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Evaluation
When I began this project, now roughly three months ago, the brief was relatively
broad and essentially meant that I could virtually go anywhere with the production.
All the brief stated was as follows “For your extended project you are required to
produce a visual product which meets professional standards”, whilst that may have
no explicit restrictions, we were required to produce it for either a specific client (an
advert for a small local company for example) or a competition (a film festival)
meaning that we would have to follow their own ‘rule set’ and restrictions to what
we could ultimately produce. That being said, there was still a strict outline of how
we had to research and produce the final project this being through various sub
headings as follows: Context, Research, Problem Solving and Communication,
Planning and Pre-Production, Technical Skills and Production, Evaluation (either
written or in video format) and Exhibition/Presentation. Before we even began the
project officially I had already crafted a rough idea of what I wanted to produce,
although I had not yet fully created a final idea I knew that I wanted to create an
experimental film of some nature, this meant that I automatically decided on
creating the product to enter into a competition as I would likely not be able to find
a client to make it for. As I developed my idea further I created the first initial idea for
what I would eventually go on to make: “The Ballad of a Psychopath” (see the
screenshot below).

As shown above, the idea that I curated revolved around the exploration of a
charismatic – but incredibly unhinged – serial killer as he breaks into a family home
and murders all the inhabitants. The main draw/unique aspect of the production
however is that, as well as the comedy and horror being interwoven within the
narrative, due to how successful and how much I enjoy making music videos, there

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are three specific sections in the narrative that are all highlighted with a specific
song to represent the three acts of the picture. As an overall, I would most definitely
say that my final production “The Ballad of a Psychopath” – whilst I faced some
problems and it is nowhere near a perfect motion picture – is a successful
interpretation of the brief that we were given. I believe this as a result of the fact that
all the feedback I have received throughout the length of this unit, besides the
occasional nudge to organise my website more efficiently, have been positive
towards my production from both the teachers marking my work and the small
audience that have been able to watch the film before the official premiere on
Friday the 10th May.

As a part of the brief we were asked to choose either a client or competition to

make our production for, so that we would have certain set of rules/guidelines as a
point of reference to follow; due to how limited the brief was. Like the majority of my
productions that I have made prior to this Final Unit, the idea of “The Ballad of a
Psychopath” contains elements of experimental filmmaking that people have
become accustomed to as a strong feature of all of my productions. This meaning
that ultimately (unless I chose to produce a music video and managed to get in
contact with a musician I would like to work with; which in itself is highly unlikely) the
prospect of crafting the project for a client would’ve been nonsensical. Therefore it
seemed that, because as already mentioned I was set on producing an
experimental short film, the only realistic option that I should pursue was that of a
competition. However, I had to make sure that the competition was lenient with
gore and age ratings due to how extreme I wanted to make the final product, as it
could be a possibility –
that like finding an
appropriate client – it be a
task to find a competition
that didn’t want to cap
any of the extreme
themes explored.
Therefore, after a fair
amount of research into
the U.K Film Festivals, there
appeared to be only one
that truly encapsulated
everything that I needed
from a client. That festival
being the Raindance Film Festival that is held in London every year between the 18th
and 29th of September. Hailed as the U.K’s answer to the infamous Sundance
Festival, Raindance seemed the perfect completion due to its close knit relationship
with both independent and student film (of which my film is both obviously). The
guidelines and ‘rules’ to follow set by the festival are featured above, and whilst they
may appear to a long and complex, in reality they are fairly broad. This is due to the
fact that they are mainly based on the technicalities of my production as opposed
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to the themes that I can’t use for instance. The only real rules that I had to take into
account when crafting “The Ballad of a Psychopath” were as follows:

-Films must be entered through an online screener, the festival will not accept any
DVD entries.

-The Final deadline is the 31st May 2019 (I will be entering on the 17th however).

-The submission fee must be paid, and is non-refundable.

Therefore, whilst the festival is not restrictive creatively like other festivals I researched
– instead embracing unique films as shown by one of the leading ambassador Ken
Loach – the technical aspects of my film had to be perfectly in line with the
guidelines so that it could be submitted correctly and stand a chance of winning
the sector that I enter it into. The first one that I had to take into account was easy to
follow because, as a result of my ever present monetary issues, I always premiere my
productions
online through
my YouTube
channel
“Charlie
Squared”, which
has a small
following. The other two guidelines however, had to be properly into account as to
not fail similarly as a result of monetary issues. This is because, Raindance has a
system for entries in which the price of submission increases accordingly to the later
the film is entered (this is shown above). To counter a disaster in which I couldn’t
enter my film due to being able to afford the submission fee for the competition, I
made sure that when I began my initial idea stage that I created an in depth
production schedule of what I should be doing each day week by week until the
final hand in on the 10th May. Whilst – as I mentioned in my weekly vlogs – I
occasionally fell behind schedule due to taking longer than expected during the
research stage mainly, the schedule helped me as tool for understanding what
targets I should meet weekly. Meaning that, I was able to, for the most part, stay on
topic and target for the 17th May entry deadline which would result in a submission
fee total of £35. As an overall, I kept a very good relationship with the lenient
guidelines of my competition/client throughout the whole of my production process
from the initial ideas phase right up until the current evaluation stage due to how my
emphasis I put on the schedule (see the first four weeks of schedule that I devised to
follow below) – despite not being able to stick to it completely – which meant I knew
precisely what I had to do and whether I needed to sacrifice some of my spare time
to make sure that I hit the deadline.

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When conducting the research for my production, it was clear that for it to be as
successful and effective as I want to be – and for it to stand a chance at actually
winning a prize at Raindance – I would have to follow genre and stylistic conventions
for experimental film, this is because although I naturally want to challenge these
conventions it is important that the audience (especially as it could be shown at a
festival) have some aspects that they can see as inspirations to latch upon. Hence
why I decided to focus on the research stage of my production to make sure that
the audience can relate to it and understand the effect that I was going for when I
produced it. One of the most important aspects of my film that I had to get perfect
was the odd, and sometimes inappropriate, combination of comedy and
gore/horror. This is because, if the ‘jokes’ that I devised either visually or through
dialogue fell flat in anyway the audience would’ve failed to have seen the purpose
of my production; not viewing it as a parody and instead a serious discussion of
psychopathic individuals, of which it is most definitely not. This brought me to the
conclusion that I should research dark comedies to find how the directors manage
to juggle to completely conflicting emotions to create a confusing string of emotions
to the audience; almost reflecting that of when someone hears terrible news and,
for reasons unbeknownst to them, begin to laugh nervously. The two scenes that
immediately came to my mind that manage to create a comedic atmosphere
when something truly horrific is actually occurring in front of the camera, were
Viago’s feeding scene from “What We Do In The Shadows” (released in 2014,
directed by Taika Waitit and Jeff Clementine) and the scene in which Tim Messenger
– played by Adam Buxton – meets his horrific demise at the hand of a large church
spire in “Hot Fuzz” (released in 2007, directed by Edgar Wright and is the second film
in the Wright, Frost and Pegg trilogy). In order to gain inspiration from these scenes
for my own production “The Ballad of a Psychopath” and more specifically as
reference for the finale of my feature in which Charlie Parchment’s character of
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Killer (whose identity is deliberately left anonymous to highlight the theme I will
explore that psychopaths live ‘normal’ lives amongst the population and rarely give
their true personalities away) captures and tortures an innocent Postman in a brutal
manner that will ultimately be comedic to the audience. A section of my in depth
analysis of the two scenes can be seen below. Due to how reliant the scene from
“Hot Fuzz” is on computer generated effects that are not only out of my skill set but
also again my budget constraints – because a man’s head is literally in half like a
coconut from an ancient spire – the scene that I managed to gain most inspiration
from to use in my own production was from “What We Do In The Shadows”. What I
found was that the element that makes the brutal scene, of a vampire killing an
innocent woman, hysterical is the audience previous knowledge of Viago’s
character. We notice the awkward ticks he has when he is preparing to take a bite
from the woman’s neck because of how it has already been established to the
audience that he is clumsy; almost as if he were camera shy in front of the
‘documentary’ crew. Therefore, in order to make sure that my final scene (and the
scene in which he ‘discovers’ the body in the hallway of the home) didn’t fall flat
comedically, I decided to include monologues in which Killer’s awkward and
unconventional personality is shown to the audience, meaning that when he isn’t
quite sure how to conduct torture it is comedic without there even being a
‘punchline’, relying solely on the actions of Killer to inject humour into the scene. As
an overall, I believe that – thanks to my in depth research I conducted into the
matter – my production meets the conventions of the genre perfectly, whilst also not
relying on it completely and acting as its own individual entity.

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Due to how serious the main theme of my narrative that I explored in my production
is – whilst psychopaths are ‘scary’ and Hollywood’s incarnations of them are usually
outlandish and extreme – I
had to make sure that I
conducted appropriate
research into a complex and
possibly offensive topic to
ensure that, whilst it is
essentially a parody of the
theme, the main character of
Killer is as much a real life
psychopath as possible. To do
this, I initially began my
research focusing on three of
America’s most notorious
Serial Killer’s (of which a
screenshot can be seen to the
right): Ted Bundy (“The
Campus Killer”), Jeffrey Dahmer (“The Milwaukee Cannibal”) and Aileen Wuornos
(“The Damsel of Death”) in order to grasp a sense of how I should mould my
character of “Killer” and how he would act when he’s not committing heinous
crimes. From my research I found the following to reference in my own production:

-They all re-visited crime scenes after the murders initially took place, in order to ‘take
their work in’ or in some cases conduct necrophilia.

-They all have members of either their family or friends that can’t believe that the
crimes they committed are true despite all the evidence piled upon them; ‘they are
too nice to do such things’.

-Some sort of outburst comes just before they are going to die, their cool and calm
demeanour diminishes and they confess to their crimes, ‘the true monster they are is
revealed to the world’.

I took into account all of these traits during both the character design face of
creating “Killer” and when writing the script, for instance he revisits the crime scene
after initially murdering the man in the hallway, his girlfriend is completely unaware
of his actions and loves him unconditionally. Whilst this research was incredibly useful
when crafting both the narrative and the character of Killer, I also looked into traits
of psychopaths in real life who aren’t serial killers. This is due to the fact that, the
public and audience (until the third of the film) are meant to be unaware of his
tendencies. The traits I found that further helped me improve the character of Killer
(a screenshot of this research is shown below), making him more realistic, were as
follows: They’re charming, they don’t experience remorse, they are arrogant, they
take big risks and are master manipulators. Whilst as a whole, the character of Killer
could never have been truly realistic due to how the film is meant to show the

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extravagant sides of serial killers (that is shown in a comedic light). However, I do

believe that I have done my topic justice due to how much respect I paid the
theme with complex research to make sure that my character is – whilst he is an
extravagant incarnation – a true to life representation of psychopath traits whether
that be in Serial Killers or just seemingly average members of the public.

As mentioned previously, I put immense detail into the process of crafting the
character of “Killer” for “The Ballad of a Psychopath” due to how important he is to
the audience understanding the themes of the production as well as how he must
be as true to life incarnation of a psychopath as
possible. Due to this, I conducted three extensive
character studies into some of the most infamous
psychopathic individuals in films. The three
characters I specifically analysed were, Hannibal
Lecter (“The Silence of The Lambs” most famously),
Patrick Bateman (“American Psycho”) and Tony
Montana (“Scarface”). I began to notice that they
all share one key aspect of their personality, no
matter how different their situations are in their own
respective narratives. This being that, they crave
attention and want to live a life in which they are
remembered when they eventually leave, but more
importantly they are prepared to gain this sense of

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power by any means necessary, rather than attempting to work for it they would
much rather murder their peers with no remorse or even a second thought. This
analysis (an example of which is shown above to the right) helped me to understand
how I could make Killer both realistic whilst also being interesting to watch on film as
all of the others are, this ultimately caused me to add the documentation aspect of
my picture, Killer wants to be the star of the film; and that’s exactly what he is by
filming himself and his crimes. As an overall, I would say that my character is a well
written character who has clear wants and desires, all of which are that of a typical
film incarnation of a psychopath, meaning that it will be far easier for my audience
to relate to him and understand his complex personality (this will be further helped
by my monologue sections that pay obvious homage to “American Psycho” and
Patrick Bateman).

As with most productions – and especially ones produced by myself – the process of
crafting my Final Major project was not an easy road due to a string of problems
that I faced throughout. For instance, as I mention deeply in my weekly evaluations,
the research stage of “The Ballad of a Psychopath” was something I found
especially complicated. This is
because, as a result of how
complex the main theme of my
production is, I had to conduct in
depth research into Psychopaths
in order to display such a complex
mental health issue with the
respect it deserves. Whilst, I am
ultimately proud of the research
that I conducted because of how
much emphasis it made me out
into the depth of Killer’s
personality, on more than one
occasion I found myself distracted
by the sheer amount of
information I had to catalogue.
This unfortunately meant that I fell
behind roughly halfway through
the project and had to sacrifice a
lot of my own time to not only
catch up; but also to organise my
website in a manner that is not just a collection of information illogically placed on
the page. However, when I finally come out of the void that is Serial Killers and
psychology, I was able to organise my page into a thorough exploration of what it
means to be a psychopath and how I can replicate that through the main
character in my picture. One of the main factors that helped this awakening were
my weekly vlogs, but more importantly the one to one feedback that I was given by
my teacher (pictured above). As mentioned in the feedback, my research – whilst it
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was ‘good’ – lacked organisation, which would eventually make the process of
taking my research and applying it to my short film far more difficult than it should
be. To combat this, I sacrificed my own time and worked solely on organising my
research by creating infographics for instance, to name but one of the techniques.
Unfortunately, the research stage of my production wasn’t the only stage in which I
faced a seemingly drastic set back. The second vast problem I faced – as also
mentioned and reflected upon during my weekly vlogs – came during the
filming/editing of my film and revolved solely around audio. The first problem with
audio that I faced, but only noticed during the editing phase, was that the
microphone I used to capture all the audio on set automatically records a small
portion of high level distortion. This was a more significant problem than it has proven
to be in previous units due to the reliance that the narrative has a dialogue;
meaning I can’t simply cut and replace it with instrumentals (this distortion can be
prominently heard in my first draft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QLHl_l3Xs0). To
overcome this problem, I had to turn down the audio levels significantly, due to the
fact that when I added a low pass filter – which is the technique I used to solve it on
“speak” – the much needed bass audio was insufficient for what I required. Although
the audio is much improved now as a whole, the distortion can still be heard faintly,
and the only real way to get rid of this in future is to invest in a more professional
microphone. The second problem that I faced regarding the audio of “The Ballad of
a Psychopath”
came into
existence as a
result of my
desire to
improvise with
the actors on
set, using the
script as a
rough
guideline for
the scene.
Whilst this
seemed brilliant at the time, when it came to editing I discovered the harsh truth
that whilst improvisation is an important feature of filmmaking, the dialogue still
needs to be the same during shot reverse shots as, whilst what is said is essentially the
same, the actor could be reacting slightly differently between cuts. This came to
fruition during the scene in which Killer has a conversation with a passer-by (pictured
above) because at points where it should have cut between my characters
reaction and Charlie’s, the dialogue was ever so slightly different. Unfortunately, the
only way to solve this problem was to remove certain places in which it would’ve
originally cut back to me and solely focus on Charlie’s performance as Killer, which
whilst it solves the problem is irritating as it does not appear exactly how I envisioned
the scene to play out when I planned and storyboarded it. As an overall, whilst I

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quite clearly faced a number of large problems, I was able to overcome them
eventually – even if it was slightly stressful at times – as a result of my feedback,
weekly vlogs and the predicted problems that I would face and how I would
eventually overcome them (a portion of this table is featured below).

This final project unit, as an overall, has been a very important feature of my whole
two year course of Creative Media Production in regards to how I have improved as
both a film maker and a analytical critic and what I can do to further improve my
work in the future; whether that be at my next step – University – or during my career
that I am hoping to have. One of the most
important aspects this unit especially has
taught me, through my period of extensive
research, is how to capture far better
original footage on my camera. The scene
that it is most obvious to see my
improvements, as a director of photography
specifically, is the finale of the third act in
which Killer tortures and brutally murders an
innocent Postman who just happened to
stumble in on his crime scene (this is pictured above to the right). The main reason

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that I believe it is clear to see my improvements this unit, especially when comparing
it to my other previous productions, is that – as is shown in the screenshot – the
settings of the camera in terms of the white balance and aperture are all deeply
thought about so that it would create the chiaroscuro technique so frequently used
in dramatic finales that I wanted to recreate/emulate. This is a vast improvement in
my overall camera
skills due to the fact
that it all my previous
projects I have just
picked up the
camera and began
filming, paying little
attention to the
actual technicalities
of how I should film it.
Another technique
that I researched –
specifically from
Quentin Tarantino’s
style – was a quick
zoom as a way in which to reveal and emphasise that something important has
taken place. This takes place during the scene in which the Postman (pictured to
the left), and is incredibly effective in representing the shock that Killer experiences,
no one has ever realised the monstrous tendencies of him before and thus he can
almost see his world falling apart in front of him in the personification of an innocent
Postman. When comparing “The Ballad of a Psychopath” to my previous
filmography, it is clear that in terms of all the technical aspects that come to making
an effective motion picture, it is by far the best production that I have crafted.
Whether that be as a result of the camera techniques that I used or the emphasis
that I put into research in order to create a character with depth that is interesting
and the audience can relate to (this is something that I don’t think I have ever
managed to do previously). That being said, there are still most definitely aspects of
the production that I would do differently the second time around and in future
productions. For example, as previously mentioned, the main aspect of my
production that I am not best pleased with is the quality of audio due to the budget
level microphone that I used to record sound on set. Therefore, I will most definitely
be purchasing a more effective microphone that has a far higher level of quality, to
make my future productions more effective and professional. As an overall, I am
happy with the final product of “The Ballad of a Psychopath” despite the fact that it
is clearly not the perfect film and I faced a fair amount of problems; however I am
proud of how I managed to overcome these setbacks in order to salvage of a
production of high quality, that I believe stands a chance of being entered into
Raindance Film Festival when I submit it next week (17th May 2019).

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