Questions On The Sequences 3 - A Post By Mori

Creative Tools

1. How did digital technology enable you to develop creatively and are there examples of the technology obstructing or preventing your creative flow?

Digital technology was a huge help to us in the making of this piece, it meant that certain aspects of the piece could happen and look good at the same time. For example we wanted our torture scene to be very dark limiting the visibility of the viewers making it look as if worse things were happening than could be seen, this meant filming it in a very dark room which was difficult to get right so we were able to film it in an almost pitch black room and then use the technology on the computer to increases the brightness and therefore make it the perfect visibility that we wanted for the scene. Digital technology also means that the titles at the beginning of the piece can look as if they were of a high budget film, this is very important for us as we want it to look as high end as possible. We were able to use applications such as Adobe Photoshop to create these titles and then move them into Premiere Elements where we edited the film. I didn’t find that technology ever obstructed our piece it was only really a help, apart from when the camera batteries ran out!!

Thinking About Audience – making meaning

1. How did you respond to the initial brief with the audience in mind?

We responded to the initial brief well by conducting research and doing a brainstorm to help us review our options. Our first thought for genre was teenage drama which we thought we could make look the best and also we know how teenagers think and what they enjoy, so they would be a good target audience. We then thought that the target audience for a film needs to be larger, we can’t just have teenagers wanting to watch our film, we need more and we also thought that dialogue does not sound too good with the cameras we have and in a teen drama we would need lots of talking as that’s what teens do, we would also have more to explain if it is a drama as the storyline is likely to complicated and we don’t want the audience to get confused as they won’t enjoy the film. So we looked at thriller, it has a larger target audience of teens through to older aged member of the public and it is slightly more tilted towards men but women are likely to watch a thriller as well. Also thrillers have more basic storylines than dramas and therefore it will be easier for the audience to understand.

2. How did your analysis and research into the type of film you selected impact on the creative process in pre-production?

Our research into thrillers and opening sequences helped a great deal towards what we wanted to do. It gave us inspiration and ideas to create the best possible piece that we were capable of. For example we saw lots of different openings on You Tube and we thought that the thrillers looked by far the most effective and would be best for us, we saw mainly gun shots and deaths, although that way was effective I wanted something slightly more original than guns something that would be a bit harder to film, so we choose to film a drowning sequence, which we didn’t see so much on You Tube so it meant we could be really creative and design the scene in the exact way wanted.

3. In filming and editing, how did you ensure that the meaning would be apparent to the audience? What creative decisions did you make in planning, rehearsing, filming and editing that were influenced by your sense of the audience and possible layers of interpretation?

The editing and filming is when we mostly had the audience in mind, as we were always trying to make the piece so it made sense to the audience. For example in the first half of the piece when the men are walking through the house we were going to skip a part when they are on the stairs so that we could make the torture scene longer but then we thought about it and we would have had to break the rules of continuity as it would not make sense if they just arrived at the top of the stairs, well the audience probably would have guessed that they walked up the stairs but it would have looked as though a part was missing. We also had an idea for the bedroom where we would have a shot of the boy in bed and then one from the other side looking at the kidnappers as they entered the room but we thought about the 180 degree rule and thought about it from the audience’s point of view and realised that such a small scene could start to get very confusing for audiences.

4. How did the audience respond when you trialled aspects of your film? Are there a variety of possible interpretations of your opening sequence that will depend on the cultural situation of the viewer?

The general thoughts n our piece were positive, everyone seemed to enjoy it and managed to get some positive feedback on the piece so that we could do some adjustments to make it as good as it can possibly be. People mostly like the torturing scene the best and found the drowning very effective. They said that the titles needed a bit of work (we hadn’t quite finished them) as well as the editing in the house as there was a bit where an actor looked at the screen, so we just needed to tighten things up slightly.