Reflections on Final Footage

We were generally pleased with our final opening sequence as we thought there was good continuity, style, theme and music - which was backed up by our audience feedback
          

"The music and paced made it seem really creepy"

However, some feedback we got suggested that the point/anchorage of our footage wasn't very clear which left people confused and disinterested. Also not everyone understood what had happened (thought the man was drunk rather than dead)

"I didn't understand that - it was a bit boring"

In addition to this the dissolve could have been better if we had more time to tweak alter how we editied it or shot more suitable footage (that would have been easier to layer up).

Titles

We wanted to keep our titles quite simplistic in order to be in keeping with our indie / art-house style. As a lot of our shots were artistically framed - there was quite a lot of room or space in which to place the name titles. However we did think about title placement when making our story board such as the black back of the head shot and our other early cutaways.           

The last title had is crucial as it's the name of the film. This is why we wanted to keep it a strong but simple black and white  - to be similar to our other titles. However it looked a bit dull and insignificant, so we added the smudge effect and put it lowercase (which is an alternative idea and makes it ambiguous as to whether we mean the vowel or the name).

We came up with the idea of Reverse Pictures as it is going against or REVERSING mainstream film. This gave us inspiration for our logo (the reversed R). We tried to do a fancy title opening- but found it want in keeping / didn't match the independent alternative brand or company, which is why we ran with the mirror image animation. This also reverses the writing to link with the company name.

Editing Techniques

Below are some of the editing techniques we used in our seqeunce(s):

Preparation for the second shoot

Aims

We have a slight disruption as  our actor is no longer available on weekend. We will see if he can do very early in the morning on weekend or before school on a weekday. 

• If he can't do it - we will use a stand-in actor (see picture) for the weekend in order to practice our new shots and then re-shoot the following weekend
• Shot list storyboard etc. - what we will test out etc.

Test Shoot Breakdown

-Arrived at location and set up the scene, thought about lighting and tried out a shot
-Actor arrived, explained expectations and aims, did all his shots first
-Did the last sequence and phone shots from different distances
-Had a break for lunch
-Finished off all our storyboard shots
-Did quality control for all our shots so far and recharged camera
-Started experimenting with cutaways and new shot ideas
-Re-did lighting shot and added in reaction cutaway
-Did another quality control
-Checked there was nothing more to add improve or do and checked our equipment and packed away carefully

In this test shoot we wanted to test out the arty style of our idea and experiment with creative close ups and framing. We also wanted to test out our idea of a dissolve in editing so took a shot with that idea in mind. We also played around with the manual focus.

We will later test out these theories/shot types in editing and then improve them or scrap them for when we do our re-shoot.

Our Storyboard

Proposal Re-presentation

Genre
Our film’s genre is psychological thriller, examples from this genre include Se7en, Rear Window and Silence Of The Lambs which focus on creating fear through tension as opposed to blood and gore.

Opening Sequence

It is dawn. There is a girl with blood on her in the middle of the room on a chair with a dead body at her feet. She is rocking slightly to show that she is thinking hard. We would introduce this scene with slow close up tilts and tracks along the body, her hands, the chair, her face etc whilst showing the titles in the area of space (e.g. first title of the back of the head of the dead body). About half way through the mood will suddenly change and she will get up suddenly. She will become very ‘matter of fact’ about how she is going to dispose of the body (kick the body to see if its dead get bin bags etc). The sequence could end with a phone call to a friend, on the line "I need your help."

Outline of the film
The dead body is a character who she knows but isn’t really connected to, he gets drunk and violent at her home, and she kills him in self defence. She’s up all night trying to figure out what to do. OPENING SEQUENCE. The rest of the film is about how trying to hide the body and the secret leads to her killing others.

After some clarification of what lead up to the event (in the sequence) this proposal was signed off - which is good as we are now able to start working out practicalities of shooting and start composing a storyboard for our upcoming test shoot.

Conventions and signifiers of the Thriller Genre

Character Profile

Dawn
-18 years old
-Lives with 3 housemates in London
-Is a studying English at university
-Is quite a structured logical person
-Enjoys socialising and going out
-Hopes to be a teacher
-Is quite naive and optimistic (begins to change in film)
-This killing starts the ball rolling on a bad sequence of events - which is the rest of the film

Shots of Potential location

Target Audience

Our target audience for this film would be:

- People who enjoy and watch psychological thrillers (and other  thrillers)

- Students who are a similar age to the main protagonist

- Young women

- British film fans

- Slightly alternative audiences (who like something local, new and innovative as an antidote to high budget blockbusters)

Typical murderers/villains in Thrillers

Some typical traits or conventions of a killer in the thriller genre include:

-Older white male

-Very clever but not very strong

-Bit psychotic making them scary and creepy

-Pre-meditate murder with every, detail planning, extremely carefully - taking everything into account

-Identity not fully exposed (shadows, enigma, sometimes revealed near the end)

-Kill for pleasure, revenge or other motives

-Cut off from society or isolated

We would like to break these stereotypes by having a murderer who is:

-Young female student

-Spur of the moment murder, without thinking about consequences or what to do with the body

-Quite a normal everyday member of society (friends, flat, job)

-Introduced like any other character, with information about lifestyle (not shadows or hidden faces)

Extract from criminal justice - good use of camera work, focus, music and space

mood board of inspiration for proposal

images from Hard Candy, Criminal Justice series 1 and 2 and Eternal Sunshine On A Spotless Mind

Analysis to the Opening Sequence of Insomnia

Conventions or Techniques used in this opening:
-Use establishing shot to set the scene (wide pan over icy waters)
-Have simple titles (black and white, simple font) that fade in and out and overlap
-Have blurred focus on some shots and titles
-Have extreme close ups (which are enigmatic and slightly disorientating)
-Simple masculine white, black and blue colour scheme
-Red blood to signify horror/thriller genre
-Music - tense, long notes, threatening, builds up, bass, increasing beat/pace, no dialogue