P5 Certification Classification Based on Feedback of Final Film

Summary of Feedback

My feedback on the whole was very mixed, the ratings people suggesting very much changing between the individuals. The survey gave me a greater understanding that a majority of people believe the film is not totally well suited for younger audiences however the focus group of media students (who are learned in film classification) suggested that the film could have a far less strict rating. This was shown as nearly the whole group suggested the film be PG where as in ur online survey the majority suggested 12A or 15 would be appropriate. This response can be seen below:

Draft Email to the BBFC

Final Classification

Taking all of the feedback I have gained towards the film through the Online Survey and focus group discussions I have decided to class my film as a 12A.

Below are screenshots of the BBFC's website depicting what is allowed in a 12A film:

As my film features moderate threat, both psychologically and physically, I felt this warranted a rating of 12A, were the violence more prominent and shown in full view then I would perhaps consider moving it to an even higher rating. However as almost all of the categories of possible mature content fit within the bounds of the above specifications, I believe this classification is the best fit to the content within my film. This is in agreement with the survey taken by audiences that stated this in part with 29% of voting suggesting this rating (this can be towards the start of this post).

P4 Focus Group Screening & Feedback

Meaning and Purpose

I wanted to ensure that I knew the kind of audience I would be aiming for with this film if it were to be released at any point. To find out what the general public felt was the best option for the film I created an online survey for the film, this gave me insight into what people thought of the narrative, the violence depicted as well as the key themes and use of what could be considering frightening imagery. This insight will help me in the production of future projects as well as the distribution of the film produced. Surveys like this can also help an argument for certain classifications of the film when I get in touch with the BBFC (British board of film classification) about how I am allowed to advertise my film.

All of the answers given to the survey gave me some insight into the opinions people had about the film which will help us choose the certification we would like to show our film under. As shown people, we began asking what age rating the survey taker would give ours after watching it fully. This gave a wide range of opinions with two categories being largely popular, 32.3% of people voted that the film was of 15 rating, and 29% said 12A would be a good rating for the film. This shows a split in the leading opinion which shows that our film is viewed differently by different people. From this question alone then, we could not determine how our film should be rated.

We then asked people to rate on a scale of 1-10 how child-friendly the film was, 1 being not child-friendly at all and 10 being very child-friendly. As shown below this question gave a more tangible result, most people rating the film as less child-friendly, the peak of the results showing at 3 and 4 on the scale. This can show that the film is most likely not meant to be viewed by children.

We then asked how violent the viewer thought the film was in a 1-5 scale 1 being nonviolent and 5 being incredibly violent, this question gave another very split view as the peak of people decided the film was in the middle of the scale. We received no votes for incredibly violent however and there was a slight lead to people saying it was nonviolent, this could suggest that the violence in this film was not the major issue for people who believed it was not right for children.

To see how the film affected the average viewer we then asked if the viewer found any elements of the film scary, to this we largely received 'No' to be the largest answer of the three choices with 54.8%, this suggested that to the average viewer the film was not scary, which suggested that the atmosphere of the film was also not the issue for people, however, the 29% that said it was scary could have been the same people that pushed the previous votes in the direction they were in.

To test people's direct thoughts about the themes in the film and specifically relating to whether  we asked the following questions:

I firstly asked about the show of violence in the film, once again this question gave a very split reaction to people when asked if it was too shocking for younger viewers the vast majority of the survey takers said 'maybe', this gave a majority of 54.8% to the question. Aside from the large group of people who were unsure however there was an approximate 5% margin between Yes and No, this margin was too small for a proper decision to be made however it did show that more people that it was too shocking.

I then asked about the showing of the confined space, with the man scared in the box. This question showed that this theme was most likely the one that caused people to think it was worrying for children to see. The majority said either Yes or Maybe this time as opposed to a general split in the results. Yes having the most votes with 38.7% of the viewers saying that the confined space was too scary for younger audience members to view.

Finally, I asked them a general question to see their opinions after considering the themes of the film, I asked whether the viewers believed the film was acceptable for younger audiences. the vast majority saying 'Probably not' with 54.8% of the vote, followed by Not at all and Probably 16.1%, nobody saying it was definitely suitable for younger audiences.

We also screened our film to a small audience of students who after watching gave their opinions and answers to specific questions about the film. We recorded this focus group and the video is shown below:

From this we saw that most people believed that PG was a fair rating of the film, these students being educated in film certifications during their media course gave the opinion that as no harsh violence was shown, and no truly fearful scenes were interlaced in the film that the film is acceptable for younger audiences, a lot of people commented however that the film has a more deep meaning that might be too advanced for children to appreciate.

P3(d) Linking Audio to Visuals and Applying Audio Effects

Meaning and Purpose

Another important effect I used in the film was the lack of sound, I reduced the volume of some clips to give a stylised effect, an example being that I was showing the pointlessness of the man in the box screaming and struggling to ring people on the phone by having his voice and noise turned down so he couldnt be heard by the audience.  I achieved this by selected the audio version of the clip, separating it from the video clip using 'Unlink Audio' and then deleting the audio of the clip I wanted silent, or simply fading the volume out where needed.

P3(c) Applying Visual Effects and Transitions

One of the more basic effects of editing I used was fades, to give the film a nice entrance I faded in the original base footage as well as any titles that came in at the beginning of the film, I also did this with the audio files at the beginning to help ease the audience into the scene helping with building a sense of immersion within the viewers of the film. Below are screenshots; one showing a fade in a timeline and one being the effect shown in my project's final film.

I also used some sound editing techniques to control wind noise and unwanted lip smacking by lowering the levels of the volume, this makes the film quieter in general but helps a lot with the clarity of dialogue and can make the film feel more professional and high quality. An example of a track I did this to is shown below, I lowered the final parts of the clip because unneeded noise was taking up the space, giving an unprofessional feel to the scene, I used keyframing (the process of changing values of a clips variables such as opacity or volume in relation to the current tracking point of the clip on the timeline) to make the last 1 second of the clip much quieter, this helped transition into the next scenes more quiet atmosphere as well as the aforementioned boost in quality of the final product.

Below you can see the color corrected image after the image was made to appear more blue.

P3(b) Producing and Reviewing an Off Line Edit

 Meaning and Purpose

The editing process is the final step in ensuring a quality end product, it involves piecing together the film using all of the footage gathered and recorded by the crew and collating, combining and adding effects to this to give a powerful and watchable end product.

When we then placed the clips into the timeline I then proceeded to use the razor tool to cut clips to the exact length they were needed to be. The tool bar can be seen below, the razor tool being the sixth icon in from both sides (directly in the middle). This toll splices a clip so that hit becomes cut into two clips on the point at which you click the clip with the tool, this then allows footage to be deleted as well as some more advanced editing techniques such as frame skipping and impactful cuts.

I then placed the clips on levels known in the Adobe suite as 'layers' this allowed the overlap of footage which I found useful for advanced editing as well as more common processes such as titles, crossfades and crosscutting. The layout of my final timeline can be seen below, I used 3 layers for visual elements such as titles, crossfades and the base footage for the scenes. From this placement (and using the razor tool to ensure the clips were spliced in the correct way) I then added more advanced techniques into the edit.

One of the more basic effects of editing I used was fades, to give the film a nice entrance I faded in the original base footage as well as any titles that came in at the beginning of the film, I also did this with the audio files at the beginning to help ease the audience into the scene helping with building a sense of immersion within the viewers of the film.

I also used some sound editing techniques to control wind noise and unwanted lip smacking by lowering the levels of the volume, this makes the film quieter in general but helps a lot with the clarity of dialogue and can make the film feel more professional and high quality. An example of a track I did this to is shown below, I lowered the final parts of the clip because unneeded noise was taking up the space, giving an unprofessional feel to the scene, I used keyframing (the process of changing values of a clips variables such as opacity or volume in relation to the current tracking point of the clip on the timeline) to make the last 1 second of the clip much quieter, this helped transition into the next scenes more quiet atmosphere as well as the aforementioned boost in quality of the final product.

Once I had placed the clips correctly and had their interactions and transitional effects fully finished I then moved onto to correcting colour, colour grading and adjust the brightness and contrast of the individual clips used in the film. This helps the film's visual quality as well as making it more appealing to viewers as well as more visually stimulating. I did this by adding effects onto the clips such as 'Brightness and Contrast" and "Color Balance" and then adjusting the levels of these effects for each of the clips that I wanted to effect a change to. In most of the box shots for instance I turned the blue up for the scene (as shown below, I achieved the effect by turning down the red and green shadows) I did this to make this shot seem colder, emphasising the loneliness of the man in the box. In contrast to that in the shots which the villain outside the box moving around freely in the outside world I made the green and red much more vibrant and the blue was the turned down colour, this was to emphasise the freedom of the villain as well as his greed and jealousy.

P3(a) Logging Rushes and Creating Edit Decision List

The first step in our Post-production phase of the film was to log all of the footage with key and recognisable names so that they could be called upon later in filming. With a larger production where shots are planned to a tee this is usually done through renaming the shots with their appropriate shot number and letter, for instance '3b_1' would translate to being the first take of the second shot in the third scene, when an editor is editing the third scene he would then simply import all files beginning with 3 and continue from there. However, as our shots were not totally fixed in place and we were not aware of this industry technique at the time we named our shots by describing the action in the scene and splitting them into two folders; Clips Day 1 & Clips Day 2. Renaming them based on the action inside the clip was very helpful during the editing process as it allowed me to search for keywords such as 'leaves' or parts of dialogue like 'Who are you?'. I did this in conjecture with my shot list (shown below).

We didn't just have visual footage however, we had also recorded audio files of dialogue and sound effects on a 'zoom h4' handy recorder which registered the files as wav files with no names. To avoid confusion we decided to leave these in their linear state as we were able to remember which audio would sync to each clip that required it. This was the easiest and safest choice for the audio files and made editing very smooth and simple when importing the footage and sound in to our editing timeline. However while editing the names of the dialogue would not have worked we had also produced some sound effects which we named according to what they were supposed to sound like for instance a heart beat sound effect we called simply 'heart beat.wav'.

Below is an example of the timeline after we had imported the two folders of renamed footage along with titles and the sound effects I used during my edit. Logging the rushes was very helpful in creating the edit and placing the footage correctly into the timeline, speeding up the editing process largely.

P2(d) Following Production Processes

Meaning and Purpose: 

In the process of filming and production there are certain techniques that can be used to enhance the meaning as well as the aesthetic and aural quality of the film. We embraced a lot of these techniques within the production process of our film which included techniques ranging from camera movement, lighting and framing. I believe all of these techniques helped enhance the film's image and meaning as well as giving the short a lot more flavour in terms of style and creativity.

Slider

During the process of our production one of the techniques I learnt was managing the use of a slider or a dolly in a scene to give a slow and steady movement with purpose. The slider I had been given to work with was very steady and gave a good solid movement which made capturing the shot below very simply and intuitive. The slider in film is generally used for shots opening a scene to simply keep a dialogue scene visually interesting.

Practical Lighting

During our production process a very influential part of the lighting system was the idea that for the man in the box scene we would only use practical light (as in a light in which the source can be seen in frame). This has been used in a number of important 1940s film noirs as well as classical Japanese and Chinese cinema for the effect of true realism within the frame, giving a sense immersion within the audience. Below I show one of our stills alongside that of a noir scene from Kubrick's 1956 The Killing which is using the same technique to light its actors, while the background is lit from a non-practical light.

Following Shots

During our filming we used a following shot to introduce our villain, in hindsight this was a bad idea due to the trouble of catching the actor's dialogue and shaky footage, we had no microphone on him other than the one on the camera which meant we had to bump up the sound in order to her him correctly, we should have had a nother microphone at his front or had the phone picking up sound. However I believe the shot is powerful and when applied correctly can look very good, although I do believe for our film it could have been improved with more preparation as the camera movement was very shaky and this made filming the actor very difficult.

Long Shot / Wide Angle

For the mid-montage scene where the villain is walking down the path we decided it would be good to give this a wide angle long shot to show him getting closer and closer to the camera as he walked. We may have been misusing the wide angle shot here as it is generally retained for comedies such as the works of Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd - the big three silent comedians of the early to mid 20th century, chaplin famously said "Life is a tragedy in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.", an example of a shot from Chaplin's The Circus (1928) is viewed below ours. We used the shot to give a sense of impending danger whereas chaplin uses the shot to give information and space the audience from the character so they can laugh at it.

Montage

Montages are another very popular scene type within film, popularised mainly by western films in the US such as The Lone Ranger and A Fistful of Dollars. We used our montage scene (which is a collection of shots showing the passage of time) to give information on what had happened to our protagonist before the event, that makes it a flashback montage which is common in the thriller genre as well as sci-fi and fantasy films like the Lord of The Rings Trilogy.

P.O.V. (Point of View)

P.O.V. is used in a number of genres, but it is famously used in crime films, especially the works of Quentin Tarantino, the Point of View shot gives the perspective of somebody and from that we can gain a number of clues as to their position. For instance if everybody is looking down at the camera, it would suggest the person the camera is mocking the view of is in trouble or of a lower status, this is seen commonly in Tarantino's use of car boots (as shown below in his film reservoir dogs, the camera here taking the space of a police officer taken hostage by the gang of robbers), another example being Kubrick's 1987 war film Full Metal Jacket in which the drill sergeant can be seen standing over the private screaming, this shows his power over those of lower ranks. Our P.O.V. shot enlisted a very similar concept, the camera on the ground pointed up at the villain who hits the camera with a large branch, the POV shot here showing the power the villain has over the person whom we assume is the man in the box. This is also helped by a multitude of our other shots comparing the two characters.

Handheld

Handheld shots can be very useful in movements, for instance in Spielberg's war film Saving Private Ryan the handheld movement of the camera helps add to the sense of chaos and uncertainty. In our film the handheld motion is meant to give a sense of fear in the audience as it is added into the scene where the man in the box is hit over the head. The handheld movement helps add to the danger the man is in.

Low Key Lighting

Low Key Lighting refers to light which gives a high contrast yet very dark images, it was most popularised in the film noir stages of directors such as Truffaut and Godard in France however it has been used in a number of important films. Low key lighting symbolises the presence of evil, as well as emphasising emotions such as fear and isolation. In our film we shot the actors face in a dark surrounding which is a common usage of the low key technique, featuring in films such as David Cronenberg's 1986 film The Fly as well as Ford Coppola's 1979 film Apocalypse Now. In both of the aforementioned examples the villainous character of the movie was featured in this low key setting, we switched this in ours to instead show our man in the box as a white and innocent person surrounded by darkness, to emphasise his fear. Below our still from this scene are examples from Cronenberg's The Fly and Coppola's Apocalypse Now.