The Last Goodbye

So here it is! The end of our Film Coursework is nigh, and that can only mean one thing - well, lots of things, but what I mean is, of course, the closing of my blog!

This project has been so much fun, I've enjoyed working with my wonderful group of Bhavika, Bisma, and Mary, as well as everyone else in the media department! Thanks to Miss B and Miss T, and Ryan for putting up with all our group's problems and many, many reshoots etc. : )

From Ugliest Jumper Ever to Blink Murder, I've learnt LOADS, which is obviously what it's all about :P

So yes. This blog is now officially closed!

Until next time, byebye! xx

Pre-Evaluation Film Summary

Film Title: Blink Murder

Production Company: forty4 productions

Genre: Psychological horror/thriller


Synopsis: Emma is a university student and lives in North London with her housemate, Yasmin. Her boyfriend cheated on her and dumped her for a more attractive girl, increasing her insecurity and causing her to develop an obsession with image and physical beauty. She becomes incredibly jealous of attractive women, wishing to be like them, and seeing them as threats that have to be eliminated. Yasmin is completely oblivious, and no one would suspect Emma. As she leaves the house late one night to find her next victim, Yasmin goes to bed, unaware of her housemates late-night hobby...

The first half of the film involves Emma lengthening her list of beautiful female victims, and the audience also finds out a bit of the backstory. Eventually, Yasmin begins to suspect Emma, realising there is a hidden, monstrous side to her. She works out that Emma is the mysterious serial killer in the area, and almost meets the same fate as the other women when she confronts her, but Yasmin manages to escape. Emma eventually commits suicide, being unable to reach the state of perfection she desires, and realising that the game is up.

The Opening: shows a montage of clips showing Emma getting ready to go out, accompanied by unsettling music and broken up by title screens showing the production credits. There is a build up of very fast-paced cutting between shots of models' pictures cut out of magazines with the ghosting effect, while the track Edge of Madness plays, which leads up to the title: Blink Murder. The rest of the sequence shows Yasmin turning off a light, walking upstairs, and going to Emma's room, where Emma is just about to take the knife out of the drawer but is interrupted. They have a conversation and Yasmin goes to bed, leaving Emma to take the knife...

Music: An Upsetting Theme - double basses, glockenspiel, cellos - found on: http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/

Edge of Madness - rising atonal strings

Question 1

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The film opening we came up with uses the formula of repetition and difference, utilizing some of the conventions of opening sequences in films [click here for more detail] and our chosen genre of the psychological horror/thriller [click here for more detail].

Our title sequence contains credits going all the way through (although originally it didn’t, and was one of the things we had to go back and change), making it clear that it is the opening and the main part of the film hasn’t started yet. Occasionally, films have short sequences before the credits start, e.g. Se7en (David Fincher, 1995), where the characters are introduced, and the enigma surrounding the murder, and then the title sequence begins. However, the start of the actual film is then marked out well, and I feel that the montage at the beginning of our sequence has a similar effect.
Our opening sequence also abides by Levi-Strauss’ narrative theory of binary opposites, with a very clear theme of good versus evil (the good represented by the sweet-natured housemate, Yasmin, the evil represented by the killer, Emma). Levi-Strauss’ theory is one that, unlike other narrative theories, can be found in all films, most obviously in the characters. For example, Bianca Stratford and her sister Kat in 10 Things I Hate About You (Gil Junger, 1999) are complete opposites, Bianca being the stereotypical popular girl to Kat’s nonconforming ‘antisocial’ feminist. [Click here for more on binary opposites.]
See Question 2 of the evaluation for more character detail.
As is conventional in horror films, the victims in our film are all female. Although this isn’t shown, it is strongly implied, when Yasmin talks about ‘awful things on the news’, and Emma’s reply mentions ‘all those poor women’. However, we decided to twist this and make the killer female too. As in other film openings we looked at which showed the character/s getting ready, such as Legally Blonde (Robert Luketic, 2001) [click here for a detailed post] and V for Vendetta (James McTeigue, 2005) [click here for a detailed post], we chose not to reveal the killer’s face immediately, and instead have a build-up to it after a series of CUs and ECUs. We originally intended to use contrapuntal sound in our sequence, but this was difficult given the fact that we had to use copyright-free music, and our ideas didn't fit, so we used very conventional suspense-building music. (See pre-evaluation summary for music detail)
We also had a section where Yasmin is walking up the stairs into a dark space, which is a conventional action in the horror genre, as it incorporates the fear of the unknown.

Similarly, the themes of revenge and extreme jealousy are also core to the plot of the film, and tend to be present in many films of the genre, such as Crush (Alison Maclean, 1992), where one character’s jealousy-provoked lies cause another to seek revenge on the object of the first’s jealousy. A more recent example is The Talented Mr Ripley (Anthony Minghella, 1999), which also explores the envy and instability of protagonist Tom Ripley, which causes him to turn into a murderer, just like Emma.

Another thing we did was to juxtapose the ideas of beauty with death and evil (see above for the literal juxtaposition in props), which presented beauty in a negative fashion, quite unusual for the genre, and presenting an interesting contrast.
We infused the convention from the film noir genre of the femme fatale in the character of Emma, a charming, alluring, but dangerous young woman, only with a more modern slant, twisting in psychological horror and thriller elements. Emma’s nails are painted red, she wears a red dress, and we show her applying bright red lipstick – typical of the femme fatale in classic film noirs, such as Chinatown's (Roman Polanski, 1974) Evelyn (see right).

A more modern example of the femme fatale is Mia Wallace of Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994) (see left).

However, we broke conventions by breaking Todorov’s classic narrative pattern of

equilibrium -> disruption -> resolution -> restored order -> new equilibrium

by starting our opening with a disruption, with the introduction of a killer to an ordinary setting.
Our sequence is in real time, following a linear structure, and uses enigma codes to move the film along.

Question 2

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our film opening shows a young, white female, and an Asian female of about the same age. They appear to be sharing quite a nice house – the mise-en-scène indicates that they are middle-class, and are students aged around 19-20 years old. One piece of audience feedback we got from our screening was that our opening reminded them of the film Single White Female (Barbet Schroeder, 1992), as it focuses around two women sharing an apartment, one of whom has psychological issues.
We represent two quite different female characters, who seem to possess some of the stereotypical characteristics associated with girls and women. However, they represent two different stereotypes of females, and have very different personalities, demonstrating Levi-Strauss' theory of binary oppositions.

Emma, the antagonist of our film, cares a lot about the way she looks, and is very insecure, aspiring to be like the models she sees in magazines. We reflected this with our careful choice of mise-en-scène; she has an enormous mirror on her desk, and around the frame of the mirror are stuck many pictures showing beautiful people, cut out of magazines. On the desk you can see a great deal of make-up, hair products, and perfume. When the drawer is opened, you can see typical ‘girly’ items, like nail varnish and ‘cute’ things, as well as an iPod, as other students would have, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray – we thought this was rather fitting subtle addition as it is a book that focuses on beauty and aesthetics. These also add to the representation of a middle class, educated, intelligent (if slightly unhinged) student. The Complete Beauty Book is also very prominent; once again, the mise-en-scène is reflective of the antagonist’s personality.
However, although she has a lot of stereotypical female traits, her character has more depth and is taken to extremes – she is so envious of beautiful women that she kills them.
Both characters speak with English London accents, indicating the setting despite the absence of an establishing shot, which would have detracted from the unsettling, atmospheric effect we intended.
The relationship between the two characters is intended to be amicable – Yasmin likes and cares for Emma, and Emma likes Yasmin, finding her quite endearing, although she does sometimes get on her nerves and disrupt her plans.
We cast different ethnicities to reflect the diversity of culture, particularly in our setting of North London, and to echo developments in society and their impact on the film industry.

Question 3

3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Distribution is a major and fundamental part of the film industry, and deals with ‘launching and sustaining films in the market place’*. Theatrical distribution (showing the films at cinemas) is the usual way feature films open, and is the distribution filmmakers aim for, as ‘the cinema provides a uniquely immersive experience.’* This has shown to be the best method of increasing the profiles of films. The release plans for films are discussed by distributors with the producers, exhibitors, and others such as publicists, designers, and advertising agencies.
Our film opening has been described as 'edgy', 'artistic', and 'quirky' - the montage opening is unconventional and the audience are unsure as to exactly what to expect. These qualities distinguish it as an independent, arthouse film.
Our production company, forty4 productions, would work with a film distribution company such as Dogwoof Pictures to distribute our film, as large distribution companies would be too expensive. Dogwoof Pictures are noted for releasing a number of foreign language films, such as the documentary Viva Zapatero! (Sabina Guzzanti, 2005) [which I have on DVD :o], but not exclusively. They are UK-based and support small independent films in their release, and have released over 50 films since 2003.
Because our film product had a very low (virtually non-existent) budget it would be shown in more arty cinemas, where independent films run alongside a few blockbusters; this would be places like the Ritzy Picturehouse Cinema in Brixton, or the Phoenix Cinema in East Finchley, London, as they show films such as Moscow, Belgium (Christophe Van Rompaey, 2008), a Belgian film which would not generally be shown at big cinemas such as Cineworld. They also provide somewhere for local artists, including students, to showcase their work amongst similar standards in the Phoenix Gallery.
Alternatively, we could use the internet to showcase our film, on websites such as http://www.ukstudentfilms.co.uk/, where we would get a far higher potential global reach, or independent film festivals. Also, it is very clearly a British independent film, rather than an American one, with British actors, and a difference from high-budget American blockbusters; it would not be shown in mainstream cinemas, as apart from anything else, it would be too competitive and would not be worth it.
We could also exhibit our film at film festivals, such as the Raindance Film Festival in Piccadilly, London, where independent films are showcased and some are awarded prizes, such as last year’s ‘Film of the Festival’ winner, UK filmmaker Tom Tagholm’s About de Truffe.


*FDA website: http://www.launchingfilms.tv/distribution.php
Film Distributors’ Association [FDA]

Question 4

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
The core audience for our film would be people in their late ‘teens, and, following the theory of Blumler and Katz, they would be likely to choose to watch our film as a means of diversion – it would attract the same sort of audience as films such as Francis Lawrence’s I Am Legend (2007), Nelson McCormick’s Prom Night (2008), and Disturbia (D.J. Caruso, 2007). The genre of horror in its broadest sense encapsulates our film’s genre, and our audience feedback showed us that it is a very popular genre, with 14 out of 20 people of our core target audience stating it as their favourite genre.
In fact, due to the genre of our film, age becomes almost irrelevant; as the characters are in their late teens, it will particularly attract an audience of the same age and those slightly younger, who hold aspirations to their (slightly) elders, but the genre has such a massive fanbase in itself that there is already a large amount of interest generated from that group. This is one of the reasons it is so important to get the balance between repetition and difference just right, and to create the right narrative image. We would not have as high a budget as Hollywood blockbusters would, and so would not be able to focus a great deal on ostentatious marketing, but would provide enough information in posters, trailers, and for word-of-mouth for the genre signifiers to be clear, but leaving narrative enigma. This then acts as a promise that the film will answer questions raised by the film’s publicity. Films such as the Saw (James Wan, 2004) series have such a strong branding and narrative image that they need very little information on posters – they can tell of a new film in the series, but without saying what will happen, acting as a teaser, enticing their fanbase to see the film even more.
We thought that we targeted both males and females quite well, as the females would be able to relate to the aspects of beauty and feelings of jealousy, as well as being interested by the story; the heterosexual males would be interested because of the plethora of beautiful girls that would be in it, and they would be able to relate to male characters, and as a horror/thriller, it would have a fitting amount of gore. However, our opening does show the film as being very feminine - there are two female characters, no mention of men, and contains very feminine themes. This would bring even greater appeal to women, particularly those who feel under-represented.
With a teen audience, it’s also likely that if two people in a relationship may go to see a film together, even if just one wants to go, so the boy/girlfriend of someone in the core audience help to make up the secondary audience. Similarly, parents accompanying their sons or daughters to the cinema are part of the secondary audience.

Question 5

5) How did you attract/address your audience?
Our audience would have very particular expectations of our genre of film, seeking emotional and visceral pleasures, and already linking it in their minds with other films of the same genre – so by creating a film of the horror/thriller genre, it is already set up to be recognised by a mass audience made up of fans o that genre. As Rick Atman (1999) argued, genre films ‘are also the medium of an additional mode of communication that groups of consumers carry out with each other’, and also suggested that genre films share a repertoire of elements, but that audiences have to recognise the same repertoire of elements. With our film, although we only made the opening, we included a lot of elements of the horror genre, such as:
· using the ordinary – taking the ordinary setting of an ordinary house and making it scary (also helps audience in suspension of disbelief)
· a big knife
· mirrors and reflections
· [the suggestion of] attractive female victims
· close-up camera range (lots of ECUs at the beginning)
· HAs and LAs – changing levels
· victims & villains
· high body count
· personality extremes
· young, beautiful people
· vengeance
· obsessions by the villain (beauty)
· low, slow strings/high-pitched, frenzied strings

The title of the film itself, Blink Murder, a pun on the game Wink Murder, is an indicator of the genre, incorporating the word ‘murder’, an immediate signifier, and the pun on the child’s game plays with the idea of childishness, subverting the sense of fun and innocence - especially with the themes of sexuality, revenge, envy, and death.
Atman also argued the case of counter-culture attraction, involving the actions that are outside established morals and laws, and allowing the audience an escape to these pleasures. Our film would have this attraction to audiences, partly as envy is common among a lot of women – but they would not go to the extent of killing over it. We thought that there were a lot of different elements in our film that gave it a lot of appeal to both genders; in particular, we gave the female portion of our audience something strong to relate to, but also something that would horrify them.
Barthes’ narrative theory on different codes includes the enigma code, which is one that draws the reader in, as they want to find out the answer to the mystery which has been set up. We utilized this in our product – there is immediately a mystery surrounding the opening of CUs and ECUs interspersed with credit titles – ‘who is the girl? What is she getting ready for? Is she good or bad?’ etc. The same is true of the appearance of the housemate walking upstairs, also leading the audience to wonder what is in the drawer that is so secret. In the short dialogue between the two characters, more questions are raised: what ‘poor women’ and what has happened to them? It leads the audience to make guesses as to what is going on, and as we have the classic moment of the drawer opening and the knife being revealed, some of the audience’s suspicions are confirmed, but although some questions are answered, it leaves more to be asked. This is one of the key elements that will make our audience want to see the film.
Audiences may also draw links to other films they’ve seen in the past that have similar themes or scenes. For example, we drew some inspiration for the beginning of our opening from Robert Luketic’s Legally Blonde (2001), as in the beginning scene Elle is getting ready, and we don’t see her face until the end of the sequence, as in our own product. While still in production, we also found a similar montage in James McTeigue’s V for Vendetta (2005), with cross-cutting between Evey and V, waiting a while before revealing their faces. We also took a lot of inspiration from Se7en’s opening sequence, mainly for the music and credit style – like Se7en, our soundtrack includes random diegetic foley sounds from things related to what is happening, but in the wrong places, e.g. an eyeliner pencil being sharpened. We made the text of our credits shake and move, similarly to how in Se7en they flicker and are ‘scratchy’. These films that inspired us have all been very popular, and as the opening sequences of films are key to drawing in the audience and setting up the film, I feel that these elements will be successful in attracting an audience.

Question 6

6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
We used a lot of technology [click here for full list], most of which we had used previously, but we learnt about it in much more depth – including finding out a lot of the advantages and disadvantages first hand.
Hardware:

• Canon HD mini DV (Digital Video) camera – although we had the capability to change the camera settings to shoot in high definition (HD), we didn’t, as it’s expensive to shoot on HD tapes, and it also takes up a lot of power on the PC, so when editing everything would be much slower. As well as this, we would be unable to watch it in HD, as it would require a huge technology update which would be expensive, and would take time. However, it is something that in the future I feel it would be interesting to work with. The transition to HD is an example of how the medium of film is changing quickly, and perhaps indicates that this will change again soon.
• tripod for our camera to give us steady, focussed shots
• an on-board microphone so we could pick up the right audio much more clearly, which we could then listen to through the headphones. The sound kit was something we hadn’t used previously, but it didn’t take long to work out how to use it best.
• pag light -> very useful for short distances and CU shots, easily transportable (battery pack attached), good choice of how to use it, (barn doors that mean it’s possible to create shafts of light, and different filters too). However, it wasn’t very powerful, and worked better when combined with another light source.

We had to experiment quite a lot with lighting, and were not really used to using this technology, and it did bring up some problems: even though we were shooting indoors, the lighting wasn’t very good and so the shots were less clear, and the lack of light also made everything look really flat. To solve this, we got to use:

• the studio lights in a reshoot -> very powerful and very strong, very versatile, with the ability to create ambient lighting with the shutters and filters (but we didn’t use these). Had we chosen to, we could have used all three of them, giving us three-point-lighting and making it look more professional, but it would have taken a long time to set up and been difficult to arrange so that the lights would not be seen in shot. However, the studio lights were a lot less portable, being very heavy and in a bulky box, and we had to wait half an hour after the shoot for it to cool down properly, so no one burnt themselves putting it away, potentially also breaking the light.

The light we used really helped the shots look better, but we only had time to do the shots of the killer’s dialogue (we had to reshoot this anyway, due to bad framing and non-existent eyeline-matching). This presented us with another problem: the lighting in the same room was very, very different, as we had been unable to reshoot the housemate’s dialogue. We attempted to fix it on the editing software we used:

• Adobe Premiere Pro - we used Premiere to change the brightness and contrast on all of our shots, and added a special lighting effect on the housemate shots, which made the lighting difference less noticeable, but decreased the clarity of the image, which was an unfortunate downside. We learnt from this just how problematic and difficult to get right lighting can be, but I think it’s something that will help us in future projects – we will know what can go wrong and how to fix it before it happens.

We also had a few problems with getting the camera to focus on the right things, as it was on the automatic setting – I feel it would be quite nice to work with the technician to explore the manual settings on the camera, as it would give more us more scope to experiment with foregrounds and backgrounds – after watching Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) Gregg Toland’s innovation of deep focus, where everything in the shot is in sharp focus, really interested me.

Another problem that was hard to fix during editing was that the camera produced a whirring/buzzing sound, and this was present particularly on our new shots of one half of the conversation. We were able to lessen it by lowering the treble on Premiere, but this muffled the sound of the dialogue slightly, and we were unable to do anything about it.
We added five new timelines during the course of our non-linear editing, and had five tracks for video and four tracks for audio by the end. I’m much more comfortable with editing after this project, because we were forced to edit alone sometimes, which was really helpful. I learnt how to use different techniques (for a full list, click here), two of which included:

-Ghosting: layering shots over others but changing the opacity, so that the one on top is more transparent, causing the effect as demonstrated to the right, and with the ECU shots of Emma's eyes at the beginning of the montage

-Solarising: we used the 'solarise in' and 'solarise out' effect on a very very short section of a shot which we cut from the middle of a longer one, in order to create the flashing effect on the eyes that we found to be extremely effective from audience feedback - it was one of the favourite elements.

I also really appreciate the fact that we got to use non-linear editing and do it all digitally with the PCs in the edit suites after finding out all the hard work that goes into linear editing! I definitely feel more comfortable with the whole editing process and feel I've learnt a lot, from the simple processes such as capturing and naming clips, to the more tricky such as trying to adjust the sound to the right levels.

We also worked with the technician, using the Mac to create our credits on the software Adobe LiveType, with which we made our text move, and was very compatible and easy to transfer from the Mac to the PC and vice versa.

Question 7

7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back now that the production and post-production stages are finished, it’s clear that without the preliminary task, we would have had a great deal of difficulty. The briefs were different in that in the preliminary task, we had a time limit of one hour for each stage, and although ultimately we did have a time limit for the main task, it was much more flexible, and also allowed us a choice of locations, rather than having to film in the school. In general, we had a lot more flexibility with the brief of the main task; the preliminary had specific things that had to be included: a conversation, demonstration of the 180ᵒ rule, shot/reverse-shot, and match-on-action – basically all good continuity – and it had to be 30 seconds long; the main task had to be an opening sequence, with a duration of 2 minutes, including titles and a soundtrack. We also had more choice in our group members. This meant that when it came to planning, we approached it much more carefully and were able to come up with multiple ideas that we could then either use or scrap. We had a better idea of what things would work and what wouldn’t, and had to come up with proper stories.

I found that, although we had learnt the theory already, the completion of the preliminary task helped me understand the importance of and get to grips with the idea of filming master shots first and then cutaways, how shooting scripts worked, and things like location recces. I also learnt that running on the action is a good idea, to prevent actions from looking stilted, unnatural, and posed. However, we do have a shot in our final production that does look slightly unnatural!
Being able to reshoot was one of the big differences between the preliminary and the main task, and it was certainly very important for us! We had the capacity to change our idea around, and view what worked and what didn’t, rather than having to film everything in one hour. We got to know the importance of shooting scripts and storyboards, which really helped in our preliminary tasks, especially with the time limit – it was good to have the shooting script worked out to make sure it was done in the most efficient way, without having to shoot in the order the footage would appear after editing. We found it was important to leave gaps between dialogue in the conversation, as they can be edited out, but if you need to cut into them it can be really difficult. Also, it is much more sensible to take at least two takes of every shot, because it’s likely there will be something wrong with it.
We were able to experiment much more with different techniques and effects on Adobe Premiere Pro for the main task, as we had much more time, and there wasn’t much we really needed to do with regards to effects in the prelim. We learnt how to edit using continuity techniques, so we didn’t have to waste time doing that in our editing sessions for the main task.
Looking back on the preliminary task and the evaluation, it is a very different reflection process; with the preliminary task, success was measured by whether the brief was met, and we achieved all the specifications, but the main task had a lot more detail and had an intended genre, narrative image, and codes. We didn't have any audience feedback for our prelims because we weren't targeting anyone, we were just attempting to fulfil the brief. With our main task, however, it was important to get audience feedback to see whether or not we had succeeded.

All in all, I think we achieved what we had aimed for: from the screenings we found that our audience understood what they were supposed to, could identify the genre and form of our product (the opening sequence to a film), and most said they would want to find out what happened later in the film.