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March 2017
Evaluation Task 7
A prezi outlining the development of the thriller since our prelim task
Evaluation Task 6
'We used a RØDE direction shotgun microphone, the microphone allows sound in from what it is pointing at instead of other things around it, this helped capturing the dialogue on the shoot as the road outside the carpark was loud and the mic didn't pick it up.'
'There is a constant ambient sound, this is to ground the film in the real world and give a more realistic feel to the scene where it would have been slightly more unrealistic.'
'Dubbed over voice to make her turn around, as she needed to have a motivation for turning round in the scene so we put the voice over the footage just before she turns around.'
'lowered the volume of Molly's dialogue, this is as the sound was overly loud so in Adobe Premier Pro CC we lowered the volume of the sot to better fit the sound of the rest of the thriller.'
'Practical Effects, fake blood done by make up artist on sight on the day of the shoot. We asked her to give him a stab wound on the neck.'
'We used a focus pull as it emphasised that there were more police that the detective on sight, this would make the audience see the extent of the trouble that the girl is in.'
'We used hand held as this part of the scene was the breaking point for the girl where her illness is about to become emphasises, so to put emphasis on this point we needed to use exciting camera movements.'
'The snow in the end titles is representative of the key line of the thriller which is 'we leapt and we landed in the fresh fallen snow', as this is the line in which the detective notices how mentally ill she really is. The title was made in the apple software 'Motion'.
Evaluation Task 5
I=Interviewer
HG=Harry Gale
I: Hello and welcome back to radio porter, and we are back with a very exciting special guest, the famous film maker Harry Gale is here with us today to discuss his new film ‘fresh fallen snow’.
Harry Gale, pleasure to have you here
HG: Pleasure to be here, Dave.
I: well Harry, there has been a lot of talk about your opening scene, with Times calling it ‘the most memorable start to any film ever’ what is it that is so incredible about the scene?
HG: Well, Dave. The scene’s location is very cool, it is onto of a carpark and there is a sense of vertigo while watching it, which creates tension anyway, which is good for a thriller. The scene itself had a low budget, in fact all we need to provide was the guns and police vests, this appeals to audiences as many people want to work in film and think that if they have a low budget they can never make anything good, this tries to get rid of that idea.
I: What about your choice to use an unknown actors instead of Hollywood stars?
HG: We worked with lesser known actors as they worked best in the role, I mean, as brilliant it would have been to have Leonardo DiCaprio as the detective, we think that the actor we hired, does a perfect job of it and embodies the character perfectly, same for the other characters. Also we didn’t want to work with an incredibly high budget, as there is something about low budget independent film which is so unique and it forces you to make more compromises and find creative ways around your problems which really worked in this film, we think the audience will enjoy that feeling of knowing that this film was made with well under $1 million which for a summer blockbuster is very inexpensive, however if we hired someone like Leonardo DiCaprio, that price would have rocketed up to $26 million which doesn’t guarantee a good profit margin.
I: What genre would you label you film as?
HG: Well I believe it is a thriller, yet a drama at the same time, as in the present you have the very thrilling action between Molly (our protagonist) and Detective Nyland (our antagonist) this is shown in the opening scene and the atrocities in the mental institution, yet at the same time there is the flashbacks to times of Molly as a child and her relationship between her and her parents also the moments of the detective and his life outside the force and the effect that this case had on him, which is the drama aspect of it.
I: I would argue that this is of the subgenre ‘psychological thriller though, wouldn’t you?
HG: Yes, absolutely, we didn’t want the thriller to be action based except for the opening scene, which even though there is guns and a stand off, it is the dialogue in that scene which really emphasises the tension instead of the guns.
I: Who and what inspired this film?
HG: Well ever since I saw ‘Shutter Island’ (2010) I knew I wanted to make a film centred around mental illness, it is such an interesting topic to delve into, especially in film as you can represent two completely binary-opposite perspectives of the world, the one of the mentally ill character and the mentally stable police detective, and using different editing, camera and sound techniques to show the difference between the characters was a really enjoyable experience to do.
I: Where is the film meant to be set? Is it England?
HG: Well we wanted the film to be grounded, so, there was no way better to do that than set it in your own country. Foe example the opening scene was filmed in Guilford, however, it isn’t set there, but it is set inside a kind of… recreated England in which we can design the terrain through the editing, as there is no mental institutions in Guilford, so through editing we had to convey three locations that are fairly similar to each other, so it is the hospital, a forest and a city, and we couldn’t find a location with all three so we had to edit our way around it and film in different locations and make them look as if they are close enough together for the girl to be able to run to each of them consecutively.
I: For listeners today and don’t know what the film is about, would you be able to give a brief outline of the plot?
HG: Well, the film is about a young girl who is mentally ill, she is in a mental hospital and her and her friend plot to escape, they manage to do so and run away and a majority of the film is how their relationship develops over the course of their escape. Eventually the film ends up in the city and finishes with the opening scene where she makes a shocking revelation about how she can never escape from the institution that keeps them prisoner.
I: the characters are quite ambiguous, would you say so?
HG: yes, they do have many things that go on in their mind, from the protagonist to the antagonist, where I as a director wanted to make the audience feel sympathy for an unlikeable character and dislike a likeable character, so for the detective who is the antagonist you start to dislike him for the scenes of his personal life and you begin to sympathise with the protagonist due to the flashbacks of her life and how hard her life has been.
I: There is a quite shocking plot twist in the opening scene when you see what she has done, why did you choose to do this?
HG: There is, however, we saw this as necessary as we needed to show the extent of her mental illness and what it has driven her to, so we just wanted to show how far gone she really is.
I: Who is this film aimed at, a young audience, an old audience or another that I haven’t thought of?
HG: Well we wanted the film to be unflinching as it represents a young woman spiral into madness, so we couldn’t exactly make it a PG, however we wanted to make it a 12, which we eventually realised we couldn’t do as it would mean that we couldn’t show many of the things we wanted to, however, the film ended up being a 15. We chose the film to be a 15 as we wanted a large audience to be able to see it and we really wanted a target audience of 19-21 year olds as they are able to take the themes represented in the thriller seriously as they are relatively mentally mature, however, it can appeal to anyone as we have suspense and an interesting narrative, however, they shouldn’t be looking for an easy watch as the film is rather hard hitting.
I: I remember when Universal showed the first trailer for the film, about a week later it became the most anticipated film of 2017, how did you create this much… ‘hype’ around the release.
HG: Well it was my idea to do a lot of digital marketing for the film as it almost guarantees that a lot of people will see it and people also respond we'll to it being interactive as it is more memorable, so we advertised through social media platforms such as Facebook where it would be a view through binoculars at a snowy forrest and the user would have to find the two patients in the wood and when they clicked on them the poster would be shown that had the tagline and the release date.
I: It was a strange choice not to have any soundtrack on the opening scene wasn’t it?
HG: Well we didn’t want to detract from the dialogue in the scene as it was a fairly interesting conversation between the protagonist and the antagonist, and a lot of the themes that are bought up in the dialogue, are revisited later, and we wanted them to stick more which would have been less easy to remember if there was a soundtrack.
I: Now… the studio credits for films, I don’t get why they have them as they should be in the credits at the end right?
HG: Well, not many people sit through the credits up until the point where the studio gets credit, therefore we put them in the beginning so people know who made the film.
I: what about the title for your film, did that have any meaning behind it?
HG: Yes it did, the words were hollowed out to show that the character was void of emotion and feeling, and the snow was put in through a particle emitter in the software motion, this was to mimic the tagline of the film and the line that is revisited most, in the film.
I: Is it true you edited the film yourself?
HG: It is true, we used the software adobe premier pro cc as it is a good editing software that allowed us free range of other adobe softwares such as after effects, this is all due to the adobe cloud which is a very clever things that allows seamless movement of projects to other softwares in the adobe universe. The cuts had to be quick as it is a thriller, therefore if something exciting was happening, there would be a lot of cuts that fasten the pace of the thriller, but we did keep the shots longer on the protagonist as she is our main character and we needed to establish the relationship between the protagonist and the audience to allow the audience to like her more.
I: Have you stuck to the conventions of a basic thriller?
HG: No, Usually a thriller centres around a strong male protagonist and has a lot of action, however, we wanted the film to centre round an unstable characters, even those who are in a position of power. We wanted it to still be obvious that it was a thriller though, so we used a lot of the editing, camera work, editing and mise-en-scene that you would see in a thriller however, the story contradicts this.
Evaluation Task 4
Our graphs show the difference of age and gender dependant on the questions that we asked them.
This is the ideal person that we want for our thriller, they are 21 and show interest in psychological thrillers such as ‘Sherlock’ and ‘Fight Club’ 
Our target audience is males aged 19-21 as this is the age when people leave school and will have more disposable income as they will be working and have student loans and based on our research thrillers are a popular genre for that age range. Males also showed a strong interest in thriller films.
Evaluation Task 2
In our thriller we decided to subvert from the gender roles and show female power through the mise-en-scene. The female protagonist hold a knife in the scene, whereas the male antagonist does not, this shows her power in the scene as she is the one with the weapon and the male character is not. Even in the extras, the female extra who plays a police officer holds a large rifle, whereas the two male police officers with guns hold small police officers, this subverts from the stereotypical role of women in films where they play a damsel in distress and instead shows a more powerful domineering female character. The female antagonist also wears a green coat, the fact that she is the only character that wears colour, all the other characters wear black, she wears the colour green to connote that she is disgusted with the fact that she stabbed the male character. The stab wound of the male character on the floor, is another subversion from the male archetype in film, as it shows the man as having his dominance in a scene taken over and subverts from stereotypes of female characters.
Camera is used to subvert from gender stereotypes. The female protagonist has always got a steady camera movement on her, and when the police officer becomes more hand-held as he realises the degree of the mental instability of the female protagonist, this shows that he is the one that is more fearful and that in her head even though she is scared, she is strong, which is why the camera is stable on her. The female character is mainly shown with a completely blurry background and only her in focus, this shows the confusion in her head and how lost she is in her own mind. The male antagonist however has more things in focus within his shots, this shows that he is grounded and secure, this adheres to stereotypes as it shows the male as a more stable and less eccentric character than the female.
The shots are held longer on the female protagonist, this is to establish that she is the character that the narrative is going to follow. There is more wide shots of the male character as it shows the scale of his team and that he is a authoritarian figure within the narrative which adheres to stereotypical gender roles in film.
There is no soundtrack in the scene, the audio is purely diegetic as it is all dialogue and ambient sound that we filmed on the day. The female protagonists dialogue is more loud and shrill whereas the male antagonists whose dialogue has a much calmer tone. The sound in the scene adheres to the stereotypes surrounding gender as males are stereotypically not caring and much more calm in social situations, however are outspoken, whereas women usually talk more manically and panicky.
In our thriller we decided to adhere to stereotypical views of ability and disability through mise-en-scene. The ‘disabled’ female character is wearing a jumper under her green coat, the black jumper shows that she is void of normality and the green coat that symbolises that she is disgusted with what she did to the point of her even denying it to herself, this emphasises her mental disability. The police officers all wear black and formal clothes, this shows a higher position of authority and shows that the able are higher status that the disabled character. The number of police are important as well as it shows that the abled outnumber the disabled, however, it does change from adhering to subverting as stereotypically the mentally ill are ignored by the majority and her lashing out draws attention to them and shows that they shouldn’t be ignored.
The camerawork subverts from the stereotypical roles of ability/disability. The camera is stable on the ‘mentally disabled’ character as the narrative follows her and goes from the perspective of her normal, so the handheld shots of the police officer are there as it shows that the protagonist views the police officers as not normal. The focus of the background of the characters emphasises the ability/disability of the characters, the background of the protagonist is blurry as it shows that she is lost in her mind whereas the background for the antagonist is more in focus as he is more mentally able than the protagonist.
The editing is adhering to the stereotypes of ability/disability as when the protagonist repeats ‘we leapt and we landed in the fresh fallen snow’ it cuts every time she repeats it to another clip of her saying it, this shows the destructed nature of her mind, and that things aren’t clean cut in her brain and that her thoughts are scattered, and after she has said it, it cuts to a final clip which is of an able character, this shows adherence to the stereotype that the able are more higher in authority so much so that the scene finishes with the antagonist instead of the protagonist.
Our representation of our primary social group of gender is positive as it shows a strong female protagonist which isn't usually shown in thrillers. The secondary social group was shown negatively as it created more conflict in scene also both of the social groups couldn't be positive as without conflict, the film wouldn't be able to hold interest.
Evaluation Task 1
My Evaluation Task 1 for the thriller that me and my group made.
Editing
We reviewed and selected shots so that we could label them, so we would be able to have an idea of what was in the shot so that we could speed up the editing process by having a brief summary of what was in the shot and what type of shot it was, for example, ‘agitated girl (mid shot)’. The group made the decision to label the shots while they were in the rushes folder so that our timeline wasn’t too clogged up. The timeline gives a brief preview of the clip duration, it is also the place where the editor will adjust clip duration and order of shots. The framing of the shots had to be good otherwise it was not used as it would look too amateur and we wanted our opening sequence to look professional so that we could gain interest of the audience.
The shots would need to be cropped so that we could cut into other shots or if there was any extraneous dialogue or audio that we didn’t want in the thriller. The blade tool was used so that we could quickly crop a shot in the timeline, the razor is useful to break a shot into two sections, so that you can move one section later or delete one section as a whole. Shot composition was influenced by the cropped shots as depending on the actors response to the dialogue in the scene, so when the male lead says ‘there is a lot of people around you’ we cut to a wide shot to show the people surrounding her, whereas when the girl says ‘we leapt and we landed in the fresh fallen snow’ quietly, we go to a close up as it is a mental not to herself. We edited the clips together so that the dialogue would make sense, sometimes composition had to be sacrificed as the story would have not made sense if we used the audio from one of the other shots.
We used the timeline to order the shots and adjust the timing so that we would only have speech from the actors and not from anyone on set, this provided continuity as the people in our group are not actors in the thriller, therefore it would not make sense for them to have audio in the sequence. We stuck to one layer in the timeline as we didn’t have a script for our thriller so the clips didn’t all have the same dialogue, therefore we didn’t need to have multiple layers as the times the actors would say things would be different from clip to clip.
We had sound from the microphone on set, this was diegetic as it was happening within the scene.
We matched action in the thriller by cutting usually when there is movement and then matched them up to when there is a similar movement in another clip, therefore as there is movement, it is harder to see if there is a slight delay in the action. We used a shot reverse shot to show dialogue in the scene, so if one actor was saying something, the camera would be on them and then we would usually cut to the other actor when they replied however, sometimes we had reaction shots where we held the shot on the actor that isn’t saying anything also that we could get their reaction to what the other actor is saying. We created diegesis in the opening thriller through dialogue, so we would get the actors to answer each others questions with the question so that the audience would be able to see that it was a response.
We used relatively fast paced cuts and didn’t hold on a single shot for longer than we had to. Fast paced cuts are a convention of there thriller genre as it speeds up the pace of the opening sequence.
Thriller: Behind the Scenes
This is a behind the scenes video of my groups thriller
Shoot Day Reflection
We left school at 9:30A.M. so that we could get as much day light as possible. We drove to Leapale carpark in Guilford which is where we decided we were going to film. We started the day by choosing which side of the carpark we were going to film, we decided in the end that we were going to use a side with a nice cityscape and a few hilly roads in the background as we thought it would give a better effect for the thriller. We then started to practice lines with the main actor, this is where we decided to give her a new line, we decided to make her look more mentally unstable we would give her a line totally unrepresentative line of what was happening in the scene, the line was ‘we leapt and we landed into the fresh fallen snow’ we thought that in the full movie there should be a flashback to the true meaning of this line and maybe it would be a line from a book that her mother read to her when she was a child. We practiced movements and filmed a couple of the shots of our main character as on our shoot there were also three other groups filming their thrillers, and our main male actor was in one of the other thrillers as well, this meant that we would have to film all the shots without him in it until he finished, so our female leads shots were filmed. We also did a few establishing shots, we were told that to do an effective establishing shot we should focus on something obscure and distinctive and for our genre conventions, something
out of the ordinary.
We left at midday for lunch, we went into the town, and got some food and then returned. After we went for lunch we practiced for another hour and then our actors were ready, we got all the cars into a sort of police blockade and put a fuzz light onto of one of the cars to make it look more police like, the police officers all had guns except for one that was using a phone to report what was happening. We filmed static for most of the shoot, however, towards the end we decided to try out some handheld shots of the police, these shots looked more action based and fitted in better with the genre conventions for the thriller genre. We were also given access to a makeup artist that did the maker up for the person that our female actor stabbed, it looked realistic and even though the actor was freezing cold, he did a good job of acting like he was bleeding out on the floor.
The shoot was successful as we got all of the shots we needed plus more, the actors were brilliant and even though there was a lot of waiting around, they didn’t complain and gave good performances and we think that the footage will turn out nicely. The other groups that were filming let us use some of their actors as police officers as well and they did a good job, and the close ups we got of them looked really nice. There was a few problems as well. For example, the day was freezing cold, and this caused the actors to shiver quite a lot in some of the shots, this meant that we had to retake quite a lot. However, overall the shoot day was a success, now all that is left to do is to edit it together, which we should be able to do sometime after half-term.
Similar Media Products
Films:
Salt
Shutter Island
Girl Interrupted
Hannah
The Fugitive
TV Shows:
Blind Spot
Legion
X Files (a stretch)
Video Games:
New Lara Croft (younger)
The last of us left behind - expansion pack - PS4 —— kickass girl
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