Final Film - Click

Evaluation Question 7 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? - Joe Sheldon

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

Before production of the beginning of our film, we carried out a preliminary exercise to gain valuable skills in continuity that could be transferred to our project. The brief was a short scene in which a character opens a door, enters a room and then crosses the room to sit opposite a character. They then exchange a few lines of dialogue; the whole scene should last 30 seconds. It should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule. The task was designed to help us stick to the basic rules of film making and not confuse the audience by breaking the basic laws of continuity.

We employed shot/reverse shot twice within the first scene to establish the characters and begin conversation between them. We have gotten better at keeping this consistent and using it effectively without hinging the whole scene on this technique. For example, despite there being two over the shoulder shots (pictured above and to the right) to begin the shot/reverse shot sequences within the first scene, one shot of Gemma is shown without the shoulder of Tom, as it still makes sense within the context of the

story but varies the shots more. Practicing this technique in the preliminary task has allowed us to alter the technique for more interesting viewing.

We used the 180 degree rule to good effect within the second scene. Within the preliminary task, we practiced working with an establishing two shot of the characters, and a shot/reverse shot that does not break the 180 degree rule (does not switch sides between the characters). We have improved at varying the shots within this and using it to effectively pull off a walking sequence. In a scene where all three characters are walking up a hill, it begins with a wide shot and then varies in angles and closeness, while not breaking the rule. In contrast, our preliminary task used only a singular wide shot to establish and then the same shot/reverse shot angles. Staying on one side of the line also allowed us to illustrate the direction in which they were walking.

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

Evaluation question 7 from Jake Lawson

Evaluation Question 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? -Joe Sheldon

Evaluation Question 6 from joebsmedia

Slide 1:

Pictured above, IMDb (upper) used to research films that were our genre and Blogger (lower), used to document and organise our research.

Slide 2:

Pictured above, Celtx, a script writing software used to create both the rough and final drafts of the scripting for our film.

Slide 3:

Pictured above, Premiere Pro, the editing software used to cut our movie and a Panasonic HC V270, the camera used to get the shots and footage for our movie.

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

Evaluation Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Evaluation Question 6 – What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

During the planning of our media product, we used several sources that allowed use to plan and understand Psychological Thrillers. We used  IMD8 that provided numerous ideas for the creation of our film. This is because it gave our group information on similar genres to our film idea, as a result, It improved our general understanding. We also used Rotten Tomatoes as a second source of information as it provided knowledge of audiences regarding to different plots, this then allowed us to create a product that would suite our target audience in best possible way. We presented our work in Blogger which allowed us to clearly organise and display our work in a professional way as well as it making it easy to look back at previous work that could help

contribute to newer posts such as research and sources of information to push up our grades. We also used websites such as Slideshare and Prezi that meant that we could present work in different formats to improve the general presentation of our work. Furthermore, we used different search engines such as yahoo and google to widen our knowledge on certain subjects of media, to improve our understanding on areas that we may not have fully understood or feel we were required to improve on. In addition, we used YouTube to develop our terminology through tutorial videos as well as allowing us to embed videos onto blogger to further explain points through demonstration and examples.

 For pre-production, we used Celtex as a cheap and effective form of writing a script. At first, it was difficult to understand, as there are many functions that we were not familiar with, before using it. However, after using it for some time, we became more experienced with the software, where we were now able to write a script without taking too much time. As well as this, we also had access to numerous templates within Microsoft word that gave us an idea of how to set out different posts such as the risk assessment and the shot list. This made it a quicker and easier process to publish posts which gave us the possibility to focus on content rather than presentation.

In terms of the production of our film, we used a Panasonic HC V270 camera to film all of our clips. We felt that this camera was perfect for what we had to film as the scenes appeared high quality despite the camera not being of a high cost. The only problem that we faced, as a group, is that only having a single camera was a difficult and more time consuming method as we had to perform a scene multiple times for whenever we required to change angles. Therefore, it was harder to keep continuity within our scenes. When it came to editing the clips, at first, it was difficult to understand the functions of Adobe Premier Pro as it had many options in which we could edit the film. However, this was a brilliant tool to use as, once we had a better understanding, it proved to be vital in the production of our film when putting all the clips together.

Evaluation Question 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Evaluation question 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted our audience based on the results from our pre-production questionnaire where we handed out our summary of Click. By doing this, we were able to identify areas of our film that needed improvement.

In this screenshot from the results where we asked 10 people what genre they believed the film was, only four people believed that it was a psychological film, and even one person thought it was a crime film. These results helped us reach out and attract audiences as we changed aspects of our film to make it more identifiable as a psychological thriller and by doing so, it helped us attract an audience who were fans of that particular genre, as well as the horror genre as a whole. We believe that we achieved this as when we gave out our post production questionnaire, 8 out of the 15 people who were interviewed were able to identify the correct film genre - Psychological Thriller. As well as this, 3 people out of the 15 were able to identify that Click came under the horror category. This proves that the changes we undertook were successful as it made the film more addressing to the audience and what they would like to see on screen. 

Additionally, in our pre-production questionnaire, we asked the 10 people if they could identify what certificate they believed the film was. 7 out of 10 people believed that the film was rated 18. With this information, we knew that we did not need to change anything to make out film appear within the characteristics of a rated 18 film. Through our post-production questionnaire we knew that this was the right decision as 8 out of 15 believed that the film was an 18+. This shows that our film was going to be more attractive to audiences around that age group. 

As well as this, we made our film more addressing to audiences by using teenagers to play both the three characters and the body. We decided this would be a good idea because it makes the audience feel more anxious and scared while watching the film because the characters are around a similar age and are more relatable. This was proved right in our post-production questionnaire when we asked 15 people 'What emotion did you feel while watching this film' and 7 people said they were scared while 4 said they were anxious.   

Evaluation Question 4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?

Evaluation question 4 - film group from ashleighlovitt

Evaluation question 3 – what kind of media institution might distribute your product and why?

Eval3 from ashleighlovitt

Evaluation question 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our film Click, our representation of young people subverts what is generally typical of them. For example, in the first scene the character Charlie is seen playing about with a lighter in a dark area, this immediately sets the tone for the rest of the film which shows the audience how different Charlie is from any other typical teenager. This is also apparent further o in our film when Charlie is walking behind both Gemma and Tom, showing how he subverts his typical representation as a teen because he isn't socialising with them at all, or even walking in line with them and this is shown though a point of view shot where Charlie is trailing behind. As well as this, Charlie is shown different 

through his own clothing in comparison to the other two characters. Tom is wearing a grey jumper and blue jeans, which in contrast to Charlie who is dressed head to toe in black which represents him as rebellious and mysterious ultimately subverting the typical representation of a teenager who are usually sociable and adventurous. 


However, towards the end of the film both Gemma and Tom behave in a way that supports their representation. When all three of them find the body, Charlie runs up to it (shown through another point of view shot signifying his deranged behaviours) which shows how normal the others are behaving. While Charlie is touching the bodies blood, Tom and Gemma try call the police/get help. This supports the typical representation of young people as they do not do anything irrational - they try to do the right thing.

Evaluation Question 5 - How did you attract/address your audience? - Joe Sheldon

How did you attract/address your audience? 

To find out whether we were successful in attracting our audience, we conducted a post-production questionnaire, attached below.

Post Production Questionnaire Results from NinaBalaj

I feel that, overall, we have reached our target audience. A majority of our feedback group recognised both the genre of the film and it evoked emotions that were appropriate from a large majority of them. Eight out of the fifteen could recognise that it was a psychological thriller film, with one respondent saying that the "music fit well". This could be a result of our research, in which we found out that slow and tense build up music was the most appropriate for the psychological thriller genre.

A further eight out of fifteen enjoyed the film, with only a minority of four saying they didn't enjoy it. This could have been from it's "intriguing plot", which follows the conventions of the genre. In our research, we found that the audience for a psychological thriller would enjoy POV shots and a classic structure, which we incorporated into our film.

However, our film did draw some criticism from those questioned. One respondent said that it "was not clear what the genre was until the final scene". We could've addressed the genre within the first minute or two with a flashback sequence or other genre trope to rectify this. Furthermore, a complaint was that there was "little conversation" within the film. Despite us cutting some conversation to keep pacing and structure as good as they could be, we could've found a better balance between scenes of talk and scenes of action.