production loge (thusfar).

CHARLIE WALKER 1234 CLAREMONT FAN COURT SCHOOL 64680
GCSE J526 UNIT B324 PRODUCTION P0RTFOLIO IN MEDIA STUDIES VIDEO BRIEF 7: OPENING SEQUENCE FROM A NEW FILM INCLUDING TITLES TOGETHER WITH A STORYBOARD



PRODUCTION LOGE (pronounced 'low-j') 
9/9/14 |  PLANNING | THE BRIEF

I am working in a group of four students (including yours truly), of which are Lily Stojsavljevic, Ollie Davis and Robert Tann. The plot focuses on a woman who awakes from a blackout to find her boyfriend dead in her boyfriends flat, and frantically tries to hide to body as she hears a knocking on the door. The death is a result of a deadly virus that's circulating 

9/9/14 |  RESEARCH | OPENING TITLE: ZEN 

In class I watched the television opening to 'Zen'. We studied how it represents its themes of crime, action and Italianicity. It has guns, which indicate crime. It has Latin written on Romanesque structures which indicates Italianicity. It has Italian colours (red, green and white) to indicate Italianicity. The editing is fast and swift which indicates action and/or speed and motion. Silhouettes of certain objects implies mysteriousness and enigma. The episode title was also called 'Vendetta' which is an Italian

word, meaning 'revenge', which indicates Italianicity and crime. Intense. 

10/9/14 |  RESEARCH | THE ART OF THE TITLE: DETECTIVES

In class, we had a look at the opening of French television show, 'Detectives'. We analysed why it looked like a Television opening rather than a film opening, ignoring the fact that the 'French Television' title giving it away. We looked at how the font was very straight and strictly kerned, so as to indicate a cold and emotionless feel. It had the Eiffel Tower in the background, indicating that it's set in somesuch European country. The theme song is very upbeat and chirpy, juxtaposing the aforementioned cold and emotionless feel established by the font and pallet choice. It has electronic profiles of the actors in the show as if it were part of an investigation. The purpose of having it all digitised and through the filter of a phone screen is to establish the modernisation of the city of Paris, and the worldwide metropolis in general. The detective business has changed a lot since the 40s, where detective stories such as LA Noire have taken place. Detectives can streamline their entire business with the use of automated applications such as photo recognition and DNA scanning, and smartphones which combine every aspect of their business onto one device. This is the world we live in now, Privacy is limited and technology is everywhere. The intro sequence to this TV programme exemplifies this.

12/9/14 |  RESEARCH | THE ART OF THE TITLE: SHERLOCK HOLMES

In class, I was overwhelmingly ecstatic and dumb-founded when watching the opening of Sherlock Holmes (2009), since I have a debilitating, deep-seated passion for Guy Richie's masterpieces of cinema. From still images, we extrapolated various themes, such as period drama and dark subject matter. Although when we actually watched it, the music was up-beat and rapid, establishing Sherlock Holmes as a jaunty and comedic affair. There were three layers to the title animation: moving image, into still image, into sketch format. The images from the film were transferred into sketch format with pen and ink wash on sepia-toned paper to establish the time period. The colour palette is quite bleak and monochromatic, which proposed a melodramatic affair, soon to be contradicted by it's jaunty and light-hearted tone established by the music. 

12/9/14 |  RESEARCH | THE ART OF THE TITLE: DEUS EX 

For homework, I studied the excellent opening credits to Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I chose it not only because it's one of my favourite games in recent years, but because it's opening sequence establishes the tone of the rest of the film more effectively than any opening sequence I've seen in a game. The colour palette is very important, as those are roughly the same colours used throughout the rest of the game: black and yellow. It's a cyberpunk dystopian future set primarily in Detroit (nothing can be more dystopian than Detroit) with rampant wealth disparity and poverty (like Detroit is now) yet nano-human augmentations are available to the wealthy elite. The opening sequence shows the main character having augmentations installed in his body after a serious injury, and themes of cyberpunk and futurism with ambient music and advanced technology. It's plain to see that this game is set in the future, as the technology is super advanced (they brought a dude back from the death). The ambient music establishes a certain intensity and gravity to the piece. The bass is strong and the melody is subtle and synthesised. 


10/9/14 |  RESEARCH | GENRE 

I made a Scoop.it page for my horror film. Scoop.it is a useful tool because it's easy to set up, use, and access from whatever device. It brings together a diverse range of information onto one, centralised location. Having all the pages I need for research in one place is an undeniably useful tool, although it's search system is unintuitive and its interface is complex and outdated.

30/9/14 |  PLANNING | TREATMENT

An infected MAN (Charlie) dies at his apartment when he has is GIRLFRIEND (Lily) over. In order to not make it look like a murder, she tries to hide the body and clean up the evidence. She has recurring flashbacks about their relationship, about possible hints that he showed that could indicate infection. There are news reels in the background about how all infected must be quarantined. Her sense of urgency increases as she hears the doorbell ringing. As she opens a closet to store the body in, she sees multiple bodies, indicating that he was a murderer and further framing her as the killer. 

PLANNING | OUR FILM TITLE 

Our film is primarily about a deadly infection going around in the area. This is made clear in the film by a public service announcement. That symbolises the central, neutral voice in the film, despite it being a terrifying and cold one. Amongst all the confusion and hysteria, the only true voice is the cold and robotic one. Because of the weight the public service announcement represents, we decided to call the film 'Public Service Announcement', and all the drama from the film stems from that voice. We considered calling it 'contagion', but that would have been too obvious. 'Public Service Announcement' is neutral, mysterious, calm, enigmatic, and worry-inducing. 

PLANNING | OUR FILM TITLE CREDITS

I went back to look at Art of the Title in order to understand how professionals do their title business. Words that will appear on screen will be 'produced' and 'directed', and font choice and colour palette will play a huge role is setting the tone.

Directed by: Oliver Davis
Produced by: Oliver Davis, Robert Tann, Lily Stoj, Charlie Walker
Starring: Lily Stoj, Charlie Walker, Robert Tannington
Sound design: Oliver Davis
Cinematography: Oliver Davis
Key grip: Charlie Walker

11/11/14 |  RESEARCH | CALL SHEET FOR FILMING

Shoot Date: 18/10/14 and 25/10/14

Location: 23 Saxonbury Avenue, Sunbury-on-Thames, Middlesex, TW16 5EY

Crew: Oliver Davis:          07508702495    -  olliedavis501@gmail.com

Crew: Charlie Walker:     07753130024   -  charliewalker98@gmail.com

Crew: Robert Tann:         07763514087   -

Crew: Lily Stojsavljević:  07828398429   -

Camera Equipment:

-Canon 70D

-Glidecam HD-2000

-Tripod

-Canon EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM Lens

-Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX DG OS HSM Macro Lens

Sound Equipment:

-RØDE NTG-3

-RØDE Blimp

-RØDE Micro Boom-Pole

-RØDE VideoMic Pro

-RØDE SmartLav+

-Dead cat/dead wombat

-Zoom H4n

-XLR Cable

Lighting Equipment:

-Every single light in the house

-iPhone torches

Props:

-Saw

-Plastic Wrapping

-A television

Wardrobe:

-Lily – Normal clothes

-Charlie – Normal clothes, makeup to look like an infected/dead person

PLANNING | OUR PRODUCTION COMPANY

We discussed many different production company names. It was hard finding on that we all agreed on, so we took many suggestions from others such as 'Wild at Heart', or considered using the first letter of our first name as an initialism for our production company name, just like the production company of 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia'. We all agreed that the production company name should accurately reflect the tone of our film: scary, fearful, and mysterious. As such, we agreed that the name 'anaconda' was suitable. An anaconda is a terrifying thing that snakes around amongst tall grass, only partially visible. It's incredibly deadly and nocturnal, only hunting during the night. Much like in our film, where we're confused and scared by the plague we can't see. Both the anaconda and the virus are threatening to humans, but they're only doing it to stay alive. We can barely see either of the killers, but a monster is more scary the less you see of it. Calling our production company 'Anaconda Productions' was too fitting not to name it that.

PLANNING | OUR DISTRIBUTOR



We went on FDA's (Film Distributors' Association) micro-site "launching films", which presents a generic guide to the business of launching films in the UK. They detail the process of launching a film, and give advice such as using social media and marketing materials to promote and launch your film. We looked at which film distributor would take on our kind of film, which is an indie film.

We learned what distributors do; how they discuss how to promote a film with certain methods with producers and directors, and those external to the film like newspaper publicists and billboard marketers. They then create marketing campaigns through promotions, screenings, public relations and social media to focus and hone in on their target audience and generate hype.

We looked at many distributors that have distributed some of our favourite films. For instance, Warner Bros. distributed the excellent Harry Potter franchise, and Universal distributed the Bourne triology. These are all big name distributors, and since our film is a small indie thriller, Miramax seems like a suitable distributor, since they were responsible for the independent film boom of the early 90s. It's where they got their name from. They're much bigger now, but for them to distribute a small student film will harken back to their indie roots.

9/9/14 |  PLANNING | DRAWING THE FIRST STORYBOARD

10/11/14 |  RESEARCH | EDITING

Here is a a general overview Ollie's screen in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6.

And a close up view of the timeline

We used three separate video tracks and eight separate audio tracks. Bright green clips represent other sequences that Ollie had made earlier, in this case they were the flashback scenes.


On either side of this text there are two small screenshots of the two flashback sequences. Ollie applied the tint affect to all of the clips in both sequences and changed none of the settings. This gives a black and white effect.



One shot had to be done inside of Adobe After Effects CS6, and this was the shot of the TV turning on to reveal the public service announcement. Originally the TV turned on to a blue screen which looked like this:

The idea came to me that Ollie could use a keying effect to use the blue screen as a "blue screen", and overlay the Public Service Announcement onto the top of it. Ollie used Keylight 1.2 for this, as can be seen here:

You can see the finished product in the picture directly above this line of writing. Ollie split the footage of the TV into two, so that the Keylight effect only kicked in after a second or two of the screen being blue, so as to give the effect of the TV having more time to boot up. The colours of the film looked slightly warm, so Ollie applied Colour Curves inside of Adobe Premiere in order to remove some of the red colour and also change the brightness and contrast.

It's slightly difficult to see but Ollie have ever so slightly taken out some of the red midtones by pulling down on the middle of the red curve. Ollie also darkened the overall midtones by pulling down the middle of the master curve. Ollie has taken a screenshot of the clip before and after this effect was applied, and spliced them together down the middle so we can see the effect that this has on the look and feel of the film:

Original on the left, result on the right.

So overall the shot looks like this:

This shot looks darker and better fits the overall tone and feel that we wanted to convey with the film. Then Ollie thought some more about the fact that the film revolves around a virus, so he decided to add a tint effect to the entire timeline in order to make the piece have more of a sickly feel to it. Again, Ollie has made a before and after shot:

It's very subtle but you can see the line going down the center of the frame and brushing along the corner of Lily's eye (the eye closest to the camera).

The resulting shot looks like this:

Finally, Ollie wanted to give the piece a more cinematic feel so decided to change the aspect ratio by cropping the image down. Ollie cropped 10% off of the top, and 10% off of the bottom. This gives a "black bars" or "letterbox" effect which makes the entire production look more cinematic and widescreen.

And the finished product looks like this:

10/11/14 |  RESEARCH | AUDIENCE PROFILE

Audience profile for film 'Public Service Announcement

Age group: 14 - 40+

Gender: all

Certification: 15 (BBFC)

They are likely to be a fan of contemporary horror and thriller films and series', such as American Horror Story, The Killing, The Conjuring, American Psycho, The Walking Dead, Hannibal, You're Next, as well as action blockbusters such as Lucy, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Avengers, Thor, Captain America, Man of Steel, and others. 

In their leisure time they would go on Tumblr, watch Youtube series, play video games, and probably shop at American Apparel, Redbubble, Etsy and ASOS. 

They would have iPhones, Macs, for which they browse the internet and internet shop and Tumblr also. The music they listen to is Sun Kil Moon, Meshell Ndegeocello, Olof Arnalds, Jose Gonzalez, The Casual Terrorist, Pink Guy and Michael Cera. Their favourite genre is definitely Indie Folk. Either that, or they're die hard Nicki Minaj fan.

I think my film would be of interest to them because of their other interests in the horror movie genre. The film presents many horror film codes and conventions that they would find appealing, such as suspense, jeopardy, mystery and enigma. What's more important is how the audience accesses the film. Main veins of internet media are Youtube, Tumblr, Netflix and IMDb. Their need to rampantly consume media and commercialism correlates with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (first basic physiological needs, then a sense of belonging, then self-actualization) but it's important not to assert the authority of Maslow when it comes to media in general. Reviewers will hail "A psychological tale of coersion and enigma which explores the human condition unlike any other. 9.7/10" -Total Film

My unique selling point of the film would be that it tackles current events, such as fear-inducing diseases and dangers to young adults via coercion and intoxication. Ebola is a current issue in West Africa but is garnering attention in the western world due to its lethality and fearmongering. These are risky topics to make social commentary about, but that could be a unique selling point to stir the pot and push the boundaries of acceptable.

This audience profiling has to be done if film distributors have any idea who they're distributing to. If they want to generate any revenue at all, they have to target certain audiences aggressively or try to reach out to all audiences. Understanding your audience is key to making and distributing your film.

10/11/14 |  PLANNING | AUDIENCE RESEARCH

I started by investigation how brands target audiences in preparation for creating my own audience profile for my GCSE film. In the post-production process, distributors conduct marketing strategies to reach their target audience. This could be in the form of physical advertisements such as billboards and pre-roll ads, or an online marketing strategy utilising viral ads and Tumblr and Twitter pages.

Audiences can be segmented like so:

Gender
Ethnicity
Age
Region / nationality
Socio-economic  

In my opinion, ethnicity and region are interchangeable or utterly replaceable, since region limits media accessibility whereas ethnicity doesn't.

11/11/14 |  RESEARCH | SHOT LIST

SOUND	VISION	ACTORS	PROPS	NOTES
Loud string instruments ascending in volume	Extreme close up of bodily features such as hair, nails and eyes. Title credits also roll	Lily	None	Every shot starts and ends with a fade to black to signify half-awakenness
Ambient synth sounds signifying confusion and bleakness	High angle shot of Lily reaching waking up in a panic	Lily	TV remote,  Chemistry text book (to signify that she's a GCSE student)	The shot is slightly darker to both signify her state of mind having just woken up and to show that not much is clear to her at this point in time
The ominous voice of the public service announcement	Close up of Lily reaching for the remote and turning on the TV followed by a close up of the TV screen displaying a screen test, a subtitle, and an omnious voice reading the subtitle	Lily	Television	The voice is intentionally cold and bleak, to represent how cold and bleak the situation of rampant disease and dead boyfriend actually is
The ominous voice of the public service announcement	Over the shoulder shot of Lily watching the TV and paying close attention to the public service announcement, intervened by a tracking shot of the back of her neck	Lily	Television	The tracking shot of the back of her neck is to signify confusion and delirium
A fainter, more distant version of the ominous voice, punctuated by intense synth noise	A tracking shot of Lily walking through the hall and up the stairs, intertwined by flashbacks of her boyfriend which are in black and white	Lily	Jacket, trees,	The flashbacks to Lily with her boyfriend are in black and white to make it clear that those events aren't chronological to the main series of events
the faint voice of the PSA voice grows fainter, but the scene is mostly silent	A tracking shot of Lily walking into a bedroom to find her boyfriend limply sprawled on the bed, hereby showing her boyfriend has succumbed to the virus aforementioned by the PSA. This is represented by the bruising and redness of her boyfriends hand, an implied symptom of the virus	Lily, Charlie	Bed	The camera is very steady and the shots are very long in this sequence, juxtaposed to when it the camera starts shaking more and the shots become shorter, to display suspense, jeopardy and motion
Sounds such as turning on a kettle and picking up a glass are punctuated with short, sharp sounds as if turning on the kettle had the same sound as drawing blade or hacking off a limb; subteties are dramatised and punctuated with louder sounds	Flashback to when her boyfriend is making her tea, but spikes his drink with some sort of drug but is unable to see the effects of that drug due to the fact that he died too soon	Lily, Charlie	Mug, kettle, boiling water, tea spoon, tea bag, pill	This scene is in black and white again to let the audience know that this is a flashback
Ambient, computer generated noises such as the ever-increasing Shepard's tone combine with sharp percussion to generate tension	Lily struggles to move her boyfriends body as she panics due to the PSA telling her that contact with anyone infected with the virus. A tracking shot shows her panicking by moving with haste and checking every room in the house	Lily, Charlie	none used	The Shepard's tone present in this scene is an audible illusion that seems to be forever increasing but doesn't. This rise in pitch represents the rise in tension
Horns, wind instruments, percussion and strings burst in staccato articulation to generate tension and fear. shortly afterwards, a doorbell ring is heard	A cupboard under the stairs opens to find a weakened and injured almost-corpse (Rob) pleading for help. An over the shoulder shot shows her scuttling back away from the almost-corpse crawling and reaching toward her. As the doorbell rings, we're not sure who it is or what they want, and the film cuts to black, thereby ending on a cliffhanger	Lily, Rob	none used	There are many possible theories as to who rang the doorbell at the end. It could be the CDC (Centre for Disease Control) inspecting the house for a possible contaminant. It could be the authorities searching for Lily's boyfriend due to his habit of drugging people and keeping victims under staircases. On the other hand, it could just be a parent or a friend, to which Lily has to either hide the bodies or talk her way out of trouble.
uplifting, major chords are played on the sole piano to represent a joyful and care-free atmosphere	Flashbacks to when Lily and her boyfriend were hanging out and having fun, before she found out he was a possible serial murderer/sadist.	Lily, Charlie	none used	The purpose of this scene is to juxtapose the dark and dreary that came before it; to create light relief. Of course, present is the irony that Lily's boyfriend is a sociopath.

2/12/14 |  RESEARCH | RESEARCH INTO SIMILAR FILMS

•The Conjuring (James Wan, 2013)

•Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)

•The Matrix (the Wachowski’s, 1999)

•Upstream Colour (Shane Carruth, 2013)

•Don’t Look Now (Nicholas Roeg, 1973)

•The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (David Fincher, 2011)

•

•Whilst only one of the above films is a horror film, genre isn’t the defining aspect of our inspiration, it’s more to do with technique. How the cinematography is executed, how the characters are presented on screen, how the audio is interwoven, et cetera.  The Conjuring mainly inspired the horror and suspense themes of our film; the dying man emerging from under the stairs, for instance, is inspired by The Conjuring. The Conjuring was the biggest influence to the genre of our film, and how our film fitted into that genre. The horror codes and conventions we used were overall inspired by the Conjuring.

•Pulp Fiction was a main source of directorial inspiration in regards to how the cinematography was executed; high-angle to low angle tracking shots, for instance, are Pulp Fiction inspired. Using simple motifs such as the PSA voice, and intense sequences on innocuous commodities like making tea is Tarantino inspired.

•The Matrix was in mind in selecting the darker tone of the film; the mystery, enigma, and even colour palette was Matrix-inspired. The opening to all Matrix films lead to some underlying enigma, so in that regard the Matrix was helpful. The lack of explanation and context, but slowly pulling back to reveal a bigger picture through flashbacks helping to piece together a coherent narrative, is heavily Matrix inspired.

•Upstream Colour is technically in a whole other genre and could not be further from the genre of our film, but was still a major inspiration in regards to how the close up shots were executed. The extreme, macro-filtered close-ups of innocuous bodily features like hair and nails were inspired by Upstream Colour’s use of body close-ups.

•Don’t Look Now uses effective cross cutting, an editing technique we used in our film. We crosscut between current events and flashbacks to show how certain scenes interlink chronologically, like how Don’t Look Now crosscut between symbolic events and actual events. 

2/12/14 |  RESEARCH | EXIT POLLS

The BFI carries out exit polls in order to "help film distributors improve the way they distribute and market their films, which may ultimately lead to bigger and more satisfied audiences." We went to the BFI site to do extra research. This is quantitative research. I also conducted some qualitative research. 

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