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Evaluation - Question 6+7...

Evaluation - Question 4+5...

Evaluation - Question 3...

Evaluation - Question 2...

Evaluation - Question 1...

Film Synopsis...

     If our film was to be made into a feature length film the main protagonist the ‘taxi driver’ will be a psychopathic serial killer who kidnaps multiple people, in particular vulnerable women typically with small children. The woman and baby in the boot - heard at the end of the opening – will endure multiple types of abuse; physical, mental, sexual and psychological which will be inflicted  by the protagonist who we soon learn to find has psychological problems. One of the themes in the film will be obsession which sticks to the typical conventions of the thriller genre. We want our audiences to be shocked throughout, to achieve this we would make sure that the taxi driver appears as ordinary as possible which will make what he does even more shocking than it already is, this is why we felt it was important to show that he was a family man (included in the picture in our two minute opening). There will be a heroic character that will eventually ‘come to the rescue’, either a police detective or a family member, however we are undecided as to who it will be just yet. In contrast to the mystery convention of a psychological thriller our audiences will be very involved with what is happening throughout which is very different to the majority of psychological thrillers already out there. 

Script - dialogue...

Tara put together a video of the dialogue used in our 2 minute opening film. The main speech we used was of Stefani's dad speaking as if he has a passenger in the back of the taxi, we used close up shots every time he spoke to give it a creepy effect. We also did this so that audiences don't initially see all of his face which adds suspense and makes them question why.

Costume...

There was not much to post about the costume choice for our final film as there were not many scenes where you saw what the taxi driver was wearing, however there were a few qualities which we wanted to make sure we included. We wanted to create a feel of a family man, someone trusted and someone who the audiences would not automatically suspect as dangerous. This is why we made sure we had close up shots if the hand with the rings on, this suggests that he is married and with a family as does the picture of the children. The only costume requirements we asked for was that our driver made sure he wore ordinary everyday clothes just so that the audiences wouldn't not suspect anything.

Storyboard/Shot types...

Since none of us were very artistic we struggled to create a storyboard to express how we wanted our film to turn out, so we decided to make a list of our different shot type's as an alternative. Although we did use a lot of shots the majority of them were extreme close ups and close ups because we had a lot mouth of shots of the taxi driver speaking and lots of close ups of different objects. From finding this I can now see that if we was to redo our film I would try and incorpoate a wider range of shots rather than the repetitive close ups. 

Location...

When we was planning our film and brainstorming idea's although most of the footage would be of insde the taxi we still needed a location which looked out of the ordinary and would make our audiences question why they were there, so we thought of a couple of ideas and decided that a wooded area would be the best. We then searched some local places which would have enough space for us to film and to park and found Whitewebbs. Most of us knew the location already and we all decided that it was just what we were looking for. Below is a picture:

Delayed sound update!...

Here's a delayed post about a change we made in some of the sounds in our film. We decided that although we like the 'My Funny Valentine' song there was something not quite right about it and thankfully Tara found a new song which worked perfecty and here it is:

We found that this song was a lot more subtle than the Frank Sinatra one and was more appropiate for inside the taxi.

We also added a sound at the end of our film of a baby crying, we knew that this would be very extreme and would push the appropriate boundries but we needed something to shock our audiences and this was just the thing. When we first added the audio clip of our friend Georgie saying "let me out" we liked it but there was something missing and it wasn't getting the big reation we hoped for, but after adding the baby sound effect we definatley achieved this.

Props...

Although we have finished our film now I thought that it would be good to post some of the props we used in our film and why we chose some of them.

We knew that from the very beginning we didn't want to give away too much as to what might happen in our film and we wanted to make sure that our audiences didn't suspect anything from the taxi driver so we decided to include a shot of a family photo (below). We felt that by adding a family photo the audience will automatically see the taxi driver as a family man and will suspect nothing.

We also included a shot of the drivers hands with the rings on, this shows that he is married and again implies that he is a family man and there is nothing out of the ordinary.

We also included some shots such as the taxi badge and the taxi light (below) just to emphasis the taxi and make it the most predominant element in the film.

BBFC research...

Once we had completed our film what we had to do was decide individually what age certificate we thought it should be given, if it was to be made into a full length film. I went online to the BBFC (British Board Of Film Classification) website and found their guidelines to giving a film a age certificate.
Since our film is a physiological thriller we knew that it would contain some scenes of a sexual nature, violence and strong language so it would definitely not be appropriate for a U or a PG, however after looking at the requirements for a 12 and a 12A it would not be suitable for that rating either:

The two possible options for our film would be a 15 or an 18, so I looked at the requirements for a 15 first to see what it contains:

From looking at the elements for a 15 and an 18 I have come to the conclusion that our film should be given the certificate of a 15, this is because although we may have to reduce our limits to what we would have wanted to include in our film, making the certificate an 18 may reduce our audiences and may mean that our box office sales will be a lot less than if it was a 15.

Feedback to our opening...

We decided to get the rest of our class to have a look at our video and give us some feedback on what they like and what we need to improve or change. What we really wanted their opinion on was the ending, we have decided to add a baby crying onto the end of our film just to give it the shock factor with our audiences and here's their opinion:

Final but unfinished opening...

We are so close to finishing that we thought we would upload the opening at its current state, we just have to do add our titles and our production company and we are done! We are not sure if we like the speech which is suppose to be from inside the boot so we are going to record a couple more versions and then decide on which one is the most effective. Here's our ALMOST final film...

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title research...

It has taken us a long time to pick the perfect title for our film and most of them were either too obvious or just didn't fit in with our film. We asked the rest of our media class for any suggestions for our title and we started to think of films like Taken which are very similar to our story line for inspiration but what we loved was the idea of taking a line from a nursery rhyme song. This has been done before with films such as When The Wind Blows and we felt that since the last part of our film was a baby crying this link to a nursery rhyme would tie in brilliantly. We searched the nursery rhyme 'Rock-a-Bye Baby' and found that the line "When the bough breaks' has a sinister feel to it which would be perfect for the title of our film.

Reaction to our almost finished film...

We are so close to finishing our film opening, we just need to add a few more touches and it should finally be complete! We decided to see what some of our media group thought about our film and if they had any suggestions or comments which we can use, so here is a video of Shaileyee's reaction to our film...

Inspiration...

When we was planning  our film we got the majority of our inspiration from the opening sequence of 'The Bone Collector'. We particularly loved the types of shots they used and how they build up the story gradually. Once we had seen the clip it helped us have a better understanding of exactly what we wanted our film to look like and gave us some great camera work ideas!

What we liked most about the clip was that the driver was silent and we tried to incorporate this element into our own film by never hearing the passengers response. The silence works perfectly with our film as it doesn't give too much away at first which is just what we wanted.

Sound...

When we  were planning our film we all pictured the music to be classical because we felt that it had a creepy effect to it which we loved without being too obvious. We listened to lots of recommended songs but we couldn't find one that would fit, until, Tara suggested the song 'My Funny Valentine' by Frank Sinatra. Although it wasn't the classical idea we originally had it worked perfectly with our film.

To incorporate the sound into our film we filmed the driver turning on the radio, when we filmed this part as we turned the radio on there was a talk show which we have decided to include in our film and edit it to make it sound like the radio is then tuned into the song.