Soundtrack

For our soundtrack, we initially planned to create our own music for it, as we could create the soundtrack to our liking and also experimenting and having fun in the process of making it, and even if we didn’t like it we could create different ones in which we could alter.

However, we had a few troubles finding suitable software’s to use without paying for them, therefore we asked our friend that works in a recording studio within the school to let us use his software and equipment to experiment with different beats. As we didn’t have a lot of time due to our friend being extremely busy, and as it took us a long time to get used to the buttons, the software and all the equipment we didn’t have enough time to produce the actual soundtrack. However, the short time we spent in the recording studio, it gave us a lot of practise and experience when working with this type of technology.

On the other hand, as we couldn’t create our own music, we looked into several websites on Google that provided us with free music that we didn’t have to ask permission to use. After doing our research, we decided on using http://www.freeplaymusic.com/ as it had various different types of music that we liked, but then we came across an assortment of instrumentals that had a sense of mystery and suspense to the beats.
Going through each one, and listening closely, I came across one tune ‘..’ that I felt was perfect and got my partner to listen to it as well, she also really liked it. We felt really positive about this soundtrack, but we had to ensure it fitted our filming and created the right atmosphere, we therefore imported the music in, cut certain parts, and the music fitted really well.

This is a our free music file:
Victim Pileup by x_nish_x

Meeting 9&10

*As we haven't come up with a name for our film and production logo, we decided to research into different names and a load of suggestions came up between us. However we all agreed on the title 'A Twisted Obsession' for our film as it expressed the main theme of our film in 3 words, for our production logo we chose 'Rage Ent' as it included all three of our initials in it, we looked into if our names were taken, but as a positive it hadn't.

Meeting 10
* I found a free copyrighted soundtrack from a website that worked brilliant with our film and it reflects everything in the all the scene. It took me a while to right the right soundtrack, but it was worth the wait.
*I thought it would be a good idea to include a voiceover in the climax of the last scene, so we therefore had to go record the voiceover so we could import it in our film.

Production Logo

Production Logo

To help with ideas for our production logo, we all looked into researching different company logos from other film openings. This helped us allot, in thinking of a correct approach to creating the perfect logo to represent us.

Some of the logo's we liked and were influenced on were:

To keep the logo simple but effective, we went with something similar to image 2 (above), that image was very simple but created a big impact on the film. To help us create our logo, we used the software Adobe Photo shop, this software had all the elements to help turn our original picture into a cartoon, by using special effects and colour correction. This turned our normal picture into an eye catching logo.

Original picture:

The original picture is of Georgina's lips and fingers.

Production Logo FINAL:

(Rage Ent.)

This logo has a young sexy feel to it but in addition it had a professional look to it as it was created in a professional software. The logo itself is interlinked in with our main storyline, as it is seductive, passionate and a strong image, which is all the main themes that our film is about. To make the text 'RAGE ENT' stand out, we scouted around for different fonts on websites such as http://www.cooltext.com/ and some other popular websites, none of them really appealed to us, therefore we found a simple text on Adobe called 'chiller', this worked out very effectively and looked brilliant on our logo.Personally, I think this is the right logo to use as it is eye catching and will engage the audience right from the beginning.

To create the entrance of our logo, we played around with some keys on the software Adobe After Effects, to help us decide on the entrance we experimented on several tools such as speed, scale, position, rotation, opacity etc.

From this, we created a 5 second animation using different tools, we were then satisfied with the entrance. The whole point of the entrance of the logo is to make it look engaging to proceed to view the film, in addition, it is to associate our company with other films we make in the future, so that the audience will know who produced the film.
                           Before:

Furthur on, we thought that we shouldve done something different with the background instead of leaving it just black, therefore we imported a background from Adobe After Effects, which worked even better than the first appearance of the logo.

After:

Credits for the opening sequence

Opens with: RAGE ENT presents..

Starring : Anisha Vasudevan 

                  Riham El-Daoud

Director: Georgina Johnson

Costume Designer: Merrissa Blake

Executive Producer: Serena Montana

Film Editor: Jake Thomas

Director of Photography: Terrenc Lyle

Music: Garry Potter

Main Title: A Twisted Obsession

The voice over

As we wanted to include a voice over in our sequence, we firstly used a digital recorder to record our voiceover, however as we struggled to work the equipment we decided to use something we were familiar with, therefore we decided on just using a video recorder.
The only dialogue that we were using for our voice over was the important words:

‘I never thought I could love, but I can’t help it anymore.’

The voiceover was destined to be placed in the most crucial part of the opening sequence, which was after the climax outbreak of Leanne, in the ‘dark room’ after she rips all the pictures and then stares at her reflection in the mirror, therefore we thought it would be the icing on the cake to include a voice over, which would hint to the audience what would happen if they had watched further on.

For the voiceover to be the only audio in our film, we had to unlink all the frames and then delete only the audio from all our filming. We did this because in those frames we wanted our soundtrack to play throughout the entire sequence. For the voiceover, as we recorded it on a video recorded we had to unlink the files and delete the filming as we only wanted the audio, we did all these changed on Adobe Premier Pro. The main aim of the voiceover was to establish what state of mind the protagonist is in and her emotions at that precise point.

Experimenting with fonts

Using different websites such as:

http://www.flamingtext.com/
http://www.cooltext.com/

I decided to try and find suitable typography to use as potential titles for our opening sequence. Testing different fonts with different colours and effects to guarantee that the best ones were chosen , I chose a few that were effective, however personally I didn’t feel that they looked professional enough for our film, therefore we didn’t feel the need to use any of these fonts.

On the other hand, we found a simple and effective font from Adobe After Effects that we really liked, therefore we incorporated it into our title sequence after changing the font size and the colour to red, as this is our key colour throughout the entire sequence, it represents the passion and love aspect of the storyline, including connoting the danger and trouble from it.

After doing all the effects, we decided to think about how the text was to appear on the screen, therefore we searched through all the effects and presets available to see which ones were the best. We found two effects called ‘evaporate’ and ‘word flash’, we incorporated both of them and made them merge together, to create the perfect effect for our genre. The effect is eye catching, and adds the correct atmosphere for our film, which will make it more eye catching for the audience.

Meeting 7 & 8

*We managed to film all our scenes in one day which was time efficient as we didn't have to carry on the shooting to another day.

Meeting 8
*We had a session on where we learned how to incoroporate sounds and sound effects in our opening sequence. We also looked at different camera techniques and fasinating ways in which we could make our title enter our sequence using scale, rotation, timing and also professional fonts.
*As a group we decided on making our own music to be presented throughout the 2 mins as it would be easier and more original rather than writing to a label to ask permission to use their music.
*To enhance our filming, we decided to look on different tools such as a red filter, monochrome etc in Adobe Premier Pro.
*We also looked into different fonts that could be possibly used for our titles and credits.

The weather

The weather
We had to research our weather on the particular day we were planning to film, as we couldn't film if it was rainy and cloudy. Therefore we looked on the internet, we managed to find a day that had suitable weather.


As you can see, the day we planned to film on was a wednesday, it was sunny which was suitable for our film. We could only film in the afternoon as rest of the group could only make it after 2pm, therefore it was good that the weather was sunny throughout the entire day, so we finish our filming in one day.

Production Brief

Opening sequence title: A Twisted Obsession
Length: 2-3 minutes

Members of the group:
The group is made up of myself, Riham and Georgina. My key protagonists who will be acting in the opening sequence are myself and Riham, and Georgina will be doing all the filming. Equally all three of us have planned, researched and edited the entire film.

Content Overview:
Two best friends; Toni and Leanne, have been best friends for years now, feeling happy for the first time in years, Leanne has finally settled somewhere that she feels is her home, as she moved around a lot in her childhood, and never being able to make stable friends. During the few years of friendship with Toni, Leanne’s feelings towards Toni developed slowly into something more than friendship; this all was new for Leanne as she has never experienced this feeling of love for no one.

In the awareness of her love for Toni, Leanne begins to show signals of obsession towards Toni, this involved taking her belongings slyly to feel more close to her, then her obsession gets worse, Leanne creates a scrapbook of Toni, by taking continuous pictures of her. Toni being oblivious to all these activities, finally starts getting suspicious of Leanne’s continuous change of behaviour, as one day Leanne would be normal however if Toni spoke to another girl or boy, Leanne would be furious. This leads Toni to confront Leanne, this gives Leanne the chance to express what she’s feeling, she weeps and feels upset, then to her surprise, Toni rejects her feelings, stating she just wants friendship and the fact she doesn’t like girls.

This all builds up to the climax of the film, where Leanne continues to express the extent of her obsession with Toni. Toni becomes outraged by this, and starts telling Leanne how she doesn’t love her like that, all this talk from Leanne makes Toni feel sick, Leanne still hoping for Toni to accept her and understand her feelings and in the end admit she loved her too were all shattered, by Toni’s refusal. This leads Leanne to turn her obsession into a psychopathic outrage, where she turns aggressive and ties up Toni, concluding in her locking her away with her and brutally attacking her.

Target Audience:
Our main target audience is teenagers, both male and females but it will would be likely that females watch it more as the major protagonist of the film are females. The ways in which we decided on this target audience is simply because the lifestyles that the characters have are similar to real life situations that females are being faced with, therefore it appeals out to them as they feel they can relate to their lifestyle, sexuality etc. Being a teenager, everything changes rapidly, for example the different exciting obstacles they are faced with, such as love, friendships, sexuality etc, therefore using these stereotypical elements in our film would interest them more. In addition, teenagers are more likely to be conscious of the film being advertised as they are most commonly known to have media awareness and would feel more determined to watch it, although this all relies on how we market our film.

Research:
We targeted our research on a few storylines in popular television dramas such as ‘Skins’ and ‘Hollyoaks’ which connotes the main theme in which we want our opening sequence to revolve around. These ideas have jointly given us various ideas and elements which we might incorporate into our opening sequence which will positively have a good effect on our target audience. In addition, we have viewed and analysed various examples of film openings to give us all an idea of what fundamentals that are crucial to be included in our opening sequence, in order to make the genre clear, whilst still obtaining their attention to all the other elements of the film.

To give me more experience in the elements that make up an opening sequence, I decided to analyse the opening of ‘Batman Begins’ as the opening held a variety of essentials that I needed to be familiar with such as cinematic techniques, lighting, camera angels and movements, etc. In addition, it made it understandable to what was needed to make the genre obvious as it used all the major conventions of an action/thriller. In comparison to ‘Batman Begins’ we also wanted to use elements such as the conventions of a thriller however using other stereotypes of civilization in order to keep our target audience affianced.

Representations and Stereotypes:
The main representations that we will be focusing on are friendships of people that are too close together, which then leads into something bad. The ways in which we will be portraying this will be displaying the innocence of a friendship with another whilst showing the comparison of a confusing tie to one another which reveals deep situations which could make or break them.

On the other hand, the obvious stereotypes that our sequence will be focusing on are troubled teenagers as our main topic. To give the plot a twist, we will be changing the basic stereotype of all teenagers being signified through ‘gangs’, ‘violence’, ‘knife crime’ in media and society. However, most media’s don’t capture the truth behind the teenager’s outrage, which are the emotional outbreaks that might occur in that stage in their lives. As a group, we decided we would want to embellish that concept onto one of our characters to conclude in wreckage.

Putting both elements, the confusion of friendship along with the troubled youths, effectively this will end in the audience feeling interact with the sequence, meaning they would want to see more.

How will we check the film’s success?
To help with feedback and comments, we decided to have a privet viewing of the film to the pupils in our class and some individuals outside of the classroom. To help us improve our work, we would collect all the comments made after the viewing, expecting both positive and negative comments. However, with the negative comments we will then use them to improve our work to the audience’s preferences.

Conventions:
To help establish the genre clearly, we would use the specific conventions of a thriller to ensure that it is visible to the audience. Using conventions will help to ensure our work looks more professional and effective to help engage the audience further. Some of the stereotypical conventions we plan to incorporate in our work are:
- Mysterious locations, to create peculiar atmospheres.
- Sense of anticipation/suspense.
- A villain and hopeless victim.
- Images being blur and not focused.
- Shaky movements.
- A variety of camera angels and movement in fast pace to show the pace of what is going on.
- Lack of what is going on.

Constraints:
The major constraint that we have come up against is as a group, not always being together and therefore not having efficient time to focus on media alone, without other things getting in the way. Another difficulty is that we are all based at different sites, therefore most of our planning has been done through social networking tools such as msn or facebook, which helped majorly, as when we actually did see each other we could converse about what we’ve planned, which at times was overpowering. Another major restraint we had to deal with is the use of school media equipment, as there are more than one media class within the school; the equipment gets taken out quickly. In addition, some of the software for the equipment is difficult to understand, therefore training sessions are advised. Lastly, the un-controlling constraints is the weather, as some days the weather won’t be suitable for our filming, therefore filming would have to be delayed to when the weather was right, therefore putting back our production process.

Treatment

For our title, we came up with various different title ideas; we tried to incorporate at least one of the key themes into our title, to give the audience some reflection of what the film was about. We each tried to come up with at least one title idea, and these were:

- Twisted Love Story
- Love’s Demise
- Possessed
- A Twisted Obsession
- Unwanted Possession

We all decided on the title ‘A Twisted Obsession’, as we felt it displayed the correct reflection of our film and it symbolizes our entire plot in just them two words, which will appeal to the target audience.

Our plot is based on a friendship of two young girls, Toni and Leanne, as the years of past in their friendship, Leanne slowly develops an obsession over her fellow best friend. The obsession began as Leanne started feeling differently towards Toni, more jealous and protective, her obsession then lead her to stealing some of Toni’s possessions and it then exceeds when she starts taking continuous pictures of her to form her own scrapbook, which is full of pictures, symbols and anything that related to Toni.

The way in which her feelings progressed are pretty normal ways, Leanne began to spend nearly every minute with her inside of school and outside, they were like two peas in a pod, but things became different to Leanne, as she started feeling more sentimental towards Toni, eventually she was all she could think about. But as Leanne’s behaviour slowly changes, Toni begins to become suspicious of her, as Leanne would get really bad mood swings about her going out with other friends or even talking to them.

Toni eventually confronts Leanne about her changing moods, to her surprise Leanne just breaks down and exposes all her hidden feelings to Toni, hoping she would understand and maybe, just maybe love her back. To Leanne’s dismay her love for Toni is rejected harshly, Toni expresses how she only thinks of them as friends, and how she doesn’t like girls like that. Feeling emotionally confused about what has happened and betrayed about Leanne’s hidden feelings, Toni runs off.

Toni thinking that Leanne will just stop her feelings for her is wrong. Leanne’s long term obsession with Toni just doesn’t disappear, it gets worse. Her feelings towards Toni become aggressive, she seeks for Toni after school, leading her into a secret room, her feelings become emotional which turns violent and physical, which leads her into abusing and raping Toni, therefore Toni commits suicide due to this.

In the climax of the film, the case of Leanne is still under way, the police are scouting continuously for her, Leanne therefore comes to the terms of her being disturbed and mentally unstable, she therefore commits suicide because she feels dead without Toni and in addition she truly believe that she deserves to die.

As our task is to only film the opening sequence to our film, we have to carefully produce it to be engaging for the audience to have wanted to carry on watching it.

For our opening sequence we had to plan out what shot we were going to have to use, the shots that we were mainly using are a series of short shots. These shots are used to establish the storyline and to engage the audience in that 2 minutes, but still keeping the enigma code in effect, as we don’t want to give too much of the storyline away.

Our shots will consist of:
- Our opening sequence beginning with our production logo appearing on the screen with effects whilst the soundtrack begins slowly in the background.
- A close up shot of Leanne’s face, which then zooms in further, to show the passion she has whilst hugging Toni, in that shot she is also smelling her hair and playing with it.
- Title appears with effects of my name and Riham’s.
- Fades out & into another shot.
- A close up shot of Toni’s face, which zooms in further, to show that Toni is content with Leanne.
- Fades out &goes into titles with effects of Georgina’s name.
- Extra close-ups, close ups, medium shot of Toni laughing and being her bubbly self to create the effect that she is being watched by Leanne.
- Fades out &goes  into titles with effects of the costume designer’s name.
- Fades out into another shot.
- A mid shot merged in with a match on action shot of Toni walking home whilst opening a gate.
- A long shot of Leanne walking sneakily through the gate after Toni.
- Fades out into an over the shoulder shot of Leanne following Toni, which obviously means she’s following her.
- Fades out & into titles with effects of Executive producer’s name.
- Close up shots of Polaroid’s on the mirror, whilst Leanne is stroking them.
- As the beat drops in the soundtrack, this represents Leanne going mad and ripping the pictures up as she feels angry about her feelings towards Toni and she bottles it up.
- A mid shot of Leanne leaning over the sink, in emotion as she doesn’t know what to do, she slowly then lifts her head in deep pain towards the mirror.
- Fades into titles with effects of the main title.
- Whilst the previous shot happens, the voice over plays which over powers the soundtrack in the faint background.
- Last shot of a zoom in of a distressed Leanne, staring deeply at herself in the mirror.

Meeting 6

*I researched into the weather to see what day would be best to do filming on.
*I also wrote out the treatment of the opening, such as what we were going to do on the day we chose to film on etc.

Influences

To get an understanding of what our film needed to consist of, I did some research into films based on homosexual, obsession storylines, and found a variety of films. Certain films that really stood out for me, and was an influence to help with our storyline were:
*One Hour Photo (Thriller)
*The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love
*Hollyoaks (TV Drama)
*Skins
*Asylum
*Posessed
*Thirteen

Hollyoaks: Sarah, Zoe & Lydia, the love triangle.

The three main characters in this special storyline were firstly Lydia, the key character. Lydia is a troubled young girl whose sexuality has made her into the obsessive crazy person she is in Hollyoaks. The obsessive Lydia drove previous girlfriend into falling in love with her best friend, due to her possessive and jealous antics over her friendship with Zoe. The troubled lesbian manipulates Sarah into thinking the worst of Zoe, only to later find out that Sarah wants Zoe and not her, but by this time, Lydia has gone crazy over Sarah. Her confused and mixed mind led her to kill off Sarah in spite of her love for fellow best friend Zoe, supposedly by accident, when the cut parachute was meant for Zoe.

Sarah on the other hand, is a confused popular girl in Hollyoaks, confused about her sexuality and her past intervention with best friend Zoe, she comes to terms with who she is, which led her to Lydia. Not knowing how obsessed Lydia is with her, Sarah confides in Zoe about her troubles with Lydia, Sarah then realises her feelings for Zoe are much more than friendship, she then wants to break things off with Lydia, which led her into her death, as Lydia over heard the conversation.

Zoe compared to both of them is an intellectual bubbly student in Hollyoaks, who is also confused with her sexuality, later on realises she is not what she thinks she is. Her main role in this whole situation is being Sarah’s best friend. Aware of Lydia’s antics and behaviour, Zoe warns Sarah off her, not in the sense she is in love with her but in the way of how a best friend would be looking out for her friend. Zoe being the good friend she is, Lydia doesn’t seem to see it like that.

This whole plot ends with Lydia attempting to murder Zoe after Sarah’s death, as revenge for her unhappiness. The plot ends in Lydia confessing the damage she has caused, therefore getting sent down for life, and Zoe being free of all charges against her but without her best friend.

The reason why we used this storyline as our main influence is because it really stood out from the rest, it expressed the same themes that we wanted to incorporate into our opening sequence. The reaction to this storyline in the public was fur nominal, as it gave an insight to so many different matters, which we found out when we were researching different situations to do with our theme. The idea of this storyline is very original which made it so successful along with the character being represented in detail, which made us more fascinated with doing a film similar to this. This plot overall gave us a huge influence in the production of our opening sequence, in ways of presenting the characters to the audience all the way to props and locations.

SMART Targets

Specific; Have the correct shots of our filming.

Measurable; We will try to accomplish our aim and complete filming in one day, therefore to ensure we have enough time to edit.

Achievable; In one day.

Realistic; To ensure we take as many camera shots in all angels in that one day if possible, and edit them
later.

Time; 17th February.

Meeting 5

*We did research on our genre, so we could illustrate the genre clearly in that 2 minutes of filming.
*I created SMART targets to give myself precise goals that we had to meet.

Mood board

To create my mood board, I looked up different images on Google to try and create an effective mood board to express all the main theme’s that our film is about. Using the key words such as love, best friends, hate, obsession, lesbian, many images came up which portrayed all of our themes. The mood board helps for the audience to get a drift of what the film consists of and potentially establish the genre of the film. If the audience find this mood board eye catching, there’s a higher chance of them wanting to watch the film.

The images I’ve used help to express the emotions, actions and different stages in which the characters are going through. The various expressions used help to show the confusion in the film, it gives a sense of atmosphere to the film.

Locations

Locations:

For the locations used in our opening sequence, we scouted around for the correct settings; we ended up locating our opening at our school, Harris South Norwood.

The school:

As a group we felt that using our school as the main location was very convenient compared to other location which we tried out before. We felt that this location worked better than others as we had access to all the rooms and places within the schools premises.

The toilets:

For our final scene of our opening, we located it in the girls toilets as we felt the lighting and the whole surroundings worked well for the way we wanted to interpret that particular scene. We used the big mirror as our main source as this had a great effect of being a dark room. Unfortunately we didn’t have access to the dark room on that particular day; therefore we substituted it with the toilet and found it worked out just as good.

The playground:

For the other little shots, we used this free playground space situated in the school. It was perfect to show the audience that the two characters were outside etc.

Character Profile

Character Profile


Using these character profiles, helps to identify the detailed elements we chose to represent our characters so they are understood further than how they come across. Using props, make-up,costume,body language and facial expressions, we helped to identify our characters to the full which makes it easier for the audience to understand the personality of the character.

Detailed Synopsis

Two best friends; Toni and Leanne, have been best friends for years now, feeling happy for the first time in years, Leanne has finally settled somewhere that she feels is her home, as she moved around a lot in her childhood, and never being able to make stable friends. During the few years of friendship with Toni, Leanne’s feelings towards Toni developed slowly into something more than friendship; this all was new for Leanne as she has never experienced this feeling of love for no one.
In the awareness of her love for Toni, Leanne begins to show signals of obsession towards Toni, this involved taking her belongings slyly to feel more close to her, then her obsession gets worse, Leanne creates a scrapbook of Toni, by taking continuous pictures of her. Toni being oblivious to all these activities, finally starts getting suspicious of Leanne’s continuous change of behaviour, as one day Leanne would be normal however if Toni spoke to another girl or boy, Leanne would be furious. This leads Toni to confront Leanne, this gives Leanne the chance to express what she’s feeling, she weeps and feels upset, then to her surprise, Toni rejects her feelings, stating she just wants friendship and the fact she doesn’t like girls.

This all builds up to the climax of the film, where Leanne continues to express the extent of her obsession with Toni. Toni becomes outraged by this, and starts telling Leanne how she doesn’t love her like that, all this talk from Leanne makes Toni feel sick, Leanne still hoping for Toni to accept her and understand her feelings and in the end admit she loved her too were all shattered, by Toni’s refusal. This leads Leanne to turn her obsession into a psychopathic outrage, where she turns aggressive and ties up Toni, concluding in her locking her away with her and brutally attacking her.

Meeting 4

*We chose our character costumes for Leanne and Toni, so that they were comfortable in them.
*We decided on our final locations being a greenery area in our school, school playground, and the girl’s toilets.
*We made independent mood boards for our project to relate back to our opening sequence by using images.

Final Idea

Thriller:

After a week of trying to work around our horror idea, we decided on changing our genre to thriller as it worked out to be more convenient for us. To make the thriller idea better we changed certain elements of the plot to make it easier to work around, and also to make it easier for us to film. We then agreed to allocate our roles in the sequence and find suitable locations, quickly as we didn’t want to waste any time. We agreed on locations that would work and which would be easy to film and use.


Brief outline of plot:


Toni and Leanne are best friends; however Leanne’s feelings for Toni start to develop into something more, in this process Leanne slowly becomes obsessed with Toni and everything to do with her. Oblivious to the fact of Leanne’s obsession, Toni carries on as normal, and then one day Toni realises Leanne’s behaviour is abnormal and confronts her. Leanne immediately confesses her feelings for Toni, only to be rejected. Leanne then concluded into aggressive behaviour, locking Toni away with her to only abuse her.

We then created our final storyboard to outline the shots, effects etc. This helped when it came to filming, as we drew out every major shot, which made it easier for us to get an idea of what to do.