"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.

Applying for Commercial Usage of our Chosen Music

If we were to finish the rest of our film noir and publicly release it into cinemas worldwide, one of the things we would need to apply for is permission for music use. This is because we haven’t created our own music to use in our opening sequence, as we are using the song ‘Clues’ written by Jan Hammer. PRS (Performing Rights Society) acts as the agent between our film production company ‘Take Two Productions’, and Jan Hammer, as they ask the owner of the music if we would be able to use in our film opening. To apply for music use, we would have to log onto the PRS website (www.prsformusic.com/Pages/default.aspx) and apply using an online application form. On receipt of our request PRS would then contact Jan Hammer and ask for his permission, and negotiate a price we would pay for use of his music.


As Chloe is responsible for sound in our group, she undertook the task of going through the process stage towards applying to use our music, ‘Clues’ by Jan Hammer. We would need a broadcast licence for a feature film for commercial use only. Chloe entered the name of our production company, our film title, a brief synopsis of our film and various other information, so that PRS can inform Jan Hammer the specific use of his music. Then she entered the piece of music we wished to use and who PRS would have to ask permission from to enable us to use it.

Below is a scanned version of the details we were intending to submit to ask for music use permission:

Music Choices-Chloe and I

As editor, Chloe is also responsible for sound. This includes the music and sound effects we need for our film. Back in January, Chloe and I listened to many different pieces of music before deciding on 4 top choices. These are shown below along with the reasons why we shortlisted them:

'Mausam and Escape' by A R Rahman - This piece of music is fast paced and would suit our running scenes. We applied and kept this music on our film for a while, but after showing it to class members and our media teacher, we gained feedback that it was a little too dramatic and made our sequence sound like a film trailer instead of a film opening. I also felt it sounds too Indian for our film, though there are some good parts in the song that add extra emphasis to certain scenes in our sequence.

'Clues' by Jan Hammer - This music is well suited to our film and the noir genre. It's slow paced but mysterious and matches with the action scenes in our film, as well as the slow studio scenes. The quietness also allows any diegetic sounds in the background to be heard alongside the music. We applied this music in our second edit sequence and the whole group agrees with its suitability compared to the first piece.

'Keep Running' - This music varies in pace throughout, which would be useful for our running scenes. The title also links in with our film narrative, but overall we don't like the music enough to see it fitting in well with our film and matching with all the action.

'Theme from The Warriors' - This music is from a film called 'The Warriors', which was made in 1979. It suits our film in regards to pace, but the genre of the music isn't very noirey. We also want to avoid using any music from a previous film as we want our film to be individual.

Shooting & Filming: On Location (Interior & Exterior)

On Wednesday 5th February we filmed for the best part of a whole morning, shooting on location in Alexandra Park, capturing all the footage we needed of exterior shots. The weather seemed to be in our favour, yet the coldness of the Wintery weather proved a bargain, adding to the cold and thrilling nature, mood and tone of the exterior shots.

We made sure that we had at least two or three takes on each shot, referring to my storyboards each time, so that we had more choice whilst editing in the post-production process. I would set-up the camera in position for each shot, sometimes discussing a particular shot angle for at least 5-10 minutes, then would be part of the action in front of the camera, Josh Emily and Chloe helping by simply pressing the "Record" button on and off.

I had questioned my position in front of the camera, as I felt that I would not have as much time behind the camera as I would have liked. However, as our lecturer sparked up hopes of A-Level Drama Students acting-out the scenes whilst we could execute our different tasks, we fell into the same unfortunate position as the rest of the groups in our lecture, where all hopes had been destroyed. Josh's friend Aidan had promised to step-in as "The Shadow", but a week before he opted out of acting, and I persuaded Josh to act as "The Shadow".

The following Wednesday 12th February, we filmed the remaining shots to do, the interior shots. We had previously speculated about the location of the interior shots, and came to the conclusion that we would have to film inside our College building. We decided to use the Media Studio rather than our classroom, as the sound would all go "in sync". On the whole everything went according to plan and our careful planning lead to a marathon run of capturing footage that morning. We had captured more interior footage than exterior footage, yet this didn't matter because overall we had more than we needed from both locations.

"Shadows Present" - Evaluation of Animatic

· We were given the task of producing an animatic, a movie file extracted from storyboard artwork, that would plan-out how our project would look on-screen. It was only supposed to be a plan, and from this we could draw conclusions on which shots we thought were the best, to be used for real. It was really the editor’s job to produce it, but I agreed with her that I would help since I drew the storyboards and I knew in which order the shots would appear on-screen.

· At around the same time we were asked to produce a PowerPoint presentation to show to the other groups in our lecture. It was a way of getting their feedback, and using this to further improve our project, since our target audience is students of the same age, between 15 and 24. I managed to produce an animatic at home without sound for the presentation. Chloe, our editor, decided that it was better for me to finish the animatic at home, so the next time we met as a group in the next lecture, we chose music and sound effects and I added these to the already completed animatic and finished the job by fading each shot into the next and fading sound in and out. When selecting music and sound effects as a group, I hope we have chosen these for the finished piece (for real) so that this is one less decision we have to worry about when editing the final piece.

· From producing an animatic I have learnt more about our editing software and am now even more confident than I was when I edited the Exchange project with the help from Josh and Marc, though I was pretty damn confident then!

· I have seen an animatic produced by another College, yet I didn’t realise how difficult it was to produce an animatic compared with producing and editing a piece with real people and moving images.

· The finished animatic seemed better than the version I had produced without sound. With titles included, the sound and storyboard artwork all came together to make a new story. Watching the animatic, I feel that I am the viewer of a completely different film. It gives the perspective of a cartoon-artist compared with the view of a director of a film with real people. Maybe like a Toy Story artist’s impression of a sequence and then the actual sequence directed by Steven Spielberg.

· From the animatic shown to our class (the version without sound), the feedback received was a bit negative. Various opinions were that we were trying to cram-in too much into a short 2-3 minute opening sequence. As if we were making a whole film not just the opening sequence. This feedback was very useful because we can now film our opening sequence, remembering not to add too much.

· The only thing I didn't like about the animatic was the editing of the sound. I used a gunshot sound effect which repeated itself every ten seconds or so, and although I only wanted one gunshot I couldn’t make the sound clip this short and was forced to have 2 gunshots instead. This has however added more emphasis to the end of the opening sequence, but I shall try not to repeat the same mistake in the final piece.

· The other thing I didn’t like was the fading-out of one piece of music then the fading-in of the next piece of music. On the finished piece the fading seems too rushed and what I actually wanted was for there to be a short silence before the next piece of music faded-in.

· I have compared my animatic with the one created by other groups and the one created by the other College, yet my opinion hasn’t changed - that ours seems a little bit faster-paced with loads of shots and fast-paced music. Though it does depend upon the desired pace of the film and the music that is used to emphasise this pace.

· If I had the chance to do this again (which I probably will in my spare time), I would edit the sound a little more carefully and try not to add too many shots into the animatic. I have to say, even though I have never produced an animatic before I have taken myself by storm. I didn’t think I could produce such a good piece (in my opinion) in such little time available. And it has taught me a lot about how to plan out the shots and how to look at them and decide “is that good or not”. Like reading an essay back to yourself to make sure it makes sense, but instead watching the whole way through and making decisions on shot size, framing, shot types and so on…..

"Shadows Present" - Coursework Project Animatic

Creating an animatic is a very useful piece of pre-production work as it gives us an insight into what our final film opening will look like when all our chosen shots are put together. From creating an animatic we have learnt what our film will look like alongside sound, and with the help from Chloe (our editor), we have had the chance to consider the length of each shot and the order in which they appear.

After I had completed the storyboards, we cut each frame apart and arranged it together to form a look-a-like of our final piece, but in storyboard drawings. We then applied 2 of our music choices to add extra atmosphere and make the animatic seem more realistic and like the final piece.

The music choices were from our final list of 4, but because we haven't made a final decision yet we decided to incorporate 2 of our choices here to see which one is best suited. The first piece is by Jan Hammer ("Clues") and is slow and more noir style, whereas the second piece by A R Rahman ("Mausam and Escape") is more for a running pace but has an Indian style.

As you can see our animatic runs over 3 minutes, but in the real film the shots will be shorter and the action in each scene will be quicker than it's shown here. Also we decided after creating the animatic that the personnel titles will appear at the beginning of the film and we would have no music, or very quiet background music on the final scene where the 2 people exchange their dialogue and get into a fight. This is because we want the dialogue to be heard clearly and the gunshot to shock the audience with a loud effect.

At the end of our animatic we have also added the 2 gunshot sounds we wish to use. We found the gunshots on a sound-effects CD in the Suffolk College library, and they have proved very useful as we wouldn't be able to create a gunshot sound ourselves (for obvious reasons!).

(With sound) (Also on YouTube - www.youtube.com/chriskenworthy)

"Shadows Present" Coursework Project - Storyboards

Group Treatment: Audience and Influences for Opening Sequence - Josh Payne

After conducting our surveys which were targeted at the age group suggested by our brief, 15-24 year olds, we found what the common tastes seemed to be. Firstly, they were on the whole unaware of the term film noir and many of them listed their favourite genres to be comedies or action films. This meant that a film that simply copied many traditional film noirs would simply not interest a modern audience, in order to catch their attention we need to put a different spin on it. The first thing to do is to not film it in a black and white visual as another fact that came out of our primary research was that many people seemed to be put off by a film being in black and white. By keeping the film in colour we will need to be more creative and careful with our lighting techniques.

As well as that our primary research indicated that a lot of people require several 'action' scenes in a thriller which indicates that they prefer a faster paced story and avoid any pondering. Josh tried to incorporate this into the script by introducing a fast paced opening with our main character fleeing from an unknown pursuer as he tries to make off with a mysterious package containing a large sum of money. This was intended to get the film off to fast start. However it was also important to maintain many of the traditions of noir in order to keep the film in this genre, so the scene where the two men are in the room together will emphasise many classic film noir lighting techniques and the dialogue throughout the piece will be noir like in both its subject matter and wording.

Our influences for the more traditional noir characteristics in the piece were classic film noirs such Citizen Kane, Detour and Double Indemnity for the feel and visual styles including how they put the camera in different positions to create interesting angles. Also, some of the dialogue in our piece references these kind of films. However, the wording is slightly updated and our props and costumes have been modified to fit into today's fashion criteria.

Looking at more recent noirs influences have included both the George Clooney thriller Michael Clayton and the Coen Brothers' No Country For Old Men. Michael Clayton starts out with its main character sprinting through a wooded area with his expression indicating that something very unexpected and dramatic has happened hence his fleeing which serves as a hook to the audience. Also, in No Country For Old Men the main protagonist steals a suitcase full of money and intends to make away with it but finds that a killer is now on his trail. The plot plays on the age old question of whether you would take an abandoned bag of money if you simply came across. The idea of an ordinary man making one bad decision and then having dark repercussions is a constant theme in film noirs and helps us to further our film's connection to noir traditions.


As a group we wanted some feedback about film noir to help us with our project. The feedback would be gained through primary research in the form of a questionnaire, as this way we could tailor the questions to ensure we would gain the useful answers we wanted. Emily devised the questionnaire and went out to ask people for answers. She asked 7 people in the 16-25 age range as they are the main cinema audience and they are who we would be aiming our noir towards. She also asked people aged 40, 28 and 14 to see if our film would appeal to a wider audience range as well. My job was to analyse the results and below is a table showing what I found out explaining how the information we gained from each question was useful to us.We will attempt to incorporate our findings when creating our opening sequence to make it more appealing to our target audience of people aged between 15 and 25. The question about black and white films (question 2) will be particularly useful when we are in the editing suit and are choosing to add any effects to our film. Our results show that black and white films aren’t a popular choice and that they would turn off/over the TV if they saw one was on. Our role in creating our title sequence is to get people to stay tuned in and watch on to resolve the enigma(s), but if our audience would choose not to watch it just because it was in black and white, then perhaps we shouldn’t add that effect. Question number 5 also proved interesting with the results as it shows how people can be interested and ‘hooked’ in a film opening even if there isn’t any music to accompany it. We will still use music in our opening piece as we feel it’s the key to creating the right noir atmosphere, though it is useful to know that we won’t be turning away our audience if we chose to have loud sound effects, plain speech or dead silence instead. Although the resuls we gained were useful, there were still some things we could have done to gain even better results. Firstly we could have asked a bigger sample of people to gain more accurate results with defined replies on each question. However, I think the outcome would still contain similar results, and wouldn’t be of any further use to us. Also, we could have more questions requiring a more detailed answer (open questions) to gain more feedback from each person we gave the questionnaire to. But they may not have been as keen to fill it out if they had noticed how detailed it was. Overall, I am pleased with the results we discovered as they’ll be very useful to us in the future.

Group Treatment: Sound - Chloe Atkins

As a group, our first ideas for the sound were to have a continuous soundtrack accompanying each shot. We ideally want this piece of music to be contrapuntal to the action on screen as it would show that we haven’t just picked a piece of music at random, and that it was clearly planned and prepared for. We wanted our music to be orchestral yet modern, and to make it sound creepy and odd. In the editing suite a few days ago, as a group we decided on a list of top 4 music choices that suit our demands. One of our top choices is called 'Mausam and Escape' by A R Rahman. It has a fast pace towards the end of the piece, which will be the part of the song we will use for the running scenes. Although we have had some doubts about whether it sounds too continental for a film noir, despite it's suitability in regards to pace. The other is called "Clues" by Jan Hammer, which we will use for the shots where Peter is opening the package and discovering the items inside it.

Other sound that would be recorded would be diegetic as we would leave the camera-top microphone on. For the sound where the ice-cube crashes into the glass that the Man is holding in the room, we may have to make it pleonastic as to demonstrate the Man’s loneliness and that every small sound can be heard and is amplified. For the sound that would be impossible to retrieve for our opening, such as a gun shot, we will have to result to finding a sound affect that suits our film. Sound effects can be easily found on the Internet or on compact-discs in sound libraries.

We have realised that it is important to get the music and the sound right for a our opening as it will be used to create the atmosphere of a film noir, and can keep the audience intrigued into watching more.

Group Treatment: Editing and Titles - Chloe Atkins

The initial ideas for the editing style of our film noir opening would be cutting shots to create a short, sharp and precise appearance. The effect of this would make the scenes seem more intense with lots of things going on in each one, and also to put the audience on the edge of their seats with anticipation. We also decided, as a group, that the speed in which the Man was travelling would affect the speed in which the shots would appear on the screen. For example, the part where the Man is running at a breathless pace, the shots would be fast also. And where the Man is dead in motion and lying on the floor, the shots would be left long to create a slow pace.

When the cuts occur between the Man running and when he is in the isolated room, we decided it would be best to use a sweeping transition to illustrate a change in location and a change in the Man’s emotional state. A sweeping transition may seem to calm and unsuited to the action on the audience will be viewing, but we wanted this transition to not be too noticeable as it may break the audience’s trust and belief that our film is real. Late after a piece of voice over from the Man, a series of location cuts begin. These will be between the Man running through the woods, and the same Man sitting in a darkened room alone. Each shot-after-shot will be fast and chaotic as to disorientate the audience and make them watch carefully, as the shots unveil more of the Man’s problems and secrets.

Whilst in the editing suite, we as a group decided that in the shot sequence between the woods and the room locations, the ones where the Man is running could be put into a black and white or tinted blue effect to show the grimness of the woods and also as a nice touch to show that this is directly from the Man’s memory. Also, it ties in with many of the traditional noir films, as they were all in black and white because of the time period they were filmed in.

For the titles, we have decided that the personnel titles would be shown before the action begins, and then the main title of the film would be displayed at the end. The personnel titles would feature our group names and roles, and would drip-fill with red one by one onto a black background. This would represent blood and murder, and is used on other film noir, crime or who-done-it mystery films. The main title would be best positioned at the end as we discovered that most opening film sequences come before the main title appears. This also ensures that the audience stay seated throughout until they uncover the name of the film they are watching. We decided that instead of following the same format as with the personnel titles, we would have this written on a piece of dirty, torn paper that drops onto the floor. It has yet been decided who drops this piece of paper on the floor, but it would probably be the main character Man as he is dying. The font of our ‘Shadows Present’ main title would be in a handwritten style, but bold and clear enough for the audience to read. The colour of the writing would either be black or deep red, to represent blood again.

!!UPDATE!!

Chloe Atkins has updated her blog, and because she has done, I have asked her permission to use her new blog post in this post. It is an update on the colour, shape and size of the typefaces and fonts of the titles:

In our film we have chosen to place the main title, 'Shadows Present', at the end of the sequence. We found this popular with many films and we thought it would create an enigma for the audience and keep them watching to find out what the film is called. However, as editor it is my responsibility to choose a suitable title font that will match with the noir style and be interesting for the audience. The same chosen font will then be applied to our name titles (which will be shown during our final fight scene and between the running through the forest) to show continuity throughout. We have also had a group idea that the actors' names should appear during the woods scenes, but are unsure if this idea will stay as it is not neccessary to have too many short unreadable titles disturbing the film, rather than a few good readable titles that break up the action nicely. For the background to our titles we had already decided upon black as it would make the text stand out and would match the noir style. Below are some of the font ideas and the reasons behind them: (the font examples shown below aren't the same as the ones we looked at in the editing suite, but they are very similar. You might have to click on each font example to see it more clearly as the quality isn't very good):

1. The first idea was to have the titles written on a piece of paper attached to the package, which would be in the hand of the person who dies at the end of our film. The shot we took panned out from the title to slowly reveal the hand holding it, however after following advice from Jon (our media teacher), we decided to abandon the idea on the thought that it looked unprofessional and too 'studenty'.

2. The second idea was to keep the handwritten appearance from the first idea, but use a professional font instead. For this our options were 'Copybook' (shown on the left), 'Brush Stroke 26', 'Bradley Hand ITC' or any other similar examples. After applying the title to our film, we realised it didn't look very noiry and gave connotations of a comedy or children's film instead of a dark crime/horror noir sequence.

3. The third idea was to choose something more gothic and detailed. For this we'd use 'Annual' (shown on the left), 'Copperplate Gothic', 'StoneSerif.1 Gothic' or any other similar font. I liked this font style as it suited the noir genre and introduced our film title nicely according to the previous action shown. However, there were still other ideas that could work just as well, so I looked at these first. 4. The fourth idea was to choose something simple but looked like a typewriter, to give the impression that someone is present and has just typed/written it onto the screen (like in the first and second ideas above). For this we used a font called 'Perpetual Elite' (which is similar to 'Courier New' - shown on the left). The font suited our film noir, and is similar to the titles in the opening sequence to the film 'Se7en' (as analysed previously). We decided to put the font into size 86.0 for the production company titles at the beginning, and size 70.0 for our names.

4. The fourth idea was to choose something simple but looked like a typewriter, to give the impression that someone is present and has just typed/written it onto the screen (like in the first and second ideas above). For this we used a font called 'Perpetual Elite' (which is similar to 'Courier New' - shown on the left). The font suited our film noir, and is similar to the titles in the opening sequence to the film 'Se7en' (as analysed previously). We decided to put the font into size 86.0 for the production company titles at the beginning, and size 70.0 for our names.

5. Once satisfied with the font choice, Josh and I tried to apply some sort of title effect that would create the appearance of a shadow walking across the font. After a long time of fiddling around, cutting bits of the title and inserting different effects, we decided that our ambitions were set too high and it wouldn't be worth it after all. So we then decided that the font could change colour to red. This would give connotations of blood and death, and would be a nice touch to the end of our sequence, but the beginning of the film. We kept the same font but changed the colour to red. We placed the titles next to each other in our film timeline, and applied a fade transition between the 2 titles. We then applied a 'blur' vidoe effect to the end of the red title to disorientate the audience and add a noirey touch. We showed the rest of our group and we all agreed that this effect worked well.

So above are the few ideas we had as a group, and ideas Chloe had herself. Each idea is good in certain ways, but had to match the noir genre for it to go well with our film.

Group Treatment: Mise-En-Scene - Emily Swager

Emily had discussed with the group her M-E-S treatment and we agreed it was fine. Here it is:

Location

Man running in the flashback is going to be set in the back of our college, at a park called ‘Alexandra park’ we choose this place for exterior scene because it has a lot of trees and it would be good if it was sunny as you would be able to see a shadow through the trees for our silhouette man. Also you do not get many outside noises and not many people go down there so it would not be a problem when we have to come to edit to get rid of the diegetic sound. When the man is sitting in the room we have chosen the studio in our college because it’s very dark and a good place to give out shadows and it would be very effective for our venation blind effect.

Costumes

Both times exterior and interior we our going to have our main man who is running to be wearing wrinkled clothes and black clothes and a little stubble on his chin because it shows that this man is in his late teens and he is not experienced in making rational decisions in life.The shadow is just a black figure so it does not require a lot of costume but my plan was that we get the actor who is playing him to dress all in black and not put any light on him to make him more silhouette.

Lighting

When we come to the interior (man in the room) it is going to be darkness and then it has a few seconds of the venation blind effect over his face. When we cut to the flashback then comes back every time we come back to the room it gets lighter. This shows that he figuring something out which is that the silhouette has been watching him all this time.When it is exterior in the park we are going to use natural daylight on the man running but with the shadow we will need some lighting so that we can put a shadow effect on him on the ground so that it appears that the shadow is bigger and more powerful then this man.

Performance

In the beginning when we see the man in the room his facial expressions is relieved to show that he has just gotten away from something and he escaped. But when we go in and out of the flashbacks you see his face getting more anxious and nervous.At the ending when he is in the room you see his face relaxed and clamed then there is a lose up of his eyes which seem scared and nervous like he has released something.

Props

A desk (available at college)A chair at the desk (available at college)A angle desk lamp (available at college)A fan (for the desk, available at college)A black folder, a pad of paper, a few Biro pens and a mobile phone (to decorate the desk)2x large brown envelope packages (1 to use and 1 spare)A drinking glass and waterA fake knife and a fake gun2x black & white photos of our main character walking, and a paperclip to hold them togetherAn A5 black notebook with a date in itA magazine cut-out collage of a nameless address and phone numberA fake ice-cube (or real ice from the college cafe if they have any)A piece of paper with 'Shadows Present' handwritten in bold onto itThe main character's costume and the shadow man's costume (as described above)

Group Treatment: Cinematography - Chris Kenworthy (myself)

· For exterior shots, I was thinking that since the first shot is going to be of a package full of money clenched in a hand, maybe some sort of close up should be used on the package in the hand. A normal close up might be a bit far away, so I’m more likely to use a big close-up or even an extreme close-up on the hand and package.

· Again, I was thinking of maybe a close up of the package on the ground after it has been dropped and is still in a hand. It would look obvious that the person’s hand is on the ground because of the foliage in our chosen location, so a medium close-up would be best.

· A medium close-up shot of the package as a shadow passes over it. If the shot is framed nicely and nothing is moved between shots, then maybe it would seem like the same shot - the shot of the package on the ground, and the next shot where the shadow passes over it.

· Medium shots, Wide shots and Close-ups are probably going to be the main shots used in the production. Of course, when filming this on-set in our locations both inside and outside, as a group we will probably discuss the shots whilst practicing them and make final decisions there and then, so most of the ideas I have may change to different shots on-screen, which will be down to different perspectives of the same shots.

· Also there is a shot of my eyes “wearing a panicked expression” at the beginning, so an extreme close-up will probably be the best type of shot to use. Fellow group members will act as assistant cameramen/women when I am needed in front of the camera.

· Maybe a change in the focus, between the background and the foreground, though looking at our ideas and script I don’t quite know where we could include this kind of detail.

· The use of Dutch Tilts in my “Exchange” project before Christmas received a lot of positive feedback from the rest of the students in my AS Media lecture when it was screened, so I shall aim to reuse Dutch Tilts in a similar fashion.

· On the interior shots, I’m going to be acting so I shall have to tell my crew what shots I will require, and whilst on-set maybe they can show me the framing before we film each shot. I shall also oversee the shots as the director of the production both in front of the camera and behind, on both locations. Especially the interior location, since we’re planning on using the Media Studio where we can adapt the lighting and position of props to our liking.

· I shall be acting in the interior location, so my assistant camera crew will be filming the shots. I will have set it up and all they will need to do is press the Record button on/off. If one of them wants to adjust the exposure or aperture on the camera then I can do it, since I’m very confident about altering the settings on any camera that I will use or have already used, both in Media Studies and in my private life.

· Whilst on-set, we can discuss the height, angle and framing of each shot since it is difficult to draw these small details on a storyboard.

· We will mainly be using a tripod with the camcorder, but maybe a handheld shot here and there if shots are too difficult to shoot on a tripod. Panning and tilting may be used in the exterior location as my character runs past the camera.

Group Treatment: Questionnaire and Results Analysis - Chloe Atkins

Conducting a Questionnaire

As a group we wanted some feedback about film noir to help us with our project. The feedback would be gained through primary research in the form of a questionnaire, as this way we could tailor the questions to ensure we would gain the useful answers we wanted. Emily devised the questionnaire and went out to ask people for answers. She asked 7 people in the 16-25 age range as they are the main cinema audience and they are who we would be aiming our noir towards. She also asked people aged 40, 28 and 14 to see if our film would appeal to a wider audience range as well. My job was to analyse the results and below is a table showing what I found out explaining how the information we gained from each question was useful to us.

We will attempt to incorporate our findings when creating our opening sequence to make it more appealing to our target audience of people aged between 15 and 25. The question about black and white films (question 2) will be particularly useful when we are in the editing suit and are choosing to add any effects to our film. Our results show that black and white films aren’t a popular choice and that they would turn off/over the TV if they saw one was on. Our role in creating our title sequence is to get people to stay tuned in and watch on to resolve the enigma(s), but if our audience would choose not to watch it just because it was in black and white, then perhaps we shouldn’t add that effect. Question number 5 also proved interesting with the results as it shows how people can be interested and ‘hooked’ in a film opening even if there isn’t any music to accompany it. We will still use music in our opening piece as we feel it’s the key to creating the right noir atmosphere, though it is useful to know that we won’t be turning away our audience if we chose to have loud sound effects, plain speech or dead silence instead. Although the results we gained were useful, there were still some things we could have done to gain even better results. Firstly we could have asked a bigger sample of people to gain more accurate results with defined replies on each question. However, I think the outcome would still contain similar results, and wouldn’t be of any further use to us. Also, we could have more questions requiring a more detailed answer (open questions) to gain more feedback from each person we gave the questionnaire to. But they may not have been as keen to fill it out if they had noticed how detailed it was. Overall, I am pleased with the results we discovered as they’ll be very useful to us in the future.

Group Treatment: Roles and Jobs

Job roles within the group were as follows:

Joshua Payne - Script Writer/Producer
Chris Kenworthy (myself) - Director/Cameraman/Actor
Emily Swager - Art Director
Chloe Atkins - Editor

Because our coursework project was a group activity, and since we had been designated our job roles within the group, we each contributed to the treatment for the project according to what we were doing in our different roles. A number of different tasks were to be completed, especially the ECMS of the film (Editing, Cinematography, Mise-En-Scene, Sound), and they were designated to each member of the group according to decisions made. The blog posts on this page, as completed by each group member, are as follows:

Editing and Titles - Chloe Atkins
Cinematography - myself (Chris Kenworthy)
Mise-En-Scene - Emily Swager
Sound - Chloe Atkins
Audience and Influences - Josh Payne
Questionnaire and Results Analysis - Chloe Atkins.

After several production meetings in which we discussed and adapted our own ideas, we finalised on an idea for the script. Josh then went away with this group idea and and formatted it into our final script idea. He had completed a rough outline for the script, which he would finalise later on after a group discussion before production took place. This is a rough outline of both the synopsis and the script, which Josh has published on his blog (Josh-Script):

"The story consists of a man who discovers a large sum of money contained within a package in the middle of a forest. The package belonged to a dead man. When he brings the package home with him it is revealed in a series of flashbacks that it was placed there as a trap and that an unknown assailant has now caught up with him. The two meet in a violent confrontation with the audience not clear about who has won thus creating an enigma."

"Shadows Present" Script - Josh Payne

As part of our pre-production work Josh created a script for our film. This involved the dialogue each character would be saying and a rough discription of where shots would appear in the storyline. We were each given a copy of the script to write our own notes on, relevant to our role. There were more than one versions of the script as Josh decided to change things according to what the rest of the group wanted or what we were advised to do by our media lecturer. Below is a scanned version of Chloe's copy of the script with notes on editing, sound and titles that we could use. This script version was done about a few weeks before we began filming.

Creating a script is an important part of pre-production work as it helps to order how our film is going to appear. We took the final version of the script with us when filming in both locations as it helped us to keep on track with what we wanted to film and so that both Chris and Josh could learn their dialogue lines. Although it was Josh's task to create a script, as his role is writer and producer, everyone in the group contributed ideas and made useful suggestions for what else could be added.

"Shadows Present" - Synopsis for Opening Sequence

A few hours earlier:

Peter walks along a footpath and discovers a body. Peter wears a woolly hat, a brown leather jacket, dark crumpled trousers and some black trainers. The person that he has just discovered appears to be dead and has a brown paper package in their hand. Peter reaches for the package, and prizes it away from its lifeless owner.

His eyes seem to wear that of a panicked expression. Of course, this event was a flashback, and coming back into the present day he speaks of how this was the day that his life finished.

Present Time

Jason walks through the door to his apartment. In the room that he enters is a table in the centre of the room, a chair situated in one corner of the room to his right, and a window on the wall opposite the door he has just come through, blinds drawn and partially letting light into the room. On the table sits a whisky glass, a bottle of whisky, a black biro pen and a scrap piece of paper. A stand-alone wooden cloak hanger sits to the left of the door, where Peter has placed his scarf. He reaches for his woolly hat on his head, pulls it off and places it on the table in front of him.

Peter drags the chair carelessly across the room to the table, then collapses into the chair. He is weak, and only just sober. He slowly reaches inside his jacket and pulls out the brown paper package that he had prized away from the lifeless owner. His hands shake vigorously, as if shivering, as he carelessly places the package on the table. He starts to inspect it.

Peter pierces his hand through the opening and draws out a ball of money in his hand. Twenty-pound notes. He rolls his eyes to the corner of both eyelids, then his face is shadowed by the blinds, then he rolls his eyes back to the package further inspect its contents.

He describes (in his mind) how he is like “a panther prowling through the undergrowth stalking its prey.” Then he asks himself “was I the panther, or the unsuspecting gazelle staring into the great gorging eyes of abyss without even realising it?”

The blinds seem to let in more light. The disturbing eruption and sudden burst of light causes Peter to remember more about how he had come across the package, only a few hours earlier. He remembers the landscape. A footpath, squelchy and dirty, yet dominated by foliage and weeds. He clearly remembers panting as he ran away from something. Whilst inspecting the package, he tries to remember what he was running away from, but he cannot think straight with the tension that is building through his flashback. He just remembers a shadow, but whilst running he was unable to make out where the shadow was coming from.

As he remembers glancing for a brief second behind him, his flashback suddenly stops and he is forced to continue inspecting the package to remember more. He asks “why me? Why me, the keep your head down, no fuss, always do as you’re told, unimportant cog. The one whose eyes you always avoid because otherwise you might actually have to acknowledge they exist. The bloke who melts in with the crowd. No one taking second notice!”

He again remembers running, rushing through the dense woodland. Lifeless winter leaves fall from branches onto the foliage-dominated pathway as Peter rushes past, and as the shadow seems to snake its way through the branches.

Back to the present time, as the flashback fades away for a brief moment, Peter pulls out another item from the package. It is a piece of card, which he unravels to discover someone’s contact details - an address and telephone number. It has been done in some sort of code, with cuttings from newspapers and magazines.

Wondering why he has come to possess someone’s contact details, he remembers more as his flashback claws it way back into his mind. He had tripped on a loose branch on the path and dropped the package. Going back for the package he briefly glanced behind him at the shadow, a pair of feet coming slightly into view. He picks up the package, and whilst doing so he comes back to the present time and looks at the package like he did on the path. Only this time, as he puts his hand into the package he draws out a photograph, which has been taken of him as he had walked on a different path some time ago. It was now obvious that someone was following him and watching his every move, but for what reason was still unclear.

Lots of ideas, thoughts and concepts filled his mind as his imagination started to run wild. The flashback again dominates his current state of mind, as he remembers stumbling back to his feet with the package in-hand after tripping on the loose branch.

The next item that he pulls out of the package is an A5-sized notebook. Turning the cover, he discovers a date scrawled on the inside cover, a date not so long ago.

He remembers suddenly diving behind a tree to catch his breath after running for what seemed like ages. Whilst catching his breath, he turns and looks around the tree at the footpath he has just run along. A silhouetted figure in the distance hides behind one of the other trees as Peter looks towards them.

Peter again dives behind the tree, now fully aware that there is someone on his trail. He takes three deep breaths, then makes a run for it, in his last final sprint, in order to try to lose the figure that is stalking him. He stares in desperation at the blinding coldness of the white winter sun.

Something that we, as the audience, see on-screen is a berry on a branch. A cold, wintry, whistling wind catches the berry, causing it to gracefully fall down from the branch. Halfway to the ground, the shot fades into the next shot, where the berry dropping from the branch is substituted by an ice cube, as it falls into a glass of whisky (inside Peter’s apartment, at the present time).

A hand comes into shot. It is Peter’s hand, as he reaches for his whisky glass. He picks it up and consequently gulps-down the whisky, unaware of a certain presence behind him. Peter gulped down the drink as if the whisky was the only thing he had left that was worth living for.
As Peter drew the glass away from his cheeks, he felt a presence, as if someone was behind him. He felt insecure for a brief moment, until a voice broke out of the dead silence, advising him on the way he should drink alcohol:

“You know that stuff will kill you.”

Bewildered by the contents of the brown paper package that lay so still on the table in front of him, Peter was not sure whether or not his imagination was trying to speak to him. But an accidental creek in one of his floorboards behind where he was sitting reassured him that there was actually someone there, though he does not turn around.

The creek suddenly sets off a series of last minute thoughts that pass through Peter’s mind. From the piercing white light appears a shadow, which crawls up the leg of the table to Peter’s left as the shadowed figure approaches from behind. The figure keeps on approaching until the shadowed ball of his head rests on the edge of the table. Peter is not alone.

The figure takes out a knife. The sound of the blade as it swipes the edges of the figure’s jacket pocket disturbs Peter, so much that he immediately closes his eyes after noticing the light that has been reflected off the shiny metallic surface of one side of the blade crawling down his right sleeve until it rested on the back of his right hand, which was face-down on the table.

Peter decides to reply to the shadowed figure’s rhetorical question, seeing no gain or loss from replying.

“I suppose that’s your job then isn’t it.” (closes eyes)
“It was all set up. Right from the off.”

Just to be sure that he was heard the first time, the shadowed figure speaks two more lines of dialogue, and consequently gets to speak for one final time before committing what he has come here to do. The greed dripping with determination from his shadowed and silhouetted lips as he spoke.

“Manipulation does indeed taste sweet in success.”
“Whilst revenge on the other hand is best served cold.”
“And it’s said that death is so very, very cold.”

The figure has spoken of the key word, which leads to a series of unfortunate events. As the figure starts to approach from behind, and as more floorboards creek under the weight of his feet, the light from the window seems to fade and Peter reaches inside his jacket with his right hand, and pulls out a gun. He had found the gun in the package, and had already placed it in his jacket pocket after it fell out of the package on the way home.

The camera tracks, or pans, over to the blinds on the window. The light has faded into more of a dark grey. The sound of a wooden chair moving across the floor. More floorboards creeking. And suddenly, the sound of two people struggling to defend themselves from each other. Peter with a gun, the figure with a knife. The light from the blinds increases steadily as the struggling drags on, until the battle comes to its climax.

A gunshot, the light from the blinds suddenly comes at full beam, then dims as the struggling of a person dying, as they fall to their knees.

Was it Peter who won the battle? Did he manage to disarm the mystery figure and shoot him? Or did the mystery figure kill Peter? The next camera shot is focused on the floor, which is fully-lit by the light from the window. A hand falls into shot, the fingers letting-go of a scrunched-up piece of paper. And written on the paper is the title of the movie, “Shadows Present”.

All light and noise seems to die down (fade) after the hand has fallen, and consequently the shot fades out to black. As to whose hand has dropped is unclear. The enigma of the movie - who died?

(A shadow passes over the hand just before the light fades away).