In this final project I have definitely improved my technical skills in a sense of using more computer programmes and learning more about using the camera. For example, whilst filming this opening sequence we had to re-film because of the lack of shots, therefore this provided a good opportunity to make the film better in terms of more camera skills. We used a variation of shots the second time around from EST. shots to close-ups and also the moving of the camera, we tried tracking but it was difficult to keep a steady hand but I felt I learned a lot by experimenting with the camera and we definitely know now to try more than one of every shot whether it be at a different angle or closer up to the character because you cant always rely that the first shot will be exactly right.
In terms of computer software I also learned more than the skills I had in the preliminary. The website blogger.com was what we used to store all our work, it did this as a webpage and allows people to look at what we have done in each separate part of the production process quickly and clearly, I am confident in using and uploading images/files and changing them to JPEG etc.
Another programme that I am now more familiar with is Adobe Premier which was the software used to edit with, we had to do this is the editing suite so we had to stick to using one computer. To begin with the fact that the computers had two monitors threw me a bit but after a while I learnt this made it easier to view the whole film and edit what was needed. I know that my audio skills have improved as well as the rest of the groups because we did not need to put music over our first film.
Wednesday 24 March 2010
How did you attract address your audience?
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The fact that we used three girls as the main characters enables the target audience to relate to the situation that they are in, for example the ages we have aimed our film at is between 17-20 and these are the ages people start to think about moving out, therefore we used this as a key theme in our opening sequence. The surroundings in our filmn also allow the viewers to have a certain sense of imagination, for example the flats are just in a quiet road in Woodhall Farm, Hemel Hempstead and arent well known, this allows the people watching to create in there mind what is near, what is happening around them, what is not happening around them etc. The woodland we see briefly definately appeals to our audience as this is usually used in horror films to add more tension and suspense, this also relates to the viewers imagination as its left to them to guess whats going on. There is a shot when the two girls are stood at the window looking out at the man standing on the edge of the trees. Although normally in horror films ive noticed that the villain is seen at night, we identify our antagonist through his costume rather than his actual identity therefore its more important for the audience to see the character rather than just know he's there which is what would happen at night.
Who would be the audience for youre media product?
The implied audience is teenage boys and girls, roughly around the ages of 17-20. We gathered this imformation from the original questionnaire we used to gather information on the horror genre. The fact that the main characters are all young makes it appeal to a younger audience, and hopefully this age range will relate to the characters and their situation of moving into their first shared house. Another plus side is that there is already a large target audience of people that enjoy horror, for example it is a popular genre for couples to go on a date to watch, but also once released on DVD a popular genre for groups of friends to watch on a night in.
Ellen Jones is a 17 year old girl, she enjoys going to the cinema with her boyfriend/friends, she goes roughly once a week because she likes to take advantage of orange wednesdays. In her free time she goes to Sixth form and socialises alot. When going to the cinema she mostly chooses to watch horror, as new and improved trilogys such as Saw are being brought out more often, and she likes these films. When at home, she likes watching DVDs with her cousin and sister these are mostly chick-flicks as they are feel good films that include characters of around the same age that are good looking and fashionable, which she enjoys. Watching Horror DVDs is also one of her favourite things to do, especially with her boyfriend.
What kind of media institution might distribute youre media product and why?
Distributor
Because our film is obviously British and contains unknown actors, I decided to distribute it around the UK film festivals because there is more chance that a distributor would be interested in a new genre of horror if its British and introduces new actors, similar to films such as ‘slumdog millionaire’ introducing Dev Patel and ‘about a boy’ introducing Nick Hoult who went on to star in Teen Drama ‘skins’. I think these are the reasons that its more likely for our film to be distributed by a UK company as US are more likely to be interested in big names which make the films have star quality.
Research into Film Festivals; http://www.britfilms.com/about/
Our International Short Film Festival Submission Scheme enables short film-makers to show their work at festivals. To be eligible, films need to be less than 45 minutes long, less than a year old and have a British director or producer.
After researching this I can see our film is eligible to be shown at this festival.
Funding
We didn’t have any funding for our production, but a common UK funding body to production companies is the national lottery; http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/15037
More than £2 million of Lottery money is being invested in 15 British film production companies to develop new feature films through the UK Film Council's Development Fund. The investment is being awarded through the fund's Production Company Vision Awards, a new initiative designed to help creative producers with a vision for the future of UK film to develop projects that will broaden the quality, range and ambition of films and talents being developed in the UK. As part of the Development Fund, the Vision Awards will provide companies with up to £150,000 over two years, to enable them to nurture talent and to generate, source, research and develop feature film projects with a degree of creative autonomy.
Role of Production Company
Obviously the production team films and edits the whole production but once they have found a distributor that’s when the production team are less in control of the film, for example marketing and jobs to get the film into cinemas or on to DVD then that is pushed by the distributor more than the team that actually filmed.
Because our film is obviously British and contains unknown actors, I decided to distribute it around the UK film festivals because there is more chance that a distributor would be interested in a new genre of horror if its British and introduces new actors, similar to films such as ‘slumdog millionaire’ introducing Dev Patel and ‘about a boy’ introducing Nick Hoult who went on to star in Teen Drama ‘skins’. I think these are the reasons that its more likely for our film to be distributed by a UK company as US are more likely to be interested in big names which make the films have star quality.
Research into Film Festivals; http://www.britfilms.com/about/
Our International Short Film Festival Submission Scheme enables short film-makers to show their work at festivals. To be eligible, films need to be less than 45 minutes long, less than a year old and have a British director or producer.
After researching this I can see our film is eligible to be shown at this festival.
Funding
We didn’t have any funding for our production, but a common UK funding body to production companies is the national lottery; http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/15037
More than £2 million of Lottery money is being invested in 15 British film production companies to develop new feature films through the UK Film Council's Development Fund. The investment is being awarded through the fund's Production Company Vision Awards, a new initiative designed to help creative producers with a vision for the future of UK film to develop projects that will broaden the quality, range and ambition of films and talents being developed in the UK. As part of the Development Fund, the Vision Awards will provide companies with up to £150,000 over two years, to enable them to nurture talent and to generate, source, research and develop feature film projects with a degree of creative autonomy.
Role of Production Company
Obviously the production team films and edits the whole production but once they have found a distributor that’s when the production team are less in control of the film, for example marketing and jobs to get the film into cinemas or on to DVD then that is pushed by the distributor more than the team that actually filmed.
How does youre media product represent particular social groups?
The character of scream links to our negative antagonist through costume. The idea that the villain is only partly seen and hides as much of their identities as possible, (scream wears a mask and a hooded cape and our character is dressed all in dark and wears a hood.) we only see part of his shaded face in the shot when the camera pans round this factor adds to the lack of information we know about these characters and makes them even more mysterious.
The similarity between our female character, Laura and the victim in horror film 'Prom Night' is not just costume, its the fact they are the main characters and its hinted from the very beginning of both films that the Villain wants her. In this situation the other characters are less important and when they die, its not as much of a bigger deal as if the main victim is killed off. The ages are also similar.
Our media product represents a teenage social group through its mise-en-scene, for example the primary research I did to decide on a genre the positive feedback on horror films was around the age group 17-20 therefore that is who our final opening is aimed towards as it contains a young cast, and an up to date theme revolving around a group of friends moving into there first home together
In what ways does youre media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Looking back at the independent research into horror genre, the opening sequences of the film I looked at have a lot of similarities to ours. For example; I identified that in most opening sequences the titles come in late, looking at my timeline the first title in horror film ‘wrong turn’ doesn’t show until nearly one minute in, and this one thing we wanted to do in ours but because of the short time length we’re allowed and because we used most of our titles to cover up mistakes they didn’t come in as late as we’d wanted. The font we chose for the titles is pretty plain and has a basic colour scheme of black and white throughout and appears to the bottom right of the screen, this is common trend in the openings of horror films, as its subtle but does the job.
The first shot in our film is an establishing shot of the three girls going into the clock of flats carrying boxes, I think this is a good idea as it immediately sets the story, and introduces the characters, then the second scene is the three girls again walking up the stairs which is another technique that familiarizes the viewers with the characters. We wait until the girls get inside the flat to do close-ups on them, I feel this is because close-ups exaggerate whatever the person is saying at the time therefore it wouldn’t make sense to add them in anywhere, this is most definitely followed in tense moments of horror films the camera gets close to the character and creates tension.
It is recognised it not just horror films but in all movies that sound plays a big part in identifying what is going on, and we made a conscious effort to follow this, an example is the sound of the doorbell when the girls arrive home, once the doorbell rings there is a moment of suspense where character Laura walks towards the door, the original plan was to add in a hyperbolic doorbell noise but when filming the sound was loud enough so we left it as it was.
The mise-en-scene of our film was pretty simple, as I think a lot of horror films are. The setting is usually a secluded house/flat in which someone is moving into or has just moved into with minimal characters and costume, however we needed continuity when using props so it was just a case of remember what we were carrying and how.
The first shot in our film is an establishing shot of the three girls going into the clock of flats carrying boxes, I think this is a good idea as it immediately sets the story, and introduces the characters, then the second scene is the three girls again walking up the stairs which is another technique that familiarizes the viewers with the characters. We wait until the girls get inside the flat to do close-ups on them, I feel this is because close-ups exaggerate whatever the person is saying at the time therefore it wouldn’t make sense to add them in anywhere, this is most definitely followed in tense moments of horror films the camera gets close to the character and creates tension.
It is recognised it not just horror films but in all movies that sound plays a big part in identifying what is going on, and we made a conscious effort to follow this, an example is the sound of the doorbell when the girls arrive home, once the doorbell rings there is a moment of suspense where character Laura walks towards the door, the original plan was to add in a hyperbolic doorbell noise but when filming the sound was loud enough so we left it as it was.
The mise-en-scene of our film was pretty simple, as I think a lot of horror films are. The setting is usually a secluded house/flat in which someone is moving into or has just moved into with minimal characters and costume, however we needed continuity when using props so it was just a case of remember what we were carrying and how.
Audience feedback
Audience Feedback- Questionnaire
1. Can you identify the genre the film would be?
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
2. Do you think our titles (i.e. font, size) fitted the genre?
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
3. Can you explain the significance of the flat? Explain what has happened here before? ¬__________________________________________________________________________________________________
4. How did you feel the costume, location and props contributed to the narrative?¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬ __________________________________________________________________________________________________
5. If you had the chance would you continue watching the rest of the film?¬¬¬¬
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
6. Where the superimposed images effective? How do they help show you what has happened?
______________________________________________________________________________________________
7. Any other comments?
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
1. Can you identify the genre the film would be?
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
2. Do you think our titles (i.e. font, size) fitted the genre?
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
3. Can you explain the significance of the flat? Explain what has happened here before? ¬__________________________________________________________________________________________________
4. How did you feel the costume, location and props contributed to the narrative?¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬ __________________________________________________________________________________________________
5. If you had the chance would you continue watching the rest of the film?¬¬¬¬
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
6. Where the superimposed images effective? How do they help show you what has happened?
______________________________________________________________________________________________
7. Any other comments?
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Monday 15 March 2010
Production report
I feel that as an overall project it was successful and am happy that we chose the horror genre out of all the others this decision was also a plus because the group luckily had a lot of similar interest in horror films and this made the initial research quick and easy to do because we split it amongst us and managed to cover a wide range of films from ‘wrong turn’ to ‘saw’ to ‘the strangers’. In our feedback people mentioned that they would want to continue watching the film to know what happens therefore I feel that the decision we made to have it as a cliff-hanger and not to give to much away in the opening sequence was a success in terms of gaining an audience and shows us that if we were to market our film, a clip similar to the opening sequence would be a good way to create a fan base. At the end I felt we had a very good music for our piece that fitted well with the genre and what was happening to the characters.
The fact that we had to re-film was a negative to our production process and although we got on with as much pre-production work as we could we had to wait about a week until all of us were available and the place we chose to film at was free so this did effect us time wise but I feel we got over this hiccup well and worked quickly on the editing to catch-up with everyone else who was on target. Another downside to the project was the camerawork, out of the group none of us were very experienced with capturing the shots which I feel is one of the reasons we had to re-film, however this did give us a good chance to better the production and learn techniques we didn’t know before. Because we didn’t need to have music in our preliminary task this was a difficult task, we found one website that didn’t get back to us but once we were told about unsignedbandweb.com we scrolled through a few pages and found the perfect one.
If I had the opportunity to re-do this project I would chose an alternative genre just to experience the different ways industries get involved with the casting, producing and marketing the different films because I found the investigating into these parts when we were producing very interesting. I would also like to try and market our film, I think this would be beneficial for us to see what ways are successful and which are not so much. In terms of improving what we have already done I think I would like to take a bit more time on the mise-en-scene such as the character costume, the main one being the antagonist, we based him and chose to follow conventions of other villain scream but I think he appeared a bit to normal, a better mask or disfiguration of the face would’ve portrayed this better.
The fact that we had to re-film was a negative to our production process and although we got on with as much pre-production work as we could we had to wait about a week until all of us were available and the place we chose to film at was free so this did effect us time wise but I feel we got over this hiccup well and worked quickly on the editing to catch-up with everyone else who was on target. Another downside to the project was the camerawork, out of the group none of us were very experienced with capturing the shots which I feel is one of the reasons we had to re-film, however this did give us a good chance to better the production and learn techniques we didn’t know before. Because we didn’t need to have music in our preliminary task this was a difficult task, we found one website that didn’t get back to us but once we were told about unsignedbandweb.com we scrolled through a few pages and found the perfect one.
If I had the opportunity to re-do this project I would chose an alternative genre just to experience the different ways industries get involved with the casting, producing and marketing the different films because I found the investigating into these parts when we were producing very interesting. I would also like to try and market our film, I think this would be beneficial for us to see what ways are successful and which are not so much. In terms of improving what we have already done I think I would like to take a bit more time on the mise-en-scene such as the character costume, the main one being the antagonist, we based him and chose to follow conventions of other villain scream but I think he appeared a bit to normal, a better mask or disfiguration of the face would’ve portrayed this better.
Pre-Production report
Pre- Production Report
To start the pre-production stage, we had a group meeting to discuss the genre on which the film would be based, we found this decision easy as we all have an interest in scary films and think that making it would be interesting and least boring to make. However there were disagreements to begin with about the content of the film and what was to happen during the beginning, but after a few more discussions we agreed on a storyline which I feel we have stuck to very well.
During the pre-production process we had various pieces of work to produce before we could actually film, these included the treatment, shot-list, storyboard etc. which are then to be posted on our blogs, and we shared the work load between the four of us and worked together when one had a problem. For example there was a problem with the treatment in the way that it was in the wrong order and we had to add shots in, but by matching it with the shot list it was corrected easily. A questionnaire is a research method we produced and asked to our target audience which meant a range of ages and genders where asked to see what they look for in a scary film, we chose to ask the people the questions rather than just hand out the questionnaires therefore the answers are more in depth and the results played a big part in the decisions we made to do with the film. The independent research we did also helped influence the choices we made, recent films like Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch were two of the ones I chose and factors like lack of violence and blood definitely stared in our production.
The storyboard was one of the things which we struggled to produce as at one point it didn’t match the shot-list or the treatment so that had to be re-done and the pictures re-drawn. Surprisingly, the script was one part of the pre-production work we found easy to produce although none of us knew it off by heart therefore the dialogue in the film doesn’t match the script one hundred percent which is definitely a flaw because if the actors had spent more time learning the script then they would match.
To start the pre-production stage, we had a group meeting to discuss the genre on which the film would be based, we found this decision easy as we all have an interest in scary films and think that making it would be interesting and least boring to make. However there were disagreements to begin with about the content of the film and what was to happen during the beginning, but after a few more discussions we agreed on a storyline which I feel we have stuck to very well.
During the pre-production process we had various pieces of work to produce before we could actually film, these included the treatment, shot-list, storyboard etc. which are then to be posted on our blogs, and we shared the work load between the four of us and worked together when one had a problem. For example there was a problem with the treatment in the way that it was in the wrong order and we had to add shots in, but by matching it with the shot list it was corrected easily. A questionnaire is a research method we produced and asked to our target audience which meant a range of ages and genders where asked to see what they look for in a scary film, we chose to ask the people the questions rather than just hand out the questionnaires therefore the answers are more in depth and the results played a big part in the decisions we made to do with the film. The independent research we did also helped influence the choices we made, recent films like Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch were two of the ones I chose and factors like lack of violence and blood definitely stared in our production.
The storyboard was one of the things which we struggled to produce as at one point it didn’t match the shot-list or the treatment so that had to be re-done and the pictures re-drawn. Surprisingly, the script was one part of the pre-production work we found easy to produce although none of us knew it off by heart therefore the dialogue in the film doesn’t match the script one hundred percent which is definitely a flaw because if the actors had spent more time learning the script then they would match.
Wednesday 3 February 2010
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