To Sin No More: Special Effects/Make-Up

In one of the scenes of our short, our actress needs to look like she has marks/bruises/scratches, on her wrist. My group have decided that I am going to be the best person to create this illusion, as I did this in my film last year, so have had experience of it.

In order to do this professionally, it seems as though I would need to have access to a 'bruise wheel', these are very handy and enable the user to create realistic looking bruises and abrasions with great ease. If I can find one cheap enough and practice with it, then I may be able to create our effects this way. However, as I'm not sure whether I'll be able to get one or not, I may have to use normal make-up like I did last year.

Doing it this way, I did manage to create the desired effect. When I practiced the make-up effect on my own face, it looked fairly real and we decided to go ahead with putting it in our film, however, when shooting on location we did hit some difficulties. I found that a heavy layer of make-up was needed in order for it to show up properly on camera. I had also not accounted for the fact that our actress might rub at the make-up, causing it to begin to come off, this time I would take this into consideration and maybe apply something over the top in order to fix it in place. As the make-up will only be on the wrist, I may be able to apply a light layer of hairspray to act as a fixer.

The final option I have is to substitute face paints for a bruise wheel. I have looked at the two products and personally, I think that the texture and consistency of the two seem very similar. I will also buy some cheap face paints and experiment with these before I look into bruise wheels in more depth.

To Sin No More; Costume Plot

To Sin No More Costume Plot

To Sin No More; Final Treatment

To Sin No More FINAL

Above, I have embedded the final draft of our treatment. We have not really changed anything apart from a few spelling/grammar errors. 

We have also changed the name of Daniel because we felt that if he was conceived from a rape which caused Sam to lose her faith then he would not have a Catholic name, therefore we have changed his name to Blake, which simply means 'pale' and did not appear on the list of Catholic names we looked at. 

Feedback: Target Audience and Conventions

 

During our lesson on 18th October we also asked Mr Leach to help us answer some questions, the conversation is shown in the audio recording which I have included in this post. 

When asked about our target audience he said that we should aim at adults, which I agree with, as although we do not show anything during the rape scene, it is not going to be suitable for younger audiences. When discussing this, Mr Hood raised an interesting point that we are also going to have to be careful when picking our actors/actresses because we do not know their background, and the issues in our film may cause them some upset. This is something important for us to consider.

Reading of Treatment and Feedback

During our lesson on Tuesday 18th October, we presented our treatment to our teacher, Mr Hood and our headteacher, Mr Leach. We chose to present our idea to these because Mr Hood is our media teacher so has the knowledge to determine whether or not our idea will work, he can also offer us any advise needed when it comes to the technicalities of producing our film. We chose to present to Mr Leach because he is a Catholic and is also a step father. We wanted to present to him because we wanted to make sure that as a Catholic, he would not feel that we were being too stereotypical and make sure that were not going to cause offence to anyone.

When giving us feedback, Mr Leach said that he felt that although we perhaps were conforming to stereotypes, he himself did not feel offended by anything that we included. We were pleased with this because it means that we have included the sensetivity needed in order to tackle the issues in our film.

Nursery Rhyme

The nursery rhyme which we are going to include in our film is something important which we have all been thinking about. We have been looking into the meanings behind them. When looking, we stumbled across a couple of nursery rhymes which we think may be suitable for our film. The first being Hush, Little Baby, which I have included the words to below:

Hush, little baby, don't say a word, Papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird.
And if that mockingbird don't sing, Papa's gonna buy you a diamond ring.
And if that diamond ring turn brass, Papa's gonna buy you a looking glass.
And if that looking glass gets broke, Papa's gonna buy you a billy goat.
And if that billy goat don't pull, Papa's gonna buy you a cart and bull.
And if that cart and bull turn over, Papa's gonna buy you a dog named Rover.
And if that dog named Rover won't bark. Papa's gonna to buy you a horse and cart.
And if that horse and cart fall down, Well you'll still be the sweetest little baby in town.

This would be a good choice as according to Wikipedia 'the lyrics promise all kinds of rewards to the child if he or she is quiet', which links with the plot at the time when the nursery rhyme would be playing.

The second choice would need to be changed as it was originally written for the film Nightmare On Elm Street so if we used this one there would be copyright issues. However, I don't think there would be any problem with us writing our own version, taking inspiration from the version I have included below:

One, two, Freddy's coming for you.
Three, four, better lock your door.
Five, six, grab your crucifix.
Seven, eight, gotta stay up late.
Nine, ten, never sleep again.

I have also included a video of this version, because this is the kind of route we would like to go down when including it in our own film. We have discussed transposing the nursery rhyme into a minor key to make it more eery, and having it sung by either a young girl or a number of young people. 

To Sin No More; Treatment First Draft

To Sin No More

Research Into Specific Areas

Whilst writing our treatment I have been carrying out a lot of research along the way in order to make sure that what is being written is accurate and to make sure that any symbols which are being included, are being used for the right reasons.

The first thing I researched was names. This is because we wanted our character's names to be a symbol and represent something about the character. I found a baby name site via Google and used this to look at some names, I then found a secone website which had names commonly used by Catholics and then matched up some names. Finally I found a site which gave me the meaning of the name. It was this which helped us to decide whether or not we used the name. The meanings and the names of our characters are:

• Samantha - Listener of God
• Daniel - God Is My Judge
• Anthony - Worthy of Praise
• Ray - Wise Protector

The next thing which I wanted to research was the symbols which can be carried by Catholics in order for them to show their faith. To do this I asked my form tutor because she is an RE teacher; she advised me to make sure that my characters are first of all dressed in a way which would be seen as acceptable as Catholics believe that they should keep theirselves covered to a certain extent. She then told me that rosary beads and a crucifix can be worn as a physical symbol to show their faith. I wanted to know why a crucifix is so important and a cross is not really enough, so I once again went to Google to find this out. I found that a crucifix is worn because it has Jesus on the cross, which reminds Catholics of the suffering that he went through in order to save others.

I also researched what happens when a Catholic goes to confession, to do this I typed my question into Google and found an answer on Yahoo, I found that the answer helped me to better understand what would happen, the bit which I found most useful was the inclusion of the prayer which is said. I have copied and pasted it below:

My God,
I am sorry for my sins with all my heart.
In choosing to do wrong
And failing to do good,
I have sinned against you
whom I should love above all things.
I firmly intend, with your help,
to do penance,
to sin no more,
and to avoid whatever leads me to sin.
Amen.

The prayer helped to come up with a title for our film. 'To Sin No More' felt like a good choice because it has meaning and our film is about a woman who regains her faith.

As pregnancy and abortion feature in our film, I felt that this should be researched, particularly because this part was going to be included in the flashback. I researched 'the history of the pregnancy test' on Google to find out what they were like, or even if they existed during the 1970's because if they didn't, we would need to show this in our film via a different symbol. I found a very useful website, which can be found here: http://history.nih.gov/exhibits/thinblueline/timeline.html.

I also decided to look at when abortion was legalised in the UK, I found on Google that this was 1967, so we were ok to include this in our film if we decided that Daniel, the child conceived as a result of rape, was actually aborted. Next, I looked at whether a Catholic would be forgiven for aborting their child: this is a bit of a grey area as it depends on how religious the person and their family is. However, I feel that in our film, if the young girl, Samantha, who is pregnant is the only one who knows about it then the only person who needs to forgive her, is herself, and of course God, but this could be another reason for her losing her faith.

Finally, the 1970's flashback is something which I have also looked into briefly, for descriptive purposes I have looked at the styles and trends of the 70's. This caused me to come across certain hairstyles such as that of Farrah Fawcett, I think that stereotypical things like this hairstyle and fashion trends will guide the viewer straight into the idea that the film is set in the 1970's.

Treatment Development

As a group we have discussed our film idea and decided that we would like our film to be about two brothers, one which is treated a lot better than the other one. As a last minute thing we decided that perhaps the brother which is not treated as well, doesn't actually exist because he is a ghost; this is where the sixth sense element comes into it. However, if this idea doesn't work, then we will also record and alternative ending, whereby the second brother does exist, however he is just treated differently.

We have decided that the eldest brother is going to be treated differently, and he is going to be the result of a rape which happened to his mother when she was 17 years old. She will have been raped by her 'Uncle' (mom's boyfriend/husband), and will have been a sexual abuse case which had been happening for a number of years. The rape will have happened when she and her Uncle were on their way to the church service on a Sunday morning.

The abuse which she has suffered for many years will result in her becoming pregnant, but as she is a Catholic, she struggles with her religion and her conscience and ends up losing her faith when she decides she is going to abort the child, which is looked down upon in highly religious Catholic families/communities.

When watching the news, the mother of the two boys will be forced into a flashback by seeing a report on sexual abuse. She will also be forced into a flashback when looking at a box of baby items which she is looking back at as it is her son's 17th birthday and she is feeling sentimental.

There are a lot of things in our film, such as Catholicism, which I feel I do no know enough about, for this reason I am going to make sure I carry out enough research when writing our treatment, to make sure that we create a film which is correct.

Existing Product Research

After further discussion with my group, we have decided that we would like to include certain things our film. To do this successfully, I am going to watch some existing products in order to make sure that anything we do looks authentic and convinces our audience of what is happening.

We are going to be including a flashback which takes the audience back to the 1970's, in order to do this we are going to have to be very careful when choosing costume and locations, so when the time comes to do this I will carry out a significant amount of research to make sure we are going along the right lines. I will watch a film set in the 1970's to look at the kind of clothing worn by people. Off the top of my head the film I could think of that was set in the 70's, is Please, Sir (1971), so I am going to rewatch this as part of my research.

We are also going to be including elements of religion in our film, and as our film is going to be a thriller, Rob came up with a good suggestion of a film called Carrie (1976), which I think I am also going to watch. I think that I am also going to watch this film in order to get an idea of what we could add to increase the tension in our film and how we could really make religion a focus point in our own thriller. As this film was also made in the 70's this may help me with costume/location as well.

Finally, we would like to add an element of the 'sixth sense' into our film, if we feel that it will work and our audience will get it. As I have never seen The Sixth Sense (1999), I have decided that I am going to watch this film, so that when we get to the stage of editing I can have a better input when coming up with ideas. I also want to make sure that anything we do doesn't look cheesy and too far-fetched, so watching an existing film that uses this idea will help me to make sure of this.

Hopefully, watching these existing products will help me to make ours a much better end product, making it more professional and better received by our target audience.

Roles To Be Allocated.

Following our group meeting on 27th September 2011, I have made a list of the roles that will need to be allocated to group members at our next session. The list is below and after our two hours next week, I will hopefully be able to include a synopsis of our final film idea. So far we have only come up with the basic outline which still needs a significant amount of work.

• Director
• Producer
• Editor
• Sound Editor
• Special Effects Editor
• Lighting Engineer
• Sound Editor
• Story Boarder
• Script Writer
• Treatment Writer
• Location Scout
• Talent Scout
• Costume/Make Up
• Props Manager
• Continuity Manager
• Camera Operator
• Photographer

After our meeting next week I will be able to post who is going to be in charge of what in our production team. I will also be able to include a treatment which will give a finished idea of our film. Until I have this finished idea, I think that it will be difficult for me to list the difficulties that my group and I may face during the production process of our film, so I will include this in my next blog post. 

Deciding A Genre

During our last meeting, my group and I decided on a genre for our film. Just as we had limitations as to what we could do last year, we also had the same problems this year.

For our AS projects, all groups decided that a thriller would be the best genre to go with, this is because none of us have the skills to write something successful like a comedy film and we do not have the budget/equipment/facilities to film something like a sci-fi or an action film. For the same reasons, my group and I have once again decided to go with a thriller as being our chosen genre.

However, this year, we will be adding different elements to it. From reading each other's treatments we have decided that we would like to add religious elements to or film, because it is something which is quite uncertain, so we feel we could use that to our advantage and possibly use it to build tension. Over the next few weeks we will be using our time to come up with our film idea and write and present our treatment.

Treatment Ideas

During the second half of the two hour session we had on Tuesday 20th September, my group and I met for the first time to discuss the ideas we had for our film. As this is the first time any of us have ever worked together in a media environment, we took the opportunity to remind one other of the short film ideas we came up with as part of the task set for us by Mr Hood over the summer holiday. Below I have embedded a copy of all of our presentations, each presentation includes the reading of our individual treatments which we will hopefully combine in order to come up with one great idea!

Holly A2 Treatment Pitch from Gavin Hood on Vimeo.

The first video is of my presentation. I try my best to cover answers in all potential production problems during the first stages of my idea, so as to avoid anything problematic later on during the process which could slow down the film planning/making/editing process. I believe that this skill could be valuable to our group because it will hopefully keep us organised and on track. I also feel that I could prove to be a valuable group member when it comes to the film production part of our process.

Sam C A2 Treatment Pitch from Gavin Hood on Vimeo.

Sam is a very creative member of the team and I think he will contribute greatly to both the pre production and post production side of our media project during A2. He has some very interesting ideas when it comes to the technical elements which we could include in our final film and the skills he holds in the editing stages of our film will prove to be very useful to us as he is a perfectionist in the best way possible.

Rob A2 Treatment Pitch from Gavin Hood on Vimeo.

Rob is going to prove to be a very useful member of our group due to the imagination he has. The ideas which he presented to us in his project at the beginning of the term included a very involved, yet gripping storyline which touched on the theme of religion, something which we haven't come across that much when developing our own film ideas in the past. I believe that it is Rob's way of thinking outside the box that will help us during the pre production stages to create the best possible script, treatment and storyboard we possibly can.

Adele A2 Treatment Pitch from Gavin Hood on Vimeo.

Adele is also a very creative member of our group, and although not the most vocal member, I believe that she will make sure her ideas are heard by us all in order to create the end product we can all be happy with. She has some very good ideas when it comes to creating suspense/tension in our short film and I think she will be a vital member when it comes to perfecting the planning, production and end product.


During the discussion held in our group session, we went over each other's treaments and picked out the ideas that we liked from each. We will decide on a final idea next time we meet, for now I have included a list below, of the things we liked the idea of including in our final film.

• Including a quirky twist
• Not using a weapon as this can create more tension
• Brothers that are competing for attention
• An act of violence/abuse commited by a family insider
• An object which holds significance
• Religion as a major theme

After our next session I will create a more detailed post about the direction in which we have decided to go with our short film and will fully discuss the ideas which we have and where each idea came from.

My Group.

A2 Groups have been announced and I am pleased to say that I will be working alongside Sam Clark, Rob Abel and Adele Dibble. I am looking forward to working each of them over the course of the next year.

Welcome!

Welcome to my A2 Media Blog! I am back for another year of Media Studies and am very much looking forward to it! I will be posting all of my planning, research, discussions, etc. on this blog regularly just like last year. I hope you enjoy reading through my posts.

This year, my task is slightly different; the aim is to create a five minute short which will represent a group of people in a certain way. I look forward to working with a new group of people and creating a fresh, quirky idea which will hopefully be entertaining and meet all of the criteria needed to gain the best possible grades. We also have to complete two ancillary tasks which are to create film poster and a film review to accompany our film; I am looking forward to developing new skills during this process, and building on existing skills which I gained from the AS course last year.