Final Film - Darkroom

Radio promo trailer

Group Film Poster

After observing and analysing all of our group posters, a unanimous vote lead us to choose a final group design of Ewan's Poster, this was developed further with addition of colours, a preliminary film certificate and our production logo, as well as text about directors, producers and the filming team/crew, this led to the development of the poster below.

This is our final film poster design and has been approved by many of our peers, with reviews of "That looks nice!", "Amazing" and "Unique" suggesting it is a very successful poster and is good at advertising the film without giving anything away within the story.

Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation question one posed a few questions for us to discuss, these all asked "In what way did our media product develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?"

The first question within this was part A, this asked:

 Part A - At a technical level, how well did you observe the conventions of continuity and the language of film editing?

Whilst producing our film we included a range of editing techniques that allowed us to match the conventions of many films within the thriller genre and many generic filming concepts, this included use of the 180-Degree rule, shot reverse shot,elliptical editing, jump cuts and a montage.

180-Degree Rule

Throughout the film we tried to keep the 180 degree line, however there were many times in which we broke it to make the film seem more mysterious and weird, this included creating a view that almost made it seem as though our main character was being watched. The idea of the 180 degree is that the camera must be kept on one side of this parallel line to ensure characters do not look like they are going back on their path and ensures that ideas such as the shot reverse hot for conversing against. as you can tell from the film, we broke this many times to give an unusual feeling and a create and almost dizzying feeling allowing this to provide a disorientating effect and feeling and provide an ability to make the viewer feel what many of our characters may feel, this break also kind of acts to create a realistic like feel as human movement is not smooth and may have many quirks and differences.

 Shot-Reverse-Shot

One other conventional techniques we did was that of the shot-reverse-shot, we used this only within one scene in which our main character,Roman, and a stranger,Rose, exchange some dialogue about what pose to make for a photo. This technique is used primarily show both parties reactions and views when conversating with each other. The first angle is used to depict that of the first person starting the dialogue with the next shot showing the receivers/respondents view or response and then back again. We included this so you could tell which party was talking at which time. It also allowed for us to easily frame and set up the shot in which Roman would take a photo of Rose. This again was broken toward the end with the use of a whip pan to suggest that the woman near the church was Rose who had disappeared just moments ago and increase the pace of the scene.

Elliptical editing

Elliptical editing was important within our film to convey that time had past.  Elliptical editing is used to remove.cut many irrelevant shots to make the scene faster than it would actually be in real time. This also helps to retain the audiences attention ensuring they do not get bored and have a lack of interest with the film. The scene in which this is used is that of the transition between the travelling scene to that of Roman walking up the stairs in his new home. This cuts out the shots of more travelling and pulling into the house that would take over 4 hours in real time itself.

This is similar to how many other films transition through a  large period of time or travel without creating a montage, this can be scene in the famous Batman Begins scene in which Bruce Wayne is travelling across a mountain range, it does not show all his steps and only shows interesting and different movements such as when stops to pick up the flower, this is next shown when he is travelling over a glacier and through a small village, cut, and the further up the mountain face.

Jump cuts

The inclusion of jump cuts was only toward the end of the film with the scene in which Roman is blinded and stumbling away. This technique is done to to give the effect that the entire world is glitching and the idea of him breaking the camera distorts the world and make it feel that the camera has some sort of power of the real world and the lives it affects. It also allowed us to produce an enigma making the audience question "why is the world stuttering". It also helps to provide the feeling of what Roman may be feeling such as being dizzy and disorientated due to the flash of the camera. This is similar to that of the film "Royal Tenenbaums" in which one of the main characters is changing his appearance and instead of showing all the boring detail, it uses jump cuts to show the time passing and emphasise what each cut of the scissors is doing and how it is effecting him.

Montage

The final editing technique used was a montage. This like the majority of the higher level editing techniques was used toward the end of the film after Roman had been blinded by the flash. This was done by creating a new sequence and speeding it u quickly  to give the effect of a fast paced flash back like view of all the events which occurred within the film, although not originally intended it also seems that the montage is Romans life flashing before his eyes prior to that of going into the light, a metaphor for dying, further suggesting the camera steals their souls and presence.

This is not a stereotypical montage as montages tend to be used to show a sped up lapse of events such as training within the very famous rocky scene.

Part-B asked - In terms of the content, how does your film reflect or challenge the conventions of the genre you are working in? does it fulfil the nature of the genre or does it subvert expectations deliberately. 

The genre of our film was that of a mystery thriller with neo-noir elements, this is determined from the idea that the camera is used to make people disappear and when a photo of them ha been taken, their soul is almost lost forever. Each important aspect of the film such as the things that go missing, appear with some item of red, this is in reference to the sin city franchise in which is too in black and white except important plot points or characters. The use of photos trapping or stealing people is in a reference to Shutter in which photos are a part of the person and were they to be destroyed, would cause the person to die in the same way the picture was destroyed.

The film itself tends to challenge many of the conventions of a modern thriller, rather than having increased amounts of action it plays to drastically building these up to help retain an enigma through the entire film. To ensure we were meeting the requirements of a thriller film, we conducted mass amounts of research into the concepts and conventions within this genre, allowing us to understand what we were trying to create. One way in which our film challenges this is by replacing a definite antagonist or bad character with that of an object furthering the idea of the enigma asking, is the camera,roman or an other worldly entity doing this. We however did stick to the conventions of thrillers within certain areas such as very slow and drawn out areas to help produce tension within the story.

There are a few themes and Icons in which our film fits the conventions of others, such as the cameras overall prevalence throughout the entirety of the film. This helped to emphasise the importance of the film and ensure that the camera was always at the forefront of people mind allowing use to manipulate them into thinking many views about the camera, with only its true purpose hinted within editing and camerawork and not directly. This provided the big selling point o our film which was the enigma. Using the enigma also helped us to ensure that the audience would assume it was a mystery thriller as we had a narrative device that was based around a mystery.

One obvious similarity that all members of our group noticed, was that the film closely replicates many themes of the recent film Polaroid as that too makes use of a camera that had mysterious and dark powers that was found. Unlike ours, Polaroid focuses on taking a photos of a person with the death of them rather than just the disappearance, whilst also focusing on more of the idea that the camera is most definitely supernatural. 

As we did not want to create and obvious ending and further the enigma into after the completion of the viewing, we left our film more open and up to discussion which subverts the classic convention of a thriller which would normally have a closed and fully concluded ending.

Location

Throughout our film there were many settings that complimented the thriller genre, these were all realistic and what seemed, normal locations with the ability to create a realism within the atmosphere of the film. This is also suitable as it allows the viewers to experience life within the position of our characters as the areas we filmed were all nearby and gave the persona of a real living and breathing world that we were stepping into. Of all the locations, the development room was the most interesting allowing us to be the most creative as the rooms themselves are contrasts between the regular world, spawning life in the form of pictures within the dark rather than that of the light. It also allowed us to contrast reality with the unusual too as the room made use of the dark and eerie in which the human mind would tend to wander and imagine things, which we portrayed within the action in our film.

Music and sound effects

Non-diegetic sound is sound which is added after the filming process and is not from within the live scene itself.

Diegetic is the opposite with the sound being created from the actual scene and is already within the shot, such as footsteps.

Non-diegetic sounds such as music was used within the film to help increase the building of tension within the production, this also allowed us to make use of the audiences emotions to make them feel as though the unusual was about to happen or be caused by something. One important piece of sound adapting was to make use of a quieter soundtrack within the dark room so that diegetic sounds would be much louder and off putting to the audience, for example this is audible when the tap goes off within the dark room scene, a top would not normally be this loud furthering the concept of unusual and weird.

Other aspects of non-diegetic sound was that of the voice over, we used this to set the scene that Roman was moving from Scotland and this is when everything within his life started to change. This helped to better the audiences understand of what was going on, without throwing them in the deep end and confuse them directly. The use of the voice over gave many people the impression of the beginning of trainspotting (1996) in which the main character Mark Renton sets the scene for why they are running and what it is like being on drugs.

Part-C - Are there any elements of deliberate pastiche or parody, where you "Play" with the genre codes and history? Are there any intertextual moment where you hint at a reference to another film?

As mentioned within one of our previous posts, intertextual references within our film, we identified many of the references within our film and the inspirations it draws from them. One of which is the aforementioned Sin City in which the most important aspects of the film are highlighted within red. within sin city this is used to highlight clothes and blood to commonly emphasise important points to the story and its progress. Within our film we used this to highlight the many items in which Roman takes photos of and disappears, this allowed us to almost foreshadow each item disappearing by making it of a red shade/tone.

This is also similar to that of Schindler's List in which items are sometimes highlighted red and the black an white is not so strong, with the white contrasting clearly against the darker greys and blacks rather than the cells shaded like darkness of that within Sin City. This use of red also signifies a danger in which is obvious when the entirety of the last scene is within the red room suggesting Roman would be the one who would disappear this time.

One final film we referenced was that of the short film Black hole in which a man photos copies a hole that becomes real and usable, this was referenced within the idea that when a persons photo was taken they would appear missing suggesting that photos have a real world consequence.

Part-D - What kinds of audience pleasures are you trying to provide and how confident are you that you achieved this?

The Richard Dyer theory of pleasures refers to the idea that media texts provide people with a form of escapism from reality and in comparison their own boring lives. There are five key components to this theory, the first being intensity. Our film helps to provide an intensity in the form a building tension and the fast paced stumbling within the ending of the final scene, this helps to compliment the second concept of energy in which the the fast pace of the final scene creates. This energy is also felt within the audience as they see Roman stumble and get disorientated within the ending of the film making them too fell confused and disorientated.

Our film also makes use of the other concept of transparency. Our film does this by stating what is happening, within the form of a voice over so the audience can clearly understand who Roman is and weather they wish to side with him or against him within the plot of the film.

The audience also have to watch through and enigma in which too is a form of entertainment in which we feel we have confidently matched. as it leaves them asking questions and negotiating their own opinions and views. This aligns with Stuart Halls theory of negotiated viewing of a narrative and that they will have one of 3 views. This can be seen in the final film evaluation when one quote given to us said "I thought the story line was good an I think I kind of understood it, I guess at the ending I was a little bit confused".

Barthes enigma theory of hermenutic code: suggesting the full truth of the story is not fully explained and is avoided to deliberately force the audience to guess making them feel a gratitude once the get it correct or a satisfaction once it has been revealed

Evaluation question 1

Evaluation question 2

How effective is the combination of your main from JoeUsher123

Evaluation question 3

Evaluation question 4

How Did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Research
One of the most important aspects in the creation of any type of film is to have  varied and thorough research to aid and give insight into how we should create our film but also what genre and narrative we want to base it upon. We mainly used the internet to conduct this research and without it would not of been able to find out key aspects about what we wanted our film to be.  The websites we used in our research stage was as following:

Blogger:
Blogger was one of the most vital tools that we utilised not only in our research stage but many of the others as well. Blogger is a website that allows its users to create blogs which then allows for the creation of posts which can have a range of information on them. It also lets users customise and edit the blog to there liking using an array of backgrounds, colours and fonts. We used as this main hub that we placed our research on. It also allows you to embed videos and links which we did after the completion of our preliminary exercise as it went alongside our research on the blog so can be seen as a whole rather than individual pieces of work on separate platforms. However one negative of blogger is that sometimes videos and pictures can alter the borders and spacing of the layout meaning you have to change it around in the formatting tools as if not they occupy too much space on the blog and look out of place.



















SurveyMonkey:
Another website, in which we used to conduct our research was SurveryMonkey. Its a free online survey generator that provides the creation of free surveys to your customisation and other programs that require payment however we only used the free survey creation of the website as it was all we required. We used SurveyMonkey among colleagues and asked them to fill the surveys in for us. The positive of this website is that it is completely online so does not require you to print out any sheets which can waste time and lets you answer the survey straight from the internet giving quick and easy access. The only downside to this website is that there are not advertising options so means you have to find people yourself to answer these surveys or put them on another website or program that allows you to do so.

IMDB:

IMDB is a online database of information related to the world of films, television programs, home videos and video games, and internet streams including cast, production crew, personnel and fictional character biographies, plot summaries, trivia, and fan reviews and ratings. This website is extremely useful as it has all the information about the films that i researched into one website. It is also easy to use and access with the only downside of it being that you cannot directly get the embedded links for film trailers and scenes meaning you have to use you tube instead.

BBFC:
Lastly, the BBFC (The British Board of Film Classification) was another website i used to conduct my research which has detailed information on how films were rated and why they deserved that age rating. It allowed me to research into why certain films got the age rating they got so helped to give me a clear understanding into what our films would be rated and insight into what our target audience for our film would be. However i found the layout of the website as a whole quite confusing to use as there is a mass of history being held by the BBFC so can take time to find the film you are looking for but also to remember the information as well.

Youtube:

Youtube is one of the biggest video-sharing platforms in the world and is great to use for research for any type of topic which in my case was film. This website helped us to research as we could look up certain film scenes to see what shots, mise en scene, sound and editing was used to help give insight into what we need to use in our film to convey the correct meaning that was intended.  we also used it to upload our preliminary exercises, and also our finished 5 minute film which then allowed us to copy the embed link into blogger, so we can view the video from our blog page instead of having to go to Youtube directly. Youtube is very simple and easy to use as it has fast navigation and a simple layout with it also being easy to upload your own videos. The only downside of this website that i found was that sometimes when searching for a video it may not show up straight away if you don't get the name of the video correct.







Planning

Planning was another stage that came after research that was the stage in which we began to plan out our films ideas and begin to write and create the shots and other key elements for what we would need to make it. We used many different technologies in this stage to aid us in our effort and they were as followed:

Celtx:
Celtx was the first program that we used in our planning process. It is a media pre-production software, designed for creating and organising media projects like screenplays, films, videos, stageplays, audio plays, documentaries, machinima, comics, games and podcasts. Cetlx is a great program to write a script, as it has many tools that you can use to your disposal including formatting presets from a drop down menu which means you do not have to do them yourself. However one negative of Celtx is that at first it can be quite difficult to use especially if you have no experience in writing scripts but once you get the hang of it, it is a great program to use for screenplay writing.














Phone:
We used our phones to take location photos before we began filming as it allowed us to organise when and where we were going to film and also to extend upon our ideas for the film, which meant that we could visualise our characters and props in these locations before we even started filming but also made it easier when drawing the storyboard as we had the locations already in photo. However the downside to using our phones to take these photos is that they can not be the best of quality and do not allow you to change settings or the lighting or exposure of the photo so we may of been better using a DSLR camera instead as they are marginally better in terms of quality but are harder to use.

Production
The production stage of our film is when we begin to create the film itself and when we compile both the research and planning we have done beforehand to aid in the creation. This was probably the hardest stage out of the four as it required us to use many different types of technology and was when we had to begin filming each scene for our film which meant we had to remember a lot of information and take into consideration of each when filming. The technologies we used were as followed:

Premiere Pro:
This program was possibly the most vital in the whole creation of our film as it was the program that allowed us to edit each shot of our film together. Premier Pro is a professional editing software from Adobe with its primary feature being the ability to manipulate footage and moving images to the users own desire. This program has a large array of different effects you can use to manipulate your footage, including blurs, dissolves and many others. However the problem with this software is that is is very difficult to use even for some of the more experienced people and to add some effects that you wish you will be required to use adobes other program after effects which is an even harder piece of software to use however we did not use after effects as we did not require its utilities. All in all the this is a great software to use when editing and allows for great quality to a professional standard if used correctly.

Photoshop:
Photoshop is a photo-editing software but can also be used as an illustration software. It allows you to compile and edit images by changing colour, contrast, sharpness and adding many other effects such as a large array of filters which can manipulate the image, this is a great feature to the software as it means you have many options to change the image into a way that you want it to. We used Photoshop mainly in the creation of our film poster as it allowed us to manipulate and create a professional look to go alongside our film. The only downside of this piece of software is that similar to Premiere Pro can be hard to learn how to use at first but luckily i had a lot of experience beforehand with Photoshop so i found it easy to use but for most newcomers can be tricky to get to grips with it.

Camera:
The camera we used to shoot the footage for our film was the Canon Legria FGT25. It allowed us to record footage at 1080p at 25fps and the camera has the usual basic functions that most video cameras do such as a focus assist which helped with long periods of recording but the camera also allowed you to change to manual focus if you wanted to get a certain depth of field for a shot. In the end we did not end up using many of the features of the camera that i would of liked to use, due to a narrow timescale that we had to film. One downside of this camera is that it can blur very easily if you move too quickly when holding it and also can be hard to use if  you wish to use some of the more advanced features that the camera has.

Zoom recorder:
A zoom recorder is an audio recorder that allows you to record sound for either just sound based files or to go alongside video. We used the recorder to record our voices in the radio trailer but also for the monologue at the start of the film where our main protagonist speaks. It is quick and efficient to use with it also being extremely easy to record with. The negatives of this recorder was that it came with an micro SD card, which makes it not compatible with some computers without the use of a USB cable. Another negative was that we had nothing to attach the recorder to so meant that one person had to hold it while the other spoke.


Evaluation
The evaluation stage was the final stage in the creation of our film and was where we went over all the other stages and evaluated what we did and the negatives and positives of what we did. The technologies we used when evaluating where as followed:

Microsoft PowerPoint:
Microsoft power point is a presentation program that allows you to create and edit a presentation toyour choosing with many different layouts and fonts to choose from which meant that i could create a good looking presentation for my evaluations. It is simple and easy to use and i could not find any downsides about the program for the reason that i used it for.














Microsoft Word:
Microsoft Word is a word processor that allows you to write in an essay like format but can also be used for book writing. The program is simple and easy to use similar to Microsoft Powerpoint and has the same layout and formatting types meaning that it doesn't really have any negatives other than that the layout of the pages can look quite boring due to it only being a word processing program.


















Prezi:
Prezi is a free presentation software that allows the user to create a presentation for the topic of their choosing. It allows the user to zoom in and out and the around the presentation which gives the presentation a more interactive feel. It is fairly simple to use and has a quite a good amount of layouts and font types however there are some aspects to the program that are not as clear as some of the others especially if you choose to not use one of the pre made templates and start from fresh. Overall, the program allows a good choice of formats and allows you to create an interactive and entertaining PowerPoint for the topic of your choosing.