evaluation question 6

Question 6

evaluation question 7

Evalutation- question 4 and 5

evalutaion question 2

Evalutation- Question 3

Evaluation- Question One

The title of the film is called ‘Penny’. We chose the title to be just a name because it meant we’re meeting the demands our genre, ‘psychological thriller’ because with it being just a name we anticipated the audience would start to think, who is penny? So it has a psychological approach. We also liked the idea of an integrated title. As we had seen a film with it and thought it would suit our film perfectly.

The setting and location we chose we originally agreed to have an oxymoron approach with it being really dark in his bedroom but have him out in the light to meet the conventions of a psychological thriller. After seeing the scene with him in the light we chose to get rid of that specific scene because it didn’t do anything to our play and we needed to cut down on the time because at this point we had filmed for over five minutes because we thought if we did loads of filming we could do a lot of editing but we soon realised we could only do a maximum of two minutes for our opening. Also it didn’t do anything for our film. The bedroom was used with the alarm clock set to wake him up at an early hour because we wanted to portray he has a structure to his lifestyle still.

Costumes and props- the costume that harry was wearing consisted of dull and dark colours to connote the fact he was dangerous, we had the clock to connote the fact he still had a structure, the alcohol on the window still you see if to connote he is isn’t 100% sane. He doesn’t like to feel in control of himself.

Laptop was used to portray the fact he is still looking for her and the camera we set up is so you can see him losing his temper at not being able to see her or find her and he doesn’t like the fact she isn’t interested in finding him. Tic-tacs were used as drugs to connote that being drunk isn’t enough for him to be out of his head. So clearly he liked not being able to think straight or even that.

Camera work and editing were done to at an independent’s film standard. So this meant hand held techniques were used. We used a tripod when tracking Harry when he walks to the bathroom. A high angle shot was pointing down at him when he does the monologue to connote he isn’t worth a lot whilst he is under the influence of drugs. The editing was continuous so the viewer isn’t confused because we had a lot going on in our opening without giving too much away so I think if we had split scenes, flash backs etc. It would have the audience struggling to keep up. It was fast paced. This was to connote he was rushing his life away with all the drugs and to portray the fact that when it starts to slow down when he runs out of drugs he can’t cope. Hence when he loses his mind with his outburst at the computer.

The title font was in a block capitals style on his hand. This was to connote the fact he is always thinking about her and it often that younger children who aren’t so mature tend to write on their hands. Well we thought to have the psychological approach by connoting he is immature which sort of gives hints before you see him taking drugs that he isn’t a very good dad. Taking drugs as such is a very immature thing to do. It’s written in big capital letters to connote that, which is exactly what is he saying his is head and thinking in his head. Screaming and shouting before you see him lose his temper.

The story line is about a stalker and an innocent girl and about their relationship as  father and daughter. Our opening doesn’t give too much away, we just wanted our opening to allow the audience to get an opinion of the main character, Harry.  We came up with the story line as a group and we agreed it did match the demands of a psychological thriller.

The opening we tried our best to bring across the genre being a psychological thriller. We believe we met the demands of it being a thriller with the non-diegetic music being creepy and the editing being at a fast pace. The psychological aspect we tried to bring through Harry. With the way he behaves and his actions and what he does to make the audience think constantly. This is why we believe we have met the demands of a psychological thriller.

Harry is the only character that is shown in the opening because film openings don’t give much away. He is shown being asleep next to the alarm clock to connote he has a structure which would give you the idea he is like any normal human being, waking up early to get to work but then you see him going to the bathroom taking drugs and then we hoped the audience would remember all the drink that was on the window steel. So we showed him in stages to make it easy for the audience to follow but with them also thinking about him as well having their own opinion when they see him wake up early but only to take drugs.

We chose against having special effects as we’re an independent company so produced our film on a low budget. So we didn’t have money to spend on special effects. Also film openings don’t tend to have like massive explosions that you need special effects for so it wasn’t really relative to our film.

Jelly Bellies Activity

Within our group we composed a story board with jelly babies. The idea of the activity was that we had to put camera angles accordinly to which scene it suited best. This enabled us to have a better insight with regards to filming and transitions. It definitely developed our knowledge as to what camera angles and transition suit a genre. We learnt from this task what the actual point of a story board is because by completing the story board it gave us clear instructions as to what we thought was necessary. Therefore all we had to do with the cameras was to execute the camera angles to a standard that we thought worked well. The difficulties were trying to take the genre we had chosen (social realism) seriously considering we were using jelly babies in the story board that we had to think hard about what transitions, black outs and camera angles to use on them. Another difficulty was putting together all the ideas. Everyone had good ideas but theres only so much you can do to one scene before it becomes too much for the viewer to understand what is going on but these were soon solved when we all had an equal input to the overall story board.