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.