The finished product

Finally after months of planning, filming, editing and stressing out about it, here is our opening sequence to the feature film 'Femme Fatale':

Q7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Filming our preliminary task really helped us develop our main task into something which we are all proud of. Our preliminary task of filming a continuity exercise made us realise that filming is actually really difficult, there’s so much to think about. For example the framing as in is the subject central or more to the left and shot distance as well was tricky because you don’t want them all the same distance or angle because that’s monotonous and boring for the audience, they want variation. Also bringing in props proved a challenge to us as a group because we didn’t sort it out before hand and then some of us forgot to bring in a pair an envelope of paper as fake money and we just used whatever we had with us just before we filmed. This taught us the valuable lesson of preparation and organisation!

The continuity task helped us to realise how much work goes into filming a simple forty five second sequence. We constantly had to think about camera angles and distances and whether there was anything in the shot that shouldn't be, for example in one of our shots there's a camera which shouldn't be seen. This made us develop the skill of checking every time before we started to film and it also improved our multi tasking skills because we were always thinking of something else like angles whilst filming or checking the lighting

I personally think that our group worked effectively as a team and that sometimes there were times of mis communication but on the whole we communicated and helped each other out with resources and ideas for our blogs. Our preliminary task helped us to trust each other with this media project because we were all in it together and we were all just as scared as each other about using the cameras and tripods.

Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Throughout this whole filming and editing process we have used solely digital technolgy which is where the future of film making is going. For filming purposes we used digital camera that had a tape in it but was digitally transferred to the computer using a fire wire. For editing we used the Apple Macs and Garageband and finally we used an internet blogging website to document everything that was happening with our media product.

Constructing this opening sequence has helped me learn new technological skills, for example I can now use Macs properly because I had never used one before as I have a Windows computer at home and have only used them. Whilst on these Apple Macs I learnt how to edit my footage on iMovie and because we’ve spent so much time editing and screen grabbing I can now do this without asking for as much help as I did at the start of the process. These parts of equipment are vital because without them the editing wouldn't have been possible and throughout our whole process of editing and filming, we only used digital technology.

Filming with cameras has made me realise that there’s nothing to be scared of whilst filming, it’s just a camera! It’s also made me realise that actually using a video camera is quite simple and that it's not as complicated as it looks. 

Whilst using a camera, to get a steady shot a tripod is needed. Using these tripods was awkward in times, for example we had to put one on a chair in order to get the right height and angle and it fell off a few times. Before this I had only ever used a tripod once and that was for taking pictures with an ordinary photo camera so it was static. When we were using it for our filming however, I learnt how to manipulate it in order to get it to do what we wanted and also I learnt how not to break it because being able to know how to work a tripod properly is one of the key skills I have learnt during this whole process.

But with all positives comes a negative and with our filming, there comes a few. One of these negatives is that we actually filmed over some flashback and stalking footage which was extremely irritating because we had literally just finished filming a couple of days before. This caused our whole group anguish and slight panic and this prevented our creative flow because in the watch flashback which we filmed over, there was a clock on the wall of the office which said 10.30 which was supposedly half an hour before our main character was murdered. Unfortunately we forgot about this clock feature and just wanted to get it over and done with  because we had already spent so much time filming and our teacher was fed up of being filmed. Also, we filmed over the main ‘dead’ scenes when our character is lying on the floor so we re-filmed these but forgot to put the clock in saying 11 o’clock. This took away some of the significance of the clock but this was entirely our fault as we were dreading filming again and we just wanted to be able to edit. This has made me learn to check before each time we film that the tape is fast forwarded on so that it doesn’t record over anything and especially so that it doesn’t record over someone else’s work.

Blogger is an internet blogging site that allows individuals to have a personal blog for free. It enables them to write about whatever they want and for exam boards to check the process of coursework.

I had never used Blogger before this coursework and I found it easy to use. It allowed me to upload pictures, videos and links to anything that I had used or needed. I would definitely use Blogger again and it is so easy to use that I don't see why anyone wouldn't use it.

Q5. How did you attract/address your audience?

To attract our audience we used mystery and confusion. We did this by using a voice over on a black screen as the very first thing the audience are shown, so that they would be more focused on what was being said. This draws importance because as there are no interesting visuals then all the concentration will be on the sound which is what we wanted in order to draw the audience in and to keep their attention.

Another way we did this was by using the out of focus eye shot after the voice over and at the end. This was done at the beginning in order to make the audience purposely confused as to what is happening. We wanted them to question what they were seeing so that they would want to watch more and find out why this is happening. In all thrillers there is the element of confusion, as to who is the killer and why did they strike? This confusion also creates suspense and we used this generic thriller feature to keep our audience attracted to our opening sequence.

Audience research is another thing we did to address our audience. We made a questionnaire on some generic elements of thrillers and gave it to a group of wide age ranges. We then took these back and analysed the results as to if we should change anything. For example we asked if they preferred to have a male or female killer and 60% said they preferred a female antagonist. We also asked what gender they preferred the victim to be, man or woman and 80% said they preferred the man to be the protagonist. Looking at these results we obviously decided to keep the genders in the same suppressor/victim situation in order to keep our audience happy and interested in our film.


If the audience weren't happy with our film then this causes failure to us as a film team because the audience are extremely important to any film. We as a film production team need to recognise the importance of the audience because if there's no audience then there's no profit, and this can result in possible bankruptcy to the production and distribution company because the audience's cinema fees go towards the overall costs of the film. When making a film you want to override the costs of the production of the film so by attracting an audience and keeping them interested, the companies involved in producing and distributing the film will generate a profit.

To make sure a sample audience enjoyed this film we did a screening of our opening sequence and gave them a feedback sheet because this would be the first time we would get feedback from an audience other than ourselves. The audience was a total of six people which is small but we realise that if we were making this into a proper film then our sample audience for a preview screening would have to be a lot bigger in order to generate a statistical feedback result.

We asked this select audience if they noticed any continuity errors and they all said no which was amazing because with any film there can't be any continuity errors because then it would be disrupted and create less realism for the audience.

Another question we asked was if there was anything they would change or improve and the results were that nobody would make any changes or improvements! This is obviously brilliant because it proves that we took on board what our audience research results were and that the audience was pleased with it.

Q4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has helped us choose what certificate to make our film. As a group we decided on a fifteen rating as if we had made it an eighteen certificate, then we would have lost out on large range of audience seeing as if it was an eighteen then people of fifteen wouldn’t be able to see it and that would mean our film could lose out on an exceed able amount of profit. This happened with Bruno (Larry Charles, 2009) when it was first released into the cinema. It was originally rated as an eighteen certificate but the film company realised they would lose out on a considerable amount of audience as Borat (Larry Charles, 2006) was such a hit with this age group. In the end some footage deemed unsuitable for a fifteen certificate was cut out and thus it became a fifteen rating.

 The fifteen rating was also decided because of the boundaries; for example we didn’t want our film too violent and although there is a murder, it is suggested violence and the pain isn’t focused on which is what the BBFC states is allowed in a fifteen rating. I feel that the only pain that is shown is the main character’s pain of his loss of life. We also feel that there wouldn’t be much sexual references or a wide range of strong language, but there might be the occasional outburst from the character and this also relates to a fifteen.

In our audience research we asked ‘what age do you think most watches thrillers’ with the choices of under 20, 21-34 or 35+. We asked twenty candidates and the most popular answer was 21-34 year olds. We didn't ask what gender they thought most watched thrillers but we have obviously learnt this for next time so we can either prove or contradict the stereotype that only middle aged males watch thrillers.

Although we have decided that our film is a fifteen certificate, originally we rated it as a twelve. After talking to both our media teachers about it and re watching our sequence, we collectively decided it should be rated as a fifteen because our teachers pointed out that there was an underlying malicious tone to it that suggests more mature themes in it. This was annoying to some members of our group because some of us had already written this question but with a twelve certificate in mind. This meant that we had to re write what we had already written but luckily it was easily changeable because a twelve and fifteen rating are similar in some aspects of the boundaries.

Q3. What kind of media institute might distribute your media product and why?

Thinking about our media product, I personally would say that although our film has indie characteristics in it, it is not an indie/low budget film and is a mainstream film. I would say that our film opening (if it were to be completed into a whole film) would have to be a blockbuster. 

I think this because it’s not an original idea; a victim being killed at the start of the film and the audience trying to piece together the crime and suspects. We also decided this because we think that the stereotypical audience for arthouse cinemas doesn't match our film because arthouse films can be niche and can only appeal to a select few. With our film we want it to apply to a wide range of audience so the niche category isn't what our film slots into. So with our film being mainstream, it would be distributed to mainstream cinemas like Showcase, Cineworld and The Odeon which attract millions of customers every year.

The budget that my group and I have decided for this film is £6.5 million. We decided this by comparing our film to similar ones like Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000). Memento's budget was $5 million and we thought £10 million was a bit too high for our film and we couldn't decide on either £5 million or £7 million so we met near the middle and said £6.5 million.

I think our film would be best suited as being distributed by a film company such as Newmarket Capital Group that is a production and distribution film company and when this occurs, this is known as digital convergence. Newmarket Capital Group is actually Memento's distribution and production comapny and we felt that we should use this because Memento started out as an independent (indie) film and went on to become a successful blockbuster.

 We feel that our film would be opened on 150 to 200 screens in the USA to start with before marketing it to other countries such as the UK. It's important to market it to one country before marketing it to another because marketing is so crucial to a film that you want to have experience and feedback before this is done.

Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product represents a post modern view of gender, for example our genre is thriller and our murder victim is male and our killer is female. This represents the idea of women being equal to or more powerful than men as they are now the killer, not the victim unlike fifty years ago which is conveyed in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). 

The man is represented as being powerless to the woman perhaps as they feel to their female partners in modern day relationships, which subverts the stereotypes of the typical man woman relationship. One of the messages being put across in our opening sequence is that woman are just as powerful as men and that they too can cause havoc and that they are not just the damsels in distress, they are the offenders and can create as much mess as a stereotypical male hero does.

If women aren’t the victim in films then they generally are there for their sex appeal, for example in Transformers (Michael Bay, 2007) Megan Fox is purely there for her sex appeal and her good looks. We didn’t want a ditzy female character that would just go with whatever the male hero said, we wanted a female with character and feistiness. However, the film noir genre has been an influence to us because although the women do seduce other man into doing the dirty work for them, they are still powerful and in control which is what we wanted for our main female character.

We wanted a strong female character that would kill our male character but I don’t think we wanted a trained assassin like in Nikita (Luc Besson, 1990) or Salt (Phillip Noyce, 2010).

I feel that what we were going for is someone like Roxie Hart in Chicago (Rob Marshall, 2002). For example she killed her lover in the heat of an argument and although she used a generic weapon (a gun), we feel that this links to our storyline.

Male victims are slightly unusual too, due to the fact that even after the feminism revolution in the seventies men are still stereotypically seen as being in more power. This is the stereotypical ideology in Hollywood and is usually shown in big blockbuster films. Male victims are unconventional just like female agressors like in the film noir genre. What I mean by this is that they are the victim to the woman's sex appeal and are therefore powerless to the woman as she is manipulating them to do the things she doesn't want to.

Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The genre of our film 'Femme Fatale' is a thriller and with thrillers suspense, tension and mystery is created through the sound and we have used these typical elements of a generic thriller in our film. Our music is repetitive but it keeps the audience interested as it is parallel to the action and has an underlying tone of tension to it which keeps the audience on tenterhooks as to what will happen. We didn't want to go too overboard on our music and have frantic screeching high pitched strings like in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960), we wanted a suggestive piece of music which could be put to other visuals and mean something completely different.

Psycho is one of our biggest inspirations for music but a lot of our creative plot ideas came from Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000) and I think this is because it was one of the first opening sequences we studied before choosing a genre. This is why I think it is our main influence because for example our film is a thriller and is about a murder and the time jumps around, just like in Memento which was nominated for two Oscars.

As Memento is one of our biggest influences, the director Christopher Nolan is one of our group's inspirational directors because he is the mastermind of confusion, complexity and successful thrillers, for example his other films include Inception (2010) which won four Oscars and three BAFTAs and The Dark Knight (2008) which won two Oscars and a BAFTA to name but a few. He is a successful generic thriller director and felt that he would be the right person to direct our film because of his success and because of his ability to develop and understand complex plots.

Our group's influential director is Christopher Nolan but my personal influential director is Darren Aronofsky, his films include Black Swan (2010) which won an Oscar and a BAFTA as well as many other film awards. He is known as being a successful psychological thriller director and I feel that his work, such as Black Swan has inspired me with our film genre.

Our film is a thriller and has conventional aspects in it but it has experimental aspects in it as well, for example our thriller has a female killer and our victim is male and we fetishize the man's dead body. What I mean by this is that in Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978) both male and female victims are murdered but whilst the men's deaths are short and sweet, the women's deaths are slower and are dragged out more. We changed this by focusing and concentrating on the man's body by showing the floor shot of him before each flashback sequence and this conveys that he is powerless to the woman because he is on the floor and is literally lower than her.

Titles

We've made our titles finally and we made these by using the accidental footage that we have from the stalking shots. These shots are generally of nothing in particular and are just accidental or are in the five seconds before the acting started. For example here's one:

Each of these last for 2 seconds because we couldn't fit the whole name and job title onto a 4 second clip so we split it in half. We also did one each for the actors and this brought our whole time up by 12 seconds so we've finally reached our time limit!

After we had shown it to our teacher she pointed out that there wasn't a an actual title in the whole sequence, so that meant we thought we had finished again but instead had one little thing left to do. We couldn't think of a name and asked our teacher and someone from another media group to think of one. We were all thinking of titles to do with time and clocks when our teacher said 'Femme Fatale'. This relates to the film noir genre of women seducing lovers to kill their husbands and we liked it because obviously our killer is a woman. We were all happy with this and it adds some mystery and class to our sequence because the title's in french.

Feedback sheet

To see everyone's progress and to get feedback from our finished products, we all did a screening of our opening sequences and gave a feedback sheet. This is our feedback sheet:


1. Is it clear that this film is a thriller?                                            Answers:

Yes    No                                                                            Yes - 6      No - 0

2. Were there any conventional aspects of a thriller in it?

Yes    No                                                                             Yes - 4    No - 2

3. Was the acting:
Poor     ok     good     excellent                                         poor - 0      ok - 1       Good - 3      Excellent - 2
4. Was it clear when the time jumped?
Yes    No                                                                            Yes - 3    No - 3
5. Were there any continuity errors that you noticed? If yes, what?
Yes    No                                                                            Yes - 0   No - 6
6. Do you think the music matches the film opening?
Yes    No                                                                             Yes - 5    No - 1
7. Is there anything you would change or improve?
Yes    No                                                                              Yes - 0    No - 6
8. Do you think it was effective using a man as the victim?
Yes     No                                                                              Yes - 6   No - 0

Time limit

So we've put all our footage together but it's too short! It's only a minute and a half which is strange because we've done so much filming and re-filming. We tried to add one or two more seconds on to each of the dead floor shots but that can only boost up the time by so much and by the time we'd done this to all of them, it had only increased by five seconds.

We were going to do a graphic match from a clock or watch face to our main character's eye but we didn't think it fitted and we filmed it at a wrong angle so the continuity would be disrupted and the transition wouldn't be believable to the audience.



Alex filming the eye shot


After uploading this onto the macs, we decided that we could use it at the beginning because it's blurry but is pulled into focus and pulled out of focus so it creates mystery and confusion to the audience as to what's going on. We also decied to use it at the end to convey that it goes back to the beginning; the character and the audience have to find out who killed him and why, just like in Memento which was our biggest influence.

As we had put these eye shots at both the beginning and end, it made the whole thing longer by twelve seconds but still we need more in able for it to be two minutes!

Music

We obviously needed music for our piece as we couldn't just have it silent all the way throughout and after asking for some websites from our teacher we started traipsing round copyright free music websites. We went onto http://www.audiojungle.net/ and found a track that fitted so well with our sequence. It was called 'Four Suns' and we were so amazed at how we thought it fitted with it that we knew we just had to get it for our project. Unfortunately it was $14 and although we did really like it and thought it was perfect for this, we didn't really want to have to pay $14 for it so somehow I manged to download it but it kept saying 'audio jungle' throughout the whole song. We tried to put it into Garageband to cut these out but it wouldn't let us.

At this point we were almost in tears. Beth and I actually made some music in Garageband and I'm glad we did because we think it fits better than 'Four Suns' did! We went onto the choice menu of 'loops' and put in a loop of strings, then some 'jazzy' drums came in and then finally an action style bassline came in. Eventually one by one these fade out towards the end and at the beggining and end is an organ style chord which creates tension and mystery even before it's started! So we're all very happy with the music, finally!

Voiceover

We decied we wanted a voiceover in our sequence so we started looking up time quotes. After trailing the internet and finding some weird ones, we found one that fitted really well. It was: 'Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them'. We thought this was perfect and decided to have it at the beginning over a black screen so the audience would be more focused on it therefore conveying the importance of it.

Originally we were going to have our teacher do it but he refused to do it, probably because he'd already let us film him for our whole process, so we recruited a friend and we managed to do it quickly and in the first take! We wanted to have a second voiceover but we thought this might be a bit too much and it would have taken the importance away from the first one so we just left it at one.

Continuity finally

We've finished our continuity exercise! We put in the last angle of our match on action and here it is:

Editing, editing, editing

So we've edited the flashbacks and the beginning and we've just put together all the bits in between. Between each flashback and the previous shot we've put in a transition of fade to white.

 The shots directly before the flashback scene are the same so that was quick and easy to do which obviously gave us more time to edit the rest like our match on action.

We've editied our match on action! We originally filmed a previous match on action in the old 'dying' room but it was too distracting, didn't fit in with our storyline and there was an 180 degree rule error.

The 180 degree rule is something that is the most basic but crucial continuity rule in filming. It's when there's two subjects and in order to keep the continuity, they have to be filmed from the same 180 degree semi circle, hence the name. If they're not filmed using this rule, then the audience will see them from what is called the 'reverse angle' and it will disrupt the continuity.

This match on action took us a while to get right because at first the clips from each angle were either too long or too short so we were constantly editing them to different lengths.

Editing continues



Screen grab of Mr.Evans being stalked



We've edited the flashbacks and now we've edited our new beginning which is a stalking montage.



Ellie and Alex editing

This sounds really boring but what we've done is we've filmed our victim Mr.Evans in corridors, whilst he's teaching and walking and we've split each individual clip up and put a different one in between so it's not the same shot for too long.



Accidental footage

Whilst Beth and Ellie were filming him walking outside, one of them accidentally left their camera still recording so now we've got loads of 'accidental footage' which is amazing because we can use some of it to make it look more realistic to the audience that he's being stalked!

Filming finally finished!

We've finally finished filming and re-filming, after so many filming sessions! So we've loaded everything from every single tape onto the mac and now we're in the process of editing on iMovie.

First of all we edited all 3 flashbacks because they're easy to edit and we knew for certain what we were doing. Our 3 flashbacks are:

• The watch flashback

• The wallet flashback and

• The holepunch flashback.

For the wallet flashback we put in a cutaway to the picture in the wallet of our main character and his partner to convey that it might be her who killed him.

With the holepunch flashback our character uses the holepuncher twice so we kept one normal speed and made the second one in slow motion by clicking on clip and then slow motion and we made it slow motion by 50%. I really like this bit and I also really like how the sound is slowed down as well; this makes it seem more menacing which is good because it's our murder weapon.

With all the flashbacks we put an effect on them which is called 'dream'. This makes it brighter and more yellow ish which gives the impression of a dream or flashback.

Re-filming

As I've previously said, we filmed over some footage that was quite crucial to our narrative. This was extremely annoying but we've managed to re-film it so it's fine.

We re-filmed our dying scenes in a different room to the one we used previously which was actually better than what we thought it would be. Initially we should have used this room before because it's a better layout for what we wanted; there's nothing in it apart from a few tables but they're not in our shot so the whole shot looks desolate which reflects his lonelines when he's dying.




Re-filming in the new room


Because we re-filmed, there was obviously the problem of continuity. Continuity errors are the bane of our fiming, seriously! But we've now got all our filming done apart from one little bit which is a shot of our teacher's eye because we're doing a graphic match from his watch face to his eye.

A graphic match is an editing technique which is when an object is shown and then it fades into a similar object. For example if there was a mug and then it slowly faded into the sun then that would be a graphic match. Here's an example:

Audience Research

We had to do some audience research on our genre of film which is thriller and we created some relevant questions which we handed out to all age groups.

Our questionnaire

 In total I think we printed out 20 - 25 copies but here are our questions with the answer choices we gave:

1. Do you like knowing who the killer is?

Yes/No

2. Do you like it when a film plays with time?

Yes/No

3. Which aspect of a thriller do you prefer?

• The outcome,
• The build up,
• The suspense or
• The clues coming together.

4. Do you find it important when a specific object has significance to the character of the story?

Yes/No

5. Do you think it’s interesting when a weapon used to kill someone isn’t generic (knife/ gun) ?

Yes/No

6. At what age do you think most watch thrillers?

• Under 20,
• 21 - 34 or
• 35 +

8. Who would you prefer the killer to be?

Man/Woman

9. Who would you prefer the victim to be?

Man/Woman

10. Would you prefer the ending of a thriller to be fulfilling?

Yes/No

Question 7 was a personal response question so we couldn't measure how many said what one because there wasn't a multiple choice, it was an open question.

We got everyone who answered a questionaire to put their age at the top of the sheet but we didn't think for them to put their gender. This was silly because we should have done this because questions 8 and 9 are about gender and it would have been interesting to see what gender was preferred for the killer/victim by the gender of the people answering. This is something we've learnt for next time so hopefully we won't forget that again!

Here are the results from our questionnaire:

Filming continues...

So we finished all our filming in two and a half days and guess what? We filmed over some footage! That probably wasn't the best thing we've ever done; especially as we were so close to starting the editing.

Me and Beth (Ellie and Alex were in lessons) finished filming and decided to upload everything to the Apple Macs on iMovie.

We had one main tape with our names on it which we were filming on and the continuity exercise tapes. We uploaded our main tape and two of the continuity tapes (which we used for our match on action), which we also used if we wanted a second camera on the same shot. Using more than one tape was brilliant as we could film a match on action because it would make our opening sequence more interesting.

The only confusing thing with using three tapes is that you can't remember which ones you've loaded onto the Macs and which ones you haven't. We realised this the hard way and kept getting confused as to which ones had been uploaded because me and Beth had uploaded all but one of the continuity tapes we had used. This is why we weren't sure if we had uploaded everything as the tapes weren't marked.

When we had uploaded everything from all the tapes we realised something was missing so we checked again and realised that we must have filmed over some footage. Luckily it was shots/scenes we could re-film easily so it wasn't too bad but it was just annoying about the fact that we had finished and then we realised we hadn't.