Final film- The unpredictable

The Unpredictable film poster

Here is the final poster which we as a group put our ideas together and collaborated them to make our final poster. We felt that this poster was really good so we made a slight adjustment by adding a slogan from the other design poster.

The Unpredictable- Radio trailer

Tom Morris Evaluation question 4

Technology was obviously key to my work on this project. We used a HD camera to film our production, which I found importantly, easy to use, as I carried out the majority of the filming. 

During the editing stage, using Final Cut, I didn't do too much of it to be honest, but when I did help, I found it quite complex, but some of it was fairly simple. 

To produce our radio trailer, I used a Zoom recorder to record my voice, which was easily uploaded to Final Cut to be used as a voice over. 

Other things such as Google Docs, to produce the questionnaire was very easy to use and I would use it again the future. 

Blogger itself, has continued to be very effective and has always been straightforward and is a very good way to display this project. 

Tom Morris Evaluation question 3

3 – What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Having looked initially at the brief, we looked into various genres and ideas. As you can see on the blog, we played around with other storylines and possible outcomes, until we finally decided to go down the route of a psychological thriller. This we thought would be effective as we had done something of similar style the previous year. That wasn’t on the same lines of course, but the story, in a sense, is similar in terms of the severity and darkness to the story, even if it isn’t until the end.

Once we had decided on this idea however, it was fairly clear on where we were to take it. The criteria stated that the film must be five minutes, the end product being a few seconds over I believe, but we wanted to get every aspect in, cutting it down to an extent at which it still made sense to the viewer.

In order to understand what our audience thought of our idea, we produced an electronic questionnaire in which we distributed on the internet. Also, we made a video where we attempted to film various people answering our questionnaire in person. This however, didn’t go exactly to plan, but we had the answers from at least one person in the end.

In terms of meaning, we didn’t as such struggle, but in editing we did have to make considerable cuts in order to get it near the five minute mark. We initially felt this would take key parts away from the film, taking away meaning and would confuse the reader. However, we found that we could cut it down and still make sure it made sense and followed our story rather well, if not better. Some parts I saw as excessive, anyway. We filmed in parts, which helped with continuity so we didn’t get lost, as such.

Effects such as black and white and the repetition of these shots help the viewer understand the film better. Also, sound effects over these shots give them a better understanding of what’s happening and why.

We distributed a rough cut of our film and found that viewers liked the idea of the storyline and the effects in which we used. We shortened the film after due to the length. We needed to get as close to five minutes as we could.

Tom Morris Evaluation question 2

2 – How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?

In our main production, we were trying to achieve a sense of mystery and suspense, to give the viewers a shock come the end. We did this by building up evidence that would seem to have led to only one outcome, but of course it was the opposite.

We reflected this very well in the ancillary products also. The film posters in which we produced contained symbols from the film, such as the poker chips, the playing cards and in one, the face of Brian himself. On both however, is blood. We did this in each of our posters to throw the audience a little, as this suggests that something bad will happen, but they don’t know how it will happen or in which context. By this I mean, given the circumstances of the film, this could be a vision of Brian’s, but it could also be a reality. The viewer looking at this, simply doesn't know.

The one above is my poster, which as you can see, has the elements I was talking about. The one on the right is our final chosen one, which goes further in using more symbols, but keeping the blood to add the sense of mystery.

We also produced a radio trailer for our film. This also reflects all of the elements as in it you hear scenes from the film, that give the listener an understanding of it, but not giving anything away. It uses the same conventions of the posters really, as it gives the audience an outline but it keeps a feeling of the unknown.

In comparison to existing products, we looked at existing trailers and posters to give us an understanding of how they should look and sound, belonging to this genre. We found that what were required for the radio trailer were key parts taken from the film, sound obviously. Also sound effects from the film that carry significance. The voiceover in the ad was also important in the sense that it is setting a tone for the film and also of what is to happen.  It was kind of the same for the poster, just containing the symbols, showing what happens in the film and then the blood rather than the sound effects to add the uncertainty of the storyline.

Tom Morris Evaluation question 1

1 – In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In terms of understanding the continuity of our film, we of course had previous experience from our production the year before. In that film, we had understood the aspects of continuity well and in doing so, produced a film that had continuity that worked quite effectively. So from this, we had already observed the conventions of this, to an extent.

In order to understand and interpret these conventions further, I did research into it by looking at videos, to give me a better idea of how continuity, in particular, should work to the best of its capabilities, giving me a vision almost of how our film should look in terms of continuity. I feel this research helped a great deal, as I think our end product is very strong in this department. Personally, I feel that the continuity and the editing between shots is what set’s our film apart. We chose to adopt a quick, snappy, rhythmic style between our shots, making the continuity what it should be; clear, precise and keeps the viewer informed of any changes that are happening, as well as making sense throughout.

I believe our film met the criteria of a psychological thriller very well. We had done research into the genre and found exactly how it should look, as well as the specific effects needed to give the viewer no doubt of the genre in which they’re watching. Effects such as zooming in and out of the eye reflect, I feel, the genre well. It gives us an almost weird, unusual edge, which I believe is necessary to a psychological thriller. The ‘eye zoom’ especially, gives us a sense of the psychological state of the subject, perhaps. Also, the flashbacks we see of the main character Brian, further confirm this genre as it is us seeing what he sees in the future. The sound effects of something rewinding and the black and white effect over the film, show this again. At some points in the film, we see Point Of View shots (POV), where we see what Brian is seeing. This puts us in the mind-set of the character and gives us an understanding of what he is thinking, or planning to do next, maybe. As the director, these are the effects I wanted the film to reflect, by using these shots, such as POV’s and Over the Shoulder shots (OTS). It puts us in the mind of the focus point and we see everything he sees, in the same way and context he sees it, which is what I really wanted to get across to the viewer.

Also, I wanted to stick to the conventions of the genre, and never planned to subvert the expectations of the audience. I wanted it to be different and un-expecting, but at the same time, I wanted it to be seen as a psychological thriller, in which we all know and enjoy.

I don’t see there being any parodies in our film. As I said, I wanted to keep it close to the conventions of the genre and in doing so, avoided any parodies and ‘twists’ of the genre, such as blending two genres together. A part we are particularly happy with is the plughole scene. We didn’t parody as such, but took inspiration from the great film Psycho, where we see the same thing of zooming into the round plughole and then zooming back out of a round, eye. We differ from this as we have a different context, no one has been killed as there was in Psycho, and there is simply water instead of blood. This scene uses that effect well but also works cleverly as it flows nicely with the story, as Brian goes through his morning ritual.

In terms of audience pleasure, I want the audience, as I said, to get into the mind of Brian and to understand what he is doing and why. Also, the film builds up this huge expectation of something amazing to happen, and it does, to an extent. Then of course at the end, there is the twist in which the film finishes on. This I think will surprise viewers and perhaps have had them fooled throughout the rest of the film, which I hope they will see as clever and that it makes a great story.

Comparing our film to real media texts, I think there are a couple in which we looked at and took inspiration. For the title sequence, we took ideas and the look from the one seen in Se7en, where we see the text ‘jumping’ across the screen, from its original position. This adds to the distressed, edgy look we wanted.

The other film would of course be, Psycho. We thought it would be interesting to take such an iconic scene and give it a twist of our own, which I feel fits into the film very well and also tells the story in a different way, whilst still having such clever, eye catching editing.

Audience feedback results

click for audience feedback results

Audience feedback questionnaire

link to audience feedback questionnaire

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1_4xk0PyJtU0hz_Lg3PSCAB4jHkNB0oxg8MtBktkydjE/viewform

Rough cut of film- The Unpredictable

This is our rough cut of our film the Unpredictable. We have way too much film for the final requirements of the 5 minute film even more than the video above. However this is the rough cut of our film and from this we have pulled out some factors which we believe need amending for the final cut of our film.

The first drastic amendment which we will need to make a lot of cuts and teaks to the length of out film however keeping the same storyline. This is the at least rough cut that we had saved for our film however we did have much more film than the 5:46 version of our film above. We will continue to edit our film to reduce the length to make it fit the 5 minute requirement as much as we can.

The second change which we will have to make is adding music to the none dialogue parts of our film. This will make the film flow much better.

The third change which I will be making is around the titles of our film I feel they need tidying up and change the background font to black and the overlap font to white to give it the image of Brian's future vision.

The final change which we have decided to make is using a video effect over the black and white filters to make them look more paranormal when the character Brian sees into the future. This effect is called vignette which will give us a better effect here.  

Film poster- Tom Morris

Filming pack day 3

Risk assessment

Shooting script-
shot 26- Extreme long shot
shot 27- still shot - Brian enters from right
shot 28- over shoulder medium
shot 30- over shoulder medium
shot 31- over shoulder medium
shot 32- medium to long shot
shot 33- close up of phone
shot 34- Still long shot
shot 35- medium shot - horizontal
shot 36- medium shot - horizontal
shot 37- medium shot - horizontal
shot 38- medium shot - horizontal
shot 39- medium shot - horizontal
shot 40- medium shot - horizontal
shot 41- medium shot
shot 42- long shot to extreme long shot (pan)
shot 43- close-up



location recce-

Script-

 



Storyboards-

shot 26-43

Character props-

Brian's props same as day one on filming pack 1   Lewis props













Equipment-

Filming equipment for day 2

This is the camera which we are using to film the whole of our 5 minute short film.

This is the tripod for the camera which we are using for our 5 minute short film.

Location photos-

This is the first location where Brian meets Neil.

 The third shot is where we see Brian walking to the bus station, to return home.

 This, the second shot, is where Brian and Neil go and sit in the park.

 Finally, we see a shot of the bus station.

Camera mapping- 

Shooting script

shot 1- Close up
shot 2- Medium
shot 3- Medium shot
shot 4- Long shot
shot 5- POV (Point Of View) looking down the stairs
shot 6- Medium shot
shot 7- Long shot
shot 8- Over shoulder- Medium/Close up
shot 9- Close-up - pouring water
shot 10- Close-up
shot 11-Over shoulder - Long shot
shot 12- Medium shot POV
shot 13- POV Looking around bathroom
shot 14- Over shoulder - Medium
shot 15- Close-up - Crash zoom in
shot 16- Close-up - Crash zoom out (from his eye)
shot 17- Medium shot
shot 18- Medium to Long shot
shot 19- Still close-up
shot 20- Medium shot
shot 21- Over shoulder close-up
shot 22- Medium shot
shot 23- Pan long shot
shot 24- Long shot
shot 25- still long shot
shot 26- Extreme long shot
shot 27- still shot - Brian enters from right
shot 28- over shoulder medium
shot 30- over shoulder medium
shot 31- over shoulder medium
shot 32- medium to long shot
shot 33- close up of phone
shot 34- Still long shot
shot 35- medium shot - horizontal
shot 36- medium shot - horizontal
shot 37- medium shot - horizontal
shot 38- medium shot - horizontal
shot 39- medium shot - horizontal
shot 40- medium shot - horizontal
shot 41- medium shot
shot 42- long shot to extreme long shot (pan)
shot 43- close-up
shot 44- long shot - bus stop (at home)
shot 45- long shot (pan)
shot 46- medium shot
shot 47- medium shot - horizontal
shot 48- medium shot - horizontal
shot 49- over shoulder - medium
shot 50- still shot medium
shot 51- over shoulder close-up
shot 52- over shoulder close-up
shot 53- still close-up (cards on table)
shot 54- close-up
shot 55- close-up to medium
shot 56- close up (money)
shot 57- over shoulder medium
shot 58- over shoulder medium
shot 59- medium shot (money)
shot 60- over shoulder medium
shot 61- close-up (coin landing on table-still)
shot 62- over shoulder medium
shot 63- close-up (chess board)
shot 64- over shoulder medium
shot 65- over shoulder medium
shot 66-over shoulder medium
shot 67- over shoulder medium
shot 68- over shoulder medium
shot 69- over shoulder long shot
shot 70- over shoulder long
shot 71- over shoulder long
shot 72- over shoulder long
shot 73- over shoulder long
shot 74- long shot of door shutting
shot 75- long shot of table
shot 76- close-up
shot 77- over shoulder close-up
shot 78- still shot close-up - cards being played
shot 79- over shoulder close-up - raising stake
shot 80- medium over shoulder - gathering winnings
shot 81- medium to long shot
shot 82- POV looking onto road
shot 83- POV looking left - showing car speeding up the lane
shot 84- medium shot still (high angle)
shot 85- blank shot
shot 86- extreme close-up of eye
shot 87- medium shot (laid in road)
shot 88- POV low angle

Tricky shots Practice example

Filmed by: Tom Morris and Matthew Gollick 

Edited By: Matthew Gollick 

This post was written by: Matthew Gollick 

Myself and Tom noted several different kinds of tricky shots which we will use in our short film. We then went out and practised these shots in our surroundings. This helped us to gain experience and the required knowledge in using the cameras and software which we will use to produce our final short film. I edited our tricky shot example, and I filmed the final 2 shots of the Dolly P.O.V and the final shot Crash Zoom In Zoom Out. Tom filmed the opening shots. 

Our list contained many different tricky shots. Pan zoom was proven to be a difficult shot for our short film. We found this shot easy to achieve after several Prentice's at this shot we had a  good pan zoom shot which worked well. The main problem we initially found issues with was panning the camera and remaining on track with the zoom following the character.  

The next tricky shot we tried was P.O.V Dolly shot. This shot we will be using in our internal scene of the house when Brian is walking into the bathroom he will be looking towards the bath as the camera is dollying forward. We practiced this shot several times until we found it easy to dolly forward with the camera to a tilt downwards looking towards an object of matter.    We found this shot really hard to achieve at first as the shot was not smooth enough. When we film our short film we will have to ensure that the camera remain as still as possible. 

The next tricky shot which we tried was Tilt low angle shot. This shot was hard to film as the timing of the tilt has to match with the characters movement at the same pace in order for it to look good. We successfully filmed this shot with the motion of the character and this looked like this was going to be achievable in the scene which we will use it in when Brian is walking down stairs. 

Our final tricky shot was Crash Zoom, we also found this shot tricky to achieve. This shot involves editing effects as well as filming the shot itself. We filmed this shot zooming into a light and out from a persons eye. This was a real success and it looked really good we will use a similar shot and effect in our film where the camera will zoom into the plug hole and out from Brian's eye. I used a cross zoom effect over the top of the two individual parts of film. This worked really well and this was the best tricky shot we successfully produced in our example film of tricky shots. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VP5jEAP3K4



This example is an example of a crash zoom, which we will use in our film. This example in phsycho uses a zoom in towards the women eye and to a zoom out from the plug hole where the blood is flowing down the tap. Between these individual parts of video they overlay a cross zoom video effect to complete the crash zoom shot.

List of tricky shots

Pan and zoom
(This shot will be used in our short film when Brian is walking round the street to the bus stop)
Zoom in-out crash shot
(This shot will be used in our short film when Brian enters the bathroom and looks down towards the plug hole the camera will zoom into the plug hole and out from Brian's eye)
Dolly shot 
(This shot will also be used in our film when brian is walking into the bathroom the camera will dolly forward)
Tilt low angle shot
(This shot will also be used in our film when Brian is walking down the stair case from a lower angle)

Five minute film treatment - Unpredictable

Title: 
Unpredictable

Duration of the film: 
5 minutes

Detailed synopsis:

A man called Brian is just normal person, living a normal life. This is until one day however, when he wakes up for what should be a routine day consisting of college.It is after waking up when he falls over and bangs his head on the wall. Consequences are soon to follow, of course. Brian then begins a run of luck that see's him win bets and things seem to go his way. We see his friends, oblivious to his new-found 'skill'. They believe it to be pure luck that Brian is having. But of course, no one is this lucky. All seems well for him. This, of course, has to end at some point. On such a good run of luck, Brian fails to predict what is going to happen next. After winning at a poker night, he is hit by a car and killed. This gives the film an ironic twist, in which he predicts all of the good things that are to happen to him, yet fails to predict his death. 

Audience:
We distributed a questionnaire on the internet, giving the participants an idea of our synopsis and what the film is in general. Our results showed that the ages of 15-20 years old preferred our idea. Also, 70% of the participants who liked the film were male, as opposed to the 30% of females. 80%  also said that they would find short films at the cinema, before a film. Most said, having looked at our idea, that it was a drama. 

Suggested elements:
Black and white overlay when he has a vision of the future

Revised film script

First draft script for short film

Here we have a rough idea of how our film is going to be. As a group we created a script from both our ideas which we combined to make this script. However we are now going to revise it and make some changes where we decided to either add or change things. Then produce a written up version for the final thing.

Passage of time

Here we filmed our own example of passage of time to help use with our own understanding. We filmed this in location of our college where i travel from the 5th floor  to the student union on the lower ground floor. This was the full length video for our example (Above) I then edited this down to a shorter clip (Bellow) to show how much the film could be shortened whilst still achieving the same outcome. 

 

Here is an example of Passage of time. We will use passage of time in our short film to show a change in location after brian travels from his house at the end of one scene to the next where he is in barnsley town centre. To achieve this shot we will shoot a bus coming up the road. Then we will cut to a side on shot of the bus as it goes by, then cut to the next shot in the next scene.