Filmed Evaluation

Weekly Update 04/4/11

Today we have evaluated other groups videos and had our production evaluated. We were surprised about some of the high marks that we got. Some of the comments we were given were more than justified as we agreed with the faults mentioned.

Finished Horror Film

Weekly update 30/3/11

Tomorrow is the deadline so today we are finishing our editing. Our film is coming together, but is still not as good as we originally hoped for. But hopefully we will be okay.

Test Shot

 With make up

Without make up

As you can see, the make up we used is very minimal

Question 9 - What was your contribution to the process during the planning, production and post-production stages?

My contribution towards the planning of the film was to help think of the original plot in which we all threw our ideas together and came out with our story and the title with ‘Don’t Turn Around’ with was thought of by me. During the production we all took turns in directing and filming various shot types e.g. close ups and long shots. I also arranged the actor for our group on the date that Mart had scheduled as he sorted out our location. During the post production stage, I didn't have that much input on the editing, but mainly focussed on sorting the blog out and making sure that was up to date. James and I originally created a soundtrack but we decided not to use this one and another was created. I have had an input in putting sound onto the film which we have done very recently.

Question 4 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The horror genre typically represents a number of different social groups as all different types of people can like different things, but traditionally social groups that most view horror films would be people between the ages of 15-21, mostly male. This may be because people under the age of 15 may be too scared to watch these types of things and people older may not have enough time.

When filming, we used a male actor as we knew that males consumed the most horror films. The clothes that were used were not typical clothing for conventional horror films, as the clothing was very plain. Other mise-en-scene such as make up was also not used in a conventional horror film way as would be thought of, as we didn’t use things like dark black eyeliner, just very faint make up that wasn't noticeable.

As shown on the photos below, the make up we have used is not obvious at all and the actor we have used is male.

Question 9 - What was your contribution to the process during the planning, production and post-production stages?

I participated in the different stages in our group, from planning to the finish of our work.
During the process of planning, same as other group members, I did the location research, including taking photos and drawing pictures for demonstration. After we decided the location and the story of our horror film, I also take part in the story board produce and I drew part of the story board along with other group members. Meanwhile, I did the research on the former students' works in order to gain some experience from them.
During the process of shooting, the job was finished by the effort of the whole group and the work was fairly shared by each member of the group. During this stage, I completed some useful shots for our group.
During the stage of editing and soundtrack making, I did part of the jobs from both sides. With Ashley and Martin, I made two soundtracks which can be used in our film and I did some editing mainly with Martin to make our raw footages become a fluent clip.

Question 7 - What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

During the process of the constructing we used different types technologies and media.
Internet was often used as a very good tool of searching materials, for example, our idea of title came from the picture we saw online. Blogger is a platform on which we keep our record of how the whole product developed, and it is displays the work we finished. Imovie is the major and necessary software we use during editing. We found it very suitable for us as primary learner to use as it has a lot of functions which are very easy to operate. This allows us to make the most of raw footage and turn them properly into complete work. Also it helps us to make the work more creative, as a lot of special effects are provided in the software. Garageband is another apple software we apply to create the soundtrack for our film. Even though we cannot use the mature artists' music as soundtrack, we use garageband to compose our own soundtrack without much difficulty. Garageband contains a variety of basic music elements of which we can link with each other to create our unique soundtrack, for example, we mix the distract of church bell ringing and the sound of footsteps to make a soundtrack which goes along well with our church theme.
Therefore our process of constructing the work is based on a series of technologies in different stages.

Question 9 - What was your contribution to the process during the planning, production and post-production stages?

For our film I worked in a group consisting of 3 boys, myself, Ashley and James. During the planning stages of the horror film project I had a very hands on approach and came up with core ideas that were then followed up on by the other members of the group and together we created very strong ideas for our film. My main role in the planning stage was research and location finder. I think I did an excellent job in finding and gaining permission to use St. Matthews Church, Pentrich as our church location as it was a perfect setting and created the mysterious mood and atmosphere that we as a group felt was needed. For the research jobs I did a lot of research on IMDB on existing horror film and watched a lot of scenes from existing horror films on YouTube to find out what type of scene or certain action was liked the best by the audience which would be from a film that was a psychological horror film. In the production stages of our horror film project, when on location all three of us filmed scenes by ourselves and when we weren’t filming behind the camera we were in front of the camera directing our actor and actress on the script and continuity. Once we had filmed everything and got back into the MAC suite, I did a lot of the timing editing by ‘stitching’ everything in time and making sure everything. I did a lot of the editing and also helped with the soundtrack on GarageBand. My role was more based towards the editing role, with James targeting the soundtrack and Ashley doing titles and credits.

Question 8 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

The main difference between the preliminary task shoot and the actual project was that we had a location to film on. After we brainstormed our ideas initially when we first started thinking about producing our horror film I knew exactly where we would film and I was quite insistent on it. The other members in the group were soon turned to my idea for the location and we all agreed that it was brilliant. We learnt a lot from our preliminary task, one of the things we learnt was to film a shoot from many angles and get timing along with continuity absolutely bang on so when we get to editing it, the editing stage become much easier as the shots fall into place easier without much editing time wise. We learnt about camera movements while shooting the preliminary task. After looking through our footage it was very apparent that we either moved the camera too little and created a jump cut or moved the camera so much that when played back the scene looks very dodgy. If I were to do the production for our film again I think I would try to film as soon as possible even if we don’t use much of what we film on the first shoot. I would organise everybody in the production team and allocate each one a precise job that gives them a specific detailed job to do each week so we don’t just come to class then make a plan of what we are going to do in the class time. 

Question 6 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media project and why?

After looking at films that are similar to our group’s film, the distribution companies appear to be small independent companies but when they are traced back to the parent companies it is more than likely that one of the big companies owns them for example Sony, Universal, Fox Entertainment Group are some of the big parent companies. Looking at a British film, ‘28 Days Later’ the production company is ‘DNA Films’ with the distribution company being ‘20^th Century Fox’. As DNA Films is a relatively small company it means that they would concentrate more closely to the production of a film. If our film was to be produced professionally I think that choosing a smaller company that has links to bigger companies is key as to become successful you need ‘a door to the next level’ and having good relations with multinational distribution companies like Fox Entertainment Group is a big pull to going with a company like DNA Films. I would like to think that DNA Films would use our film as they do ‘proper’ British films that you wouldn’t get a foreign production company taking on a project. To produce a successful film is no good if you don’t have a great distribution and marketing company behind you as you need the expertise in marketing to draw in the box office revenue. By using a big distribution company the film would already have a head start on other films that aren’t being distributed by a big company as it wouldn’t have the reputation or pull power to close deals.   

Question 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

• We think we targeted our intended audience quite well as the actor we used was relevant to the research we did and the setting and theme of the clip also fitted well.
• The soundtrack that we have made suits the film and will attract the target audience as

Update 21/03/11

Today, we have scanned in a lot of work from our folder and continued to edit our clip.

Release Form

This is the release form that we had to get our actors to sign; Jack Caudwell and Betty Taylor

Health & Safety Certificate

We had to get written permission from the church in order to film there.

Title Research

We had to evaluate titles from movies, so that this could help us when designing ours.

Lighting Design Sheet

This is the lighting we decided to use, we feel it gave us a very natural feel about the film.

Recce Sheets

This is the recce sheet we have done as a research on the location we prepared to film at.

Film Outline

This is our film outline with time and shot types, according to which we will shoot our horror film.

Evaluation of previous students work.

We evaluated previous students' works to learn some experience from where they had done well and bad. 

Textual Analysis Grid's

We did the textual analysis grids as a research on professional horror films to find about the conventions in this genre.

Storyboard

This storyboard shows how our films will be generally like with the pictures we drew.

Update 14/03/11

Today we continued with the continuity editing.

Update 07/03/11

After our initial shoot we started to edit out the bad clips and kept the better clips for further editing. As the screenshot shows the majority of the film isn't edited as we are doing continuity editing before we do anything major.

Question 1 - What did you make, who did you work with and where did the original idea come from?

• We are going to produce a short psychological horror film about a depressed boy walking into a church and finding the unexpected.
• We reaseached psychological horrs on IMBD which is also on the blog.
• The initial idea came from all of us brainstorming and putting various ideads together and we came us with the church idea. We knew Mart had connections with the church so we thought we might aswell make the most of it.
• Our production hasn't gone aswell as we hoped for, but we have made the most of what we have got.

Question 3 - Who would be the audience for your media project?

We used the IMDB website for research earlier in the year and found out that males tend to watch horror films the most in general with a age group of 18-29. Using this research as a guideline we set our age rating at 15 as we feel that if the film we create is a 18 it limits the audience who would be able to see it and takes out the under 18 group of the audience whom we think 'sets the bar' for films, i.e. if the younger people like a film and review it well other older people are more likely to go and see it if as they might have been a little wary at first as they might have thought it may have been childish.

We think that this group is associated to horror films as males like to be scared and have the feeling that they don't know what’s going to happen even if they have watched the horror film a lot of times. The fearing of the unknown is a big point for horror films. The audience watches them knowing that they will get scared but they still watch them as they want to get scared.

We are going to use the information above and the information that we have researched by putting different bits of 'scariness' that we have seen and the effects that is effective to the audience. If we target the audience in the right way and use the effects and styles of horror films that they like to see then we think are horror film could be a success.

Question 2 - In which ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

1. The forms and conventions in horror films refer to the traits which can be often seen in the horror films, including different technical aspects. These conventions help make the film more frightening and the supernatural scenes more convincing. The film I have studied is Van Helsin, which is a very typical vampire film. The conventions in this film include characters designed in Gothic style, dark lighting, etc.
2. The result of the research helps us find and learn the forms and conventions in horror films. The conventions and forms can be used as models which we can simulate and reproduce in our own films as these are the conventions in successful and professional films, for example we can learn how the soundtracks in the films are used and apply this to our own soundtrack produce through garage band. This is very important because if we do not carry out the research, we will not have enough experience which makes sure that our work can be effective and close to professional level.
3.  We did not challenge the conventions. Even though we have done a lot of research and learned a lot of relative knowledge on lesson, our experience of practice is still not sufficient enough for us to challenge or  break the conventions in an obvious way. The challenge will be reasonable and necessary only after we have comprehensive understanding of film making and practiced a lot. If we want to break conventions, a lot of unexpected situations will happen, which increases the time we will spend.

IMDB Research

Update 24/01/11

Today we have put the soundtrack with the opening titles as shown below. We had some technical difficulties when trying to import the GarageBand soundtrack into iMovie but after a few attempts we managed to sort it out and get the track imported. We are not sure if the soundtrack accompanies the title sequence so we will probably change it at a later date.
We are still planning to film on Wednesday and will upload the footage as soon as we can.

Improvements on soundtrack

After listening to the soundtrack that we made last week we thought that the 'foot steps' sound should start off quiet and get louder and louder as the soundtrack progressed. To achieve this effect we had to split the clips up and ended up with a separate tracks for each section. We are very pleased now with how it sounds.

Copyright issues found and resolved

We thought that we might have copyright issues with using a photo from 'PhotoBucket', we looked into the terms and conditions of the website and found that any photo uploaded is copyright free as shown in the highlighted section of the print screen above.

Titles

Today we have designed some titles that we think look quite good and will suit our film. Above is an example or the first page.

Potential Soundtracks

We were experimenting on GarageBand and created another soundtrack which contrasts to our original attempt. After discussing the new soundtrack we felt that it portrayed someone walking or traveling somewhere. This might work well with the clips that it goes onto as it could play when the monster is creeping up on the main character.

Update 24/01/11

Today, we have attempted to make our titles. We have a good idea of what we are going to do, once we have clear picture of a gravestone in the church yard.

We plan to film, around the Wednesday 9th or 16th Feb, but this may change depending on the availability of the church.

We have also have been looking at fonts on the website above.

Special Effects/Make-up Research

We did some research into special effects and make-up. We decided on a burnt, bruised look. We feel that the burnt effect that is shown in the video is easy to make and would be quickly applied as we wouldn't want to keep our actors/actresses for along time in make-up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIoD1wJ37eQ

Script

TITLE SEQUENCE

EXT. ST. MATTHEWS CHURCH, PENTRICH – EARLY EVENING

(shots from outside of the church, up the step.)

MAIN CHARACTER

Walks around and up to the church, notices old headstones.

(looks scared)

INT. ST MATTHEWS CHURCH, PENTRITCH – EARLY EVENING

(shots from inside the church, a view from the door and the pulpit.)

MAIN CHARACTER

Enters church looking upset and distressed, looking for some peace and quiet.

(sniffling, walking down the aisle to the front row and takes a seat.)

‘MONSTER’

LIGHTS GO OUT

LIGHTS TURN BACK ON

Appears on a pew 4 rows across and behind the main character.

MAIN CHARACTER

(confused.)

‘MONSTER’

LIGHTS GO OUT

LIGHTS TURN BACK ON

Appears on a pew 3 rows behind the main character.

MAIN CHARACTER

(confused.)

LIGHTS GO OUT

LIGHTS TURN BACK ON

‘MONSTER’

Appears on a pew 2 rows across and behind the main character.

MAIN CHARACTER

(confused again.)

LIGHTS GO OUT

LIGHTS TURN BACK ON

‘MONSTER’

Appears on a row 1 row behind the main character.

MAIN CHARACTER

(looking around, confused. wipes a tear from right eye.)

Hello, who’s there?

LIGHTS GO OUT

LIGHTS TURN BACK ON

‘MONSTER’

Disappears

MAIN CHARACTER

(turns around to look at the row behind, there is nothing there)

‘MONSTER’

Re-appears on the row in front of the main character.

MAIN CHARACTER

(turns back around to face the front.)

‘MONSTER’

(smiles scarily and smugly in MAIN CHARACTERS’ face.)

LIGHTS GO OUT

END

GarageBand introduction.

Today we have had a little introduction to GarageBand, the program that we will create our soundtrack on.

After a little playing around, we think that we have created a soundtrack that is quite good and represents our film.

There are 12 church bells ringing in the background with a sort of dark, techo beat playing on top of the bells.

We feel that having the bells ringing is a good representation of our film as it is being shot in a church.

Update since last post.

Its been a while since we last posted on here, but since then there has been some movement on the horror film front. 

Although there has been a change of Vicar, we have permission from the church to film our film there, we do not have a date to film yet but we plan to do our first soon mid-february time.

We just about have our actors sorted, there is just one more person we need to ask.

Our storyboard and script is now complete and will hopefully be scanned on soon. 

Our planning folder was handed in last week, we felt the information in there was to a reasonably good standard.