Talent Release

To ensure our actor and actress give their consent to let us publish our opening sequence online, we created a talent release. This is a professional document that gives their written permission for them to do so. 

Costume And Makeup Planning And Practise

In our opening sequence we will have to put both of our characters into costume and makeup.

Olivia (Carmen):

Because Liv is the young female who has been captured within our narrative we have decided to represent her as almost doll like. This has connotations that she is being controlled, she's young and vulnerable and she is naive to the world. Therefore, we plan for her to wear no foundation at all, wear pink blusher and curled eyelashes. This conforms to the ideas of an old fashioned dolls face. Her hair will be in two loose plaits hanging on both sides of her face and will have pink ribbons, again, as if she's a doll and someone has done her hair.

Her costume will be a silk pink nightie, using the colour pink to continue the youthful and vulnerable connotations. Also, she will be wearing hand cuffs on her wrists and chains on her ankles. Because of the chains we want to make them appear to be as realistic as possible considering she has been held for a long time now. Therefore, we will use subtle makeup to make her skin around the handcuffs and chain to appear red and bruised.

Joseph (the kidnapper):

Joe will be made to look as pale as possible with dishevelled hair but a perfectly kept beard. This can help to represent his mixed personality and also the mix of emotions he feels towards Carmen (he's meant to love her as his own but despises her as he's not his own daughter). His clothing, as chosen by the focus group, will be black suit trousers, a pastel coloured turtle neck jumper and a cardigan/jacket over the top. The suit is effective as the professionalism displayed on his surface is a direct contrast of the disorder in his brain the audience later learn of.

The majority of the makeup we plan on using is simple and doesn't require practise as it is basically a lack of makeup and white powder. However, the bruising and redness around the handcuffs will have to be done with makeup.

Casting

When deciding on who we were going to cast in our opening sequence we realised we only had to have two characters. Although we could have chosen to use characters in the background who we are never introduced to as if they're extras, we decided using only two characters highlight the isolation the girl must feel. It also creates the sense that there is no way out because there's no one to help.
Therefore, when casting we knew we needed a male who appeared to be older and a female who needed to be around 16 as that is around how old she would be after being kidnapped as a child. The male especially had to appear to be quite old considering in his last he has already had a young child and has now kidnapped another who has grown up to be 16 years old. This means he must appear to be around 30 as a minimum. Here are the people we have cast:

Joseph Cardoza:
Joe has practise in performing as he is a singer and musician, therefore we are confident he will be confident in himself when we are filming and he will be effective. Also, he is very tall and skinny which conforms to the stereotypes of a typical thriller villain. Furthermore, his appearance conform to the feedback from our focus group of what they would like to see. Although he is only 17 when he gets in his costume and makeup we believe he will look much older.

Olivia Mclean:
Olivia is also a music student and an actress and is part of our group therefore she has a good idea of what we are looking for. Also, when we took sample footage for our focus group and used her as the actress, she was very good and followed directions well. Liv is the right age for the female in our narrative and with the right costume and makeup we can dress her almost like a doll.

Final Credits and Practice

At the beginning of our opening sequence we have decided to integrate the credits throughout. We have chosen the font we will use and I have conducted previous research into what names etc we should include. However, due to the fact of there only being four people in my group and needing to include more credits than this, we have decided to make up the names for the credits so we are not repeating our own names multiple times. We thought this would make the opening sequence seem more realistic as it conforms to the codes and conventions of an opening sequence.

The names we have decided:
Studio:Wellington studios

Production company: Wellington Media

Director: M. Night Shyamalan 

Producer: Scott Takeda

Starring: Joseph Cardoza
Starring: Olivia Mclean

Film Title: Carmen

In terms of integrating our credits into our opening sequence we have decided to think about the representation behind it. Instead of just adding the credits to the frame we have decided to almost hide them behind significant objects throughout. This challenges the stereotypes of opening sequences within the thriller genre and can also portray the fact that she has been hidden. It can also suggest things about the characters e.g. that we don't know the whole story or the whole personality behind the characters. After making this decision i decided to attempt at integrating some credits into short clips that we are planning to include in our final piece.


Review:
After having a go at integrating the credits within the simple frames i have realised its a lot harder than it looks.

• I originally didn't consider the fact that objects don't just vanish so i would have to make the credits swipe in consistency with the speed the object is moving at so it reveals the text underneath. 
• I found it a lot harder to make the font look 'hidden' when it was placed vertically on the screen as it meant you had to crop it frame by frame to reveal more of each word.

Updated Idea

Target Audience Feedback On Updated Music Idea

As a group we sat down and disguised the music we were going to incorporate into our opening sequence.

Originally we had decided we were going to have a soundtrack over the whole opening sequence over the males sequence. However, after developing our plan further we decided to change the way we were going to incorporate it. We decided that we will incorporate a song into the males sequence by playing it on a radio as a radio is a sensible prop to use in our genre. Whereas the first plan was to play this song even when the male had left the kitchen we realised that this would turn the music from diegetic to non diegetic and this is not what we wanted. Therefore, the music on the radio will stop and muffle when he exits the room and sound effects will then be used to build tension for when he is approaching the girl. My practise sound effects will be a guideline for how we will layer and build effects.

After deciding this, we realised we would have to find an appropriate song to put over the males sequence before he leaves the kitchen. We discussed the type of song and decided we wanted to use a song with a singer and not just use an instrumental, this would give us room to make the lyrics relatable to the genre and also conform to songs stereotypical played on a radio. However, to challenge stereotypes of a radio to help suggest not everything is as it seems, we decided a old song would be most appropriate. Therefore, we found the following songs:

(skip to 1.38 for the beginning)

(skip to 00.20 for the beginning)

We chose these songs because firstly, they all had titles that can be related to our plan and our genre. 'Daddy' is particularly appropriate because currently in our plan, the last thing you see and hear before the title of the film is displayed will be the female saying to the male 'morning Daddy'. Each song is also not too upbeat but has a significant meaning to their lyrics.
The second song we liked the 'crackly' effect it had over the song as it sounded like a retro radio. It also had a melody being played on a xylophone which sounds like a nursery rhyme which can often be described as 'creepy' which is a nice undertone.
Finally, the last song is from the blues genre but again has a crackle effect over the top. 'Devil got my woman' could be an appropriate title of a song to use as it could suggest the way the male feels about his own daughter dying.

To decided which one would be used in our opening sequence we asked six people withing our target audience (three boys and three girls).
After listening to the videos three out of three of the girls said they preferred the first clip and on person said they also likes the second however, after explaining that in the beginning of our opening sequence everything is meant to appear okay, they said the first one was more appropriate as the second is more stereo typically creepy.
Out of the three boys, two said they preferred number one and one person said they prefered number two.

Overall, the first clip was the most popular choice therefore this is the music we decided as a group we would use based on target audience feedback.

Font: Target Audience Feedback

Now we have decided our final sub genre of thriller i decided to get target audience feedback on potential fonts. I found these fonts based on the font analysis of existing thriller films i have done previously. To make sure my feedback was relevant to my target audience i asked a mixture of boys and girls ( 3 of each ) who are all aged between fifteen and eighteen years old. I also made sure i asked them if they enjoyed and or had watched psychological thrillers before so the knew what sort of font would be relevant. Based on what the feedback suggests this will influence what font we use in our final opening sequence.

These are the pictures of the fonts i sent to every person i got feedback off. The responses were in numbers corresponding to each picture.

1

2

3

4

5

6

Audience Feedback:
I decided to ask the audience through text as it allowed me to send the pictures easily. When i text them i sent a message asking 'For a psychological thriller film, which fonts appeal to you the most? eg. which is creepiest but doesn't appear like a horror?'. I asked this to make sure i had pointed out that we did not want the fonts to appear like a typical horror font as i know that is a typical thriller sub genre. However, knowing every person i asked has psychographics of psychological thrillers i knew their judgement would be reliable.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

After recording the results for the feedback these are the results:

Most of the results are what i expected however, i was not expecting number one to be the most popular choice. Due to one and four being very similar they are the two most popular options but i thought four would be the most popular. In my opinion between one and four, the first has connotations of horror where as four doesn't. This was also highlighted by the second response. 

When i informed my group about the feedback we spoke about the most popular options and we came to a decision that the two most popular options were the ones we would have to chose between.