Final Evaluation Q4

Final Evaluation Q3

Final Evaluation Q2

Final Evaluation Q1

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

Chantage Feedback

Film Review

FILM REVIEW EVALUATION

(due to the size of the film review, it is displayed below the evaluation)

This film review was written for a magazine that I invented called "Viral Magazine". The magazine is all about technology, media and everything around that. I chose to write my review for this magazine because it relates to my target audience who's lives revolve a lot around the media and technology. This review would also fit in Empire Magazine because it follows a similar layout and colour scheme. This film review follows a similar layout to other film reviews that really do exist in the world. After doing a lot of research on film reviews a few things became clear, film reviews found in magazines always have the same features: photo(s) from the film, the film title, quotations from famous people within the media or film industry, there is a rating on the film and the review itself talks about the best and worst parts of a film. These features can also be found in my film review, the main photo (the biggest one) is a key moment in the film and is interesting. The film title is in the biggest font and the colour scheme for the whole film review is a dark red. The review itself talks about the directors (myself and Megan), the actors, the editing, the camerawork and the film of the plot. The quotations from famous people are from Rian Johnson who directed the neo noir we studied earlier, Brick. He is also currently directing the new Star Wars film which shows that he's relevant in the film industry and knows what he's talking about. I have a screenshot of Kanye West's twitter account showing that he used the social media platform Twitter to talk about Chantage. This is relevant because not only is he a huge public figure in the media but it's also Twitter which is commonly used by my target audience. The final quotation is from Leonardo Dicaprio who is another influential man in the film industry who is also admired by my target audience. The actual film, Chantage didn't turn out as great as we hoped so writing about it positively was hard, however I did pick out good points on actors who played especially well and specific scenes in the film that worked exceptionally well.

Chantage Film Poster

In order to create this final film poster I had to take a series of photographs using vivid lighting, reflectors and flash guns in order to create the shadows and brightness of the photo. I took separate images of Holly's hand holding the revolver and another of Holly's hand holding the lipstick. In Photoshop I combined the two best images in order to show the gun pointing at the lipstick. I also had to create separate layers of the nails and lipstick in order to keep them in colour whilst the rest of the image was in a high contrasted black and white filter. Although Photoshop didn't have the same font as Final Cut Pro (American Typewriter) I was able to find a similar font that had a similar typewriter effect that worked perfectly. My poster is a teaser poster so it doesn't have as much information as a regular film poster might contain, this kept the poster simple and easy to read which really helped when choosing the location of my film poster. The information that is found on the poster is the title (Chantage, the release date, starring characters, directors names, writers names, the film tag line and the production company. The poster doesn't really give much away about the film however you can tell that this poster is linked to the film as not only is the font the same, but the gun was the gun used in the film and the red lipstick and nail vanish link clearly to the film.

FILM POSTER LOCATION

The location and format that I have chosen to display and advertise my film are on billboards that are located in popular cities such as New York City, London and others. This way thousands of people will see the poster because they're in highly populated areas and the billboards are huge so therefore are visible from very far distances. Due to the location of billboards I made sure that the poster was simple and easy to read because when driving past a billboard unless in heavy traffic it's hard to take in high amounts of information within seconds. To the right are two examples of the billboards I might advertise on, the first is located in New York City, just outside of main city centre. The one below is in another city (most likely located in America) that is next to a busy road. The film poster is also majority in black and white which symbolises the genre of film noir. The gun shows that there is action/murder in the film and the lipstick along with the tagline shows that the murderer is probably female. The fact that a feminine hand with red nails is also making it very obvious that the villain is a woman. The film poster also highlights the importance of red which again links to the film noir conventions of having a femme fatale involved.

Film Review Research

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Chantage (BTS)

This is a short video showing the best behind the scenes moments of our film noir: Chantage

Chantage - The Final Film

Chantage is finally here! After long hours of planning, filming and editing, we can finally say that Chantage is D-O-N-E! We actually produced a coloured version as well as the black and white version in order to find out which one was best. After conducting some more audience research based on the two finished films, coming to the conclusion to release the black and white Chantage..

Here it is:

Evaluation of Chantage

The final film has it's good sides and it's bad ones. The actual film itself comes across as very confusing and unless you've read the premise or the rest of this blog it may not make any sense at all. It wasn't until we began filming when I began to realise how hard it is to make a film in five minutes, it's very hard to make a story that makes sense and lasts only five minutes. However, we worked with what we had and it didn't turn out too bad. What's confusing is the characters and their relationships with each other. What many people didn't realise is that Roy and Vivian are brother and sister, Roy has killed both of their parents and Vivian is mad so threatens to kill him if he doesn't give her the entirety of their inheritance. Ernest is Vivian's ex-boyfriend and also Roy Peterson's solicitor. This fact isn't as clear in the film as one of our actors had trouble keeping a straight face for more than five seconds, it took about half an hour to get the final cut when they're in the office as Vivian threatens him (0:26). Unfortunately by the time he managed to get through all his lines, he slightly mispronounced the word "solicitor" so it actually sounds as though he's saying "I'll call my sisters". At that point we had, had enough of trying to get him to be serious so we went with what we had. This did cause some confusion though when asking people their thoughts on Chantage. 

The cinematography side of Chantage went extremely well, we were able to produce some really artistic shots. For example, after Ernest has shot Roy, he is panicked and doesn't know what to do with himself (3:06). We used the camera to really highlight this, instead of using a tripod we had a handheld camera that tracked Ernest's movements. This helped to build the tense mood and helped to represent Ernest's emotions and how distraught he was. Another example of a great shot was at 0:35 where there is a cut from the title sequence straight to a close up of Ernest's phone displaying pictures of Vivian. The cut goes from a huge black screen to a magnified object which helped to reinforce the importance of the phone and what was being displayed on it as it was key to the storyline. 

The sound was one of Chantage's weakest factors, unfortunately the boom mic that we borrowed from school was faulty which lead to a tonne of unusable footage as it had no sound to accompany it. After adjusting the boom mic we were able to get it to work, however what we didn't realise at the time was that when inside the microphone made a horrible buzzing noise that was permanently layered onto more of our inside footage. We tried to reduce the buzzing noise using the sound adjustment settings in final cut pro, however it didn't work and the buzzing was still a disruption which then lead to us having to re-film for the third time. However, because of this we were able to film in a different location that looked much more like a professional office and also enabled us to re-evaluate the script and make some adjustments to make it even more powerful and effective. So, in this case having a faulty boom mic actually led to a better scripted and better located scene.

Chantage is very busy, it's one of those films that you have to pay attention to at all times in the film otherwise you'll miss something that was really important and without it the film wouldn't make any sense whatsoever. This is because of the 5 minute time limit that we had been set. If I was to re-do this project I would definitely write the story in order to fit into the 5 minutes perfectly, allowing a smooth flow of scenes and a story that was much less confusing and hard to understand. 

Editing Chantage

Post Production is a very important part in the creating of a film,

without it a film would lack continuity, emotion and detail. For our film, Chantage we used Final Cut Pro X. This software enabled us to do some basic and technical editing. By using Final Cut Pro we were able to add in titles, subtitles, filters, transitions and sound. Each of these individual additions to our film helped us to follow the conventions of film noir. For example, after doing audience research and overall research on film noir we came to the conclusion to put a black and white filter over all of our clips. The top left shows a screen shot of the different styles of filter you can paste on top of any clip. We chose the black and white pre-set which we then modified slightly using the colour enhancement settings.

We increased the contrast of the video which created a chiaroscuro look which is very common in many film noirs. Final Cut Pro is fairly straight forward and so it was very easy to use. The screen shot to the left shows the layout of final cut with the film in the centre, video clips on the left and the timeline at the bottom. This layout was very beneficial when choosing where to cut certain clips as it was exact to the frame. When putting certain clips together to create one scene, we used different types of transitions in order to create a certain mood depending on the scene. For example, in the fourth scene (sweet talk) we wanted it to be emotional as Vivian tricks Ernest into thinking she's hurt and her brother is responsible. This is a very tense and emotional moment because Ernest really believes Vivian because he still has feelings for her and we wanted the audience to feel that. To create an emotional atmosphere we used longer transitions like fade to black and cross dissolve which made the clips blend together in a much sadder, slower pace rather than using quick cuts that might create a quick, action filled mood instead.  In the murder scene we used quick cuts in order to intensify the action and really create a fast paced, rushed and panicked mood which worked perfectly.

The majority of Chantage's transitions were fade to blacks and regular cuts. We didn't want to draw too much attention to the editing in our film so remained with cuts except for at the end of a scene as fading to black really helped to express that the scene was over and a new one was starting. It also represented an end to something, for example the end of Roy's life or the end of the short film. Sound was a big issue when filming, the boom mic we borrowed from school had been abused by some other students who had used it before us and so it didn't work as well as it could have. There was clearly a fault within the microphone that couldn't be fixed without extensive soldering or replacing of parts which we didn't have time for after we realised that it wasn't working properly. When we watched our footage back on the camera just to check that everything was going okay, we figured out that it actually wasn't going okay... The microphone had created this horrible buzzing noise that made it impossible to hear any of the actual audio that we had meant to originally record. Luckily we checked it before we called it a wrap and were able to re-film some of the scenes that had been ruined by the microphone. Some of the audio wasn't entirely ruined though, instead we were able to fix the audio through final cut. Seen to the right you can see how we adjusted the volume, the background noise and the hum in order to revive some of the audio we had recorded previously. This helped reduce some if not all of the buzzing created by the faulty boom mic and also helped to reduce some of the background noise that the boom mic had picked up. 

Another feature we used from final cut was the range selection tool, this enabled us to choose specific sections of the audio and adjust that section's volume. This really helped we having non diegetic music playing while our actors were talking. This meant that we could have the music at a reasonably loud volume when it was silent and we could then lower the volume when our actors spoke so that they could be heard over the music. As soon as the actors had finished speaking, the music would return to it's original volume and carried on until we changed it again. This was a perfect technique for sound effects as well and really came in handy when setting the mood.

Overall the editing process took around five hours, if not more. However, it's one of the most important parts of making a film which is why it's so important to spend so long editing. The editing helped to bring Chantage together and fit the parts together to create one whole story. The editing also helped to create certain moods. The transitions would create tense moods or calm/sorrowful moods. The editing took a long time but helped to make Chantage what it is.

Chantage Specifics

CHANTAGE ACTORS

Connor Smith............... Ernest Hamilton

Holly Hayes................. Vivian Peterson

Tom Roper................... Roy Peterson

Helen Inman................ Evelyn Harris

Nathan Gilbert............. Richard Wilkinson

Barney Taylor.................. Passer-by

CHANTAGE FILMING LOCATIONS

Chantage was filmed in five different locations including the school kitchen, the street outside Megan's house, the back of Tesco's car park, an alleyway branching off of the high street and the summer house at the bottom of my garden. The following is a rundown of those locations, what was filmed there and why we chose to film what we did where we did:

The Summer House:

The summer house appears in two scenes, both scene 1 and scene 3. We used the summer house as Roy's office in which Vivian threatens him and he has a meeting with his solicitors. We used the summer house because it can either be very bright or very dark. It also has blinds which enabled us to create some interesting shadows that followed the traditional film noir convention. The summer house also had a desk with a large monitor and other office equipment which would show exactly the kind of man Roy is. Professional, wealthy and important. We also have studio lighting in the summer house as it's also used as my photography studio which meant which could use these lights

The Kitchen:

We decided to use our school kitchen because the colours were simple and bright which helped to represent the innocence and happiness that we wanted to radiate from Evelyn in contrast the much darker atmosphere we wanted to radiate from Vivian. The kitchen was also very easy to access as it was in our school and meant that we could film during film time as we were already finding it hard to meet up outside of school. The kitchen also looked good in black and white and helped to create a very clear contrast between thee actors/actresses and the white cupboards. The natural lighting that filtered through the window also really helped to create a bright, positive lighting that would again show the good, sweet character that Evelyn was and also how good Ernest was before Vivian tricked him.

Alder Close:

We decided to use Alder Close to film some of our night time scenes as it was dark, but was also lit up by a fair amount of street lights which would enabled our camera to pick up the faces of our actors and actresses. We chose Alder close specifically because it was cut off from any main roads so the background noise of any cars would be minimum and there would be very few people that could pass by and potentially interrupt one of our takes. The road was also very easily accessible for all of our actors, it wasn't too far and was even walking distance for those who couldn't drive. This made it easier for all of our crew to meet together and film.

Tesco Car Park:
We filmed the murder scene in our local Tesco's rear car park. This was because it was lit up evenly by a lot of street lights and is normally very empty as it's only often used by employees. As you can see from the Google maps view to the right you can see that it's a big, open space surrounded by tall trees. This would enable us to film without being interrupted by people passing by. The car park was also local and looked almost abandoned when you film from the right angle which really helped aid our story. Towards the very back of the car park it's very empty and hasn't been very well kept meaning that filming here gave our film an abandoned and intimidating feel which helped again to set the mood of the film. 

Pepper Alley:

For the final scene in our film we decided to film in an alleyway as this is a very common location for film noir. We also received a lot of audience feedback when researching which told us that alleyways were very effective and common in film noirs which helped lead us to the final decision of filming in an alleyway. However, for this scene we decided to film during the day time to break the typical convention of film noir. Pepper Alley is a very narrow alleyway that's also quite long. Filming here helped create a lot of shadows as it was a bright sunny day. The alleyway was also very close to our school which again helped us to film during school time

CHANTAGE CHARACTER COSTUMES

The costume we wanted for out femme fatale was elegant, classy and sophisticated. We didn't want it to radiate seductive-ness or anything too revealing as for our film the femme fatale was intelligent, serious and threatening. Our femme fatales main costume can be seen to the right. The colours are fairly neutral except for the skirt which is the part of the outfit that shows the traditional red found on traditional femme fatales. To accompany the clothing, we included red lipstick, red nail varnish and black heels. This was the complete look for Vivian our femme fatale and it helped to bring out her personality perfectly in comparison to the sweet Evelyn. Evelyn was the stay at home girlfriend who is sweet, honest and caring. Evelyn wears bright, sophisticated colours, her top is a bright pink with pastel white and blue flowers. The flowers show an obvious sign of innocence and kindness. Evelyn's trousers are office, black and show that she's modest and professional in comparison to Vivian wearing a shorter skirt. Evelyn wears little make up and simple black shoes. The two characters wear completely different costumes which shows how opposite their characters and personalities are. All of the male characters wear suits. This shows that they are business men who are professional and smart.  The suits show specifically that Ernest and Richard are working men who are on the job, it shows that Roy is also a working man who is wealthy and knowledgeable. At the end scene, Vivian has changed which shows that it's a new day (3 months later) and again it breaks the traditional convention of a film noir femme fatale. We chose this outfit as it shows dark colours that would really stand out in black and white in order to create a really contrast which actually is a very common film noir convention that we conformed to.

CHANTAGE FILMING PROPS

For Chantage we only had one major prop which was the gun used to kill Roy. I bought this gun from Amazon for a very low price and it was perfect. We decided to go for an older style of gun to represent how old film noirs are. The rest of our film was modern since we used iPhones, computers and modern costumes. In order to represent the history of film noir we used an old fashioned pistol style of gun to shoot Roy, almost as a tribute to all of the classic film noirs. We also used some other smaller props like a folder with fake documents in it to show Roy changing his inheritance and a fake Chanel purse that Vivian drops in order to capture the attention of her next victim, "The Handsome Man". 

Chantage Premise

After knowledge of her brother's involvement in her parents death, Vivian Peterson blackmails him into giving her the inheritance she thinks she deserves. Agreeing, Roy Peterson calls his solicitors, Ernest Hamilton, an ex of Vivian's and his colleague/friend Richard Wilkinson as soon as he can to amend the details. Ernest, a hard working and caring man, is called away from a night in with his girlfriend Evelyn, only to walk back into the arms of his ex-girlfriend, who has nothing but lies and trouble to cause. After Vivian overears Kenneth's sudden dismissal of the blackmail, she in enraged and tricks Ernest into believing Roy is abusive towards her. Going even further to trick Roy and Ernest into meeting. After faking another injury, as the three meet, Ernest feels angered that Vivian is under another attack from her brother and finds himself holding a gun to Roy's head.

Chantage - The Rough Cut

This is a rough cut of Chantage, there are a lot of scenes missing which have been substituted by a blank screen and the scene name. We had some technical difficulties with the boom mic as well, these scenes are being redone in order to fix any sound issues that may have occurred.  Enjoy.

Shooting Schedule

Film Poster Analysis

Shooting Schedule

Chantage (Script)

Film Animatic

Film Noir Storyboard

After completing the majority of my research I will now move onto creating my own film noir. I will be joined by Megan Byford, one of my classmates. Below is our storyboard. We have come up with a plan for our film which includes characters, locations/settings and props. The Camera angles are not as clear seeing as we couldn't represent them fairly on the software we used to create our storyboard. More information involving camera angles, sound and lighting will be coming  soon. For now, we have our storyboard that holds all the basic information about our film.

Film Noir - Audience Research

Question 1: How old are you?

The results to this question show that the majority of people who answered this survey are aged between 16 - 21 (78% were). This is useful information as we now have information that tells us how to create a relevant film noir for teenagers and young adults within the range of 16 to 21. This is very helpful to me as I categorize into that age range, this way I am able to relate to our target audience. This will come in very handy when planning, filming, editing, basically the whole production process as we make our film noir.

Question 2: What is your gender?

The majority of those who answered our survey were female (78% in fact). This shows that the majority of the audience research comes mostly from females, because of this the decisions that we makes based on this audience research will lead to a film made for females which could be a reason to create my film for females aged between 16 to 21 years old. Whether we decide to go through with that or not, we're still unsure.

Question 3: Are you familiar with Film Noir?

The results for this question were very close, 60% answered that no, they did not know what a film noir was. The remaining 40% answered that they did in fact know what a film noir was. This shows that in order for the 60% to understand and enjoy our film we will have to break or challenge some of the typical film noir conventions. We are also looking at including some typical genres of other films that those aged between 16 - 21 would enjoy for example, romance, thriller and action films. This will make our film much more relevant and enjoyable for our target audience. We will also include typical film noir conventions such as chiaroscuro lighting, dark alleyways and a crime based storyline to interest the remaining 40%.

Question 4: If you answered yes in question3, do you like watching film noirs?

Interestingly 62% answered that no, they do not like watching film noire which is understandable for an age group of 16 -21 year olds as originally film noir were popular in the 1950s and are definitely not considered modern films to be watched by teenagers and young adults. This again shows that we will have to include more modern conventions from other genres that will attract our target audience to our own film noir. This will then encourage our target audience to enjoy our film.

Question 5: In the films you watch, what gender is the villain usually?

The majority answer for this question was male. 73% answered that villains are usually male whereas only 7% answered that they were female. A small 20% answered that villains could be either female or male in films. In our film noir we have decided to go with a female as this will challenge our target audiences expectation and should hopefully intrigue them. Having a female villain is common in film noir which is our main reasoning behind our female villain, although we are challenging some film noir conventions we decided to keep within the female villain convention as it will be different to our viewers expectation.

Question 6: With a female villain, what personality traits do you expect?

In continuation with the film noir convention of a female villain we asked people what personality traits they would expect in a woman and gave some typical examples. The four most popular examples in order of highest percentage were as follows: Intelligent, Seductive, Mysterious and Charming. These four personality traits will be really helpful when portraying a female villain in our film noir. In order to show these characteristics we'll have to really think about our storyline, characters, props, costume and editing. These will be key in representing these four characteristics, especially as they are going to be key in showing that our female villain is just as good as a male villain. 78% respondents said that they would expect a female villain to be intelligent, in order to show this in our film I think that the story will be the most important factor when representing this quality trait in our female villain.

Question 7: What locations you would expect in a film noir (or something like a crime thriller)

Location is a very important factor in film, especially in film noir as there are common locations that appear in film noir. Some examples of these are living rooms, alleyways, offices or dark streets. Our audience research shows this as 82% of respondents said that alleyways were a location that they would expect in film noir. This is a film noir convention that we're going to follow as a dark alleyway with low street lighting

really helps with a dark, mysterious atmosphere for our film. 67% of respondents also said that mansions were a location that they would expect in a film noir. After doing some research on locations and where to film nearby we found that filming in a mansion would be hard as we don't own one and no one that we know owns one. We did however come to the realisation that we do live very near to some big houses that could easily pass for a mansion.

Question 8: What music do you expect in film noir?

69% of respondents answered that they would expect jazz music in a film noir, 67% answered that they would expect instrumental music in film noir. Based on my previous target audience research results it became clear that music is very important in any film, including film noir. This research shows me specifics of the type of music to include. Instrumental could be very useful when trying to create certain moods as it adds to the drama. Jazz music could also be very helpful in setting the mood, it creates a mood, specifically from the genre of the classical film noirs.

Question 9: What are some filters that you could see a film noir being in?

88% answered that they could see a film noir in black and white which is probably because black and white is a common film noir convention. Whether we're going to have our film in black and white or not we are still unsure because we still want our film to be relevant to our younger target audience. In order to keep our target audience interested in our film we may choose to challenge this convention and our target audience research and keep the film in colour. We have decided to film everything in colour and then decide in the post production process as to what filter our film noir should be in.

Conclusion

This audience research has been very helpful in making some of the big decisions we have to make as regards to location, music, actors/actresses, storyline, target audience and filters. Although we are still undecided on some of the questions asked, we have been able to make some firm decisions such as our villain will be female, we are going to have jazz and/or instrumental music in our film and our target audience is both females and males aged between 16 and 21.