Saved screenshots of our progress on garageband

Some Saved printscreens with the progress of the film

Lighting Design Sheet

Health and Safety certificate

Release form For Actors

Textual Analysis Grids

Media evaluation 5,8,9

Media evaluation 5,8,9


5.


We intended to attract our audience by making the video raise tension whilst not revealing too much about the threat or story line. The way we wanted to attract the audience is by making them jump or trying to create a lot of tension in a short sequence. This is done by using sound to help create tension and the sounds we used were very loud so people knew where exactly the threat was without having to see them or give them any visual indication.

We also wanted to attract the audience due to how we tried to make our piece similar to the film paranoid activity which was massively popular with the younger audience. That is where we got our idea of having a majority sound based film. Paranoid activity used sounds very well throughout without seeing very much of the threat. This worked well with the modern audience and we were hoping that because they might’ve seen that that our film would make them think that this will also be scary or similar.

In our film we used shots that made the audience relate and empathise with our character because of them being close ups. Some of the shots even involved the character looking directly into the camera. This was to make the audience feel close to her and like shes looking directly at them. This could make them want to watch more to see what happens to her due to them now feeling more like they can relate.





8.

I believe that we have learnt many things since our first film and that we have greatly improved our knowledge of what works in filming. This project has helped us learn about such things about continuity which at the start of filming we paid less attention to with people using either different props or using a different hand to hold that prop. Also that they have to be constantly on the same foot when walking otherwise it looks jagged and bad. Other things about this include the lighting we use and making sure it does not change from the shots, this is why filming at night is useful due to it being constantly the same darkness.

Also we have greatly improved our knowledge of how to make the shots look more interesting and using a variety of shots helps the piece become less boring and more upbeat. We tried to use as many shots as possible during our filming, but since our filming was done in a bedroom we couldn’t get some shots in. we have discovered that we would need a bigger location next time to get a better amount of action and more freedom of what we could do. With our first piece we had a lot of shots but as we noticed some went on for far too long we tried to make the second one not have longer than 5 seconds per shot otherwise the audience get bored.



9.

I believe that my contribution consisted of brainstorming with Joe about what sort of idea will be needed for the product and we both at first decided zombie. Since then we learned that it would be difficult to make it seem scary when it’s a zombie film. Our second idea was a ghost one, this is because we both watched and enjoyed a lot of ghost films. We thought that sounds were far more effective than seeing the ghost.



The planning in our group was split almost completely down the middle and we have done equal amounts on that. Since the location was near me I tended to do most of the research on the location whilst Joe did the shot lists and other things like that. The location reccee sheet was on our first location which we initially assumed we were going to use but since that location became unavailable near the deadline we couldn’t do up another reccee sheet in time.

During the production of the product I tended to do a lot of filming and Joe directed the pieces that he did not film, this was during the first filming. But during the second filming we also had a lot of input into the shooting and directing of the product which again was split between the both of us equally.

Also the editing in our piece was done by initially me cutting down the scenes and putting them into order along with making sure the continuity is right. That was then followed by Joe making sure that they flowed well and putting in transitions the music and us both at the end putting in the titles.

 Evaluation Questions 6,7 & 9

6. Looking at common British horror films, there are not many that are very similar to our project, the only similar ones are low budget, self published titles, so they did not really make it into the mainstream society to gauge the audience research, instead they are short, online films. None of these videos I would not use the similar techniques they have to distribute the film. The best footsteps to follow in are Paranormal activities. They gave a clear indication as to audience reactions and essentially challenging people to NOT be scared by the film, using the audience reactions in the trailer. Doing this would hopefully have a similar effect on our film, challenging the audiences to not be scared. I would use paramount pictures if any distribution company, because they have the right idea to ensure people go to watch our film, for the right reasons. Other companies would not understand horror films like paramount do, and may give off the wrong signals of our film, making people see it because they might find it funny, not scary. Giving the wrong signals of this film would not only damage the reputation of the film and our production label, but also attract the wrong type of audience, meaning any audience research carried out would be invalid data for what we would intend to use it for.

7. Making this film, I personally have learnt a fair amount about the simple, basic elements of the technology used. Firstly, the camera. The video camera we used, I had no clue on how to use it to begin with, didn’t have a clue on how to white balance, focus, zoom, anything. Putting the use into practice making this film, we quickly picked up on the techniques on how to do these things, and do them well. During the editing stage, I personally was sceptical as to how well this could be with the default mac software iMovie. I had originally thought it would be very bad, considering it came built in with the mac for free, it was clearly not professional software. To my surprise, there were so many effects and transitions on offer. Giving us a wide range of tools and SFX to use to improve on the video. Garageband offered a wide range of ready made sounds for us to import straight to imovie to our film, but none of these were really the sound we were looking for. Luckily, we learnt how to create our own music track with the on screen keyboard, controlled by the keys on the computer keyboard, and it even allowed to to change the octave for an amazing sound of mixed pitches. I did not know anything about garageband before using it for this project, but since using it now, I feel it did allow us to be a lot more creative with the soundtrack, as the tracks on offer in the database did not fit our sub-genre of horror film.

9. With just 2 people in our group, the work could be split much easier between 2 people rather than 3. me and alex decided to try and split the work as evenly as possible. The planning was simple enough, he did the script, I did the storyboard, and the rest was as evenly split as it could have possibly been. The filming was a little trickier. With our first attempted film, the one we had abandoned, alex did a lot of the filming. But on our final piece, we had split that even aswell, doing a shot each, constantly conferring with each other to see if we were both satisfied with the shots. Editing was difficult. Because alex was a much better editor than me, we decided to let him do the bult of the cutting, and placing of the clips, while I sorted out the transitions, added sounds, and the final touch up on the edits, to be sure it was as smooth as possible. The soundtrack was composed by alex, but I had recorded one of the instruments while he recorded the other for it. And because we struggled to find out how to import the piece to our film, I decided to spend half an hour figuring it out. So all in all, the work was as even between me and alex as it could have possibly been.

Evaluation Questions 1&4

1. Originially, the group that consisted of me, Alex Parsons and Laura Mossendew had planned to create a zombie film. At this point, we already knew it would be incredibly difficult, anticipating the actors being uncoordinated unreliable. With this idea we found we would have to rely heavily on the actors enthusiasm, and since they did not get a mark out of this, this was very difficult to predict. We could not decide on a plot to our film as the majority of zombie films have incredibly similar plots, For example Dawn of the dead and Resident Evil, Both plots involve avoiding dieing by going to a safer area, many other zombie films do the this commonly used plot idea. Unfortunately, Laura had left the group, but luckily, it was at such an early stage, me and Alex had the opportunity to completely change the film. In the end, we had decided on a Ghost/Slasher Genre of horror film, where a girl wakes up in bed, hearing knocks on the door, goes to get a glass of water, not noticing the shadowy figure moving closer and closer to her, while she is oblivious as to his existence. Eventually she hears a noise on the stairs, gets quite a lot more scared than she was in the first place, rushes to her room, while the door to her parent’s room opens by itself. Originally we planned to use a younger child, but we did not know anyone of a younger age to use as the actor in the film, so instead we decided on a teenage girl, which still shows a level of vulnerability, but not at the same level.

4.              This horror genre that we are using for our film is very commonly seen amongst groups of teenagers, as they can see themselves in the situation created, and teenagers always look for ways to challenge themselves at anything, especially getting scared, so watching a good horror film late at night, then hearing noises, if the teenager gets scared at all little noises in the night, you would know the film was a great success. In our film, we supported this by using a fairly average setting, very normal, average props around the house. We didn’t go excessive with what we could use, because for this film to be slightly believable we had to use the kind of stuff the majority of people would have around the house, for example, in our film we had a plug in outside the room, coats on the stair rail, all the normal family stuff, nothing was excessively cleaned or perfectly neat, if it was, the realisem of our film would have been dropped almost instantly, as the teenage audience would not be able to relate as much subconsciously with the character in the film, causing the film to instantly be much less scary. I feel the realisem did find a great balance in our film, considering the highly unrealistic threat, the storyline can be seen as believable for the small detail in the mise-en-scene.

Finished Alex and Joe media film

This is our final film edited, we are glad we had finished and edited it by the deadline.

Evaluation from class

we ended up editing the second video we filmed and it got a 43.5  on average out of 60 from the class with a lot of comments mentioning the lighting and needing to improve continuity.

Horror Film

currently having trouble uploading the video, the internet keeps crashing as i upload so it doesnt go up. i will fix it soon. hopefully before the deadline.

MAJOR PROBLEMS

after shooting what was to be our first base of the film, disaster struck. The owner of the location came across some personal problems and since then, we haven't been able to film there. by this point. we had edited the shots we already had together, and soon realized we needed to re-film some shots. the only way we had to get around this is to COMPLETELY Re-film everything at a different location. which, 4 days before the deadline is a risky move. but it's the only option we had.

Filming Problems

Recently we had planned to go filming, so we got the location sorted and equipment, but the actor was already being used that day for a different film. Because we already have footage of her as the character we could not have used an emergency actor. This is a major downside to using a popular actor amongst the projects.

RECCE SHEET

TEST SHOT

SHOT LIST

STORYBOARD

SCRIPT

Written by

                       Alex Parsons and Joe Louth

Fade in whilst the noise of a tapping foot is constantly playing

Int. Bedroom – Night.

Theres a person view of a persons closed eyes whilst in the background noises are happening. The noise then gets louder until a very loud bang.

The person’s eyes then open suddenly.

It then transitions to a longer shot of the bedroom as the person sits up and looks around.

The person will now look on edge as a tapping noise is in the background.

A Cross dissolve to show the passing of time

The clock in the background will show that time has passed whilst the noises still taking place.

The person then picks up a blunt object slowly and walks towards the door almost tiptoeing.

The noise of tapping then stops when she touches the door handle.

He takes a step back closes his eyes opens them quickly and grabs the door handle quickly and rips open the door

Int. Hallway - Night

(The camera switches to first person.)

She walks down the hallway, stops at a corner she goes to look round the corner.

The camera switches to viewing him and where he came from. In the background is a shadow.

Int Stairs – Night

She’s on the top of the stairs looking down at the darkness except the kitchen which has the light on.

Daisy

Mum? Dad?

No response. As she goes down the stairs she hears footsteps from the room that she is going to enter.

She walks down the stairs getting more nervous as she looks round to the kitchen nothing is there.

Int Kitchen – Night

 The camera follows her checking the kitchen and follows her hand as she gets the drink and puts water in it.

In the background of the shot a figure is stood staring at her.

Then as the close-up of her turning off the light and switches back to look in the kitchen the figure is in the room. Can’t see any features of it.

Camera goes for over the shoulder shot, she stops, turns round to look in the kitchen.

As she looks, the figure has disappeared, but there is a sound now on the stairs

Int Stairs and hallway- Night

 The girl walks upstairs and as she’s walking back to her room you see behind her in her parents room with a arm hanging off the bed with blood dripping off it.

Fade Off when on the bloody hand shot. 






















NOTE: the actual film has stuck to the basic elements of this script, but small parts of it have been taken out and added, for a more interesting and scary film

Editing in progress

so far, the editing is going well, sadly we could not get the location for the next shoot so we have had to postphone the shoot, this is quite risky due to the approaching deadline.. but the re-shoot is definitely needed for the unique sounds we need to create. The clips are flowing very well, better than we had expected, we still need to do the sound tracks over the film. and the title, but these should not take too long. overall we are pleased with the progress being made.

evaluation questions 2 & 3

Our media project challenged some of the codes and conventions that run through a lot of horror films. Even though we tried to stray away from the attitude in horror films of the victim always wanting to check what the noise was in ghost films we couldn’t find an alternative to make it seem realistic.  But in our piece we tried to show as little of the threat as possible and create the majority of the tension with just using noises and close-ups. The noise was a constant beat at the start to make the audience wonder what it is which will eventually build up to a bang at the end I believe that this was a good way to make the tension build.  I believe also that the close ups at the start added to the tension as well this however did go along with the conventions of the horror film as a lot of horror films tend to use close-ups so the audience doesn’t know what’s happening as much.

Our audience for our piece hopefully would be broader than a lot of other genres of horror films. Since ghost isn’t gory or completely full of action it can appeal to both genres and many ages. But our audience which would have the most in it would probably be males aged 14-25 this is due to stereotypically males enjoy horror movies more than girls and that age range will be the most likely to enjoy a ghost movie. The reason that we think our piece would appeal to a larger audience is due to the main character also being female which a female audience would be able to relate to more and the male audience enjoying the horror aspect more. The age of our audience could be higher because that people usually enjoy horror movies over the age of 25 but ghost movies are more appreciated by the younger generation we believe. But under the age of 14 generally will get too scared by horror movies thus we wouldn’t expect many viewings off that also due to our age rating they would not be allowed to watch it but people still do. 14 year old is still under the age rating but they are  still likely watch it. 

This is a quick video we did to touch up on our filming and editing skills, the downside is that we were supposed to make this as close to the actual horror film as possible but our film is mainly set at night in one location, a house, so in the day time outside did not give us much of an option. 

We noticed in the editing a continuity error, with the walking, in one shot, Cathy was far before the light, but in the next shot she had passed it. we noticed this now, so we can watch out for this in the actual horror film.

Basic Film Outline

The outline of the film will be as a child is experiencing nightmares and hearing noises from outside and her parent’s room. She then goes to her parents room gets told to go back to sleep so she tries. Hears more noises and goes to the kitchen to get a drink goes back walks down to parents room again but the doors opened. The audience see a hand with blood on it hanging off the bed then the child runs away to her bedroom then reaches her bed gets under the covers then the camera looks at the handle of the door as it slowly opens.

This was the original film outline and has been altered slightly since it was made. i shall upload a current outline later on.

PITCH

Make Up Design

In out film, we are not really going to be using make-up , to make the film seem as realistic as possible, but we will need to use some fake blood for the Parents in the bed.



This is a video i found on making pretty decent fake blood, this will do for our project, the only downside to this is that it stains skin

New Idea

We had decided to go with the idea of a ghost being the threat of the film, only we did this with a twist.

Instead of an average haunting, we decided to mix two genres together to make one Awesome Super-Genre! :[) We call it, a Ghost-Slasher.. it's a supernatural slashing film, we chose this as these were the two main ideas we were torn between so we eventually decided to go with mixing them.