Final - Dirty Little Secret

Jonno Megan Ben Lishia prelim

Question 7 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to your final product?

From the start of the year to now we have come a long way from our preliminary short over the past few months. Although we managed to film and editing within two lessons for our Prelim, we spent a great deal making sure we had done all the research that was required for us to develop on our ideas on our Opening Sequence. We have definitely come along way since our 30 second Prelim. Our targets were met from our Prelim to our Opening Sequence, we were all quiet on set (this was easily done and controlled well). The other task was acting continuity, which as shown in our video of Dirty Little Secret, there was nothing different in the way the actors talked or acted. Third and finally the last target was experiment more with lighting and camera angles, this will be demonstrated as I progress further into this answer.

Lighting...

The Preliminary task was filming in our tutors office, we used the natural light coming in through the window and had no artificial light on set. No reflectors were used on set either during the filming as we wanted to create a realistic environment so it would seem believable to the audience. The opening sequence of Dirty Little Secret was a lot more complicated than that, as we had to film our entire sequence in the TV Studio and convince the audience that we are not in a college buildings studio. This meant careful planning on what light was appropriate for a Film Noir styled film. We wanted to keep it low key, so playing around with the lights was crucial with creating certain shadows on objects or the actors. Each shot we used 3 different lights, make sure we put them on at an angle at the actors faces so it would highlight key aspects of that persons face. We wanted our opening sequence to look more 'arty' than realistic like our short Prelim. I think we really achieved this and allowed us to be more creative with our lighting and effects.


Camera Angles...

The Preliminary task we stuck to the camera basics which was shot reverse shot (which is a reoccurring theme in our opening sequence as well), Close ups of specific peoples faces and Match on Action shots and the occasional use of panning. We kept it plain and simple to give the aspect of two people talking in an office scenario. We took all our knowledge from the prelim task and recreated them within our interrogation scene, which we used similar shots but added some more challenging shots to compliment the simple shots we decided to put in too break up the scene a little was an Aerial shot of the two detective talking, we did this bad standing on a step ladder and free hand film the scene for a few second. This was really effective and more experimental than previous shots, which helped boost the cinematography overall. We decided to be less shy with close ups and do more extreme close ups of the detectives smoking to pull away from the typical shot reverse shot technique. Another few shots we used were mid/wide shots, to show the audience more of the detectives surroundings and create my black space around certain characters to create the aura of enigma. 


Correcting Noise...
So we had problems during editing because of noise from off the frame was notice-able. We worked around this but was really hard editing around it or changing the noise/voice recordings over. The opening Sequence for Dirty Little Secret was a lot better for us because we didn't have any distraction noises in the background that we had to correct. The only thing we had to do was the sound was drag it too fit around the cuts we made I.E sound from one clip going on to another clip, on purpose not by accident. Then once we made sure the sound and speech was all to our liking, we made sure that some of the quieter parts of speech were made loud so the audience can hear what they are saying and that the voices don't go out of key/loudness.


Continuity...
Every film will have at least one continuity failure in, with our Prelim it was the acting which didn't match and didn't remain consistent. This made it hard to edit around and caused frustration, so when we began filming our opening sequence we made sure to check over and over again just incase we made any continuity mistakes. Other than one mistake which we resolved by clever editing, it was a lot smoother process than the Prelim, and we pushed ourselves not to make any serious mistakes which could make the opening sequence less dramatic and bring the viewer away from what they should be watch. Overall I am quite pleased with our final outcome.

The preliminary activity brought a lot of mistake to the surface, but made us realize what to look out for and make sure we don't make the same mistakes twice. The Opening Sequence allowed us to experiment more with lighting, camera angles...etc. I'm glad we didn't edit or morph the footage of the prelim, because it allowed us to to try out a mixture of different style with our Opening Sequence footage, where we played around with the contrast and brightness to the desaturation and colour tools. I feel me and my group have made great progress in completing our short sequence Dirty Little Secret as we got to explore bigger technologies (Cannon XF 305 Cameras compared to the smaller handheld ones) and got us more involved as a group with decision making. 

Question 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Technologies Throughout our Project
Making this opening sequence allowed us to experiment with a lot of different technologies. One of the first things we started with was creating this blog, using the website blogger. I was used to using other blogging sites such as Tumblr...etc. But Blogger was a completely new experience, it allowed me to blog my work easily and quickly although putting images within the blog was a little hassle, overall it was quite simple to use to document my work.


The actual filming of the project, we used the TV Studio camera (Canon XF 305), the camera's were easy to use, the ones provided to us in the studio. They were full HD and we could easily zoom in using the special remote on the tripod. These were all quite brand new camera's, different to the ones we used for our A2 music video (as I have done AS/A2 in one year). After we had shot all our footage we transferred it to the computer and then transferred the data through a hard drive to a computer where we could start editing our footage together.


Majority of the time we were in the editing suites using an editing software called Adobe Premier. We cut all the clips we needed and made sure we fitted them right on the time line. I had already used Final Cut Pro so I kind of knew how to cut clips and fiddle around with them putting them into order. After we had the basic draft of our opening sequence in order, we experimented around with effects, the one we used all the was through our footage was the desaturation filter to make in black and white (to create an authentic Film Noir Style feel). After this we decided to create a more atmospheric effect, we increased the intensity of the brightness and the contrast, to create more strong contrasting shadows. When all the effects were done we then turned to the sound, which we had to change the vulume of the speaking voices in some clips and put non diegetic music for our opening sequence. For the last week of editing, we had a dilemma of not being able to use the computer because they were over booked, so we then had to transfer over all our date onto my laptop and edit half the sequence through a downloaded trial of Adobe Premier.


Once we had finally finished the filming and editing stages, so after more blog posts we are now uploading it to Youtube, one of the biggest video hosting websites on the internet, this was a simple progress, and then putting the embedded code on the final blog post.

Question 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

1. What are your initial thoughts on our opening sequence?

"I thought it was really tense and atmospheric. I really liked the music, it made me want to watch the rest of it."

2. Does it remind you of any films you've already seen?

"It was really reminiscent of classic film noirs, I think the femme fatale character is a lot like the ones in Neo-Noir films."

3. How did the opening make you feel? 

"It made me feel quite intrigued, I wanted to find out what happened in the rest of the film."

4. If the film was released, would you go an see it based on our opening sequence?

"Yes definitely!"

Question 4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?

Personal Profile - Liam Crosbie
Name: Liam John Diagoro Crosbie
Age: 26
Location: London, Swiss Cottage
Occupation: Bartender/Script Writer
Likes/Dislikes/Hobbies: Script Writing, Film making, Going Cinema.
Doesn't like films that don't have a good plot.
What films they like: Crime/Action/World Cinema
40s Cinema - Film Noir and Gangsta
What TV Programs they watch: Torchwood, The Sopranos, Animated
What music they listen too: The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Juliette Lewis...


Why would this film appeal to them?
Our film invites a range of people with all different likes and dislikes towards the film industry. This person is a mature adult who diverse's himself in script writing and associates himself with the crime/action genre. He respects and acknowledges a variety of different films and also has the keen eye for older films from the 40s. Our film is a mixture of the old style Film Noir with the new so trying to put it back on the map so younger generations can experience what their grandparents endured as they grew up. We created a Neo-Noir but followed the basic conventions to make it fit into the bracket. Liam would be attracted to the idea of enigma we introduce from our opening sequence as he likes a good mystery plot that doesn't give much away.

Question 3 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

What is a production company?
A production company is what provides the basic platform for films and other media. They provide the funding and equipment to help the project become complete. Our company we made is called Demi-Monde Productions we played around with different things but this related to the type of film we were making. Demi-Monde means a small isolated place, usually the 'underworld' type of city where criminals and the marginal all congregate. Our made up production company specializes in Film Noir and Neo Noir styled films, that is self funded by Movie Stars to help promote old movies and get younger generations emerged into old style film making, but attract it by making it so that teenagers can also respect this certain type of cinema.


What is a distribution company?

A distribution company sells the rights to Cinemas, Television Channels, Retailers...etc so that a film or type of media can get seen by the public. Their job is to make sure they distribute it too the right people in places where it will be noticed and seen. The distribution company might give it to the cinema, and ask for a certain percentage of a ticket payed by a customer. The bigger the film and distribution company, the bigger the release of the film. A major company, will get it distributed across the world, too many top cinemas I.E Odeon or Television Companies such as Sky (Movie Channels). Smaller Independent companies are for the smaller budgeted films, so these will be distributed to smaller cinema's more along the Art house type and not Big named ones. Then at some point the film could make it's way on the TV channel Film Four. Our Company Black and White Pictures is a small independent distributors to help get small budget films into Small Arthouse Cinemas and also available on sites like I Tunes, Love Film and Netflix. It main form of advertisement is using Viral Marketing, using Facebook and Twitter to help younger generations get more involved with smaller budget films.


Where would funding come from for your film?
As the UK Film Council has been forced to shut down, smaller budgeted films may never see the light of day. Most of the funding would come from Actors who want to help younger film makers in kick starting there career, or members of our group working on bigger projects to help fund our smaller film (Actors such as Gary Oldman have done this to fund own films, Nil By Mouth). Other funding could come from Film Four which shows movies from all different parts of the world and all types of budgets, so looking for funding from them could be a good help if we shared the rights and allowed them to screen our film on their television channel.


Some Film Four Funded Films...

• Trainspotting
• The Iron Lady
• Sexy Beast
• Slumdog Millionaire
• This Is England

Order of Titles that appear in our Opening Sequence

• Black and White Pictures - Our distribution comes first as they are the ones who have helped promote and distribute our film in all the right locations and done their research on what areas and who would view this film.
• Demi-Monde Productions - Our production team that helped find the funds and equipment so we could actually make our film.
• Highest Billing Actor - The star of the film and the lead role. 
• Other billing Actors - The rest of the main cast will now be mentioned until the next series of titles, no extras, just other key actors who aren't in a lead role.
• Script Writer - The one who has wrote the script for the film now comes after all the actors, they are the ones that brought the script to the table.
• Title of Film - Reminding the viewers of the title of the film, usually comes in around here.
• Sound and Editing - The people that pieced all the film together to bring it as a whole.
• Director - The director will come last, the one who directed the film and had complete control of how the film looked and what went on in Pre/Post Production and during the filming.