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