'The Employer' - Final Film

'The Employer' Final Poster

After consulting our media tutor, we decided to remove the background image of the eye and curtains and enlarge the central image of Kyle. This way an audience could understand how The Employer was more central to the plot than the eye and theatre curtains.

'The Employer' - Radio Trailer

Radio Trailer

Evaluation - Question 4

4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Evaluation - Question 3

3  What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The positive ways that the film developed was only possible because of the feedback from the audience. From preproduction, when we read the plot to members of the public and then answered questions about the film, we received feedback to consider such as assumed genre, whether the story line made sense etc.

Some of the audience considered the plot line to fit in the genre of crime, drama or plainly thriller. From this we decided that should adapt the film to involved more psychological conventions to ensure our film fits into the psychological thriller genre. The responses from the initial audience feedback was more focused on the violence in the film. This is a main element in the film as it is what ruins the Employers life and inspires his revenge, but I feel it is more important for the audience to focus on the message and the idea of the flashbacks rather than the violence. To tackle this issue we decided that we wouldn't only include shots of physical violence in the flashbacks, but of the setting in which it happened too. This was so that the audience would understand that, although, the violence is a huge indicator in the plot, the we did want them to focus on the meaning behind it and the irony of the setting that it occurred in.

When we decided to film, we kept in mind the non-linear narrative. We had to consider the audience and eliminate any possibilities of the audience becoming easily confused, especially by the flashbacks. Because of this we focused on making the flashbacks as obvious as possible. 
When filming the flashbacks, we wanted to make sure that you could tell that the beating was happening for no reason. It was a mugging and was committed with a purpose and there was a clear motive. When we filmed the scene when Kyle takes the Employer's money, we wanted to make the money the central focus. To do this we make sure that the money being physically taken from the wallet wasn't obstructed in any way so that the motive behind Kyle's attack was clear as this is what would eventually lead to the Employer's revenge plot.
We also had to consider the shots in the confrontation scene. Because the monologue was possibly the most important part of the film itself as it tied up the lose ends of the plot, I believe it was necessary that we use simple shots in the conversation scene. These are shots like shot-reverse-shot, over-the-shoulder-shot and establishing shot. This would mean that because the conversation scene is so simply shot and easy to follow, the important dialog would be easier to follow as the audience's concentration wouldn't be thrown off by any confusing shots.

Once all of the shots were filmed, we created a rough cut of the film to show to audiences and receive some feedback to be considered for the final cut. Responses varied and a main concern was that it was never apparent how Kyle received the box that was so important in the first place. This was something that confused the audience in the feedback and I feel that this scene is particularly important to the narrative. Because of this, in the final film we decided to completely re-shoot the first house scene and have it completely clear that Kyle receives the box and is told to go to another address. 
We also had a lot of respondents claim that they didn't truly understand why Kyle went to the houses in the first place. 

Before the rough cut was actually completed, we did have some class mates view the pre-rough cut. They also claimed that they didn't completely understand why Kyle was going to the houses. This was when we decided to film the scene where Kyle found the note in his pocket. I believe that this is the scene that would establish why Kyle was to go about to different addresses. 

After the rough cut finished, there was still some confusion over the films narrative. After looking further into the audience feedback, I found that a lot of the respondents didn't understand the plot again.

When we edited the very final cut of the film, we decided that instead of having to re-shoot the scene in which Kyle finds the note and have the contents of the note shown to the audience, we would record a voice over of the contents of the letter. I think that this was the element that clarified the beginning of Kyle's journey of why he travels to the houses. The voice over was also used as a sound bridge from one shot to another. I believe that adding the voice over gave the Employer an omnipotent tone, which showed him as powerful and, again, aided the way his character was viewed and went with the atmosphere we wanted to create. 

The responses to the final film were particularly positive. Respondents claimed that they understood the film a lot more now as most of them had actually seen the rough cut so had a clear comparison between the two films, therefore could comment on our development. Although, most of the respondents thought that the film was a psychological drama instead of our intended genre of a psychological thriller. This is something that I feel we would have helped by putting a lot more into the iconography of a thriller, but overall I feel that creating a dramatic effect is still effective. I don't feel that we lost the audience's grip and attention in anyway by this because the respondents still understood the message that we were trying to put across. The respondents still found the message of revenge and people changing that we were trying to portray and personally I feel that this is an achievement.

There are various interpretations of our film, especially when it comes to the final scene. It is down to the discretion of the viewer as to whether they find it appropriate that the Employer killed Kyle or not. We did receive some vast views but overall this is the kind of thing that we wanted to achieve. I think its extremely effective to allow an audience to consider things like morals and human nature, this is something that I consider goes hand in hand with a psychological thriller. This is because it considers elements of the human mind such as deep rooted revenge and allows the audience to consider what they would do in that situation or whether they accept Kyle's death.

Overall, I believe that it is down to the discretion and morals of the audience as to whether they agree with the message that we were putting forward in our film.

Evaulation - Question 2

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?

Evaluation Question 4

Q4  How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

-RESEARCH/PLANNING

Blogger was an essential tool when researching for our films production. We were able to create our own media page on Blogger in which Blogger acted as a medium we could all collectively share ideas through and monitor each others work.  From researching and constructing our own story lines to posting our final film, Blogger did not only have the tools that allowed us to write analytical essays, but and the function to post images through. I feel it was the way Blogger acted as an online storage file for all our work that made the process of making our film a lot more successful than if we were not using it. 

Celtx was fundamental when creating our own individual storyline, free downloaded from the internets allows a professional document to be created with set action segments, and shots all provided to help illustrate the kind of environment we wish our script and film to be created in. This was very helpful for our research to be put into action. 

Facebook serving as the most popular social networking site was also helpful when researching and distributing material for our film. We created multiple online questionnaires mainly concerning the storyline of our film in which we were able to post on our individual facebook profiles for our friends to fill out. This proved to be very successful as the feedback we received helped us improve the storyline drastically. 

IMDb proved to be, in my opinion the most effective tool when researching different films. The multimillion film database covers a wide range of films from different genres. This allowed us to view recent and older psychological horror films and use similar cinematographic within our own film.  

YouTube played a similar role to IMDb when researching psychological horror movies for our film. The significant difference between YouTube and IMDb was the films on YouTube were a mixture of professional and unprofessional. This allowed us to observe the differences between conglomerate media productions compared to low budgeted student films.

-PRODUCTION

We used Adobe Photoshop for our subsidiary media production: our poster advertising our film. Photoshop gave us the ability to take the photo we had taken on our professional camera (rented from the media department) and edit into an industry standard poster that would describe a synopsis of our film. The additional effects Photoshop allowed us to create included the black fading around the central image of Kyle, as well as the the 5 star review icons.

This voice recorder was the piece of equipment we recorded our second subsidiary media product on. The radio trailer was clear and easy to hear due to the recording of me and Kyle recorded without any harsh sounding tones in our voice and usual flaws founds in camera phones such as wind and 'bumps' in speech. These were easily removed in editing and when the device did pick them up it removed them from the original audio file.  

When filming in multiple different places, we all carried round our mobile cell phone in order to take visual evidence of the production completed in that day. We chose specifically not to rent out more professional cameras due to the photo having less importance than the poster. Additionally mobile phones are easier to  manoeuvre that large cameras. They were also almost always at hand due to needing them for purposes outside of filming. I used my phone (Samsung Galaxy s2) on shoots in which I was excluded in terms of acting. In shoots in which I was acting (the majority) Annie used her phone. (Samsung Galaxy S3). Both phones provided us with clear photographs. 

The Sony HD 2000 Camera Corder was the technology in which we created our final media production. The HD quality footage it provided us with allowed us to create a high quality film with additional audio collected through the inbuilt microphone. 

Final Cut was the video editing software we edited our finish film through. I felt happy that barnsley college's media department had funded us with the latest equipment in terms of editing footage. The use of cutting and fading and split clipping with many additional extra features allowed us to create an industry standard film we could all be proud of. 

When we created online questionnaires for audience feed back of our story lines and final films, we collected the data and analysed it the Microsoft Excel. I found Microsoft Excel useful as it allowed us to have a visual representation of the data in the form of graphs, columns and pie charts. This collectively highlighted potential flaws within our story line/film and so we could create alternative shots in order to correct the situation. 

EVALUATION-

When evaluating my third question, I felt that Microsoft Powerpoint would be an appropriate programme to present on. After I had completed my evaluation, I had to share it on blogger, I did this through SlideShare. SlideShare is an online programme in which users can upload their presentations for other people to see and use. SlideShare comes with a embedded code system, in which I could insert into blogger. 

When evaluating my second question, I felt that Prezi would be an appropriate programme to present on. After I had completed my evaluation, I had to share it on blogger, I did this through Prezi. Prezi is an online programme in which users can upload their advanced presentations for other people to see and use. Prezi also comes with a embedded code system, in which I could insert into blogger. Additional features such as tracking and motion is also included within Prezi. 

After our films completion, we, as a group created a facebook page dedicated to our film. This facebook page was called 'The Employer'. On this page we kept fans updated with out latest trailers and posters and radio trailers in the hope that the page would work similarly to the ones used within the industry.