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Evaluation Question 7

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

Evaluation Question 6

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

Evaluation Questions 4&5

Who would be the audience for your media product? How did you attract/address your audience?

Evaluation Question 3

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

Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Evaluation Question 1

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

Audience Feedback

At our media showcase evening, some people that viewed our film gave us some feedback about how they liked 'When the Bough Breaks'.

Finished Final Opening!

Here is our completed final two minute opening! As a group we are so proud of everything we have achieved over the last year and we are so happy its finally finished.

Film Synposis

If our film opening was to be made into a full feature length film, the main protagonist would be the male, serial killing, black cab driver who kidnaps and tortures multiple victims. The story will focus mainly on the mother and baby revealed to be trapped in the boot at the end of the opening two minutes and the torture they endure. However, later on the story will turn to the main protagonist and his psychological problems and history. At the end of the feature length film we have decided that there will be a hero like figure that 'comes to the rescue', which will most likely be a detective. As a group we realise that we want the audience to be fully involved and consumed throughout the film, which is not a typical convention of the psychological thrillers that have already been produced.

Costume and Props

For the costume, the male cab driver in our opening's costume is basic casual wear that cab drivers are typically seen in due to the fact that they do not have to dress smartly. Therefore, it is just a tracksuit and casual trainers.

The props we used for our opening were picked specifically to make the cab driver seem like a typical family man, in which passengers should feel safe in the cab. For example, the family photo in the front and the cab licence badge create the feel that he is a trustworthy driver, which misleads the audience completely as he is actually a serial killer.

Dialogue

Tara made a video for our group which shows the dialogue we used in our two minute opening. We used Stefani's dad as our creepy taxi driver and while we were filming we had a conversation in the back of the cab to make the dialogue seem more natural and therefore more strange when it is revealed that there is actually nobody in the taxi…

Storyboard / Shot List

This is the final plan of the shots we used during filming for our two minute opening, our alternative to a storyboard. On reflection, I realised we used quite a few close up and extreme close up shots of either the taxi driver's mouth or objects in the car, to add to the eery tone we were hoping to create in our psychological thriller.

Location

I realised I have previously forgotten to talk about the location in which with shot our opening. We decided to firstly use the road in which me and Emily live to film the basic shots of the cab drivers mouth and shots like the family photo. We did this because the scenery did not have to be specific here as it was only showing the road for a short time.

Then, we moved on to a more remote setting of Whitewebbs Golf Club not far down the road. We chose this setting as it is a remote woodland setting with many trees and lots of space to add to the creepy feel of our opening. We also loved the setting because of the shot entering the golf club car past where the cab is secluded when driving down a pathway lined with trees as this conformed to the nature of the psychological thriller we are aiming to create.

Reaction Video

This video, as I mentioned before, is the reaction from our media class to the baby crying at the end of our film. From this reaction we decided to keep it because we think it adds a certain edge to our opening, weather it is pushing the boundaries too far or not…

Title

We were really struggling to find a name for our two minute film opening as we wanted something that was a twist on words but was also reasonably subtle, and this did not turn out to be easy! Even though we know that having a baby crying in the boot at the end of the opening is pushing the boundaries quite a bit, we have decided to keep it, as a lot of the feedback we had was that it was definitely a bit twisted, but people generally liked it.

 So, we have researched into nursery rhymes to find a title, and we have decided on the name 'When The Bough Breaks' from the classic lullaby 'rock a bye baby'.

Almost Finished Opening

This is a draft of our very nearly finished opening. We were recently playing around on YouTube and found a clip of a baby crying and added it to the end of the film to see what it looked like and we were quite surprised as we like it, even though it may be slightly morally wrong. So, we need to get a few opinions on weather we should keep it or not.

 

The only  things we have left to do are to finish off the title sequence, to sort out the editing on the footage where the taxi is stationary by putting footage in-between, to re record the voice at the end of the opening, to decide weather we want to keep the baby crying at the end of the film and finally add in the engine noise over the dialogue in which it is missing.

Title Sequence Research

As we are coming to the end of our editing process we started looking into title sequences separately and bringing out ideas together. I researched mostly titles of films that were of the psychological thriller or horror/thriller genre as they seemed to suit our opening well whist also sticking to the conventions of the psychological thriller genre we have based it upon.

The first title sequence I came across was the opening to 'Se7en'. I really liked the font used and the way that the words appear and disappear on the screen as it screamed psychological thriller and hooked me in right from the beginning, which is exactly what we are looking to do.



The second title sequence i came across was the opening to 'Bullit'. This was my favourite out of all the sequences i have researched as the font was exactly what i can imagine our film having as it was bold and sharp. I also really liked the fact that the font was white, as I had only considered having black font before, but after watching the title sequence to Bullit I'm more interested in having white font in our opening.
  )

New Music Idea

While Tara was doing some extra research she found a song that was better suited to our film, so we decided to try it on our film and we love it! The song is 'It's not for me to say' by Johnny Mathis and it fits in with our footage perfectly. We showed our media class and they were divided in their opinions and some preferred the old one whilst others loved the new one. However, we have decided as a group that we want to keep the new song, linked below:

Shaileyee's Rection

As a group we think our opening is coming together just as we planned it to, but we wanted to get an extra opinion to check that it was also appealing to other people outside Mac 4. So, we asked our media friend Shaileyee to be the first to watch the (almost finished) opening and give us a bit of feedback!

Update!

Just a quick blog to update you on what Mac 4 has been up to.

Music

We have decided that in our two minute opening we want to create a very eery feel that would usually be found in a psychological thriller, using music. To do so, we have chosen Frank Sinatra's 'My Funny Valentine' because classical music will (hopefully) create the feel that we are going for and make the taxi driver seem a bit more creepy and keep the viewer on edge…

BBFC

After researching into the BBFC and how they rate films with an age certificate to ensure they are being viewed by people of appropriate age I have decided to rate our film on the information provided. Due to the fact that as a feature length film our opening would contain scenes of a violent and sexual nature as is it is based on a taxi driving serial killer it would therefore not be appropriate for viewing under the age of 15. The reason for this is that the scenes that would be in the film if it was to be a full feature length film would be very graphic and not appropriate for the certificate of 12A or 12 as the BBFC guidelines suggest that a dark and unsettling tone with strong language is not appropriate for this age, which our film would definitely contain.

Therefore, from my research our film would only be only fitting to viewers over the age of 15 even though this will then not appeal to as large a demographic as a 12 or 12A certificate may have.

The reason I do not think it is necessary for our film to be rated with an 18 certificate is because it wouldn't contain most of the key issues that the BBFC deem only appropriate for adult viewers, for example, frequently strong language. As a result of my research on the BBFC, if our film opening were to be made into a feature length film it would be rated appropriately at a certificate of 15, as it fits into this guideline best, still keeping a wide range of viewers and an appropriate demographic.

Brief & Inspiration

Our final idea is based on an interpretation we formed from being shown a clip from the film "Bone Collector" by Miss Foster. It starts with shots switching from a normal taxi driver saying typical phrases that a taxi driver would say to a customer, for example, "alright love, where would you like to go?" and shots of the taxi that make the driver look like a normal family man i.e. a family photo. The taxi then pulls off into a secluded area and the driver leaves the taxi whilst saying "won't be a minute, love" and it is then revealed that there is in fact nobody in the back of the cab. The final shot will be of the boot of the taxi and a voice shouting "let me out". This is the clip which gave us our inspiration:

Change Of Idea, Again...

 After some unsuccessful days of filming and many discussions with each other and Miss Foster, we have decided that our previous idea is not, once again, the type of film opening we want to produce. When brainstorming ideas we decided that Emily's Dad's taxi is something we want to base our idea on as we believe that it is unique and hasn't been done before, unlike many of our other ideas. This idea is definitely our strongest idea yet and we think we have finally found our final idea. We are using Emily's Dad, Paul, and his taxi, to create a film opening based on a serial killing taxi driver...

Filming: Day One

This explains everything that happened during our first day of filming, including being asked to leave the station due to not having filming permission. We will now have to book an appointment to film in Liverpool Street station to continue our filming, and until then begin filming the different shots of landmarks around London.

 

Inspiration

This is the scene from the film 'Friends With Benefits' that inspired our idea to film in the train station. Our idea is not really similar to this clip but this is where the idea evolved from.

Filming Landmarks In London

These are some of the landmarks that we plan to film in London for the flashing images at the beginning of our two minute film opening.

Our New Idea

After much discussion, many heated debates and lots of changing plans, we have finally decided on our final idea.

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Changing Our Idea

Since we began filming for our idea, we decided that the footage we produced was not good enough for what we wanted. Therefore we have decided to change our idea as it was causing us a lot of problems that we didn't consider before hand and they idea was becoming more and more complicated every time we discussed it. We talked about just changing the idea a little bit, but we decided a complete change was needed. We have a few ideas involving things we didn't realise we had access to, i.e. Emily's dad's taxi, and we now just need to chose the best idea.