Shoot Day Reflection

This is a full overview of how our Shooting day turned out as well as my general thoughts throughout.

The day of our shoot started very early for me, I made sure to set my alarm to wake up sooner and have plenty of time to make sure I was bringing everything I could possibly need - any extra makeup, my camera, fully charged phone, etc… before heading over to school and sitting down at breakfast with Meadow, discussing our excitement and anxiously looking around to spot Max and Joy. Once the group was together, I handed Meadow the costume for her to calmly get changed into whilst we carried our props from our Media classroom over to the buses, making sure to quickly shoot some behind the scenes footage, then we were ready to go!

Around 20 minutes into the bus ride, I decided to start doing Meadow’s makeup - I wanted a closer window between its application and filming it in order for it to smudge less over time and look as fresh as possible, but still allowing me enough time to not rush it. It was all turning out very well, the wound prosthetic even stuck down exactly as I had hoped and my plan of using gel on her hair to make it appear more dishevelled worked out great! Until we ran into a small issue when the bus transporting us to our location broke down… This was unpreventable as it all simply came down to the faulty bus, so although definitely not an ideal situation, we kept in good spirits and mainly found the situation quite funny - I’d say it’s crucial for cast and crew to be in a good mood for shooting small projects, particularly one-day shoots like this one, so we were lucky we still felt confident. Whilst we waited for a replacement bus to arrive, I took the opportunity to take some cool photos of Meadow in costume and fiddle around with how her hair would look, unfortunately I didn’t work on her makeup as it would have looked extremely concerning to passerby's to see me covering her leg in blood with no context, but we had fun regardless and decided to have our lunch early in order to save us some time on the actual location to get straight to working. 

Once we arrived on location at Tulleys Farm, we unloaded all of our equipment onto some type of golf cart that the owners had very kindly and conveniently provided us with, this greatly helped with transporting everything, including ourselves. We soon got to our first set in the junkyard, and with great efforts to suppress how jittery I felt, we immediately got to setting up the camera or examining the specific cars for potentially useful shots. As a group we briefly came up with the order of locations and actions that we would shoot in order so that we were all on the same page, so after we had the basic plan and our first shot was set up, we began filming. Right away, I was incredibly relieved to see how similar the shots looked to the vision I had in mind since the start of our planning process, Max was extremely quick and fluent as camera operator, resulting in actually interestingly framed shots done with great efficiency - throughout this initial section, Max was the main camera operator whilst Joy and I switched around from being on sound, shooting behind the scenes footage, and touching up makeup/costume. My favourite part of the entire day was almost certainly filming the sequence of shots in this initial half where Meadow reveals the wound on her leg and rips off her sleeve to use as a bandage, this was mainly due to how satisfyingly accurate it was to my ideal version of how this scene would turn out and it overall felt like such exciting material to shoot.

We did have a few minor issues in that exact sequence with makeup and costume however, which were entirely my doing but I have definitely kept in mind for any future projects, as the tight leg on the trousers meant that they would slightly lift up the prosthetic wound whenever Meadow pulled them up for different takes, which slightly unstuck the side of the prosthetic as it had started to wear out anyway - I should have waited slightly longer before applying this wound on her leg, although I am not too concerned by this timing error of mine since I wasn’t expecting the bus to break down and create an even longer gap between application and filming, and I ended up somewhat fixing it with the foolproof method of simply adding more fake blood. Then, when it came to ripping up the shirt, the shirt’s material proved to be very tough to rip as Meadow struggled to tear it off of her arm - Joy and I did make sure to have tested the ‘rippability’ of the shirt the day before in our own time, I did find it fairly difficult to do but eventually managed, yet I had failed to consider that I had ripped it from a different angle, as well as the fact that I was with a friend instead of being in front of an entire crew with a camera pointed in my face, we did fix it however by simply snipping up a large cut in the sleeve behind her shoulder for her to grab and pull at, as well as using clever camera angles to take the focus away from this clearly pre-ripped sleeve.

The second half we had left to shoot was much more straightforward this time as we only needed two shots in the end; her running into the garage, and one long continuous take of the final action in the sequence. Filming a long one-take wasn’t my original intention at least as I had been planning for an admittedly much more tedious ending scene of the motorcycle surrounding the garage/shed around her, followed by a jumpscare, but the one-take ended up working very well as it built fear and much more intense tension from a quiet scene where you can only hear the Hunter’s heavy footsteps and scraping of the axe, desperately hoping the Survivor escapes her hiding spot in the car quietly. We also got to use a studio light that lit up Meadow’s face from within the car very nicely, and watching her wonderful acting in close up was a great moment. This shot was also unexpectedly very nerve wrecking for me, I had never attempted to film a long take myself before and when it came to my turn on the Camera Operator rotation, I didn’t expect to suddenly get so nervous just before hitting record and I felt my heart beating all throughout quietly stepping around without making any noise and making sure to call out the action queues on time, which honestly was a very fun experience that I would love to attempt again someday.

The only slight mistake I realised we made only after we had wrapped up was a simple annoying continuity error, where Meadow ran off in one scene whilst carrying her bag, yet the running scene straight after showed her empty handed, I’m hoping we can fix this by cutting the first shot a bit earlier or perhaps even cropping the bag out of it, but we will have time to solve that issue when we begin editing. I remembered another issue with the chase scene just before we called out to wrap up the day as I visualised the transition between the two scenes and how in the first shot Meadow ran from left to right, but is running from right to left in the next one, to fix this we filmed a brief shot of her running into frame from left to right, and then deciding to turn back around to run in a different direction - this fixed the issue with direction, but I’m slightly worried about location continuity as all three shots have different backgrounds, cars, and ground, yet it could also simply come off as time jumping to different stages of her escaping so I’m not entirely worried for now. I am overall not concerned about the editing process, mainly because I am significantly more excited and enthusiastic to start it more so than I am nervous, but also because I know I’ll get plenty of support and help from my very talented group mates in the edit suite just as we had offered each other on shooting day as everyone was so professional, efficient, and suggested plenty of creative input and their own skills to contribute so such a smoothly running day as a whole.

 

Shoot Day Notes

These are some quick notes I jotted down at the end of our Shooting day in order to remember any specific thoughts I had throughout - although I ended up remembering every meticulous detail of the day anyway since I found it so fun and had no problem retaining the entire experience.

What went well and why? 

• We managed to shoot everything we wanted and more within daylight with lots of leftover time, despite the late start

• Prosthetic (initially) stuck down and generally turned out a lot better than I was expecting

• Everyone was professional and offered their own individual input and skills so we got everything done smoothly and efficiently

• It was extremely exciting for me personally as all the shots were coming together identically to how I had pictured them in my head

• Carrying the equipment around was very easy (and fun) as we had access to a very convenient cart to drive it around from one location to the next

• We ended up changing how the final sequence would play out but with the same sentiment, it went from intense chaos from the motorcycle surrounding the shack followed by momentary relief, and finally a jumpscare  - to complete tense silence with only footsteps and the Survivor trying to sneak outside again, only to be (somewhat) jump-scared. 

Did any issue arise and, if so, how did you fix them? / What could you have done differently? 

• Bus broke down unexpectedly for two hours, meaning we had much less time to film, but we instead took the time to have lunch early to save time and I fiddled around a bit with costume and makeup, but then we got picked up by another bus and managed to shoot everything

• Better transition from junkyard to garage (keeping background + ground material similar) as it was fixed last minute

• Simple continuity error where she ran off with her bag and then appeared in the next scene without it, and the Hunter entering the shot from the other side (not impossible, but just didn’t make as much sense as entering in the same direction as the Survivor)

• Prosthetic cut could have been glued down better (but - the amount of time between application and shooting was unexpected, and was fixed with readjusting leg position + more fake blood)

• Very nitpicky but I could’ve progressively added more gel in her hair/face as she ran and sweated more

• Could have planned out the jump scare a bit better

Did you learn any new technical skills? Did you learn any new technical language? 

• The one-take sequence was a new experience

How did the skills that you learned in the initial camera workshops at the start of term help prepare you for the shoot? 

• A few seconds before yelling cut

• 180 degree rule for filming the final jumpscare

• Max adjusted exposure accordingly

What equipment did you use (make sure to include any lights or additional equipment you may have used as well) 

• Light stick thing in car to light up only the Survivor’s face

What was your favourite part of the day? 

• The sequence where she ripped the sleeve off to tie around her wound played out exactly as I wanted it to and simply looked awesome, was also around the time I realised it would all come together as expected and that it would be great

• Filming the one take was a very interesting new experience that was surprisingly nerve wracking (through no fault other than my own - cast and crew were very kind)

Are you happy with the footage you have shot? 

• Yes except for transition between the two locations simply due to continuity errors

• Aside from that simple mistake, the composition and colours of every shot were absolutely amazing and really looked like a post-apocalyptic film

• We also certainly got all of the shots we needed as I made sure to film any extra shots, such as a close-up of the axe dragging across the ground, despite intending on that sequence to be one continuous take, or a few extra shots of the locations in case we want to have a brief world establishing shot sequence if we wanted to, better to have footage and not need it rather than no footage and need it

What have you learned that you can use for your next filming project? 

• If you have an idea that you think will look good but you’re slightly unsure of, to just go for it, and if it doesn’t end up working, you can always just film something else because it might end up turning out perfect unexpectedly. I learnt this since I started feeling unsure of whether or not the Survivor should rip her sleeve off as it could be complicated to pull off, but we ended up going for it after receiving some encouragement and, despite the actress struggling slightly with ripping the shirt (which was my mistake), we managed to make it work through selective angles and cutting up a massive rip hidden behind her arm to ease the effort.

If you had to do it again, what would you do differently? 

• Test out the ‘rippability’ of the shirt better

• Buy a slightly better quality bag as the zipper broke (even though we made it work)

• Take a note of small continuities like whether she ran off with the bag or not

• This is nit-picky but the makeup I did on her face ended up coming out a bit bloodier than I intended, which looked great but didn’t make as much narrative sense as simply having a lot of dirt or simple scratches on her face instead of a full on bloody wound on her forehead

What are you most excited about when it comes to editing? 

• Watching and physically crafting my vision come together into a solid project

• I’m also looking forward to looking through all of the actual camera footage and seeing the shots up close in detail

What challenges do you face in the edit suite?

• In the last project I did in the edit suite, I struggled with the overall process simply due to issues with footage that I very messily shot; the actions were generally difficult to nail down and the audio was hard to edit in time mainly due to overlapping dialogue or irregular timing.

• I found the audio issues in particular very confusing to fix, I’m confident enough I could have eventually figured it out if I wasn’t as annoyed by the footage - I tend to get fairly emotionally invested when filmmaking, which can either be very fun or very inconvenient for myself and others, I hope to work on it.

• I didn’t let this bring my spirits down for this project however, I know I’ll try my very best to make it work to be the best of my ability with enthusiasm and determination, and of course a lot more patience and time

 

Behind the Scenes

This is a short montage of all of the behind the scenes footage we each took turns in shooting over the day.

Edited by Joy

Mise-en-Scene in our Sequence

 

Mise en Scene

This is a simple Youtube style breakdown of the reasons behind my group's choices for different aspects of Mise-en-scene in our sequence.

Saul and Elaine Bass

 

Research into Saul and Elaine Bass

Saul and Elaine Bass

Born in New York in 1920, Saul Bass was an iconic American graphic designer, and filmmaker who primarily designed opening title sequences and film posters over an impressive 40 years, working alongside him throughout this long career (and of course often overlooked) was his wife Elaine Bass, a title designer and filmmaker born in New York in 1927 whom he married in 1961.

Their iconic style

Originally, opening titles to films were widely dismissed as wholly unimportant and were often projected onto the closed curtains of a theatre, only opening for the first real scene of the film. 

However, Saul and Elaine Bass soon introduced a new and distinctive style to designing opening titles, completely revolutionising this unique art form for the rest of cinema. They introduced their signature "kinetic type" made up of bold block fonts moving across the screen in visually engaging patterns, usually accompanied by images or animations, resulting in a quirky minimalist style that was aesthetically intriguing and effectively set the respective tone for the rest of the film.

Most distinctive work

The project that launched Saul into widely regarded success in the industry was his work on Otto Preminger's 1955 'The Man with the Golden Arm', a film centered around the then controversial and taboo topic of drug addiction, which Saul was challenged to create a symbol for that artistically captured its intensity that he greatly succeeded at, making a respected name for himself.

For this project, he designed a single image of a jagged and distorted silhouette of an arm to represent the theme of the film, it simultaneously implied a theme of addiction as it alluded to the harsh realities of intravenous drug use, but also strayed away from being too explicit and sensationalist for shock value. He kept this theme for the opening titles as their minimalist yet meaningful sentiment hinted at the film's topic, but also left plenty of space for questioning and curiosity.

The pair then went on to work with Otto Preminger again on Anatomy of a Murder (1959), as well as an extensive list of talented and important names in film history, notably including;

• Alfred Hitchcock, designing the poster and opening sequence to Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960)

• In the same year, working for Stanley Kubrick on the titles to Spartacus (1960), and later creating the iconic poster for The Shining (1980)

• Robert Wise and Jerome Robins on the uncharacteristic end credits to West Side Story (1961)

• Martin Scorcese on multiple occasions, such as Goodfellas (1990) and Cape Fear (1991), with mainly Elaine designing the unique and romantic titles to The Age of Innocence (1993), and finally Casino (1995) as Saul's final project before his death in the following year at the age of 75.

Opening Sequence - Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

Notably the Bass' second project working with Otto Preminger, Anatomy of a Murder is a 1959 courtroom drama/crime film produced and directed by Preminger based off of the novel of the same name by John D. Voelker, starring James Stewart, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara, and Eve Arden among others. 

The plot follows a lawyer defending a soldier on trial for the murder of an inkeeper, whom the soldier claimed he killed in a fit of insanity after he allegedly assaulted his wife.

 

Title Credits to Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

This title sequence is amongst my favourites of the Bass' works due to its sheer simplicity and clever efficiency, proving to offer a smooth introduction that easily sums up the film's themes with a very minimal concept.

This sequence opens on the director's title, crediting Preminger in block white capitals against a uniform grey background, this is then covered step by step with the illustration of a deceased victim in a crime scene, coloured in solid black. The victim's body parts all drawn separately to one another and appearing in parts, with the film's contrastingly bright white title promptly displayed across the body in a rough and uneven font - the image of the whole body along with the title and director's name essentially representing the film as a whole;

The rest of the opening is made up of jarring cuts between zoomed in sections of the dismembered body next to other credits - such as a single leg with Lee Remick's name followed by the other leg with Ben Gazarra's, then sliding off the screen to cut to another body part with another name.

This could reflect how, similarly to a whole body being made up of separate body parts, a whole film is made up of several credits all offering their individual contributions. So if the entire body represents the finished film credited to Preminger, the broken down limbs would be the rest of the cast and crew's specific efforts that came together to result in the final product.

That simple idea clearly presents the plot's themes of murder and mystery with the single image of a dead body, yet the very vague and simple style of the image hints that the focus isn't on the horror of the murder itself, but rather on its study as the zooms on its limbs mirrors how a detective would inspect the body and attempt to (literally) piece together the real story behind it.

Saul and Elaine Bass' minimalist take on this opening is overall very impressively visually engaging as it is made of just three distinct elements; the flat grey background, the jagged and fully black illustration of the dead body, and the white block capitals of the credits. These three incredibly basic colours are somehow surprisingly effective as they clearly contrast against each other and allow for no distractions to shine the focus on the titles, whose simple font works smoothly with this style and remains very prominent against the darker shades behind it, as well as leaving the spotlight on the more uneven and quirkier font of the film's name.

The iconic simplicity of this sequence went on to inspire many other films' openings, such as Catch me if you can (2002) or even Monsters, Inc. (2001).

Similar Products and Conventions

 

Research into Similar Products and Conventions

Our Sequence's Genre

As a group we decided that our sequence's genre is a hybrid Action/horror, as it involves a serial killer and a chase sequence, with a prominent Post Apocalyptic sub-genre due to the overall setting.

We then had to look at a range of different films and TV shows of the same genre and identify the ways in which they are similar to our sequence, this could help us take inspiration from different conventions to really emphasise our genre's effect.

The Terminator (1984)

The Terminator is a science-fiction action directed by James Cameron and distributed by Orion Pictures.

Whilst this film is a sci-fi action film rather than a horror action, both projects involve a Post-Apocalyptic world and feature a lot of similarities between their main characters.

Similar Characters

The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) + The Hunter; 

The character of The Terminator is a cyborg assassin from a future post-apocalyptic world in 2029 who is sent back in time to 1984 on a mission to -terminate- young women of the same name, but only targets one of them in this film (Sarah Connor).

The Hunter from our sequence is somewhat similarly a motorcyclist/murderer currently living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland who sets out to kill a young woman (The Survivor).

Both characters are then survivors of a past apocalypse on missions aimed to kill a similar target, they share themes of a ruthlessly violent nature with no visible remorse and seem to be overall efficient killers who know what they are doing (as well as both sporting a rather cool-looking black jacket).

However, in addition to some obvious differences, these killers have different motivations for their crimes; The Terminator is carrying out this murder as part of a mission mandated by a will separate from his own and only lacks mercy due to being a cyborg incapable of human emotion, whilst The Hunter is motivated to kill of his own volition/for his own benefit with no real obligation to kill that specific woman and lacks mercy as part of his character riddled with murderous tendencies.

Sarah Connor (Lina Hamilton) + The Survivor; 

The character of Sarah Connor is a 19 year old woman that is being tracked down to be killed by an unrelenting assassin as she is the soon-to-be mother of a future John Connor, who will eventually lead a successful resistance movement against the artificial intelligence that created said assassin.  

The Survivor from our sequence is overall very different in her backstory as she is simply another survivor of the apocalypse that has been striving for survival over the last few months of her life, and only really exists to be killed as the victim of a typical slasher horror style sequence (to be clear, our sub-genre is not a slasher, but does contain some similarities structure wise to a slasher opening).

Looking past the clear differences, both characters share a thriving instinct for survival and are obviously determined to outrun their killers to stay alive.

A Quiet Place (2018)

A Quiet Place is a post-apocalyptic horror directed by John Krasinski and distributed by Paramount Pictures (and produced by Michael Bay!)

This film as a whole is very different from our sequence in terms of character, plot, and most themes... however, one very interesting similarity that I spotted was a certain shared theme.

Similar Theme

I am aware that this may come off as a reach but its somewhat meaningful to my perception of this project; the main source of fear from both projects is very centred around sound;

A Quiet Place takes place in a nearly deserted world where three confirmed creatures that crashed onto earth from another planet roam freely on the hunt for human victims, these creatures are blind and track down any survivors through an extraordinarily acute sense of hearing, the main characters therefore live in almost complete silence through a carefully planned system of living and communicate in sign language. The film very efficiently builds fear from a lack of sound in even the most tense of sequences, it puts the audience on edge as they sit in uncomfortable silence just waiting for a sudden jolt of terror if any character makes a single noise.

Our sequence however creates fear through a single uncomfortably prominent sound, whilst the beginning of the sequence isn't exactly a calm situation as the Survivor scrambles to collect resources and tend to a severe wound, it looks to be somewhat safe and doesn't appear to have any active threats as it plays in relative silence. This safety is then disrupted by the growing sounds of a distant motorcycle revving, which clearly terrifies the Survivor as she scrambles to start sprinting for her life to hide, and even whilst hidden, the revving grows to a very loud level as it physically surrounds her new 'safety' setting, trapping her in. Motorcycle revving is also generally a very unsettling sound on its own as it's naturally extremely loud and distorted, resembling other sounds of danger like chainsaws or the roaring of a large predator.

Obviously these uses of sound as a primary source of fear are in direct contrast to one another as one thrives off of a frightening sound whilst the other works off of nearly no sound at all, but I find the overall theme of relying on specific sound as the main scare rather than creepy visuals a great contrasting similarity.

Monsters (2010)

Monsters is a science-fiction horror film (in a post-apocalyptic setting) directed by Gareth Edwards and distributed by Vertigo Films.

This film is, in my opinion, a very underrated project simply due to how it saw the typical narrative of 'monsters' taking over the world in a new light - the main takeaway for how it resembles our project however was the actual production itself.

Similar Techniques

Monsters worked from a considerably low-budget of "way under $500,000", which is fairly impressive in comparison to other films of the same genre, managing to maintain low costs despite the film's concept typically requiring a larger budget to pull off, such as the use of CGI creatures.

Edwards achieved this through unsurprisingly using cheap equipment, but more interestingly; 

- The entire crew was made up of only six people who filmed this in five different countries, but of course proceeding to shoot in the vast majority of these locations without permission.

- Most of the extras featured were actually just people that were already at the location, all of whom he somehow persuaded to act in his film, yet surprisingly not coming off as cheesy or awkward.

- He wasted no time in producing a script or storyboards and rather came up with a general outline with specific points that every scene had to mention, before handing it to the two main actors to fully improvise

The editing process was also fascinating as Edwards would have to tediously download all of the footage from the camera's drive every night to then delete the original data so that it was ready to reuse the next day, this finished footage was then edited at the same time as filming.

He also used knock-off software to produce all 250 extensive special effects over a five month period, which he completed in his own room on a regular laptop.

Of course, the manner in which Edwards approached low-budget filmmaking for this genre is very different to ours; he had a more chaotic mindset of outright going against any necessary production norms in order to achieve his original vision in order to stay within budget, rather than simply working the execution of his vision around said budget in a more 'refined' manner like our group has.

Despite this, I actually found it quite funny how his solutions resembled something that I would also come up with at my age and experience level, and the shared techniques of shooting a typically high cost genre on a low budget (yet still managing to pull it off as a perfectly "expensive-passing" film, for lack of a better term) is something I find somewhat comforting and inspiring.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Mad Max: Fury Road is a post-apocalyptic action film directed by George Miller and distributed by Warner Bros Pictures.

Despite the very similar genres, this film as a whole is sadly very unrelated to our sequence, but I used it as one of my references when coming up with ideas for costume design.

Similar Costume

The character of Imperator Furiosa in this film is one of the main protagonists, and coincidentally a character who's design I've always had a soft spot for.

I first came across a website that fully broke down her costume, which I found useful for coming up with specific clothing items for the Survivor from our sequence to wear as it helped me understand what physically made up a typical 'tough female apocalyptic survivor' character.

convenient full costume breakdown

Parts of the final product of our sequence's costume design for the Survivor that are similar to that of Imperator Furiosa come down to;

• A neutral toned, fitted, and fairly run down top with uneven sleeves (as one of them is ripped off at the start of the sequence)
• A dark brown belt nearly identical to the ones wrapped around her waist
• A 'slouch' fitted and worn down practical pair of dark green trousers
• Standard black leather boots 

Whilst I would have loved to take inspiration from the more unique aspects of her costume like her prosthetic arm or buzz cut hair, for obvious reasons I couldn't attempt to get our main actress to shave her hair or try to pull off a green screen prosthetic with our budget.

The 100 (2014 - 2020)

The 100 is a post-apocalyptic science fiction drama TV series developed by Jason Rothenberg and also distributed by Warner Bros Pictures.

(Continued) Similar Costume

However, the simplicity of our final costume (at least compared to other apocalyptic survivor costumes)
can also be compared to those featured in The 100, which is a lot more plot-driven and relies on simple but solid costumes.

Our final costume design more closely resembles that of this series due to its more basic composition, despite our sequence being very visual as well as plot driven, we are unfortunately slightly limited due to budget and time.

Overall

Throughout my research, I was surprised to find how strikingly different most post-apocalyptic plots tend to be; it was only surprising to me because I thought of this particular sub-genre as quite specific, but after some thought I figured that the concept of a post-apocalyptic world tends to be primarily used as a simple setting for world building or a general plot device, rather than a strictly convention-driven genre like slasher-horror.

Somewhat strangely, the main aspects I found that these films/TV series had in common were nearly entirely visual, specifically when it came to costume design as so many of the -often female- leads sported run down practical clothing items but were also completely covered in unnecessary accessories like multiple belts, satchels, waist-bags, bandages, etc.... This focus makes sense for most genres as certain costumes have their own connotations (e.g. lab coats would make you think of sci-fi), but I'd say it's fairly uncommon for a (sub)genre to be so centered around costume - I'm not complaining however as costume/character design is oddly one of my favourite aspects of filmmaking.

Shooting a Dialogue Sequence

This workshop/practice was split into two sessions; filming day and editing day - quite simply, we first got into groups and filmed a short sequence with dialogue, then proceeded to edit the footage together. 

Filming the sequence

As a whole, this filming process was unfortunately not my best work and was riddled with mistakes, I wasn't fully thinking through the structure of what I was filming and I suppose I was more focused on getting it done in time.

My group was assigned the editing suite to shoot in, then we had to quickly come up with a simple idea to film - I'd consider this as my first mistake as I overcomplicated the scene a bit, we ended up with just one girl trying to turn a device on, then another one coming in and offering to help; this sounds fairly simple, but shooting both of their faces separately as well as the device whilst obeying the 180 degree rule, particularly within our time limit, ended up being slightly tedious.

We made sure to set up our shots according to what we learnt in the camera workshop, even though I still ended up not pulling them off at all;

• I attempted to set up a 180 degree line to shoot this sequence in, although I think I ended up pushing the boundaries of either end of the line a little too far as the shots ended up contrasting each other a lot - to the point where the girls ended up actually swapping sides in a shot in an attempt to film a more interesting take, which completely defeated the purpose of this rule. 

• Throughout filming I find I was more concerned with getting both of the girls visible in the shots rather than attempting to frame the shots in a more interesting way using the Rule of Thirds, although the more simplistic framing I took on consisted of one girl in the lower left and the other in the upper right corner, resulting in a somewhat more fulfilling composition.

• Another mistake of mine was failing to set up the camera's setting appropriately as the exposure was much too low, resulting in very dimly lit shots, which oddly enough is something that I am usually confident in, so perhaps it was just that the location was too dark to properly judge whether the camera's monitor was actually bright or just bright in contrast to the dim surroundings - either way, something I should have paid more attention to.

Whilst I could easily blame my poor performance on this project on a number of factors, i'd rather just accept that I made some obvious mistakes that day and use it to keep in mind on shooting day of our final sequence, where my group can certainly work together to use our strengths and judgements to ensure a much smoother filming process with more organised footage.

Editing the sequence

When it comes to editing, I tend to find the process a lot calmer than filming (despite filming certainly being more fun) as I typically have a lot more time to spend on editing footage than I have to shooting it, which allows me to spend more on carefully fixing any mistakes through experimentation.

Once my group partner and I sat down to edit our sequence however, I found that working on a project as tedious as this one within a short time limit was very difficult for me as i'm a very inconveniently detail-oriented person who likes to work in short sections in deep detail rather than finishing something roughly and then improving it in steps.

What resulted from this was us actually running out of time for this editing session as I admittedly took up far too much of our time in thinking of ways to produce a decent edit from this less than ideal footage, rather than focusing on simply getting the sequence together and finished, even if it didn't end up entirely good - which didn't even go for the section of the sequence we edited either way as we ended up with just a very roughly edited first section, followed by an empty project.

Firstly, whilst reviewing our footage, my failure to correctly use the 180 degree rule as well as my lousy exposure settings became very apparent, and proved that I wasn't entirely thinking through every shot as it seemed so obvious to me in that moment, so next time I will be sure to quickly look back on at least one take to check that it looks good before filming the rest of the sequence without knowing it would all look so poor.

Another clear issue that came up was abundant inconsistencies in audio, which was again due to the lack of timing of the silent pauses in between moments where neither girl was talking, this resulted in various shots with overlapping dialogue or background sounds that produced extremely rough audio cuts as we resorted to making a makeshift buzz track from the (very short) silences in between action, which we used to fill in any audio removed from dialogue bleeding in.

We were taught how to use the Crossfade tool in this software however, which you would drag onto cuts between two audio files in order to produce a smoother transition between them and prevent jarring sounds, but yet again we regrettably weren't able to add these as we very quickly ran out of time, even though it annoyingly would have only taken us a few seconds to implement.

Despite all of these complications, i'm surprisingly not too concerned about the editing process as I understand that the circumstances for this project were not ideal from a mix of lousily organised footage and too short of a time limit to attempt to fix accordingly (even though those are technically just excuses for my poor choices at the end of the day).

On the bright side however, i'm certain (and very relieved) that I will have a lot more time to spend on editing our final opening sequence, as well as being presented with much more coherent and better thought through footage to work with, so i'm confident that I will be able to produce a satisfying result along with help from my talented group mates to ensure that we are all happy with the finished product.

This is the link to what we ended up with;

 

Target Audience

A target audience is mainly the gender and age range that a film predominantly targets.

Knowing your target audience helps to generate profit as it essentially guarantees that a specific large group of people will be interested in your film, which then helps to deliver certain expectations or know what codes and conventions to follow - e.g. male audiences are stereotyped to be more attracted to violence whilst female audiences are drawn to romance. Knowing who you're targeting also helps you know how to market to them - younger teen audiences may be more accessible on certain social media sites as opposed to to older audiences.

Targeting Age

The age ranges that a film can target are split into certain stages of life, more notably;

• 16-17 would mean late teens that are above the age of consent and finishing high school, yet can't purchase alcohol.
• Whilst 18 year olds are just one year apart from this, they would be considered legal adults that are now of age to purchase alcohol/cigarettes, drive, vote, etc... and are also going into their first years of university.
• 21 year olds are the ones finishing university and first starting out jobs.
• 25 year olds are then starting to earn a salary from those jobs and are fully immersed in adulthood.
• 30-40 is then finally the range where people typically start getting married or having children.

Your targeted age would therefore be determined by which of these audiences best fit your film's plot and setting.

     

Targeting Gender

Gender is a lot more straightforward to target as the differences between their stereotypical wants is fairly ingrained into our minds from a young age.

Men overall are typically drawn to attractive women, violence, action sequences, etc... so horror or action films are usually targeted towards male audiences.

Women then prefer to see attractive men, romance, emotional themes... so they are the targets for genres like romance or drama.

    

Our Target Audience

Since our sequence's genre is Action/ Horror and involves a motorcycle chase, a bloody wound, and a serial killer... it is then pretty clear that we are targeting a male audience.

Whilst age doesn't play a large part in the sequence, it does contain implied violence as well as other somewhat frightening themes, and the main character throughout is clearly a teenage girl, we decided that our targeted age range would then be 16-17.