Our Final Film

This is our final film 'Recurrence'.

Evaluation: Question 7

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=pOW9NEpZDoE

We decided to present the answer to this question as a group. After discussing what we each thought about this question, we put all of our ideas together and recorded ourselves as we each talked about a different part to the answer.

Evaluation: Question 6

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hupGUM9Z8Bo&feature=youtube_gdata

I have also presented my answer to this question in a movie maker clip.

Evaluation: Question 4 & 5

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
5) How did you attract/address your audience?

[I wanted to combine questions 4 and 5 because I thought that explaining who our film is targeted at and how we addressed the audience should go into the same answer.]

We decided to rate our film as a 15, as we were aiming at older teenagers. Although we think this film would appeal to most age groups in this category, we wanted to focus on certain elements of the opening in order to attract our chosen target audience. We felt that we would need to make the characters in the opening scenes relate that that target audience. When the scene changes from the title to a mother and her teenage daughter arguing, we thought that the body language shown, portrayed what was happening, without needing the sound to back it up. We all agreed that this scene in particular would relate to most teenagers and parents of teenagers who may have experienced tension and arguments in their own family lives. The following scene shows the girl running away from home which we hope will make the audience feel sympathy for the character and want to continue watching to find out what happens to her. We also used certain elements within mise-en-scene in order to make the audience feel like they could relate to the teenager. We made sure that the character was wearing something that was simple, so we decided that the character should wear jeans and a jumper. We didn’t want the girl to stand out too much, since she was meant to just be an ordinary girl. As we mainly wanted to relate to teenagers between 15 and 19, we thought that it was best for the character’s age to be unknown to the audience. I think we made it clear that she was also between the age of 15 and 19, which means that a teenager who is watching, may feel relatable if they think that she is the same age as them.

Evaluation: Question 3

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoSFQamyKOw&feature=youtube_gdata

I have presented my answer to this question in a movie maker clip.

Evaluation: Question 2

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

In the opening scenes of Recurrence, we wanted a particular social group to be represented, in order to fit with the audience that we are aiming our film at. The main social group which is represented is a family, which is clearly under stress and unhappy. As the audience will see throughout the opening, it is a broken family, where there are two parents divorced with a teenager who is left in the middle. We thought that our opening puts across the stresses of a modern day family when the parents are no longer together.

As the film begins, you see a girl who is standing in front of a big house. We wanted to leave the audience unknown to whether she lives in the house and is from a well off family or whether she works at this house, as it is meant to be set a long time ago. We thought that the switch over to the present tense would leave the audience wondering what bearing she has on the rest of the film and what might have happened to her in the past.

When the scene changes to the teenage girl and her mother arguing, we thought that the audience would be able to tell that it has moved to the present tense. We thought that the modern house and the typical teenager attitude would give off this impression. The body language between the mother and the daughter portrays a lot of tension and built up frustration through the facial expressions and hand gestures. We wanted to portray the modern lives of a broken family and what effect is has on the people involved.



Evaluation: Question 1

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

Through analysing and doing deconstructions of the openings of psychological thrillers, we got a lot of ideas about how to do our opening. When planning the opening of ‘Recurrence’, we wanted it to have more substance than many thriller film openings because we wanted to include enough story in the opening scenes to draw the audience in. Although we wanted to stay mainly on the normal conventions of a thriller, we wanted to also develop them. I think that we managed to expose the audience enough so that they realised the genre was a thriller, but I also think that we made them really wonder what is going to happen throughout the film.

When discussing our film with people, we found that lots of people asked themselves these questions...

·         Is the film going to be old fashioned?

·         Who is the girl?

·         Will the film have flashbacks from modern day to the past?

·         Will the whole story be in the past?

·         Will the girl from the opening scene reappear?

·         Why are they arguing?

·         Does the mother know she’s gone?

·         Where is she going?

·         Whose house is it?

·         How does she have a key?

·         Where is her dad?

·         Is there a relationship between the girl and her father?

·         Why is she acting like she has never been there before?

·         Why is she in the same place as the other girl?

·         What is going to happen next?

At the beginning of the task, I did a deconstruction of the film opening of ‘Road to Perdition’. After doing this, I thought that the opening of our film should have more content relevant to the story. In Road to Perdition, the opening starts with a clip of the end of the film where a boy is standing on the beach. The shot then changes to a clip where the boy is cycling through the town, going the opposite way to everybody else. I think this represents him taking you back to the beginning of the story. The long opening doesn’t really give you a full sense of what genre the film is. In contrast, we started with a clip from the past, whereas Road to Perdition started with a clip from the future. In ‘Recurrence’, we wanted to start the story immediately from the outset. We also wanted to subtly convey the girls’ family situation to the audience to help them empathise with how she is feeling. I think doing the deconstructions really helped us to realise what we wanted our film to be about, what target market it should be aimed at, how much story we wanted to include in the opening two minutes without giving too much away and how we would portray to the audience that it was a thriller.

Audience Feedback

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE3jlkjgF-Q&feature=player_embedded

This is the audience feedback from our film opening.

Analysis of Shots

The scene begins with a close up shot of a lit candle in front of an old, stone pillar which gets blown out after a few seconds. We wanted to start the opening with this because we thought it looked slightly creepy, which suited the genre of film that we chose. We filmed this part at dusk, as we wanted as little natural light as possible, so that the candle was the main source of light in the shot.

The scene then changes to an establishing shot of an old house and a girl walking down the steps holding a candle. We also filmed this at dusk, so that the candle would stand out and light up the girl’s face as she walked with it. We filmed this from behind a bush, to give the impression to the audience that someone is watching her.

The shot then moves to a close up of the girl, as she blows out the candle.

The screen then fades to black and the title ‘Recurrence’ comes up in white letters. I think the first scene displays a lot of mystery that will intrigue the audience to keep watching.

The opening then fades into present day, showing a mother and her teenage daughter having an argument. The teenager storms out of the room and the camera moves to the other side of the door to watch her slam the door and continue to storm upstairs, into her bedroom and start to pack her things. We originally filmed every shot so that it followed on into the next, but came out with 5 and a half minutes of film, so realised that we had to cut it down. We used fade in/fade out transitions to merge shots into one another, in order to show the passing of time.

This allowed us to get the overall time down to around 2 minutes. We shortened a lot of the shots that showed the teenage girl packing her things and leaving her house, as we felt that the scene was too long, uninteresting to watch and unnecessary to the storyline.

The sequence of shots which follow the girl as she goes to her dad's house and down the long driveway include a wide variety of angles. We used a panning shot to show her walking past the camera as she enters the gates at the top of the driveway and a tracking shot from the front because we wanted to show her emotion of feeling fed up and tired. We then included a hand-held shot of her feet and the suitcase going past the camera. We thought this was an effective way of showing her journey to her dad’s house because the scene then leads on to a shot where the camera is close up to the suitcase and then tilts upwards as she walks away from the camera to reveal the house. The camera is then at a low angle to show her as she pulls the suitcase up the steps.

 

We thought this sequence of shots really showed how tired and fed up she was. We wanted to portray her struggle as she pulls her suitcase along the long, stone driveway.

We think this particular shot really shows how much she is struggling, because it shows her trying to pull the suitcase up the steps, one by one.

Inside the house, many different and interesting camera angles are used in order for the audience to get a feel for the layout of the house. We also wanted to use some angles to make it look like someone is watching her.

The scene begins with a close up of her putting the key in the door, which we thought was effective as it then slightly tilts upwards as she walks in. We also thought this shot would be a good place to put one of the titles and when editing, we decided on putting ‘Director of Photography – Rebecca Atkinson’ in that place.

A mid-shot is used while the camera tilts downwards as she puts her things on the floor and then tilts upwards as she closes the door. We wanted the audience to see what she was doing, therefore used the tilt to show that.

We then used a slow zoom into a close up of her face to show the real emotion in her face, so that the audience could understand how she is feeling.

The camera angle then changes to a hand-held pan of her feet stepping over her bag and walking away.

After a mid-shot and slow pan of her walking into the room as you hear the diegetic sound of her calling out for her dad, the camera angle changes to an aerial shot from the top floor of the house, looking over the bannister at her, as she turns around. We used this shot because we all agreed that it looked like someone was watching her. We wanted to make the audience to

feel like that was what was happening, in order to give off a creepy vibe about the house.

 

As we wanted to create this feeling for the audience, we continued to use shots that would do this, for example; we then used a tracking shot as she walks through one of the rooms and up to the stained glass doors, opening them and walking out. The tracking shot makes it look like someone is following her.

We think this shot is very effective because the natural light which comes through the stained glass doors brightens up and outlines the figure of the teenage girl.

As the film is called ‘Recurrence’, and the girl at the beginning was filmed from behind a bush as she walked down the steps, we wanted to show the audience that something happened to her, and that it was going to happen to the girl in the present tense. We did this by filming the girl in the present tense from the same position as before, as she walked down the same steps.

We think that the combination of shots and music that we used did make the audience feel that someone was watching the girl and that something bad was going to happen to her.

Research and Planning: Peaceful Sleepers Soundtrack

We chose to use the song 'Peaceful Sleepers' by Amy's Ghost for our opening two minutes as we thought that every part of the song seemed to go with our film. The build up in the song created more suspence in the film and the words also seemed to fit with what went on in the opening two minutes.

Research and Planning: How Filming Went - The Second Time

Although the first time that we filmed, we thought that everything went smoothly and we were able to capture everything that we wanted, when it came to editing the opening two minutes, we realised that we didn't manage to do so. Some shots were too long, and we realised that we didn't have the variation of shots that we wanted to include. We also started to realise throughout the editing process that the film was boring and wasn't really going anywhere. Our main aim was to capture the audience and make them want to watch more. As we felt as though the first idea did not meet the standards that we wanted, we decided to film a second time, in order to get everything we wanted.

Whilst filming the second idea, we all realised how much better it was than the first idea. The camera angles varied more and generally looked a lot better. We planned out timing a lot better for certain shots, for example the close up candle shot at the beginning and the girl in the white dress walking down the steps and blowing out the candle. We wanted these shots to be filmed at dusk, so that it was slightly dark, but not too dark that you couldn't see. We wanted the other shots to be filmed in the daytime, therefore we filmed the second half first and the first half afterwards.

Throughout the editing process, we were very happy with how it was beginning to turn out. We were all so glad that we re-filmed as the film had more suspence and it felt like it could go somewhere from the opening two minutes if there were to be a whole film.

Research and Planning: Age Rating (final)

As mentioned earlier with the previous idea for Recurrence, we still want to rate our film at a '15'. We think that this is the appropriate age rating for the genre of the film and what is included in the film.

Research and Planning: Synopsis of the Whole Film (final)

Synopsis of the whole film:

Set in a suburban town, a teenage girl is seen to run away from her mother’s house to move in with her father. Lara (the teenager) does not realise what she is about to encounter. She enters the house expecting to be greeted by her father who appears to be out.

As she begins to explore the house and move her things in the audience begin to realise that she is not alone in the house, and that she is being watched. Lara calls her father who answers and says that he has been called out of town due to business and will be back a.s.a.p. A little spooked by the house Lara calls her boyfriend Matt explaining what has happened and he agrees to come and stay with her until her father comes back from business.

Soon the couple realise that there is something seriously wrong, and both say that they have seen a young girl walking around by the river and in the garden. Matt says that they are probably paranoid and due to the events that have happened all they need is a good night’s sleep and to put it to the back of their minds. Suddenly they couple wake in the middle of the night to find the girl standing at the end of the bed. She says that she is merely there to warn them that the same fate that had befallen her will happen to Lara and she must leave as soon as she can. They demand to know what she means but she vanishes in to thin air.

Overtaken by curiosity the couple find the old house records in a desperate attempt to find out who the girl was. They soon find out more than they wanted to. Her name was Lucinda Kent she lived in the house over a 100 years ago and was found brutally murdered along with her mother and brother her father was also found dead next to them and it seemed that he had taken his own life.

Confused Lara and Matt decide to leave and get away from the area, yet as they are about to leave Lara’s dad arrives back and says to the two that they are being stupid, that they were probably just imagining things and that they are perfectly safe with him. Reassured they decide to stay.

The next day the couple find that they cannot leave the house the doors are locked, and when they go down to the basement in search of tools to get out they find Lara’s mother and brother dead in the cellar. Frantically trying to find a way out they realise that what happened all those years ago was the father had killed his family and took his own life as he was ashamed of what he had done.

Lara and Matt as they try and leave the basement are confronted by Lara’s father as he points a shotgun at the two and states that he had to do it. But before he can shoot them both Matt leaps for the gun two shots are released in the struggle one hitting Lara’s Dad. As he lies bleeding to death on the floor Matt turns to reassure Lara and finds that she has also been shot.

He holds her until she dies and you see him leave the house before the police arrive. He later discovers that the young man who was courting Lucinda had been at the house when her father had gone insane and he disappeared after the family had been killed.

Research and Planning: Cast & Crew (final)

Cast:
Girl (from the past): Rebecca Atkinson
Teenage Girl: Lara Allgood
Teenage Girl's Mum: Dee Allgood

Crew:
Production Company: BLS Media Productions
Written By: Sarah Harris, Rebecca Atkinson & Lara Allgood
Soundtrack: Written and Performed By 'Amy's Ghost'
Filmed By: Rebecca Atkinson & Sarah Harris
Costume Design: Lara Allgood
Casting Director: Sarah Harris
Director of Photography: Rebecca Atkinson
Directed By: Rebecca Atkinson, Sarah Harris & Lara Allgood

Research and Planning: Prop List (final)

- Candles
- White Dress
- Teenage Girls's Clothing
- Suitcase
- Bag