The Warehouse Killer

The Warehouse Killer Complete Film from Alex Hetherington on Vimeo.

Evaluation Activity 7

Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product? Through our preliminary production, as a group we have all developed our camerawork and editing skills. One of these skills I know I have improved upon the most is the ability to create a match on action edit. On my preliminary production, the only match on action edit I did was one of a door opening and closing using two shots as seen here.

However in the final production, there was a match on action of the character Karen running, which had to match with footsteps and even the lights on the back of the van.

A second skill we had to develop was the 180 degree rule, this rule is explained in the following Slideshare by Levi Wigglesworth in this public post.
 

180 Degree Rule For Media from leviwigglesworth

The use of the 180 degree rule is to simply avoid confusion within the viewer, this had to be followed perfectly to ensure a professional look to the film. Cameraman Sam Duxbury especially had to develop this skill as he spent most time behind the camera, being the only person in our group who didn’t have an acting role.

An example of the 180 degree rule being followed in our production.









Another editing skill used and developed, again mainly by cameraman Sam, was the use of a shot reverse shot. This is when there is a shot of something or someone, usually within speech, and then the shot switches 180 degrees. This is again showed within the following example.

An example of a shot reverse shot in our production.







One more of the skills which was developed in the editing by myself and Emma Bailey was the use of ‘J’ or ‘L’ edits. This is done by locking a layer in the timeline, either video or audio, then moving/cutting/ trimming the other. This was done for the door ‘squeaks’ and for most footsteps whereby numerous match on action edits were needed. This ensured a smoother and again professional look to the production. An example of this is shown below.

An example of ‘J’ cut for door squeak.   

An example of ‘L’ cut for footsteps.

Evaluation Activity 6

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

Evaluation Activities 4 & 5

Who would be the audience for your media product? How did you attract/address your audience? In addition for the audience feedback, we found that the audience thought that the plot was typical for the thriller genre, but liked the element of action and the added tension with the scream at the end making them want to watch the rest of the film. One person who watched the film, Callum Chadwick, said: "I think that the rest of the film would be really interesting, as this beginning leaves everyone on a bit of a cliff-hanger as to what happens next." Another member of our small audience, Alex Woodfield, said "As someone who enjoys watching more independent films at the cinema, this film really appeals to me. I like that the main character in the beginning seems like a normal, everyday person." However, one person, Ellen Smithies, did say "I think that the plot could be quite predicable, and also I would be more likely to go to the cinema to watch a big blockbuster or something with a famous person in it than to watch a small student thriller." Overall, our audience members seemed to enjoy our production, with a variety of feedback.

Evaluation Activity 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? The official definition of a production company is a company that provides the physical basis for works in the realms of the performing arts, new media art, film, television, radio and video.  The production company is usually responsible for fundraising for the production, handling budgeting, scheduling, scripting, casting and resource supply, the organisational staff, the production itself, post-production, distribution and marketing.
The film distributor is a company or individual responsible for the marketing of a film or production.  These people set the release date for a film and select the viewing platform of the production, for example either straight through DVD release or theatrically.

 Independent films like ours generally have a small return.  Most ‘indie’ filmmakers do it for the love of telling a story.  However, there are ways of increasing profit, for example through advertising and product placement.  Films that have been released in the past that would be institutionally similar to ours would be films like Attack the Block, which was a mid-budget British film produced by Big Talk Pictures, Studio Canal, Film4 and the British Film Council.  This film used a variety of production companies (as named above), which would be the source of the productions finance.

We chose Coffee Films as our legitimate production company, as when we researched independent film companies, we saw that they had produced some small-scale films like ours, and we thought they would be a suitable company for our production.  Coffee Films is a British independent film company that was established in 1996.  In 2004 the company was recognised as one of Europe’s leading young production companies.  We decided that our film would be made by a small production company because it isn’t in the same style as other Hollywood films.  The company has produced thrillers such as ‘Lucid’: a psychological thriller feature set in the Scottish Highlands.  They have also produced several online films, including ‘A Plaster, A Paper and a Cheese & Pickle Sandwich’: a black comedy thriller short film.  While the company isn’t very well known, we think that this production would be more suited to producing our film.

Our production company that we made up ourselves is called Red Herring Production, after the plot twists in thrillers such as ours.  We thought the colour scheme: red, white and black, looked quite dramatic, as well as thinking about the connotations of the block colours.

In 'The Warehouse Killer', the titles were displayed in this order:
• Production Company: Red Herring Productions
• Production Company: Coffee Films
• Actors (as shown in order of appearance)
• Director
• Credit to Coffee Films
The production companies had to be shown first before the film began because that's how they are shown in proper films.  Then the actors names were shown in order of appearance because there were only two actors in the film and it just made more sense to have them in that order than any other. In our production, the overlay titles are displayed in the corner of the screen, so that the audience can concentrate on the action within the frame, rather than on the words. The text is white with a black outline, looking quite plain to, again, keep the viewers’ attention on the action within the frame.

Our film would be released on a small scale, much like an Irish independent film called 'Attack the Block', which came out in 2011 in 66 cinemas.  The film would also later be released via the internet, on sites such as Netflix or Amazon Prime.

Evaluation Activity 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Pick the key characters from your opening. Take frame grabs of reasonable sized images of them. Think of one or more characters from other films with some similarities to them (but maybe some differences too!), find an image on the web of that/those characters and save it as well. Drop the two into Photoshop, as a split-screen. Export this split-screen image as a jpeg then post it into your blog and write about the similarities and differences in terms of appearance, costume, role in film etc.
So, for example, if you have a flawed detective type character, look for other detectives to compare them with. You need to do this for all your characters and then to expand beyond their character types to discuss any use of social groups including stereotypes or expectations i.e. having a young female victim fits the gender stereotype of weakness and vulnerability or you could have a killer who’s a doctor, which makes them more threatening as it plays against our expectations and normal trust in this profession.

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The key character in our production is Karen, and she is played by Emma Bailey.  If our opening were to actually be a part of a full feature-length film, the plan would be that Karen wouldn’t feature in the film, but only in the beginning, as it is implied that her character dies at the end of the opening just before the main title, with the high-pitched scream and the sound of something clattering.  This fits in to the stereotype that women are vulnerable, and in thrillers one of the first people to die.  However, we killed the male character first, going against the general thriller convention and stereotype.   This is because we wanted the killing to be a surprise to the audience.  We essentially wanted Karen to be the catalyst of events yet to come in the film. 

Her character was partly inspired by the teenage girl from the opening scene of Ils/Them, because she witnessed a crime and tried to run away, but still ended up dead.  Being a young woman in a thriller fits the gender stereotype of weakness and vulnerability.  Although their situations aren’t exactly the same, both of the characters were female, and therefore were portrayed as vulnerable.  Both characters lose people close to them: the girl from Ils lost her Mum, and Karen loses her friend and work collegue, and then dies.  They both have a similar role in each of their films: both are used to set the story and to give the audience an idea of what is to happen to the main characters in the film.  For costume, the teenage girl is dressed more casually than Karen is, because this fits her character better than for her to wear office clothes, as she is portrayed as a rebelious teenage girl.

               

Another character similar to Karen is Olivia William’s character in Sixth Sense: Anna Crowe.  While Anna is married to the victim in her film, and doesn’t die, she still sees the death of her husband.  In this way, both Karen and Anna show that while they are stereotypically vulnerable, they are also both strong individuals that are capable of dealing with these difficult situations.  Both wear costumes fitting for the locations: while Anna wears a dress because she’s come home from an awards dinner, Karen wears smart office wear because she is at work and she has to look professional.

Evaluation Activity 1

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

warehouse killer commentary complete from Emma Bailey on Vimeo.

Film Shoot Analysis

The First Shoot:   We got off to an unsteady start, as we weren't quite as organised as we should have been.  Both of our original actors told us on the day that they couldn't do it anymore, but we decided to carry on regardless because Alex and Emma both had a little amount of acting experience.    Also, we had to get used to using the equipment, which took us a little while to get the hang of.  We had some trouble with our microphone, so the footage that we got out of the shoot didn't have a good enough quality for what we wanted.  Originally we only planned to have one shooting day, as everything was to be shot in the same location, however in the end we didn't have time to finish all of it, and we had trouble with the lighting in the warehouse.

The Second Shoot:    On the second shoot, we were a lot more efficient and quick with the filming.  We had to redo a couple of shots from the first shoot because of the quality or the change in natural lighting.  Everything ran a lot more smoothly and we got all of the shots that we needed to, because we had got used to the equipment and we got the correct microphone working, and we were all working together a team more than the first shoot, because with two thirds of our team acting, it would have been difficult to dedicate different people to specific tasks.

Soundtrack Analysis

The second piece of music we use in our production is called All This. This piece of music plays when Karen sees Joe on the floor of the warehouse near the van. Again, we thought this sounded fitting for the thriller genre, but as you will hear, the first minute of music isn't used, because we didn't think that that part of the music was appropriate for our piece. Again, this was a free piece of music made by Kevin MacLeod.
 
Above, you can see a video of the main piece of background soundtrack non-diegetic music we used in our production: a free piece of music we found off the internet called ‘Bent and Broken’, which we thought sounded fitting for the thriller genre. The song by Kevin Macleod was designed for a Horror film; however we thought that the piece had thriller connotations within it. The piece had to be cut down for our production, as it was too long and it wasn't appropriate for all parts of the film, however it does run from the very beginning of our production, through the production company logos, as we thought the music sounded quite dramatic and good for the logo title music.

Production Logo Analysis For RHP & Coffee Films

Below is our subsidiary production company logo that we have made up for our production.  We chose the name ‘Red Herring’ because in thrillers there are red herrings to make the plot more exciting, leading you to believe one thing when in fact not everything is at it seems.  We thought this would be suitable for the sort of thriller we wanted to produce.

MEDIA Red Herring Productions Logo from Emma Bailey on Vimeo.

Coffee Films is a British independent film company that was established in 1996.  In 2004 it was recognised as one of Europe’s leading young production companies.  We decided that our film would be made by a small production company because it isn’t in the same style as other Hollywood films.  The company has produced thrillers such as ‘Lucid’: a psychological thriller feature set in the Scottish Highlands.  They have also produced several online films, including ‘A Plaster, A Paper and a Cheese & Pickle Sandwich’: a black comedy thriller short film.  While the company isn’t very well known, we think that this production would be more suited to producing our film.

General Planning

On the day of our filming, we had to take a bus to get to our location to film.  We used rosso.com to organise the time that we should get the bus and helped us to figure out where the nearest bus stop would be to the location we were filming in.

We also used Facebook messenger to communicate with each other about media outside of school. To give the whole group access to our work to put on their blogs, we put finished work on a group Google Drive which we could all access.

Storyboards Planning

Storyboard (Click Here)

Titles and Fonts

Due to us wanting our production to look like a professional thriller, we wanted the titles to connote the dark tone of the plot.  We also wanted to target our audience through our titles, so therefore the titles should look sophisticated and easy to read.  Therefore, we could not use fonts such as Comic Sans or Curlz, or any other sans serif, unprofessional fonts.  Instead, we think that using a serif font, to broadcast the seriousness and connote thriller conventions, for example Book Antiqua or Imprint MT Shadow.  In the end, we have decided to use Rockwell in bold and in CAPITALS.

For example:

ALEX HETHERINGTON

SAM DUXBURY 

 EMMA BAILEY

Shot List

1.       Establishing long shot of woman at desk working.  Low key lighting, her face is lit up by the computer screen. 

2.       Medium shot of the side of the girl sat at the desk.

3.       Close up on hand typing on keyboard.

4.       Shot of door, woman on left hand side as door opens and man walks through.

5.       Over the shoulder shot of woman looking up from laptop as man walks towards her.

6.       POV shot of man talking to woman from man’s prospective.

7.       POV Shot of him walking away from woman’s prospective.

8.       Medium close up of closing door.

9.       Match on action so as door closes, we see close up of door stopping an inch before it closes fully.

10.   Extreme close up of gap and man going down stairs.

11.   The medium close up shot cuts back to the woman working.

12.   Medium shot of her resuming work.

13.   As she hears a bang from the warehouse, a medium shot of her shows her turn to the door and pans as she slowly gets up and edges close to the door.

14.   As she gets closer to the door, medium shot of her looking at the crack in the door.

15.   There is a medium shot of door and girl walking through.

16.   Match on action into warehouse.

17.   We then switch to a POV shot from the edge of the warehouse from the killer’s perspective of the woman. Shot will be done using a hand held, rather than a tripod to ensure viewer knows it’s another POV.

18.   Close up of hands on balcony.

19.   Long shot of her walking down the stairs slowly.

20.   Close up of hand on banister.

21.   Reverts back to long shot of her walking down stairs.

22.   Long shot from corner behind girl as she walks down stairs and across warehouse.

23.   POV shot from killers perspective, with hand held.

24.   Medium close up of girl turning as she hears another bang.

25.   POV pan from woman’s perspective as she surveys the area.

26.   Medium long shot of woman as she surveys area.

27.   Continues previous POV pan shows van and mans’ legs.

28.   A shot from the other side of the van shows the man on the floor, and the woman looking at the shoe. We stay on the shot as she runs to the body.

29.   Zoom from medium long to close up of body as woman runs to man.

30.   Match on action long shot of her walking round van, reaching the body and bend over it.

31.   Shot from behind of woman leaning over man.

32.   POV close up of hands on body.

33.   Medium long shot of woman walking round van.

34.   Zoom to keys from long shot.

35.   Match on action of her running for keys, both long shots.

36.   Side shot of her picking up the keys.

37.   Medium long shot of her running for van and unlocking doors with keys.

38.   Medium long match on action shot of her running past dead man and opening door.

39.   Match on action of her getting into the van.

40.   Close up of the lock as she scrambles to put keys in ignition.

41.   Long shot from outside van.

42.   Medium shot of trying to start a van from outside van.

43.   Long shot from inside warehouse of her pulling out of parking space.

44.   Long shot of van driving away and out of warehouse.

45.   Black out.