Final Opening Title Sequence - 'The Will'

Final Opening Title Sequence - 'The Will' 

CCR Task 4 - 'How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?'

CCR Task 4 - 'How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?'

For the is task i created a Wix website to explain how i integrated the software, hardware and online technologies on my media A1 coursework.

Here is the the link to my website which answers CCR Task 4's question - https://matthewiveson0.wixsite.com/my-site-2

CCR Task 3 - 'How did your production skills develop throughout this project?'

CCR Task 3 - 'How did your production skills develop throughout this project?'

For this task I made two timelines explaining how my production and research & planning skills developed throughout the duration of my A1 media course

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CCR Task 2 - 'How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?'

CCR Task 2 -'How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?'

For my group and I's opening the sequence 'The Will' we have decided that our target audience is men aged 30-39, we did previous research which helped us come to that conclusion (Demographic research - https://matthewivesona1media.blogspot.com/2022/03/target-audience.html) and (Similar product research - https://matthewivesona1media.blogspot.com/2022/01/research-different-poison-berries.html).

I have additionally picked out 5 key moments which will help me to explore how the target audience is engaged:

The blurry reflection on the vinyl is a unique stylistic choice which will be appreciated by slightly more mature young adults as the shot will instantly cause them to raise questions and thus they keep watching. It also doesn't establish anything due to the illusive nature of the shot but once the vinyl starts playing music the camera pans up and reveals the location and the man, this engages the target audience by slowly revealing more shot by shot so not giving any details away without meaning too, which i turn hooks them in through the questions they may ask.

The cutting open of the berries will engage the audience via their intrigue of what they may be used for, almost causing the audience to become like detectives and thus drawing them into the story and the narrative behind this suspicious berry potion. Also the detective aspect may also appeal to our secondary audience of women aged 40-49 as they have given high ratings to similar products such as And Then There Were None and Line of Duty which both revolve around murder and crime.

When the man draws up the poisonous berry mixture up the syringe it provides some hospital/medical experiment imagery which is the first major clue to the audience that something is wrong and not all is harmless. These clus provide escapism which can be taken from Blumler and and Katz's theory of uses and gratification, specifically providing Entertainment which allows the audience to be able to relax, the target audience is engaged especially since by 30 people usually begin to work, have job and possibly start a family so a break from the stresses of life can be very useful for them.

When white powder is added to the beaker it causes the potion to fizz and react which visually provides a huge contrast to the crimson red berry juice and turning it into some kind of mini volcanic eruption. The fizzing diegetic sound effect is loud and obnoxious which will alarm the viewers and engage them with this specific sound design as this is completely out of the ordinary in every way shape and form which will spike their interest. 

When the man opens to door to the woman there is a big reveal of her with a funnel which provides to connotations of the potion he just made will be traveling down that very funnel into her throat. With our target audience some personal identity with the woman may be discovered as she is effectively silenced from talking and describing her feelings which is a topic many men struggle with now and the stigma of boys don't cry and that the public believe men should toughen up and therefore cannot express their feelings either.

When the poison berry potion is being poured down the funnel she begins to shake and react to the potion, this is the climax of the sequence and will act as the peak for the target audience engagement, this is due to the reaction of the woman and her crying and choking sound, therefore indicating not only is this potion is harmful but it is lethal. 

In conclusion i think my group and I were successful in engaging our target audience as suspense was slowly built gradually form the start till the climax of the opening sequence through the preparation of the sinister poison potion which hinted and gave out subtle clues of the ill intentions of the man, if anything we could have added more effective clues to the audience as the sequence was very subtle so maybe adding the plastic gloves for him to use would definitely make the berries seem more threatening.

My Film poster for 'The Will'

The poster design centres around the idea that something so simple and innocent can become sinister. This is reflected through the berries and how the opening sequence revolves around them being cut up and sliced (some may presume this is for a fruit juice or smoothie) but if you look at the connotations you will discover this innocence is not the case and that they are being used for evil intentions.

The sylisation and theme of the poster will help sell it towards the slightly more mature younger adults who appreciate the vintage look of the film as well as the detective aspect which the audience can almost partake in whilst watching. The vast amounts of red insinuate danger and warning, even if it may not be obvious, do not ignore 'red flags' of which many pop up in the opening which lead to the death of a completely innocent woman.

The film has the age rating of 15 because there is a moderate quantity of violence in disturbing death sequences such as in the opening but in addition to the gore the focus will be on the dark beauty of these scenes rather then the obscene gore in franchises such as the Saw and Hostel film series' which go overboard on the grim gore aspect, where this film will not go in that direction. The rest of the film also focuses around the crime aspect whereas similar products such as line of duty have the age certification of 12 so a balance between the two leads to 15, which I believe would definitely be suitable according to the guidelines of the BBFC.

The release date of the film is the 1st of October 2022 because this is the start of the build up towards halloween, so everyone is beginning to feel in the horror/ spooky mood, this film serves as the perfect introduction into October with its psychological thrilling nature whilst taking aspects of the horror genre into one stellar package. Additionally, the film is not released directly on halloween as on that day people will not be watching films but be trick or treating and thus this would not provide a significant viewership and also after halloween people become in the mood for christmas films so this is why the films release date is where it is. 

The tagline 'Not everything is as it seems' is the key component to this film poster as it signifies that anything normal could really be sinister such as the berries that could have been used for a peaceful craft whereas they were being used for despicable evil. The tagline also implies that anyone you know could not be a friend but really an enemy such as the man is murdering his sister in order to acquire the will which is truly shocking to the audience and is an example of the worst human behavior imaginable.

Netflix would distribute my film as it is one of the largest streaming platforms worldwide and has over 200 million subscribers; it is known for releasing large blockbusters such as Red notice yet also released smaller indie films such as Tucked, additionally the horror netflix
original trilogy Fear street was very successful despite not undergoing a cinema release. In addition to this Netflix would market my film through predominantly New media sources such as instagrama and tiktok which would spread the film across a large audience, this adheres to Henry Jenkins' theory of spreadability which implies if marketing is not sharable it will not succeed which is why the reveal moment of the 'funnel and poison' murder plan will be featured in this viral marketing campaign to engage and intrigue consumers. these reasons accumulate to why i have chosen Netflix to distribute 'The Will'.

The downside to there not being a cinema release is that there will be less individual paying individuals who will each pay to watch the film on the big screen whereas at home a group of people can watch for the price of 1 subscription; but this could even be so to a greater extent since password sharing is a huge issue netflix faces where friends share passwords with each other and only pay for 1 subscription between all of them. Despite this netflix do market the films on TikTok, instagram, youtube and other social media platforms as well as recommending targeted films to each subscriber based on their previous watch history and prefered genres. This targeted marketing will ensure 'The Will' will get across to a global audience and to the our specific target audience who engage with the film and understand its meaning.

CCR Task 1 - 'How does your product use or challenge conventions and how it represent social groups and issues?'

CCR Task 1  - 'How does your product use or challenge conventions and how it represent social groups and issues?'

For this task I created a video explaining why my media product used and challenged certain conventions as well as how the opening title sequence represented social groups and issues.

Post Production: Part 2

Post Production: Part 2

Over the second half of the post production editing process we aimed to add a soundtrack, sound effects, titles and fine tune the colouring of the sequence as well as fine tuning any errors in the sequence and it's presentation. These later few days of editing were definitely a big step up from the first few days as well as adding all these different features was significantly more challenging as they hard to fit perfectly.

Firstly, we decided for the soundtrack to use piece of music one of Bach's string compositions. We decided on this because it is something classical and relatively peaceful which the man enjoys listening to whilst committing the unthinkable poisoning to his sister, it shows the juxtaposition between the two and also how nonchalant he is about killing her. Underneath the music i layered a vinyl crackle to add texture and realism to the soundtrack which also implies
the soundtrack is diegetic. 

I then synced the timing of the crackle and Bach's track to when the man starts to play the vinyl. Towards the end however this really awesome soundtrack did not have as much effect towards the end of the sequence as there was not enough dynamism throughout. In order to increase the impact at the end of the sequence I added an evil soundscape when the man opens to door to reveal the woman and added some sub bass booms periodically; this really helped but I knew it could be even better so we all actually decided to completely cut Bach's track out after the fizzing shot and  place each boom on the each new cut which sounded incredibly creepy and nerve wracking when we watched it back. 

Next we added titles to the sequence, this began by making a list of all the titles we needed to include and then adding our names to our respective titles (lila - Director, Meadow - DOP, Matthew - Editor) as well as making numerous fake names for the rest of the tiles apart from Ezra and Suzanne our actors. We then chose a font and went back and forth on it for a while but eventually settled on one which looked beautiful yet refined and structured. One thing that we struggled with was deciding where and when the titles should be placed as we were not sure if some shots should be cleared of titles or if we should put them in
the corner or feature them front and centre in the shot. However since our opening
sequence does have a focus on titles over narrative we decided to place them according to the composition of the shot, for example if the shot was asymmetrical and contained lots of imagery on one side than the tittle would be placed on the other side or if the shot was symmetrical then maybe a middle position would be more fitting etc. In addition we learned a very useful skill to determine how long each title should stay on the screen for, the rule was that you should be able to say the given tittle three times in succession before it would disappear.

When editing the sound of the opening sequence that was recorded by the microphone as well as a separate internal mic built into the camera we had to unlink the audio channels from the video recording they were attached to and then cut the audio channel that had the muffled low quality camera mic recording and then duplicate the good audio so it could be heard from stereo channels left and right.

Lastly we added cinematic bars to the sequence as it was shot in widescreen, in really gave it a cinematic feel in its presentation and made it look so professional.

Overall I am so happy with how the opening tittle sequence has turned out, i must say i am especially happy with how great the shots themselves look which is down to the way we filmed them and the time we took when filming them, like i said previously we choose quality over quantity. My favourite shot is the one of the man holding up the fizzing poison liquid to his eyeline and then putting it down, turning round and opening the door to reveal the woman with a funnel strapped in her mouth; it's just great how the light radiates in the room contrasted to the the dark dingy room the woman is inside of. If I were to have done anything differently I would have maybe hidden the man's identity more the shots by putting his face out of focus or having just extreme closeups of him but still i am pleased with the shots we have of him.

Post Production: Part 1

Post Production: Part 1

Throughout the past few days our production group has begun to edit our opening title sequence. I was the main editor and thus had a big responsibility to make sure we were making good progress and that i was happy with how the edit was shaping up to be like.

Firstly we sat down together in the editing suite and watched all our footage back, once we saw our first opening shot we were in awe of how good the video quality was, to me it actually looked better then in real life especially with the way the rays of light would transcend across the room. We then went on to review the rest of the footage and noticed some takes were shaky but quite often that our final takes were ideal for what we actually wanted to use, however there was one shot that we wanted to use (the man mixing some liquids together - wide shot) but looked different to the other shots since we should it as a last minute attempt at the end of the day and thus the lighting was very different. 

Another issue we came across was not having lots of shots to pick from, we noticed that it definitely would have been nice to have a few more different shots; but thankfully the shots we did have we very good and looked beautiful so in this case we had quality of shots over quantity.

After we finished reviewing all of the footage we then began to place down shots chronologically on the timeline and then cut those shots into what we all thought was of a suitable length; and then put them together to form a very early stage cut of the sequence. It was quite messy, not refined and was over 3 minutes long which was significantly over the specification of the brief.

We ended up having to shorten some shots are cut some shots out all together, one significant choice we made was completely getting rid of the shot of multiple berries that have been cut; this shot showed the scale in the quantity of poisonous berries in the poisonous drink but also how far the man was willing to go by cutting every single tiny berry perfectly down the middle. The reason we got rid of this albeit decent shot was that it was slightly out of focus and the shot of a single berry being cut open look astronomically better through its detail and precision, plus in other earlier
shots the amount of berries was also signified by the large amount in the jar and on the stalk.

Finally, one more significant choice we made was having our finishing shot be of the man's face looking satisfyingly at the woman, this shot marked as the perfect conclusion for our sequence and an insight of what may be to come. His face also implies that he wants more of the satisfaction of devising a plan to kill someone; this is alo why the meaning of his character makes the last shot that little bit more unnerving and creepy to the audience.