Palpatine- Our Thriller Opening Sequence

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

Looking back at my preliminary task I understood what needed to be done to construct a media product, in my case a thriller film opening sequence called 'Palpatine'.  The prelim task demanded that I understood the basics of shot types. Using these techniques in an in-camera exercise task using a Sony NX5, my group and I then edited together the shots taken which helped me understand the need for continuity. By using the Adobe Premiere Pro software, this provided me with the essential knowledge, practice and understanding of how my thriller opening sequence should be constructed. From the early days of pre-production I produced a storyboard which reflected this. Overall what I learnt from this process is how to successfully make a film opening sequence.

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

How did you attract/addresse your audience?

What pleasures can your audience take from opening sequence? 

I believe that the audience would enjoy the violence in our opening sequence and the twist at the end which reveals that the character is in fact harming himself. The AMBIGUITY of our opening sequence means that the audience is left to try and understand what is happening and why.


What genre and subgenre is your film under? 

Our film falls under the category THRILLERS, specifically PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLERS. 

Definition from Google

How have you attracted audiences through the use of: 

Editing- Our editing is what leaves the audience with a sense of mystery. The jump cuts and pace of our opening sequence means that the audience aren't given time to figure out what's going on. This makes the audience want to keep watching as they want answers.

Music/Sound- The use of the interview on Carl Jung gives the film a fourth dimension which gives the audience more to think about. By going into the shadow perspective and the dark side of human nature the audience start considering the psychological issues which are being represented in this film and whether it applies to all human beings.

Image of Carl Jung

What were the key conventions that you used or challenged which appeal to the target audience?

By using a male protagonist and combing him with pure violence would appeal to a male orientated audience. Mix in psychological issues and you have a character which appeals to a wider audience of both genders, as it has been shown that females prefer watching films which have a more intellectual side and make them think. I have talked more about conventions of thrillers in the next blog post, where I discuss the conventions that we conformed to and those that we challenged in our media product.

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Target Audience

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

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How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Who were you attempting to target with the opening sequence?

Our target audience, as previously mentioned, is very versatile. Our aim is to have a variety of people watch our film and hopefully come out of it questioning society and people's intentions.

Which characters did you use?  Where these archetypal of the film genre?  What roles did they take in the film?

The main character in our film is a lower-middle class young man who works in a kitchen. I wouldn't say that this is an archetypal of thrillers, as majority of the protagonists in thrillers are either teenagers or middle-aged men. Our character fits right in between those two commonly used demographics.

What themes/ issues were represented in the film – did these reflect any particular ideologies – dominant or alternative?  Could these be linked to other examples from other films?

Our thriller is psychological and explores the idea that as humans we all have a dark side. We were heavily inspired by Carl Jung and his theory that the only real danger that exists is man himself, and that us humans are the origin of all evil. He suggested the shadow or "shadow aspect" ;(1) an unconscious aspect of the personality which the conscious ego does not identify in itself....it is largely negative. Films such as 'American Psycho' and ''Psycho' explore psychopathy, obviously to a much more intense extent but nevertheless are inspired by similiar ideologies as ours; that every human has something evil inside them and has the capability to inflict pain on others. 

Have you reinforced or challenged stereotypes in your opening sequence? 

I wouldn't say that we are reinforcing or challenging a stereotype, we are merely exposing human nature and the types of people who exist in our society that we are (largely) unaware of. The only aspect of our character that conforms to the stereotypes about mental unstable people is the violence and murderous qualities. It is commonly misjudged that all people with mental disorders are dangerous, and our thriller reinforces that stereotype. "Most news accounts portray people with mental illness as dangerous" (Wahl, 1995).

Overall, what social group have you represented?

As we only have one character in our opening sequence we are only representing one gender; young males. We have represented him as being violent and dangerous, which does conform the to the stereotype that most thriller films reinforce; that masculinity is seen through violence.
Our thriller also represents someone who suffers from a mental disorder and the self-harming thoughts that they may suffer, however we have challenged that slightly as our opening sequence shows him smiling about the pain that he is inflicting on himself.

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In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Firstly, what are conventions? Conventions are the generally accepted ways of doing something. Conventions can be used, supported, reiterated.
Our thriller 'Palpatine' develops the theme of men being the violent gender. Looking at articles I found that men commit more acts of violence than women. A study carried out by the US Department of Justice found that 75.6 percent of all offenders were male and only 20.1 percent were female which supports the statement that men are more violent than women. This video explains the reason why manhood is connected with dominance, power and violence and how the media has used this image of men for a very long time. 

There are a lot of films in the market which portray females as having psychological disorders...

Examples of films:

                 Girl,Interrupted

                 Fatal Attraction 

                   Blue Jasmine

                    Betty Blue

         A Streetcar Named Desire

However we have decided to focus on the films which have male protagonists who suffer from disorders, such as American Psycho and develop the idea that in fact men can be unstable too and that it can lead to violent thoughts.

In terms of following conventions of a thriller film there are many aspects of our opening sequence which does conform. For example there is a clear battle between good and evil, however instead of it being between two characters it's a battle within himself. Another convention of a thriller film is that they usually follow a storyline which is based on things that society fears most today i.e terror attacks. Mental disorders can still be considered taboo in todays society and is something that is rarely spoken about yet is feared just as much as other commonly talked about feared situations. Our thriller opens up questions about mental disorders and how it can affect a person's behaviour, attitudes and beliefs. In terms of characters a convention of thrillers is that the protagonist/antagonist is male, which is the case in our thriller. If we look at the filming of thrillers, the lighting is usually low-key and dim, which ours isn't as we have used a harsh, bright light. Furthermore the sound used is usually 'tension' music whereas ours is a warped speech by a psychologist. However our thriller does conform as it used quick, jump cuts and a montage of several different shots. We decided to do this as it increased the pace and means that the audience don't have time to properly understand what they have seen; making the opening sequence that much more exciting and intriguing. 

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Sources- 
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/men-more-violent.htm

Short Video of the Editing Process

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Post Production

Titles & Sound

The title itself was easy enough to design and place. We opted to go for a simple black background with crisp white writing. We thought that the more simple, the better. The only struggle was deciding on the name of our thriller. Because our initial idea changed 'Rich Kids' no longer worked. Here is a brainstorm of the different names..

A lot of these names were inspired by Carl Jung and his theory of 'the shadow'; 

"Everyone carries a shadow," Jung wrote, "and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is." It may be (in part) one's link to more primitive animal instincts, which are superseded during early childhood by the conscious mind.

This relates well with our piece hence why we chose to use audio clips of a lecture on his theory of the acceptance of ourselves and others, aswell as an interview with Jung himself where he states that inside we are all evil in some way or another. We included diegetic noises such as the punches and kicks, which were made up of soundclips such as a can of dog food being emptied, a punching bag being hit, a baseball being smacked and footsteps walking in mud. These are all unconventional noises but when edited carefully and layered on top of each other they make very convincing punching noises.

The last thing left to do was watch our opening sequence carefully, and go through each section to ensure that the continuity and transition were smooth. All we have left to do is post our clip unto the Hurtwood Media Youtube Channel.

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Post Production

Editing the Clips

After ordering the clips we had to go through and crop them. We did this because some of the clips were either too long, or we only needed a certain amount of footage of that particular shot. Another reason why we had to crop,  specifically the punching footage, is because either the punches would get weaker by the end of the clip or Calum would laugh or lose concentration. By using the cutting tools available on the software we were able to make precise and accurate cuts, ensuring that they ended well and would allow for the clip to flow on to the next. 

When editing we had to be aware of continuity. What we quickly came to realise was that the amount of blood that Calum had on his face and shirt needed to be gradual, so the shots needed to be ordered specifically for the continuity of the sequence. 

We used editing techniques such as layering which allowed us to transition smoothly from one shot to the next, which was especially important when transitioning from the opening track down of Calum to his first punch on the face.

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Post Production

Playback and Review

The term film editing is derived from the traditional process of working with film, but now it increasingly involves the use of digital technology. A motion picture is created from combining and editing raw footage. 

Before going into the media suite I was nervous at the prospect of editing as the software, Premiere Pro, is one that I have never used before.

In the first session we had to review and select shots. We had to be quite harsh and really narrow shots down as we had taken so much footage.

Once the shots were selected we placed them on the timeline, and started putting them in the general order we were going to edit them in.

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Time Lapse of the Shoot Day

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Shoot Day

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Props and Make-Up

For our opening sequence we need some fake blood, specifically for the scene when the torturer cuts the victim with the hair brush. In order to obtain some blood we have to email Loz Tait, head of costume at Hurtwood house. We also needed a spare white shirt for the torture scene, one which we are going to bloody and dirty, the silver tray which we weren't able to obtain and a watch box.

 

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Permission to film at Cornhill Manor

Here is a screenshot of the email that we sent to the housemaster of the boarding house, Cornhill Manor. We are still awaiting a reply!

We have two days until our shoot, and all we have left to do is pull together the last bits such as props and make-up!

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Film Date

Our film date was announced to us today. My group and I are set to film on Thursday 29th January, 2015. Two weeks today we will be in the studio filming so these next two weeks are vital in pulling together all the final bits and pieces for our opening sequence. 

2 week countdown begins today!

Shot List

What is a shot list?

A shot list is similar to a storyboard as it identifies what is being shot. It is ideal that the whole group is given a shot list so on film day the process will run smoothly as everyone will know what is happening and when. A shot list is generally ordered in terms of location, rather than the order the scenes come in. This just makes filming a lot easier, and more time is saved.

Here is a website which my group and I used to aid us in this process;
http://www.ehow.com/how_2112260_shot-list.html

Here is an image of one of our final shot lists

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Final Storyboard

Here is a collage of our final storyboard. After completing it we cut them out and ordered them on A3 pieces of paper.

Using our storyboard we will be able to out together our shot list. 

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Prop List

Here is the final prop list, which Christina is going to manage. This weekend she has decided to start collecting all of these items;

Romany also thought of the clever idea of getting a personalized tin which would say 'speckled rolex' on it. This tin comes with mints inside of it, which would act as the drug that we want to use as a form of torture. Here is an image of the item that she has ordered;

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Storyboarding

As we slightly changed our ideas we had to re-do our storyboard. As a group we decided to go with my ideas for the torture scenes, which we now wanted to incorporate into the getting ready scene of the rich kid.
First we wrote out every single shot we wanted on a rough piece of paper. There was a lot of discussion and crossing out involved. Once we were all happy with our selection of shots, we transferred them unto the actual storyboard template. To speed the process up we decided to share out the workload by drawing out a selection of shots each.
The next step is to fill in all the transitions and sound on the storyboard and produce a shot list (see next blogpost).

I will upload final images of our storyboard once it's complete.

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Cast

Having slightly altered our idea, we decided to use one actor as the rich kid and then one actor as the butler (but who will also act the part of the torturer). Because of this we changed the name of our opening sequence from 'Rich Kids' to 'Rich Kid'.

After discussing the actors, we thought it would work well if we asked Calum Goddard and Finbar Shepherd to act for us. Both of them are tall, have dark, thick hair and are clean shaven which is the look we are going for.

Finbar Shepher

Calum Goddard

If they accept our offer, then we will email them further asking for certain props that they should bring along with them such as a full suit.

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Torture Scene

During the Christmas holidays all members of the group had a task of researching violence involving the following weapons;

• Rolex 
• Comb 
• Cologne
• Tie

Our final torture scenes look like this...

Comb- The comb will have (unseen) metal spikes on it so when combed through the hair will cut the scalp.

Tie- The tie will be tied around the victims neck and the torturer will drag the chair that the victim is sat on with the end of the tie.

Cologne- The torturer will force the liquid inside of a cologne bottle to be drank by the victim.

Rolex- Instead of using a watch we are going to go with the idea of the drug 'speckled rolex', and the torturer will force it inside of the victims mouth.

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Research into violence with domestic weapons

This is an example of how there was a murder due to perfume, which could inspire us when looking into torture using cologne. We don't want to torture scenes to be too far fetched as that will take away from the realism but we still want the effect to be shocking. An idea I had was that the torturer would force the liquid inside the cologne bottle to be drank by the victim, and then the bottle itself would be used to beat the victim. It would be necessary for the cologne bottle to look heavy.

Inspired by the drug 'speckled rolex' it would perhaps be more realistic to use that rather than the actual watch as a form of torture. Perhaps the torturer could force the victim to overdose or take a large amount of the drug. What needs to be considered is how the name will be incorporated into the scene to make the link between the two types of rolex's clear.

Using the idea of a death by comb, we could have the teeth of the comb be replaced by metal spikes. This could then be used as a form of torture as the victim could have their hair combed through by it, cutting the scalp in the process. An afro comb could be used as it's teeth are made of metal.