Evaluation

Voices is loosely based on and inspired by the idea of psychological thrillers such as the films: Secret Window directed by David Koepp, or The Others which is directed by Alejandro Amenábar. Advancing and combining the ideas within these films, the thought of a girl hearing voices in her head came upon us. Not only looking within the film industry, I came across a story within a local newspaper about a man stalking a young girl, which inspired me to tell the group to make our film about a girl who is being stalked by someone she knows, which then leads to the voices in her head. Media and other famous films can motivate many directors in the filming industry and so that is what we thought we should do to collect more then one suggestion.

Stereotyping happens a lot in films, such as a social groups and cultural gangs; as an audience you assume things bad could happen, never the good. In Voices we have stereotyped the typical blonde haired young female teenager which could connote a ‘blonde bimbo’, as seen on wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotypes, but that was not the way we were trying to convey her. To us she was just trying to bring across the fact that it could happen to any young girl, any person. The average criminal doesn’t have a stocky build either and looks terrifying, which what many people feel they do look like, as we like to see what we want to see. Our criminal is the total opposite to a man that is stocky and who looks terrifying, he is not that old either, probably the same age as the young female and therefore does not fit the usual profile of this type of suspect. Voices isn’t your average psychological thriller as you don’t get a hero, which contradicts Propps’ theory that there is always a villain, a hero, a false hero, etc.

Our film, Voices, touches different aspects of the serial world of psychological thrillers. Many studios do the genre of thriller, as it would keep the audience in suspense, and that is the key, to keep your audience hanging on. One company in particular that would take to our film is Shamley Productions, who are one of the biggest holders of this type of genre. Movies such as Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) and Psycho (1960) have encouraged other directors and companies to follow in Shamley Productions’ way of producing films to keep stock of a wide audience - Shamley Production's link http://www.imdb.com/company/co0137800/. The Voices would come greatly into the category of the thrillers, which would fit right into Shamley Productions’ many films. The creepy characteristics of our film would stir the mentality of many viewers, which is what the majority of the movies do in Shamley Productions, such as, Dark Intruder (1965).

The target audience for our movie Voices, in my opinion, would be older teenagers and above, for example 15+, as the entertainment in installments has a high rate of eeriness. My group and I felt it best to make the age rating 15+ as lowering it to a 12, even though giving it a wider audience, would not be suitable due to the complexity and the inter-twining of the thickened plot.

Keeping the target audience in mind whilst making the film, we tried to maintain the level of intelligence appropriate to our age rating, not only to keep our viewers interested, but also to remain keeping them hooked. For example, the language we used was of a caliber that related to our target audience. We also tried to stay true to our genre by keeping the suspense elevated in our film.

Filming was the most important part of the whole process since without it we would not have had the film. The greater part of our movie was shot outside, where it was freezing cold and due to some unfortunate event, we lost our first filming of it, leading us to go out again. The second time of filming though was admittedly enhanced then when we went out originally. So I guess it was a good thing when the first one had gone.

When we filmed we learned that we should collect more then two minutes, giving us more then we need so that we could pick which were the better snippets out of the lot. Also we learnt that we should do more then one of the same shot so that it gives us more of a variety.

The first part of the shooting was walking to the place were the argument was situated, as shown on the right. This was to build up suspense as the audience wouldn’t know what was happening or what was coming round the corner.

We then moved on to the alleyway where the first part of the dialogue came into play. Thinking of different ideas, we used something which was one of my favourite parts of this film - my feet walked past the camera, which was held close to the ground and zoomed in a fair way, then someone else’s feet walk past. This creates the idea of the unknown for the targeted audience.

Moving on, we then came onto our final piece of filming outside, which was where the young girl finds out her friend was the one who was following her, also that he is the one who is stalking her and putting voices in her head. Although this was the most challenging scene of all, we had it done within two shots as we were professional and kept a straight head when being filmed.

The filming inside was quick and simple. We also had to re-film these three clips as we had accidently filmed over them when filming the outside parts. Yet again, the second time we shot them, they were 100% improved (shown below). From the first time we had filmed the three clips, we had to consider the mise-en-scène – the lighting and costuming, as it didn’t seem right at first. So learning from that, we used Adam’s phone camera light and I dressed up all in black for the reason that it seemed to make it creepier then wearing the usual ‘white straight jacket’ for a mental person.

Later on in the editing stage, we decided to use a clock for the opening credits, which I took home as my clock looked an old eerie one. The ticking, the look and the angle set, made the right atmosphere for the rest of the film.

After filming, we jumped straight into editing. Through the process of editing I learned many things by assisting in the editing. Sarah Palmer did the bulk of it as Adam and I were in all of the film and Sarah did not participate in any of it due to the fact that there was only two characters and we discussed thoroughly which role would suit who, but we helped when we could, for example, cutting most of the film down from approximately twenty minutes to two minutes thirty seconds. In my opinion, this is the hardest part of the task given - the editing, because this is where you can’t go wrong otherwise your film could be lost or ruined. The first thing we did was cutting and chopping all the little snippets, making sure all ran smoothly as we cut them, if it didn’t, then you would get jumps from one clip to another.

Subsequent to that, we then had to decide which part if the film would be in black and white, as we didn’t want most of our film being in that colour because the majority of Voices is in the past, and black and white is the typical colour to set the past in.

Meanwhile, with the present snippets in black and white, we wanted to settle on a way of linking together the past and the present, as a result, we took a look at other colours and links. Choosing a perfect link, which would be where the two clips over lap – seeing both past and present, we also chose for the colour to run together – black and white mixed with colour; it added an effect of confusion, improbability mixed in with creepiness.

With that in mind, we had cut more down as we realized that we still had to put the credits on the opening. Cutting it down to at least two minutes, as we were unable to chop out more otherwise the story line would be unaware; we had nearly finished the editing.

During all of this, the music was added bit by bit, which underscores the whole performance. Even though the music runs through all of our opening of the film, it adds different effects when the dynamics progress or digress. Also, keeping the music throughout, holds up the suspense when the dynamics do come through.

The final editing we had to do was the credits. For this, my clock which I had filmed came into plan. Using the clock ticking round – fast forwarding, showing time passing, we placed naming over the top, such as, the character and who was staring as it. We also used the title, with a foggy style to it, which faded in and out again. The style of writing which we used was also used for the staring roles, as we wished to link everything together, including the strangeness.

Looking back on the preliminary task I think that our group has progressed immensely. Seeing the way we combined our skills and used the knowledge of what we new, we worked better as a team and cracked on with things we should be doing in spare time as well as lessons. Although we did work well on the preliminary task, because it was the actual task, we it wasn’t easy to work hard because we were comfortable with who we were working with. In my opinion I feel that our film Voices was a top notch opening, and I would happily work with the same people for the next task given.