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

After reviewing our previous attempt at creating a media project, compared to our more recent product, it’s evident that we have become more aware of the framing aspect of our shots. Below is a selection of screenshots from both projects, and the contrast of this improvement is significantly apparent.

There is also a significant development between the preliminary task and the main project, in reference to the variety of shots that we have captured, and the angles in which we have used.

The lighting of the set was another aspect which I think we have improved upon.

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

12.5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

The unique selling point (USP) of our film, Relapse, is the fast-paced action and violence that most British films wouldn’t usually feature; this is more conventional in American films. Our idea to use the ending of the film at the beginging could also be considered to be a unique selling point, due to the fact that it creates a sense of mystery around the intentions are reasoning behind the character’s actions. This could potentially attract the audience to continue watching the film to establish why these events occurred. 

Our audience feedback was relatively positive as they appreciated the variety of camera angles that we used to present the running sequence. When viewing our rough cut, our audience didn’t respond well to the silent opening as they weren’t aware as to whether the film had started, and they weren’t keen on name of the film. We have since rectified these issues to provide the audience with the most successful version possible.

12.4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for our film, Relapse, is primarily middle aged, white British males aged between 22 and 50 years. Considering the fact that our film is categorised as crime genre film, I think that this will attract an older audience as it could be more suited to the more mature generation due to the fact that there could be swearing or violence in the film. I think it will also be more appealing to the working class people, as opposed to middle class people as it isn’t the most intellectual film within the market, however, this doesn’t apply to everyone.

The epitome of our target audience is Charlie Davies:

A production company is a company that is responsible for the physical production of a media product and they may also be directly responsible for funding the production.

The production company that we chose to use was entitled Kings Langley Productions, and we specialise in crime genre films. Our film, Relapse, is a middle age crime film – we have incorporated our knowledge of crime genre films with our understanding of the media consumption of a stereotypical middle-aged man to create this niche, British film. A similar British production company is Coffee Films who commonly produce feature and short films. Coffee Films are renowned for filming with a limited budget and, like Coffee Films; we are aiming to reach an audience who are interested in the crime genre, at the same sort of age.

Our film focuses on the lives of men who have resorted to crime due to a financial strain, and it attempts to convey the hardship that they are experiencing as a result of this with some fast paced action scenes. Consequently, I think that our film could attract a Hollywood company who could distribute a crime genre film, because their target audiences, or audiences that recognise their brand name, are similar to ours.

A distribution company could be involved even during the scriptwriting, as they could analyse the text and suggest whether there is a market for such a media product. The MGM Company have distributed films such as, Another Thin Man, The Beast of the City amongst numerous other crime genre films. The MGM Company is experienced in distributing media products to their target audience which is also comprised of primarily middle aged men, as opposed to teenagers or an older generation.

On the other hand, Contender Films, who have experience in distributing media products to both cinemas and on DVD, is a British distribution company which have also released crime genre films. They have recently been acquired by the Entertainment One Company which consequently resulted in an increase of funding available and are also linked to other companies which would aid them during the distributing process to a larger audience.

These are the types of companies that we would consider if we were going to distribute our media project due to the fact that they have knowledge of the crime genre, subsidiaries which could expand our audience and have generated a fan base which is similar to the audience which our film could appeal to.

12.2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

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

Upon reflection over our title sequence, we were required to consider how our media product used, developed and challenged the forms and conventions of real media products.

Based on my previous research into the common conventions of crime genre films, using websites such as http://www.filmsite.org/genres.html and other sources, it’s evident that our title sequence has numerous traditional elements. This is apparent due to the fact that our title sequence introduces the key characters with a mysterious non-diegetic audio track which generates an atmosphere, and a sense of limited time and dialogue, similarly to the title sequences of the films Pulp Fiction, The Dark Knight and Goodfellas.

However, the format in which our title sequence portrays these elements is quite direct, where as other crime genre films such as Pulp Fiction display a more discrete approach by separating the action, dialogue and introduction of the characters from the titles, and the mysterious audio track. We decided against this style due to the fact that we thought including the titles with the action could encourage the audience to maintain an interest and also make the text relevant. Although, we thought that the use of computer generated text created a surreal aspect and separated the physical appearance of the text from the action, similarly to Pulp Fiction.

In order to maintain this interest, we thought it would be beneficial to introduce the main characters during the title sequence, because this could set up the dynamics between those characters and immediately inform the audience about the relationship between these characters. But by limiting the amount of dialogue, we were also able to create a sense of mystery about the intentions of these characters - a common convention in the crime genre.  

The structure of our sequence could be considered to be subversive due to the fact that the title of our film is displayed towards the end of the title sequence, where as the title for Goodfellas and Pulp Fiction is revealed in the middle of the sequence, and The Dark Knight’s title is shown at the beginning. The reasoning behind this decision was based on an original idea that the gunshot at the end would be followed by the title, which could delegate emphasis towards the title by creating a more dramatic effect. We also decided to order the sequence of events in a linear format, similarly to that of Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction and The Dark Knight, as we thought this would enable the audience to follow the sequence of events more clearly.

The presentation of these titles is parallel to other crime film opening sequences as both Pulp Fiction and Goodfellas use a smart and clear font for their titles, such as Times New Roman, which is similar to the font that our group used for our titles. The color of the font is white, which is the same color as the font in the Goodfella's title sequence. The reason we decided to conform to this style was because we thought that the contrast of white text against the black background was more visually effective. The fact that we used black backgrounds, however, is an element frequently used in crime genre films such as Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas and The Dark Knight. In reference to the style of text and the color used; our title sequence conforms to the common conventions of a crime genre film.

The main enigma of our opening sequence is the mystery of the intentions and actions of the main characters. We decided to limit the amount that we would reveal about the reasoning behind what is happening on screen, as this is a common feature in numerous other crime genre opening sequences.  We also used music to create a dynamic scene in the hope that the audience would maintain an interest and desire to discover what happens in the following film. This method is also used constantly in our chosen genre based on our conventional research.

As a group, we thought it would be more visually appealing if our title sequence was in color, as opposed to black and white which is generally classed as the traditional presentation of a crime genre film. We also thought that the concepts and issues raised within the plot were quite current and the color format could reflect that. This idea was derived from the film ‘Trainspotting’, which tackles similar issues such as drug abuse, in a color format. We shot our title sequence in 4:3; however, this should have been 16:9. This was an error that we made during the filming process and we contemplated rectifying this problem by cropping the shots to appear letter-headed, but we felt this didn’t justify cutting out some of the action on screen.

Within our opening sequence we used a range of close ups shots of the character’s faces whilst they were running, to convey the frantic emotions that they were experiencing. We also focused on building the foundations for the film, by capturing a shot of one of our characters crying so the audience could begin to share empathy. We also concentrated on the legs by using close up shots of the characters running, to highlight the importance of the amount of motion taking place. We also decided to incorporate long shots to enable us to capture both characters at once, and illustrate the distance between these characters - all elements that are commonly associated with the crime genre.

To create our title sequence, we used a compilation of different camera angles, as we were impressed by the variety of shots depicted in the opening chase scene of TrainSpotting. We attempted to conform to the conventions of a crime genre by tracking the character’s while they were running, as seen in the title sequence of TrainSpotting. However, due to limited resources and the fact that we decided to improvise with a skateboard, this attempt wasn’t as successful as we thought it would have been..

We thought that our characters should be in smart attire, such as suits, similarly to the clothing worn in the film Reservoir Dogs, and should be wielding guns as their props due to the fact that this is a popular convention in crime films.

The film Trainspotting was quite influential, in reference to the editing and sound, due to the fact that our title sequence also consists of fast paced transitions, with an equally fast sound track to match the action displayed on screen, which could potentially create a tense and exciting atmosphere – the main objective of any crime genre film. We decided to conform to this convention as we thought that this could set the mood for the audience so that they can share the fear of the main characters and the tension between them. We also derived the idea of initiating the sound at the same moment that the main character’s foot made contact with the floor from Trainspotting, as we found that this was more effective method of introducing the audio track.

We decided against the use of any special effects as the majority of crime genre films that we studied seem to avoid this surreal element during their title sequences.

Over all, it is evident that our media product rarely challenges the conventions of a crime genre film, and opts for a more conformable approach which could offer our product a more successful future, if it contains elements of original media products that have been successful within such an industry.

Audience Response

After reviewing our title sequence, the target audience explained that their expectations of a crime genre title sequence were exceeded as they stated that our group “did it justice”. It also became apparent that the pace was successfully captured due to a variety of shots depicting the motion of the characters and that this pace was paralleled by the music effectively. They thought that the abrupt titles also continued to generate this pace and suited the genre.

However, they thought that the shot of Liam running wasn’t as successful due to the fact that the camera tilted towards an awkward angle which was the result of improvising with a skate board as a make-shift camera dolly.

The target audience also provided suggestions for our untitled project, such as “Chase” which was a simple, yet direct suggestion for our title, considering the title sequence is primarily composed of a chase scene. They also proposed we title it “Relapse” to emphasize the drug abuse theme which is apparent throughout the film, and this would also make the title more relevant by combining the content of the film with the title which could provide future, potential viewer’s with a greater insight into the film before they watch it.

As a group, we also generated various questions which we thought would evoke a constructive response from our target audience. These are the questions that we used, and the format that we presented them in:

These were the results that we derived from the questions within this survey:

Based on these results, we were able to conclude that our title sequence was recognized as a crime genre by 70% of our audience and the remaining 30% acknowledged other aspects of our title sequence which could be misconstrued as a convention of a thriller or action genre. We also established that the majority were able to understand and follow the sequence of events, and these events also encapsulated the majority of our audience.

However, the results based on the suitability of our audio were relatively successful, but this was still significantly lower than the previous results which suggests that this is an aspect which we could improve upon.

Final Title Sequence

This is the product of our title sequence media project, entitled Relapse. However, due to the compression rates on YouTube, our video is out of sync with the audio, but our teacher will send a synchronized copy.

Post-Production

To begin the editing process, we logged the rushes by reviewing each shot and deciding which take would be the most successful in comparison to the surrounding shots. We recorded these decisions in a table format with the correlating timings of the starting and finishing point of each shot, regardless of whether we were going to use it or not to ensure that we had a clear understanding of which clips to use during the editing process. We also included a description of what the clip consisted of, as well as the scene and shot number to further solidify our certainty of selecting the correct clip when editing. Evidently, this process consumed a significant amount of our time, but beneficially decreased the amount of time spent selecting the appropriate clips whilst editing.

This prolonged process then enabled our group to accurately begin constructing our title sequence. We began by dragging the rushes onto the timeline of the video editing software, Adobe Premiere Pro. We arranged the shots according to the order of the shot list and reduced various clips to ensure the continuity was consistent throughout, which was especially effective in maintaining the match-on-action whilst the characters were running.

After these adjustments, we included the stereotypical titles of a crime genre title sequence. This consisted of the actors, directors and writers names, as well our production company and the school's title to illustrate the collaboration.

Once we were satisfied with the visual aspect of our title sequence, we began to adjust the audio levels by increasing and decreasing the sound created within the shots to suit the action depicted. We achieved this by creating a marker on the area of audio which required an adjustment, then raised or lowered this point accordingly.

As a group, we then used the website www.incomputech.com to select an appropriate, track that wasn’t copyrighted to generate the pace or a crime genre title sequence. Finally, we asked our target group to review our refined title sequence and generate some feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of our product.

Production

Evaluation

The filming process took a total of 2 hours, approximately, and consisted of the group collecting the equipment required, such as the camera and the tripod, travelling to the location which was conveniently within walking distance, filming the scenes required according to the shot list and returning the equipment. The filming process was relatively smooth which could be due to a combination of the experience that we gained during the preliminary project and extensive planning prior to production. I think that performing a trial run using a camera man on a skateboard as a makeshift camera dolly prior to filming enable the group to determine which individual would be most steady and accurate whilst moving on the skateboard and to familiarize themselves with the balance required. This also highlighted a slight issue with directing the skateboard in a straight line, which was corrected with an innovative piece of rope, attached to the front of the skateboard which another member of the group could use to pull the camera man along.

Whilst we were filming, we deviated from the shot list slightly as we discovered various opportunities to incorporate different shots that we thought of and felt would be more effective during the editing process. This is apparent as we filmed more shots of Liam's feet whilst he was running because we hadn't fully considered the timings of the shots and how short they were, and we thought this would extend the time but maintain the fast-paced atmosphere.

We did also encounter a minor problem which consisted of a significant amount of traffic. The reasoning behind this was the time in which we decided to film. We thought filming after school hours would enable all group members and actors to attend the filming session, however, we didn’t consider the traffic that was trying to get to surrounding schools to collect their children. This was a minor inconvenience which merely delayed our shooting schedule, and could be something to improve upon in future projects.

Personally, I think that the group formed an effectively team, by allocating roles to different individuals throughout the project but recognizing that these tasks may not have suited that individual and switching such responsibilities to emphasize the various strengths of those individuals.

After analyzing the raw, unedited footage we could conclude that the majority of the material filmed was usable and would produce an effective title sequence. However, there was a difficult shot of Liam running which was tracked using the skateboard and rope that didn’t turn out as expected as the camera angle tilted slightly. The outcome of this shot wasn't what we were expecting but it was the best option considering the equipment that we were working with.

Overall, I think the production process was a success which could be due to meticulous planning and the experience that we had gained from our previous project. This experience influence our project quite significantly as the group that we worked with for the preliminary, wasn’t the same as our current group, which enabled us to gain information from our previous group’s mistakes, as well as the other group’s mistakes

Pre-Production

Synopsis of the Whole Film

The film follows Nick, starring James Lyons, through an emotional journey in which he attempts to save the life of his dying daughter, starring Kelly Brown, by funding a lifesaving operation. He is a successful businessman and this financial goal is easily achievable for him, until he allows the stress of his daughter’s illness to interfere with the quality of his work and he is fired from his role in the company.

From this, his life begins to spiral out of control as he uses the controversial drug trade and other illegal methods to fund his daughters operation but after becoming addicted to the substances he formerly sold, he was incapable of prioritizing his savings. His daughter ultimately passes away which results in a prolonged battle with schizophrenia and eventually the dramatic ending.

Synopsis of the Title Sequence

The main character, Nick, starring James Lyons, will be shown running in various locations. He will also be shown panicking over the voices that he can hear whilst he’s running. As Nick is running, there will be scenes which reveal the titles and will be superimposed in the editing process. At the end of the title sequence, Nick is shown contemplating shooting himself as Raoul enters the shot, and the audience feel obliged to watch the whole film to discover which character dies. At this moment, the screen will black out and the title of the film will appear on a black screen.  

We decided to create a timeline to depict the timings of each element within our title sequence so that we could be more aware of the time during the filming process. We separated the audio elements from the visual aspects but ensured that the timings correlated with each other.

We based the majority of our decisions on previous, successful crime title sequences. This is evident as we will include a screen black out at the end of the sequence and will display the title of the film, similarly to the sequence of Goodfellas. We were also influenced by the weaponry revelation towards the end in the title sequence of Goodfella, as we incorporated this element of mystery through out our title sequence and disclosed the gun at the end.

We have also been inspired by the method that the film Pulp Fiction used to included the opening credits as we will also displayed the text on a black screen to separate what appears to be real events, from a surreal superimposed section of text.



To ensure that our group had a clear idea of which shot was in what location, we created a shot list so that during the filming process, we had a clear reference as to what shots are needed to complete our title sequence.

We thought that shooting lots of short shots in numerous locations would convey a fast paced atmosphere and portray a sense of movement due to the fact that the character will be seen in various locations.

Location	Scene No.	Shot No.	Description
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	1	Establishing shot of the path where NICK is going to be running
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	2	CU of feet seen running over and away from the camera. Non-Diegetic music starts as foot plants
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	3	MCU of NICK seen running past the camera with RAOUL following.
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	4	LS  tracking the two character from a high angle shot
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	5	LS NICK followed by RAOUL round a corner, panning from right to left.
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	6	MS Follow feet of running characters
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	7	CU Shot of faces whilst running
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	8	MS Shot of feet whilst running
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	9	CU Shot of faces whilst running
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	10	POV shot from NICK running
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	11	LS Tracking shot of NICK running then stops and watches him running away
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	12	NICK stops running and seen in CU deciding route
Kings Langley Common Lane	1	13	LS Panning of NICK running down road into woods
Kings Langley Common Lane  (woods)	1	14	Music fades out. MS NICK sits down, takes out picture and gun
Kings Langley Common Lane (Woods)	1	15	CU of NICK’s face, looking very emotional at the picture.
Kings Langley Common Lane (Woods)	1	16	MS of NICK sitting down contemplating, whilst RAOUL rounds the corner, NICK looks.
Black Out with a Gunshot followed by Title

To further install our idea, we decided to draw a storyboard which depicts the movement of the characters and the technical details. We have also included a description of what has been depicted in the storyboard.

It’s important to perform a risk assessment so that we are prepared for the filming stage and this can be achieved in the knowledge that everyone is safe. Listing all potential hazards also ensures that everyone is aware of the dangers and also what can be done to prevent it.

Based on the preliminary task, it became apparent that some members weren’t aware of what they were responsible for, so we decided to state whose responsibility it was for each element of the Mise En Scene for our project:

We also decided to create a crew list describing the roles of each member of the project for each scene, and any additional props or equipment that is required.

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In order to prepare for the filming process we photographed the locations which we were going to use as our set and later analyzed various aspects of that location and the effects that it could have on the film. This is the conclusions that we made: