Evaluation Question Four

Who would be the audience for your media project? 

We have asked a variety of people, who fit our target audience, 5 questions about the types of films they like to see.

1. How old are you?
2. What is your favourite film genre? 
3. What is your favourite film in that genre?
4. Who would you go see a film with?
5. Would you be more interested in seeing a mainstream or independent film? 

Their responses were:

Hearing their answers, we feel that our film is suited to our target audience (both male and female aged 15-25). We think our film is mainstream, so it will appeal to a wider audience. 

Evaluation Question Three

Evaluation Question Seven

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

During this time we have learnt a great deal about filming and editing for example how to put together and edit the shots so that the clip runs smoothly. This was a big problem whilst creating our preliminary project, we had a very bad jump cut in the middle of the clip; the interrogator's leg moved too quickly due to poorly thought about filming and due to the fact that it was the first time we had used an editing programme.

We have also learnt the importance of keeping the camera and the tripod on a flat surface to ensure that the shots are straight (unless having a canted angle shot), this makes the footage look neater and also makes it easier whilst editing as if jump cuts are needed, it makes the shots look neater and less noticeable due to the straight frame.

Due to updated editing programmes, we have also been able to include sound effects which have improved our final opening sequence, for example where dialogue has been drowned out by surrounding sounds; we have layered sounds over the top such as screams or sounds to show suspense.

Another thing we have learnt during this time is how to layer a soundtrack over the top of a clip and making sure that the volume and pace is right in the different parts of the clip e.g. turning down the volume of the music when there is dialogue and making sure the tempo is quick when the characters are running.

Evaluation Question Six

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?


We feel our whole group has learnt so much about the different ways in which we can use technologies. Going into this project we had to learn how to use completely new computer programs which at first were quite confusing. We all agree however that our skills using the programs, tools and filming equipment has improved greatly and we have learnt a lot from this project.

To film our project we used three different cameras;

1) Nikon Coolpix P520 Bridge Camera

This camera records in full HD, has a fairly good microphone to pick up the actors voices as well as produces 18.1 megapixel pictures which we thought would give our project a crisp edge and a professional look.



2) Panasonic HC-V720                                                         3) Panasonic HC-V520

These cameras also produced full 1080p HD films and had good microphones, all three cameras
picked up outdoor lighting very well too which was especially convenient as our filming location was in the woods.


Tripod

In order to achieve steady footage with a professional quality we used a standard tripod. It had ajustable legs and a spirit level so when the forest floor was angled, we could still be sure that we were getting good framed and still shots.














Editing

When it came to editing our project we used an apple mac computer and its very many programs.This was new ground for all of the group as none of us had any previous experince with these computers and we had to learn to a whole new way of using the computer. This was not a problem, after practicing a bit we all got the hang of using the Mac and we all feel pretty confident now.

To create the intial production logo we used photoshop and fireworks to edit the text colour and make it the right size etc. These can be quite complicated to use at first but we soon understood how to do the things we needed. For example, we knew how we wanted our logo to look and in order to achive this we had to completely transform the original and this meant knowing how to use the program well enough.






















After we created the logo and had it exactly how we wanted, we then wanted to animate it, combining it with a specific background, a pulse movement and an audio clip. For this we used Final Cut Pro.

For the final editing of all out clips to put together our film opening we used Final Cut Pro. This is relatively new software and did everything we required and gave us a lot of creative control around cutting, transitions and effects.We all liked using this program.

For the text/titles over the opening sequence we used Motion.

Evaluation Question Five

How did you attract/ address your audience?

Through the use of the story line:
We all believed that the story line of our opening sequence would attract a younger audience. The story line is based around two young girls being followed into the woods by a scary- looking woman. In the opening of the clip we show two friends coming back from a party in the early hours of the morning, which relates to most young people.

We also thought that the use of a scary villain- like character would attract the younger audiences as most horror/ thriller films are popular with teenagers.

Through the use of props and costumes:
The props used in our opening sequence also attracted our audience. For example fake blood was essential for our horror film as most films in that genre focus on gore, which seems to be very popular with younger audiences. Also, we made sure the two girls' costumes were casual and trendy to represent their age.

Through the use of location: 
The main filming location of our opening sequence is in the woods, which we knew was a very popular choice of setting within horror films and also popular with young people as it makes the characters look more vulnerable. Therefore we believed this was the perfect place for filming, in order to attract the younger audience.

Evaluation Question Two

How does your media product reprusent particular social groups?

Our media sequence features two teenage girls walking home from a party, the characters shown in the sequence are around the same ages of our target audience. We feel this means the film would appear more to them.

The girls in our film, Anabelle and Lucy are dressed in fashionable clothing, we chose this costume especially to reprusent their social group. They are seen to be part of the 'popular girl' group, shown coming from a party -so they have lots of friends, therefore the audience sees them as socially desirable.

We also took into consideration the dialogue that the characters said, they were engaging in typical girly gossip about a couple back at the party in order to indicate that they are involved in others buisness like the 'popular girls' are usually associated with. We used two blonde actresses which is also common in most sterotypical horror movies made with teenagers in mind, we thought this was important sterotype to follow in order to appeal to the teenage girl audience.

Here you can see a scene shot from the huge movie Scream 4, although the movies are different in the enviroment, the characters are very simular in appearence for example; hair colour, how there is two of them, and they give of a 'popular' demeanour.

As well as the two main characters Anabelle and Lucy, there is the crazy woman. We wanted the woman to appear a little older than the victims. We didnt really base this character around any social group and this is because murders/crazy characters generally in horror films wouldn't usually have a social life as such. Our character does however show simularities to other creepy horror film characters.

Evaluation Question One

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Final opening sequence

Story Board

Story Board 

We have created a story board because it will help us visualise our 2 minute opening sequence. It will help us determine what shots we need, at which angles. We have drawn out 30 different shots, trying to add as much detail as possible, so when it comes to filming it will be quicker and easier because we already have a plan of what we need to do.

When we were filming our sequence we found the storyboard really helpful because it helped us organise the order of which we needed to shot. We had to change some of our shots because they were to difficult to film. But in general we followed our storyboard. 

Opening Sequence Titles

We have found a number of suitable fonts to use for the titles when they appear during the opening sequence. They all have a 'typewriter' like theme where the edges of letters are jagged and uneven. The font could add to the mysterious feel we want to create for the audience.

The options we have are as follows; 

The group was also talking about transitions of the titles, where they should appear and when. We did some research for this. I had the idea of our credits coming in in a flashing/static appearance. Some inspiration from this came from the horror/crime/thriller movie Seven opening credits as shown below.

This opening uses a lot of flashy graphics to grab the viewers attention. I feel that this is the type of title sequence and effect on the audience we want. To create the title sequence we are using 'Motion' which the group feel would be better and give us more control creatively.

Shooting Schedule

We planned our day of shooting to make sure everything ran along smoothly and to ensure we didn't miss out any important shots. Our schedule was also helpful as it reminded us of what we had to tell our actors.

 

The soundtrack

Soundtracks 

We have started to look at soundtracks to play over our opening sequence. We wanted a soundtrack that sounded scary and intense. We wanted it to start off slow and mysterious, while they're talking, to create an intense atmosphere. It should then start to quicken and become louder as Lucy & Annabelle notice they are being followed, and start to run away.  The soundtrack will then be layered with the noise of Lucy & Annabelle running. The beat of the soundtrack should match the pace at which they're running.  When Annabelle realises she has lost Lucy the music should quieten so the audience can hear Annabelle call Lucy's name and then hear Lucy's answering scream.

We have chosen a build up scare soundtrack to use for when the crazy woman picks up a rock and hits Lucy over the head with it.  We thought that this would create a tense atmosphere for the lead up to the murder. 

We tried to find a tense/scary audio clip to play over our title credits. We found 'Ambient horror music & dark soundscapes' on FinalCut Pro in the soundtracks folder. We thought this audio clip went really well our opening credits. We continued this audio clip throughout our opening sequence, layering it with other audio clips. 

We layered a memo clip, that we found online, over the top of the ambient horror music. We really liked the erie feel the audio clip had, we thought it made the atmosphere more suspenseful and hinted to the audience that something bad was going to happen. 

Update on Location!

When we decided where we were going to film, we decided on Warren Road, Bromley, England, United Kingdom. Although a few of our group had been to this location previously we didn't know exactly where we were going to film every different scene. We did several run throughs of the script with the actors and we decided in detail where each scene was going to be shot.

We are extremely pleased with our location, it really suits the movie being a thriller/horror. The location is secluded with few cars using the country lane surrounded by woods and spooky looking trees at night. It is perfect for the cliche 'silly girls walking home at night alone'. We feel that location is very important with how the audience connects with the sequence.

                                     

                                     

We also required a woody location for some of the sequence where the girls see then run away from the crazy lady. We were very lucky that this location also had a wood to the side of the road and a creepy looking lake so we were very happy with using this location.

If this were a big budget movie, shots like aerial and high angle would be easily obtained with cranes etc because of the large budget available. Our group felt that these angles would bring something eerie and spooky to the sequence and it would be a shame to not use them because of the fact we didn't have the resources like a crane. I had the idea of me climbing up a suitable tree and shooting from above, the woods at our location have many trees suitable for this.

As you can see the area in the woods where we film is very uneven ground, muddy after rain and generally quite hard to film on. We take this into consideration when planning filming days. Overall we are very happy with our location!

Costume ideas

We had an idea of what we wanted our characters to wear; making sure that we portrayed them in the right way (for example annabelle and lucy wearing dresses to show that they have come back from a party).

Annabelle - Dress and jacket

Lucy  - Dress

Crazy women (Alex) - ripped leggings and loose fitted white shirt

Filming Day 2 - 19th February 2013

On the second filming day, I feel that we were much more prepared having the previous filming days experience. We knew that we needed to be efficient and organised because of the limited amount of time with good lighting.

Our schedule for the day included filming all of the second scene which is the girls running into the woods and fleeing the crazy lady that appears to be following them, as well as some close ups of Alex/the crazy lady following them. The second scene is without doubt the longest scene and i feel we underestimated how long it was going to take to film it.

We didn't manage to get our whole schedule done that day but we got as large proportion of the 'fleeing scene' done and our group is happy arranging another filming day to get the close ups of Alex like we planned before.

We made a few small changes to the story board whilst filming on this day, such as the way the two girls run off has been changed to opposite directions and particular angles we wanted to shot from, after shooting them we found different angles that would portray the scene better than the original idea.

We love this still shot of Alex's character! We were able to shoot a
bit of the crazy lady on this filming day.

Overall we are very pleased with how the filming days went, we learnt that organisation and following the schedule is very important in order to keep to time slots and get filming done, and at the correct time, in order to achieve the best lighting in our shots.

Filming Day 1 - 18th February 2013

The first day of filming at the hayes common location was on the 18th February 2013 our group met in hayes high street and walked to our location. We had with us the equipment needed for filming which included three HD cameras and a tripod.

The first day of filming went well, it was a good experience for the whole group. We spent around two and a half hours at our location. We filmed around 25 minutes worth of good filming we should be able to use in our sequence.

During the first film day we started to realise some problems that we may face when filming in the future and how to over come these predicaments.

The main things that we faced were;

1) Lighting is a very complicated aspect of our filming project, we need the light during our sequence to  resemble the light of around 1AM but filming at this time is not really possible for actors and for our group, as well as the fact that it would be too dark. The sun currently goes down at around 6 o'clock in the evening and by the time it reaches 7 o'clock it is too dark for us to film without artificial looking light. This leaves us 30-60 minutes of good filming light.

Our actresses on location at 5.30pm

This is the lighting at our location at around 7pm

 As you can see in the pictures above the light at location varies a lot and changes very quickly.


2) The enviroment that we filmed in was a woody area off of a road in hayes near a lake which consisted of hilly and muddy areas which naturally is a bit tricky to film on but we manage to overcome this by using the tripod and imaginative ideas to keep the camera steady and film from some angles we didn't intend to but actually can bring more atmosphere into the sequence.

Whilst filming on the first day, our group realised how organised we needed to be and planning the scenes, shots and angles was very important in using time wisely and making sure all the shots are done as professionally as possible.

Specific Shot Planning

Although we are yet to confirm the exact shots we are going to be shooting, we have come up with some interesting ones that we are looking forward to shooting as we think these particular shots are quite strong and will bring some mystery, tension, shock, and proffessional quality to the opening sequence.

Below are some very basic drawings of possible scene shots and angles we think will look very good and we can hopefully film on 18/02/13

A) The thoughts behind this shot is a close up of the girls feet walking, I thimk this could be suitable as the opening shot as it gives an insight into what is happening in the scene.. i.e the girls are walking home, its dark and presumeably late because there are no other sounds but their footsteps which makes it rather eiery and spooky.

B) Close ups are always rather bold, a close up of eyes brings more of a tense atmosphere to the scene because eyes can show pain, happiness, evil, many emotions etc. A close up of the mad womans eyes could be a good shot to include as this will attract the viewers attention and look rather dramatic. Equally, a close up of the victims eyes which would show fear, could also be as moving for the audience as the mad woman's.

C&D) We have found a very good setting to film at and its very suitable for long shots. We discussed this type of shot together and we all think a frame were we show either the scared girls or the murderous woman in full with the scenery behind would bring the sequence alive a lot more.

E) This drawing just shows the filming location, we think that an establishing shot would be great and we can really show off the surroundings and how well they work with the film. We are also lucky to be filming when a cresent moon is about so we can get a very neat shot of the moon which could show the viewers that its night and generally moons are associated with creepy things happening.

F) At the moment we are thinking of leaving the sequence as an element of suprise and although making it clear that one of the girls has been murdered, not showing any gore although this could change if we think the sequence would be better showing the girl. A good shot to show what has happened could be the murder weapon covered in blood, it would be rather shocking to see and this would make the opening sequence of the movie draw the audience members in to carry on watching.

Day Before Filming

Our first day of filming is going to be tomorrow (Monday 18th February)

We are meeting at our filming location which is Hayes Common at 16.00, we have chosen this time because in order to get the scary atmosphere of the film we need the location to be dark, but at the same time we also need adequate lighting. This is one of the problems we believed we may encounter when we first planned the filming. 4 o'clock in the afternoon should be when the nightime settles and we are taking with us some big work force torches which admit large amounts of light and could be made to look like moonlight. We will do some practice shots with before to make sure that the light doesnt look artificial if we do need to use the torches.

We have two of Megans friends who are actresses playing the teenage girl characters, we have asked them to wear smart/casual as if they had come back from a party like the characters are. The other charcater is the 'mad woman' an escapee which is going to be played by Serena's friend. They are going to be wearing some ripped leggings and a white t-shirt, which will give a plain but mysterious look to the character.

As for props, there is a fancy dress shop called 'fancy dress me .com' in coney hall which we will purchase fake blood from.

We are yet to finalise the order in which we will shoot the shots and little details but other than that we are very excited to be starting our first day of filming!