By Mark Pedro

What I Was Asked To Do I was asked to produce a 2 minute film sequence for an opening to a film for my coursework. I got into a group with Nicole Darku and Zenande Gexu.

Research To know what kind of film myself, Zenande and Nicole wanted to make, we had to carry out some research. We came together and we made a questionnaire on films (E.g. What kind of movie do you like?) When the questionnaire results came back, we were sure what kind of movie we were going to make. We then watched some chosen genre movies to get an idea of what we were going to do and, hopefully, get inspired by.

Questionnaire Results (Part 1) To know what kind of movie we were going to make, we decided to compile a questionnaire to give to our peers to get a feel of what kind of movie they liked. The three answers to choose from were “Romance”, “Thriller/Horror”, “Sci-fi”, and “Action”. We asked out of a total of 20 people. The results came back with some very interesting results:

Questionnaire Results (Part 2) After we knew what kind of movie we were going to start filming, we wanted to know some more aspects of the film we could use (E.g. What kind of weapon do you think a murderer should have in a Thriller/Horror movie?) We asked a question (What kind of murderer do you like seeing in a Thriller/Horror movie?) with three optional answers: “Obsessive”, “Everyday Joe” and “Old Man”. The results were as follows:

Influential Films After we knew what kind of movie we were going to make, we needed to watch some Thriller movies to get an idea of what we were going to do for our coursework and, hopefully, get inspired. Films such as Scream(1996), Hostel(2005), Psycho(1960) and One Hour Photo(2002) were our main influential films when coming up with a sequence. The thriller movie One Hour Photo(2002) had a big influence in planning for our movie. The movie focused on a lonely man who took photos of people who became obsessed over a family; this inspired us to create the antagonist of our movie; the “Psycho”.

Job Roles & Deadlines Before we could even start planning, we all had to allocate everybody to a job role. With everyone assigned to a job role for each part of the production, we could get the work done faster and we could receive feedback from one another to see how each person was progressing on a particular task. Deadlines was also helpful as this allowed to understand when a certain task had to be completed by and kept us focused on our work.

Planning When we knew our job roles, we came together and brainstormed ideas for our film sequence. We came up with the idea of a psychopathic man who is obsessed over a girl that he likes a lot. Influential films had a big impact on our idea. When we had an idea for the film, I was located the job to write up a script. I found it pleasantly easy to do this as ideas kept on bouncing around in my head.

Planning Presentation To help ourselves to organise our work and ideas, we thought it was a good idea if we made a PowerPoint presentation that could hold together all of our ideas. We had to think about aspects of the movie such as representation, mise-en-scene and camerawork.

Storyboard When the final draft of the script was completed, it was time for us to come together and draw out a rough version of the storyboard: After we were pleased with the drawn storyboard, it was time for us to pick up a camera and take photographed photos of the storyboard. This helped us a lot as it structured how we were going to shot each scene.

Production When we were happy with the photographed storyboard, we went onto Production. Before filming, we had to write up a shooting schedule so we knew what scene we were doing and what day we were go to shot it on. We then had to write up a risk assessment form so we were sure of any risks while filming our film sequence. When we were sure that all paperwork was completed and we had all the necessary props and the mise-en-scene was prepared, we were ready to film the sequence.....

Filming The Shots Filming the sequence was tiring and, at times, a very frustrating process. We had to re-record a lot of our shots as they were just not what we wanted in our sequence. Many shots were also filmed with a lot of noise in the background (Coming from the open window) and because of this, had to be re-recorded. We used a lot of artificial light from a headlight for our scenes which was crucial for our scenes and, while we were filming, it blew out. We had to stop filming for the day and we had no alternative but to continue filing the following Thursday. The following Thursday, we stay focused and we completed every shot that had to be shot. Equipment was not working, too much noise and people distracting us; filming was a nightmare.

Post-Production When we had completed filming, it was time for us to enter the post-production stage. At this stage, we all took the footage and edited the footage ourselves, individually. When I captured the footage, I had 10 minutes worth of footage to edit with. It was long process but, it worked out in the end. The focus in my editing was to create a feeling of tension and suspense for the audience. The use of quick shots near the beginning and the deep drum sound overlaid, creates tension and suspense. The sound was made by myself and was made on a audio editing software. The title of the film was in red writing (A convention used in many Thriller/Horror) movies.

Evaluation Our media product uses some Thriller movie conventions. Deep base drum sounds and short clips are used to create tension and suspense (Which is a Thriller movie convention). I believe that our movie represents particular social groups. The protagonist (the girl) represents the popular rich girl; her bag and her cloths conveys this. The antagonist (the psycho) represents a working class and psychotic person; this is shown through his house and the cloths that he wears. I think college students and teenagers would be the target audience for this media product as the film is based in a college and includes teenager characters in the film sequence. I attracted my audience by making the film based on teenage characters and based in college. While I have been constructing my product, I have learnt about how the camera operates and how it can be used in a variety of ways. I have also learnt how to edit my media product using Final Cut Express Pro. From my preliminary task, I have learnt to always test your equipment (Camera, microphone, etc...) before you start filming anything. In my preliminary task, we forgot to turn on the microphone in a lot of scenes and, therefore, we had to re-shot the scenes again. Overall, I think I have progressed a lot.