OUR FINAL FILM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4u5kikw5Bw

Here is the link to the final our final film opening on youtube!

Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use develop or challenge form and conventions of real media product?
As part of researching real media product that’s excising at the moment we looked at many different horrors film openings to understand the conventions that are used at the moment. We found that the most common occurrence in horror film openings are the girl plays the victim as women are more venerable to men, we incorporated this into our horror film by having the victims played by two young girls, who are also younger in age than the “baddie” which makes the audience feel more on edge as your feel the need to help the victims in the film. We also found the use of blood and dark scenes were commonly used throughout real media horror films, this kind of convention makes the audience feel on edge as many people find being left in the dark uncomfortable and the slight of blood represents danger and crime, so we developed this aspect of horror conventions by filming our film mainly in a dark areas with no windows which we also developed as there is no way out making the victims seem more venerable, so our choice of setting was developed from watching other horror films set in dark secluded areas. We also used a bloody knife after Gwen went missing but this added mystery to our film as the audience do not know what happened to Gwen therefore from this start to think up different scenarios in their heads adding to the tension. An added convention we used that is most horror films was a grave yard we thought this would be a nice added touch to add to the film as it makes the audience feel uneasy as grave yards are a scary place. So by looking at different horror films we used aspects of these films to develop our film to make it as scary as the real media films.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Like I said in the first question we found that a particular aspect used in horror films would be the women are used as the victims and the male is mostly shown to be the criminal, so we used this in our film to represent this kind of convention as we wanted to make our film as scary as possible making the victims looking as venerable as can be and the baddie in control. To develop this aspect we used two young girls (rosy and Gwen) we made sure that we used girls that were younger than the criminal as this makes the victims seem more venerable, we also wanted to have two victims as this makes the criminal seem more powerful as he is able to have control of two people by himself. We made the characterisation of the two girls different, rosy was the more confident girl who wasn’t afraid, usually in horror films this person is able to make it to the end and we wanted to include this in our film so the audience feel like the story will go on, and Gwen was the more venerable girl which usually gets killed off early, but then the audience create an attachment as feel sorry for them.

What kind of media institution might distribute to your media product and why?
The kind of media institute that I think would be interested in our film would be hammer film products, this kind of Film Company would be interested in our film as they specialise in horror films. By having a company like hammer films producing our film there would be many adverting opportunities as they have many years’ experience therefore they will have many contacts in the media to get public relations, hammer films also have been able to build a large audience as they are a specialised film company that produce horror films so horror film lovers will be looking at their up and coming films. We made our own film institute to go at the being of our film opening to make it look more professional but we also made our film institute specialised horror naming it fearsome films.
I also looked at Pixar on my journey to creating our final movie opening, this kind of company would not be relevant too our movie as they are an animation company that aim their films a younger children and this would not be suitable to our film at all.

Who would the audience be for your media product?
We decided to aim our film at teenagers ages 15- 25 (ABC1), we decided this age would be best suitable for our film as we have included younger people, this age group in the film. Being teenagers ourselves we understand what we would be attracted to in a horror film, so understanding this we would be able to reach this target audience better meeting their wants and needs as we have the same needs as they would do being teenagers. from a financial side of things we realised that this would be the best age group to aim our film at as this is the age group that mostly go to the cinema, during the revision many people do not have the money to spend on entertainment, and we considered this when choosing our age group, but knowing ourselves that we go to the cinema on a regular basis that the best money to be had and the age group likely to go to the cinema more often would be the 15-25 age group. I believe that during our film we did reach audiences as I have explained in the evaluation of the feedback I got from teenagers in this age group.

What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Throughout this whole process I personally have gone through a lot of ups and downs with the technological processes we have come across.
Starting off with our preliminary task, we used a flip camera that was very useful and straight forward to use, but when we came to the editing process, we found it quite hard to understand this new kind of technology that we had never used before(final cut express), so we resorted to using the windows movie maker, I put together all the clips and created different effects in between the clips to make the film look smooth and effective, although this came out good and I was pleased with the outcome I know that using the final cut express would have created a better preliminary task for us, but I am glad that I done this cause then i had experience with two different editing processes to decided what one was the best for me. Another technical difficulty i came across was when I was filming the original begging part with tom and his daughter and wife, the clips came up really dark as I couldn’t provide enough lighting so we ended up not using the clips, but this turned out for the best as our end result/idea I was happy with.

When we was filming the clips for the final video we found that the clips also came up dark and this became as massive issue as when we put them together quite a lot of the scene was dark and it wasn’t clear to the audience what was going on, so we had to reshoot the the clips down in the basement, this time we put on a light from another room in the basement which gave us the right amount of light and the clips looked better when put together with the rest of the shoot. When editing the final piece we found ourselves using lots of techniques that we beneficially to the final product which I am pleased with, we used sound in a really effective way and inputting this into the editing process proved to be difficult and actually choosing the right sounds was hard but we managed it and I think the sound is a huge strength to our film. Overall I am most proud of how we overcome problems and sorted them out efficiently and quickly, along with the sound we chose and in what parts we put this into the film, we spent a lot of time making sure the sound entered and exited at the right time and I am most pleased with our efforts of this.

Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
looking back at the preliminary task I believe that we have learnt a tremendous amount and we have come on so much from then, especially if you look back on our final cut edit of the preliminary task to the final cut edit of the final film. We actually didn’t use anything from the preliminary task apart from some of the camera angles as camera angles like the 180 degree rule were important, and tracking shots were essential in our final film. Our preliminary task was really basic with no props no real costumes and using a basic non HD camera, so the quality was different and also we didn’t use any kinds of music in the preliminary as at that point we didn’t know how to do so. So then when you look at the final film I believe we have come on so much as we have learned so many new thing different techniques, we have also learned how to organise a film opening, so organising where to shot it, making sure the site is available and clear, making sure everyone was available at the time and day when the shooting was going to take place and also decided on any props, these were all essential things that I think we managed to do very well in the final film. I am please at how we all worked very hard as a team together all bringing our different strengths to the project to bring out the best of our media product, I am really happy with the end product, and pleased with how I personally have come along in this task from editing in windows movie maker and shooting in school to organising a better venue and editing in final cut.

evaluation of my feedback

questions asked:

did you find the opening of the horror film effective if yes why?
which features of the horror film did you find most effective?
which parts do you think could be improved and why?
did the opening make you want you to watch the rest of the film?
did you find the opening of the film scary?

i chose to ask these questions as i thought these would give me the best answers to understanding if our horror film opening would be a success or not, and if not why!

from listening what they had to say i am very happy with the feedback, nearly everybody said that the music was really effective and one of the strongest part of our part film and was the most effective part giving off scary vibes, which we was trying to create.
i asked them what they thought could be improved, i think this was the most important question as then we would have a better idea of what to do if we were to do this project again, people said that some of the sound cuts could have been better and that we should have used shorter clips, i agree with this as then it would have created a feel of urgency, one person also said one of the shots where Gwen disappeared. to improve for next time i think spending more time on the editing on the less crucial parts will be better and improve the film.
overall i am really happy from the feed back as everyone said the opening made them want to carry on watching the film, so we must have done a good job!





editing day 4

                                              

we chose this as our final logo for our film opening, by looking at many different logos that are in the film making industry at the moment we noticed the most popular style is a basic bold look that will capture they viewers eye.

we chose this as our final logo as we think it meets the criteria of a good logo, it looks professional and classy but goes with the genre of horror and the name we thought was highly appropriate the genre as well.

so we adds this to the beginning of our film.

effects

we then went on to edit the effects using final cut express.

we decided that to create the best effects for our film using sound it would be appropriate to have the music dissolve into each other instead of straight cut music that would look messy, by dissolving the music into each other and having the music so it slowly gets quiet or slowly gets more intense this would make the editing of the sound more professional, and nicer to listen to.

when adding this effect into our film we did this -
For example we used it right at the beginning of the film opening between the change of music from the church bells to the music box this worked well as it softened the music change up so it was unnoticeable.

(fade out dissolve effect)

Another effect we used was the slow down or speed up tool

this was effective as this type of effect adds to the tension of the scene and we thought it would be useful to add into our film opening as we wanted to create as much tension as possible.
we simply did this by changing the amount of time the clip is shown by, increasing or decreasing the number already given.

we used this quite a lot throughout put movie opening, but the most effective part was when tom was walking towards the building and he turned his head back towards the grave yard, we slowed this but back down as it created tension and built up the atmosphere of the scene.

also an effect that was important to our movie opening was adding text. we did this by clicking on the text tool and simply adding the text, we changed the font and the colour of the text appropriate to the clip on the screen at the time so it stood out to the audience.

WE HAVE FINISHED OUR EDITING

editing day 3

editing

today we started to add captions at the point in the movie opening where tom is walking down from the grave yard to the building, we decided to add the here as it is the first part of the film opening where there is no dialogue and where the chilling music box music is being played.

we used our own names at the beginning of the film and put the roles we played in the making of the film

"Filmed by mia goodley"

"Staring gwen caple
rosy vega
tom white"

music/ sound

today we also started to add sound into our film opening.

i believe that in a horror film sound is extremely crucial as this build the tension and gets people on the edge of their seats, if i am getting to scared watching a horror film i will turn the sound off to make the scene less scary, so from my personal experiences i believe that sound has a huge role to play in the horror film genre to get the audience really scared.

so we started adding the music in the parts we wanted to come across most scary, we used strong eerie music that is clear but chilling at the same time and we also chose to use a music box at the beginning of the film, again i believe that also having music related to children creates a better and more scary atmosphere, also as our film is about a man whose lost his child this was really relevant to our film and we decided that we would use it as an iconic piece throughout our film, starting by using it as he is walking away from his child grave.

we found our sounds from a website called free sounds  http://www.freesounds.org/ . 

refilming our movie opening

we decided after our last editing session and from looking over all of the clips that we defiantly needed to re film some more video clips, to make sure that it was viewable to the audience and they could see everything that was going on, we also changed the idea of our film to make it make more sense at the end and to give it a more gripping story that the audience that will make them want to carry on watching.


our final idea - we have kept all of the begging bit of our film all the same: tom at the grave yard, rosy and Gwen talking then knocking on the door for what they have known to be a experiment where they will be taking part in a medical experiment for what they think is £1000 (but you wouldn't find this out until later in the film) we have kept rosy and Gwen walking down the stairs and tom locking the door all the same, then this is where it changes, we have changed it to when tom turns off the lights and gwen and rosy are in the darkness, gwen disappears and rosy is left alone, the lights come back on and rosy then realises gwen is not there tom comes down the stairs and informs rosy that gwen is having her interview rosy believes him and goes upstairs, the next shot is of rosy finding a knife with blood on and she throws it down she then discovers photos of her mother and hr sister and herself, she finds this weird and she is confused to why he has pictures of her and her family, tom then asks rosy if she is ready for her interview, she reply then goes back down stairs, the next shot is of rosy discovering Gwen tied up which we had filmed previously, rosy screams and continues to cry, we then decided this is where the name of the film will come up and that is the end of our film opening.




for the filming today i filmed the clips using the flip cam and rosy gwen and tom stared in the film.
so today when filming we filmed:

• the lights turning off then back to when rosy realises that gwen is no longer next to her in the basement
• tom asking rosy to wait upstairs while gwen is being interviewed
• rosy finding the pictures of her mother and sister along with a knife with blood on
• rosy walking down the stairs waiting for her interview
• rosy finding gwen

shots used during the filming today

• over the shoulder
• point of view
• pan out
• close up
• extreme close up

props used fr the filming today

The coat Tom wears

The knife Rosy finds

The photos Rosy finds of herself,
Mum and sister.

The fake blood we used on the knife..







editing day 2

During this editing time we put the first part of our film opening together, we decided we would defiantly use our back up plan which was of tom looking at two grave stones and walking through the graveyard to the place where the story was going to be set (the basement).

we all contributed in starting to re understand how to use the final cut express program, and we are happy with the result we have come out with, now we have had some practise on the software we found it easier to edit the clips together into one, using the crop tool mainly to get the sections of the clips that we wanted.

we are happy with the result and the moment and we hope to continue with the same understand and learning things along the way while editing and putting together our horror film opening.

editing day 1

we decided that to create the best professional look for our final film opening we would use the mac books editing our footage on a software called final cut express, during the time period between the preliminary task and now we over come the issues we had originally and become more confident on the macs ready for our final editing process.

during this editing session, we decided that we would go through all the clips we filmed and decide what ones we wanted and what ones we didn't want, this would make it easier when it came to chose what clips to put into the final cut express time line.
when reviewing all the clips we realised that some of the clips were unusable as they were too dark and the audience wouldn't be able to see what was going on and could only hear we tried using different effects and tools on the macs including the brighten tool to see if we could save the clips but this didn't work, although having the dark clips with only sound could have been effective i think that we should consider filming some parts of the film again.  

we also decided during this session that we wouldn't use the clips that i filmed using myself tom and Isabella as they were too dark and didn't resemble what we wanted them too, but we did have a back up plan that we have already filmed if the clips of the three of us didn't come out well, so we have decided to use them clips instead.

so during this editing period we chose the clips we are going to use for our final movie.

Shooting Day 2

25th november 2011

the filming

today i filmed the scene with myself tom and Isabella in playing the roles of the mother (myself) father (tom de Vere white) and the young child (Isabella goodley) we filmed this in the dark although this wasn't the effect that i wanted to give this was the only time available before editing and it got so dark so early so we had to make do with the surroundings.
we tried to create a family atmosphere, on parts i was recording tom playing with Isabella and tom filming me playing with Isabella, we was trying to create the effect of a home video. i think this part of the film was really hard to shoot as we only had car head light and street lap lights, this didn't really create the effect we wanted it too, so i think we should consider this when editing our film, to see if there is any way to brighten the footage up.

props used
for this we used no props only ourselves we didn't need any props for this part of the filming.

shooting day 1

24th November 2011

The filming

Today we went to my basement to start filming for our horror film opening.
we started by filming tom in the grave yard which is right next to the location of my basement, during this scene there is no dialogue and it is just of tom looking at two grave stones, this helps to cause confusion and thoughts to the audience as they wonder why he is looking at the grave stone this also sets the scene for the rest of the film as starting in a grave yard will show the film is not going to be pleasant like a comedy or a romantic film as you don't tend to have comedies set in grave yard as this gives a chilling effect. we then filmed the entrance of the two characters Gwen and rosy and the initial meeting of rosy Gwen and tom, during this scence we used a lot of camera angles including over the shoulder shot, match on action, the 180 degree rule and many more. we then continued to film down in the basement where the main filming took place, we found this hard to shoot as we found it hard to get the right lighting so the audience could see what was going on, we organically used torch light but at the end of the filming session we decided that we need to re film a few more bits, and we add this to our shooting schedule.


props used during this shoot

• white dress
• lab coat
• tourch
• rope

updated schedule

1st November 2011


DATE                        WHERE                     ACTORS                            TIME

24/11/11                   my basement             Tom de Vere White                after school
                                                                   Rosy Vega
                                                                   Gwen Caple

25/11/11                   my house                  tom de Vere White                 after school
                                                                   Mia Goodley
                                                                  Isabella Goodley

25th of November onward we will add in any extra time needed out of our plan if we don't meet our updated schedule.




we have decided to change the dates of our filming process to the above, we have also decided to change the location of our shoot to my basement, as we think this we will a more suitable place to create the best tension for our horror film opening, we have also changed our actors and brought tom into play the main character who turns out to be the villain and rosy and Gwen will play the two girls who are the victims while i shoot the scenes and direct the shooting with rosy and Gwen, deciding camera angles and where the actors will stand and what they will say.


ORIGINAL STORY BOARD

Mum and Daughter playing together in a field, laughing and smiling

The camera zooms out to an over the shoulder shot of the dad watching them on a video camera. The nursery rhyme 'Ring around a rosies' starts playing in a child's voice. The man joins in on the last line "They all fall down." The shot changes to black.

The next shot you see is the title 'THE SOCIAL EXPERIMENT'. It is written in red to represent blood.

The scene changes to a shot of the four teenagers receiving letter about the social experiment. They all agree to go. You then see a shot of them turning up at the social experiment.

The room is pitch black with only a light on the floor.

The light shows foot steps walking towards the children.

The light is shone on the children's faces. The torch drops.

The torch is on the floor again, watching the mans feet walk around the room.

The next shot you see is of a hand reaching out, covered in blood.

The children have all been tortured. They can not escape. What will happen to them?

24th October 2011

Finished and Final Preliminary Task 

this is our final video we edited using movie maker on windows we decided to use this as our final preliminary task as we thought that this resembled what we was trying to create the best with the editing skills we used on the windows movie maker, i think that knowing and learning different ways of editing videos is good, but i want to be able to become more advanced on the final cut express video editing program as this will make our final film opening look more professional, we are currently still trying to figure out the problems that occurred in our first attempt so we can become better in our film opening, but i am happy with how our final preliminary task came out on window movie maker.

23rd october 2011

Preliminary Task First Attempt

This is our first attempt at using the mac computers to edit our preliminary task like i said in one of my previous posts we found t hard to understand the mac books and decided that for our preliminary task we would use movie maker, we made various mistakes when filming this task but this was a great way of learning and experimenting different ways of editing our movies, this is our unfinished preliminary task that we made by using the macs we will review this when we come to do our final task to see what we can do to make our editing skills better on the mac computer.

Schedule

This is our schedule for the week after half term to film our film opening.

DAY                                    WHERE                          ACTORS                          TIME
Monday                           

Tuesday

Wednesday                       Rosy's house/garage           Mia, Rosy,                         All day half term

Thursday                           Garden behind Mias           Izzy(Mias sister)                 1.30 - Aslong as it takes
                                          house.                               Mias mum.
Friday                                Editing at school                Rosy, Mia and Gwen          Lesson and afterschool

Preliminary task - day 3

21st October 2011

we came across a problem when we went back to edit our movie further, so we decided to make our movie again using movie maker, we found this was easier to do and much quick than using the macs which we are not used to. we finished our final film and i am please with the outcome, like the mac version we all contributed towards the making of the film, and I'm pleased with our first time using this soft wear.

Preliminary task - day 2

Monday 17th October 2011

Today we started to edit the videos from the flip camera that we shot for our Preliminary task. we all worked together to produce a old professional looking Preliminary task. we put together a series of clips that could be understandable to the audience. we took it in turns to edit the clips into a sequence but all helped each other out to make it as good as we could. we used the mac's at school to do this as it gave us the best possible software we had available to us, as none of us had used this software before we came across a few problems that we didn't understand so we used google and you tube to help us understand the software step by step, this helped us a lot.
although we still have some editing to do i am happy with our short film so far.

Preliminary task - day 1

Friday 14th october 2011

today we used the flip up camera to film out preliminary task within the school, rosy and i were the actors in this task and Gwen did the majority of the filming although we all had a go at different parts of filming, we all came up with the ideas and how we wold film the shots and the dialogue.
our first shot was of me running through doors into another set of doors changing the camera shots as this happened then Rosy's feet walking after me, as part of this shot we did a low angle shot so this makes the audience feel intimidated . Then there was a close up of my face running into the toilets, and going into the cubicles this was to show the emotion and fear on my face, the there was a shot of rosy coming in after me we had a discussion and she pulled me into the toilet, the shot then flickered between rosy and i sitting in a cubical showing that i and been possessed by her.
we used the match on action shot as rosy walked into the toilets
we used the shot reverse shot as rosy and i was talking
and we used the 180 degree rule while rosy and i were talking as well.
we then uploaded the videos onto a memory pen so we could later edit them on the mac's.

initial ideas - horror film opening

The name of out our initial idea for our horror film opening is 'The social experiment'.

We thought instead of doing the usual, sterotypical zombies, murderers and scary monsters it would be more creepy and interesting but also easier to do with the budget/equipment to create a film that is phycologically scary where the death occur between the charcter to make it more chilling.
The basic storyline for the film is a man whos wife and daughter get killed by four people who were drink driving. He wants to get revenge on them so he sets up a social experiment and invites them to join in for 2 months and they will each get a reward of £1,000 if they do and complete it. Each of the four people, ellie, charlotte, dom and alex agree to do it and go along. Little do they know that the man is going to drive them crazy and torture them and eventually going to kill them or they will go so mad and loose the plot that they end up killing themselves.

Analyses of Film Openings

This film is a action crime film, with the typical conventions of swearing , smoking, lots of different camera shots and guns. the opening of this film starts off with a definition of pulp, this is unlikely within a film opening but works well to describe the narrative of the film. the opening scene starts off with a man and a woman drinking coffee in a stereotypical American diner, they start to discuss their past robberies in places such as Conner shops, then then proceed to ask for another cup of coffee kiss then, burst their characters into the film and rob the diner, the scene freeze frames then goes on to show the title pulp fiction along with all the actors producers and the film institution. the swearing throughout the scene confirms the film to be a 18 and the genre in which it is. the lighting in this scene illuminates the faces well so you can see the focus is on the two character and you know to watch them.

the film the dark knight starts by showing the names of the 3 intuitions that produced this film(Warner bro. pictures, legendary pictures, dc comics). the film then goes on straight into the action typical for a action film, this helps you discover the action within the film straight away. the action starts by men robbing a bank with the expected conventions of masks guns dressed in black, and a highly regarded American bank. the men then go on to rob the bank but have been instructed by the "joker" to kill one another, there is a lot of violence in the opening scene, but no blood or gore this is what gives the film its 12 rating, the later reveled "joker" then escapes by driving a yellow American bus out of the building blending in with the rest of the yellow buses on the street.

the opening scene to final destination 3 is mainly focused on showing the credits of the people who were involved in this film, the names are written in a old fashioned circus/ fairground font that you would see on a poster, blending into the background of old fashioned cirrus stereotypes, like fortune tellers boxes, tarot card etc. the film then proceeds to go onto a group of kids at the fair where you can see numerous amounts of potential danger. the opening does not give you a very good idea of what is to come but you can sense the tension with the screams from the fairground rides and the old fashioned spooky circus freaks. the music adds to the atmosphere by creating a spooky sense to the genre of horror/thriller.

the happening starts with the opening credits that proceeds to go on for a long time before the film starts the production company 20th century fox, show their title and logo before the credits begin. the background to the credits gives you no indication the plot or story line but later on you would understand why they used this in their opening scene, the clouds gradually become darker and the music playing in the background gets louder, this could sum what show the the film might to to a bad end, but it doesn't show this well. the narrative then starts with a establishing shot of central park and the people in it, that are happily walking around minding their own business, then the characters in the film freeze and begin to commit suicide, this immediately tells you that the film is going to be a horror genre and shows why it is a 15 rating as you can see blood and death. there are many different shot types used within this opening scene, for example a point of view shot when the workers are falling from the building and a aerial shot when it approaches central park in new york.

hammer film productions

I have decided to look at the horror movie producer “hammer film productions” this particular film production company are based in the united kingdom and they were founded in 1934, the company specialise in the typical gothic horror film, but they also produced science fiction, thrillers, film noir, and comedies and the further on the line in later years they went on to produce television series. When hammer film productions were most successful they donated the horror film market, they produced films worldwide and became a financial success; this was due to becoming in partnership with major united states studios, such as Warner bros. during the 1960s and the 1970s the demand for horror films fell and the market became more competitive so due to the loss of sales and losing the contracts with the American funding the company decided to cease production, in the mid 1980s and since then the company has been in effect hibernation. In the new millennium the company was brought by a consortium including advertising and art collector Charles Saatchi. Once all the plans went through the company declared that they were going to begin making films again but none were produced. Again in May 2007 the company was sold again but this time it went to a group headed by big brother a Dutch company, consortium cyrte investments, who said that they were going to spend $50m on horror films.

 some of the films they have produced in the past over the last 70 years ..

films that are in production...

i also decided to look at the film institute Pixar, Pixar have been around since 1984 and are an animation film institute that have been producing films mainly for children of a young age.

Featured films -

Toy story

Cars

Finding nemo

Up

Monsters inc

A bugs life

Pixar aims to lease younger children mostly and are one of the most successful film institute’s in the world.