense feeling, as due to the crying girl at the beginning of the scene, we are immediately made aware a tragedy has occurred. This makes the production seem edgy as something is going to happen but we do not know what due to the cross cutting between the past and present.

In reality it would be preferable to draw this scene out for longer than 2 minutes so we would have more time to build the suspense of what is going to occur and further attract the audience, but in the 2 minutes we are able to keep the audience attentive by cross cutting back and forth to the incident occurred and the repercussions without taking much time. Hopefully this will grip the audience and make them feel urged to continue watching as the plot of the movie is still not quite revealed.

Our target audience is the late teens, as this age group can relate to being at a club of some sort and losing a companion amongst a horde of strangers. The feeling of vulnerability is portrayed when our main actor is left behind, lost and alone. I think the final wide shot of Helena in the alleyway highlights this point exactly; the expanse of space in the frame makes her seem isolated, and the perspective is very ominous, implying someone could turn the corner at the very end of the alley. 

Although our audience may not fully be able to relate to this exact scenario, they can grasp the concept of how this could be dangerous for a young drunk girl. The seriousness of this further draws in the audience. In order to ensure that our audience enjoyed the production and fully understood the plot we conducted a short online survey.

One of the main ways by which we wanted to attract our audience was by filming predominantly in London, this was mainly because of the amazing oppurtunities it poses as a city. For example, even from planning stages I knew I had to take advantage of the Thames and the shingle at the southbank, just because of what an amazing bit of film it would create. I think that particular scene really makes the opening more sophisticated and controlled than it would have been otherwise, as well as it's beautiful and serene environment both promoting London by posing its best assets and attracting the viewer.

Finally, we felt the modern aspects of our opening such as the answering of Helena's smartphone directly link to our target audience of teenagers and young adults as modern technology and equipment. We thought most of our target audience would most likely have the same smartphone as Helena and if not, something similar. This ability to compare oneself to the character again heightens the sense of verisimilitude and empathy for the victim.

EVALUATION QUESTION 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Because we had already taken out a vox pop, an online survey and given people surveys to fill out in real life asking them about film genres and their preferences, we already had an idea of the type of opening we were going to create and who we would want to position it towards. In the screening of our opening, we asked similar questions on a hand out that people could fill in after watching our piece. We also conducted an online survey on our facebook page, (which reached 561 people!) asking what people on social media thought of our final cut.

 















These are the results we obtained from the screening:
60% of the audience were male and all were within the 15-20 age bracket because of it taking place at school.

Question 1: What film did you see most recently at the cinema?

1. 'Home'?
2. The hobbit
3. The imitation game
4. The theory of everything
5. The theory of everything
6. Kingsaren
7. Foxcatcher
8. Whiplash
9. Ex Machina
10. How to train your dragon 2

Question 2: What type of cinema did you see this film at?

1. Multiplex
2. Arthouse
3. Multiplex
4. Multiplex
5. Arthouse
6. Arthouse
7. Arthouse
8. Arthouse
9. Multiplex
10. Multiplex

Question 3: What kind of genre do you think our film is?
Out of the options Action, Thriller and Horror, Thriller was the unanimous choice.

Question 4: What would you rate our opening out of 10?

1. 7
2. 9
3. 10
4. 7
5. 7
6. 9
7. 9
8. 8
9. 9
10. 10 

Question 5: What do you think was the plot?

1. Girl gets kidnapped
2. Party went wrong.. girl left behind.. she got kidnapped..
3. Some girls are at a club, and start walking home, but one gets a call from her mum and her friends walk off and leave her in a dark alley way when you see a figure walking towards her
4. A girl gets followed after a party and is taken.
5. 'Helena' was abducted when she was separated from her friends
6. Girl taken by man after party
7. Helena is killed, Anna blames herself and spirals into insanity before tracking down the killer and vanquishing evil.
8. Girl gets kidnapped after club, other girl remembering what happened.
9. Girl gets killed, then friend finds who did it.
10. Girl going home from party, girl left behind rapist/kidnap

Question 6: Would you want to continue watching?
5 answered agree
5 answered strongly agree

Question 7: What was your favourite part of the opening?

1. The strobe sequence
2. The party scene all v.good.. continuity of the shots
3. The ending because of the suspense
4. Title and music
5. The sound effect/phone call with 'Helena' and her mum
6. Intro and ending
7. The very opening scene
8. The flash back transition and ident
9. The party scene and music, the opening shot on beach
10. Party scene, good. Cinematography, sound.

Question 8: What was your least favourite part of the opening?

1. The throwing up scene could have been less... humorous?
2. No clue
3. /
4. /
5. /
6. That it was a different character in the intro
7. The vomit
8. The coming out of the club and vomiting shot
9. The phone call at the end - the sound was strange
10. Intro, seemed irrelevant (different character?) Waves too quiet.

Question 9: Do you feel you can relate to the characters in this film?
8 answered yes, 2 answered no and were both male (which could suggest that because they wouldn't ever worry about something like this they couldn't empathise with the character)


Question 10: Are there any things you think we could improve on?

1. Make the charms stand out more (???)
2. Nope
3. /
4. /
5. The plot could be a little scarier
6. Balance audio
7. /
8. Audio
9. Audio levels
10. Opening shot louder waves, phone scene clearer, more contrast

We only got 17 results from our online survey, of which 76% were female and 23% male.

The majority of people who filled out the survey were between the ages of 15 and 18, which was understandable because of the age of people we are friends with on facebook and who like the page are of a similar age and still at school.
70.59% of people said that they 'strongly agreed' they would continue watching, and 29.41% said they 'agreed', which is incredibly positive results seeing as the survey was anonymous and there was therefore no bias.

From this graph you can see the extremely positive results we have obtained, with the majority of people rating our opening a full 10 out of 10, and none going lower than a 7.

The unanimous choice for the question 'What type of film would you think this opening would lead into' was thriller, which was exactly what we were hoping for.


Here are some examples of how people responded to the question 'If there was anything we could improve on....'

1. Virtually nothing! Perhaps carry sound from club on subtly in background. BPM perhaps halved. 
2. Genuinely think this a pretty fab opening for a film I would definitely continue watching! Well done dudes 
3. Soundtrack  
4. Perhaps more of an ending- build up- suspense- close up of figure coming- slower steps- then quicker steps- however I was scared for the girl though. Wanted her to run after friends.. Party scene was good and the audio was correctly -non descript rhubarbs- but then clear when needed to be.  
5. No  
6. Make it longer as so intrigued!  
7. FABALICIOUS FUNKy FrESH  
8. Nop! I love it.