Research and Planning: Voiceover

Jess and I have a very specific idea of how we want our voice actor to sound; none of our friends have deep enough voices, as the voiceover should sound much older than seventeen or eighteen…

We therefore decided to look up voice actors, and found a website called http://www.voice123.com which has thousands of voice actor’s demo tapes and contact email addresses. Although we thought it might be an outside shot, we decided to contact a few voice actors we thought would be suitable and explain our situation to them.

Below is a copy of the letter we intend to send to our favourite voice actors.

Research and Planning: Useful Websites

Some useful websites I’ve found during this process include:

www.WriterDuet.com, for collaborative, real-time script writing, which proved useful for Jess and I when we weren’t together.

www.SurveyMonkey.com, which helped to create a professional looking survey and distribute it a wide audience.

www.celtx.com allowed me a 15-day free trial for script writing, which was enough for me! It allowed me to format a script properly too, which looks better than just putting it straight onto my blog.

www.freeplaymusic.com, which organises copyright free music by genre, making it easier to find suitable music for our opening!

www.bubbl.us creates mind maps online, which I could then put onto my blog. I found it easier to get my thoughts together once they were all down on a mind map.

Research: Prezi: Analysis of Survey Data

After five days of collecting our survey data, we now have forty-five responses. Our amount of responses went up significantly after we posted the link on Facebook, showing how useful social media can be.

http://prezi.com/errn-wze5qog/results-of-our-survey/

I then collected the results and turned them into a Prezi, to make them more comprehensible, rather than just lots of numbers on a page!

Researching our Target Audience

To find our target audience and shape our film to their requirements, I have created an online survey using SurveyMonkey to reach a wider range of people. I then shared the survey on Facebook, because social media can be a useful way of reaching people. Hopefully, with my survey on three websites, I’ll get a decent set of results.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HGX22Q2

I read some examples of other AS media surveys on Slideshare to get an idea of what I should be asking and how to set out the questions.
The questions I eventually decided on are:

1. How old are you?

2. Are you male or female?

3. On a scale of one to ten, how much do you enjoy thrillers?

4. How often do you watch thrillers?

5. What makes you want to watch thrillers? (Select all that apply)

6. Do you enjoy complicated storylines?

7. What is your favourite subgenre within a thriller film?

8. What is your favourite thriller film and why?

9. Which other film genre do you most enjoy?

Researching How To Keep It Authentic

Our film opening shows a woman being released from a mental institution, with a voiceover reading out release documents to give a backstory and context, and to explain and make it clear to the audience what is happening.

Jess and I have never read any release documents, nor do we know anything about mental institutions. We therefore decided that we should do research into this, so we didn’t make up a mental illness which doesn’t really exist, or which wouldn’t explain her behaviour.

Release Documents
First of all, we looked up release documents. They begin with a lot of information, such as a social security number, a patient number, the date of release, the name of the institution… They also included other information such as the patient’s date of birth and contact numbers, but we decided to omit this from ours, as it does not add any important information, and would make our voiceover unnecessarily long.

Names of Institutions
I then looked up names of mental infirmaries, both fictional and real. The names we eventually settled on were the St. Andrew Trinity Infirmary (for her current location), and Blackhaven Institute (for the secure asylum she was moved from). In both cases, the names are names of existing infirmaries merged with another, as we wanted it to be fictional but believable.

Mental Illnesses
Lastly, I looked up types of mental illness, particularly those which can be caused by traumatic events. We wanted a mental illness which would explain her violence towards the people who killed her father. Eventually, we settled on ASPD. This stands for antisocial personality disorder, which is often referred to as psychopathy or sociopathy in popular culture. The symptoms include:

• Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest
• Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure
• Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead
• Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults
• Reckless disregard for safety of self or others
• Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations
• Lack of remorse
• (http://psychcentral.com/disorders/antisocial-personality-disorder-symptoms/)

Researching Studio Idents

At the beginning of our film opening, we will need an ident; the word ‘ident’ is short for identify, and is how television channels and film production companies identify themselves to their audience.

Some of the most famous and easily identifiable idents are Universal, Walt Disney, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Columbia, and Paramount. Television channels use idents too; such as BBC One, who use circles in their idents.

An ident can be either a visual image or a short animation. We plan on making a short animation for ours, although we may just have a picture – we want it to be on a black background so it stands out, and although the ident doesn’t have to be related to the film directly, we still want it to reflect it slightly; it would seem odd to have a cheerful ident before a psychological thriller, and could put the audience in the wrong frame of mind.

Clearly, our ident has to be quite simple, due to the short amount of time we have to produce everything, the lack of experience we have, and the fact we do not have the same kind of software and knowledge as they have at the BBC, for example. Therefore, I looked at simpler yet still effective idents, such as Spyglass Entertainment:

Researching Film Openings: Number 3

Whenever Jess talks about our opening, the two things she refers to the most are American Horror Story and Se7en. Because of this, I decided to rewatch the titles to American Horror Story (which are incredibly creepy and disturbing, but certainly effective), and also to rewatch Se7en over the weekend.

The titles, in particular, we think should be similar to Se7en, and we are currently thinking about using a desk (ie, patient 439’s doctor’s desk), and having the names on certain items.

Researching Film Openings: Number 2

The next thing I decided to research was past AS media projects. I found a playlist of AS film openings, just as we are doing, so I watched them all to get an idea of what other people had done in the past, and to see which ones I particularly liked and why. All of these ones are thrillers, which is useful because this is the kind of route we want to go down.

 

However, after watching them and choosing my favourite (A Silent Ending), I realised I didn’t know what grades they had received – I may have opinions on which ones I like, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they met all the criteria and impressed the examiners.

Therefore, I decided to find more AS film openings, but this time only watching ones which got A grades. The video below was particularly useful as they have kindly added extra information to their youtube video to explain their thought processes and how they achieved it. I thought it was really good, and although I was clearly expecting the ‘jump’ at the end, it still got me.

I also found a really good AS film trailer; although it’s not the project I’m doing, it have me a good idea of what the exam board are looking for when it comes to shots and transitions.

Researching Film Openings: Number 1

To start my research I did a rather generic Google search of ‘Horror Film Openings’ (even though we wouldn’t describe our film as a horror, it seemed a good place to start), and came across a list of ’12 shocking opening sequences of classic horror movies’. These films were…

• The Stepfather (1987)
• When a Stranger Calls (1979)
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
• Halloween (1978)
• Saw
• Final Destination
• Night of the Living Dead
• 28 Weeks Later
• The Ring
• Ghost Ship
• Scream
• Twilight Zone: The Movie

All of these films throw you in at the deep end, with no gentle introduction to the story. They begin with action, or something shocking, and immediately grab you.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, for example, has a creepy voiceover and radio report to explain the backstory, as well as a rather disturbing decomposed body. This is a good example of a little doing a lot, as not much is shown but you’re already feeling uneasy. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swBoRZaCTPA)
In contrast, 28 Weeks Later (although I wouldn’t call it an effective horror film, it did have an interesting approach) begins with a quiet dinner which quickly gets sabotaged and turned into dinner for the zombies instead. This film immediately becomes a bloody fight, taking you straight into the action. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHf6Th-E3kE)

My second Google search, this time omitting the word ‘horror’ and just searching for ‘Film Openings’ brought up a list of ’17 Simply Brilliant Movie Opening Credits Sequences’. These were:

• “Do The Right Thing” (1989)
• “Watchmen” (2009)
• “Se7en” (1995)
• “Enter The Void” (2009)
• “Lord Of War” (2005)
• “My Best Friend’s Wedding” (1997)
• “American Psycho” (2000)
• “Lost In Translation” (2003)
• “Children Of Men” (2006)
• “The Player” (1992)
• “Adventures In Babysitting” (1987)
• “Funny Games” (2007)
• “Panic Room” (2002)
• “Persona” (1966)
• “Austin Powers” (1999)
• “Memento” (2000)
• “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968)

I then wondered what it was that made a film opening good; so my third Google search was exactly that… ‘What makes a film opening good?’

It came up with several slideshare presentations and other blogs so I’ll leave the links to my favourites.
http://www.slideshare.net/jonsaward/what-makes-a-good-film-opening-5873057
http://www.slideshare.net/sambenzie/film-opening-conventions-14886161
http://ascwkjm.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/what-makes-good-opening-to-film.html