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.