Bitter Youth

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)

Title: Bitter Youth

The title of the film 'Bitter Youth' is symbolic of how his childhood was bitter and he was never treated equally to those around him. The troubles of his youth have been carried over into his adulthood and will be present for the rest of his life. This sends the message to the audience that everything has an effect on you. The title represents the film well as it sends a message to the audience that it will not be a storyline filled with light-hearted characters. The plot consists of a bitter character who is trailing his emotions along with him and every action he takes. The title is presented in black on a black and white shot. This fits with the genre of Psychological Thriller as it creates confusion as it is not a bright and natural colour.

Setting and Location: We set our film in a church and in a basement. These are both settings which fit with the typical conventions of a psychological thriller film as they are vulnerable and eerie feeling locations. We used the basement as the ‘stalker’s’ place to collect all his images of Sammie, the girl he stalks. This is a private location in his home where nobody would choose to look, this connotes his love which has been undiscovered by anyone else but him as it is underground. The church is used to symbolise Sammie’s purity as she is dedicated to god. The location of this shot is in a basement which is in his house. This makes the relationship between the stalker and his board of photos and his time with 'Sammie' intimate. The mise-en-scene in this shot is filled with cardboard boxes which are suggested to be filled with other images that the stalker has taken. This adds to the genre of Psychological Thriller as it makes the viewer question what they are seeing which creates confusion.

Costume and Props: Sammie wore a dark coloured coat and trousers contrasting with a pastel coloured top to symbolise how the core of her was pure but her stalker was corrupting the outside of her by becoming possessive and stalking her.

The stalker wore a baggy black t-shirt, trainers and jeans to symbolise how he wanted to cover himself up and remain unnoticed so ensure that he would not be suspected of stalking Sammie. The dark coloured clothing represented his dark and obsessive personality.

The naturalistic clothing shows how normal the stalker attempts to feel around Sammie however this is contradicted by the soul purpose of his stalking.

We used a board covered in photos of Sammie to clearly represent that she was being stalked. We used a Polaroid photo which the stalker shook to symbolise how he was shaking Sammie’s life and recreating it to what he wanted it to be through his own eyes.
The sun was setting in this scene which darkened the shot. This left it looking like some colouring had been drawn out of the shot however it continued to look natural. This links to the conventions of a Psychological Thriller as it is natural but is used to the it's advantage in the shot.

Camerawork and editing: We used a Cannon 300D camera, a tripod and an apple mac computer to film and edit our opening sequence. When filming in the church we didn't not use a tripod as we wanted it to be like the eye view of the stalker. We decided that it would create a more naturalistic view from the audience if we allowed the camera to move with the camera person. When filming in the basement we used a tripod in contrast to the corrupted mind of the stalker and how normal he looked when being shown from a distance. We used a variety of shots, including an over the shoulder shot to compare with how the stalker would look if he was being followed. 

We used an apple mac to edit our film together using the iMovie application. This allowed us to experiment with various effects and titles. These are shown in other frames we have used. We liked the idea used in the film 'One Hour Photo' with the stalker stood infront of his wall of photos with his back to the camera. We used this idea but changed it to an over the shoulder shot from behind the character.
The close ups we used in our opening sequence, particularly in this shot are commonly used in  psychological thriller films. For example, Momento, uses close ups in the opening sequence which is where we took our inspiration from for some of the camera work we used.

Title font and Style: We used a plain, standard font to symbolise the simplicity of Sammie’s life. This paired with the black and white colours used connoted the contrasting lives of Sammie and her stalker. The black represented the dark and corrupted life of the stalker and the white represented the pure and innocent life of Sammie.  The title is dragged across the screen on the talkers hand. This represents how he drags his feelings for Sammie and his obsession over her into everything that he does.

Story and how the opening sets it up: The story we chose for our film would be that the stalker would have known Sammie since they were children, however they had grown apart. The stalker kills everyone around Sammie in attempt to gain a closer friendship with her again when her loved ones die. The opening sets this up as it shows the stalker following her wherever she goes and also covering a board with photos of her from various points throughout her life. The church is also symbolic of this as there is a graveyard outside, where they will return to at various points throughout the film as each friend of Sammie dies.

We used a low angle shot to define the film as being about a stalker and how a girl if being followed by someone. The non-naturalistic heights for a person to be watching someone from a low angle which shows his strong obsession as he is willing to lower himself to be around her.

Genre and how the opening suggests it: The opening suggests the genre as the music builds tension but also misleads the viewer. The diegetic music in the church endorses calmness which builds confusion as it contrasts with the negative plot. The confined settings in which we filmed our opening sequence represented the confined mind of a mentally unstable person, alike the stalker. These all suggest the genre as a psychological thriller creates confusion and builds tension without attempting to mimic a horror movie.

The black and white shots in the opening sequence automatically draw the audience in as they are contrasting to the naturalistic film they would usually watch. The typical psychological conventions aim to confuse the audience which is what we wanted to develop when changing the colour and speed of some shots.

How characters are introduced: Sammie is introduced when she walks into the church; this immediately creates an innocent, caring person as she is dedicated to god. This also suggests that she is reliable as she showcases her commitment to something.

The stalker is introduced through an extreme close up of his eye. This immediately suggests that he is going to be at the forefront of the plot as he is shown in an intimate view. As the stalker is shown from various angles in his basement, the audience are shown that from all angles, he is completely dedicated and obsessed with Sammie as he doesn’t remove himself from concentrating on her throughout the opening sequence. The gap in the doorway to where Sammie is sat represents how the stalker is only an onlooker on her life and not directly involved with her. The close proximity to her is symbolic of their close friendship in their childhood which had been pulled apart as they entered their teenage years. The mise-en-scene in this shot contains a typical church. This worked in our favour because a film in the Psychological Thriller genre typically has a setting which the viewer can relate to or that is believable to them but have something abnormal occurring in it.

 Special Effects: We used special effects in our opening to add to our genre of a Psychological Thriller. We used transitions between each shot to allow the sequence to be more aesthetically pleasing which means that the viewer will want to watch the entire film. We used stop motion for our final credit of who directed the sequence. We used a Vignette effect on the sequence to create an eerie feeling. This brought back the non-naturalistc feel of the sequence as some parts have their colour removed to represent the stalkers mind. He was deprived of feeling and happiness when he was young which has been brought into his adulthood. Alike the colour being washed out of some shots. The corners of the shot were turned black when we used this effect, this symbolised the dark circle the stalker wraps around Sammie who is represented by the paler centre, throughout the film. The use of newspaper cuttings for letters in this shot is used to create a threatening feel towards the audience, as if they are being watched also and brought into the film. This is a convention of the Psychological Thriller genre as it indirectly involves the viewer.
Our inspiration for this special effect came from the film Se7en, where in the video link at 2 minutes it shows a word being removed from a bank note. We took a more non-naturalistic approach with this and used stop motion using the entire screen with a clutter use of the mise-en-scene and simply varied black and white lighting.

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

3) What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?

Our film would not be played on TV on channels such as Film 4 or on the BBC as it is not well known like it would need to be, to be played and have enough people watch it as the other films shown on those channels. 

The London Film Festival screens up and coming new films which have been professionally made using a full production team. This does not include us as we used an SLR camera and simple tripod with 3 people in our creative team to film and edit the opening sequence. For 2/3 of us it was also our first time creating an opening sequence for a film so we are not as experience as the other film creators who have their work shown at the London film festival.
Link to the London Film Festival: http://www.bfi.org.uk/lff

My local cinema is the Odeon in Guildford. As this is part of a chain of cinemas it only shows major new films that are shown all around the UK. For example, they are currently showing

Home Alone,

Life of Pi, 

Nativity 2,

Pitch Perfect, 

Rise of the Guardians, 

Seven Psychopaths, 

Skyfall,

The Hobbit,

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2,

The Wedding Video, 

Tinker Bell And The Secret Of The Wings

which are all well known, new films. Our film would be an amateur, low budget film targeted at people who enjoy watching films of the Psychological Thriller genre and would go and watch films alike ours often. For these reasons, our film would not be suitable to be played in my local cinema.

As psychological thriller films are not as common as comedies or rom-coms this makes it more difficult for them to be successful, therefore I don’t personally believe Bitter Youth would be appropriate to be targeted to show in local cinemas as the competition would be too strong for it to be successful. I believe that film festivals would be a common place for psychological thriller films to be shown as they will be viewed by many film critiques who will give honest and useful feedback on it.

I think that Bitter Youth would be shown at the British International Amateur Film Festival as it specialises in the type of film we have made (amateur). We would join the South Eat region of the organisation as that is where we are based but also near to London where there is a greater population that various other regions available. This film festival also would showcase our work to many people in the industry inside and outside the UK which would increase the amount of people who view our film.

Link to the British International Amateur Film Festival: http://www.theiac.org.uk/index.html

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our film certificate is age 15 so I asked a member of our target audience a few questions to find out whether I thought they would watch our film or not.

Name: Sophie Warren

Age: 17

About me: I am in sixth form studying PE, psychology and media studies. I enjoy going to the theatre but I also like to watch new and independent films that other people may not even take notice of. I love series dramas on TV. Sherlock was one of my favourites as it follows how his mind works through solving things. I personally love any music as I don’t like to confine myself to one genre or artist.

Preferred genre of film: Psychological Thriller/Thriller/Horror

Where would you go to see an amateur psychological thriller film? I would go to a film festival most likely as I would then be able to see various new films. This would allow me to find out if there were any particular films that I would not otherwise have seen if I was only to watch those which are out in the cinema. I like watching films other people may have not seen or that may not be as well-known because they are no expectations for them so I can have my own opinion without it being abused.

Sophie Warren would watch our film as it is one of her preferred genres of film. We would target our film to be shown at film festivals which is where she would go to watch a film alike ours. She also fits into our target audience so she would be a perfect viewer for our film.

The age rating film certificate we gave to this film is age 15. " Nobody younger than 15 can rent or buy a 15-rated VHS, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, UMD or game, or watch a film in the cinema with this rating. Films under this category can contain adult themes, hard drugs, frequent strong language and limited use of very strong language, strong violence and strong sex references, and nudity without graphic detail. Sexual activity may be portrayed but without any strong detail. Sexual violence may be shown if discreet and justified by context." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Board_of_Film_Classification
This allows us to have content which may not be appropriate for those below 15 years of age but is not too violent or offputting that we have to give it an aged 18 certificate. We wanted our film to be viewable to people as young as possible without having to let the film suffer as it didnt have the content it 'should' due to it being innapropriate therefore we set our film rating at age 15.

5) How did you attract/address your audience?

We addressed our audience by researching what age range we would want to target our film at and created out plot according to them. We used characters in our target age range to make it relatable to them as our stalker was aged 16 but played the age of an 19 year old. This was the same for Sammie as they were in the same year at school. Both of these ages are within our chosen age range as we have targeted our film at people aged 15-30. We used research from our target audience to decide what we wanted our storyline to be. We asked questions such as: 

What is the best Psycho-Thriller you have seen? so that we could use some of the conventions that they had used in our sequence so that our film would appeal to our target audience. 

What do you look for in a good film? So that we could decide which areas to focus on most as opposed to choosing for ourselves what we liked in our film. This allowed us to create an opening sequence for a film in our genre which would appeal to our entire target market.

What is your favourite genre? We asked this question after we chose our genre so that we could add elements from other genre's into our Psychological Thriller genre so that it would not only appeal to people who enjoy watching films in our chosen genre but also bring in viewers from other genres.

We uploaded our opening sequence to youtube so that we could get feedback from people in our target market. We wanted to know what people in our target market thought so we posted the link to our social networking sites and here are the responses we had:

"Love this! I want to see the rest of it... The camera angles are so artistic. There are some really dark and emotional shots. The editing was done very well too." - Eilidh Gill, aged 16
"Wow, very dark and interestingly shot. Great work :)" - Iman Osman
"This is fab! You have the iconography to a t with the grave yard and church settings. Especially liked the point of view shots and the choice of props ; the photo's of the girl, think your narrative and genre are easy to identify, great job!" - Madeline Philpott, aged 15

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

 

We used a Cannon 500D camera to film our opening sequence. We also used a tripod and apple mac computer. The camera we used was of a high resolution which meant that our footage was clear and left the final product looking more professional. I learnt how to use the camera when I was taking trail shots on location. For example, we took numerous shots outside the church of Sammie walking past in an attempt to find the most aesthetically pleasing angle we could. We chose to use a large amount of handheld camera work which meant that we had to ensure that we would not keep the camera still as we wanted it to resemble the eye view of the stalker. We had difficulty in finding a happy-medium between a shot that looked like it was from the eye view of a person and having it too shaky. We worked around this by ensuring that the footage was clear when we looked back at it.

We used iMovie on an apple mac to edit our opening sequence. We also used garage band to edit the sound we used. We had various problems when we were trying to edit and overcame them by watching YouTube videos to learn how to use iMovie more smoothly. For example, we found that any piece of film had to be the same length of time or more as the transition after it in order for it to work.

7) Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

When creating the continuity task I found difficulty in working with the camera as I had not used one professionally before, therefore I acted in the sequence instead. I also found difficult editing as my work was not up to the standard that I wanted it to be. We used a variety of shots in the continuity task to prepare us for the full product of an opening sequence including shot reverse shot to feature both characters featured in the scene, two shot, over the shoulders shots, medium long shot and moving subject walking into space. This allowed me to see how each shot would look when it was put into practice in a scene. We used the 180 degree rule in this shot as Stephanie and I were sat at a table but ensured that the camera only revealed the half of the room we were in. When editing I found difficulty in accurately cropping the pieces of film that we needed to add to the sequence. I edited some of the sequence together but found that the pieces of film were a couple of seconds out of accuracy or delayed in what we really wanted. I learnt from this in progression to our final product. When editing our opening sequence I found that I had learnt from my mistakes and was able to edit clips of film to a high quality to ensure the continuity was smooth. An example of this was when I edited the walked of the stalker into a room in his basement, he walked in from the doorway and the camera switched to showing another angle of him walking into the room however the sequence continued from where it left off in the last shot. We used the 180 degree rule in this shot as we only revealed everything the camera could see from through the doorway and nothing behind the doorway or the doorway itself. When filming our sequence Stephanie took control of the final filming however I was able to try out shots we could use on location as then we could decide as a group what we thought.
We originally wanted to film in the Guildford Cathedral as the setting would have worked well for our genre as a Psychological Thriller as we thought that it would create an eerie feel however due to technical reasons we were unable to do this. Instead we filmed in St Pius church in Merrow and found that the intimate church and graveyard worked in our favour. The intimacy between the stalker and Sammy without them being in direct contact left the viewers on the edge of their seats and question what their relationship would be like as the film progressed. This linked to the genre of Psychological Thriller as it makes the audience think about what is happening and developed their confusion.
As we didn't use any music in our preliminary task and only used diagetic sound from the filming we did, the first time we had to work with sound was in our final product. I think that our greatest difficulty in this was trying to find music that would fit with the genre and the sequence that it had to go with. We settled on using three different sounds for our opening sequences, two of which were diagetic. The non-diagetic music used created a creepy feeling for the viewer as it is incredibly un-easing.

Over the shoulder shot from final product opening sequence compared with over the shoulder shot in preliminary task.

Long shot from final product opening sequence compared with medium long shot from preliminary task.



This showed how we used the skills we used from our preliminary task to our final product. The quality of the shots are also better which acts as a perfect example of how our filming quality developed as we filmed our opening sequence.

Researching your chosen genre - Psychological Thriller

 The Unusual Suspects

     The opening sequence of The Unusual Suspects consists of mainly panning and tilting the camera to set the opening scene of the film for the viewers. The initial shot is an extreme close up of a large amount of matches being lit. This connotes danger as once fire is created it is often difficult to control. The shot then switches to a medium close up of a man resting on a wooden box attempting to light a cigarette on another set of matches. This connotes deception as not everything is as simple as when you first see it, you have to wait for the bigger picture to arrive. The camera often tilts up and down to show the streaming of water, oil or fire and how it is spreading. This connotes how everything can surround you and the use of natural substances spreading where they would not normally be suggests that something disastrous is about to happen.

The sound used in the opening sequence is mainly diegetic. The first shot used features the sound of a match being struck and the flame inflating and then deflating again. This would be a familiar sound to the majority of the viewers. This then fades out and a light stream of water running down something is heard. This connotes purity and continuity as water is a natural substance and it is flowing. The burning matches are then dropped and they catch fire to a stream of oil running down what looks like a boat. There is a sound of flames travelling and ‘gushing’ which adds to the soothing sound of the water. The fire gets stronger and begins to crackle which also adds to the idea that ‘nothing is what it originally seems’. Non-diegetic dramatic music begins to play in the background softly. It is made up of what sounds like several faint violins being played. The sound of a man walking down metal steps breaks the soft sounds and brings the viewer back into the harsh genre. Two men then have a conversation. They speak softly and quietly however they both have relatively gravely voices. This adds to the soothing setting they appear to be in but also adds to the fire which is growing around them. Towards the end of the opening sequence a gunshot sounds from a distance followed by an increase in the non-diegetic music. This connotes mystery as tension is being built within the sequence.

The mise-en-scene consists of a boat filled with what looks like cargo. There are several wooden crates along with ropes. The use of a boat as opposed to opening with a setting on land adds vulnerability to the two characters who are introduced and how they are surrounded by endless amounts of water.

The editing is fluent and the transitions between each shot are smooth however some cuts are sudden to suggest that uncertainty and a fast paced storyline lies ahead. The lighting is dark however the use of some brightly lit elements such as the matchsticks before they have been lit suggests that this has been created during the editing process. The non-diegetic music was added to increase the tension as the volume varies throughout the two minutes. For example, towards the end the music becomes louder as the gunshot is fired. This suggests that the storyline is to only become more dramatic after this point.