Media CCR Questions

1. How does your product use or challenge conventions? ---> Lighting, Sound, Editing, Narrative Structure and Camera Work.

Our product uses all of these conventions mentioned with each different shot. In the opening scene we use all natural light, post production sound (diegetic sound of the motorbike), used a colour grade to make it seem more suspenseful, and also used a EWS to set the scene and point out who our main character is. We then cut to a shot inside where we used a back light on dim to make the scene very dark and thrilling. A garage door opens in this scene and we see two new characters; the body guards. In my edit I added in a mist overlay to give our set more of a warehouse feel. As the garage door opened I key framed the opacity of the mist making it seem like it was disappearing. The shot we used for this scene was a wide shot and I added in the diegetic sound of a garage door opening in post production. As our main character walks into our scene we have him walk past the camera to show that he is moving to a different location. I added in footsteps to show diegetic sound in post production. Our character walks past the camera as I mentioned and here we cut to a wide shot of his back. Our main character then walks down a long hallway with air vents and other warehouse props set up. With the walk down the hallway we don't see the actors face due to his back facing us, however we got the main character to take his helmet off while he was walking. This created lots of suspense because we still do not know who this is. Also we used a silhouette for this hallway scene to create more suspense. I added in a mist effect to make it look more like a warehouse and also changed the opacity so it wasn't so obvious that I added it in post-production. The scene cuts to where we see the victim for the first time and he is tied up to a pole we found with some old rope. We also used some of the props we had available to make the scene look more rustic and old. Such as: a car rim, Boat propeller, anchor, big coffee bags and more rope. To make our victim like he had been beaten we used lots of make-up and dirty water. For sweat we used water, however this didn't show very well on camera because of the low lighting and dim setting. The Mafia sits down next to our victim and we see the first portion of dialogue. The Mafia yells at the victim "What were you doing that night!" Our Victim then responses with "I don't know, I swear I don't know what you're talking about!" The Mafia then gets up and we used a tilt shot from the the Mafia's feet to his head to show him rising up above the victim. The Mafia the uses a hand motion to his body guards. We then switched shot to show the back of the bodyguards entering where the victim was. It was important with this shot that we didn't show any of the scene around where the victim was because in actual fact we used the same area with the mafia walking into the warehouse. We did this well and used the bodyguards backs to hide the large metal door where the Mafia walked in, a little bit of the door showed but the audience wouldn't of recognised anything. However we want to try and become better and better without any mistakes. The two bodyguards untie the victim and pick him up from his arms and walk down the corridor, this was where we made a mistake. We used the same corridor for the Mafia to walk in, but then used the same corridor for the bodyguard to walk out. This was probably the biggest continuity error we made while filming this short. As the two bodyguards walk out with our victim I added in a gun shot flare coming from the left side of the frame to indicate that he has been shot. I did a cut to black with a gun shot timed together to add more suspense. This is when I added in the rolling credits from the bottom of the screen to the top.

2. How does your product engage with audiences? (What effect does it have on audiences? What emotions do you evoke in audience members?)

My product engages with the audience by putting them on the edge of their seat in terms of music, camera work and lighting. In the first few opening scenes I immediately had a suspenseful piece of music starting to fade in, coupled with the late pan of the camera and blue hue colour grade, it set the scene for suspense quite well. This is repeated throughout the walking up to the door scene and also the knock on the door scene. However in the door opening scene the colour grade can't be seen as well due to it being so dark at first (this is why i added the mist effect) however when we switch to the silhouette scene the colour grade is seen more because of the back light we used. While all of this is happening we the suspenseful music picks up and would definitely evoke curiosity and fear into the viewer. We then moved on to the dialogue scene and the colour grade can be seen well here mainly due to a light that was set up with a red plastic tint over it. The music is still playing and our actors used angry expressions on their faces to show the thriller genre. When the actors said their lines the Mafia spoke in an aggressive tone however the victim spoke in a scared tone and used a frightened expression. After the dialogue our two bodyguards walk in and they untie the victim and take him away. Here we see the victim struggling for his life and the body guards fight against him. I added in a gun flare and sound effect that tied in well with a cut out which leaves the viewer in a question to what happened to the victim.

3. How have your PRODUCTION skills developed throughout the project? (pre-production, production and post-production. What have you learnt to do?

I have learnt a lot from this short film especially with the pre-production and production, I haven't learnt a lot from the post-production mainly because of my past experience with editing. However this is something I want to improve on in the next short film. I learnt a lot with the pre-production of making a short film, especially with how much planning actually goes into producing something of this size. Just for one minute of film it took us a week of planning between three people. This definitely puts it into prospective of how much planning is put into the big budget 90-minute films. With production of the film, I definitely learnt how to think on the spot and how to solve problems with certain things quickly. For example, we were losing a lot of battery testing our shots before our talent arrived. Therefore we were stuck on 20% so we had to have one of us run back up to the media studies labs and get a new camera with charge in it, and then make sure we took out the SD card from the old camera and put it into the new camera. We made sure our lighting was looking good for the first time on camera and also set up props for a scene for the first time. All of this was a good learning experience and definitely makes me want to pursue film making more and more. 

4.
How did you integrate technologies into this project? (Software, hardware and online)

In our Short film for PT1 we used multiple different technologies throughout all our scenes. Within the first scene we used a motorbike and a tripod. The motorbike worked well and definitely gave a more sinister vibe to our opening scene, especially with the used of the motorbike sound effect I got off a YouTube Video. The tripod was used in all three first opening shots in order to make it seem like we were holding our camera while tracking with the Mafia. We were going to used a piece of wood that had wheels attached to the bottom of it as a dolly to try and get a smooth floating shot that would of tracked the Mafia as he came in. However this did not work mainly because of the ground being to rough and having too many bumps. As the Mafia walked towards the door I inserted a footstep sound effect with each step he took; I got this sound effect off a YouTube Video. When the Mafia knocked on the door we got a shot of the 'authorised personal only" sign and I put in a knocking sound effect and EQed it to sound like it was very hollow, like a warehouse metal door. We moved on to the door opening scene and had the Mafia stand outside while the two bodyguards supposedly lifted up the door. This was not the case due to the door being mechanically operated and was controlled by Ella Ironside out of frame. For the door lifting scene we used a back light so that the audience can see who is "lifting" the door earlier on and not have to try and guess who it is. I also used a mist overlay that I got off YouTube to fit in with the door opening. For this to work I need to change the "blend mode" to "screen" and also drop the "opacity" in order for the audience to think that it was there the whole time and that we used a smoke machine. I also had to key frame the opacity of the mist effect to drop over time as the door lifted to give the effect of the smoke escaping out of the door as it was being "lifted". This worked well and after the door was lifted we had the Mafia walk past the camera and I used a fade-to-black transition into the silhouette scene. We tried multiple different ways of shooting the silhouette including: A wide shot, low angle walking shot. shot of feet walking, and a feet to shoulder low angle shot of the Mafia walking. The shot I used in this scene for my rough edit was the wide shot. In this scene I used the same footsteps from the first few opening scenes however I EQed them to sound like suit shoes walking in a room with lots of echo. I also added in a glitch effect into the silhouette scene to give it more suspense. In the next scene we have more footsteps EQed to have an echo. We used some rope and a wooden pole to tie our victim to and this looked really well on camera. This was the first time we used dialogue in the short film and we didn't think it through enough. We set the volume levels too low, so in post I had to increase the gain which caused the talking to be louder and more distorted. There was also a air con unit that made a loud noise as well and this can definitely be noticed in the dialogue scenes. We then had our Mafia stand up and call over to his two bodyguards and then walk out of frame. We cut to a shot of the bodyguards shoulders and had them walk and untie our victim, of course I added in the EQed footsteps. As the bodyguards walked past with the victim in their arms I added in a gun flare and sound effect in post production to make it look like he was getting shot from the left side. I did a straight cut to black here and ended with the rolling credits which I put in one text box and keyframes to roll up the screen from bottom to top.