Evaluation task 3

EVALUATION ACTIVITY 3
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?


What does a production company do?
The idea of a distributor and who that might be and why.
Why the various people are named in the titles- which jobs appear in titles and in what order and how have you reflected this?

When you have scripted, record the voiceover using Final Cut on a new audio timeline, then export to quicktime and embed on blog.

Our production company was named Highland Productions and our logo was picture shown above. This was a suitable logo for our company because it is an eerie picture of a lone tree in a foggy setting, depicting many of the same emotions in the audience as the rest of the horror film will. It is a dark scene - this is a similar feature to our film and many other films in the horror genre.
Highland productions is a small British film studio that specialises in producing horror films. it is similar to bedlam productions and see saw films - that produced the ~Kings Speech. As a result, the film would be targeted at local British audiences like the Kings Speech initially was. If the film is popular with local audiences we hope that it would go on to potentially become popular with global audiences. This could be aided by viral marketing, new technologies - such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. New technologies are often used by film studios such as The Hobbitt using online blogs, production diaries (on YouTube) and Facebook pages to create a hype about the film long before its release. By using new technologies, we would be able to save lots of money whilst reaching to global audiences, this is because it is free to create an online account on Twitter, Facebook or YouTube. The main thing we would be relying on by using this would be people sharing the film or social network pages with their friends
We would try and get our money from the National Lottery charity funds, BBC films and film 4 as they often help fund small British film productions.
We don't have titles at the moment but if we did, these would be a unique selling point of our film because people might recognise the names of the director or a member of the cast and this would give them an idea of what the film is like.

Evaluation task

From our group feedback, it has been raised that our strengths for our opening lie in the fact that the opening is very conventional of the horror genre. Most films of this genre begin with friends going on a trip somewhere not realising the true danger that lies within the woods, house or other area they are visiting. They evoke positive feelings among the audience which gradually turns eerie as they begin to realise they might not be alone before the antagonist reveals themselves and wrecks havoc among the group.

However our weaknesses lie with the lighting. We knew when we were filming that this would be an issue, although - as discussed - dark scenes do often feature in horror films as it raises enigmas with the audience as to what they are doing if they cant fully see. This is also used to hold the audiences attention, as they have to look harder in order to understand what is going on, this is frequently followed by someone jumping out from somewhere or another sudden event to scare the audience.
It was brought to our attention that we hadn't added titles which is a major feature of an opening to a film. As a result next year i will aim to adhere to all the conventions of a film and experiment with using titles.

Evaluation task 4

The audience or our film would be a group of friends similar to this. We were aiming at a largely male audience and so decided to use entirely male characters for the opening to give the audience people to relate to. We did the same thing with age - making the characters young adults/teenagers so the audience could find it easier to relate to them. This is because our target audience is a male audience aged between 15 and 25. They would be interested in Horror/thriller films with a dramatic, gripping narrative. They would want to be entertained by a film that would give them and their friends an adrenaline rush and something to talk about afterwards. 

I would expect people of this age to enjoy current chart music and blockbuster films. However they would also be aware of more independent films (such as ours) due to the versatility of latest technology - having access to YouTube, Facebook, iTunes and Netflix allows films and other media products to be cheaply and easily advertised to a specific audience globally. They would also be aware of viral marketing campaigns as they use mediums such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and blog pages to gain an audience. 

I would also expect people of this age to be aware of the latest fashion trends as clothing brands and retailers are able to advertise and sell using new technologies. They would be more likely to shop online as there is a wider selection available and it is easier to compare prices of different stores.

They would most likely watch hit television shows such as Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Walking Dead and Sopranos. This is because they all feature similar themes e.g. death, action, battles and include lots opf enigma codes.

Evaluation task 2

 

Billy in our film plays the role of the know it all, we have showed this by him trying to withhold information from his friends and . He doubles up as the comedian in the way in which he teases Liam for being scared. These two characters are conventions in horror movies in order to ease the tension in some places with their humour, and also to be relatable for the audience as in most friendship groups there is usually someone who fulfills these roles. 
A character i can compare Billy to is Marty Mikalski from the well known Horror 'The Cabin in the Woods'. Marty is shown to be a 'stoner' which is where he gets his comedic value - stoners are conventionally the butt of jokes and are either in an extremely relaxed state and don't realize the real threat that is present (this is where these two characters are similar) or are unnecessarily paranoid. 
These two characters are similar in the way in which they dress too. They are wearing casual clothing which helps show their age is similar and they have similar lifestyles in regards to class, regional identity and race. 
Audiences will be able to relate to this character because they are of a similar age and people are usually able to relate easily to people who hold a comedic value.

Evaluation task 1

Screenshot 1: This screenshot is of our opening scene, showing all 4 characters. This is a medium shot which shows the full body’s of the two characters in the foreground, it also shows the other two characters in the distance. This image is significant as it shows the beginning of our characters journey to the shack in the woods. This scene suits the conventions of a Horror as characters always start off in a busy, suburban place, but then later progress into a more hidden and discreet location, where the bad happenings begin. This shot is representational as it shows that the two characters in the foreground have arrived early, as they are more eager for the journey whereas the other two in the distance are more reluctant as they don’t know what they are getting themselves into. A convention of horror films is to have  characters with varying enthusiasm for what they are doing.

Screenshot 2: This image shows a close up, from a clip we shot to complete a 'Match on Action' section of our film; where one of our characters helps another out of a pit that they were all standing in. The previous shot shows the two characters reaching in, it then quickly cuts to a close up of the hands joining, where it later cuts to a mid-shot of the character climbs out. Many other horror movies, as well as almost every other genre use match on action in their films as it allows the audience to follow the character completely in a fluid way whilst still varying shots to maintain their attention. 

Screenshot 3: This screenshot shows our own production company, so this is where we got our budget from as they funded the project. It is important to show who the production company is as the audience would associate this with other films that they may have seen in the past.

Screenshot 4: This shot is a high angle shot of the four main protagonists as they enter the woods and it tracks them as they explore. We used a high angle at this point to show that as begin their journey, they are vulnerable to whatever else is in the woods with them. At this point in the scene, Billy is turning and telling Joe to 'shh', this creates an enigma as the audience don't know where the group are heading so it holds their attention as they want to know. All the audience can see is dark, scary woods, however our characters don't seem phased by this at all. This scene follows the conventions of a Horror Film as it shows a mysterious, creepy location. Scenes like this are shown in popular, successful Horror films such as 'Friday the 13th" and "Wrong Turn", therefore the audience would know that this is a horror film and would expect a dramatic scary event to occur in the woods.

Screenshot 5: Screenshot 5 shows a close up of a leather boot, half buried in the mud, in this scene the camera pans along with the actors, it then falls down and focuses on the lost boot, of which none of our actors notice. This links to the horror theme because of the mystery of it, as no one really knows why or how the boot got there. This is one of the main enigmas of our opening as it shows that people have been to this place before but for it is unkown when or why and why someone would leave without their boot.

Screenshot 6: Screenshot 6 is a high angle shot looking down on our four characters as the begin their journey up into the woods, the camera tracks after them until they stop to discuss why they're going up into the woods. Many films, from all different genres use tracking with their shots to show the characters movement. This scene shows what the characters are wearing aswell, we dressed them in casual clothing to imply a laid back feel - teenagers are conventionally care free and do not abide to laws or norms - and to be more relatable for our male audience members. 

Screenshot 7: This image shows a low angled close up of the main characters feet walking past. The only section of the shot you can really see is the shoes, as our characters had to hold torches pointing down in order for the camera to pick them up. We had to do this as at this point in the shoot, night had almost fallen, this was made even worse by the fact that we were under trees, making it even darker. This location however fits in perfectly with our film genre as almost every horror movie has a scene in a dark wooded area. The shoes that our characters are wearing is trainers, we chose this to further show the casual clothing of our actors. Even though they are walking through muddy wood terrain, they are not properly equipped so it shows they are unprepared for what is coming.

Screenshot 8: This image shows the silhouettes of tree's against the night sky. This scene conforms to your Horror conventions as many horror films dedicate a scene to showing off how scary the location is. This scene links to horror films such as 'The Blair Witch Project' which is filmed almost entirely in the deep, dark, scary woods. This image gives the audience a feeling of how spooky the woods actually are, allowing them to share the characters feelings, almost as if they were there themselves. This scene also shows the lighting - the only 'special effect' we used, it is very dark but there is just enough light to see what is going on. ideally we would have had slightly more light but the window for ideal lighting was small so it soon got darker.

Screenshot 9: Screenshot nine is the title of our film, in a white scary font. This font was actually also used by a horror film called Psycho. This font fits the genre nicely as it looks like it has been scratched into something like a tree (such as those in our film) and strange looking. Again we've used the scary background of the misty tree, on the dark gloomy day. This opening meets the conventions of a horror films opening because of the colours used, we decided to use dark colours to fit the dark setting and imply fear.

2 minute opening

This is our final edit of our 2 minute opening

Shot list

Shot #1. Long shot of all characters, of which characters walk by the camera.

Shot #2. High angle/medium shot of all characters walking through woods, this shot also tracks after the actors, following over their heads.

Shot #3. Medium shot of characters talking about rumours in the woods.

Shot #4. Low angle shot/tracking of one character.

Shot #5. Medium shot/tracking of two characters.

Shot #6. Long shot to close up of all characters.

Shot #7. Low angle of multiple characters.

Shot #8. Match on action of character being helped out of ditch.

Script

Joe: Oi, hurry up. Where have you been?

Billy: I had to persuade Liam, he didn’t want to come

Elliot: why not?

Liam: because I don’t know where we are going

Joe: I told Billy where we are going

Liam: He hasn’t told me anything

Joe: ok well we are…

Billy: shhh, don’t tell him

Joe: come here, I’ll tell you

Billy: No don’t, leave it as a surprise

Joe: Billy, come here

Joe: There was a girl named Hannah who was walking back from a party, people have said she was with someone, they think it was a guy. Well she was walking back, her friends left her before she came into the woods and no one has seen her since…Although rumour has it, the guy she was with lives around here

Billy: So we better be careful then eh boys

Joe: still coming?

Liam: hmmm, I’ve got a bad feeling

Elliot: oh come on

Liam: fine, lets go

Elliot: its getting dark guys, we better pick up the pace

Billy: does anyone have a torch?

Elliot: yeah

Billy: get it out then so we can see where we are going

Liam: (pointing to the pit) Whats that?

Joe: Did you not hear? Its where he puts your body

Liam: Who’s he?

Joe: what? You don’t know who HE is?

Elliot: Well if the stories are true, you’ll soon find out.

Liam: Joe, stop scaring me man

Billy: He’s getting scared already haha

Joe: Elliot, help me out of here, its freaking me out.

Elliot: sure, give me your hand

Animatic storyboard

This is our animatic storyboard that we made in preparation for our film

Storyboard

Film institution (our own)

This is a test intro we made as a possible logo. We were thinking of using this for the opening of our film however the colour scheme i used doesn't match up with those traditionally used by film companies that specialise in the Horror genre. Based on previous analysis of institutions specialising in the Horror genre, i've realised that black backgrounds with either a white or red font overlapping. Meaning i'm either going to have to change the colour scheme of this current clip, swapping the blue for red (to symbolise blood and evil), or i'm going to have to start from scratch,in order to make an opening more suited to our genre of a horror movie.

Film institution (big six)

We have chosen to use Paramount, from 'The Big Six' to use in our opening two minutes due to the fact that the institution Paramount has been used by horror films before such as Friday the Thirteenth and My Bloody Valentine. It was because of Paramount's previous experiences with filming horror movies that we decided to include it in the opening of our horror movie.

Film treatment

The opening scene starts with two of the characters waiting for two other boys. They then start to walk into the woods. We have used the low key lighting to our advantage as it is a main code for a horror genre. The characters start to talk about a girl that went missing in the woods so they have decided to stay where this incident happened. When they are walking through the woods they reach a pit, this interests the boys and they start to talk about what the pit is used for. In the camera shot we can see a half buried boot but the characters are unaware of this so they keep on moving. The next shot is match on action of Elliott helping Joe out of the pit. When they reach the shack, we started to use close ups to show the audience how serious the story being told. The last shot is of the antagonists staring at the shack whilst holding deadly weapons.

Editing software tutorial

This is just a basic tutorial i found on YouTube, teaching me some basic techniques about how to use the software. This tutorial made it so much easier to edit our film, as it taught me things such as importing media, cutting and trimming, adding video fx, saving your project and exporting/rendering the clip.

Time Management Schedule

On the 14th of December we had planned to film our media but when it came to the day one of our actors dropped out. This caused us to stop the filming and then find a replacement actor. When we had found our replacement we then planned to film on the 28th and the 29th of December. We had arrived at the location for our filming which we had scouted previously, then it started raining, so we had decided to go home and arrange to film another day.We arranged to film on the 2nd of January, this went well and we successfully filmed our media work. When we reviewed our footage, we discovered that we were missing several scenes that - when missing - would confuse the audience.

We discussed this and agreed we would have to go back a final time in order to fill in these missing scenes. After discussing filming with the group we re filmed the scenes where one of the protagonists phones his Mum to let her know he wont be coming back tonighton the week of the 4th of March.

Date	Time
14th December 2013	6pm – 10pm	Actor dropped out
28th December 2013	5pm – 10pm	Rained
29th December 2013	3pm – 7pm	Rained
2nd January 2014	4pm – 10pm	Filmed successfully

Mood board

This mood board shows several things that we want to include in our film. The first image is of the Blair Witch Project, we have got inspiration from this film in several ways. At first we thought we could use the idea of filming it like a 'home movie', we would have needed a camera with less good quality in order to show the differences between the cameras. Another aspect of inspiration we got from the Blair Witch Project was the location, it is situated in a dense forest. This location denotes darkness and mystery as you can't see much due to the trees obscuring the light.
The weapons (axe, hammer and hand held scythe) are on this to show that the antagonists are gruesome and far from professional killers. This brings an aspect of reality to the film because no ordinary person will expect to be killed by a professional killer. This brings it closer to home and people will expect that it is a possibility it will happen to them.
There are several masks on the story board because we thought we would dress the antagonists all in black and find masks to hide their faces. This would hide their emotions and expressions making it more scary because you can't predict what they will do if you can't see their face. Both masks are from the horror movie Saw, they are used very effectively in this film so it inspired us to use a similar idea.
We have put the picture of the road on the mood board because the film starts with the group of teenagers driving towards the woods on a road, they then walk away from it for a while, this shows how far away from civilisation they are and even if help comes, it will take a while to get to them.
The final two pictures show a wooden shack and woods in the dark. After watching The Blair Witch Project, we were inspired to film in the woods because it is easy to be selective over what the audience see's. It also allows the audience to see lots of silhouettes of trees and this creates tension because they think any silhouette could be the antagonist. We also chose to film in a wooden shack because it looks isolated and far from any help. It also shows that the protagonists wouldn't be comfortable in this location whereas the antagonist may be.

Research and planning provisional mark

Name of student: Billy Barber Cruz

	Done?	Comment/target
RESEARCH
Genre Research and mind-maps	Yes
Uploaded YouTube videos of openings - analysed	Not complete	You need to analyse at least 10 opening scenes
Opening titles analysed in detail – font researched	Yes	Titles research post is great – if every post was this detailed, you would be looking at top marks – this is a post to model every one on
Uploaded YouTube videos of similar genre openings analysed in detail	Not complete	You need to analyse at least 10 opening scenes
Costume and location research – google earth and pictures you’ve taken.	Yes
Actors and props photos and interviews	Props photos yes Interviews - no
Soundtrack research (non-copyright music)	Yes	Could your comment be developed – which films have a similar soundtrack? Could you do an interview with the pupil creating your score? Could you film him practising? etc
Audience Research and Profiling (typical audience member and similar films)	Yes
Institution research (Paramount etc)	Yes
Certificate research	Yes
PLANNING
Own film idea brainstorm	Yes
Own film treatment	Yes
Relevant Online Tutorials and Comment	Yes
Documenting of influences on production	?
Shot lists	NO
Consideration  of representation in your film and stereotyping – use theory from G325.	NO	You could develop your comments on the codes and conventions of your own film to include more theory, particularly about stereotypes and representation
Questionnaire (and feedback) Get some feedback on your initial ideas!	Yes
Diary of filming/editing etc with photos and screen grabs	NO
Mood board	YES
Script	NO
Practice titles created and uploaded	NO
Storyboard – animatic.	NO	Very very important Billy
Time Management Schedule	YES

 

 

Research and planning mark scheme:

 

Level 2

8–11 marks

Planning and research evidence may be partially incomplete;

There is basic research into similar products and a potential target audience;

There is basic organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props;

There is basic work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding;

There is a basic level of care in the presentation of the research and planning;

Time management may not be good.

 

Level 3

12–15 marks

Planning and research evidence will be complete;

There is proficient research into similar products and a potential target audience;

There is proficient organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props;

There is proficient work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding;

There is a good level of care in the presentation of the research and planning;

Time management is good; there is a schedule of filming

There is no animatic storyboard and/or mood board

 

Level 4

16–20 marks

Planning and research evidence will be complete and detailed;

There is excellent research into similar products and a potential target audience;

There is excellent organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props;

There is excellent work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding;

There is an excellent level of care in the presentation of the research and planning;

Time management is excellent.

Research and planning mark      12/20       Level 3

Billy – a lot of your comments are great and Band 4 level. There needs to be more consistency and also the rest of the tasks need to be completed.