Saturday, 25 April 2015
First fifteen minutes analysis of Donnie Darko
I decided to analysis the 2001 science fiction drama film, Donnie Darko. Even though it isn't classed as being a psychological thriller film, it does have a lot of psychological elements in it, which can be important for understanding how people work, especially with mental health issues.
The first scene starts of with setting the location of the film, by using a panned long shot of mountain area, and early morning sky.
Beginning long shot, setting the location.
The camera then starts to zoom in on Donnie, who is laying in the middle of a road.
We get a shot, where we are able to clearly see Donnie's face, and facial expressions.
We are then shown a Point of View shot, of the view which Donnie is seen from behind looking at it, in the next shot.
The title sequence then rolls, and we are shown the neighbourhood that Donnie lives in, including shots of the different kinds of people that live there. When Donnie is cycling through the neighbourhood to get to his house, there is high key lighting to make the neighbourhood look bright and colourful.
In the second scene, Donnie is persuaded by a ghostly voice to "Come closer.", to which he follows the voice. When Donnie is following the voice, the camera is dollying into the door.
The ghostly voice leads him outside, and here, there is a shallow focus, which emphaizes Donnie, because everything in the background cannot be seen, and only Donnie is in focus, which shows the importance of this character.
There is then a dissolve, which shows Donnie looking at what the ghostly voice turns out to be, and an image of the ghostly voice in the same shot.
Finally, we have an eyeline match, to show what Donnie had been looking at, which is a strange rabbit.
The first scene starts of with setting the location of the film, by using a panned long shot of mountain area, and early morning sky.
Research into title sequences
The genre of our film is psychological thriller, so it is important to find title sequences from a similar genre.
Se7en Title sequence
Se7en Title sequence
These images show very psychological images, such as the blade in someone's fingers, which can typically be associated with self harm and mental health illnesses.
American Horror Story: Asylum
The Victim Character Profile (original)
Name: Martine Roberts
Age: 20
Profession: Care worker
Background: In the film, Martine grew up in a big family, consisting of a few brothers and sisters, and had to help look after her siblings with her mother. Because she had always looked after her siblings, she decided that she wanted to work with children as a job. She decided to go into social care, looking after children, who have suffered from trauma during their life.
Appearance: In the film, she has just come back from work, so she is wearing a white shirt, a black skirt, a cardigan and an NHS staff badge. She is still wearing her uniform when she is poisoned by the killer.
Personality: Martine has quite a shy personality, however can be bubbly around people that she knows well. She always attempts to use humour to try and make less fortunate children feel better. Martine is always seen smiling around work, because she loves her job.
Her role in the film: Martine is the character who will be killed, by poisoning. She is at home when the killing is about to take place. She goes into the kitchen to make a drink, adds the coffee in the cup, and then leaves the room to go upstairs while the kettle is boiling. During this time, the killer enters the kitchen, via the back door, which is unlocked, and adds poison in with the coffee mixture. Martine then comes back downstairs when the kettle has finished boiling and adds hot water to the coffee mixture. She takes a sip, and then hears a knock on the front door, the detective, and walks to answer. It is at this moment that she drops on the floor, unconsious.
Age: 20
Profession: Care worker
Background: In the film, Martine grew up in a big family, consisting of a few brothers and sisters, and had to help look after her siblings with her mother. Because she had always looked after her siblings, she decided that she wanted to work with children as a job. She decided to go into social care, looking after children, who have suffered from trauma during their life.
Appearance: In the film, she has just come back from work, so she is wearing a white shirt, a black skirt, a cardigan and an NHS staff badge. She is still wearing her uniform when she is poisoned by the killer.
Her role in the film: Martine is the character who will be killed, by poisoning. She is at home when the killing is about to take place. She goes into the kitchen to make a drink, adds the coffee in the cup, and then leaves the room to go upstairs while the kettle is boiling. During this time, the killer enters the kitchen, via the back door, which is unlocked, and adds poison in with the coffee mixture. Martine then comes back downstairs when the kettle has finished boiling and adds hot water to the coffee mixture. She takes a sip, and then hears a knock on the front door, the detective, and walks to answer. It is at this moment that she drops on the floor, unconsious.
Question 7; Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
From making the preliminary task, to making a full two minute start to a film, I feel that I have learnt more things, during this period of time. I think the biggest thing I have been able to learn more about from the prelininary task to the full product, is the use of Final Cut Express. Before the preliminary task, I had not used Final Cut Express before. Being a first time user of the editing software, it can be quite difficult to use, because you need to learn what various symbols mean, how to cut clips and how to join bits of clip together, in order to make a full product. In our preliminary task, our editing skills may have not been the best, due to have not used the program before. Due to not using the program before, it also took us longer to be able to edit the clips together, whereas, when we edited the full product, it was completed more quickly and smoothly, because we were comfortable using the editing software.
However, I think in the final product, it was easier to make sure all the clips joined up together nicely, and to use different tools on the editing software, such as making a shot bigger to fill the screen more, or creating sound bridges, which were things we might not have known how to do when we made our preliminary short clip.
From making the preliminary clip to the full product, we were able to use the preliminary clip to see where we may have gone wrong with editing, and to be able to make sure that this didn't happen in our full product. In the preliminary clip, we only had basic shots, such as shot reverse shot, over the shoulder shot, two shot, and a long shot. However, in our full product, we included more "advanced" shots, such as close up shots, and slight cantered angles, to distort and show that something bad may be about to happen.
Close up shot of a phone.
Cantered angle, when the killer is about to enter the victim's home, to poison their drink.
Examples of basic shots, two shot and shot reverse shot, over the shoulder shot, used in the preliminary task.
From making the preliminary clip to the full product, we were able to use the preliminary clip to see where we may have gone wrong with editing, and to be able to make sure that this didn't happen in our full product. In the preliminary clip, we only had basic shots, such as shot reverse shot, over the shoulder shot, two shot, and a long shot. However, in our full product, we included more "advanced" shots, such as close up shots, and slight cantered angles, to distort and show that something bad may be about to happen.
Question 5; How did you address your audience?
The target audience for our media product was male and females, aged fifteen and up, with particular emphaise on young adults. I think our film would be able to reach our target audience, because the plot is interesting and also quite suspensful, as you don't know what is going to happen when the killer is deciding who and how to murder. I think our film is especially interesting, through the use of tarot cards, and even not being able to fully see the killer's identity, because this could make the audience wish to keep watching, in order to hopefully find out who the killer really is. When planning our production, we thought that using the tarot cards would make the film interesting, because it could appeal to many audiences, especially audiences who are interested in witchcraft, or supernatural type films. I think that our storyline is also quite unique, by using tarot cards, in the sense of a game, in order to kill people. This is also good for being able to attract the right audience, because many young adults may like the idea of being able to see a new film, with a different approach towards psychological thriller, that isn't merely the same kind of plot that you may see in real psychological thriller films.
From audience feedback, we found our a variety of things that were good about our film, and also things that we could improve on to make our film better. From the feedback, it seemed that most people who we asked thought that the plot was a good film idea, and that if it were to be released, they would go to see the film. Some people did also like the use of tarot cards, because this is quite original. However, I think, from audience feedback, our age range would be too high, being aged 15, to 50 years, because older, middle aged people that we asked said they probably wouldn't enjoy watching this type of film, and would prefer to watch one more suited to their taste. Therefore, it would be suitable to generally focus our film to young people, who are most likely to enjoy our film.
From audience feedback, we found our a variety of things that were good about our film, and also things that we could improve on to make our film better. From the feedback, it seemed that most people who we asked thought that the plot was a good film idea, and that if it were to be released, they would go to see the film. Some people did also like the use of tarot cards, because this is quite original. However, I think, from audience feedback, our age range would be too high, being aged 15, to 50 years, because older, middle aged people that we asked said they probably wouldn't enjoy watching this type of film, and would prefer to watch one more suited to their taste. Therefore, it would be suitable to generally focus our film to young people, who are most likely to enjoy our film.
Question 1; In what ways does your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
When we were thinking of film ideas, we researched into different film genres, such as thriller and horror, to see which best would match the ideas of our films. The genre of our own film is psychological thriller, and in order to understand typical traits that are featured in psychological thriller films. Iconography that is typically featured in this genre would be things such as knives, confided spaces and shadows. To be able to successfully make a psychological thriller film, it is important to try and incorporate some of these features into our own film.
To incorperate psychological thriller iconography into our own film, we have used low key lighting during the shots when the killer is on camera. The use of low key lighting creates a creepy feeling, and makes the audience feel that something is going to happen, involving the character in the shot.
At the beginning of our film, we have the most important scene, out of the entire two minutes, which is establishing the plot of the film, and introducing the main two characters; the detective and the killer.
This scene is important, because it establishes to the audience that Mark Wayne is a detective, despite his lack of uniform. In this scene, the audience is also given information about the game and what it involves, which is vital to the plot. Also, by placing this scene right at the beginning of the film, before the title card, it is able to straight away make the audience interested to find out what happens in the rest of the film.
During the phone call conversation scene, we had to make sure that shots of the phones matched up with times and dates, as the entire conversation between the two characters was not filmed on the same day.
Here we have two close up shots of the phone of killer and the phone of the detective, and if the times were different on the phones, then this would of broken continutity, because, in reality, it wouldn't take someone a few hours to answer a phone call, nor would it ring for such a duration of time.
Our media product can link to real media products that are of similar genre. During our pre-production research, we found a variety of different films that were similar to our own film. One real film that is similar would be Panic Room, released by Columbia Pictures in 2002. Just like our film, it is mainly set around a normal, suburban neighbourhood.
Here there is a similarity between the two different settings, because they are both based in a normal neighbourhood, where you wouldn't suspect a psychological thriller to take place.
To incorperate psychological thriller iconography into our own film, we have used low key lighting during the shots when the killer is on camera. The use of low key lighting creates a creepy feeling, and makes the audience feel that something is going to happen, involving the character in the shot.At the beginning of our film, we have the most important scene, out of the entire two minutes, which is establishing the plot of the film, and introducing the main two characters; the detective and the killer.
During the phone call conversation scene, we had to make sure that shots of the phones matched up with times and dates, as the entire conversation between the two characters was not filmed on the same day.
Our media product can link to real media products that are of similar genre. During our pre-production research, we found a variety of different films that were similar to our own film. One real film that is similar would be Panic Room, released by Columbia Pictures in 2002. Just like our film, it is mainly set around a normal, suburban neighbourhood.
Here there is a similarity between the two different settings, because they are both based in a normal neighbourhood, where you wouldn't suspect a psychological thriller to take place.
Friday, 24 April 2015
Evaluation Question 1
1 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms
and conventions of real media products?
Before the opening sequence of our film we have placed a
highly significant scene. In the scene we see both the detective and the killer
having their first conversation. This is highly significant as this
conversation is where the audience first find out the detectives position and
then they are able to hear the killers plan and how he uses the cards to find
his next victim. We have decided to place this scene here because the
information that is given in this scene is very important and the audience now
know what could happen in the rest of the film after the opening sequences.
Also the storyline of our film is linear so as this scene is the first thing to
happen we placed it just before the opening sequences.
The
Chosen genre of our film is Psychological Thriller. This is seen throughout the
Film as The main storyline of the film is the killer using the cards to
randomly selecting a victim and then giving the detective minimal information.
This is becasue the killer is playing a mind game with the detective as there
is a large amount of preasure on the detective to find who is the next victim
and then find a way to stop the killer before he kills.
Evaluation Question 4
4 Who would be the audience for your media product?
We have decided that the audience of our media product is
aged 15 to 50. This is because the age gap is large so there is a wider range
of ages, meaning a large number of people to watch our film. Also with the
audience starting at 15, teenagers will want to go watch the film with their
friends and people who have teenagers will also be interested in the film. This
increases the audience. We have chosen 15 as the minimum age because our film
involves scenes of violence, death and some weapons are involved. This means
that anybody under 15 may find these scenes distressing or upsetting and we do not want to influence young people
with the wrong message of 'killing is fine'. We chose %0 as our upper boundary because
we believe that anyone above that age may find the film confusing or may lose
interest/ not be interested in the film. Before we created the film we showed
the storyline of our film to multiple age ranges. We found that teenagers and
adults under 40 liked the concept the most and were interested to know what
would happen next. We took this response and then used it to create the age
range we have chosen.
Evaluation question 1
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For to create the plot for our film we looked at the starts of films of the same genera (crime and horror) and from this we developed an outline for the hole film. We then went and looked at the start of films that had similar plots to ours and analysed them in detail, before we wrote out our ideas for the first 3 minuets of the film. Our genera is psychological horror, where the killer is playing mind games with our cop, The film has a lot of cross cutting between scenes when our killer is talking to cop as well as sound bridges over the scene of our victim, this worked well as we were able to show the plot against this character while showing that the character did not know about it him self. Over our title sequence we had some earey sound that was then mixed in with static to try to build up tension as well as having the titles jumping round the screen shaking around.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?
When I look back at the preliminary task I feel that I have
learnt many different skills. These include the basic skills of Final Cut Express,
which included how to edit the shots we have gained together into one
continuous film. Between the preliminary Task and the Final product I have been
able to use these simple/basic skills and advance them to create sections such
as our title sequence which includes multiple images and sound from outside
Final cut and use additional effects throughout the film Such as fades.
Between the preliminary task and the final product we were
able to look back at our preliminary exercise and identify the mistakes and the
parts that were not executed well and then learn how to correct these in the
final product.
When filming the preliminary task We learned the basic skills of filming which
we were able to advance by using a number of different of
shots and Camera angles throughout the final project. We have also used the preliminary
exercise to become more efficient at both filming and editing. This can be seen
as we had to have multiple attempts at a certain shot in the preliminary
exercise where in the final film we were able to get one shot in 1 or 2
attempts. The Editing of the preliminary exercise took us a number of hours
while the largest amount of time we spent editing on the final film was with
the effects or the Title sequence.
Evaluation question 3
One media institution that might distribute our media
product is Arrow films. This is because Arrow films have already produced a
number of popular horror and crime films. This would help as our film has the
genera Psychological horror with aspects of crime. This means that they would
already know how to successfully distribute this type of film. Arrow films
would also be a good institution to distribute our media product because they
have pioneered some of the best directors from all around the world such as
Denys Arcand and Wim Wenders. This means that they are related and known
through many of these directors making them more popular and allowing them to
reach a larger audience.
A second media institution that could distribute our media
production is Newline Cinemas. This institution is one of the large American
film production and distribution companies. Newline would be good to distribute
our media product because they have already produced very popular and well know
films in the same or similar genera's as our product. These films include the
Nightmare on elm street series and Texas chainsaw massacre. With Newline having
already having distributed these films they will be known for and related to
films of the horror or psychological genera. This is good as our film is a
psychological horror.Evaluation question 6
Click here for Evaluation Question 6
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9kLAvuyZdlCcU03R3Q3VklZVVU/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9kLAvuyZdlCcU03R3Q3VklZVVU/view?usp=sharing
Evaluation question 5
How did you attract/address your audience?
I feel that we have successfully reached our target audience as looking at our questionnaire we are able to see that many people would watch the film, in our planning we looked at what age range and social background people would be to watch our film, and from this we looked at ways of make it appeal to these people, when we then went and asked people what they though about the film after it turns out that they said that the would watch the film and could see them self's enjoying watching it, how ever at the older range of our target audience many people said that the film was not to there taste and that they would not go and watch it, getting this feed back was helpful as i know understand that we possibly we set our age range too wide and that it would be a lot better if we narrowed it down, However the information that we got back was good and there was room for improvement like we missed out a few shots that we should of include and some of the information that we had tryed to include was not that clear to understand, overall the feed back was successful and good as it tells us how to improve upon this.
(need a picture of the audience question air but don't have one)
Evaluation question 7
looking back at you preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product
From my preliminary task i have learnt many different skills, when doing the filing and editing. I have learnt basic skills using final cut express to edit the shots together into a continues film, from the start of the preliminary to the end of the final film i
have developed my basic skills , which were just stringing shots together and then cutting them to fit together, and then increasing my skills could add extra sound in and overlay images fading them in and out. For our filming in the preliminary exercise we struggled to know what shots we needed and it took us some time for us to get all of the shots that we needed, to make sure that we followed the match on action rules and the 180 degree rule, however when we cam to film the final product we found this much easier to decided which shots we need and this allowed use to speed up the filming. Using the preliminary task as a tester and we were able to learn what worked and we were able to learn what mistakes we had made and what we can improve.Evaluation question 4
who would be the audience for your media product?
Our target audience is both males and females aged for 15 to 50, this gives us a wide range of people to watch our film. The reason that we are saying 15+ is as in the film there will be scenes of death, violence, strong violence and scenes containing weapons. This means that it has a minimum age rating of 15 as anyone who is under this age may find it upsetting and distressing but also might give the wrong impression "its ok to kill". With us saying over 15 it means that people who are at this age would possibly go to watch this film with there friends. However we put 50 as the upper boundary as we believe that anyone who is over 50 would loose interest in the film and find it hard to follow. When we did the questionnaires to ask people in our age range to talk about the film and give there views of the film. from this people said that they would need to see a trailer before they decided if they were going to watch it but overall the people in our age range where interested in the film.
Thursday, 23 April 2015
Wednesday, 22 April 2015
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)