Final Opening Sequence - Emily

Director's Commentary

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The primary audience for our media product is late teens and adults. As the genre comes under psychological thriller it would contain dark and distressing scenes which would be inappropriate for children under 15 years of age. Similarly, the film Orphan is also rated 15 for the same reasons, as both Orphan and our product also contain elements of drama and horror. Our target audience in terms of gender would be predominantly women and girls in their late teens. This is because the protagonist is a female; with the film being based around her life. However, 'Thrillers' and 'Horrors', largely have a target audience of men. Therefore, because of the films genre, it would also attract a lot of male spectators as well as female. Because the genre is a psychological thriller, our product is aimed at a niche audience. People with specific interests in elements such as mystery, drama and process of the mind would have interest in the film. However, this would be a smaller audience with more unique taste, rather than the majority audience who have more interest in romantic-comedies and dramas, in which they can relate to.

How did you attract/address your audience?

The genre of the opening sequence is psychological thriller and we used a variety of ways to show this genre and grab the audiences attention. To start, our audience is more likely to be females of the age between 15-30. It is a big age range but the plot line, camera work, sound etc keeps everyone interested. To start of, we chose the title of the opening film to be Emily and the reason for this is because we wanted the audience to see our media product from Emily's perspective. This makes the media product much more personal and distinctive. We could not target anyone under the age of 15 because we had to remember that this is a form of thriller and it could affect anyone under the age of 15. The location is eerie and Emily is alone which increases the tension. She looks upset and focused on what she is upset in an isolated graveyard. This ultimately shows off her independent personality. The female target audience can understand this which makes them even more interested even though Emily is 11 years old. Age does not matter in our media product so that's why it is aimed for women aged between 15-30. The fact that Emily is walking very slow at the beginning creates a sad mood to engage the audience with her pain and suffering. The opening of the film approaches an emotional mood very subtly and we want our audience to understand this. However, the main genre is psychological thriller and not long after her walk, Emily visits a mysterious grave and the audience do not know whose grave it is or why Emily is connected to it. We used an over the shoulder shot as Emily is wiping the leaves of the grave to symbolise that she is being watched over by someone. This camera work technique has also been approached very subtly but what follows on links the two shots together. Emily hears mysterious whispers calling out her name of which she response in a shocked way. This suddenly increases the tension and keeps our audience engaged. It also rained on the day we filmed which to our luck amplifies the eerie mood of the graveyard scene. As she runs, she trips over a branch next to small pink flowers. This branch is juxtaposed with the flowers as a way to show that Emily messed up in various points of her short life which led her to this troubled life while the flowers represent her life before all this trouble had entered her life. The flowers also represent her girly lifestyle before these events which links to the target audience of our media product. However, there are elements of Emily's old lifestyle in her present situation when you consider her bedroom. Thus, there are quite a few aspects in this opening film which relates its self to the target audience.

What kind of media institution would distribute your media product and why?

The Orphan and the Knowing are films which to some extent is similar to ours. Orphan’s main production company is Warner Bros. Pictures which is a big company and it also distributed the film. Knowing is produced by Summit Entertainment and distributed by Summit Entertainment. These production and distribution companies are big and being realistic, they wouldn’t produce or distribute our media product. However, we did some research about what kind of low budget independent British film companies would produce or distribute our product. Hammer Film Production is a British film company. This company produced a lot of films that have a genre of thriller, science fiction etc. As our media product fits into a psychological thriller genre, we thought it could be possible that they could produce our media product. Another option could be Film4 Productions which is a production company owned by channel 4. They produced a lot of films made in the UK and all of them were reasonably low budget films e.g. East are East. Shaun of the dead is a British film of low budget and was produced by Working Title 2. Other films successfully produced by Working Title 2 are Billy Elliot and The Calcium Kid. Working Title is a production company which might be interested in our media product because it is a bigger production company than Working Title 2.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our media product genre can be categorized as a psychological thriller with the story focused on a little girl. We got the idea of focusing on a little girl from films like Knowing and Orphan. They are real media products which also base their story on a little girl. We took both genres of the films and looked at which we could use to make our media product stand out and give it its own meaning. In terms of structure, we decided to start differently compared to the films we have researched. You will find that our film opening starts with the main character walking into a graveyard. As the media product has to be 2 minutes long, we decided to really get into our storyline and engage the audience. Therefore, we started with a graveyard to create the eerie mood. All the way to the end, the story focuses on this character which differs from the other films we researched in terms of how many characters are introduced to at the beginning.

In Knowing, the opening of the film takes place in a school showing the involvement of the character with the rest of the characters. However, our film opening isolates the character and we try to put her in the centre of the story plot. The camerawork we used represents the genre of the film. The high angle shot from the tree shows someone else watching the girl. That shot was an important part to our media product because it produces the sense of someone watching her which intensifies the genre of our media product.

At the end of our opening film, we zoom in to the characters face which is very effective ending to the opening because that invites the audience into the character's life.

An important prop in our media product is a small doll Emily holds near the end of the opening. We used a close up to show this doll because it has a significant meaning here but the audience at this stagee will now know how this doll ties in with the plot of the story. We thought the close up was vital to include because close ups on props really does give clues to the audience of what to expect later in the film.




In terms of sound, we found it confusing as to whether we should use music or not. The quality of diegetic sound we captured was very good so we really wanted that to stand out for example the wind you hear when watching our media product really captures the mood. However, we thought a lack of non diegetic sound would not create the atmosphere we wanted. We did at the end decide to use sound suitable for the genre of the film.

The mise en scene in our media product is very simple but it could be said that the costume of the character reallt stands out. Emily is wearing a school uniform which can make the audience associate her with tenderness and innocence. However, this girl is far from this as she is has more to her that meets the eye which ofcourse is not so obvious in the beginning. Nevertheless, this is an assumption the audience can make.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

In the process of constructing our product, our group learnt about different technologies, in particular when using the camera and editing software. We learnt how to use new elements of the camera, such as a variety of interesting shots that will be suitable for the mood of the film. Gradually, we became more comfortable with filming and produced more creative shots. Knowing how to use the camera and editing software meant that we could be adventurous and daring with what footage we had to film. For example in the graveyard scene one member of the group climbed up a tree in order to create a low angle shot, making Emily look more inferior to her surroundings.
In our original plan we decided to have a scene at the beginning where Emily was on the swings in the park. However, while editing we realised and came to the conclusion that this scene didn’t fit in as it was too lengthy and it didn’t flow seamlessly into the next scene. So we deleted it so our film opening can run smoothly.
Another device that we used was the sound track for the film. Because it was raining one day when we were filming we put the diegetic raining sound high so we could get a feeling of the atmosphere and it gives the film more tension. Also we realised that the weather is an important part of our film, therefore when we captured our piece we realised that the lighting wasn’t continuous. To tackle this problem we toned down the lighting of some parts of the film. This increased the continuity to make the film appear as it was filmed in the same day.
Furthermore there have been a lot of times where we filmed something and when we edited it, it did not fit in with the rest of the film. Therefore we learnt to film as many times as we could to use different angles so that when it comes to editing it we have enough footage to rely on.
In conclusion, this experience taught us how technology (editing software) can be used to create a specific effect that we want such as the sound, lighting etc. Learning how to use the technology and software’s really helped us in the process of construction for our final project and made us aware of the errors we made and helped us realise what to do if we use the software’s again.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our film opening introduces a young girl who is the main protagonist. The opening of the film revolves around her dark life and problems that she is facing. To approach this matter, we used a character of the age of 11 and a female to create a vulnerable character but with a deep underlying psychological traumatic past. However, it is not clear to the audience as to why she is experiencing these supernatural events. Another reason why we chose a young girl to be the main character is to create the effect that is similarly done in ‘Orphan’ and ‘Knowing’ where the whole film plot is affected by a young girl’s actions thus we try emphasise her significance. Coming back to the point about vulnerability, we amplified the vulnerability of this girl through school uniform. The school uniform symbolises the tender age of the character and therefore we associate her with innocence. This is an influential contrast between the dark past of the character and how she is portrayed with the school uniform. Therefore, if you bring two contradictory aspects together, it can challenge how people are seen in society especially a young girl. Furthermore, our film opening opens with a graveyard scene. This scene has great importance to the ways the character is portrayed. A school girl entering a graveyard and having a strange connection to a grave represents her in a different light because the visit to the graveyard connects to her dark past. The audience won’t know that at this point but in some ways it illustrates that she is autonomous and capable to tackle her own problems. At the age of 11, this is unexpected meaning that our media product challenges the stereotypes that people may have about young people. In addition, the opening of a film could be regarded as the most important part of the film as it shapes the plot of the rest of the film. In our opening production, we focused only on the character meaning that there is no involvement from other characters. This is vital as it demonstrates the importance of the character because the whole opening focuses on her. Immediately, we understand her significance to the story and how the rest of the story plot depends on her behaviour. The title of our film opening is Emily. We used the character’s name as a title to make it clear that she is the lead character which again showing her importance. In conclusion, our media product represents a young girl in a positive light even though the story plot revolves around her mysterious life. Even though it is not clear from watching our film opening that the character has great importance in the rest of the film, we have challenged a lot of stereotypical views regarding the age of someone. Our film opening explores a traumatic past of a young girl who is haunted by a memory from her past and we approached this subject in a very subtle way. This is because we did not want to overcomplicate the situation thus meaning that we left hints all the way through the opening of the film so that the audience themselves can figure it out.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

From our preliminary task we have learnt how to plan out what exactly we would need to film by planning in paper format. We wrote down what type of genre we were going to do which was for our main task a psychological thriller.

Locations were then discussed. We learnt what need to be in the scenes to convey that this is a psychological thriller therefore we used a scene in a graveyard to show this as graveyards look eerie and dark.
The Location was quite far so organising the days we would film was difficult we found out it would be hard to get all members together to film but managed through communication.










Long Shot of Graveyard.

We learnt how to fit the character to our films genre comparing to our preliminary task, we used a different genre. We had to research and learn a lot about the main tasks genre. Our character is inspired by the girl in “knowing”, we had to fit her more into the genre by using make up and her to wear school clothing.








Girl character from "Emily".









Girl character from "Knowing".


We found out that Psychological thrillers are a sub genre which contains some elements of horror.

Learning from our storyboard we had to change some scenes as there were problems to filming in the locations. An example of this is the swing scene, at the time many children would go to that park we filmed at, we found out this made the scene unconventional into our genre. We needed the park to look quite deserted but at a certain time because we did not want the recording to be too bright or dark. Comparing this to our preliminary task we filmed indoors. We did need to take the lighting into consideration as we did not want to use natural lighting because it made the room look too dark, we did not want to use natural lighting because we were new to filming and to keep the lighting constant we used artificial lighting. Diegetic and non- diegetic sounds were used in the main task. We learnt to make our own soundtrack with Garage Band; some of the sounds we found were very effective and were right for our film.

Deleted swing scene.

New opening scene.

During the filming process we discovered in both preliminary and main tasks that we added more camera shots. We used some of the camera shots from our preliminary task, we used the match cut from the close up of the hand in the first task and we used this when our character walks up the stairs and she puts her hand on the banister as she turns. We feel we have improved this shot, and we also experimented with other shots. From the preliminary we had to work with a written task where as in the main task we were free to use as many shots as we wanted but under a certain time. We tried camera shots we did not use and tried a high angle shot which worked well looking down at the character. From our preliminary task we were told to take note of the 180° rule. If the rule was not used the characters movement would look odd and this would make the footage not run smoothly.

Overall a lot of the skills we learnt from our preliminary task were very useful. We learnt how to use a variety of new camera shots and learnt a new genre of film, what the conventions in the genre were and how to find alternatives to problems we faced.

Analysis of the opening of Knowing

We chose this film to analyse its opening as it links to ours to an extend. It fits into the genre we are using in our opening sequence. Here, we will look at the credits and its title and how the film has used it. We will also be looking at what elements in the opening of this film shows its a thriller film. We will be using screenshots of the film in order to help us explain.

Knowing begins with the logo of the film studio that supports the film. Summit Entertainment is an independent American film studio.

This shot shows the directors name; Alex Proyas. He was also the producer and the screenwriter.








After the
director's
name, the main actor's name appears.








This is the title of the film. With the moon in the background, it shows the genre of the film (thriller) very clearly. You could also interpret that the film contains mysterious elements.






This shot is just after when the title appears. The camera zooms out of her face, showing her and her surrounding. The movie did well to show her lost and in her own thoughts while she is staring up at the sky. In our opening sequence, we showed the character looking mysterious too by beginning with a graveyard scene. The audience won't understand at the beginning what the character is doing there and that's the start of the mysterious.She is juxtaposed with the rest of the children in the background. She also looks hurt and mysterious which kicks off the start of the film because the beginning of the film connects to the other events happening after.

This screenshot is inside the class . You can see clearly the student's uniforms and that they are in a school. In our opening sequence, we put school uniform on the character to establish her vulnerability and young age.






Here is the opening of the film Knowing

Pictures of the locations

Whilst we were filmimg for our AS film production, we took pictures of the locations that we were using as our opening. The locations that we chose to film were important for the opening in terms of whether the audience would understand the genre of the film and also to the film opening itself.


Picture 1

Gate of the graveyard

This shot is the beginning of our film. We included the gates of the graveyard with the character standing in the middle, facing ahead. This single, wide shot shows the character wanting to open and go inside this deserted graveyard. From just watching this bit, it is not clear that it is a graveyard. It also looks like a park. There is no clue as to what she intends to do in this shot. This confusing is good result because we don't want the audience guessing what she is going to do right at the beginning.



Picture 2

long shot of the graveyard path



This is still in the graveyard. The character walks along this path. The reason we used this in our opening is because of surrounding. You can see the trees and the leaves on the floor. It creates a tense atmosphere because this scene leads to the part where she is visiting a grave.

Picture 3

inside the house

This third picture shows the living room of the charater. We included the living room in the opening of the film because it helps connect the graveyard and the character's bedroom. The graveyard scene is an important scene in the opening as it gives clues as to what the whole film could be about and the bedroom scene features significant key points about the character's story eventhough we approached it in a subtle way. In order for the character to get to her bedroom, she enters the living room.





Picture 4



bedroom


This picture was taken in the bedroom. The bedroom is important in our opening film like the graveyard. Here, the character looks at a doll which has connections with the graveyard. The connections are again not obvious as it is only the opening of the film. Also, it is at this scene that elements of the film's genre (thriller) can be noticed with the character hearing unexplainable voices. The picture also shows the contrast between the film and the character. As the story is meant to be dark, the picture shows a bedroom which could belong to any 11-year-old girl. We wanted to show that she is a normal girl but with problems.

Quick Overview of filming work

This post will be a quick overview of the problems we encountered during filming, also discussing the positive things we have learnt.

Whilst filming we found out that some scenes would require a lot of planning to do. We had to re-film some of the scenes again because of the change in lighting or the position of the character did not match in matched shots. At one point the character Emily's clothing changed so we had to re-film. In order to reduce these mistakes we planned ahead of what we would do for each filming day, looked back on what we filmed and discussed with all the group how we could improve the clip.

We found out during the filming work that it was hard to have everyone available to work as most of filming was done after college hours, also the location was quite far to get to.

We learnt how to use different shots to make the clips link effectively, we also added more shots during filming to make the film seem more suited to the horror genre we added close ups of objects.

Introduction of our main task

Draft of shot list


1) Black screen as titles are shown, we will show who is starred in the film, the director and who is assoccitated in the film. The title will not appear yet.

2) From the black screen an eerie sound bridge is going to be used to connect this to where we first see Emily, Also a fade into this scene will be used to connect the scenes seamlessly. Emily will be shown by using a mid shot.

3) There will be a wide shot of Emily on the swing while we also see the surroundings.

4) There will be another mid shot of Emily on the swing and this scene will lead on to the next scene.

5)Here we have a close up of Emily's face as she is walking to a grave and a tracking shot will be used after the close up.

6) There will be an over the shoulder shot of Emily looking into the graveyard.

7) Point of view shot of looking at the graveyard

8) Close up of her feet while walking

9) Distance point of view shot (camera is shaky) NB. someone else is watching her

10) Close up on Emily's face (capturing her reaction)

11) Long shot of her running (camera is behind her)

12) Point of view running

13) midshot of her coming out of graveyard, panting

14) fade

15) over the shoulder shot of Emily opening the door

16) mid shot of her coming in the door (match cut)

17) mid shot of mum watching tv

18) mid shot back to Emily walking up the stairs

19) mid shot back to mom standing up

20) mid shot of Emily closing her bedroom door (camera follows her to the window)

21) low angle shot of Emily looking through her bedroom window (the camera is outside)

22) mid shot of Emily shutting her curtains very quickly

23) Emily walks over to her bed and pull out a box (over the shoulder shot)

24) low angle of Emily opening the box

25) panning of the camera towards the door as Emily hears her mother's voice

26) close up on her mother

27) mid shot of Emily putting the box back under the bed

28) there is a side shot/close up of Emily looking back out of the window

29) over the shoulder shot of Emily, turns around looking angry

30) close up of her hand pulling her drawer open and grabbing a pen and paper

31) over the shoulder shot (but the viewers cannot see the paper) of Emily drawing violently

32) low angle of Emily as the camera captures her expression while her mom shouts her name out again)

33) high angle shot of her mom looking up the stairs

34) mid shot of her mom signing (the camera is on the same level as her) and walking away from the stairs. She hears a bang from Emily's room and pauses

35) mid shot of Emily's door while still hearing bangs

36) high angle shot of Emily's mom coming up the stairs

37) wide shot focusing on Emily (her room is became messy) standing up very quickly and getting out of her room)

38) camera zooms to her drawing

39) black screen with the title of the film (Emily...)

Preliminary Task

In this preliminary task, we learned some useful things which we could apply in our main task. With regards to the camera, we learned how to set up the camera on a tripod and how a tripod can help us use a panning shot as the camera could move without difficulty side to side. Simple things such as how to put a battery or a tape in the camera seemed to be useful for us too. We learned that when filming, we need to film more than we need to so that when it comes to the editing, we can delete the bits we do not need and use what we do. Therefore, we counted to 5 seconds and then started acting so that the 5 seconds at the beginnign can be deleted when editing. The editing software was at first hard to use as it was a new piece of equipment to us but after a few trials, we got the hang of it. We learned how to capture everything we filmed and then from there, take the bits we want and use it in our preliminary. What was really hard was achieving continuity editing. We had to match the actions so that it looked continiuous and confortable to watch. This meant that there shoudn't be any jump cuts. The good thing about a preliminary task is that it allowed us to explore the use of cameras and the editing software so that we can be prepared for the main task. Also, it allowed us to make the mistakes that we do not to make in the main task.

Before filming, we made a shot list of the different types of shots we wanted in our film. However, we did make some changes to it. This is because we realised after been given the camera and the equipments, some of the shots did not look like they would fit together and create a continuity film. This then would overcomplicate the short film and bring us difficulties when editing. When we were editing our film, we realised that we didn't film the part where Ismahan was sitting down as we paused the camera to quick. This result in us having to film it quickly again which was time consuming. What we learned from this mistake was that we need to be sure we got the whole shot taped before stopping or pausing the camera. What did work well was the editing of the door scene. The shot shows Ismahan opening the door and entering from the other side. The opening of the door and the entering were two different shots so we had to match both those scenes up to make it look like one flows into the other. We were suprised of how well and quick we managed to match it up. That was an example of a good use of match cut in our film. What also went well than expected was our use of shot/reverse/shot. We used this when Ling and Ismahan were having the conversation where you see the camera switching from one person to another. At this point we also used over the shoulder combined with shot/reverse/shot in order to expand our use of shots.

We also made sure that the 180 degree rule was not broken by staying on one side of the line, this meant that we had to film from one side keeping the camera on the same side to make sure the characters are not suddenly swapped. If we did break this rule, it would have created disturbance in the film.

Opening sequence analysis

Bhaji On The Beach

Bhaji on the beach starts with a tracking shot showing us an English butcher juxtaposed with an Asian Indian shop. This shows us that in the film, us as the audience will see how the family that the film is focused on will experience life in a white British environment. This gives us hints about the theme of the film; social realism. This is seen when we see graffiti on the walls of Nazi signs and NF. Everything in this film suggests dual culture, such as in this scene, we hear English western music which merges into an Indian song. We also hear a voiceover of a radio station first talking in Indian and then in English. This could connote that the film is about two different cultures and maybe about the views that they have of each other. The camera shots such as cutaways show us that Asha has a hard life distinguishing between her Asian culture and the English culture. We see cutaways of her family where she is trying her best to help each one of them with their problems. From this we can also see that she is devoted to her family, and because there is an Indian god statue she is also devoted to her religion. There is a high angle where the statue god is looking down at her. This connotes that she has forgotten about her culture back home and the god is reminding her to do her duties as a devoted Indian. When the mail man came in, he used subtle racist remarks to Asha about the weather being sunny and that she is already used to the heat because of where she comes from. The newspapers heading states ‘they curried my budgie’ which could also be interpreted as a racist remark. Her difficulties are further shown when her husband asks for his breakfast with an typical Indian accent suggesting he has not been in England for long and also shows dual culture. Her son asks for his shirt to be ironed. This is juxtaposition with the father as the son has a British accent while the father has an Indian accent.

The usual Suspects

The usual suspects
The beginning of ‘The usual suspects’ suggests that it is a thriller. Firstly the scene opens with a tracking shot of the river to the eerie setting of the ship. The lighting is low key which connotes mystery and suspense. The music played is eerie and suspenseful. A mid shot of a man who we don’t know if he is an antagonist is then later killed by Keyser. The setting is set on a ship which adds to the eerie feel of the film. A dead body is shown at the beginning which then shows the man holding a cigarette case and a lighter. The props used suggest violence and at this point we would think he is the villain.
The fire implies danger and death as it leads to Keyser. The camera shows a mid shot of Keyser but does not reveal his face as it hidden in the darkness. He is shown wearing dark clothing which connotes a traditional 50’s “film noir” gangster film. This is a convention of a thriller. The lack of talking builds suspense. As he talks to the other man his mode of address is tense and a close up of the man’s face is shown at a high angle; showing his lack of power. At this point the audience may now think Keyser is the antagonist. As he holds up his gun which is used as a key prop, this again suggests danger and death. A sound bridge as then used for the gun shots. This allows the audience to imagine the scene inside the ship, which creates suspense. Keyser then sets the ship on fire and flees. A figure of his silhouette is shown walking down the ladders making him look mysterious.

AS Foundation Portfolio Brief

Welcome to our blog!

In our first task, we start of with a preliminary task which is a continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, walking into a room and sitting down on a chair opposite another character where the two characters exchange couple of dialogues. The need for a preliminary task is for us to understand the use of the camera equipments and the shots needed. We also need to consider the filming techniues such as the 180 degree rule, shot/reverse/shot (especially important in conversations) and match on action.



The preliminary task prepares us for the main task which is an opening of a two minute opening fiction film.