final title sequence

music

The music we mainly chose to use was from sound effects cd,s , to fit into our genre of film ( thriller) we needed to find music which would maintain suspense but still create an atmosphere , after looking through some more music tracks we finally found a slow ghostly music track which we decided to use for our titles and for the end part of our scene , whiles building up the action with a more up- tempo track during our first scene. It was very important for us to choose the right music that would match each scene since we only had one line of dialogue throughout our film.

shooting day adjustments

14/10/09
During our filming, due to problems we worked to overcome, we couldn't follow the guideline of our shooting schedule. We started as we meant to go on shooting Scenes 2 & 5 first, however when we came to shoot Scene 1, the science lab had been overbooked therefore we has unable to film there. Instead we skipped to filming Scene 4 and used the afternoon to shoot Scene 1 in another science lab which we found was free. As we was unable to finish shooting Scene 1 this had to be finished on our second shooting day.

15/10/09
On our second day of filming we started by shooting our flashback scenes. We started with the areas of the school which got busier during the day as this was shot before school hours. As the assistant director I checked the different flashback locations before me and the crew moved to them, and chose the most appropriate place to shoot the next flashback. As we were only given an hour during second period to use the science lab again we had to finish filming Scene 1 in between our flashback shots.
Once we finished shooting all our scenes, we decided we had to reshoot Scene 2, as we needed to use a newspaper to reveal the headline of two school children dying. Therefore we re-shot this scene on the afternoon of our final shooting day.

props

cast details

Finding cast is a important part of our pre production planning as we need to make sure the actors we cast display the personalites of our characters effectively. Therefore we thought it would be best to hold auditions to find the best suited actors, and then rehearsals running up to the filming. So far, we have asked the drama teachers to make announcements to their year 13 and 12 pupils, as a maturer cast is needed for our film due to the sexual implications. They have passed on the message to let any members of our group know we need efficient, reliable and skilled students to act on Alfies, Maries and Johnny's role. We have also made announcements in the common room and put up notices on the common room notice board to both year 12 and 13 students to ask anyone if they would be interested in playing the

casting

As we had minimum response from the drama department and sixth form notice, we then has to cast year 10 students who were willing to help us. As we know the importance of casting to our film, and ensuring their reliablity, we cast students who knew of, including my own brother! To confirm we would definatly be able to use these students in our film, and take them off timetable for 2 days, we had to inform their head of year. We also got a copy of their time tables so we could inform their subject teachers to set them any work which would be missed.

story board feedback and draft 2

After recieving feedback from out first storyboard draft we learned our main problem was that we needed to include more cut a way shots. We learned that this was especially the case with Alfie's character in Scene 1. More shots of Alfie pouring petrol would be neccessary and then switching inbetween shots of Marie And Johnny getting closer to the action.
Therefore only two more storyboard sheets needed to be added before we had our final draft.we also included a few more shots during scene 3 and scene 4 to represent the action in the flashbacks happening over time and how the rleationship between marie and alfie.

storyboard draft 1

pre- production planning

Pre Production Masterclass

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final draft of film poster

poster draft 2 - second poster idea

rehearsals

On Monday 12th October, our first official rehearsal was held. However it was then when Emine Hassan, our Marie character, decided she did not want to play our part. Aswell as this problem, our main character played by Danny Martin also fell ill! As the main character is my brother, lucky enough I was able to rehearse his scenes and lines with him at home! Therefore this rehearsal consisted of running Kieran Roberts, Johnny's character, through his scenes. It was then we was able to cast Georgia Jones, a year 13 student to play our character of Marie as she was willing to help.
On Tuesday 13th October, (yes the day before filming!), we had our final rehearsal with Johnny and Marie's character. However as Alfie was still ill, he was unable to attend any rehearsals.

film review - final poster

film review draft 2

After having a class dicussion regarding our magazine reviews, there was some feedback I collected. From this feedback I learned that I needed to shrink the size of the images and focusing on adding more text onto the review. I decided it would be beneficial to create my review on Adobe Photoshop compared to the Microsoft Publisher software, as it looked more professional in this format.

film review draft 1 cand feedback

When I showed this review to my class and teachers for feedback these are the comments I recieved:

- Make our own films the main focus, yet add other films into the review to make it look like an actual magazine review page!

- Give the magazine a specific house style to suit a chosen magazine.

- The page will suit a magazine such as Empire.

- The images work well and it does look like an actual review.

From this feedback I decided to place my magazine into a review page such as Independant Critics.

Q4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Throughout all the stages of making our final product , we used different technology to help us develop our ideas to achieve this final film. First of all to carry out our research for ideas we would include in our film , we used the internet such as different websites for example google , BBC , film sites to help us gather images , typography and look at how to market films. We also used youtube , to look at different examples of short films and what techniques could ahve been used to help put together their title sequences , one example we looked at was saul bass work for the numerous films he has been part of creating credits for such as west side story and casino.We also looked at how dialogue may have been included or kept to a minumim in some short films , we looked st films which were made independently as well. In our research youtube was very helpful in giving us easy access to different variety of choices when we it came to looking at films or research into how sound is used within a film. Microsoft powerpoint and word , was also some of the technology we used to create our poster scrapbooks, or slideshows on some of planning stages for our final film for example , our pitch and feedback. Our blogs were also a big part of the technology we used that helped us within our research and planning stages , we used the blogs to look at other ideas and formats on similar blogs. Also what techniques or what websites they used to help them find the extra parts for their film ( music , images , typography).the next stage where technology was used to help the development of our film was planning , for our storyboard we used a digitalcamera to take still shots and then upoloaded them and created a storyboard on word , we also scanned in our drawn storyboard and our individual pictures we had for ideas for our poster .
To help us with the next stage of our development of our film , we attended workshops on how camera and sound can be used in films to create an atmosphere and a mood we also learnt editing techniques which helped us in our production stage. This year we used Adobe premiere to help edit our films, this enabled us to manage it easier and to have a more wider range to add effects or incorparate other details into our film.Adobe also helped us capture our rushes from the camera onto our lacie drive and place onto a timeline.Some of the equipment we used also helped benefit us , such as the camera, this enabled the group to shoot using different range of camera angles and movement that suited the genre of our film and produced best quality.these where the basic steps we took when using
Images is not the only important part within a film , sound also has a vital role and the two must play alongside one another to produce something good , we therefore had to make sure we used different technology to help us capture and create correct sound that matched within our genre of film such as the sound boom we used to capture natural sound whiles using sound effects cd's to choose music tracks and effects to use in the background of our film in some scenes.In order for a product to have the best and most efficent quality , using a combination of new technologies can help achieve this successfully as they all help offer towards the development of our film.

Q3. At every stage of development what feedback did you receive ?

At every stage of our planning for our film we received feedback that helped us be able to learn and improve our developmental ideas for each process. during pre production, We had to pitch our film idea we created from our colour we was given ( which was red) to our class we received feedback on how we were going to show certain themes within our film and how we going to develop the characters. some of the questions asked was how our theme colour red was going to be ahown in our storyline, we learnt we had to include ideas which related to this and we went away and drew up a mind map of all the themes which related to the colour red and then included in our storyline how we could show this for example we symbolised passion through the relationship between Johnny and Marie and also showed revenge through the murder the main character Alfie carries out on the other characters.During our feedback we was also reminded how our characters would develop throughout our story, we learnt that all successful films or stories always contain a characters development or background story, we then went away and added more of a background story towards Alfie’s character, he is not seen until the end but he develops through the story as a jealous boyfriend who then lets his obsession and anger cause him to seek revenge. Nearer the ending of the story he becomes remorseful and regrets his action. His character builds up throughout the story.In our pitch we had not fully explained how we would show the audience how Alfie's character would find out about the the secret love fling. We went away and thought of a way we could show this without making the film seem to simple, we came up with including a series of flashbacks during the middle of the film we will show everything from Alfie’s point of view,which will allow the audience to see when he saw the other two characters together,how he decided what to do and how he carried out the fire. We will show this through fast paced cut shots to give the audience a glimpse into how it all happened.
Another question that was asked was is there enough dialogue between the characters to show scene progressing and action taking place to improve our film we decided that the story does’t have to include to much dialogue , but whiles Marie and Johnny are in the science lab there will be dialogue to let audience know what is taking place and how scene progresses.
The next stage of our pre- production was our script, we had to make many changes towards the script before it became finalised,we received feedback on our script which caused us to make changes four times.The first feedback we received was that there was too much dialogue and not enough visual included , we therefore had to cut down and exclude some of our dialogue and include more action into the script.To help us with cutting down the dialogue out of scene 4 as well we carried out research into different short films to see how they used camera movement to show the action taking place in the scene , after this research we decided to just keep playing around with where we needed to keep significant dialogue in which scenes where it was needed. We achieved this in our 3rd draft of our script where was became finally happy with the amount of dialogue and action included. After receiving the next bit of feedback on our script we decided we would remove the voice over we was going to use in scene 3 and replace it with a opening shot of our main character Alfie sitting on a bench reading a newspaper which included the updated news story of the action which took place in the scene. This seemed more approiate to use as it would create suspense and made use of a different kind of prop which smartly helped audience interact further with the film.
our next bit of feedback we received was on our world of film mood board, we received this feedback from those in our target audience so this was very useful to help us learn and improve our ideas, to help create our mood board we used many celebrity images and used a lot of images which didn't display the key themes within our story , we were told that when our moodbaord was viewed the images and typography didn't explain our story fully , we therefore went away and started a new mood board which included more images which represented our main character, such as dark images that symbolised his family background or troubled past for example ( bottle of alcohol.
Our final stage of pre-production was our storyboarding ,this had to be changed two or three times , because we needed to include cutaway shots.
The next bit of feedback which was important for us to include to help develop our film ,was the post-production stage this was when we came to editing ,we had to over a period of time put a rough cut of our shots onto our timeline and receive feedback from teachers and other students on the process of our film and what could be improved on our film. Some of the feedback we received was that first of all the music we used at beginning of the first scene should be used to fade out quietly when dialogue between characters starts and keep on playing the music in the background. To achieve this we had to include time frames at certain points in the sound track of where we wanted it to become quieter.Another change we had to make was when johnny characters was walking towards the classroom door in scene 1,do not use too many extra shots , we therefore had to go back through out selection of rushes and include two good shots of him making his journey form the table towards the door which ended up making the scene look much more cleaner and straightforward.
During the flashback in scene 3, we had to get rid of the panning shot from feet upwards of Alfie character on the staircase, because it took too long to reveal. his
Nearer the end of the film extend last few shots in scene 5, so there is constant flow so it shows the character Alfie like he is constantly thinking at the end of film.We made these changes by overlapping different shots we had from scene 5 and adding and additive dissolve into one another to create that illusion of time was passing by this added more effect into the movie.Whiles editing our film we was told that we should not include scene 4 into the film because the dialogue was not entirely good in those shots and scene 3 already told the story of the flashbacks and represent the relationship between the characters, it also showed how over time the mian charcter character had been watching the other two characters and what hsi motivation was for his actions.
When we researched into the right music to pick out and use for our film , we looked at research into other films which matched with our genre of film and saw that it was important to include music that helped build up tension this is what we did during scene 2 where we extended the sound track we used for much longer.
Our final bit of feedback on our editing of our film , was that the flashback scene we included was i really good , effects used add realism to it and music added as well addes tension.After we completed all these changes we then moved on to producing our film posters, review and title sequences , feedback was given which then helped us recreate ideas that helped us develop them into our final products.
After completing our film and both ancilliary tasks we showed our film to the rest of the students in our class and they gave us positive feedback on our film , they thought flashback scene was very interesting and the use of effects added realism to the scene.

1st poster

Q2. how effetive is the combination of your main product and ancilliary texts ?

Q2 How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
To be able to market our film correctly and know how to appeal to the right audience, we created a film poster and film magazine review. Our poster had to be able to share similarities with our genre of film. We carried out research on different thriller film posters to see the font, composition, colours and images they included and created a scrapbook of ideas to develop our final poster for our film. From my research I noticed that thriller film posters show almost a glimpse of the storyline including maybe the villain and the innocent characters. They also include key symbols from the film, which prepares the audience for what the storyline may be and attracts an audience further in; this is what we carried in the development of our poster. We showed the main character who is the villain in the foreground this signifies his importance and lets audience make they’re own judgements about his personality before film. We also included the setting of our film in the background, which was part of the school corridor; this relates to where the action may happen mostly in the film or just let the audience know more knowledge about the film. The font we chose to use for our film gave the sense of mystery and something dangerous, we wanted to able to draw in an audience through the tagline we created . The tagline leaves questions unanswered and plays a pun into our title for film.
The first part of your film that may be seen is the title sequence, when carrying out research on different title sequences, we realised that the title sequence is what makes your film watchable. The title sequence must reflect your films key themes or ideas whiles still maintaining an interesting concept which keeps your audience drawn or hooked into your film. When creating ideas for our title sequence we took key ideas that we had seen for other movies, such as THE WEST SIDE STORY, we used a brick wall as our background image for the title sequence this wall not only symbolized the setting of the film but also the strength and closure of the main character alfie’s personality. The font we used for the titles we wanted to keep simple and bold, as we wanted to match typical titles that your would see in a film. The camera movement was a slow zoom into the brick wall whiles moving credits would pass the camera; this created the effect of the audience moving closer towards the wall as if they were getting deeper into the film. Our final title that appears written on the wall in blood, gives the audience a sense of what may happen in the film that maybe murder may take place or something horrible may take place later on in the movie.The music we chose to include was also used towards the end of our film , it was slow paced and created a chilling spooky effect which symbolised that something dangerous or evil may happen in our film . The music chose also matched within our genre of film , when carrying out research on different thriller films , i noticed that many of them included either slow paced music or fast up tempo tracks with a strong background beat.Therefore because we included murder and jeaoulousy within our film we wanted the music and the title sequence not only to grip the audience further in but to show the loneliness of the character and the emptiness of the film.Through carrying out research into different film magazines we thought that independent critics who appeal to a wide range of audiences would work effectively in being able to promote and sell our film.Example of films independant critics has featured are saw to wallace and gromit , because our film is an independent film we thought including it into independent critics would be a good way to market our film
As Independant Critics has a wide target audience we thought this works effectively alsongside our main product. Independant Critics features a variety of different reviews, from Saw to Wallace & Gromit, therefore we are aware it is read by a wide varied audience. Therefore as an independant film we thought this would be a good idea to include our film in this magazine which would appeal towards our target audience .

poster feedback

In order to find out how to make our film poster the most successful it could be we decided to get feedback from our class, to see what they thought of our ideas for the poster and what else we can add them. After the discussion these are the idea's we retrieved:

- Using dark, grey, colours keeping the images very minimalistic.

- A dark figure of the physco leaning against a wall, at an angle, yet not revealing his face. In the foreground you can have two lovers enjoying themselves as the figure in background is watching on.

- An eye looking at two lovers, who are clearly panicing and frightened.

- In a corridor with a black silhouette, and the wall has red writing saying "pyhsco".

- A hole in the wall, with an eye looking through it watching onto Johnny & Marie's characters flirting.

- Incorporate newspaper or newspaper font from our newspaper all over the poster.

- A triangle of light beaming down revealing the couple in the spotlight, yet in the background. Alfie is in the foreground looking menacing in black with his hood up.

- Half of Alfie's face blacked out with light shining on the other half.

- Alfie walking down the corridor looking powerful and the couple in the background looking scared.

- Marie holding hands with Alfie looking back over her shoulder down the corridor at Johhny.