Mitch's Evaluation Questions (New & Old)

Old Group (With Louise):

1: Introduction: what did you make, who did you work with and where did the original idea come from?

We were tasked with creating the opening 2 minutes of a horror film, my group’s is about two hikers/campers who get lost and find an old abandoned house, inhabited by a horde of animalistic vampires.

We carried out research into horror films through websites such as IMDB and BBFC, and through watching as many various horror films in our chosen subgenre (Vampire) to better understand how to target our film (audience-wise) and to create a believable film, following codes and conventions of Horror.

Our initial idea was inspired by films such as 30 Days of Night and Daybreakers, also classic horror films, such as The Shining, that focus on the idea of isolation and madness, which, if the film were longer, would be a key theme. We wanted to create a film that not only scared, but had a deeper message about community, and not being alone.

The production has been difficult, due to complications in my partners life meaning she had to leave college. 

I changed groups to work with a group I knew and was on good terms with, I got along with them great, however production has been troublesome due to actors dropping out, and locations being unavailable. In the end, we finally finished filming and have edited and composed a soundtrack.

The premise of their film is different to my own, but their sub genre is the same. Their main inspirations for their film is Dawn of the Dead, which also partly inspired my own.

Here is the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdPWrAMXGGo

3:  Who would be the audience for your media product?

We researched what age groups watch horror films the most and found that the male, mid-to-late teens/early twenties demographic was the highest. We decided to aim our film at this demographic, giving our film a 15 rating.

This meant we could showcase some blood and gore, along with some explicit language, but not as much as an 18 certificate would grant. So I wrote the script in such a way to do this.

New Group (With Amber, Abby and casey):

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

Some notable british production companies could be possible producers for our film, such as Hammer (if we went a less serious, more camp-route), DNA Films or the British Film Council, who both produced 28 Days Later, a similar film to ours.

The British/UK Film Council says it’s aim is ‘To stimulate a competitive, successful and vibrant UK film industry and culture, and to promote the widest possible enjoyment and understanding of cinema throughout the nations and regions of the UK. The UKFC has a mandate that spans cultural, social and economic priorities’. They often fund short, indie films, in their aim to create more UK-made films of various genres, which would make them perfect for our film.

In conventional film creation and cinema, our film production has not been typical, made at a much, much smaller cost, for example. We have not had any distribution or exhibition planned for our film, but a company like the UK Film Council could provide that, showcasing our film at film festivals and in Cinemas across the UK and, with the help of another distribution company, overseas.

9:  Final Question (Answered by all group members) - What was your contribution to the process during the planning, production and post production stages? (give specific examples of what you did)

I was late to join this group, only joining during the filming stage, but since joining I have tried to contribute as much as possible. I have helped re-draft the script to a higher standard, I have suggested ideas about filming locations, in the end a location I chose was used. I took part in both filming sessions since joining, framing many shots and filming. I, along with the other group members present, directed the actors and offered suggestions.

We are still currently in the editing stage, due to various complications, such as myself being ill and unable to bring in the camera and tape to import footage for several days, because of this we have had to apply for extensions, which have at the time of writing been given to two members of our group, myself and Amber are still waiting on a decision.

In my previous groups, which only got as far as the filming stage, I wrote the script itself, and drew the majority of the storyboard. I was mainly in charge of writing the soundtrack as well. My partner focussed on the technical side while I did the creative, as the film’s idea/premise was mainly my creative vision.

I drew up the titles and my house was used as a location when we did film, before changing groups.

Eval Question 6

We conducted some research into imdb and

Evaluation Question 9 (Abbyyy!)

What was your contribution to the process during the planning, production and post production stages? (give specific examples of what you did)

In my media group, I did most of the blogging throughout the weeks inputting our progress and what we planned ondoing throughout the week until the next lesson, I was involved in planning the initial ideas and we all pulled our heads together to create our final idea. The filming process was very long because our actors were unavailable for the second time we were filming to get it finished and so ended up filming a total of 5 times, I was involved in picking up the equipment and taking it to the locations. 

We had a lot of trouble with finding actors that we could use, but in the end it worked out well, I think this was due to the group pulling together and making it happen.

I was involved in the editing of the shots and helped to finalise the soundtrack which we all agreed was right for our film in the end.

I think I contributed a fair amount and I'm proud of what we've achieved in the end.

Evaluation Question 7 ( Amber.)

What have you learnt about techmologies from the process of constucting this product?

When we first started this I had no idea how to use Macs and things like I movie so this project has helped me learn how to work them. Through out the process of making our film We have learnt how to use things like Imovie and garage band, I wouldn't say that we are experts on them but we have a general knowledge of how it works and it is pretty simple. We are getting on with it to edit our horror film.
Imovie had helped us edit our film and put it all together, also it had helped us add effect and improve our film so that we can make it as good as it can be. It's also made it simple, it's not complercated which make us able to understand and grasp the consept of how to edit it all together really quickly. Garage band was pretty straight forward too, which again was really helpfull to us because they're was not fussing or complecation when we was producing a soundtrack to go over our film. In our soundtrack we have a voice over which ment  we had to record some one doing the voice over and then apply it to the rest of our sound track. This was pretty easy to do we had some explanation and then we just got on with it. Also we have learnt how to use things like blogger, which has helped us prove what we have done and provided evidence of how hard we are working. Also by blogging it helps show poeple how we have developed our idea and finished with our final result.

I think the different technologies that we had to work with did help us be more creative because we wasn't just using one thing to produce our final thing, so it was like we had more resources, Because the range of things we could use was so wide it didn't limit us and gave us that chance to show that we can think out side the box and create something we could be proud of. Using the technology like Imovie and garage band  ment that we had quite alot of control over our film and soundtrack. It being so basic to use helped us because we wasn't getting stressed out and just going with the things we had, we were able to pick and chose the parts that we wanted in our film and edit things in  and out really easily.

Evaluation Question 3 (Amber)

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our media product was aimed at mostly males, aged 15 - 24.  We gave it a 15 certificate due to what was going to be in our film like violent scene and interpretation of dead bodies. We gave it a 15 because of the idea we had for out film and compared it to  out BBFC research which gave us the basics on what makes the films the rating they get.

15- you was able to to show sexual activity but not in detail, also violence is allowed as long as it doesn't dwell and the pain inflection. It can not promote discriminating behaviour or language, this goes for drug taking too. Threat is allowed as long as it is not sexual, dangerous behaviour like self harming and scuiced shouldn't be dwelled on and weapons shouldn't be promoted to look " cool" Certain swear words are allowed but not obscene words unless they have been justified.
18- Can show most things as 18's are classed as adults and have the right to choose what they want to watch for their own entertainment. However they're certain boundaries like when it has broken the law or when images of sexual scene are too explicit and can not be justified.

Based on this information this is why we gave our film the target audience we did, it helped us think what we could put in to out film and what wasn't allowed. We was influenced greatly by the film 'dawn of the dead' which is rated 18 and so looked on IMDB of the  film.

Evaluation Question 9 ( Ambers Contribution.)

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

During the process of this I think i have contributed at the planning, production and post production stage. I have done some of the course work, evaluation questions, the story board and the script, while planning  our film out and preparing the media folder before the deadline. I drew the story boards to out line our idea and give us an idea of the types of shots to use while Casey wrote the story boards. Then me and Casey put  the script together, she wrote it and i inputted ideas, although there wasn't much at first we developed it and came up with a decent script to Say there is hardly any talking involved in our film.
 With the  production I also helped contribute to by filming some  parts and shots also arranging some actors to film with, which had to be done a number of times due to our actor dropping out.I also suggested the first location we filmed at as i knew it pretty well and it seemed like the perfect place to film at, for the type of location we was after and looking for. It was also an easy location and convenient as everyone had a nct bus card.
Unfortunately out Post Production is still on going. We have applied for an extension and have kindly been given it, we were unable to finish it in time due to many reason and we now have until the 14th of April which it will be finished by. However we have our sound track finished and ready to go on to our film when we have finished  editing it which shouldn't be long now. I helped create the soundtrack on garage band which  has worked out pretty good, we have an instrumental which was influenced by the song 'when the sun goes down' by the Arctic Monkeys. it then gets interrupted by a new clip announcing the findings of dead body's and for people to be aware and careful. We are trying to get the editing done and out the way so our film is complete for the deadline, so our film is still on going to be finally finished.

Evaluation Question 4. (Casey's answer ) :)

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

            The horror genre tends to stereotype when representing different social groups. Gender in particular is represented very stereotypically; females are seen as the “weaker” gender and are often the characters under threat from the supernatural aspect or the character who is cowering scared. Males are seen as the “stronger” gender; this is presented in horror films by males often being shown as the “hero” character that comes to the rescue of the damsel in distress. Age in horror film is something that is slightly harder to see in my opinion; films seem to generally be based around a certain age group, typically teenagers and young adults. Teenagers and other younger characters are represented as naive, immature, gullible, and unreliable, whereas older characters are presented as wiser, grumpy, and in some cases more vulnerable.

            To accommodate the gender representation, we used a mixture of male and female characters. Our victim #1 was a female, having her already dead represents that she must have been weaker than the attacker at the time, and also makes her appear vulnerable. She is dressed in pink and white (pale colours) to make her appear more feminine, pink is a stereotypically “girly” colour and the paleness of the colour used makes her appear younger and more vulnerable. Our representation of males was mixed as both our jogger and vampire were males. Our jogger was seemingly a stereotypical male as he would appear physically conscious to the audience as he is out jogging, and from the soundtrack the audience would tell that he is educated on issues – things that we associate as more masculine traits. Our vampire is represents males as strong and dangerous – again stereotypical traits. His costume is designed to make him appear as if he has a smart past but has recently gone rogue, his shirt and tie attire makes him seem more mature and smart, which are stereotypically more male features.

Casey's contribution.

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

     Throughout the process of making our horror film, I've contributed different things to each planning, production, and post-production. From when we started thinking about the idea and we all helped to evlove film idea, I began to try and find the actors we were going to use; first idea of Thomas Purdy, Christie Britton, and Mitch Proctor, when Christie was unavailable I asked every girl I could think of until I found a replacement. Amber and I then had to find another replacement for all parts of the dead body, jogger and vampie; I found our replacement vampire who has been permanent since - Joshua Brown.

     During the planning process, I did the research in to our BBFC studies so that we could come to the conclussion of what certificate our film would be. I then did the IMDB research that needed to be done in to past vampire films to so we could look at our target audience and work out what sort of things we could put in to the film to attract them. I also did part of the narrative research in to the different title beginnings of different horror films so that we could begin to get an idea of what different titles look like and could begin think of how we would like our titles to look like. I also did all three of our character designs and researched in to different make up techniques and ways of making our vampire look more realistic. There was also the film outline, shot list and first draft of the script that I wrote. The storyboar was a joint effort between me and Amber - you can see our first class art skills in the scanned version a few post backs.

     The production proccess was probably the part I enjoyed most throughout the entire creation of our film, even though it was the most troublesome. I was present through all 4 shoots and did a reasonable amount of filming. The most interesting shots that I filmed would have to be the point of view shots we experimented with on our first shoot, these meant I had to climb in to all sorts of bushes and get hit by sticks and stung by nettles to get an interesting shot that we ended up being unable to use because of the change in actor. We didn't use point of view shots on our other views as there wasn't a suitable area for them to be shot from in the new location - Eastwood. During the final shoot that Mitch and I did, I shot the first section of Alex (our latest jogger) running, up until just before he finds the dead body as I had to play the "challenging" role of Victim #1 due to failing to find an available actor.

     The post-production is unfortunately still carrying on as we had to apply for an extension on our final procuct. We did however begin editting the other three films that we made, most succesfully was shoot 3 with Callam and Ada-May as our actors. We have print screens of our edit up from this time on a few posts back. I really enjoyed editing the film because its really intricate work that takes quite a lot of care to find the right place to cut shots and piece them together. Making the soundtrack was something else I was also involved in, I decided when we started planning the film that I wanted something that sounded similar to the beat for "When the Sun Goes Down" by the Arctic Monkeys, but it was really hard to recreate Garageband, and so we made an upbeat music that cuts out abruptly and goes in to our news broadcast. Our editing is going to carry on in our spare time as we need to finish as soon as we can.  

Evaluation Question 8. (Casey's answer ) :)

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

There are many differences between our preliminary task and our final Horror Film. Firstly, our preliminary project was a horror film in the subgenre possession; after filming it and realising how difficult it would be to create and original possession film that didn’t look like an amateur production, we decided on swapping the subgenre to vampire! We thought we would be more capable of doing a film like this, and were also more aware of the conventions we could follow. Next, there is the way in which during our preliminary project we used a lighting effect to make the shots brighter so that the white was really prominent; in our vampire film we have used the opposite effect to make the shots darker so it appeared like we’d filmed later in the day. This was because it would have been virtually impossible for us to get everything filmed with the same lighting if we filmed at dusk, it took on average 4 hours every time we filmed and with only getting around an hour of dusk lighting before it would be too dark to film it just wouldn’t have been possible. I think that this is a really good effect and gives our film a darker feel to it. Finally there are the varied shot types and new ways in filming that we used in our final project. In our preliminary task we used mainly mid shots and close ups, as we were recreating the more tense part of “The White Room,” this worked well to build up tension but meant that after a while, only using those sorts of shots got slightly boring and familiar. In our final horror film, we’ve used a mixture of shots including: long shots, mid shots close up, extreme close up, pans, tilts, and shots from different angles. I think that these help to establish the story and also build the tension.

From our preliminary task, I’ve learnt that filming a horror film isn’t something you can leave to the last minute; things such as finding locations, costumes, make up, and props, are really difficult to find at the last moment. Reliable actors are probably the most difficult problem we came across with our preliminary project and we ended up using Amber (a member of our own group) because we couldn’t find someone. To try and avoid this problem when it came to our final film, we started filming as early as possible; this wasn’t helpful however since the next time we filmed two of our actors weren’t available and since it was the only day all of our group could get off work, we had to find another set of actors. We had problems with this all the way through the filming of our final piece no matter how hard we tried to sort it.

If we were to do the production again, I think the main thing we would do differently would be the planning. It was the part we seemed to find most difficult out of everything involved in our project, we either left things to the last minute, or didn’t plan well enough. I think we’d also need to come up with some back up plans for when things go wrong – like actors dropping out.

Amber has blogged. it is awsomeee!

And we're still editing! we only just got the tape today because Mitch was ill and had the camera and film. we've gone over the deadline but we have all put in for an extension on our film, Abby and Casey have been granted it and have till the 14th of April. Me and Mitch are still waiting on confirmation so fingers crossed we get one too!


They're so many  reason we are behind!  actors dropping out, location changes. complete and utter useless filming sessions! but we got there on the 4th take, little bit late, but all filming is complete. We are in the process of editing now,  our footage looks pretty good and we have some really good shots, so we're doing well, just behind.


Our sound track is all complete unless we decide to change  it because it will make our film better but for now that is complete. Today it's just me, abby and mitch casey is ill! altho she has uploaded some picture from filming, thats basically our lesson to be honest:)

Some Photos of the... Third Time we Filmed



Here is Mitch on his first day of filming with us setting up the opening shot.




This was one of the last shots that we filmed, Mitch was attempting to film without a tripod; it was a good thing that Mitch filmed this part because Amber, Abby, and myself have pretty shaky hands.



This is Abby setting up to film a pan of Callam as he jogs past; we used several pans in the opening section as we thought it would be a good way of moving the action forward quickly.

This is the shot that I filmed of Callam from behind, we thought it would make sense to go from a shot of him jogging towards the camera, to a shot of him from behind.



This was a shot that Mitch came up with after he attempted to run backwards in front of Callam which needless to say wasn't that succesful...



This is Abby checking one of the close up shots I was filming of Callam as I wanted a second opinion on the framing.

This was a close up we filmed of Callam putting his headphones away and checking for a signal, we actually filmed him putting his headphones away in about 4 shots so we  could piece it together, when we first edited this I think it looked really good.

This, again, was one of the final shots that we filmed of Callam discovering the dead body.

These photos were all from the 3rd time that we filmed, with our third jogger, and third dead body. As we didn't manage to film everything we needed this day and our actors then dropped out of filming, we ended up refilming the week later.

Evaluation Question 5 (Abby's Question)

5: How did you attract/address your audience?

Our intended target audience was 15 - 24 year olds, male and female. I feel that we stuck to the target audience very well as we had the right amount of suspense involved with the gore aspect pulling it all together. To target our audience we had older teenagers as the actors so that the audience could relate to the characters and get more attached to them. 

The soundtrack we created was quite upbeat and faded out into the radio report which attacks the threat - making it known. which helped a lot to attract the audience due to it being a serious news report being played out to the audience - the event isn't just random, it's threatening the world. 

The mise-en-scene really has an effect on the target audience because our actors looked very natural on the footage and don't look like they're putting it on which helps the film to look more realistic. for example the reaction when the jogger finds the dead body is very realistic and how you'd expect someone to react. the props such as the fangs and the blood make the film more thrilling as they looked quite realistic bar the problems we had during filming with them falling out a bit.

The location was very isolated which again adds to the horror part of the film. I think this has an impact on the target audience because in a horror film we found that people want to see blood, gore, isolated places because then the audience are on edge waiting for something to happen.

We went against generic vampire film conventions due to the vampire being out in the day (and not shining) and being able to attack in the day also adds to the attraction of the film because people feel safer in daytime so having all of these killings going on in the day time really throws the audience off.

Overall I think we did a good job in attracting the audience because of all of the mise-en-scene used and how we edited the film together to keep the audience on edge at the times needed. 

Editing screen shot, 3rd filming attempt

This is the editing stage of the 3rd attempt at filming which went pretty well till our actors dropped out.

Screen shoot, editing first film take

This is when we was editing our very first filming work.

editing screen shot. Second filming.

This is a print screen of us editing the second lot of footage after we filmed for a second time.

This week :)

Today we finished scanning everything in which is amazing!
We just need to finish off the evaluation questions and finish our film and we'll be well away!


We've recorded the voiceover this lesson and are in the stages of importing it into our soundtrack which means our soundtrack will be completed.


It is a packed lesson but will help us to organise and start finishing everything off.


The group filmed again on saturday completing all of the filming so it's just down to editing and finalising this week before we're done. It will be finished by thursday so it'll be fine.


:)

Scripts

Release Form

Lighting Design Sheet

Location and Equipment List.

Storyboard Sheets

Film Outline

Today's Lesson

Today we've been scanning in, importing and editing - so a lot going on!
We are finalizing the filming on wednesday and so have booked out the equipment for pick up on wednesday and will hopefully get everything done! :)

Test Shot/ Character Design