Costume

We picked muted colours in our costume because we wanted a very drab feel to the opening- that is, bright colours would have conveyed a positive emotion, which wasn't the statement we wanted to make at the beggining of the film- the muted colours set the atmosphere of the rest of the film.

Ripped jeans were a choice we made to make it abundantly clear that this is a normal teenager, not an agent or a spy, as ripped jeans are an item of clothing stereotypically worn exclusively by teenagers.

The coat was to accentuate the drab colours, and also because the setting of our film is late November, early December.

The attacker is wearing black to highlight his anonymity, and the gloves were a stereotypically villainous symbol to convey quickly who was the protagonist and who was the antagonist.

Props

We only had two props, the phone that the protagonist uses and the metal bar the attacker uses to knock her out. we were considering having the phone crack after it drops,  but decided that it would be too hard to read the completed downloading bar. We also briefly considered having the metal rod swapped out with a baseball bat, but realised that a hint metal rod was more realistic, as it is more easily concealed.

Actors

We were always going to have a teenage girl cast as the protagonist, but we had a few different ideas before we settled on Kira. But we finally felt that Kira had the right look of panic on her face when she shot the scenes that lent itself towards realism.

Originally the attacker was gong to be seen, before we decided to include POV shots in our opening, and we were going to cast a teenage boy as the attacker (at that point in planning it was an age appropriate casting decision). Unfortunately, those plans fell through and we then reworked the antagonists age, and included POV shots for effect, making it unnecessary to find a middle aged man to cast in the role, as the face of the attacker is not seen in our film.

Showcase and response

          



         


These are some of the reaction we captured after our opening was screened to parents and peers at the media showcase. The overwhelming consensus was that the female protagonist was a large draw for young female audiences. The only criticism we received was in regards to acting- something that is subjective, and the complaint wasn't consistent throughout the comments we received.

Similar products and target audience

Products similar to ours are:



'Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit' produced by Skydance Productions














'Ocean's Eleven' produced by Marv Films



'The Man From U.N.C.L.E'  produced by RatPac Productions



These products are marketed towards people the same age as the protagonist- namely males in their mid-thirties, but research shows that they wouldn't be interested in a film with a young female protagonist- and that young girls are interested in spy films with a female protagonist.

Finished film!

We finally finished editing our film! We fixed the issues brought up in the review, and are happy enough to post the final version. So here it is.... Classified!

Our filming experience

Meet the rest of my group. Although we've never made a vlog together, they do exist! This is them talking about our filming experience, and some of the compromises and changes we decided to make during filming, and post-production.

 

Trouble with the credits

During the reaction it came to my attention that there was a repeated name in the credits that had to be changed. Unfortunately, the new title kept dropping in quality half way through the typewriter effect, and it would not go away, no matter how many times we started from scratch. Eventually we figured out the problem and managed to change the title so that it did not turn pixelated.

Long shots

One of the problems brought up in the response was that some of the scenes were too long, and became somewhat boring and lowered the tension, so we added in some more reaction shots of Kira looking panicked, which hopefully solved the problem.

Music

This was a point of contention between members of our group, as each of us had a clear vision of the sound that we wanted to use. The beginning was decided before filming, as the music was exactly what we wanted, so that wasn't the problem. The problem was that during the running shots we couldn't find the right music, we knew what we wanted, but we couldn't find one that fit, or decide on which one was the most similar to our vision. We eventually decided, but after it had been added we realized that our choice didn't work in the slightest, and we scrapped the sound. We finally found the right music, which was a mix of tracks, and the opening came together.

Reaction to our rough opening

We had roughly finished our editing, and we showed the result to our class, to see what the picked up on to improve that we had missed. We are hopeful that all the issues brought to light will be easily solved!




Sorry about the quality, It was filmed on a phone, so there was nothing we could do...

Blip in the title

Unfortunately, there is a blip in our title where the font flickers for a second. We have worked extensively trying to correct the problem but we couldn't find any reason why it should be flickering, and therefore couldn't fix the problem.

Recording sound

We folied our sound over the top of our opening, as it was the sound effect of a phone ringing and a busy message which did not record well, as the sound was coming  through the phone, on the initial filming. We also added the voice answering, as it was also coming through the phone, and we needed to get the timing exactly right to match with Kira's reactions, which was easier to do during the editing process.

Title

We decided to have our title 'wipe' from the screen as Kira ran past, and we achieved this through keynote. The editing was extremely fiddly and intricate as Kira did not always run at the same speed, so it didn't look right when the text decreased steadily, but we managed to edit it so it was relatively smooth.    

Typewriter effect

Once we decided to use keynote we suddenly had a wider range of effects to use on our titles. Kira had the idea of the typewriting effect, and we all readily agreed, as it was very fitting for the atmosphere and themes of our film.

Keynote

As I mentioned in my previous post, I used keynote to create the title and the credits. Keynote is the equivalent of powerpoint on apple.

To be able to transfer the text from keynote to iMovie the slide on keynote has to be the right shade of green for green screen.



Then it is merely a matter of adding the text and choice of animation.




















Once this is done, then the title is ready to export. It is exported to Quicktime player so that it will easily import to iMovie.

Once in imovie, select the animation you wish and drag it over the video, and click the green screen option, and your text is now superimposed over your opening.

Typeface choice

We had some trouble choosing the font for our credits. We were originally going to use iMovie to produce our titles, but both the choice of fonts and the choice of where to place the titles was limited, so we moved onto keynote, where the font choice was considerably larger. After looking at all the available fonts we eventually chose 'Lucida sans typewriter' as it fitted the theme of spies and secret agencies that would be much larger in the latter part of the film.

Re-filming

In the original filming the central character of our opening had her hair in plaits. However, when we looked over the footage, we fount that this appearance did not quite have the effect we were looking for, so we re-filmed the shots where Kira had loose hair, and felt that her panic came through better than in the previous shots. It also helped the character seem as though she is running from something, as she has less make-up and less hair-styling.

Breaking the 180 degree rule

We break the 180 degree rule multiple times in our opening. Whilst not something we had initially planned, this was a calculated choice on our part. The break comes during the P.O.V shots. It was done to show that the attacker was other to the girl, that the camera was showing a different viewpoint, and it was therefore necessary to break the 180 degree rule to show.

Questionnaire plan

I am planning a questionnare asking people if they like action films, their favourite type of protagonist, their favourite genre, etc... I am hoping ask this to a range of ages and demographics, so that my group has a better idea of what the target audience for our film opening should be.