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This is the first cut from my production,

obviously there is still a lot of work to do.

Marked against the A-Level Criteria by our teacher, I received information about final changes which need to occur very soon:

CONSTRUCTION CRITERIA	LEVEL	COMMENT
Holding shot steady	2	Phone goes out of focus(other shots too) Try to avoid cutting on moving shots
Framing a shot	2	This is generally OK.
Appropriate material for task	2	No indication of who the character is – doesn’t really set up a narrative
Selecting mise en scene (colour, lighting, props, setting)	2	Only 1 location- this limits grade. You need to show that you have used costume, lighting etc for effect
Editing for meaning		Builds up strong suggesting crime planning.
Varied shot transitions and post production effects	2	Lots of variety of cuts/ mixes but no other post-production techniques.
Use of sound	2	Ambient sound OK but needs another layer.
Using titles	1	Still don’t like the title- and it needs to come at the end. Other titles needed.

Question 1:

In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions?

I know that all conventional film openings have titles of the production companies including those those who were also highly involved such as the star actors and the director. The start of The Last Exorcism presents the man character in First-Person, I chose to do my production from a Third-Person perspective

In my production I have followed conventions in the ways of which the opening credits are presented. I have super-imposed the names of my actors over the top of the beginning opening shots, which is typical of opening.

 

Titles	Originally I put this at the beginning and chose to have a cryptic message. There was a full stop and it was underlined. This is a very unconventional way of presenting the title as most film openings do not have any punctuation. I decided to change it: Now I have chosen a title with a double meaning. Conventionally titles begin with the word "The" and then a noun. I have copied this.
Credits	The beginning is very typical to film openings as it shows the audience who is in it and the major production teams. I have put in the names of the people who helped me with this, including the producer of the music and the actors. I followed typical conventions of opening credits, small enough so that the footage is shown but big enough to be read.
Production Logos	They are inserted with the titles at the start to show the audience the who the contributors are . Production logos are always seen at the start of the film opening, before any footage is shown, so the logos need to be shown first.
Angles	Usually my shots are low angle or about level with a desk, but I probably did too many over-the shoulder and point of view shots. I would have done more close ups and extreme close ups.
Sounds Effects	Ambient background sounds of typical office-like noises such as a coffee machine, printer, and people typing. In horror films, sharp and loud sound effects are used to create a feeling of hypersensitivity of the audience.
Music	Almost continuously used throughout. There usually would only be one track or none at all in a normal horror opening, therefore I have gone with the conventional method by only choosing one track.
Lighting	I shot with natural lighting because I wanted to give the audience an impression that is a normal setting or environment. In a way I am giving the audience a false sense of security. However, in most horror films, lighting is very dark and unclear, produced by low lighting and filters.
My film opening scenes sometimes  subvert conventional processes, however there are some parts which do follow .

Filming

I went to my mum's office, which is at the University of Hertfordshire. I did all the filming in one day and it took about 3 hours to complete. I re-shot almost all the scenes several times so that I could choose which one I thought would be the best to put in the the final version of the production. This however meant that I had to spend a lot of time watching back and reviewing each shot several times to comparing it with the other shots of the same scene, thus it took quite a while to select which ones I was happy with. However this also meant that I didn't have to keep going back and film on lots of different occasions because I made sure that I liked the shots on the same day of the filming as apposed to much later on.

Filming Photos

The Team and Location

Here are photographs of the location from different angles:






The Crew. They created the ambient noises while I was filming

To establish continuity, I had to film Rob putting on his jacket. As I filmed to 2 days, I needed to make sure that costume was kept the same throughout

I had to sit in Cally's car to get the right angle for the final scene where Rob is shown standing outside.

I filmed a few seconds worth of the location at night

Actors

CALLY CARDINES	ROB HARDWICK
Young female character	Old male character
Appeal to female audience members	Stereotypically what audiences would expect
They were both free! This is great, especially for a low budget film
They are both my mum’s work colleagues so I had to fit my filming schedule around them, however this was not a problem for me
They both fit the character profiles that I had in mind

Props

I took inspiration for the narrative features from a short film created by The Jubilee Project, here is a print screen of the film Love Language, whereby the words on the screen were used as a method of communication to both the audience and characters within the film.

Although that film has a Romance genre, I really liked this narrative technique and I try to make mine similar.

 

 Props I used in my production:

- Post-it notes

-Red marker pens

-Note pad

-Black biro pen

-Cup of coffee
 -Computer

-Cally's car
  











 
 

Plannng Narrative Techniques

The film is shown mostly from the perspective of a Post-It note, there are hints of this, but I'm trying not to make this obvious. The camera view is third person at a very low angle for some of it but the narration is in first person.
Voice overs are typically used in any genre of films in order to tell the story, I originally wanted to use one but decided that the visuals were obvious enough that perhaps having a voice over was an  unnecessary addition.

I'm trying to deceive the audience into thinking that the person they are watching is a murderer. In reality, he is actually an average man. His occupation is a building contractor. Hence the reason for all of the controversial equipment e.g chainsaw, rope, skip.
I think this will trick the audience because people will judge him straight away, assuming he is a bad person.
Most of the words are written in capital letters and red ink to make them bold and stand out, red also signifies danger in this.














The 'Flashbacks' aren't actually real, they never happened. It is all in the imagination of the narrator. She is showing us what she thinks may have happened according to what is heard in the radio news report (a murder).

When the wrong date is written, it is crossed out in a harsh and forceful way, the correct re-written date is Halloween, I did this on purpose to give a bit more of a horror sense to it.


Also, the man is shown looking at a photograph of a woman, hinting that she is the target, when she walks past him, this confirms that he is planning on something involving her.