PT 1 - CCR

Preliminary Task: CCR Questions

Question 1:

How does our product USE or CHALLENGE conventions?

There is an inciting crime indicative of a 'master villain'. The aim is to create a clear moment, in the short amount of time, when the antagonist knows they cannot go back to the original state of what things were as his internal struggle escalates and his mental stability starts to decline. 

The antagonist's initial strategy to outmaneuver the protagonist fails. In this case, it is the repetition of getting consistently low grades while the other main character (Carol) continues to get higher grades. The protagonist discovers and understands the antagonist's external object of desire, being the good grades, and finds out that this is what he wants. 

Our project uses the convention that the protagonist becomes the victim, and in the chase scene, it is revealed that the antagonist becomes the primary victim. The core event of the thriller is when the 'good guy' is at the mercy of the villain, and this is illustrated at the end of the chase scene when Kevin (the 'villain' in this scenario) knocks out Carol (the 'good guy' and victim).

A main convention of the thriller genre is the use of low-key lighting to create an eerie and unsettling vibe. We have challenged this convention as we have used natural lighting during the majority of the scenes where we have used and modified the natural light at the location of the shoot. This makes the scene a little bit more unsettling, as usually low-key lighting to enhance the shadows on a person's face, e.g. in Shutter Island as seen on the poster, the effect on Leo's face has been created by the use of low-key lighting.

Our project leans more in the direction of 'Bloody Sunday' (2002), where it is mainly focused on the aspects of war and the drama associated with it. It uses natural lighting rather than low key lighting. The use of this creates an effect that is mostly unexpected as usually one would expect lights to dim or for there to be a more intense build-up before the dramatics of the scene come into play. The reason for this is that is makes the characters more unassuming and the audience to not expect this, which can link to Hitchcock's theory of surprise versus suspense. The audience will be more in a state of surprise rather than suspense as there is less of a build up coming to the main event.

  

Our project incorporates the use of quick changes of camera angles and cuts in between scenes, which is a common convention of a thriller. This adds to the suspense building up, specifically in the chase scene where it cuts from Kevin's feet walking swiftly to an unsuspecting Carol. We also use close ups and extreme close ups of Kevin's face to show his focus and hint at what his motive is, in this case, revenge on the protagonist.

We also make use of shadows and mirrors which is important as it sets the mood and tone of the scene and easily builds up the tension quickly. They clearly illustrate who the bad guy is and creates the switching effect as to what is safe and what is unsafe. This, coupled with the switching camera shots, creates an element of danger and suspense that usually comes with a thriller.

The music used will create an eerie and unsettling feel and is used to further continue the building up of suspense and tension. For example, the shark music used in 'Jaws'. It will start off slow in pace, then slowly build up to make the shots more dramatic for the audience. I think this will be effective in making the scenes more dramatic and help resemble that of a thriller film.

Iconography that relates to the thriller genre that is used is blood. After Carol is chased and pushed over, the next shot shows her with blood on her face from the fall. This helps create a more threatening and dangerous perspective of the antagonist (Kevin) and makes him come across as the one who is in control of the situation and that Carol is helpless as Kevin succeeds in achieving his goal. Once again, shadows and silhouettes used add a sense of mystery and a looming threat on the horizon and this iconography is used in the short film.

Question 3:

Personally, I think my production skills have improved considerably since starting Media Studies. During pre-production, I was assigned the roles of location recce, weather check, film schedules, and call-sheets.

The location was a fairly simple aspect of filming, it was just the time of filming that was slightly difficult to adjust to, as we had to sort out how to do so without anyone's schedules interrupting, and ensuring random students did not interfere with filming. I enjoyed making the slides (similar to that of the moodboard) to illustrate the setting of each location and what aspects would be included in the shots.

The film schedules were probably a bit unrealistic as we had to delay the dates for filming, partially due to our group wanting to have Kevin as an actor for our film, which meant we had to wait for the other group to get their filming done first before we could have him join us. Also, we didn't expect the setting up of the cameras, lights etc., as well as the reshoots we had to do to get the shot we wanted, to take so long. It took much longer than expected, and this caused further delays in our project.

Furthermore, on days we planned on filming, the weather was predicted to rain on the days we planned to shoot outside, so we had to further change the schedule to adapt to these changes.

Overall, the week in which all of this happened was very difficult and challenging, but the group persevered despite the challenges, and we are getting excellent results for our first rough draft.

As the lighting fleccie, I assisted with white balance. However, after reviewing our footage, we realised that the lighting fleccie, as well as the camera equipment, was in the background of some shots, so we had to reshoot some scenes.

During post-production, I had several troubles with the computer I was editing on. The shots weren't processing and were lagging, as well as when I played my progress, it would lag or only play audio with no visuals. I moved computers and had some people help with the technical side of things, but the problems still persisted, making it very hard to see what progress I had made and how effective my editing made the film more suspenseful and resembled that of a thriller.

However, despite these struggles, it was very fun and interesting adding in sound effects from youtube and effects in premiere pro. It was very encouraging seeing everything come together after all the trouble we went through. I thoroughly enjoyed putting everything together and this has given me a further understanding of how producers and screenplay writers create films and movies and the process of how it is done. 

After showing my rough edit to peers, and going through it a couple more times, I was given some encouraging feedback:

Peer feedback:

Kevin gave me the idea to add in an eerie creaking sound effect of the door opening and closing during the bathroom scene. I chose to go along with this, as it adds in an element of suspense that portrays that of a thriller genre.

Despite this, for the final edit I intend on fading this sound effect sooner (Feedback given by Teacher Bianca). It lingers too long and I'm not happy with how this effect turned out.

Porcia gave the response that I could add a bit more suspense to the beginning of the music when the title appears on screen. However, I have made the decision to disregard this as I like the music how it is. Additionally, changing the music would interfere with the soundtrack for the rest of the film and this would have to change entirely as it is from the same audio feed,

Many people who viewed my short film agreed that they liked my transitions throughout the video and how it switched between black and white, which is representative of the past failures, and the original colour, which illustrates his current reality.

There is one part which I believe needs to be re-edited which is the scene where Kevin pushes over Carol, successfully taking out his target. The transition here is messy and I don't like how it turned out as much as I thought it would.

Teacher Feedback:

Once I posted it on youtube, Teacher Bianca gave further advice and feedback. She suggested moving the title alignment to center it, as it currently looks a bit empty with the black background. I agree with her on this, and will add this update in my final edit.

Additionally, as mentioned earlier, Teacher Bianca said to cut the door creaking sound effect earlier, which I have done prior to posting it on youtube.

Question 4:

This was the original video I used to decide which after effects I wanted to use and experiment with. It provided detail and simple yet effective explanations on how to quickly apply the desired affect.

As seen in another post of mine, I researched quick videos that explained what effect effectively. For example, this video on how to apply the vignette effect was really useful. However, when I came to applying this in adobe after effects, I realised that this was done in premiere pro, so I used the next video shown to show me how to do it in after effects.

In order to embed the videos into my blog post, I used this converter:

https://yt1s.com/youtube-to-mp3/en2

The camera used was a Sony XD Camera provided by the school, as well as the sound and lighting gear. We spent two days learning the rocks and ropes of how to set everything up and how to use the equipment. It was fairly simple to learn to use the gear, but there are still things that could be improved, such as being aware of empty space in the shot. (For the classroom scene, there is too much empty space at the top, where it rather should be focused more on the students and lower half of the classroom.

                                                         

All the editing done was within the app 'Premiere Pro'. This is where the transitions of graphics and audio were done, as well as any effects, editing, and assembly done. This was somewhat hard to use as my computer kept lagging and glitching when I tried to edit. However, it was very interesting and fun seeing how things got put together and how adding in effects and soundtracks can completely change your perspective on the film.

Adding in after effects was done with 'Adobe After Effects', as shown below. Here is where I added in the vignette effect to direct the distribution of light and therefore the viewer's eyeline to focus in on Kevin's movement. Using simple tutorials from youtube, I learnt how to make an adjustment layer, edit this layer, and how to incorporate the desired after effect into premiere pro from adobe after effects.