Media Production log
My group consisted of Tom Amor, Christian Howard, Emma Hodge and myself. We all agreed to create the opening two minutes of a film. We could use my camera, which would save time booking the school's camera. It was also the most appealing to us. When working in a group with more than two people there will always be some disagreement due to contrasting ideas. This will inevitability cause difficulty with particular aspects with the film's production. Finally after much debate our story is based around two detectives who attempt to solve a murder case. Whereby the killer murders, whom he believes are 'perfect' people because he believes he will absorb their perfection. Later after a few gunfights and chases the killer is gunned down by one of the detectives. Our opening two minutes will relate to this by enacting the first killing, however only later will we reveal that the victim leads, through the killer's perspective a 'perfect' life. In this opening shot we see relatively clearly the killer's face, which is not common in the thriller genre, but we decided to do this as the film is about the killer's imperfection so by contradicting the conventions, the shot is no longer 'perfect'.
We viewed a number of thriller movies including 'The Fugitive' Directed by Andrew Davis, 'The Negotiator' Felix Gary Grey, '187' Kevin Reynolds, 'Enemy of the State' Tony Scott and various others. From about 80% of these films the openings focused on the lead roles and attempted to establish the character of these roles. This usually included his/her profession if any, his/her social status, friends or relatives and sometimes financial position, which I feel plays an important part in finding a target audience as the viewers can often relate to characters when they find similarities between the characters and themselves.
We needed to establish the tone of the movie, would it be an 'all guns blazing' affair with the hero saving the lives of thousands of people, or a more subtle approach with a developing complex storyline where the violence was connoted and not portrayed. The latter allowing us to create a more stylised production such as 'Way of the Gun' directed by Christopher McQuarrie.
We also needed to ask ourselves why people watch thrillers so we set up a questionnaire and presented it to members of the public. With the information we now had to maintain these elements in our film. In order to do this we needed to understand the conventions of a thriller movie.
Many openings to films can last as much as ten minutes 'The Way of the Gun' in particular has around a seven minute introduction that doesn't relate very well at all to the rest of the film. However we only had three minutes to make an impression and therefore found it difficult to relate to some of the films we viewed, this narrowed the number of ideas we had and we cut out unnecessary shots, sometimes unwontedly.
I started almost immediately to think of story lines and sketched some storyboards with no real thought as to ...
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Many openings to films can last as much as ten minutes 'The Way of the Gun' in particular has around a seven minute introduction that doesn't relate very well at all to the rest of the film. However we only had three minutes to make an impression and therefore found it difficult to relate to some of the films we viewed, this narrowed the number of ideas we had and we cut out unnecessary shots, sometimes unwontedly.
I started almost immediately to think of story lines and sketched some storyboards with no real thought as to what we were capable of doing. These early sketches were later scrapped as they had impossible sceneries to replicate. We realised once we had a basic idea we could then write to, or visit the locations and request to film on their premises. If we received permission we could then work with genuine sets that actually existed and be far more certain in our ideas, as we knew we could re-enact them.
As it turned out our major difficulty of the production was our setting. We requested permission from Bluewater Shopping Centre to film in their multi-story car park and they agreed after receiving our purposes for filming two months before our scheduled filming dates. Five days before we were scheduled to film, Christian was approached by a member of the Management Suite informing him that it would not be possible to film in their car park, as customers may perceive Bluewater as a violent place.
We now needed to find a new location to film and fast. We selected Hempstead Valley Shopping Centre and were given permission to film immediately. The advantage of this location was its proximity. We visited Hempstead Valley about ten times with one or two hours filming each visit. We had to develop some shots, which caused us to alter our storyboards, perhaps for the better. An example of this would be as the victim walks to her car, which should have been set like this:
However we found the victim was too distant from the camera and although signs of isolation may have been connoted in this shot, it wasn't what we were looking for. Also to have zoomed in on the victim, which would have caused the victim to be more prominent in the shot appeared extremely amateurish so we needed to invent a new scene. One thriller convention that we discovered was to film just the feet; this causes the audience to use their imagination as to what might happen next. The viewer also loses his/her sense of position and is set on edge. We wanted to use this as it builds tension in the scene and the audience will know action is imminent. Another rather small feature of this scene is the path taken by the killer in comparison to the victim's. This mirrors the difference in life styles the two characters have taken. The mise-en-scene in this shot is very simple as it is an empty car park and the emptiness detracts any attention to anything other then the characters on screen.
The sound throughout the production also created complications, as we discovered when capturing the images, as the sound was not synchronised with the images. In fact there was about a five second delay with the sound. This was extremely upsetting after our amazing creation of a professional boom, which consisted of a street hockey stick, a karaoke microphone and a sponge football. (See appendix inset 1).
After realising that the standard microphone inbuilt in the camera would not be adequate due to our location this self made boom was a huge success as we were able to pick up clearly the speech between DC Walker and DC Peters without them shouting. Nevertheless it was not synchronised with the images, which forced us to dub over the recorded speech.
One of my favourite moments in the film is the panning shot from the victim entering the car park to the killer walking down the slope. We realised early on in our process of production that during winter in the early evening the sky turns a translucent blue/grey colour that would be ideal to portray unhappiness and negativity. This light also brings out the marks cars have created over time re-emphasising that we are in a car park. So with careful timing we filmed at precisely the correct moment as this light only lasts around fifteen minutes. We then thought we had the perfect shot until we viewed the shot at home, only to find that one of the car park's artificial lights was too strong and disturbed the subtleness of the shot. So we returned to dim the light, this proved successful.
The camera was set in the position it was solely in order to pan around and capture the victim and the killer in one take. This shot was filmed freehanded, as there was not enough room on the ledge. Mise-en-scene was still very basic, maintaining only the natural elements of a car park. The characters costume was basic as Tom 'the killer' wore all black to simply connote evil and repellence from society. Emma who wore casual clothes nothing white, as although this may distinguish her from the killer it would not fit with the urban situation.
The murder scene was difficult to film because at first we wished to have jumpy confusing shots during the killing to suggest a frantic and crazed state of mind. However this did not integrate well with the slow and surreal opening, so we kept it simple, which suited to the mood we wanted to create and was a lot easier to film and edit. To ensure a smooth tracking shot of the murder. I had to sit sitting in a small trolley cushioning the camera under my arm with Christian Howard pushing the trolley slowly around the action. This was used because the killer blocks the action with his back and the killing retains a certain level of authenticity.
During editing we discovered some of our shots did not fit well as the continuity was wrong for example the victim's car as it was the exact copy as the detective's, this needed to be rectified. We tried to use an authentic police vehicle as this would add to the professionalism of the production but we didn't give enough notice. We did however stumble across some police tape, which was used as a representative image of the police, as this is simple and suggests ideas rather than presents them.
I feel transitions are equally as important as the images, as they set the pace of the film because no matter how much action you may have in a particular shot, if the shots are cut together using dissolve transitions the images lose their strength. Also other connotations may be presented rather than the ideas the director had in mind. On the other hand if too much thought is put into the transitions the audience will lose concentration from the film itself.
Much time was spent over the opening scene, as it needed to be powerful, evocative and explanatory. In this scene I wanted to blend an empty car park with a full car park because not only is it an establishing shot, the dissolve from each shot connotes to the audience how an area can change its atmosphere dramatically when occupied as opposed to unoccupied.
I started off in the beginning with a rough idea of what the music could be, because I had written a short, powerful tablature on the guitar that was very versatile and could be sped up or slowed down to suit the images. The main positive aspect of this idea was that if you watched the film years later, the film would not be out of date due to the music. It also makes the film more personal as everything was original except for the basic concept of it being a thriller.
All in all I am very pleased with the production, as there are, I think, a lot of simple yet complex ideas such as the opening scene where the cars disappear from the car park. I don't particularly like the way we shot the conversational scene at the end, but we could not have tried harder with the resources we had. Ideally I would have rather shot the classic 'over the shoulder' shot where the character speaking can be seen as well as a small part of the other characters back in the corner of the image. The trouble with that was our tripod was not tall enough, and to do the same thing freehandedly just didn't work. So we filmed it slightly differently, although none of us ever seemed happy with it, we simply ran out of time to develop it.
One other lacking factor that was apparent was our time management. It would have been impossible to set a time plan although we did have a basic one. However we all had different commitments at various times. Instead of a time plan we should have written down the exact time of day we needed to film what scenes, this would have saved time travelling up and down to Hempstead Valley to film a shot we forgot to do.
We have acquired a lot of skills over the period of construction and editing, ranging from computing skills to lighting expertise. This has given us a better knowledge of the practical side of media causing us to understand why media is such a big part of our everyday life.
AS Level Coursework
