Question seven - Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full project?

Looking back to my preliminary task I can actually see how much has changed since then and how much I've learnt.

 

With these two clips we can compare how the editing, camera work and the lighting have changed. To be completely and brutally honest, the preliminary task editing was nothing compared to the editing for our final project, editing for our prelim task was basically transferring the clips onto the computer, cutting out parts that didn't fit well, putting them in a sequence and adding some music to it using soundtrack pro, which then seemed like so much work, but now comparing it to the work that was done for our final project it was much simpler. Not much has actually changed in our camera work, except that we've started using more equipment for it, like a dolly. Our lighting however has changed, simply because we didn't use any special lighting equipment in our preliminary task and in our final project we used reflectors on the characters so that we could see them clearly.

Another thing that I have learnt is how to work in a group, we had to work around each other schedules and classes, for example, we'd all come together at some point in the week to talk about when we were free to film and edit, we even made up a little chart that showed when each of us had a lesson or couldn't be in after school. This actually helped a lot because we could see when one another would be in the media suite editing and we could go and join them.

Overall I was actually quite pleased with how both turned out in the end.

 Another difficult task was making sure we had a free room to film in when our actors were free, that actually proved very difficult since one of our actors was an assistant headteacher and the week we were able to film had a lot of open evenings and parent evenings and target setting day...not exactly the best week was it?

Finally, I think I actually learnt some things about myself while filming, one, I definitely prefer being behind the camera, two, I panic a lot near deadlines and three, even though media can be stressing at times, it's an incredibly fun experience that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys a challenge.
Thank you for giving me this experience. 

Question six - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?

Question five - How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted our audience by appealing to their normal standards of thriller films. In our film we address the conventions of thrillers, such as the suspense we created in our film opening, this would appeal to our audience because it is what they are familiar with in a thriller film. As an example, I have inserted a screen capture of one of the scenes in our film, in this scene our student, Luke, starts breathing deeply while clutching his head, this builds suspense in our scene as our audience do not know what is going to happen and as his breathing increases the suspense rises.

We also attracted them by using a cliff hanger in our opening, this draws the audiences attention by making them wonder whats about to happen, this is done in other thriller films, the most popular being The Sixth Sense.

We also attracted our audience by using elements of aggressive and violent behavior which usually go hand in hand with thrillers, for example, here is a screen capture from our film opening of Mr Frost being aggressive towards our student.

We knew how to target our audience because of statistics from a popular website called Pearl and Dean, which display film statistics, such as, the gender who viewed it most, the age who viewed it most and the class who viewed it most, for example, one of the thriller films we chose to target ourselves around was The Dark Knight, which has basically the same ratings as we hope ours would.

With this information, we found that the most likely people to watch a thriller were males aged 15 - 24, which is why we chose to target that specific age and gender for our film. 

Thank you.

Question four - Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our film had to be planned before we could start shooting it, we had to look into things like classification and our target audience. The following is what we decided on.

The BBFC film classification for our film is 12, we chose this because our film does not contain any swearing or severe violence, however it does contain scenes that some viewers may find disturbing. Our target audience for our film would be mostly white males aged 12 - 25. Below is a link to the BBFC site explaining in more detail the film rating 12.

Link to BBFC site

For our film we had to come up with someone who would fit our target audience, this was our T.A.P. (Target Audience Profile). It would contain information about their age, name, likes and what they do for a living. Below is ours.

This is Sam, he is a nineteen year old white male. He enjoys films such as Casino Royale, Inception, Donnie Darko and Taken. He has currently applied to Leeds University to do a media course. He lives in his family home and spends most of his time playing Skyrim. He has accounts on both Facebook and Twitter in which he uses on a regular basis. He loves going to film festivals with friends. His preferred music taste is Indie.

The reason we have chosen to target our film at this particular audience is because it has proven to be popular among the certain age, for example,

In these screen grabs of the dark knight, which is classified as a thriller, the most popular age range viewing it is 15 - 24, which is very similar to our target age. Also it shows that it is viewed mostly by males, instead of females.

This screen grab comes from Pearl and Dean, where information like this can be found about any film.

Thank you.  

Question three - What kind of media institution would distribute your media product and why?

Question two - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In this question I will be talking about the social groups in our film and how they were represented.

There were actually many social groups represented in our film opening, these were, youth, student, adults and teachers. The youths we had were also our students, they were, Rio, Brad, Michael and Katie, our adult was also our teacher, Mr Frost.

We were able to present them as youths by their clothing and props, for example Katie was wearing skinny jeans, a jumper and a jacket, and teenage girls wear these usually. The same can be said for Rio’s clothes; they were simple but were identifiable as what a teenage boy would wear. The props that identified them as youths were their phones; Michael had his phone out when time was stopped, also Rio’s headphones are visible when they are walking out of the classroom, youths are regularly seen on their phones and listening to music through their headphones. The way they are represented as students are their bags and folders containing work, also the fact that they are in a classroom with whiteboards and desks shows where they are and this identifies them as students in detention.

The way Mr Frost is represented, as a teacher is his costume, dialogue, camera angles and his props. His costume is a sensible suit, comfortable for walking round in all day which shows authority whereas the student’s normal clothes does not. The prop that shows that he is a teacher are his pen, which he points at Luke and slam on the table. He also has a school pass around his neck with the school badge on it and his picture; teachers usually wear this so they are able to walk around the school freely. 

The dialogue also shows that Mr Frost is a teacher, for example, “Mr Gregory, Mr Gregory, LUKE!” is one of Mr Frosts lines in our film, this shows him starting off formal but when that fails, he calls out the students first name, this is done frequently by a teacher when they are trying to get a student’s attention. The camerawork is one of the most important things that show that he is a teacher; the camera angle on him is high, showing him off as taller than Luke, this shows the authority the teacher has over his students.

 

 These same social groups are also represented in films such as sixth sense

In sixth sense there are three of these social groups. Cole is the student in the school.

Next it’s Malcolm, he’s the adult

And finally there are Coles teachers in the school, one is called Stanley Cunningham.

Chronicle

There are three of these social groups in chronicle. Andrew, Matt and Steve are the main students in the film

They are also the youth in the film along with the other students.

And the adults are Andrews’s father and mother.

  

I feel that our representations of these social group were quite good when it came to showing Mr Frost as a teacher and an adult because it was clearly shown in his costume and his dialogue, however I feel we could have done better at showing that Brad was a student, I think that putting him in the school uniform would have been a better way of representing him as a student. The way we represented them as youths though I felt was very successful, especially with the props that were used.

Thank you.

Question one - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In this post I am going to explain how our film, uses, develops and challenges thriller conventions.

First off our film follows the conventions by imitating existing idents, the ident our film opening imitates is Spyglass, it imitates how the ident is set on a black background. earlier in my blog I researched film idents, they are used to give credit to the film studios.

Above are the image and video of the ident that was imitated. The main difference between the two idents is that our ident grows onto the screen as if coming towards the camera, which is a simple animation, whereas the animation for Spyglass is more drawn out and more professional. 

Once again referring to my blog, I researched conventions of thrillers, this is what audiences expect to see when they watch a certain genre. to make this simpler I'm going to keep referring to my previous work, it would be easier to follow along if you have read it. It was the last post created in November. 

Our film follows these conventions by creating suspense when Luke starts to breath heavily and pull at his hair, it makes the audience wonder what is going to happen. The heavy breathing is also used in thrillers. We also use camerawork such as, fast changes in our shots, an example of when we use this would be when Luke is stopping time, it keeps flicking between him and the clock. Another convention of the camerawork we use would be the close ups we do of Luke and Mr Grayham, the most noticeable is when there is an extreme close up of Luke just as he stops time, this is actually one of my favorite shots because of the build up to it, it worked really well. here is an example of extreme close up's used in Psycho's famous shower scene:

Another convention that we used is our cliffhanger, this is used in a lot of thriller films, the first film that comes to mind that does this in it's opening is sixth sense.

To develop the thriller conventions, our film gives our main character an ability that no one else has, the ability to stop time, however this has negative effects, it causes people to become violent towards him, this is clearly shown in our opening. This develops it because in most thrillers the protagonist has powers that don't have an effect on themselves, for example, in the film Push, the main characters have abilities that do not affect them, certain characters have these certain abilities, like they can move objects or see the future or make people believe in things that aren't real. However, I can think of one film that does affect the characters in some way, the film is called chronicle, it is where a group of teenagers get abilities from a meteor, this allows them to fly and move objects, however a consequence of this is that if they try to do something before they are strong enough, their noses start to bleed like it's causing too much pressure in their head.  

Our film has also challenged thriller conventions, it has done this by using a school student as the protagonist, whereas in other thrillers the protagonist is usually a group of people or someone older. another way we have challenged it is by the student being victimized by the teacher from the very beginning, an accepted convention is that teachers are usually kind but strict when they have to be, but in our film the teacher is openly violent to Luke as he slams his hand on the desk close to where Luke is sitting.

So that is how our film, uses, develops and challenges thriller conventions, hope you like it.   

Final cut "Time Whisperers"

This is our finished film and we have picked up on the following points;

. 0.34 requires a smoother, longer crossover from speech to clock sound

. 0.42 - dodgy sound effect!

. Export has a long black slug on the end - makes it look like the film is over 3 mins long!

. Animated 'Time Whisperers' title doesn't look good. What about if the clock shot (with ticking sound effect) faded into a static title, then fade to finish

. Requires a soundtrack to enhance visuals 

Rough cut

This is the rough cut of our film "Time Whisperers" that we have exported on youtube. We had small mistakes that didn't completely wreck the film but didn't exactly help it either. 

This is the feedback that we got for our rough cut from people in our target audience

Shooting Schedule

Shooting schedule.docx

This is my shooting schedule for the filming and editing of Time Whisperers

Animatic

An animatic is basically an animated storyboard of a film. Animatics are most commonly used for a host of production and marketing related applications, such as commercials and film pitches.

Our animatic was put together in storyboard pro and is just a simple one with our storyboard images inserted into it and what sound we want to have in our film opening.

Here is a link to our animatic. Hope you enjoy it.

Location Research

Location Research by

Costume Research And Plot

A costume plot is basically a plan of what the actors in a movie will be wearing in a certain scene. The costume plot helps to show their audience what era the film is set in and sometimes, where it may be set. It can also show class and status of a character, for example, a working class character wouldn't be shown in fancy suits, whereas an upper class character would. Costumes are always a very important part of a film because of these things. 

A costume plot is a basic plan of what the actors (talent) will be wearing. This would be very vital to the film as it would help the audience establish the place, time era and hierarchy of the characters e.g. Suit or a posh frock would symbolise importance and wealth whereas someone shown in ragged clothes would be present as poor and underachieving. You would have to consider the place in the costume plot as if the character is at home they would be wearing something they feel comfortable in; if they are at work they would be wearing a some form of suit and in our case if the character is at school they would be most likely be wearing a uniform. The Time era would be likely to be more considered if the media text is set in a certain period in history this would be done so that the characters match the fashion trends and classes of that time.

For our costume plot i have encorporated the general sterotypes within a school so a viewer can easily pick out what they are.
There are only two main cast in our production and those two would be Luke Gregory and Mr Grayham.

A Male teacher like Mr Grayham would wear the general school teacher formal attire which would include a plain shirt with a tie, plain dark coloured trousers and sensible shoes. Here is a picture of a teacher wearing these garments -

To find this picture i searched 'Male Teacher' in a search engine and this picture which came up backs the stero type of what a teacher usually wears as he is wearing exactly the same as what i described.

Students like Luke Gregory would have to follow a form of school uniform dress code. our school uniform will be the same uniform as the school we are filming in as actors will aready have the right costumes. the general uniform contains white shirts, sweatshirts, black trousers and on occasions blazers. Here is a picture of the school uniform simular to what we are going ot be using -

Time Whisperer - Costume Plot

Props Research And List

A prop is an object that can be used by an actor or actress to further the plot or to add dramatic effect however larger props are used mainly for decoration of a set. there are "hand props" which refer to the smaller objects. The main difference between prop use and set decoration is that if the actor or actress interacts with the object for any reason it is considered decoration, however if it is something that helps with plot development then it is classified as a prop.

Types of prop
Prop weapon: A harmless weapon or firearm, swords are blunted, and firearms are gas operated but do not have ammunition where effects can be added later.

Hero prop: an item of significance to the hero that is unique to that one character, for example Thor's hammer in Thor.

Breakaway objects: Otherwise known as "stunt" objects, these are props that would usually be used in fight sequences to emphasize the destructiveness and make much more dramatic. A very famous example would be a glass bottle that when hit over someone's head, would smash into piece. (not harming the actor).

Now that I have researched props I can make a Props list for our film.
Here is the props list for our film opening:

Prop List by

Target Audience Feedback

The feedback that we had from our target audience after we showed them our film treatment was that they said that since it was the type of film that they were interested in that they found it to be a very interesting and thought provoking plot and that they would go and watch it if it were being shown in the cinemas.

We took note of this feedback and thought about any ways that we could change our movie to make it better, but decided that from our feedback that we were pleased with our film opening and we just had to be careful not to make any mistakes that could change our target audiences opinion of our film opening. 

Storyboard

Time whisperers storyboard

Storyboard research

Storyboard research

A storyboard can benefit many people, such as the script write. It can benefit them by helping them picture the scene as they are writing the script.
It can also benefit the directors as they are creating the film, they can set up the scene and the actors to match the storyboard that was created.
It would help the producers also, because it would show them what to edit.It will also benefit the lighting engineers; it will show them if it’s meant to be set in a dark room or a very bright room. It can benefit the actors by helping them understand what they must do in the scene; this will make sure that they don’t mess up. It will also benefit the camera operator by showing them what camera angles and shots would be used while filming, and finally the other people it could benefit would be the location scout and the props master, it could show them the location they’re meant to be in and the weather it’s meant to be. It would benefit the props person by helping them decide what props must be used and what time era its set in.

On the Internet it shows the many roles involved in filmmaking, there are:
-       Production
-       Directing
-       Location
-       Art
-       Sets
-       Construction
-       Props
-       Costume
-       Hair and makeup
-       Special effects
-       Sound
-       Camera
However in our film we don’t have enough people for these roles so we will be doing:
-Directing
-Camera
-Location scout
-Props master
-Script writing

Script research and script

Script research

A script has many conventions, all of these conventions are important to the filmmaking process, these include:
-Stage directions usually in brackets before the characters dialogue
-Names of characters above dialogue (these are printed in capital)

-Location that the scene is taking place in
-Shot types and angles of the camera whilst filming
-Film Title and scriptwriter on front page
-Scene number
This is just a very basic list of what is included in a script

Script.

Time Whispers

Film treatment and an audio recording of our film treatment

Film Treatment – Time whispers

Audio film treatment

Film treatment research

For our film treatment research we went to this website and applied the information we found to our own film, this helped us create our film treatment for our film.


Film Treatment Research

Film idea discussion

My production team

So our whole class all got put into groups to create the opening of a film. My group consists of James Minton and Jordan Holmes, here are their film pitches.

Jordan





James

My individual film pitch

TAP (Target Audience Profile

TAP (Target audience profile)

A target audience is who we expect to watch our film and who we target it at. This is who we are planning to target our film at:
Our film rating will be 12, this is because we don't have any swearing or severe violence in our film but we do have threatening thoughts being voiced and slight violence. The age we are targeting is from 12-25 and the majority will be white males.

There are specific ways to measure class, our class rating is E/D. Our film will be viewed on places such as, youtube or at a shorts festival, this is because it is not professionally made and we don't have a budget to put it on any bigger screen. Audiences could find out about our film from social networking such as facebook and twitter since we also don't have the budget to do big advertising.

Here is a link to the BBFC, there is a list of classifications on the left that will explain more about the ages:
Link to BBFC

Our typical target audience member
This is Sam; he is a 19-year-old white male. He enjoys films such as Casino Royale, Inception, Donnie Darko and Taken. He has currently applied to Leeds University to do a media course. He lives in his family home and spends most of his time playing Skyrim. He has accounts on both Facebook and Twitter in which he uses on a regular basis. He loves going to film festivals with friends. His preferred music taste is Indie.

Current Thriller Target Audiences

This is an action thriller that has a similar target audience to ours, as you can see most of the viewers are male and are aged between 15-24.

These screen grabs are from 

Pearl and Dean

This is also a similar movie with our target audience, it is action, thriller and crime and once again the main viewers are males aged 15-24.

However our target audience slightly differentiates in comparison to these thrillers as we have discussed and considered our class to be of ‘D/E’ origin whereas theirs has seemed to be most popular with people of class C1.

Thriller Conventions

There are many conventions of thrillers, conventions are what audiences expect to see when they watch a thriller. Audiences expect to see the thriller from the protagonists point of view, this makes them feel as if they're part of the film and the events are actually happening to them. 

Sound in thrillers 
The conventions of thrillers are possibly creaking doors or eerie music, this is usually done to create suspense in the scene and to keep the audience on edge. (might include)

Characters in thrillers
The characters can vary. Usually there is a killer or a ‘villain’ in a sense within psychological, in crime there could be a detective or police officer trying to uncover the crime that has been committed or stop the ‘villain’ from committing these crimes. (must include)

Camera work
Usually the camera will move with the characters, for example if the character is running away from something, this is called a tracking shot. They also use close ups of the characters face to show their emotions. (must include) Also a very popular camera shot is a long shot to show the scenery around them and if there's lots of empty space then that can also make the character wonder what's going to happen next and if something is going to fill the empty space. (must include)

Lighting
Low key lighting is used along with the eerie music. (must include)

Props
Props would be used such as knives, guns and anything that can be used in a threatening way towards anyone. Fake blood is used as make up on characters and for setting a scene. (might include) 

Now a lot of conventions in thrillers are shared with horror films as well, conventions of horror films are, heavy make up, dark corridors and a lot of death, whereas, thrillers don't include a lot of death or heavy make up, this is because thrillers only want to create suspense, not outright terror.

Deconstruction of scenes from famous/popular thrillers

This is my deconstruction of silence of the lambs.

Deconstruction of silence of the lambs 

Sixth Sense Deconstruction

Thriller Audiences

If I take a movie example from my last post it would be Donnie Darko, only because the audience for that is very specific.

Donnie Darko. While making Donnie Darko there was a chance that it may not be as popular as it was, so the film makers had to make sure people knew what it was about before they chose to see it. They did this by how they advertised it, they advertised it specifically as a psychological thriller that would possibly scare you. Their target audience were mature enough to appreciate the film at 15 and above so they advertised it as not suitable for anyone younger than that.

Thriller audiences are always quite similar no matter the sub-genre. Thriller audiences are usually people old enough to understand the plot and people who want to be put in suspense but also want a movie that makes them wonder a little. A horror does the suspense but horror films don't always have the best plot lines.

Introduction to thrillers

This is my introduction to thrillers research. The Wikipedia definition of a thriller is a broad genre of literature, film and television programming that uses suspense, tension and excitement as the main elements, and that is exactly right,  a thriller is a film that regularly builds suspense, this is what makes them so popular. They build suspense  excitement and uncertainty. Most people think that thriller and horror are the same, but there are many things different about them. Thriller is a work of fiction or drama that holds the audience attention by creating suspense, intrigue and adventure, whereas horror creates feelings of fear, dread, repulsion and dismay. 

Some sub-genres of thriller are psychological thriller, crime thriller and conspiracy thriller. 

Conspiracy Thriller

An example of a conspiracy thriller is also a political thriller, named three days of the condor. Here is a short clip from three days of the condor. 

In conspiracy thrillers the main focus is the conspiracy that has been revealed and how the main character will handle the new information. 

Psychological Thriller

Psychological thrillers focus on the main characters mental state. The perfect example for this genre is donnie darko, this is one of the most famous psychological thrillers. 

Crime Thriller

Crime thrillers are films that focus on the crime, their detection, criminals and their motives.

These movies are very famous thrillers that we could research for our film, especially donnie darko if anyone decides to do a psychological thriller. Two famous thriller directors that could be researched are Alfred Hitchcock and Steven Spielberg.  

Choosing a genre to work with

Choosing a genre to work with was actually more difficult than it sounds, this is because of how many genres there actually are and how difficult it is to work with most of them. We did a mind map of all the genres we could think of to help us choose what genre to work with on our film, here it is:                                                  

At first we had chosen to work with comedy, but Mr Hood was quite sceptical about it, so he set us homework to come up with an original joke that would make him laugh, long story short, everyone failed. However by doing this, it showed us how difficult it is to write comedy because everyone has a different sense of humour. 

The next task we had to do was naming general conventions of genres Mr Hood said, by the end of this task the ones that had the most general conventions were thriller, horror and sci-fi. The genre that we chose to work with however was thriller, this is because horror and sci-fi require too much technology that we don't have. Thriller doesn't require as much technology as sci-fi.

Film Ident Research

For my film ident research I must first know the difference between a distributing movie studio and a film production company. The difference is that a distributing film studio is a company or person responsible for the advertising and marketing of the film. They are also responsible for setting the date of the film release, whereas, a film production company handles budgeting, scripting, scheduling, the supply of talent and resources, post-production, production and organisation of staff.

Next I must deconstruct movie studio idents, the most famous ident I have chosen is:

I think that the studio chose this name and image together because they matched well, the Universal studios ident is an image of the earth and the space around it, essentially meaning the universe, so the two would fit together and make sense. Another reason could be that the studio would be very popular around the world. Whenever a film is from universal studios the ident is usually on for 21 seconds and it is accompanied by dramatic music that has an abrupt ending as the ident fades.I think this ident is successful because there are many big film associated with universal, such as, Jurassic park, billy Madison and dragonheart.

Another ident I've decided to decided to deconstruct is:

Orion is a smaller studio than universal but it still has some big movies on its film list. This studio chose this image because it is one that most people will know about because it is an image of orions belt in space, which is visible from earth. The name was also chosen along with it. The orion ident is usually on screen for 18 seconds and is accompanied by a building soundtrack that reaches a crescendo as the ident fades. The soundtrack the accompanies this very well because it fits the ident as its running. This ident isn't as well known as universal but the films it has on it's list are quite popular. These most popular and well known film in the list is the silence of the lambs. The thing that stands out the most in this ident is the logo of course, but the colour of the background helps it stand out because its so dark and the logo is much more bold and bright.

While constructing my own ident I will need to consider how attractive it must be to the audience I'm trying to reach, I must make sure that the ident and the ident name I choose must fit well together like Orion and Universal do. I must also make my ident stand out by choosing the right colours, choosing bright colours can make it stand out but like Orion I would want to use dark colours for the background and brighter colours for the actual name to make it stand out.

Titles research

 We researched film titles using Art of the title, this helped us look up thriller films that were similar to our own and see how the titles were handled.

We also watched a film called Brief History of Title Design.

Film Opening Research

In films there are a sequence of things that happen before the actual film begins. These are the actors appearing in these films, the company idents, the title of the film and many more things involved in the film making process. Some movies however don't show any of these until the actual movie has started, for example a movie that I have done is called a knights tale and it does this. In the movie it starts with a few lines of text then the film starts without naming actors or anyone involved in the production of the film, only after the movie has started do the actual film opening begin.
I did film opening research on three films, they are posted below.

Spiderman 

I Robot 

A Knights Tale 

Preliminary Task

For my preliminary task we had to film a short film of a character opening a door  walking across a room, sitting at a table and sharing a few lines of dialogue with another character, the getting up and walking away. In my group were James Minton and Callum Harris. Our task had to be completed twice, We do not have a copy of our first draft but by having done the first draft we had many things to improve on.

Editing:

- In our first attempt our editing of our sound was incredibly terrible, we had no sound and any sound we tried to record sounded like a robot. This gave us the idea to keep our original soundtrack and just add music when no one was talking, this turned out very well in our second draft. 

Another editing problem was that we had cut a shot too early and one our our characters foot jumped from one position to another. This was once again fixed in our second film.

Framing

- Our framing was good in our film and we followed the rule of three throughout it, however we had to be careful of not cutting off any characters. We did this a few times with one of our main characters and ended up cutting off part of their arm, but we fixed all these things in our second film and we were very cautious with our framing.

Shots

- We used many shots in our film, these included, shot reverse shot, over the shoulder shot, centre shot, close up and point of view shot. Our point of view shot however went quite wrong, the camera was too close to our character face and was not realistic enough.

Finally, without further ado, here is our preliminary task!

Lighting Terminology

There are many lighting terms in film making, all of these are needed to make a clear movie scene. The first lighting term is

Key lighting:

The key light is possibly the most important light in a scene, the key light is used to highlight the form and dimension of the subject.

Back light:

Back light is the source of light is behind the object or character

Fill light:

A fill light is the light, usually from the side of the subject that can soften shadows and illuminate areas not covered by the key light.

This is a diagram of the three point lighting.