GarageBand

Today we were introduced to GarageBand and were taught the basics for example adding in different instruments and how to browse through the different effects that are available to us.


We played around with some of the effects and put them together to see what it would sound like. We were looking for sounds that we could use for our soundtrack on our production and found some interesting ones that we could alter a bit to make them useful to us.


We were also told the dead lines for filming, we have to at least done one shoot before the 14th of February. This is because of last year when too many people tried to  take out equipment over the half term and there wasn't enough. The final dead line for our complete film with soundtrack is 31st march.


:)

Amber's evaluation of the pitch :)

So recently when did a our pitch to the class  to present our idea for our horror film. We did this to get some feed back on there thoughts of our idea and to see if they had any suggestions on how to make I better. This is what we got...

We got both bad and positive comments about our pitch,  positive points were that our vampire is conventional  and able to do things in the day, and be out in the sun. Another is that we are not using a female victim. We wanted our film to be a bit different and due to the fact most people are using girls to enhance venerability, we decided not to.

 To the bad comments,  during our horror film we wanted to make a appearance of a dead body and people where concerned about how we was going to pull this off  and make it look realistic. People also said that  our idea seemed a bit short.

When we got the feed back from our class we thought about what they suggested about maybe it being too short, this made us think and disccuss about adding an extra scene in the end. The extra scene will be where the dead girl, wakes up gasping for air, as if she has just come back to life... as a vampire!

the location we are using was pretty easy to find, also it's easy to get to! it's near my grans house so it isn't really a problem and it is a pretty good vocation for filming :)


 I think we made great  use  of the feed back and I think we took it on board wisely to make our film even greater!

Casey decided to evaluate the pitch :)

So as you can see from Abby's post, we have done our pitch for our horror film!

I think that our pitch went reasonably well; the class gave us feedback afterwards which has helped us re-evaluate some points of the film and adapt it to be more suitable and moer achievable.

Our main idea seemed a little bit short, so after a little thought, we decided a few shots could be added in. We have now changed the ending of the horror film so that we see the "dead body" wake up as a vampire! Not only will this add a bit of time on to the film, but it also leaves it on a cliff hanger to make the audience want to watch the rest of the film! :)

One negative point that was made was that the SFX that we would need to use such as the amount of fake blood would be quite hard to make look realistic. We took this in mind and went and researched a couple of different fake blood recipes! We found one that looks reasonably real, and hopefully on film will! We are going to use honey or golden syrup, milk (to stop it being so sticky), red food colouring, and a little bit of yellow food colouring. This may be a little sticky for the actor's to have on them, but it looks real, so its good enough for us! :D

As for our location, some people were a little sceptical as to whether we would be able to find siomewhere with a field and the sort of scenery and lighting we would need, BUT we found the perfect place up in Bakersfield! We also hav e a source of electrics near by since amber's mum lives there, so when we have to run around getting spare camera battery's, we'll be fine!

In general, our pitch went quite well in my opinion, and I am thoroughly looking forward to filminf our horror! (:

Abby's Evaluation of the Pitch :)

The feedback we recieved from our pitch helped us to evaluate our pitch and correct a couple of minor errors found in our presentation.

There were some positives including having a conventional vampire in our film as he comes out in daylight, the fact that a male is the main victim instead of a stereotypical vulnerable girl really helps to make the film different to most horrors.

and some negatives such as the SFX we would need to use to make the dead body and blood look realistic instead of shabby and maybe a lot to do to include all of our ideas and other people said that our pitch was too short.

We changed the timeline of the film when timing the film plan and stretched some of the scenes out that would have been a bit rushed so that the preview is clear to everyone who watches it. As planned the film will be long enough as we've added in a scene at the end where the 'dead' body opens it's eyes, meaning that the girl has turned into a vampire!

The location was easy and quick to find as it's near-ish to the members of the group and filming would be easy and quick to get to due to knowing people around the area who are willing to help us stay there so we're not travelling at ridiculous times in the morning!

Overall, I think our group got some very constructive feedback which has already helped us to develop our film ideas.

:)

Pitch :)

Homework - Marking of previous students work

- Firstly read through the mark scheme to get an idea of each level. (Level 1 - 1-15, 2 - 16-30, 3 - 31-45. 4 - 46-60) 
- Then watch all 5 videos
-  Mark each one out of 60 and explain why?

Last Week and Today's Lessons

Last week we looked at the conventions in our genre, which is the vampire genre of horror films. We'll scan in the brainstorm within the week to show our thoughts. We had to start looking at some audience research of films in our genre such as Twilight, to do this we used IMDB's gathered research graphs and analysed them. 


Throughout the week we had to do some research involving some BBFC information about 15 and 18 certificates including what can and can't be shown in them. This research has helped us to start to determine which certificate our film will come under.

Today we started planning our pitch, which we'll complete later on in the week to prepare for our presentation within the next fortnight which will include the research we've done into horror film title sequences to give us a range of ideas we can use as inspiration for our film's title sequence.

Also today was a lot about group work, we decided on the title of our film which is 'Gotcha' and the treatment, which made us think deeply into how we'll portray the opening couple of minutes before concentrating on the conventions and whether we're following them or going against them. 

We watched the first 5 minutes of Saw, 28 Days Later, Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street which showed us different approaches of title sequences and analysed the purpose of them and how they made the audience feel etc. this helped us to see what a title sequence needs to be effective and intriguing to the audience to make them want to watch the rest of the film.