Evaluation Question 3: How does your production skills develop throughout this project

Codes and Conventions

Prior to starting this project, I had a very limited knowledge on the conventions of thrillers only acknowledging stuff such as tension creation and how the supernatural are involved.I was able to experience the thriller conventions first hand in the making of "The Chase"-A short film that highlights the conventions of supernatural and psychological thrillers. During the Christmas break, I made a lot of research on the conventions of Thrillers and it's sub-genres, specifically focussing on Crime Thrillers. This made it easier for me to incorporate into my film's plot and story board. This research as also significantly helped with my final outcome. Thriller films usually have a very restrictive colour palette which often includes more worn out hues-For example, Se7en's palette is sepia based. This then led me to start colour correcting the project in order to create more tension. Below is a comparison between the raw and edited version.

Planning and Organization

My organization skills have improved only to a weak extent. Prior to beginning this project, I was very bad with my time management. In the 1 minute film project, me and my group had finalized our concepts right before filming and I had handed in my part (the documentary-esque clip) . For this project, I chose to work independently and got to try my hands on roles I previously was not assigned to do such as filming, editing, animating and organizing. I had to contact my friends/the actors 2-3 weeks beforehand to see if they were available on the filming days. Since it was Chinese New Year, not everyone was available simultaneously so I divided the filming sessions into 2 days. On the second filming session, I was supposed tp contact one of the actors before hand to ensure that they were available but I did not, which lead to me having to use 1 actor to play 2 roles. My weakness with deadlines still remains a big issue and looking back, if I had used my time more efficiently, I could've gotten a lot more done in terms of planning and actually constructing the film. I have a lot  to learn from the errors with time and organization that has occurred in this project.

Camera Work

On the 2 projects I had previously worked on, I barely had done any filming, as I was mostly entitled to acting roles. I learnt many new things and gained new experiences from this project since I was able to have more roles in film production. After doing deeper research into the types of camera shots used in thrillers, I applied this into my story board. I though more thoroughly about using each type of shots in relation to the context of the films plot. Here are some examples below.

Breaking the 180 Degree Rule

180 degree rules are often used within a film's conversation scenes and establishes the 2 character's orientation  (left-right). Breaking it will result in the disorientation and confusion of the audience. for my opening, I deliberately did this as it was a turning point for the entire interrogation. The dialogue spoken by the Suspect:  "if it were your family, you'd do it too" causes his interrogator to show some sympathy, revealing his inner fragility-his desire of protecting his family. After this point he becomes the weaker one and calls it off.

Using Zooms

This Zoom of a handcuff gives a lot of context and information to the audience:
1.He is a cop
2. He is experienced at his job as seen from the confident motion of throwing these handcuffs.
3. He does not have a boasty attitude (putting the cuffs into his coat instead of waving it at everyone to show that he's a detective.)
4. The handcuffs symbolize justice, which is now in his hands to decide

On the other hand, there are many things regarding camera usage that I must still work on. After making a Bird's eye view of the interrogation table, I was careless and viewed the footage by tilting the camera onto 1 side. This made the camera and it's tripod lose balance, resulting in a broken camera lenses. The next time I film, I will remember to  have at least  1 person supporting the camera during the filming process, especially when filming risky shots like this one.

Visual Effects

Before working on this project, I had zero experience with manipulating visual effects. the best I could do was animate the motion and opacity of a key frame. 

When I had shown my first draft to an art teacher, he said that the film's sequence was good but it required colour correction as it was too colourful and vibrant to be a thriller. At first I thought colour grading was doing to be very difficult since the adjustments looked  very detailed. Once I tried to do it myself, I quickly became familiarized with the controls. Adding shadows and lessening the saturation did in fact make the film look more dramatic and thriller-like.

Adding shadows emphasized the texture of the suspect's hands to convey her desperation and anger.

The same shot, prior to colour correction

Animation

Furthermore, I also gained the opportunity to try out some animating on Adobe After Effects, another program which I was unfamiliar with. I looked up tutorials on youtube and found one on text particle animating which I used for my studio logo.

The tutorial:

My attempt

For my production logo, I used skills I learnt from my previous animations along with another tutorial and added in an element of uniqueness. I drew the logo with a Wacom tablet on Photoshop, saved it as a PNG (with transparent background.), added it in and masked it over with a glitch video I downloaded from MediaFire. 

The tutorial (the link to the glitch footage is included in the video's description)

The process of animating the production title.

Editing

Something that I think I significantly had improved at from doing this project is editing. It was always something that I feared whilst doing media studies as I had amateur experience with it. The most extreme editing I had done before doing this course was on IMovie. Once the course started, I had a small introduction to the program "Adobe Premier Pro". From that point, it seemed mildly more easy and approchable. The first time I had legitimately used it was when I made the contextual opening for my recreation of The Imitation Game (2014)- called "The Imitation Imitation Game". This involved things such as adjusting opacity, volume and animating the motion of each keyframe.

September 2016

March 2017

What also improved was the techniques I used with the film's Mise-en-scene. In the original story board of Alone, I intended to film footage of the detective's family right before he left the house. This was an ineffective way of narrating the story as it made it too dogmatic and unfitting for a thriller (more like a family film!). After showing it to Mr.Harrison, he suggested that this could be represented in a more effective and subtle way. Instead of filming the entire family, there could be a photo of the family on the detective's desk, which I incorporated into my final product. 

This shot uses the "Show-Dont-Tell" technique which has been used by filmmakers such as Steven Speilberg and Alfred Hitchcock in "Rear Window (1964).

Creative confidence

I think that this project has really harnessed my creative confidence as I was able to take my ideas to new heights.  My film's concepts originated from the trench coat detectives of the 40s and the idea of a loving family, but then I developed it to the idea of the loving family was being ceased, which exploits the fear of losing a loved one. 

Here are some examples of where I have applied my creative confidence.

The physical intimidation used by the detective to force the suspect to confess is a historical reference to "The Johnson treatment". This was a technique used by the US President Lyndon B Johnson/LBJ to intimidate or threaten his political opponents by using his height (196 cm)

The "Johnson Treatment" in action.

Unlike the picture above, I chose to do an Over-the-shoulder shot so that the audience are able to feel the strong tension in this scene.

This two shot puts the detective and suspect at equal heights which conveys the change in their power statuses. The suspect who was once inferior is now at equal stake with the man who can throw her into jail.

I believe that I have become more creatively confident as a result of working on this project since I have manipulated the Micro-elements in order to narrate my plot subtly whilst at the beginning, I could not even define the term micro-element.  After watching and analyzing other series and films in class such as The Wire , Breaking Bad and Dexter, I started to understand the concept more and more. The key was to understand how to create meaning through technical and symbolic codes.  For example, the key for the interrogation scene was to establish a shift in power between the Detective and the Suspect.

Furthermore, I used the credit texts to paint the psychological state of our main character-The Detective. Prior to the interrogation, the texts are very stagnant but as it starts, they begin to change in opacity, size and move to convey his feeling of anxiety after his family is brought into this.

Gun suggested taking this shot from this specific angle since the Suspect/Apisorn/Dennis Lee's arms and wrists take up a significant portion of the screen's composition. Fists are often connoted with having power and the meaning of this shot is that she has the upper hand now.