"Shadows Present" - Coursework Project on my YouTube Channel

If you have problems watching video clips on my blog, you can check out my YouTube channel, where I have uploaded the same clips. These are:


Shadows Present Animatic
Shadows Present-The Final Edit
The Exchange (Josh and I)
Preliminary Exercise (Josh and I)
Shadows Present - The Outtakes


This is the URL to my YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/chriskenworthy.

By the way, it wasn't part of the coursework specification set out by the exam board OCR, but I compiled all the mistakes and funny outtakes into a Special Feature video if this short sequence was ever released on a DVD. Here it is:

Evaluation of Coursework - "Shadows Present"

(1) How does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?

For our project, our group decided to film the opening of a mystery thriller involving murder and revenge, in a noir-style.

Researching film noirs, our group decided to use music over the opening credits as in the film Fargo. We searched for some music that would reflect a mystery thriller eventually deciding on a song written and composed by Jan Hammer. Aware of copyright laws permission was asked for and granted by the PRS (MCP-Music Clearance) to use this music in the opening sequence of our film.

Our group particularly liked the use of shadows in The Maltese Falcon so for our indoor scenes we used wide shots and medium shots with the light filtering through venetian blinds (Gobo) and using the harsh light from a desk lamp to create the effect of a mystery thriller.

As most noir films use first person voiceover to narrate the story with flashbacks, our film opening also used these elements. The paranoia and fear was shown in the outdoor scene of our film when Peter runs and hides behind trees when he thinks he is being followed.

The murder that takes place in our film reflects the fact that noir films do not have hopeful themes or happy endings, and the murder in our sequence is the enigma (enigmas are stereotypical of the Noir genre).

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

There are three characters in Shadows Present, two having major parts and one minor. The two main characters are Peter (played by me) and The Shadow (played by Josh Payne).

We wanted to show that Peter was a young male adult between the ages of 18-21 and so we made deliberate choices about how he should be dressed and how he should act. A leather jacket, woolly hat, black jeans and trainers were chosen. The cold, wintry weather added to the dark, sinister mood of the film.

Noir films often contain a scene where one character thinks he is being followed. This sense of paranoia is reflected in our film when Peter is followed by The Shadow through the woods and tries to hide behind the trees.

We decided that Peter should act in a stereotypical manner for this age group - unsmiling, moody and serious. This also reflects the mood of a typical Noir thriller.

The second character of “The Shadow” is deliberately not seen but we did want to show that he “existed” and so for the outdoor scene we filmed shots of his feet. For the indoor scene his voice is heard but again his feet are the only part of him to be seen.

We wanted to show that the two young male should confront each other after a brief meeting and decided this should take place indoors - where there was no escape. Noir films often take place in dark rooms with very little lighting to create a sinister and gloomy atmosphere so we decided to set the confrontation in a room with a desk lamp for low level lighting. The Shadow’s character is serious and also threatening. He is determined to have a fight with Peter. Our film wanted to show that this is a typical reaction of two males in this age group when sorting out a
disagreement. Peter even has a gun, which is fired off-camera, but the outcome is not clear.

The final, more minor character is played by Chloe Atkins whose hand is seen in the opening sequence holding the package in the woods. The dead character is not described as male or female and the gender and identity is left for the audience to decide.

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

If we were to make the whole film based on the opening sequence, its popularity would depend on the popularity of film noir and the demand for difference and choice. As teenagers are always looking for a choice of entertainment there will always be a market for films aimed at teenagers. For this reason, if we aimed our film at teenagers nationally and possibly globally, then we would be aiming for a big major company to distribute our film, like United International Pictures or Buena Vista as they would have the money to distribute our film. However, the opening sequence to our film Shadows Present did not take up too much time to produce and there was hardly any money involved during production so it might appeal to smaller, independent film companies. An independent film would need only a small budget for producing, marketing and distribution. Hopefully our film would make it to the big screen nationally but is unlikely to get as big a cinema audience as a film like The Dark Knight or even smaller films like Hot Fuzz or The Boat That Rocked. If it made it to film festivals then this would serve as the promotion of our media product.

If we were really lucky, we might sell our product for screening on a TV Channel. FilmFour or other similar film channels would be nice, and there are also 20+ independent movie channels that can be received through the BSkyB service, including “movies4men”, “True Movies” and “movies24”. I would like to have it screened on any of these channels because it would fit-in well with other small-budget films that were produced in a similar sort of fashion. But if our audience (teenagers) watch programmes like Hollyoaks on Channel 4, then this could be the channel most suited to our project.

(4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

The typical audience for our film is our own age group - teenagers and young adults, between the ages 15-24. The reason we have chosen this age range is because not only is it easier to know what people of our age are interested in, but we can add our knowledge of film noir, plus all the skills we have acquired through the Preliminary and Exchange Exercises, and combine these with our ideas and creativity skills to complete a film that teenagers are not going to get bored with after the first few seconds. Also, the kind of people who are possibly going to know something about noir films, or can at least understand the concept of a Noir film and not lose the plot half-way through, are not likely to be younger than ‘15’.

The content of the film, as set out in the task, was to make the film a BBFC rating of either ’15’ or ’18’. I think our film would be more a ‘15’ rating than an ‘18’ rating, as a lot more gore, drugs, violence, suicidal references, nudity, and possibly some exposed indecent [sexual] behaviour or sexual violence would have to be used to push the rating up to an ‘18’.

We carried out a questionnaire before going ahead with the production of Shadows Present, and since Emily Swager (Emily is our Art Director) had produced a simple questionnaire and asked several people already (about 10-15 people), including her friends and family, we took the results, analysed them and used them to produce what people were asking for. Black & white films were out of the question, as many people said they wouldn’t continue watching a black & white film after the first few minutes, and would prefer to watch a colour film.

(5) How did you attract/address your audience?

To attract an audience in our opening sequence, we cleverly used enigmas and mysterious circumstances, all of which would be revealed later in the full movie, yet the viewer would have to keep watching until the end of the film when all loose ends are tied up in the concluding stages of the movie.

Originally we had created a fast-paced opening, which was more like a trailer or an action sequence from the middle of a film. We, of course, had to edit this so that it became more like an opening to a film, by replacing the heavy fast-paced music with a much slower paced music track which added a more noir-style effect to the project than the previous one had. Plus, to slow the pace down even more, we placed the interior shots first, then the exterior shots come in as a series of flashbacks, set-off when Peter browses photographs taken of him walking down the street. This slowed the pace down a lot, much more than expected, then it was up to our editor (and our creativity) to edit the project even more to make it more suitable for our audience.

I wanted to use Dutch Tilts on shots of Peter’s feet when he runs, and of The Shadow’s feet when he follows Peter, only walking at a slower pace. I’m happy that the group agreed with my suggestion of using Dutch Tilts, because I hope these shots can be used to attract an audience, similar to how I attracted my audience in the Exchange Exercise (to grab attention).

We kept the background noise of the park, like birds singing and leaves rustling, to attract even more people to the realistic setting of the exterior shots. We made the music volume fade down to a lower level when the voiceovers came into use. This is so that my voice and what I was saying was much clearer than the previous “in your face” sound, where everything seemed to be on the loud setting. But this was a previous mistake that we quickly resolved.


(6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? (You could also mention the significance of using these technologies).

Prior to this course, I had been the IT Director in a small business in the national Young Enterprise scheme. I was asked to produce a company website, but found that the costs involved were too much for our small business. During this Media Studies course I have learnt a more simple and easier way to put yourself or your project on the internet, through blogging. I also had to create a YouTube account where I could upload our coursework project and preliminary exercise videos, for use with our own individual Blogs.

During the planning stage, we were asked to produce an animatic. I had not done this before, and have had knowledge of them from behind the scenes footage of Toy Story, and have made failed attempts in my past. I helped to produce the animatic with our editor Chloe, and together we produced it with music, images scanned in from storyboards, and sound effects - the gunshots. Making and then viewing our animatic gave me a rough idea of how the finished coursework project was going to look like, and any errors that could be pointed out in the animatic could then be resolved for the final product. I now know why storyboards and animatics can become incredibly useful in the production of any film or sequence.

During production, I used a DV-tape Camcorder. Prior to this course, I had only used a HDD Camcorder (handheld and with a tripod) in my personal life. I have been used to using more complex, modern technologies so using an old-fashioned DV-cassette tape Camcorder was a step down in technology for me.

The editing software we used was “Adobe Premiere Pro”. It was the more complicated version of what I had previously used at home, called “Windows Movie Maker”. This was a simplified editing program for the home user. By observing the progress as a team member I have learnt how to edit using the more sophisticated software, creating a group-animatic and helping with decisions and final touches on the whole piece.

(7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? (You can make reference to The Exchange too).

For our Preliminary Exercise, it was just Josh and I. We had a problem with [successfully] capturing the footage of the establishing shot of a person walking down a corridor and opening a door. This was a minor issue with operating the camera. I quickly resolved this. Our badly-written dialogue and females instead of our [preferred] male characters led to a disaster. What was intended as a two-man meeting after a murder about drugs and revenge, in the style of a gangster movie, ended up as two prostitutes talking to each other about whether one of them was “clean or not” after committing adultery with a man. We learnt that the interpretations of a sequence can be much different to a storyboard drawing. We kept this in mind, and our next use of dialogue in our next project will not contain any difficult-to-understand wording or situations.

We were set another task, to polish up our skills, where two characters were to exchange an item without talking. An easy to understand plot and a location that was best-suited to this type of story meant we had understood the interpretations of different actions within a sequence. Quick cuts between shots maintained rhythm and pace set by the chosen music. However, we still needed to polish up on editing sound, and to use only one typeface or font and not all different types. A Ghostbusters-style title was the better typeface, and I understood that the continuity of the fonts was not there, and it should have been.

When comparing the Preliminary Exercise with our final coursework piece (Josh, Emily, Chloe and myself), a few mishaps and errors have been made along the way, but I have managed to learn from them. Planning for the coursework took much longer as everything needed to be in more detail so that, on entering production, everything was clear to us, in terms of what we were doing and how we were going to do it. We organised our time effectively so that each task, including the Group Treatment, was completed in the right manner and changes made as necessary.

We delegated various jobs in equal amounts, yet I had not realised that I had taken up the most difficult role in the whole group. I was the Director, Lead Cameraman, and an Actor. Plus I had promised to complete some of the pre-production work including storyboards, a synopsis and treatment for cinematography (as part of the Group Treatment), and the animatic.

My SMART targets were to improve my use of a DV-tape camcorder, to be a more convincing actor, to be an effective team leader and Director, and to add more depth and detail to the treatment for Editing, Cinematography, Mise-en-scene and Sound (ECMS). I feel I have managed to add more depth and detail to all of my work, and not just the treatments. I have improved my camera skills and have experienced what it is like to be a team leader and to overlook the whole production process.

Feedback from Second Screening of "Shadows Present"

We completed our final edit on the first Wednesday back after the Easter break (22nd April). The following day, Thursday 23rd April, our finalised edited version of our project, "Shadows Present" was screened to the class in our lecture that day. We received even more feedback than we had before Easter and from the group presentation when I showed the class the animatic. We specifically took notes from the feedback on Forms and Conventions of Noir used (Editing, Cinematography, Mise-En-Scene, Sound; Narratives & Storylines; Characters & Iconography; and does this media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of typical "Film Noirs"), the Representations of people and places, the Institution and Industry involved in the distribution of our film, the Audience (facts about target audience and how they are addressed in our project), and the Technologies used and their proficiency and overall effect on the project. Feedback is a great way of understanding people's reactions and finding out ways of inproving to suit the audience.

Forms and Conventions:

ECMS:

Editing

The sequence worked well in colour, though someone thought the interior shots were in black and white, but they weren't, so this is obviously an issue with the key lighting being too bright. The titles and title transitions had a good effect on our audience, and someone even liked the way the titles turned to red after the gunshots at the end of the sequence.

Cinematography

The overall opinion was that the cinematography worked very well with the storyline. The framing was nice and looked as if it had been well thought out, and the handheld circular shots of me opening the package at the table in the interior shots proved a success with some viewers.

Mise-En-Scene

The locations, in general, were fine and worked well. There was one pointer given to us about the interior shots. It looked like an office, when we were trying to represent the feel of a room that Peter (my character) had gone to, but our representations of a room in a house had not worked with our audience. And because its seemed like an office, it was thought that this would be aimed at a higher and older audience rather than our target audience between 15-24 years old. We should have used a bedroom or a lounge instead, or at least we should have given the studio more of a sense of someone living there to represent more of a house than an office for the interior shots, in an attempt to aim our project at a younger audience.

Sound

Some comments were that the music was "a bit dark". I don't really know what they meant, though I can guess that they were talking about how the music has an effect on the sequence. Maybe the music was, in some respects, too cold and gloomly.

The sound effect on the jacket zip on an interior shot works as diagetic sound, and comments made were that the sound effects on the zip and the light switch worked well. The voiceovers sort of used and developed the challenging forms and conventions of Noir films, but there were some suggestions that the wording was maybe aimed typically at an older audience who would understand the metaphors and clichés included. One student pointed-out that my voiceovers were "over-the-top" and, to them, seemed a little bit "cheesy". A laughable discussion followed, but this is still a good point to consider for next time - not to include difficult and complicated wording in a voiceover. This same student also pointed-out that the sounds played during the fight scene at the end, when the title transitions are viewed on-screen, may have sounded homosexually-erotic, involving two men. We are not entirely sure about what she was thinking about at the time, but still a useful point to consider nonetheless.

Characters & Iconography

Students liked the characters and understood the different roles they played within the sequence. They felt that the characters represented young adults aged slightly older than us (late teens & early 20's) and also how they represented traditional Noir style characters, e.g. I played the man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and who has been in trouble and been nvolved with the wrong person, and Josh played the mysterious villain who is out there with a deadly ambition to hunt my character (Peter) down. However the audience noticed no fem-fatales featured in our film, though this doesn't make it any less of a noir because not all noirs feature fem-fatales in the opening.

Narrative

The class liked the narrative idea and felt many aspects of it were of he noir style, however many people didn't understand entirely what was going on, and felt the narrative was quite difficult to follow throughout the film, maybe because we'd been too ambitious about fitting too much into a short time scale. To make this clearer we would have focused on on or two key points in the storyline and not tried to over-complicate things with too many different enigmas going on at once. The audience felt the enigmas were good and would keep them watching, but perhaps too much was left unanswered and left them questioning too much instead of focusing what was actually going on. The majority of the class didn't like the dialogue and voice-over though. They liked the idea of having a voice-over as it fits within the noir style, but felt they couldn't understand what Chris and Josh were talking about because it was too 'flowery' and metaphorical. We wrote our speech in this particular way to exaggerate on the traditional noir way of speaking, but to overcome the issue we could have written it to be more understandable and appealing to our target audience.

Audience

The class felt they enjoyed watching our film sequence and would want to watch the rest of our film, but the speech would probably make it more appealing to older people (20's-ish) instead of the younger half of our target audience. This is fine for us as we would still appeal to our target audience, but could have made it more appealing to younger people as well by tweaking the speech and making it understandable for all ages in our target range.

Within the Noir Genre?

The class agreed that our film was within the noir genre as many codes and conventions were addressed. They liked the running scenes and felt the studio scenes were particularly noir-style. They felt the characters and locations represented the noir genre well and liked the use of shadows to illustrate the presence of a new character. They also liked the fast action against slow paced music and felt that worked well to create a tense atmosphere.

Overall the class enjoyed our film and said our film was definitely within the noir genre. We have fulfilled the brief and even with a few things we could have made clearer, the end result was still good.

Initial Feedback from First Screening of "Shadows Present"

On Wednesday 1st April we asked two students from other groups to come and view our film opening. Unfortunately, I wasn't available for editing on this day, but fellow group members were there and did what they could without my opinions, and without my direction as the group Director. The two students who we selected hadn't seen "Shadows Present" (our opening sequence) before and didn't know what kind of content would be included within the storyline and plot. It was therefore a good test to see if our intended audience would understand the narrative, the representations of characters and the Noir style, as this understanding of the plot would be crucial had we intended on taking a whole film to a cinema screen. We also took the chance to look at other group's work and compare their film ideas to ours. We asked Kamal and Laura to note down anything they liked, disliked or thought needed improvements in our project so we could adapt our opening sequence on the basis of their feedback and comments. 

Laura

Laura liked the music choice and felt it was very Noir-style and worked well with the action on screen. She didn't, however, like the 'tumbler' transition we had applied to our titles. She liked the voiceover as it added tension to the narrative, and crucially she understood the narrative and felt there was a good enigma which we had created.

Kamal

Kamal had pointed out something we hadn't even noticed. He didn't like the hissing sound behind the voiceover and between the shots, and even gave us some advice on how to sort it out. He liked the different shots that we used, a mixture of wide shoits, close-ups and Dutch Tilts and the overall editing style. Interestingly, he didn't like the voiceover. He liked the ending, yet had a similar opinion to Laura's, and hated the 'tumbler' transition on the titles as it wasn't in his view in the style of a Noir film at all and seemed to ruin the atmosphere and tension that had been built throughout the sequence.

We had a week left until we'd have to finalise our sequence, so we had plenty of time to sort out what both Laura and Kamal didn't like. One of the things they both disliked was the 'tumbler' transitions we had recently applied to each of the titles. Chloe and Josh hadn't liked the tumbler transition in the first place, but agreed to allow Emily to keep it only if our audience liked it. From the their feedback we decided to erase the 'tumbler' transition and instead keep a simple, straight cut between titles.

Kamal's comment about the hissing noise could be fixed in two ways: either applying a fade transition between each audio bar, or inserting a recorded piece of ambience sound between the gaps. Both methods came with the same result of continuing the hissing noise throughout but not making it noticeable to the audience. We decided on applying a 'Constant Power' audio transition that would gently fade in and fade out the hissing sound behind the voiceovers. This was a time consuming job but needed to be done because this had ruined the viewing experience for our audience.

Both Laura and Kamal liked the narrative and enigmas and understood the overall plot. This was good to hear, because we had received feedback about the narrative being too complicated and too difficult to understand, in the presentation about our film ideas earlier in the year. So even this shows that with such a complicated idea, the audience were still able to follow the storyline.

Then, unfortunately there was a disagreement over the voiceover. Laura said she liked it and it made the film more in the style of a Noir film, but Kamal said he didn't like it and felt my voice didn't suit it. As a group we liked the voiceover and felt it added a more "Film Noir" feel and helped the audience to understand what's going on. And since we don't have much dialogue in the opening we thought the audience would be bored from just listening to the music the whole time. We therefore chose to keep the voice over as it was and hope that the majority of our audience would agree with Laura's opinion rather than Kamal's.

Both the negative and positive feedback was useful to us and we chose to act on most of it instead of ignore what our audience were thinking and what they would want to watch. Ideally we would have liked 3 or 4 people to look and review our film, but there wasn't enough time in the lesson. From looking at other group's openings, we found that their narratives were also good and very Noir-style. Compared to theirs, we've gone for the fast, action-packed style of Noir film with chases and fight scenes, whereas other groups have gone for a more murderous and deadly Noir style with lots of blood and femme fetales. We also found that many groups had chosen music with lyrics that matched the action. Our music however doesn't have any singing or lyrics in it as we entirely rely on the voiceover, the dialogues and exchanging of a couple of lines of speech at the end, and the different wide shots, close-ups and Dutch Tilts to tell the story. Overall I think other groups have produced work at the same standard as ours, but have used different codes and conventions to create a different style of neo-noir.

Editing: The Post Production Process

As I wanted to render the work area and save as an ".avi" file each time we made an edit, for personal viewing only, I made notes on each edit we had completed. I do not, unfortunately, have the 2nd edit, so was unable to make notes on that edit.

Shadows Edit 1: This was the first edit that I had saved as movie (.avi) file. It consisted of experimental shots and lacks any voiceovers. We used "Mausam & Escape" (by A. R. Rahman) as the music, which gave a more heavy & Eastern (Indian) feel to the movie. It did not contain the discussion between the two key characters near to the end of the opening sequence.

Shadows Edit 3: This time around the voices and discussions have been captured for the end of the sequence, yet this edit is lacking the on-screen action whilst the discussions are underway, and also lacks my voiceovers within the first minute of the opening sequence. We still used the same piece of music.

Shadows Edit 3.1: This was probably the first of the edits to have titles included and full footage and sound used. We had re-recorded the sound for the battle between the two characters at the climax of the sequence, because even though I thought the sound was okay, my fellow group members Josh, Emily, and Chloe complained that the groans and struggles sounded too comedic, and didn't really emphasise the killing of one of the characters at the end of the opening sequence.

Me and Emily recorded sound effects for use in the sequence. The "zip" sound, when I am unzipping my jacket, and the click of the light switch when I have sat down (both interior shots).

Shadows Edit 4: After a short discussion with our lecturer, "Shadows Present: Edit 3" seemed like more of a trailer for a film rather than an opening sequence, mainly because of the pace of the cuts between shots and the rhythm of the music. Adding "Clues" as the music (by Jan Hammer), a much slower and more mysterious rhythm, we found that the pace was consequently slowed down a lot, and edited the footage with the music rather than around the music.

Shadows Edit 5 NOIR: The idea came to me, one night (in bed), that if we have the interior shots first rather than during/after the exterior shots, the pace of the sequence can subsequently be reduced. It also seemed like the perfect idea because we would be introducing my character and then have the exterior shots as a flashback from the photographs taken from the package on the interior shots.

We used bells at the beginning of the sequence to set the mood and tone of the sequence to follow, after I found a sound effects website one night. We had tried to use bells that we had recorded from a nearby church in Alexandra Park, but the volume was too low and therefore we had to find other methods of adding church bells to the sequence.

The last shot, of the package in the hand laid flat on the ground (from the dead person) contained a piece of paper with the name of the movie written on it. We had created this through the use of a white-board marker. First, the camera tracked-out and then the viewer is forced into a position where they watch a shadow pass over the hand and package and title. This was the first time it had been used, and in my opinion it looked great and our lecturer even agreed that it was creative, yet he insisted that proper titles would be better.

Upon screening to our lecturer for more advice on what we should do next, he praised our work as being more suitable and more accurate to the task set, for the project to be the opening sequence to a Film Noir Thriller, and not a trailer for a film. He did say, however, that more improvements could be made to the cuts between different shots and between different sounds used. This is the main reason behind why I called it "Shadows Present Edit 5 NOIR".

Shadows Edit 6 NOIR: As I wasn't available for this edit, Josh and Chloe used a different typeface/font, more in the style of typewriters, and taking the advice of our lecturer, Josh and Chloe had opted out of the use of the track-out and "watch the shadow pass over the hand and package" shot.

Shadows Present (The Final Edit): The final edit was made when I was unfortunately ill, and the project was given its first screening to all students in our lecture that morning, Wednesday 1st April 2009. Apparently the feedback received was positive, with one or two "touches" that should be made to the sound cuts. Even though I have watched it in my own personal time at home, thinking that it is okay so far, I still think that the supposed "final edit" needed a lot doing to it. This was the last week of College before the 2009 Easter Holiday break, and we were allowed the chance to polish up our sequence after Easter based on our feedback, then this would be the final edit and is what we would be submittng.

Shadows Present - The Final Edit: This was completed on the Wednesday after Easter (22nd April). From looking at our feedback, it was apparent that we needed to polish up on the sound cuts and, in my view, some of the cuts between different shots.