We chose to place our film under the category of psychological thriller as it includes a main character with mental health issues rather than the actor being exposed to physical danger. As a group, we decided to rate our film as a ‘12a’, enabling a large amount of people to actually watch the short film we produced. Another reason why we rated our film as a 12a is that we didn’t have the right equipment and experience to form any scenes of violence or horror, so we decided to produce a film that contained mild swearing and mild scenes of horror to qualify the rating of our film as a 12a. Throughout the production of our film, we enabled ourselves to use the correct set of shots and cuts to enhance the importance of the psychotic effect we wanted to establish for the duration of our film. At the end of our film, we used flashing images of Emily-Jayne standing behind Lucy which was a feature we interpreted to reveal the twist at the end using a psychotic effect. We also used filters and coloured effects with blurs and blurred motions to make some parts of the film more unusual, as we wanted to add things that the audience would not expect. In some places, we used quick cuts from shot to shot to make the scene more frantic, allowing the audience to feel more anxious to what could happen which was a way that built up tension to capture the audience’s attention until the very end of the film. We also used a variety of different shots, including close up shots to emphasise emotions and facial expressions used by the actors and long shots to show the scenery enabling the audience to see where the film is taking place so that they get a better understanding. Mid length shots were used for conversations allowing the audience to feel more involved in the film. We also used full length shots so that the audience could see the characters fully and make up their own opinions of each character from their appearance. (This technique of letting the audience make their own decisions was an idea I wanted to incorporate from the 5 minute film I analysed, as it makes the revealing of the twist more dramatic). The character Emily-Jayne that played the part of a ghost wore the same clothing throughout the film implying that there could be something mysterious about her. The costumes of the characters became a problem during the film as the dress we used for Emily-Jayne was borrowed from the performing arts section of college and it got lost after we had used it several times so we had to improvise on set. Also, we used two different jumpers for Lucy, and as both characters had to film in their own time we could only do short scenes so we got confused which jumpers were needed for each shot.
Continuity editing is a technique used to link a sequence together using a variety of different shots. This makes a scene more interesting as it enables the audience to see a range of shots that they can simply follow without confusion. Continuity editing was used throughout our film for conversations and walking sequences through doors and corridors etc. We used this technique to make the film flow more appropriately, allowing the audience to get a better understanding of what the film is about without getting confused, especially for the twist at the end. However, some parts of the film where we wanted to use continuity editing was impossible as some of the scenes we filmed didn’t have enough different shots to make the sequence flow appropriately. Also, the lighting and sounding from shot to shot was different which made it difficult to make the scene continue. An example of this is when both main actresses were in the canteen. It was difficult to make the scene continue with a variety of different shots as we simply didn’t have enough shots. Nevertheless, in some parts of our filming we did the same shot twice but made the actress do it in different emotions to enable us to have more variety when editing. We also did the same shot in close ups and long shots so that we could chose which was better for the overall scene. When filming, we did have an advantage as we were able to use actors from performing arts which made the filming part more professional, but this caused problems as we had to film in our breaks at college and their breaks which left us little time to edit.
In addition, we used several jump cuts to compress a number of shots into a quick scene. An example of using jump cuts in our film was the opening sequence when our actress (Lily) was getting ready for college, to create a more frantic scene. This technique emphasises a specific activity that the character is acting out, which is a way of creating suspense to capture the audience’s attention. We also used dissolves and fades to pass a passage of time and to simply link different scenes together without immediately cutting from scene to scene.
Uses and gratification (Richard Dyers Theory of entertainment) is an approach that highlights why people enjoy watching films and the pleasure they get from them. This can be summarised from the entertainment value of the film, the information that it provides for the audience, specific role models that the audience may find inspiring and the socialisation factor that comes from watching a film. In my opinion, our film is entertaining as it captures the audience’s attention throughout the film until the twist at the end. As Emily-Jayne is wearing old fashioned clothing and comes across as an outsider, the audience are anxious to see why this appearance was used for this character, which is a way of gradually building tension. Our film is also educational as it provides information about schizophrenia and how it can affect people. Even though our film comes across as dramatic, it is still true to life making the audience learn about situations that schizophrenics may be in. Transparency can make certain viewers want to watch our film as they may be able to relate own experiences of knowing people with schizophrenia or even being a suffer themselves of schizophrenia , enabling the audience to share their own emotions towards the film. Furthermore, all films create socialisation as any person can have their own opinion on a film which is another reason to why people may watch it.
From the 5 minute film I analysed (‘LOVEFIELDS’), the main way that tension was built was by the music used and the fact that the director led the audience to believe the male in the film raped and killed the woman, making the revealing of the twist more unexpected. In addition, the use of close ups were used in this short film to express emotions more clearly, making the overall experience of watching the film more thrilling, as it involves the audience. This is a technique we used in our film, by doing close up shots of Lucy’s face when she was distressed etc to make it more direct to the viewer. In our film, we led the audience to believe that Lucy was an ordinary girl that was getting bullied, leaving any action content to a minimum to keep the audience gripped throughout. This was a technique I wanted to include in our film, as the opening sequence to ‘LOVEFIELDS’ was very slow, however it made me anxious to see what was going to happen. I believe that our film gave no implications to what the ending could be about like ‘LOVEFIELDS’.
To advertise our film, we used a radio trailer that included appropriate information to inform the audience. With any trailer, to get the maximum effect of advertising a film to the viewers, it is vital that specific techniques and features are incorporated to make the audience want to see the film. This is a DVD trailer of the film ‘The Sixth Sense’. Before watching this trailer, I was intrigued to see what techniques were used to persuade the audience to watch the film and the music and script included, in order for me to take ideas and use them in our own radio trailer.
Immediately, the audience is captured by the scene of the accident and the fact that the young boy is implying that he can see a dead woman next to his window. The audience’s attention is now focused on the young boy, making them predict what the film could be about. We used this technique in our trailer, as we wanted the listeners to make their own minds up on what the film could be about, making the twist at the end less obvious. We wanted the listeners to be left in suspense after listening to the trailer, which was a technique used in ‘The Sixth Sense’ trailer. We did this by using an extremely brief description of the film and adding extracts of the film to leave the audience wanting more. Both trailers had their own way of building tension by using psychotic effects. In our radio trailer, we wanted to include a piano for the background music to create a ghostly effect. Both Shelley and I spoke for the audio to portray that a group of girls were chanting like the bullies in the film, or Lily and Emily-Jayne were talking simultaneously to show their connection with each other. An eerie effect was created in ‘The Sixth Sense’ trailer by using thrilling music and extracts from the film such as ‘I see dead people’. Also, a deep male voice only said the title of the film and the tagline being ‘Not every gift is a blessing’ which emphasised these two features. In our film poster, we included a tagline 'chasing her ghost...' to leave the audience in suspense and by copy and pasting it, it gives the implication that someone has repeatedly written it down in frustration (Highlighting mental health issues). Also in the poster, the title is the biggest piece of text so the audience won't get confused between the tagline and the title. We thought it would be a good idea to smudge all the text used on the poster to create a ghostly effect that we have used throughout the design on the poster. Furthermore, putting the rating of the film on the poster was a vital piece of information that needed to be added so that the audience knew what age it was suitable for, which is something ‘The Sixth Sense’ trailer didn’t include.
To begin with, as a group we chose images that we thought were suitable to use for a film poster. We thought it was vital that both main characters were used in the poster, so that the audience have a better idea of who to expect in the film. This is why a large image of Lily's face and a figure of Laura-Jane is used, including their names at the bottom of the poster enabling the audience to recognise who they are. Cleverly, in ‘The Sixth Sense’ trailer, it included five star ratings and critics’ opinions that may make the audience want to watch the film. We wanted to include this in our radio trailer, but we thought it may be inappropriate to the script. However, ‘The Sixth Sense’ trailer highlighted the main actor ‘Bruce Willis’, so we decided to include the actors names in our radio trailer, as we did in the poster, as this could also persuade the audience to watch the film if they knew the actor or actors from previous films they have seen them in. To continue with the eerie effect, we wanted Emily-Jayne to be in the background, distorted, so that the audience were under the impression that she could be a ghost. Influenced by the film poster I analysed, we decided to slightly blur her face like the young girl was in the ‘Uninvited’ poster as it created some sort of mystery.For our audience feedback, I produced a number of questions to get the right amount of advice to make improvements on our film. Some of the positive responses enabled us, as a group, to feel good about our film, and also leave things in that we may have taken out. We did receive criticism which was that the pace of the film at the beginning could have been quicker, so by improving this, we shortened walking sequences and long conversations to make the film more entertaining for the audience. We were also told to add more music to our film, so we choice a piece of music that we wanted to use as our theme tune from a college band ‘My Friends in Vegas’. We also added music from Garageband to build tension and make scenes more interesting to watch. One member of the audience said how they worked out the ending which was disappointing; however, no one else seemed to know what was coming so we decided to leave the film from the majority of people’s opinions. Another member of the audience mentioned how the film didn’t flow in some parts as there were editing brakes, so we solved this by finishing the film fully and by adding fades and dissolves to link scenes together.
After asking the question, ‘Do you think the rating of a 12a was right for the film?’ we had positive responses reassuring us that we made the right decision to class the film as a 12a. One of the viewers stated how this was a suitable age rating as anyone younger may not be able to understand the twist at the end, even though the film wasn’t really scary or contained bad language.
We decided to ask people of our own age to give feedback on our film as this was our main target audience. By using the main actress we did (both actresses were of a similar age to our target audience), this enabled our target audience to relate themselves to the film more. From our audience feedback, we were pleased with the overall outcome, and the fact the audience understood our story and thought that the characters were believable. This made our final stages of editing easier as we had little changes to make to our film.
The most important piece of technology that we used was most definitely the internet. This enabled us to use http://www.blogger.com/ so we could sort out all our work on from media and share it with each other. Also, by using http://www.youtube.com/ it gave us inspiration for radio trailer ideas and film poster ideas from http://www.impawards.co.uk/. To create the poster for our film 'The Lost Hart', we used Adobe Photoshop, enabling us to use effects and images of our choice. This made our overall poster look more professional and more likely to be used for a large Hollywood production company if this was possible. In our film, we also used Garageband to add sound effects and music that was appropriate for each scene. We added non-diegectic sounds, such as the alarm clock at the beginning of the film, and also background noises of people murmuring to make shot to shots in the canteen continue.
We used a zoom H4 recorder to make our radio trailer, and then added the speech onto Garageband to create a professional trailer that could potentially be used on a real radio station for advertisement. To edit our film, we used final cut express on an Apple Mac computer which was an easy way to produce the film and add effects to make the film more impressive. Our final piece of equipment we used was the Sony HDV 1000 to film our movie and a tri-pod to stand the camera on and get steady shots, and the DV 1000 to add all the clips we filmed to the computer so we were able to edit it. Both pieces of equipment were easy to use; however, the camera was not always reliable as the battery ran out several times during filming which lost our group a lot of time.
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