Script

We needed to make sure our script was right for our actors to know exactly what they were doing. I wrote up a script at home on my own with the initial ideas we had for our film ‘Enigma’ so that if anything needed to be changed later on it could be. We chose the title Enigma because it doesn’t give a lot of information away, lke our movie doesn’t. Here is a copy of my script.

1.  EXT PARK

We see a break in the wall. Eerie music plays. The camera is still. There is no sound except the background music. Josh runs through the break in the wall and round the first tree on the path. He continues running until the path on the ground reaches a big tree. Josh runs into the tree and falls onto the ground. He rolls over onto his back, sits up, touches his head, then looks at his hand and collapses onto the floor.

                                                              (CUT TO)

2.  INT BEDROOM

Josh is asleep in the bed. The room is silence and the only sound heard is the continuous eerie music. He wakes up and studies the room before getting out of bed. Josh puts his hands on the bed sheets and bushes himself up. Quickly turning the handle he opens the bedroom door and enters onto the landing. Josh walks across the landing looking upwards to see if anything is there. When reaching the top of the stairs his right hand is placed on the banister knob. When Josh reaches the middle step on the staircase he places his left hand on the ceiling. Josh is confused and wary of his surroundings. He is unaware of what is happening or where he is. When the bottom of the stairs is reached Josh quickly pens the kitchen door to step inside.

3.  INT KITCHEN

Josh enters the Kitchen where Thelma is sat in a rotating chair waiting for him. She has her back to him. There is no background noise except the eerie music.

JOSH

Who are you?

Thelma turns around in her chair.

THELMA

All will be revealed Mr. Ward.

JOSH

Where am I?

Thelma opens the filing cabinet and pulls out an a4 white envelope. She walks over to Josh, hands him the envelope and then goes and sits back down in the rotating chair. Josh walks out of the kitchen, quickly and confidently opening the door. He walks down the hallway holding the white envelope. Josh is looking around, still inspecting his surroundings carefully. When he reaches the front door he opens it slowly.

4.  EXT HOUSE

We see the house from across the street. Josh exits the house, walking quickly down the outside steps. He wonders down the street, and then stops to open the envelope. A mysterious car starts to turn onto the street but Josh stays still and waits.

Evaluation

IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP, OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

IN OUR PRODUCTION WE TRIED TO BUILD TENSION FROM THE VERY BEGGINNING OF THE FILM. WE DID THIS BY USING CONVENTIONAL EERIE MUSIC TO SET THE SCENE. WE ALSO USED CUTS AND DIFFERENT SHOTS FROM DIFFERENT ANGLES. THESE ARE ALL CONVENTIONAL WAYS OF FILMING THRILLER AND MYSTERY FILMS. WE TRIED TO ACHIEVE A DARK GLOOMY ATMOSPHERE FOR THE FINAL PRODUCT. THIS WAS BECAUSE THE GENRE HAS DONE WELL IN THE PAST IN THIS WAY, AND YOU SHOULDN’T CHANGE SOMETHING UNLESS THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH IT. WE THINK BY STICKING TO THE BACKBONES OF WHAT A THRILLER AND MYSTERY FILM USES WE ACHIEVED A WELL THOUGHT OUT AND EFFECTIVE FILM OPEINNG. THINGS LOOK MORE THREATENING IN A DARK ENVIRONMENT SO WE TRIED TO USE AS MUCH OF A GLOOMY AND DARK ENVIRONMENT AS POSSIBLE. WE SAW THAT THE FEATURES ALREADY USED IN MYSTERY THRILLERS WERE EFFECTIVE, SO NOT TO CHALLENGE THEM BECAUSE IT COULD RUIN THE IMPACT WE WERE TRYING TO ACHIEVE.

HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?

OUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENTS THE AVERAGE TEENAGE BOY. BY HAVING A YOUNG, AVERAGE LOOKING BOY IN THE FILM SHOWS THAT ANYBODY CAN BE THREATENED BY OUT OF THE BLUE ASPECTS. IT SHOWS ASPECTS OF ISOLATION AND BEING OUTSIDE THE DEFINED SOCIAL GROUPS, BUT BEING A ‘NORMAL’ PERSON IN THE SITUATION HE IS IN. OUR FILM ALSO SHOWS AN OLDER WOMAN. IT PRESENTS WOMEN IN A GOOD LIGHT AND HAVING A LOT OF POWER, PUTTING MEN IN A VUNERABLE SITUATION RATHER THAN THEM BEING OPRESSED. THIS IS VERY DIFFERENT TO BIG U.S PRODUCTIONS BECAUSE THE ROLES HAVE BEEN REVERSED FROM STEREOTYPICAL MYSTERY THRILLERS.

WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION MIGHT DISTRIBUTE YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?

WE THINK SMALL SCALE MEDIA INDUSTIES WOULD DISTRIBUTE OUR MEDIA PRODUCT. WE THINK COMPANIES SUCH AS FILM 4 WOULD BE INTERESTED. IN THE PAST FILM 4 HAVE BACKED SMALL BUDGETED BRITISH FILMS. WE THINK THIS BECAUSE OUR FIM IS SHOT IN BRITTISH SURROUNDINGS, WITH BRITISH ACTORS, WITH BRITTISH ACCENTS IN A CLAUSTROPHOBIC ENVIRONMENT. FILMING IN WIDESCREEN MEANS THAT OUR PRODUCT COULD BE VIEWED ON THE TELEVISION OR AT A CINEMA. WE COULD HAVE A SMALL SCALE RELEASE AT A CINEMA ITH HELP FROM A LOCAL CINEMA NEAR TO WHERE OR PRODUCT WAS SHOT.

WHO WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT?

WE HAVE DIRETED OUR PRODUCT TOWARDS TENAGERS. WE DIRECTED IT TOWARDS TEENAGERS BECAUSE IT WAS MADE BY TEENAGERS, AND SOMETHING WE WERE BOTH INTERESTED IN. PEOPLE IN THE TEENAGER AGE GROUP AN RELATE TO THE FILM AND BE ABLE TO THINK OF WHAT THEY DO IF THEY WERE IN THAT SITUATION. WE THINK BECAUSE IT STARRED A TEENAGER AS THE MAIN CHARACTER A LOT OF YOUNGER TEENAGERS WOULD WANT TO SEE IT

HOW DID YOU ATTRACT / ADDRESS YOUR AUDIENCE?

WE ATTRACTED OUR AUDIENCE BY MAKING OUR PRODUCT MYSTERIOUS FROM THE VERY BEINNING AND CARRYING THAT OUT THROUGHOUT THE PIECE. STARTING WITHA A CHASE SCENE WHERE THE AUDIENCE WAS UNAWARE WHAT HAPPENED PREVIOUSLY GRIPS THE AUDIENCE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO KNOW WHAT CAUSED IT AND WHAT COULD HAPEN NEXT.  THE 2 MINUTES ENDS ON A CLIFFHANGER WHERE ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN NEXT. BY NOT GIVING A LOT OF INFORMATION AWAY THE FILM CAN ATTRACT VIEWERS BY THEM HAVING TO ASK QUESTIONS AND GUESS WHAT COULD HAPPEN NEXT. WE ADDRESS THE AUDIENCE BY HAVING A TEENAGER AS THE MAIN CHARACTER. THE AUDIENCE THEN CAN IMAGINE THEMSELVES IN THE SITUATION AND THINK WHAT THEY WOULD DO NEXT.

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?

LOOKING BACK AT YOUR PRELIMINARY TASK, WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE LEARNT IN THE PROGRESSION FROM IT TO THE FULL PRODUCT?

Filming

Although Jess did the filming I would always like to ask her what she was doing or where she was shooting and we both equally inputed on figuring out the script together. It was nice to give possible ideas to Jess that she then would maybe use or not and keep a good understanding of what she was doing over each week. Although we both had our seperate jobs, we always kept a keen eye on what the other was doing and so looked out for each other and helped each other when needed.

Editing

1/2/2011 : My job within the pair was to edit and so i started doing this at the beginning of february. At first i was slightly cautious as i had only used the software in the preliminary and hadn't really realised what more advanced options i could use for the actual film opening. I started off at first importing the clips into Premier Pro and putting them in the correct format and then i went looked through the many clips that Jess had filmed. To make sure we got the perfect shot Jess had filmed each clip several times and so I had to watch through each clip to choose which was the best quality, angle and best for how we wanted to show our film. Once i had done this the whole film had been cut down to only about 30 seconds long and so I told Jess that more filming would be needed. After this I then started to cut down the clips so that they would continously flowed together as some of them had laughing in, talking that wasn't meant to be there or a delay until the actors realised they were recording. To do this i would double click on the clip so that the clip i wanted to cut down came up in a seperate box in the upper left hand corner and i would then be able to see the clip more clearly and slower to make sure that i could choose where i wanted to cut it down perfectly. I did this with all the clips from the first lot of filming. Then we needed to add the candinate details, production company etc in so I clicked "New Title" and another box would come up where i could write, change the font and colour and size of the text onto a background and then when i had chosen what i wanted i would just have to click off and then drag down the title from the clips box and slot it into where it was needed. I then chose to add a dissolve effect from the effects box onto the slide as I thought it was too harsh and jolty from one clip. To do this you simply dragged the dissolve desired onto the title and then increased or decreased the length of it by selecting it and dragging the arrow either left or right.

18/2/2011 : Today was my second block of editing. Within this week i did a lot of the same kind of things as last week, there was plenty of watching clips and cutting out what was not needed and adding a few more titles however with this week I decided to add the music on. Me and Jess had chosen a piece of music that was not copyrighted so suitable to use and we decided to have it running throughout the whole film so to do this i simply imported the music and then dragged it down into where the film was and then extended it to as long as i needed it by moving the arrow at the end of the clip to the right. However I hit a problem as i was editing our first bit of speech in as the speech was too quite to have the music playing at the volume it was behind it but i learnt to be able to change that. To do this i clicked on the sound clip and the horizontal yellow line that goes through the entire clip and dragged it downwards. This then turned the musics volume down but still let it be heard. I did the same to the speech clips but dragged the line up to increase the volume. This resulted in a great success and the speech was able to be heard. There was also a mistake within the filming as Jess had shot the last chunk of filming in a different light to this second chunk so I decided to turn the contrast and brightness down on the clips from this week and then to slightly distract the viewers of the film I added another title in from last weeks filming to this weeks. I then finished off cutting down the clips and added the dissolve effect to this slide too but realised again that we would need about another 40 seconds of filming to go and so would have to wait for the week after to finish.

10/3/2011 : This was the final week of editing and the quickest. I simply looked through the last bits of footage and got rid of the ones not needed then cut down the ones i wanted to so that they flowed well into each other. In the end we actually ended up having too much footage and had to cut down or get rid of certain clips that possibley weren't as good as others to keep within the 2 minute limit. I had to add another lot of music onto the end as the clip wasn't long enough so i just copied the first clip I had used but other then that everything went well and smoothly.

Conclusion : I'm pleased with my editing, i could have possibley been more efficent and at times managed my time better but it was hard to always know when filming could be done and when editing could be done. One problem i encountered was the lack of computers at time and having to wait a lesson to use one. If i ever did this again i would possibley try book computers in advance to manage time more efficiently but i think that overall I accomplished what little problems I had and managed to learn new skills on Premier Pro and put together a good first 2 minutes to a film.

Research

GENRE RESEARCH; Looking at possible genres I looked at Spy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spy_film ) Mystery ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_film ) and Thriller ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thriller_(genre) ) genres. My ideas were fitting in with all of the categories.  The original thoughts I had were doing a chase scene but focussing on one person’s story and not a number of people’s. I looked at Alex Pettyfer, who played the main character, Alex Rider, in Stormbreaker a teen spy movie, who was mentioned in an article by Sarah Lyall ( http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/movies/18stor.html?_r=1 ) who said that the main characters of spy movies were too old like a dad’s age. I used this to create my main character as a teenager because it appealed to the age group I wanted to design my product for more than using an older character. I want to design my film around fitting in with the thriller and spy genre because that appeals more to my target audience and I think I can achieve a good product working with these in mind.

STORMBREAKER; I looked at the film stormbreaker on IMDB ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457495/ ). The storyline was a quite interesting one and appealed to me. I liked it because it involved a normal school boy whose life had changed completely. However I didn’t like how confident the main character is seen to be, even though they were a teenager. I would like to create my main character as being naive and helpless because many teenagers may not be able t cope under the pressure of having to deal with big responsibilities at such a young age. Also by looking at this film I liked the fact it was shot in British surroundings starring a British main character, Alex Ride. Looking at this film has given me a bit of inspiration because it shows that British actors and British surroundings can be viewed and enjoyed by all worldwide in this genre. However Storbreaker has its negative aspects. In a review by Richard James Havis he states that ‘Operation Stormbreaker lacks the star power to hit big in the U.S.’ ( http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/esearch/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003254136 ) which shows that even though this genre can have a big impact in Britain it would not in the USA.

STORYBOARD AND SCRIPT RESEARCH; I now need to look at scripts so I can write down my ideas and set it out how everything should flow and move along. By having a script I can make sure my actors will be moving in the right places, know what they are doing, and save time messing about explaining what is going to happen. I will make sure I give the script o my actors in enough time for them to look over their lines and actions before I start shooting. I looked on the internet for a script to use as a reference how to write mine. I went onto a script website ( http://www.simplyscripts.com/ ) and looked at how directors had set out their scripts previously. This gave me some idea of how to lay out my information and what fonts to use for it. On google imags I typed in ‘storyboard’ and looked at a few of the top images that appeared. The first one I looked at was ( http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.fuse-studio.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/storyboard-3.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.fuse-studio.co.uk/%3Fcat%3D14&usg=__u-xFfTNm1btvvbKCuQo8n51ryQ4=&h=497&w=600&sz=212&hl=en&start=3&zoom=1&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=SE3IGBrHb5_0DM:&tbnh=112&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dstoryboard%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Dstrict%26tbs%3Disch:1&ei=LfKBTdqFDI-WhQfrkOzCBA ) because it showed everything clearly on it. It had no text or speech to show what was being said but showed where everyone was and the locations people were in.

ACTORS, LOCATIONS, PROPS; For shooting I wanted to film in different areas. For one of my areas I wanted to base a chase scene in a wide open space like a park, or woods. Living in Halifax I decided to look at filming at Manor Heath Park, Shibden Park, or Copley woods. I went down to Copley woods and looked at the trees and ground to see how a chase scene would work. It looked like a good, mysterious place to film. However I want to get a lot of filming done in mornings, and being in a woods with just 2 teenagers alone I decided that because there could be a safety risk with the area of land away from main roads and not in hearing distance from houses that it wasn’t the safest place to go and film a chase sequence where a lot of the time myself and my main actor would be alone. I then looked at Shibden Park, a wide open location to film my piece in. The wide open areas would be good for a feeling of being alone but because of my ideas of being chased by someone not seen it would be harder to show this without having to film somebody else. Transport getting too and from Shibden Park was also a problem, busses weren’t regular and take a while to get up to the Park so most of the time I could be shooting would be wasted travelling. I looked at Manor Heath Park ( http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://bournvilletimes.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/dsc00435.jpg&imgrefurl=http://bournvillevillage.com/sunset-over-row-heath-park/&usg=__3zaxZWxEpni8i_EGqgdTaE81j2g=&h=1944&w=2592&sz=1319&hl=en&start=28&zoom=1&tbnid=qXY6tXvUTAGlFM:&tbnh=152&tbnw=202&ei=nl6CTZqaLNDS4gaogcnrCA&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmanor%2Bheath%2Bpark%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1679%26bih%3D820%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=343&oei=l16CTbGxLcy6hAfm7ti5BA&page=2&ndsp=28&ved=1t:429,r:20,s:28&tx=49&ty=111 ). This seemed the perfect location. Within a walking distance of mine and my actors’ houses meat that there would be no time wasted getting to the location, if anything was needed there would be a short journey to recover it. Manor Heath Park also looked like the safest location. By being a hot spot for local dog walkers means that there would always be somebody around if any trouble happened, and my neighbour walks their dog there early mornings so I would not be in any danger, nor would my actors. The second area of shooting was a house and bedroom. I wanted to make the film look like it could be a dream sequence where the main character could wake up. The easiest place to use was my own house. This is because if more shots were needed at a later date I could always go back to using the area. Because of it being my own house I could make sure that all props, items, and decorations were in the same place from the previous shots. By using areas close to where I am from gives my 2 minute film a very British feel to me because it is the view of British-ness I grew up with. For my actors I wanted to have reliable people very close to the area of filming so that if any last minute work needed doing the people were available. I decided to ask my mum and friend to star in the film because they both lived very close to the area and were the most reliable people I know. When I asked they were both happy to help and I informed them of exactly what I needed before they agreed.

MUSIC; I need music for my 2 minute opening.  Every film I have ever watched, from Cinderella to Dead Silence, has had a distinct soundtrack to the opening of the film. Finding un-copyrighted music was a challenge to do, however from my preliminary I remembered a website (http://www.audionautix.com/index.html ). I needed to get the exact music right for my film so I looked onto the Film /Orchestra option and listened to the options that were there to find the perfect music for the genre and ambience I wanted to create. The best soundtrack I could find was called ‘Emerald Therapy’. I think this music will give it the spooky and mysterious feel I want it to have