Improved Video

Here is the last, final film for the opening sequence with the new voice over.

Re-doing a voicover

Going back through the evaluation and hearing feedback for the final piece, Alex and I decided that we should attempt to add to our final piece in order for it to look more professional. Because the voice over from our actor Gavin, didn't fit in with the mysterious, tense atmosphere we were hoping to create, we though we would replace it with a new voice. We also took this as an opportunity to use new equipment as our first voice over was recording with a microphone in the Apple Mac which gave an echo and was bad quality.

For our new voice, we wanted something more serious, deep and fitting to the tense tone, so we looked at other male voices we know of to provide their voice. These people were in our school year, Scott, Jake, Luke and Ashley. After Alex and I discussed who would be fitting for the role, we decided to ask Jake and luckily he was able to help us out. Even better, Jake studies music technology and so is able to help us in areas Alex and myself are not as knowledgeable at.

For the new recording, we were able to use the Blue Light recording studio that is in our music block at our school. After sorting out times and meetings, we were able to record the voice over using the professional equipment and the sound proofed walls. This was so our voice over sounded professional.

On Friday 20th April at 10am we plan to record the voice over in order to attach it to the final video by Monday morning latest.

Final piece

This is our final opening sequence:

Evaluation

In the two minute opening sequence Alex and myself created, we carried out a vast range of research into conventional opening sequences for films and used some of these to help us create our own one. Our product uses a cold opening which is a type of enigma code (intriguing audiences into wanting to find out what happens later on in a film).








The most inspirational films found in my research which helped with creating my own cold opening enigma code were Fight Club, Pulp Fiction, Limitless and Inception. All of these films open with a scene which is not fully explained but it later reoccurs after a clearer insight into the story for the audience as the film starts from before the scene.

First scene in Fight Club

First scene is revisited later in film

First scene in Pulp Fiction before titles

Scene is revisiting from different
angle later in film

Cold open in Limitless

Second scene after title
goes to time before first scene

First scene in Inception....

...but is never finished.

Scene is revisited later on in film..

..and is completed and continues on

The biggest code and convention which we had to make sure was featured in the project was the film's main title. We found in research that films almost always feature their main title.

Other codes and conventions which make up a standard film opening are the credits (director, actors, soundtrack, story, etc...) which we investigated into, to make sure the appropriate ones are used in our own product.

Some Like It Hot (1959)

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)

Beetlejuice (1988)

During research, I found that a lot of films try to differ from the regular way of opening a film and some don't feature the film's title until the very end of the film (Inception, The Dark Knight, How To Train Your Dragon) and others don't feature the director, actors, soundtrack and other credits in the opening and just at the end (Black Swan, True Grit...)

Black Swan (2010) Opening Scene

True Grit (2010) Opening Scene

Because the central character is a young male, the audience for 'Inspector' is similar to that but is extended to people over the age of 15 but under 40/50 (even though this can be defied as many people over the age of 50 are fans of the genre). Similarly, the gender for the target audience isn't just male as in recent years, females have shown interest in many thrillers and crime films.

Our actor

Actor in costume and makeup
for first scene

Brief case as a prop

To attract our target audience we focused heavily on the use of mise-en-scene to create our chosen genre. So make-up for blood and bruises. Lighting for a cold, mysterious atmosphere in the setting. Briefcases and a suit which imply a high, tough job. As the sequence is only two minutes long, it has yet to reveal more characters but from the insight into the main character, our product represents social groups that are the same as him. A man in his early 20s, in a high paid job and educated.

Our Actor in costume
for second scene

Actor's make up for first opening scene

Our production company 'Panoramic Productions' that we created to 'invest' into our film is quite fun with their 'other products'. So the media institution cannot be fully serious because of the crime, gun, violence theme the film has but also our film has to have a quirky side. On researching different film production companies, if I had to choose one to produce our film 'Inspector' it would something similar to Focus Features.

Focus Features Logo

Focus Features was formed in 2002 but had films from it's father and other relative companies from 1999. Focus Features are known for it's wide range of genre films that they release. A list of films from Focus Features which are similar to 'Inspector' are; Traffic (2002), Tinker Tailor Solider Spy (2011), Burn After Reading (2008), In Bruges (2008), Brick (2005) and Blood Simple (2000). They also do films that are much different from these genres such as One Day (2011), Jane Eyre (2011), Away We Go (2009), Coraline (2009), Be Kind Rewind (2008), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Eternal Sunshine For The Spotless Mind (2004) and Billy Elliot (2000).

Even though our task was to only create an opening sequence, structuring a story was required which I feel I learnt how to do over the development of this project. Especially from creating a simple preliminary task involving a 180 degree cut to an opening, developed sequence. I learnt how to develop a longer story even though we only created the beginning.

First plan sheet of story in full
not just the media assignment

As a partnership, Alex and I progressed our camera movements and learnt how to do more movements with a camera. There's a huge difference between just learning a camera movement to actually performing it, so we have benefited in using different camera movements in our piece.

Beginning of camera movement

Progression of camera movement

Mid shot of character in mirror

Close up of character in mirror

Away from filming, the editing process felt like a new experience compared to GCSE because of the new, latest iMovie. The good thing about it was that the updated programmed offered us much more for our opening sequence such as more titles, beats to second, more transitions and new features we included into our work such as the precision editor, colour change, levels of volume, cropping of the screen and adjustment of a frame.

iMovie programme used to edit our project together
and our title added for our film's company

Adding the film's main title in

All these features we experimented with and most we used in our real product. We spent a lot of time on choosing fonts for our titles because of the wide variety of not just fonts,  but styles and colours.

In our title for our production company we hoped to change the font but the certain title did not allow for a different font to be used. But this was not important for our product.

Adding a font to titles/production
company and credits

The font box in iMovie

Settings for audio clips and recordings.
We were able to set the volume to an
appropriate level for the film.

Using the Precision editor to make the cuts of each clip
more accurate and effective

Moving our voiceover to the correct
part of the film

The 'crop' feature which allowed us to
cut out a certain part of a moving
image to use in our film.

Cutting down an audio clip and
selecting parts to discard or use

iMovie showed us all the clips we had for our film

Our product makes sense as far as an Enigma cold opening can go as it gives a hint to the plot of the film but leaves our important details in order for twists of the plot to have a big impact on audiences. It fulfils the purpose of an opening sequence because it grabs the audiences attention to watch the rest of the film and find out the progression of the story and how it ends.

A transition for our film

It introduces the main character, his characteristics and lifestyle to an extend of which the audience can connect to and are interested in seeing how the film ends for the character. This is done by showing a scene of the film that will feature later on in the film but it does not give away an ending. It hints to what is ahead; violence, blood, bruises and possible deaths but it is not certain. With the exception of the voice over, the character so far is mute so the audience do not know enough about him to put him under a category of good or bad but they still sympathise with him as no other characters have been introduced.

A background to signal the end of our film.

Out of the two, main, different scenes in our opening (the cold open that occurs later and the 'getting ready scene' with the titles), I think the titles work better than the other scene because of the audio. The audio quality of the narration is poor and sounds muffled making it sound unprofessional. This is because we could not get hold of more quality equipment for audio recordings at school our self. But we managed well with the microphone on the apple Mac to get a successful recording.

The voice over recording feature

On the other hand, the camera movement in the first scene works well as it is panning around the body and street and shows the audience one of the locations in the film. The still close up works great too as it shows the audience the face of the character.

Close up in first scene

Overall I personally prefer the second scene of our project involving the titles because of the shots used. There are close ups of a kettle, toaster and mid shots of the character looking into the middle with a reflection. I think these shots work great in an opening sequence as they are quite different and adventurous compared to regular shots. The second scene appeals to audiences as the camera captures normal, everyday occurrences but they are highlighted by these shots.

Close up shot of toast

Close up of kettle switch

The soundtrack we used is effective in both scenes because they fit the mood we aimed to achieve. In the first scene the music is chilling and mysterious which gives off a cold feeling causing the audience to feel uncomfortable which is what thrillers and film noirs aim to do. Though the track we used is from a copyright CD so the music is already set before the visuals are final which is obvious when watching the scene.

Adding sound into the film

This could have been improved if we had composers who can create music to fit the visuals, as the music would have an impact with the different cuts, shots, colours and other visuals on screen. However the soundtrack for our second scene, even though is from a copyright CD like the first, fits the scene better in the beats to the cuts in visuals and the mood the character is feeling- upbeat, fun and laid back.

Improvements that would have made our final product more professional would have been better quality equipment for the recording and voice over. Also, we could used more makeup on the actor so that the bruises and blood was more obvious on camera.

A shot from our first scene in
the film

Shot from the second scene of
our film

Audience feedback
In the form of a ten question survey, I asked peers in my class to evaluate my final piece and complete a short survey to help me evaluate my work. Throughout this part of  my evaluation I have inserted scans of the completed surveys.

The first question of the survey was an open question where people were asked to write their own answer down. From these answers I see a clear indication that my piece of works comes off as fitting the 'thriller' and 'mystery' genre. Three people used the hybrid of crime along with other answers action, drama and detective. These are the the genres that Alex and I aimed to create our opening sequence on, especially thriller/mystery so overall it is clear that we have been successful in creating a piece of film to fit this.

For questions 2 and 3, the participants of my survey were only asked to select 'yes' or 'no' (even though they could have opted out of answering at all in fairness). For both, the audience answered 'yes' that the mise-en-scene and soundtrack fit their chosen genre. As the selected genres were all similar to the one we aimed to create, this shows that our soundtrack and mise-en-scene are correct for the thriller/mystery genre we tried to create.

Question 4 was another yes/no answer but this time didn't result in a 100% yes from the participants. 90% answered yes but 10% answered no with a side note. The general consensus say that the actor fits the role for the genre they chose but the person who didn't agree explained that this makes the film more interesting. This answer still helps with what type of film we were trying to create. If an actor or character does not fit the stereotypical role for a film this creates an unexpected film role for them and makes the film seem more intriguing for the audience because it differs from the norm.

 Similarly for question 5, 90% agreed yes while another person says that the sequence does not make sense. They too added a side note explaining that the sequence 'needs to be clearer'. This is not what Alex and I tried to create when making our sequence as we aimed for the sequence to be clear for all audiences. But at the same time, as part of the enigma code in our cold opening, we aimed to only show two parts of the film to attract the audience to watch the rest of the film.

Question 6 has shown that not everyone would be interested in watching the rest of the film. 80% would but 20% wouldn't and this is good evaluative points. Though I hope that this is because it's not the type of film that the person is interested in and not because they were not enticed by the cold opening.


For questions 7 and 8, they required an open answer so this is more helpful for the evaluation as the participants can give their honest opinions. For the most part, many people explained that the best parts of the sequence was the second scene which involved the titles and the getting ready scene for the character. Like I said in my evaluation above, personally I preferred that part of the sequence too and am not surprised that people preferred this scene over the first scene. Another point people picked up was the type of camera movement and shots that were used and they said that these worked well. One said that the 'tension built with the shoes and body shot' was a part of the sequence they thought worked well which I am happy was picked up on because this is one code and convention we tried to include into our opening sequence to show the genre. By building a little tension and mystery by some of the mise-en-scene for the genre.
As seen in question 8, the general consensus implies that the audio quality and narration was not the best part of the sequence. Building on that, many people agreed that the narration does not fit in with the rest of the sequence and it feels out of place. Again this was a part of the sequence I myself did not like and feel that it brings down the quality of the whole project. One person said that the actor breathing was not a good part as it makes the film not seem 'real' as he is meant to be 'dead'. A funny response was that someone felt hungry for toast after seeing it which is not an evaluative point and should be ignored but the face that there was not an answer replacing that shows the person did not think of any bad points. Another two answers left the box blank which implies they thought nothing was wrong.

90% of the participants thought that the fonts fitted with the genre of the sequence and 10% did not, which is a better response than expected. Even though Alex and I spent a lot of time investigating fonts and choosing ones that we thought fitted the genre most perfectly, as we did not design our own font there are obvious flaws in choosing pre-made ones.

This time, I used a line graph to collate my results from my survey because the participants were able to choose numbers between 1-10 to show how much of a professional standard they thought the sequence fitted in. The range of answers was between 7-9 which is a big achievement. From this I can see that everyone who took my survey thought the sequence was higher than average professionalism in comparison to a real film. this is a huge achievement for people to think this. One person thought the quality was on a 7/10 level but the general response was an 8/10. I can't really comment on this as I would be biased towards my own project, but I am very pleased with the outcome of this question.

Obviously there is a big downfall of my questionnaire and that is, because all of the participants are peers in my class they did not want to be too harsh and too honest. Even though the questionnaire is anonymous and I do not know who answered what, they still answer too nicely because they know me. This questionnaire would have more ecological validity if I asked random people from the public to answer instead of people my age. My peers have learnt the exact same stuff as me in media and therefore know a bit more about opening sequences. It would have been fairer if I asked random people as they would have been from different ages, genders and occupations.