FINAL PRODUCT

EVALUATION - USE OF TECHNOLOGY

How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?

EVALUATION - SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

Here is a summary of the development of my skills since the start of the project in October 2016 to the end of the project on February 2017

Codes and Conventions
At the start of the project I was relatively unaware of the actual definition and conventions of thriller films. After extensive research in class such as analysing sub genres, my knowledge about thrillers became more defined and this allowed me to identify the sub genre of our film opening : a Psychological thriller. In addition to class time research, I used my free time to watch several other psychological thriller films such as Silence of the lambs, A Cure for wellness, Shutter Island, Zodiac and Lights Out. This gave me a clear idea of what audiences would expect from thriller films and solidify my understanding for codes and conventions of psychological thrillers.

Planning & Organisation
I believe that am not a very organised person and this is a characteristic that I find difficult to improve and change. However, I have tried very hard to meet deadlines throughout this project and manage my workload by trying to constantly update my blog whenever we decide on changes or ideas throughout our project. We had a well planned out script and storyboard since the start of the project, which was extremely helpful and having a guide made it easier for me to work on the next steps leading to completion of our film opening. Unlike other classmates however, I did not find time to create a schedule for all the tasks that needed to be completed and mostly went with the flow of the project. Planning and Organisation is a skill that I will need to work on.

Camera Work
This is no doubt my weakest attribute when it comes to media production. Since the start of the project, I have not been very familiar with handling the camera and finding the best ways to make shots look professional and meaningful. However I did know the basics of the functions such as recording a video and simple switching of modes. Because I was playing the antagonist during filming, I did not get to interact with the camera directly and film very much except for some experimental scenes such as the peephole zoom and the collage board pan.

Visual FX
In my opinion visual effects is extremely important to thriller films as it helps to build tension and emphasise mood. I was relatively confident in the use of visual FX due to the smaller projects such as the 1 minute short film and crime thriller conventional clip done before the start of our film opening. I had plenty of practice with colour correction and effects such as vignette and I learnt how to manipulate the overall look of the scenes to create a sense of unease for the audience. However, I was careful to not overdo it in our film opening to keep it looking professional with subtle effects.

Editing
Editing is a skill that I am most confident in. For me it is the part of the project that I found easiest to do without much complications. Organising clips in order and creating a fitting sequence to the music was straightforward when working with my team I feel that my editing skills has improved by a lot as I was able to practice my editing skills sufficiently during this project.

Creative confidence
Since I have always enjoyed watching movies, reading books and other creative pieces I did not find coming up with ideas very difficult but this project has helped to develop my creative confidence immensely as there were many brainstorming sessions with my teammates that allowed me to stretch my thoughts for interesting propositions. Me Prima, and Eye were extremely compatible when it came to similar ideas and working in this project with them has made me become a quick thinker full of creative visions and suggestions for media products.

EVALUATION - DISTRIBUTION

How would it be distributed as a real media text?

Our Film would be distributed as a real media text by focusing on a niche audience that is interested in dark psychological thrillers, especially those interested in the issues of body image or just a lover for mind boggling and haunting thriller films. I believe that our film is likely to give off similar impressions as a recent psychological thriller "A Cure for Wellness" directed by Gor Verbinski in ways that the film did not appeal to the mainstream audience and many critics, but for people who were interested in original films and artistic visuals the response was generally very good. 

Our film is definitely not a blockbuster film as it centres around a controversial theme : body image issues caused by media coverage. Not everyone agrees on this statement and it may be uncomfortable for some people to take in and enjoy while watching the film. Some disturbing scenes and images with high level of gore may also put off a lot of people from watching it as our antagonist frequently "Skins her victims to use as a treatment to say youthful". Many reactions upon seeing the trailer of this film from people who are not interested in the genre would be :

Because we are targeting a niche audience and the film is not a large blockbuster film, our product will first be screened in various film festival in hopes of picking up some critical acclaim and awards, and hopefully a distribution deal. A suitable distribution company may be Broad Green Pictures, which also acquired distribution rights to a film similar to ours, "The Neon Demon". Our film will not be released on Netflix, Hulu or other streaming websites as we want our audience to experience the full scale and see and hear every detail on a large screen in the cinema(high definition), where the mystery and build up of tension will have the greatest affect. The best case scenario is for our film to be premiered at the Cannes Film Festival as it is an extremely influential festival for new films of all genres from all over the world. Jill Forbes and Sarah Street argue in European Cinema, that Cannes "became...extremely important for critical and commercial interests and for European attempts to sell films on the basis of their artistic quality"

Finally, I believe that our film will be released around autumn and winter time of the months October to January where we can take advantage of the gloom and long dark hours of the season as well as celebrations such as Halloween to attract audiences in the mood for dark thrillers such as our film. This should be a good strategy to boost sales of tickets as it is a tradition to watch horror/thriller films during Halloween(October). However, there will be a lot of competition during halloween season because many horror films will also be released during this time. 

EVALUATION - AUDIENCE

In order to identify our target audience, I brainstormed a few similar films already on the market with existing resources on the web to see the types of audience those films appealed to. Since our film is a psychological thriller, I decided to branch out from there and the results were :

• Silence of the Lambs
• Black Swan
• Shutter Island

Next, I used YouGov Profiles to gather information and data about the type of audiences that like these films and possibly use this data to predict our target audience. Here is the outcome:

After gathering data about the audiences of similar psychological thriller films on Yougov, I recognised a few patterns amongst the films such as :

• Typically middle aged viewers
• Mostly Female 
• Middle to high income earners
• Enjoy or has a profession to do with Arts
• Lives in Urban areas

This pattern has helped me to identify the target audience for our film. Firstly, the majority of our target audience will be female because they are most familiar with the issue of society's obsession for beauty, which is the main theme and cause of the antagonist's actions in this film. However, a small section of the male audience may also be able to recognise and identify with this matter. I believe that if the target audience is aware of the issues and debates linked to this film, it will be more likely to create a lasting impression on them and increase the chances of them recommending and leaving good reviews. In addition to this, our target audience will be adults around 18-30 years of age because of the violence and gruesome content in this psychological thriller that may be unsuitable for children and teenagers. People that have an interest or profession in Art may also fit well in our target audience group because they may be able to appreciate some aesthetically pleasing shots in our film and the slow paced cinematography as well as vintage style colour correcting may appeal to them. In addition they are more likely to be open to a film that is rather different from films in the recent years especially in the horror/thriller genre, where the antagonist of a dark psychological thriller is a psychopathic female.

EVALUATION - REPRESENTATION

how does your product represent social groups or issues

EVALUATION - CONVENTIONS

How does your product use or challenge conventions

There are several ways that we tried to create meanings in our film opening by linking constantly linking it to conventions of thriller films in the industry. Research of other psychological thrillers and media products influenced the construction of our film and we tried to incorporate aspects that audiences would expect in them.

Here are some of the conventions in thriller films that are associated with our film opening : 

• The narrative centres upon a crime E.g theft, murder
• Themes of identity are commonly mistaken identity, amnesia and doubles/Doppelgängers
• Themes of seeing, reflection and mirroring-manipulation of perspective 
• A series of enigmas are set up - only to be solved at the end 
• The audience is placed in a the ambiguous position of "voyeur"
• Protagonist will be in Peril/danger
• The narrative presents extra ordinary events in ordinary situations/settings
• The micro-elements are used to build suspense

Final Product

Colour Grading

For the colour correction of our film opening it was done on Premiere Pro and we tried to aim for a eerie look by reducing saturation and increasing the intensity of the shadows in our shots, reducing bright light. We also used a preset effect Lumetri Colour(Cinespace 25) to help bring out a cinematic look.

Credit Sequence and fonts

For the processes leading to our final film opening product, one of the things we had to do was add the credits and full names of actors and producers(as the full name is not shown in the word cutouts as well as what do the people do)

I was in charge of adding the credits onto the film.

I used the opening credits of Westworld as a guide as I was drawn to the simplicity of the use of text and thought it would suit our film opening. 

Then, we did some Font Research to see which font was the most suitable to be used in the credits. I found some that looked considerably fitting and showed them to Prima and Eye for approval, then downloaded the file and added it to my Fontbook on Mac, and tried it out on aftereffects with our magazine cut out clip as the base.

Here are a few that I downloaded from www.dafont.com and tried out.

However, after trying them all out in several different font sizes and composition, none of them looked right and both my group mates agreed. 

I then switched to trying out default fonts that were already on the program and found that simplicity is key. It turned out that Times New Roman in capital worked best. The settings I used were font size 48 and 25, coloured white and opacity 45%.

Here is how it looked :

Title Change

After reading the feedback from peers, a common response was that our storyline was a bit confusing and many didn't understand what was going on.

Because we have not added in the title of our film yet, we decided to change our title to "Skin" so that it was clear to the audience that the plot and killer in this movie revolves around youth and skin. This fits in with our storyline well as a woman trying to stay youthful murders and uses victims' skin to look beautiful.

In addition, many people did not know what our original title "Limerence" meant so we decided to go for a simple and straight to the point film title.

During the lesson we then explored how the words of the titles would look compared to each other with different fonts.

Plans for Final Product

After reviewing the responses received about our rough cut, we came up with ideas on the steps we will take to reach our final product and the things we would change and improve as well as keep the same. Here are a list of changes we decided to implement

- Colour grading to give unsettling atmosphere e.g (dull, cool tones) 

- Make the conventions and the character more obvious e.g change or title

- Stabilise shots of the desk and credits

- Add full name of credits using Aftereffects Text and slow down parts with names so it is easier to read

- Try to cut down time of the film opening as it is nearing 3 minutes

- Add some better shots that give context and conventions such as more of the desk and character working

Rough Cut Response

We showed the two media classes our group's rough cut and asked them to give us feedback as well as ideas on how to make it better as this is only the first rough sequence of our film opening and there is a lot of room to improve and change. The reaction of the audience was also filmed as shown :

The class were given sheets which each group had to fill out about our rough cut and here are some of the responses we received:

Rough Cut

After returning from filming the next step was to produce a rough cut for our film opening and plan out the basic sequence and order of the clips to get an idea of how the final product will look like. During the class me, eye and prima got together to go through each clip we took during our filming day and which to include in our rough cut and what to leave out. Here is our final rough cut video(sound included)

Filming Day

On the 23rd of January

We returned back to the Bangkok Condohotel where we booked our room to film in. Because we had a limited budget we only booked it for one day and all the filming has to be done on the day. Once we arrived we quickly got into action and started setting up the desk and filming spaces as well as work out the lighting with a good balance of natural and synthetic lighting.

Because I was to play the character of the antagonist, I brought a green vintage looking dress to change in to and had to get my makeup done to look like an old woman. Eye was in charge of doing my makeup as she had experience in basic special effect makeup learnt at home from youtube and helped out during halloween events. The materials used include: non toxic glue, tissue paper, eye shadows, contour palette, concealer, fake blood, and face paint.

Here is a Time lapse of Eye doing my makeup :

After completing the transformation, we started filming. We start of by filming the scene involving the desk and collage board for the title sequence then moved on to the toilet scene. For the ending shot, we painted red on eye's leg using face paint and used the shower curtains to cover the rest of her body.

Location SCOUTING REPORT

Risk Assessment

Casting and Changes

CASTING

Due to the fact that the week we decided to film our opening was an extremely busy week, Our original cast(Tan) for the psychopathic woman character had to be changed as she was preoccupied with her school work. We decided last minute that I would play the character of the psychopath instead as I had features that resembled our original cast.

EQUIPMENT

In our original plan, we wanted to include a vinyl player to emphasise the character's age and build an unsettling mood with old music playing in the background, similar to the "tip toe song" in Insidious. This idea was forfeited because we could not find an old vinyl player and in addition to that it was too complicated and bulky to carry around to the hotel to film.  

SEQUENCE

In addition to the changes of casting and equipment, we also decided to change the sequence of our opening to fit with the resources we had on the day of shooting as well as work with the closing deadline we had to work up to. Firstly, we decided to omit the peep hole effect as it was extremely complicated to achieve and our initial footage we decided to use looked better the way it is, giving it a creepy mood. 

Collage Board Creation

During the same day as the Location Hunt, we also decided to work on a prop that we will be using in our Film opening, a collage board of facial features and skin of beautiful young women. To help create the mood of uneasiness and give hints to the audience about the nature of the psychopathic woman(main character). This will be hung up upon the wall of the character's workspace.

Here is a clip of the process of us creating the collage board.

Location Scouting

On the 22nd of January,
Me, Prima and Eye met up together to go on a location scouting where we tried to find the best place to shoot our film opening as we required quite a specific setting. (A simple plain old room with a desk near the bathroom that also has to give out a creepy atmosphere)

Our first destination was Eye's old house where she no longer lives in and her old room where it looks rather old and worn out. However, we quickly decided that it would not be a suitable location as the room looked lived in and friendly with bright orange lights from the curtain and sun. Her room also lacked the desk which is extremely important to showcase our character's daily routine and workspace. However, we did find many useful props that we could use later on such as a sewing kit, old comb, glitter and an old makeup holder.

With the option of filming in Eye's old house crossed out, we had no choice but to go with our original idea, old hotels or motels that are relatively cheap and we can use for a day. Although the idea had some safety issues, we made sure to never separate and only asked for help from friendly looking people in public spaces. Our first source of information came from a kind taxi driver who introduced us to some safer hotels that are cheap around Ari(very convenient).

We visited two Hotels and were extremely lucky to find a good match very quickly. It was the Bangkok Condotel, where we were originally on our way to visit the Elizabeth Hotel and found the entrance tucked away in the corner shown below: 

We asked the hotel staff to show us the rooms before we decided to book it and the interior matched what we needed very well. We decided to use the Bangkok Condotel for shooting our film opening.

Here are more photos and clips from our location scouting day.

:VLOG that Eye made

Peep Hole Effect Trial

I decided to try editing the peep hole effect that we plan to include in our film opening. It is when the camera zooms into the peep hole of the door until we see what is at the other side of it. 
This is the youtube tutorial that I used as a guideline:

Firstly, I found a high quality picture of a peephole from google and did some editing on photoshop.

before:

after:

Then I found another image looking through a hole and made the centre transparent so i can replace it with the desired video :

I then moved onto Adobe Premier Pro to edit the footage. This is done by first zooming in to the HD picture of the peep hole and then fading into black, creating a zooming effect then later have the footage of the room appear by increasing opacity and motion of enlarging the clip.

This is the final product of my peep hole effect trial:

Sound

During today's lesson I searched through the internet to find suitable soundtracks that can be used in our film opening. It was quite a difficult task to find free and unlicensed music as we decided that we do not have enough time to be asking for permission in using licensed music.

Here are some of the soundtracks I found 

For studio title when "Primac Productions" appears at the start of the opening(Trembling part only):

For Background music:

Pencil Scribble for when the women works on the desk:

Spooky water drops:

Cutting paper sound :

Sequence #2 and Story Board

During today's lesson we came up with a second possible sequence of shots that we can try out

1. Camera slowly zooms in from an empty eerie hallway with a door at the end of the hall
2. Continue to zoom through the peephole of the door where we see a woman sitting at her desk
3. Camera pans the room to her desk where we see her wall full off cut out faces and magazine pages
4. Point of view shot of woman working. Audience sees her wrinkly/old hands cutting pieces out from magazines. Things on her desk include : tape, scissors, magazines, sewing tools
5. Woman gets up to leave(camera still in point of view) to the bathroom
6. She stops in front of the mirror and her face and identity is revealed to the audience for the first time as an old lady
7. Shot cuts to the back of her head while looking at the mirror, showing a few grey hair and skin of her back
8. Close up of woman pulling a strand of grey hair and it landing in the sink
9. Woman walks out of the toilet and camera zooms out to wide shot of her room gradually
10. A body/leg can be seen hanging out of the bathtub with blood dripping

We also drew out a story board according to this but unfortunately were were only able to draw out half of the shots.

Final Story board:

Talk through:

Location Ideas

During today's lesson me, Prima and Eye brainstormed ideas about possible shooting locations that we could consider for our film opening. We wanted a place that looked worn out and rickety to set the mood of uneasiness and mystery. 
The three main locations we came up with were :
- Cheap hostels
- Motels
- and Eye's old room

We decided that on the 21st of January we would go on a location scout to see the different locations first hand and decided which one is the best.
Some hostels that were considered to visit include : 

• Hostelling International Bangkok Hostel

25/15 Phitsanulok Road, Sisao Theves, Dusit, Dusit, 10300 Bangkok, Thailand

• Sunflower Place

39/17-19 Soi Anuman-Rajdhon, Surawong Road, Bangkok 10500, Thailand

Inspirations for character development

SILENCE OF THE LAMBS : Buffalo Bill

• kills women for their skin to make woman suit
• wants to become a woman
• has a workroom in basement
• dress up as woman

TANGLED : Mother Gothel

• traps and keeps rapunzel in tower to use her power to stay YOUTHFUL

SNOW WHITE&THE HUNTSMAN : Evil Queen

• Captures young women in her kingdom to drain their youthfulness
• Be Immortal, Young, and beautiful forever

ORPHAN : Esther

• Looks like a young girl (9 years old)
• Is actually 33 years old