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.