16. EVALUATION

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EVALUATION OF THE PROJECT

The brief that I chose required me and my group to create a film opening, horror being the genre that we chose, lasting a maximum of two minutes. Overall I am very pleased with the outcome of our film opening, especially certain camera shots which I feel helped convey the mood and tone. One of these camera shots that I am particularly happy with would be the high angle shot used (at 0:18) when the girl runs in from outside. This makes her look very vulnerable and sets the audience up for something that could happen that is beyond her control. I also feel that the tilted camera shot we used (at around 01:15) when she was walking down the hallway was very effective as it showed a sense of panic and added to the tension of the scene. I particularly loved how the camera angle was slightly slanted, this gave a distorted kind of feeling, almost foreboding what is going to happen. I also feel that the quality of our editing was very good throughout as we made sure that we didn’t cut each camera shot late or too early, we learnt a lot about achieving continuity editing from our preliminary exercise. Another aspect I felt was strong about our film opening was our choice of music to help intensify the mood. I felt that music plays a very important part in all films as it helps support the mood that is being created. Without the music I feel that most films lack something, which is why it is needed most of the time. Especially in horror films I think that music is very important as it amplifies what a person is feeling and the tension of the situation, which is definitely what I think we achieved with our music choice. I also believe that where we chose to place our title and credits was a very good decision as it didn't distract the audience from what was happening. We used the title (at 01:39) to show that a few minutes would have passed from the previous shot. However, even though I am very happy with the finished product there are only a few parts that at times were quite clumsy; this is mainly due to the fact that we were very limited with our technology when filming. The shots that i'm talking about are from the start to when the girl runs into the door. We only had one handheld camera and one microphone so when we were filming outside in the dark (00:00 – 00:10) the quality of these shots was not as good as we would have hoped. Also, the sound quality was not as good as we wanted it, when we were filming outside we had to remove the sound from these shots as the wind got in the way which meant we had to add in sound effects of footsteps instead of using the real sound from the film. I feel that this has impacted slightly on our final product as this makes the beginning look less professional than the rest. But, I do believe that the quality of the filming inside after this bit was very good and made up for the slight mistakes made before.

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

After studying other movies in the genre of horror we were aware that to create an effective opening sequence of our own we must follow some of their conventions. We believed that by mostly keeping to stereotypes and conventions of other horror films like that of those in our research this would make our film opening appear to be far more authentic and recognizable to our audience. Our film opening uses and develops many of the conventions of those in existing horror films such as the use of dark locations, which help create a sense of mystery. We decided that we would use a dark hallway, which represents an isolated location which lends to the idea of "no escape" in horror films. We also used quick editing when it came to the main action of the attack which is often used which makes the scene appear more chaotic and scary. Another convention we followed was that normal teenagers are usually used in horror movies. We thought that we would use ordinary teenagers as this would make the audience more interested and more able to relate to the people in the film, especially as our audience is mostly teenagers. Another conventional technique used in horror films is the use of unsteady camera shots, this makes the audience feel disorientated which goes with the action that happens, we decided to use this as it adds to the tension of the scene. We also used close ups of the victims face because this shows their emotions, which are often used also. Aswell as this it is common in horror films to use a young female victim, and we decided to do this aswell.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

One of the social groups represented in our film is gender. Stereotypically, females are seen as the weaker sex and more unwilling to fight back, and after researching existing horror films this was seen in a few, for example Scream and The Ring. There is commonly a female victim used that is shown to be vulnerable and alone and we decided to follow this in our horror movie opening, which shows the girl trying to run away but getting caught. So with this stereotype in mind, we decided that to use a stereotypical pretty blonde girl and that after the group had split up, the camera would follow where the girl goes, and she would be the one to be attacked and killed without fighting back.Another social group that we represented in our film opening was age. In most horror movies that we have all watched and studied the people in them are usually teen aged. This could be because there are a lot more story lines that can be based around them. We decided to use teenagers in our film opening with our main actress being 19 years old. Aswell as this the storyline was that they were running away from the police at the beginning before they all split up and run away. This can be seen as a stereotype that some teenagers are bad and often get in trouble with the police.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Because we followed the genre of horror very closely I think that film companies that specialize mainly in horror films may distribute this film such as Twisted Pictures. Also maybe it would be a British distributor such as Hammer Films may as this is a company in the UK and this film company is very much known for making horror films which means that these companies probably would attract the audience that our film appeals to. Another example of a film company dedicated to producing horror films is Ghost House Pictures which may distribute our film also. This could be because our film closely follows what these films companies would like to distribute and what they are known for. However it could be seen that Independent film companies would distribute our film due to the fact that it is low budget. Major film companies may not want to distribute our film because the actors in our film are not known or because it's low budget.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

One of the first things that we decided to do was closely decided what the target audience we were aiming our film towards would be. We decided that it would be quite a wide target audience of both males and females aged from around 15 to 30 years old. This age range of people may be likely to go to a cinema to see a film. From studying and watching other horror films, when they contain mild violent scenes they are usually certified as a 15, if they have very violent gory scenes that are certified as an 18. As our film is of the horror genre and included a mild violent scene, we knew that this would not be suitable for a young audience and so decided that our film would be certified as a 15, and so our audience shouldn't be any younger than 15. We also thought that the majority of elderly people would probably not be that interested in horror films and probably would not go to the cinema that often.

How did you address/attract the target audience?

We felt that by sticking closely to original conventions of horror films that this would make it recognizable to our audience and would make them more likely to want to watch our film. We also used the idea of "unanswered questions" which make the audience want to carry on watching and to see the resolution and outcome of the film. For example the audience may want to know who it was that attacked the girl. For our opening sequence we wanted to convince our audience to continue watching the rest of the film, which is why the opening of the film is very important. We felt that if the opening wasn't very good this would not make the audience be interested in watching the rest of our film so we decided to include an exciting opening sequence. Another way that we attracted our target audience was by using characters that they could relate to. As our audience was mostly teenagers we decided to use teenagers in our film. We also made this storyline easy to understand so that the audience would be able to follow on and be aware of what was happening.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

One of things about technologies that we learnt through this process is that all the elements such as the filming, lighting, sound and editing are all needed to create a good piece of work. If one thing is not as good as the rest this can really show during the end product, for us the sound was the hardest part to make perfect. We learnt that it is very demanding to get everything perfect when filming, so it was definitely best to film each shot more than once to avoid having to go back and do it again if we were happy with something. We particularly learnt that it takes a lot of time and effort when editing because every single shot has to be edited perfectly together in order to demonstrate continuity. Due to our limited use of technology, which I feel we handled effectively, we were not able to be completely satisfied with everything mainly due to the fact that the sound and lighting wasn't perfect, but if we were to do this again we would have tested the sound more thoroughly using the microphone before filming it. Another thing we learnt was that it is very time consuming when filming as we had to make sure that each shot was perfect. We learnt that to achieve shots that were still it was best to use the tripod which makes the shots seem much more professional.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking back at our preliminary task, we learnt a lot from this which helped us in our main task, especially concerning using technology such as editing. We were able to familiarize ourselves with how to use the cameras and microphones and this was a good thing. When filming our preliminary most of our group, except one person, had little to no experience concerning filming and editing so this was useful for us to get to know a bit about the technology prior to working on the main task. We were all more knowledgeable on how to achieve continuity editing through the preliminary, as this was the aim of it, which helped us greatly when we came to the main task. One of the main errors we made in the preliminary task was concerning sound, as we filmed a person entering a room the sound from outside the room and so the scene didn’t flow very well when the camera cut to inside the room. We learnt from this and made sure that the sound in our main task should flow better when cutting to a new camera shot. I feel that our main task was of a far better quality then our preliminary task was as we learnt from our errors.

14. CONSTRUCTION - Finishing with Music, Title and Credits

FINALIZING THE MUSIC, TITLE AND CREDITS TO PRODUCE OUR FINAL OUTCOME

From the 24th of March up until the 3rd of April we used this time to finalize our film opening to create the finished product which all our group were to be happy with. Compared to the last draft we have changed a few things to make it better.
This is what we changed:

• The first thing that we did was to tighten up most of the editing as after watching it back it appeared that a few things were not perfect, for example when the girl walks up the stairs our of the shot, we cut about half a second off that, and also off the next shot where she comes in through the door.

• The second thing we did was to sort our a few shots. We rotated the camera shot of her feet walking across the hallway as we did not do this in our draft. We also changed lighting and increased the brightness of the first few shots of the 3 people running as we filmed this bit in the dark and the quality wasn't very good, and the shots were too dark.

• The third thing that we did was to sort our the music that we were going to include. On our previous draft we chose a section of music from the horror film The Ring as it was typical "horror movie" music and thought that it fitted well with our scene as it helped build up tension. However, we chose a different section of music from The Ring for our final draft so it flowed better than it did in our draft. We kept the music constant right from where she was walking up the stairs as we thought this was better. We used dark, low tone music as it fitted with that was happening.
  

• The next thing was to change the position of the title. In our previous draft we had the title fade in on the end shot but we decided to change this. We decided to position it on it's own on a black screen straight after the girl has been attacked where it cuts off. We thought we'd do this as we want it to go into a different scene of the girl dead which would have happened a few minutes later, so we positioned the title there to give the sense that some time has passed. We had also seen this used quite a few times in our research, I saw this on Scream and House of Wax and decided that it was very effective.
  

• The next thing we did was to add the credits. In our previous draft we had not added those in as we hadn't decided on where we wanted them to be. We had decided to position them after the main action, the attack, had happened, so we wouldn't distract the audience from watching the attack. We had them fading in and out while we see the dead body as nothing much is happening at this point, the audience have time to see the credits and the dead body. We didn't make the credits too big or distracting as we thought this was best and didn't want to draw too much attention to them and we also had them going on after the action so we didn't overwhelm the audience with too much going on at once.
  

• Another thing we did was to sort out the sound and sound effects. In the first few shots that we filmed outside of the 3 teenagers running away from the siren it was very windy and we could hear the wind too much when reviewing this bit. We decided to dub out the sound and add in a windy sound effect instead, and only using the piece of dialogue that was said. We also had to add in sound effects of footsteps. In a way I felt a bit disappointed in this, but as we filmed it with the sound quality not so good we had to do this.
  

Here is the final version which is finished:





Our final version can also be seen on the DVD as is the preliminary task.

13. CONSTRUCTIUON - Day 2 of Editing

EDITING TOGETHER EVERYTHING WE'VE FILMED

After finishing our filming, we got together again as a group and decided to edit it together to try come up with our finished product. We used the skills we learnt from the preliminary to help us achieve continuity editing.
Following our storyboard we edited the shots in the order that their appeared, then viewed what this looked like. We decided that we would make a few changes as some things didn't turn out how we thought that they would on the story board. Next we decided to edit the sound of the siren in. We recorded this ourselves as we had a siren, and then put this over the top of the video. We then made it sound quieter as we wanted to make it sound like it was in the distance.


We have yet to finalize the title, credits and music and this is just a draft of how we might do this.
We do know that we want to use music, typical to that in other horror movies, but we have not yet decided on which music that we are going to put over the top and use to create the mood. In this draft we have used a section of music from The Ring. This music is very effective in conveying the mood.
We also are rethinking the place of the title and we have not decided on the credits yet we have yet to do this, all that remains for us to do it make sure we are perfectly happy with our film opening, finalize the credits, title and music.

We have not yet finished, but this is a rough edit of what our film may look like. We have some more editing to do as we are not perfectly happy with all the shots;

Here is what we have so far:

12. CONSTRUCTION - Day 2 of Filming

FILMING THE REST OF OUR FILM OPENING

Today we again, had access to our location (our school), props and cast so we filmed the remaining shots we had left to do, and finished all our filming as all our group was present. Today, we had all our cast members so we were able to film the beginning of our film opening, and any shots that we had decided to re-do from last time. When we arranged our time to meet we arranged a time of 6:00 this time, as last time when we met at 7:00 we ran out of time, so this time we made sure we had enough time to finish it. We had told the main actress, Angela, that she must wear exactly the same clothes and jewelers, and have her hair the same as last time, in order to avoid any continuity errors. We made sure that the location was exactly the same as last time also.


The equipment that we had with us this time was a tripod and video camera, this time we had a microphone for the speaking bits. We brought our final storyboard again so we could follow it as we filmed. We brought our checklist of shots so we knew what we had left to do and what we needed to re-do from last time.



First of all, we decided to film the scene that we were unable to film in the last session, which was the scene of 3 people running away, and then splitting up. Our idea was to suggest that they had committed some sort of crime so we would hear a siren in the background so the audience would know why they were running. We decided that when editing we would edit the sound of the siren in over the top so we could manipulate how loud we wanted it to be. We followed our story board, and finished this part. However, we had a few issues with this part of the filming; as it was very windy we had a bit of trouble with sound. In this part of our film opening we decided to use a microphone because of this issue, and this proved to work a lot better and the sound was heard a lot better. Next we decided to film the shots that we decided we wanted to re-do from last time. We took a note of why the previous shots didn't work, and filmed them in a different way to last time. Next we filmed the remaining shots that we had left. One shot which required us to film in our school sports hall looking up into the window where the hall we were filming is. While we were filming this, 1 of us went down into the sports hall, and the other 2 stayed in the hall, we were on the phone to each other so we could easily direct the filming and the actors. Next we filmed the scenes where it cuts away from the hall and goes to the other 2 actors at the start who split up from Jade, we decided to film these in a well lighted area using a black backdrop to give the effect that they were outside, we decided against filming in the actual outside as it was pretty dark and the lighting wouldn't be good for filming. After we would edit this piece of film to make it looks more realistic.


Here are an album of the pictures I took while was filming today:

To view the album if slide show doesn't work:
http://s64.photobucket.com/albums/h185/Dannideluca/Media%20Filming%20DAY%202/?albumview=grid


After all this, we reviewed all the shots we had done today and made sure that we had done everything we needed in order to make sure that we didn't have to come back after finding out we forgot any shots.

11. CONTRUCTION - Editing

EDITING WHAT WE HAVE SO FAR

Today after again reviewing everything that we had filmed yesterday, we got together as a group and we edited together the parts that we filmed just to see whether it was going to be good enough. We are very happy with what we have done so far.

Here is our progress so far:




We have not finished yet, but this is a sequence that we might put together. We are going to discuss whether the part where the girl gets killed will be at the beginning as a flashback or whether it will happen at the end. Once we film the rest we will decide what looks best.

During the reviewing process of all the shots that we had done in this filming session, we decided that there were definitely a couple of shots that we would like to re-do as they weren't filmed exactly how we wanted them. What we learnt from this was that we should have reviewed our shots more while we were filming as we could have just refilled the bits that we needed while we were out on location, which would have saved us a lot of time.

10. CONSTRUCTION - First Day Of Filming

FILMING HALF OF OUR FILM OPENING

Today we had mostly everything we needed (costumes/props/cast etc) and had access to our location, so we were able to film half of film opening. However, one of our group members, Lottie, was unable to attend this filming session. So present was Me, Jack and Hannah. We worked around this by distributing her role from that session to everyone else in the group.
We scheduled to meet at our location at 7pm as we needed it to be dark, but this proved to be a bit of a problem as we didn't have enough time to film everything we wanted to from that session due to the restrictions of being in our location that late. We learned from this that during our next filming session we would schedule to meet at an earlier time of 6 so we could have more time.


The equipment that we had with us for this filming session included a tripod and a video camera with a built in microphone. We decided that as this part of our filming doesn't involve much dialogue we wouldn't need another microphone at this point. We had all the props that we needed including the fake blood, the costume for the creature and the mobile phone.


We also brought with us our final storyboard so that we could follow it as we filmed, and a checklist of all the shots and Hannah would tick them off as we went so we would know what we had left to do for the next filming session.
As well as all this we thought it would be good to take a digital camera with us so as we filmed hannah would be taking pictures to show the process of this filming session and things such as props and the location.


As we only had our main actor, Angela, were filmed the bits that only her were in, which were from when she enters the door right up to the end shot. We decided we would film in the order that our shots came in on the storyboard as this would be easier for us.
First we filmed from our first location which was where she comes in through the door. (We would have previously seen her running from the other side in the shot before it) We filmed this is a variety of ways, using long shots, mid shots and close up's and then we would later decide which one to use, or which combination to use. After this, we filmed in our second location, her going up the stairs. We also filmed this in a variety of ways, from behind of her going up the stairs, in front of her, and at the top of the stairs while she was walking up. Next we filmed in the main location of the hall. We filmed her coming through the door into the hall (we would have previously seen her coming through the door on the other side after climbing the stairs)
After this, we skipped many shots and decided that we would do these on our second day of filming as we were running out of time. We filmed our last few shots of the dead body, using the fake blood that we made, and filmed this from a variety of different angles.



Here are some of the pictures that I took whilst we were filming on this day.

View this album if the slideshow doesn't work:

http://s64.photobucket.com/albums/h185/Dannideluca/Media%20Filming%20DAY%201/?albumview=grid

9. PLANNING - ORGANISATION OF FILMING

ORGANIZING WHEN TO FILM

During our lessons and meeting up on Tuesday the 3rd, Wednesday the 4th and Thursday the 5th, As a group we have decided on our final idea, and have our final draft of the storyboard ready and we decided that we had done enough research and planning so that we could start the filming. We decided to devise a list and discuss everything that we will need to make sure that the filming goes as good as it can.

Here are some of the things that we have discussed and finalized:

Times and Locations
Our location we are going to film in is our school, and we are going to use a few different areas in our school like some stairs, a hallway and just outside to film in. We decided on this location as we have easy access to this place and some of the areas we have looked at have a very dark mysterious feel. It didn't really matter to much on the location as we wanted it to be a random place that the girl runs into, just as long as the place looked like it would easily accompany the action that was going to take place which was the killing. We have decided to start our filming on Monday the 9th of March, due to the fact that the school is open late on Mondays, so we thought that we may have enough time to finish half of our filming on this day. As we need it to be dark for our filming we are going to meet at 7.00pm and we believe that this will give us enough time to film.

Props
We have have made sure that we will have all the props we need for our filming on that day. I will be providing the costume for the creature and Jack will be buying the food coloring, cornflour and water for the blood and have a mobile phone.
The props are:

• Fake Blood - Cornflour, water and food coloring to make it

• Black sheet/costume with a hood and a black wig for the creature

• Mobile Phone

Actors/Actresses
Our main actress has told us that she will definitely be able to make it on Monday so we will film the scenes with only her in.

Equipment
We will make sure that we have the equipment needed to film all that we needed on this day.

• Video Camera and Tripod

• Camera to take photos

• Microphone

We made a list with all these things on, so we would make sure that we wouldn't forget anything for our filming.


Click the picture to make it bigger.


We will be starting our Filming on Monday 9th of March.