Evaluation - AS media coursework.

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 
During the first few lessons and discussions of this topic we looked for inspiration and ideas from existing films of the Horror/ thriller genre. I decided to look into thirteen ghosts, the remake made in 2001. During the opening sequence of this film I discovered that not much regarding the plot was actually explained, instead there was a deep look into the atmosphere and general themes of the film. The main thing I noticed from the opening sequence was the tilted camera angles, I thought these worked extremely well in disorientating and therefore frightening the audience before there were even any characters introduced. Automatically I knew that this was a technique I would like to use when creating our own film opening in groups. We did end up using a tilt camera angle during the beginning of the chase scene which I feel turned out to be very effective. 


I also chose to analyse The Dark knight which is actually more of the action/adventure style. Although not from the same genre I felt the way it built up suspense through the use of sound only was very effective. Music and sound is key to building tension and so when editing we did take our time over choosing a score which we felt would be most effective. We liked the low drone we had used in the preliminary task and so re-used that in the main film opening, we then looked for and found a more up tempo and more complex piece of music which came in later. Although there were some aspects of the dark knight which we felt would not be and could not be used; for example the bus crashing through the wall. This was very effective obviously these sorts of elaborate special effects would not be available without an extremely high budget.

During discussion, although not deeply researched, The Exorcist was mentioned. This is 

where our idea for a religion based horror film came from, we were all aware that this film was based around Christianity and so began discussions about how we could develop this idea further. 
We thought about various idea’s regarding a child being possessed but felt that idea was far too common as seen in other films like The Omen. We began talking about how extremism could feature which would almost subvert the general view on religion and put the potential audience out of their comfort zone. 




I also looked into the Tv Drama; WhiteChapel (1st series) which was based around copy cat murders in the style of Jack the Ripper. From this I found lots of effective techniques which I mentioned earlier including tilt camera angles. However, what I found most effective from this additional research was the style of the credits during the opening. This had a huge influence on our own credits with the font style and colour and the speed at which they came up. I think this really added to the sinister atmosphere of the opening.


2. How does your media product represent particular social groups? 
We only really introduced two characters during our film opening one being the villain and one being the victim. The villain is portrayed as a mentally unstable religious extremist and the victim; a normal young girl to the audience and a prostitute to our deranged killer. The audience are never really fully introduced to the killer in terms of his costume 

because he is always seen in the dark. Although, we did try to keep his costume dark to mirror his dark character; He wears a long black coat and black trousers. We also didn’t show the killers face throughout which adds an obvious element of mystery and fear of the unknown for the viewer. We tried to obviously give a negative view of the killer through his lack of description and detailed description of his actions in the voice over. We understood that this negative portrayal of the religious extremist could be quite controversial however felt that the fact he was indeed described as a ‘religious extremist’ would dilute any upset with the religious community.

With regards to the victim, we tried to make her relatable for the young target audience so that the impact of her death would be greater. We wanted to make her look quite provocative with the short skirt and high heels, however quite ordinary with the leather jacket and scarf. Although we wanted to introduce her as someone who has ‘sinned’ so that the storyline would become clearer, we also wanted to add in the idea that the killer was mentally deranged and that in his mind, all young females are prostitutes and need to become ‘pure’. I think this added a new twist to the plot which would add confusion and disorientation for the viewer.

We used the camera well in showing her as an innocent victim, the close ups on her face which gives a positive atmosphere allowing the audience to be in control of the situation (by having all the character information) and therefore have a positive view of the girl. This was a complete contrast to the long shot views of the villain. Also, we helped the sympathy feeling for the victim in the fact that we had one slow motion shot of her realisation that she was being followed which obviously highlighted her reaction.

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? 
Although we created our own film institution and logo (La sangrienta pictures) we felt that if we were to actually produce the entire film that a film institution such as Twisted pictures would be suitable. 
Twisted pictures is best known for the series of horror films ‘saw’ which still are some of the most popular horror films produced. Twisted pictures would be suitable due to their history in producing extremely successful horror films, most of which are aimed at a young adult target audience (similar to that of our film opening). 

On average the singular films in the saw series made over $100 million which adds to their successful history in the production of horror films. Also the special effects in the saw movies were done extremely well and we felt that special effects is one of the main aspects which can make or break an effective horror film. 


However, a more negative aspect of this institution is that the majority of their other past releases have been categorically less successful. In fact some of their other productions have been only released on the internet which is not what we would be happy with as an outcome. A possible alternative to this institution would be Columbia pictures which is the film institution that I researched, they have an extremely successful history and have produced many award winning motion pictures. But yet again there is a negative aspect with regards to this institution producing our film; they do not have a great range of history in the production of films for the horror genre. 


4. Who would be the audience for your media product? 
There was quite a dispute within the group when deciding what a suitable age certificate would be, we were unsure whether the themes in the plot would warrant an 18 or 15 rating. We finally decided on a 15 rating as there is not excessive amounts of gore and violence and the actual plot, although psychological, was not as chilling as some other existing horror films. So with regards to the target audience we felt our film would appeal to an age range of 15-24. 


We do not think that it would be specific to either gender as the female character would be seen as an interest for young men and a more relatable character for young women. We feel that because of the mature themes such as religious extremism that our target audience would ideally have an interest in current affairs and or different cultures. We don’t think that the film would appeal to any particular social background or income however would appeal to people studying sociology/ psychology either at Alevel or at a lower/ higher level. We think this because the film plot looks deeply into the mental state of the religious extremist and naturally though the fact that this person has chosen psychology or sociology as an option they must have some interest either in the human mind or collective minds. 

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

I feel we addressed that target audience well in our opening. The target audiences interest in current affairs is addressed in the voice over news report at the very beginning. The voice over is also a very familiar medium to use and so would adhere to the side of realism in the story and also appeal to the audience as it is indeed familiar. The victim is played by Ellie Duckles and, as mentioned earlier, this works through the fact her character is 17 years old and so within the same age range as the audience and is extremely relatable because of that. The high angle shots of her emphasise her vulnerability which sparks sympathy from the audience regardless of their age, this creates a broader range of people the film would appeal to.

The villain is shown in dark clothing, through this and his description in the voice over, he becomes instantly dislikeable. An easy to read character appeals to the target audience through the idea that people like to be able to fully understand a situation. However, the horror genre’s main purpose is to frighten its audience and this cannot happen if every aspect of the production is understood. Our film addresses this slight fault through the victim being intrinsically more relatable, her confusion adds to this scare tactic as the audience will feel more connected to her and are more likely to be frightened when she is.

I created a poster as part of a possible advertising campaign for the film as I feel a trailer or advert would be less accessible, and a poster gets the idea across quickly. This point works especially well for our target audience of young people as they stereotypically have a shorter attention span than some older generations. I think the poster would also be good as it can be shown on many different platforms such as billboards etc. and so reaches a wider audience. Although, if we were to advertise on a larger scale I feel that some online adverts on social networking sites would be effective. From the survey of potential audience members I took, I found that nearly all of them used at least one social networking site, and so an advertising platform on, say facebook would be almost certainly reaching the target audience and therefore possibly more effective than a television advertising campaign.


6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? 
I have decided to create a short film regarding the technology aspect of the evaluation showing what problems we had when creating the film: (pause where necessary, was unable to upload in a better quality, for full quality see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiMGXYWgpB8&feature=youtu.be)

We came across many difficulties when editing the piece. Final Cut Express was unreliable at times for example in not saving work on one occasion. The ability to zoom right in and do more detailed editing was very useful which is something we could not do so well in IMovie. I learned how to use a lot of basic functions in final cut. The major draw back of this software was the time it took to render clips and render their alterations, it was very tedious waiting for the clips to render and not being able to do anything else especially considering the majority of our clips were in black and white! Following on from this we were very happy with how final cut allowed us to change and improve the quality of our clips with the colour pallet as there were issues with the cameras we were using when filming in low light conditions. Overall we fell that Final Cut Express is very high quality editing software and helped make the editing process as simple as possible.


We used two separate cameras when filming; my own bridge style camera and Ellie's high quality compact. We found that in many respects the compact camera was better however due to availability issues we were forced to use my camera for some clips. However having a fairly high quality microphone installed in the compact camera, the scene (as shown in the video) with the P.o.v. running shot was difficult to film and edit due to the sound of the wind overpowering the screams. Although the compact was also very good in low light we did end up having to use torches to brighten the shots when filming. This was a minor inconvenience and overall we felt the quality of the camera was very good and easy to work with, with simple controls and playback options.


I also had never really used a mac computer prior to making this opening and so gained some more knowledge about the mac operating system. Automatic back up and autosave was a very good feature on the system which allowed us to be free from worries that our work may be deleted. The documents system was hard to navigate around however and so we had to spend more time than we normally would with windows when saving and retrieving footage. 

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

Almost every aspect of producing our preliminary task was changed when creating our main horror film opening. However, we did decide to relate the actual plot to our main task. When brainstorming ideas for our preliminary task we decided that, in the knowledge that we were to ultimately have to create the opening to a horror film, we would link it at least to the same genre. We decided this because we felt it would be the best possible practise in suspense building techniques and so on. We thought about the plot with both the main and preliminary tasks in mind and that was the main reason for nearly the same characters featuring in both.

We did exaggerate the victims character somewhat in the preliminary task in comparison to the main task by dressing her in a white floor length dress etc. During the preliminary task we thought that this exaggeration was necessary in explaining the plot and making it understandable. However, there is a distinct line between making a storyline obvious and making it completely unrealistic. The villain however was portrayed as almost exactly the same character in both tasks apart from the slight change in costume through the removal of the mask (changed for the same reasons as previously mentioned). 

We realised that perhaps the main issue with the preliminary task was that we failed to create the effective scare aspect. We discovered that this was most likely due to the speech, realistic script writing and acting is extremely hard to do well. So we changed this in the main task by only using the voice over of the news report and the screaming which I feel worked a lot better, in a more subtle way.

In terms of the actual production of the short film, we found that using one of the schools flip-cam’s was perhaps not the best use of what was available to us. The really quite terrible ability of the flip-cam in dark conditions would have been a major draw back if it had been used in our main task. The fact that we edited it to be black and white made the quality worse still by adding extra noise and taking away most of the detail. We realised when discussing what equipment was available that we actually had two better quality camera’s owned by myself and Ellie. We shot most of the main task on Ellie’s camera however as the microphone which was built in was of better quality than my own camera.

We edited the preliminary task on imovie purely for the reason that more of the group had some idea of how to use it, in complete contrast to our lack of knowledge for final cut express at that point. Again we found that we were limited during the editing process and probably should have used the most professional software available. And for the final opening we did switch to final cut, our lack of knowledge disappeared after only a few editing sessions and we were able to grasp the basis of the programme relatively quickly.

We really did work well to improve our skills dramatically in both a technical and creative way throughout the course of this project. Linking our plot between the preliminary and main task was really helpful in progressing in a way which specifically related to improving our final product.

Feedback

Other than the feedback we received in class (documented in course work book) after watching back our film openings, I felt it was necessary to try to gain further feedback from a wider audience. Here is a short questionnaire I sent out to some peers and the answers that they gave:

Please watch the opening to this film at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjaxv7TQVY8&context=C34ee273ADOEgsToPDskLtQdVJyAh1d0wI1pjcPIKs

1) What was your favourite aspect of the film opening and why?
2) What genre would you say this film was from and what made this obvious?
3) What aspects of the film do you think could have been done better and why?
4) Did you think the editing was done well and why?
5) Did you think the credits were done well and if not what would you have done to improve them?
6) Do you have any other feedback/ comments?

1) The depiction of the serial killer, gave a chilling effect

2) Horror, made obvious by the use of music and black and white
3) The sporadic use of colour footage somewhat takes away from the chilling and scary atmosphere
4) Yes, the integration of the depicted settings was smooth and the music contributed largely to the sense of atmosphere
5) The credits were done professionally, but perhaps could be more subtle
6) The ending of the trailer was very effective as it really set up the story-line further than what the opening shows

1) I liked where the music came in, it set the atmosphere and the lighting drew me into the centre of the frame.
2) Thriller – Because of the tension building throughout.
3) The forensic glove was not realistic enough.
4) Yes it was, it was seamless and not noticeable.
5) Yes they were done well.
6) It was good and made me want to see more.

1) The dark and chilling atmosphere because it hooks the audience by both intriguing them and scaring them.
2) I would say its a psychological horror, the setting and the atmosphere made it obviously a horror while the high pitched cold music along with the crucifying element with the mysterious masked villain contributed to the psychological aspect.
3) Its hard to think of anything major to improve the one thing I would say is that the aspect ratio of a couple of shots after 0:37 was different other than that it was really good.
4) I really liked the way it was edited, the mixture of fading and cutting worked well in different ways, the fading was great for slowly building tension and I liked the way that the voice over or the screaming continued as the fade took place it made it look very professional while the cut at the very end was a great way of making the audience jump a little.
5) Yeah I liked the credits, the choice of font as well as the monochromatic nature of the text was very fitting to the style of the piece and as mentioned before I liked the way audio continued through the credits as it added to the sense of continuity.
6) Not really just that it was really professional looking and I think the atmosphere was especially good.

1) The use of black and white

2) Horror, set at night and the scream at the end
3) If you had the materials, more gore. Eg. Make up
4) Yes, I really liked the use of slow motion
5) Yes I like how they didn’t detract from the action and I liked the title on the book
6) Really liked the concept of the opening


1) The fact there's a lack of music so the voice sounds more powerful/clear and when there is music/sound it builds tension.
2) Horror film and because of the storyline.
3) Maybe a zoom in on the pictures in the book because it would look more effective.
4) Yes and because it told the story clearly.
5)Yes, i think the font fitted the genre.

Generally positive overall and the negative was very constructive - very helpful exercise. The negative comments will help when it comes to writing an evaluation.

Our final film opening:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjaxv7TQVY8&context=C34ee273ADOEgsToPDskLtQdVJyAh1d0wI1pjcPIKs

Our film poster: created on photoshop CS5.

See detailed annotations regarding the making of this poster in course work A3 book.

Completion of Film opening!

           Today we completed our final movie opening and exported it! We began the editing session by searching for music, we had discovered during our editing for the preliminary task (which we edited on imovie) that another program, imovie, had some good sound effects and uncomplicated slow drones which we decided to use again in our main task. We saved a selection of the drones to the desktop and imported them into final cut ready to be dragged into the timeline.
           After recording our voice over and dragging it into the timeline we began to play through the film to observe where the voice over would be best suited. We then discovered that the voice over and sound of the poloroid camera flash clashed so made the decision to split up the voice over so it braked when the noise of the flash sounded.We then cut the voice over again so that it had two more breaks within it to make way for conflicting sounds in the video.
          Once the voice over was complete and in a position we all agreed with, we began to discuss the position of the drones. We agreed that it should begin during the first few seconds (as did the voice over) but we wanted to create and capture the haunting lone voice to begin with so decided to begin the drone a few seconds after the start of the voice over.
          We then reviewed again and watched the film opening through, as we were moving through the film  with the scroll tool, we saw that one particular part of the film worked really well in slow motion! The moment when Ellie turns to look and see if she's being followed. The way she turns round caused her hair to flick which was really emphasised in slow-mo. We cut the clip twice to select the hair flick singularly and set about slowing it down (modify>speed) we decided that 40% time would be slow enough. I feel this worked well because it gives the audience a chance to see the victims face in full, while also adding drama and suspense.
          We cumulatively decided that there should be another piece of music during the opening as it didn't have any sense of suspense building with only the voice over and drone as a sound track. We looked at various online sites and came across a website (incompetech.com) with quite a few more tension building horror scores. We decided on a track called 'house of leaves' and downloaded and imported it into final cut. Our next task was to position the track at a suitable point. We tried it in various places but in the end decided that it should begin with the first kind of up tempo chase scene about mid-way through. We cut the score so it finished with the video and then set about finding a single drum beat for the slam of the book at the end. Again we looked at various sites but found our drum beat on 'free sound', we then imported it and added it into the timeline at the end.
          Our next task will be to start planning and looking at some topics to include in our evaluation of the entire project.

Finishing the editing process.

          Yesterday we began putting the finishing touches to our movie opening, we converted the appropriate shots to black and white and enhanced some shots in the colour palette menu. We then found that some shots still needed to be brightened. After that we started putting our final film in the correct order and put in some cross fades when adding our credits (which we first imported as image files).
       

          Towards the end of our editing session we recorded the final voice over of the news report(using the mic installed in the mac and the voice over tool in final cut), both Charlie and Ellie recorded a voice over and we listened to them both, we came to the conclusion that Ellies voice sounded more haunting than Charlie's against the video. We intend to complete our film entirely within the week ready to show in class.

News report voice over for our movie opening.

"In the early hours of this morning local police recovered a body of a young girl in kentwood forest. She is said have been dressed in a white gown attached to a crucifix. This has led police to believe that the girl is the most recent victim in a chain of murders linked to the extremist serial killer known to the press as 'the prophet'. This reporter spoke to local sheriff Brady but was refused further comments..."
We had decided when filming that it would be more convenient to use the voice over toll in final cut to record the voice over and so the actual script was not decided on until the editing process. We did however have a rough idea of what would be included, above is the final script which we used and recorded after we had a better idea of the length of our film opening.