To ensure our film was accurate, we decided to research into some of the main features of the opening.
Schizophrenia- A person diagnosed with schizophrenia may experience hallucinations (most commonly hearing voices), delusions (often bizarre or persecutory in nature), and disorganized thinking and speech. The latter may range from loss of train of thought, to sentences only loosely connected in meaning, to incoherence known as word salad in severe cases. Social withdrawal, sloppiness of dress and hygiene, and loss of motivation and judgement are all common in schizophrenia. There is often an observable pattern of emotional difficulty, for example lack of responsiveness. Impairment in social cognition is associated with schizophrenia, as are symptoms of paranoia; social isolation commonly occurs. In one uncommon subtype, the person may be largely mute, remain motionless in bizarre postures, or exhibit purposeless agitation, all signs of catatonia. Late adolescence and early adulthood are peak periods for the onset of schizophrenia, critical years in a young adult's social and vocational development.
Child abandonment- Child abandonment is considered to be the leaving of a child on his or her own without any intention of returning to ensure their safety and well being. It is something that is considered to be among the most serious of offences a parent can commit in relation to their child. Child abandonment is normally discovered if a child or children are left alone for a long period of time and are observed to be behaving in a manner not normally befitting of their behaviour. This may include the children wandering around the area in which they live at peculiar times, asking others as to the whereabouts of their parent or indeed – as is often the case – children misbehaving or causing trouble in order to seek attention.
Homelessness- Causes of homelessness: Poverty, substance abuse, domestic violence, mental disorder, disability, lack of accessible healthcare.
Drug/substance abuse- Depending on the actual compound, drug abuse including alcohol may lead to health problems, social problems, morbidity, injuries, unprotected sex, violence, deaths, motor vehicle accidents, homicides, suicides, physical dependence or psychological addiction. Drug abuse, including alcohol and prescription drugs can induce symptomatology which resembles mental illness. This can occur both in the intoxicated state and also during the withdrawal state. In some cases these substance induced psychiatric disorders can persist long after detoxification, such as prolonged psychosis or depression after amphetamine or cocaine abuse. A protracted withdrawal syndrome can also occur with symptoms persisting for months after cessation of use. Benzodiazepines are the most notable drug for inducing prolonged withdrawal effects with symptoms sometimes persisting for years after cessation of use. Abuse of hallucinogens can trigger delusional and other psychotic phenomena long after cessation of use and cannabis may trigger panic attacks during intoxication and with use it may cause a state similar to dysthymia. Severe anxiety and depression are commonly induced by sustained alcohol abuse which in most cases abates with prolonged abstinence. Even moderate alcohol sustained use may increase anxiety and depression levels in some individuals. In most cases these drug induced psychiatric disorders fade away with prolonged abstinence.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
In the first frame you are introduced to the setting, the main character and the title of the film. The title of the film is Lola Grey and appears along side with the main character who is named Lola Grey. We chose the name Lola Grey as the characters name for several reasons; we chose the surname Grey as it suggests a gray and dark plot which is a ground convention of a thriller film. We chose Lola as it fits well with grey and isn't a particularly common name so therefore sticks in people's memories. We used a red tone for the lettering as it has connotations of anger and blood; conventions that are often in thriller films. We made it fairly translucent so that the title didn't draw away all of the attention away from the film. The title appears in the corner also for the reason as to not dominate the whole frame as it would cover the image of Lola. Also having the name appear alongside Lola lets the audience make a logical guess that this character is Lola.
The setting of our film is rural; the location was set in fields next to a railway and rustic farm barns. It is a run down place and can look quite fearsome. The barns are visible from the first frame so could be linked with Lola's flashbacks as she comes from that direction. Conventions that we used for our setting that link to thriller films are the frightening and daunting appearance that is given especially from these barns; thriller films don't have a particular setting as it is a vast genre so it would be difficult to generalise. However psychological films tend to have wide, isolated settings which is a convention clearly used in our film.
For the filming I played Lola Grey so therefore had to wear appropriate clothing. I wore dark, plain clothing so that it would continue the dull and desaturated theme. There isn't any focus on clothing regarding conventions for a thriller film, so the decisions were linked more towards the mis-en-scene. We wanted my appearance to look quite shocking to the audience and to appear as if I had fought in some kind of struggle, possibly with Lola's agressor. We made my clothing muddy to implicate this as well as using makeup to look as if I had been beaten. Ketchup was used over my hands and clothing to represent blood, however we were aware of the risk of it looking too unrealistic but we only mildly focused on it when filming.
For the long shot filming of me walking towards the camera (frames one, two and four) we used a tripod to steady the camera; it took many attempts to get the distance and zoom right as we found it difficult to control the speed at which the zoom would go in or out. Therefore we opted to do it manually than use the camera's zoom as it was jerky and too quick. The use of long shots allows the audience to study and make judgement of Lola and to why she's in the condition she is in. For the rest of the filming, including flashbacks and closeups outside, we filmed hand-held. It was mainly for the purpose of giving the audience a closer experience of Lola's emotions; the camera was shaky which reflected how Lola was fearful. This is a convention we used from psychological thriller films as it lets the audience look at the film as if they were there themselves. We used close-up shots of me outside towards the end of the film and also in the flashbacks. The close-ups give a contrasting effect to the long shots which are spacious and give the feeling of freedom compared to the closeups which are more confined. The close-ups allow the audience to acknowledge the details of my appearance, especially the dark eyes and poor condition. the sixth frame where I'm outside and rocking in a disturbed manner the audience are able to take in Lola's nervous actions. We followed the rules of thirds otherwise it would be too uncomfortable for our audience to watch, especially as Lola's behavior is distressing.
We used totally different settings for the flashbacks to make the clear difference of tenses distinguishable for the audience, the flashbacks are in a dark and enclosed setting; completely different to outside. Our plot is about Lola who develops schizophrenia which is about the mind and is therefore a convention of psychological films. The use of flashbacks in our opening also reflects elements about Lola's mind and confusion which we used especially to follow conventions to do with psychology.
We wanted to create a tense and depressing mood hence the dark setting and tonal range we used, we further enhanced the desaturated tones when editing using Premiere Elements Pro 7.
Overall we feel we have followed key conventions of both thriller and psychological films, they were helpful for us when making decisions and we used them for ideas towards our plot.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our character Lola Grey wasn't initially based on anyone, character or real life people but as we developed our plot we noticed that Lola shared similarities to other characters from psychological films.
The main character from the film 'Shutter Island' named Teddy Daniels has psychological problems which overtakes his life. This is what is similar to our character Lola as she also has psychological problems which dominate her life. However this is possibly the only shared link between the two characters as there are other major differences such as the time setting and location, ours is set in the present day, UK whereas 'Shutter Island
Our character, Lola is meant to be from the under class of British society, however she doesn't necessarily represent the social group of all under class people as she is under class through her unfortunate background. If it was for her drug taking she might have money, and if she had money she wouldn't have to commit theft or other crimes which result her to being an underclass. If anything she might represent a homeless social group as Lola is homeless and shares the same life style as many homeless people. Plus homeless people tend not to have chosen to be homeless, but have no way to get a way out of it.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Our production company consists of Sophy, Bethany and myself as we physically produced our film plus we were also assisted by members of our school's I.T team. A production company is a company that produces and releases a new piece of media, like we have done. The production company needs funding to be able to produce their new media and if they're a small company they will need to sell their media to a distributor.
We didn't have a specific budget for our filming as we used all of our own props and clothing and we used the filming equipment acquired from our media department. However is were to make the whole film then we would need a considerably large amount of money to produce it.
As we would be considered as a small production company we would have to sell our film to a film distributor. A distributor is responsible for releasing media to the public and in our case a film distributor would release the film to cinemas, television, DVD or similar places where you can view films. We wouldn't be able to this ourselves as we don't have the funds. Another popular film that used a film distributor was 'Paranormal Activity'. Their budget was only $15,000 and was produced using hand-held cameras and it was through Paramount Pictures that distributed their films. Other big film distributors include 20th Century Fox Film Co. Ltd., Warner Bros. Pictures, The Walt Disney Company Ltd. and Buena Vista International. However Paramount Pictures would probably be the most suitable distributor because they have distributed other films from the same genre as ours including 'Shutter Island'. Furthermore Sophy, Bethany and myself could be seen as distributors ourselves as we burned our film to a blank DVD and were able to show people our film.
However if we were serious about finding someone to distribute our film we might think of starting at a film festival by screening our film to the public for free. This would gain recognition by distribution companies who would hopefully want to distribute our film for profit.
We haven't used any names on our opening as they didn't fit in, but if we did complete the whole film we would need to include certain peoples. I researched who this would have to be:
cast and crew
film producers/ production company
film distributors
director
film name
sound producers.
Bearing this is mind it is clear that titles are used to give appropriate recognition for the various people involved in the film. If we were to complete our whole film then we would need to include titles as it would give us recognition and furthermore make us competitive in the current film market.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
Our demographic age range was 14-18 year old, mainly for the reason that we are in this age range so we could put our interests into consideration. We didn't feel confident enough to create an 18 certificate film as it would either have to be more dark or violent, something we felt we could better achieve on a smaller scale therefore aimed for a 15 age certificate. More than often people under 15 watch these films so that's why we aimed from 14+.
Older audiences are likely to watch our film too, however we felt that it would be easier to target our age group as we use different technologies more on average. Technologies including laptops and phones which open our opportunities to advertise our film.
How did you attract/address your audience?
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Before our main task we only used filming equipment once before when we did our preliminary task. Since this was such a smaller project I feel I have learnt a great deal more about the different technologies that are involved to create a film from the main task. Firstly I learnt more about handling the camera:
We used a Sanyo Xacti camera with a tripod, we used the tripod to make steady shots as when hand-held the picture was very shaky. We found that when we tried to zoom with the camera it only moved at one speed which was too quick for us.
After filming we then had to upload and edit our film on the computer, using Premier Elements 7.0 programme. When editing we had several difficulties, we felt premier elements wasn't a good enough programme as we had many set backs. To begin with we struggled uploading the film, it would crash therefore delay the progress we had made especially if we hadn't saved recently. The programme had a tendency of crashing throughout the whole editing progress which became quite frustrating as we didn't have any alternative equipment. Eventually we found as we deleted shots we didn't need, the programme didn't crash so often indicating that the film was too big for the programme at the start of the progress. However once we got past the stage of editing the sequence of the film we were able to add colour or a hue over the film.
In this print screen you can see some of the options we could choose from. We also had difficulty burning our film to a DVD for other people to watch our film. This was because the programme put our film into a format which isn't commonly recognised by other programmes. We also clumsily made the mistake of burning our disk to a CD, from this I certainly learnt that we needed to burn out film to DVD for it to play.
We used VLC to play our film with sound, this was one of the programmes that did play our film, we used it to show other people our film.
When we made graphs and storyboard we had to use paint to put them into the right format to put on to blogger, which we used to record our work. Originally we made our graphs using excel but we needed to save them on paint so we could upload them to blogger.
Other technologies we used were facebook to ask permission to use the soundtrack and youtube for our evaluation and to distribute to our audience.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?
I feel my knowledge on how to use the different technologies in particular have improved a lot since doing the preliminary task. Through the preliminary task we were able to experience difficulties that we could address for our main task whilst gaining basic understanding on how to use the cameras and other technologies.
For our preliminary task we had to include the 180 degree rule, shot reverse shot and match on action. Before the preliminary I didn't know about these terms so I gained knowledge of these different camera angles and why they're used.
I didn't feel I learnt enough through my preliminary task with how to use the camera so for the main task I wanted to gain more skills. So to do this I researched different camera angles and shots specifically known to be used in thriller and psychological films. I came to understand how the camera shots are able to help create a tense or claustrophobic atmosphere simply by being close up to something uncomfortable to look at.
I also hoped to develop my knowledge on using the editing programme, Premier Elements 7.0. In the preliminary task we focused mainly on learning how to cut and put the film in order whereas in the main task I wanted to focus more on sound. We learnt how to add non-diegetic sound on to our film and to fit it in with the timing. I also learnt how to add text and other techniques such as editing lighting which was useful particularly with out flashback shots which before hand were very dark and difficult to see.
The editing process started off quite easy, we knew what we wanted to achieve. As we progressed it became much more difficult - the software we used was very temperemental, it was very slow and kept crashing. We also had difficlty finding the tools we needed on the programme. In places we wanted more lighting than we've achieved, but we couldn't find a tool that did enough without losing quality. We also would've liked to make the film look to be of a higher quality, the picture quality isn't great and the zoom on the camera does not allow you to zoom gradually so it would've been good if we could edit that. We edited our film as best we could and we think it works quite well, considering this is only the second time we've filmed and edited.
We asked ten people to complete our questionnaire after watching our film to help us review our work. The people who completed the questionnaires ranged more in age than the people who we asked to complete our previous questionnaire; this was because we want to compare the different opinions of our target audience and extended target audience to see whether they’re similar. Thriller films tend to attract a wide audience so it felt appropriate to ask the opinions of different ages.
We also made sure we chose people whose answers wouldn’t be bias by answering the highest, just to be friendly, since we wanted accurate results to get a clear idea of the audience’s opinion.
Question 1. What is your gender?
Male Female
This basically allows us to understand whether there are any correlations with a certain sex with their other answers as sex tends to influence their opinions.
Question 2. What age range do you fall into?
Under 1414-1819-2526-3536+
As you can see we didn’t ask any under 14 year olds or any 26-35 years olds. It happened by chance that we didn’t ask any 26-35 year olds however as we managed to get the ages above and below it shouldn’t make much difference to our results as they’re reasonably close age groups. Our thriller film isn’t really appropriate for under 14 year old audience so therefore their opinions aren’t valid for our review which is why it doesn’t make any difference to our questionnaire results. The 14-18 year old age group are our main demographic which makes their opinion more important for our feedback. For this reason the 14-18 age group were the majority who answered our questionnaire. As previously said we wanted to know the opinions of a wider age range as despite having certain demographics for our film other audiences tend to watch thrillers also.
Age is an important influence on people’s opinion so for that reason too we wanted to make sure we asked more than just one age group
Question 3. With 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest, how well do you think the film meets the conventions of the thriller film?
1 2 3 4 5
The fundamental conventions of a Thriller films are intense and thrilling plot, often based around a single character; without these basic conventions our film couldn’t be called a psychological thriller. This question not only lets us know whether our film has met these conventions but also indicates people’s opinion on whether our film is successful or not. Most people answered 4 indicating that although the conventions weren’t noticeable the best they could have been, they were still strongly recognised by the viewers. However this is a reasonable response as we are only able to show two minutes of the beginning to a film so not much progress can be made. One person answered 2 which is disappointing and shows us that there’s certainly room for improvement. Bearing this in mind we asked in the final question what improvements could be made.
Question 4. How well do you think the film meets the sub-genre of psychological thriller?
1 2 3 4 5
For our film to meet the sub-genre of a psychological thriller we had to clearly show psychological elements that involved the character’s mind. We used flashed backs to do this and from our results this turned out very successful. Half put 4 and the other half put 5 which means that the character’s mental thoughts were recognised. Therefore we successfully achieved the psychological sub-genre.
Question 5. How would you rate the plot?
1 2 3 4 5
The plot is the main part of a film, so for it to be a successful opening, it must be a good plot.
For this question we used a scale of 1-5 for the respondents of the questionnaire to rate the plot. By doing this we get an insight of how good or bad the audience think the plot is. By looking at the chart we can see that there are mixed reviews about the plot, but the largest amount of people thought that the plot was good, giving it a 4 or 5.
Question 6. How well did the plot captivate you and make you want to keep watching?
1 2 3 4 5
By asking this question it allows us to see if our introduction was successful in engaging the audience’s attention. Our whole project is based around the plot. What is the point of the film if you don’t like the storyline?
From this feedback we can see that our plot worked well. We were given all 4’s and 5’s therefore the film fulfils its purpose.
Question 7. How would you rate the camera work?
Camera work was one of the things we decided needed to be better. Before our preliminary task we’d never seriously operated cameras before so it was a challenge.
This feedback clearly shows that our camera work is good, 4’s and 5’s show that it is better than average even.
Question 8. How would you rate the choice of setting?
The setting is a restriction we have, we can do it anywhere, but practically, it can only be within the Peterborough area. However the graph shows that our choice of setting was good. Some people think it could be better, but no one thought it was below satisfactory.
Question 9. How would you rate the film overall?
All 4’s and 5’s is an excellent result. There is room for improvement, but it shows all our viewers were happy. This also shows that we targeted the right audience.
Question 10. Is there anything you would improve?
This is an open ended question because we wanted individual people’s opinions.
Some answers given are:
“Build the viewer into the plot – they are left wondering a bit too much”
“Better setting?”
“Longer flashbacks, less transitions between”
“Be more descriptive about the plot t the viewer”
Other than these, we were told we didn’t need improvements. This is all helpful feedback. It’s clear we needed the plot to be more apparent, though we found this difficult as we were just doing the opening. In hindsight we also agree that the flashbacks aren’t long enough, making the transitions a bit too frequent.
Before filming we wanted to check the weather conditions as the weather is a vital part in setting a scene and mood. We wanted to film in bleak conditions for it creates a negative and dark setting which would be appropriate for a thriller film. It will hopefully make the film more tense which is a main concept of thriller films.
This was the weather forcast when we filmed on the Sunday, however despite it showing sunny conditions the weather when we filmed was rainy and miserable. We wanted to film during the day as we wanted it to be light enough so that the filming wasn't too dark like on our preliminary task. We also liked the de-saturated effect it gave to the filming as it made it look more grim. It was also very windy which added effect to the girl looking messy and dirty.
In our outside shots we want to use the wind symbolically; we want the inside shots which are close and claustrophobic to contrast with the windy outside shots so that it feels like a breath of fresh air. This will hopefully help to make it obvious that she's escaped.
Preparation
We wanted Lola to look dirty and beaten so we used makeup to create these affects. Blackened eyes give the perception that Lola is drained of energy or has been beaten which we want to be acknowledged by the audience so they can guess the possible plot. We used different hair products such as serum to make my hair look greasy; Lola would need to look dirty as if she’s been captured for a while and not washed.
We smudged the mascara around my eyes and down my face so it would look like Lola had been crying in a possible struggle with her capturer, this again was something we hoped the audience would pick up on and think might have happened.
I wore some old clothes knowing that I would be getting them muddy plus we wanted Lola to look quite urban; therefore I wore plain tight jeans and a graphic plain top with a leather jacket. Using plain toned clothing meant that the clothes wouldn't stand out too much keeping the audience’s attention focused on the acting rather than the clothing.
The easiest way to make me dirty was to simply cover myself in mud. In the plot Lola has escaped in this muddy setting so to make it realistic she would have struggled around in the mud. She would also have gotten grazed or bloody whilst escaping so we used tomato ketchup on my clothes and hands to act as blood. We used tomato ketchup as it a vivid red against the dull setting and tones of my clothing. The blood could imply a violent struggle to the audience and keeps them guessing what has happened.
These pictures of the location were taken before filming; we took them when it was dark to show the eerie feel that is created. We wanted an eerie setting as Thrillers are tense and uncomfortable to watch. However when we uploaded these pictures it was too dark for our project to be filmed as it is barely visible. It is a clear setting with nobody around (apart from some horses which wouldn’t be included in our shots anyway) which adds to the loney, eerie atmosphere.
It’s not a very clear picture but it shows a barn which is the nearest building to where we’ll be filming. It is quite a frightening looking building as it is rusty and run down giving the impression that it isn’t looked after. Thriller films often use run down or empty places as they’re deserted and don’t attract people’s attention. As it will be visible in our film it gives the audience a place to link to with Lola being captured and believe that Lola was captured in this building. However because it’s not accessible to us we weren’t actually able to film the flash back from inside the barn, plus lighting might not have been efficient.
This is another barn that will be included in our shots adding to the rural features of the location. This barn looks less ran down that the other one and therefore doesn’t look as creepy. Because of this we chose to include a closer view of the other barn so that the audience could link to this one more.
This genre is a sub-genre of thriller, but sometimes incorporates elements from mystery and drama as well as the typical traits of the thriller. It also occasionally touches on the horror genre.
When a psychological thriller is combined with a horror, it is very often based on fears, guilt, and beliefs. It is more about normal human beings rather than monsters and gore, like in a horror. It tends to be more subtle than a traditional horror with less physical violence than a horror and aims to mentally affect the audience.
A psychological thriller refers to films that employ a scenario in which characters must use their minds, not their bodies, to survive some manner of life-threatening conflict. A good psychological thriller must contain a chase, or ‘cat-and-mouse game’. To be considered a psychological thriller and not a horror the chaser and the chased must be around equal stature, to eliminate the threat of violence.
There are a host of different ways in which psychological trauma can be leveraged, but if it's to be used properly, it needs to involve more than just a brutal decision making process (which is essentially what the 'Saw' franchise boils down to minus the gore). The filmmaker needs to push a character until they begin to doubt their own grip on reality.
A few scary scenes are fine, but the lasting scars of a psychological thriller tend to follow when a character does finally lose their grip reality.
Mis-en-scene
Our aim was to create an eerie, dark scene which had an aire of mystery. In order to achieve this, we decided to film on a day with a little sunshine, so that we could still have a clear picture, but on a day with a little cloud so there was not too much colour. Typically thriller films have very de-saturated colouring so we wanted to show this as much as possible, we also edited it to make the colours greyer.
We picked a windy day to film so that our actress' hair would blow in the wind. Wind adds to the mood because it makes it seem colder, coldness is associated with unhappiness and fear. It also adds to the aire of mystery.
Our setting is a farm track by a building that stores farm
