StoryBoard

This will be the first shot shown, we have decided we will be using a long shot so, straight away the audience will be able to see the location of the main character- Charlie. We want to make sure the scenery was shown as the scenery really links to the typical conventions of a horror film,  therefore we want to make sure the scenery is included, we are planning to have Charlie run and pan the camera so we are able to see the movement in a smooth way. Charlie will be wearing a tracksuit as he;s acting as a jogger, so this fits the style nicely. We don't really want him wearing anything to fancy so we just asked him to wear  black as it's very simple and doesn't stand out too much. 

Audience Feedback

This is my audience feedback. A lot of positives came from feedback as I found out that the sound effects used were really good and challenged conventions of most horror films. My idea and plan was to create a horror film which challenged conventions of all other horrors and that's succeeding, for example I used happy sound effects such as birds singing and a bright day so the lighting was high. The audience slightly understood this and thought it'd be good as it wouldn't be the same as other horror films.

Theo Benjamin- Evaluation

Question 1- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?  

My media product challenges most conventions of horror films. The reason I say this is because main horror conventions are:

-Dark lighting
-Enigmas
-Loud stings in the music
-Hand held cameras/POV
-Parallel editing
-Use of ellipsis

My horror film doesn't use any of these and/or uses opposite conventions. My media product uses bright lighting and is based in the day whereas other horror films are based during the evening/night time and have dark lighting throughout, my media product is set during the day and therefore bright lighting is used throughout. 

In my film there aren't any chases/fast paced things going on during my clip so I don't use parallel editing and at the end of my clip I don't use a sting to show 'Bella' pop up in the face of the camera. The POV/hand held camera technique is used partly in my clip but only where it is appropriate, which is when the victim comes in contact with Bella. The ways my media product does use conventions of real media products is by using professional company logos. Another way my media product uses conventions of horror films is by using sound effects to build tension up and to make the audience on edge. Sound effects also give off an enigma and makes the audience wonder what is going to happen next.

Question 2-How does your product represent particular social groups?

My product tests the stereotypical social groups given in films. My film represents the social group of victims. The reason I say this is because in most horror films the man is seen as 'dominant' and is usually the hero. In  my film the male character is the weak and vulnerable person as shown when he comes across the little girl in the woods. The character I've compared my main character to is Felix Davison from the 2011 horror 'You're Next'. The reason these two fall into the same social group is because they're both male victims of horror films which isn't very common, especially in big Hollywood movies. In these pictures both characters are looking round as they've heard an unexpected noise but don't know what has gone on, whatever created the noise is unknown by the characters and also an enigma for the audience as they're not shown what makes the noise till later on in the film when both the characters are killed. A main reason I chose a male to play my main character is because my horror film is very different to other horror films and doesn't follow all conventions. For example I use a bright setting and it's set during the day time compared to most horror films which are set at night with bad stormy weather etc.

Although these photos do not show a location I can see that my character is outside whereas Felix is shown inside with blood on his face. The look of concern on his face is because he's seen his friends die from the killer who are targetting the house he's in. The character used in my film isn't injured/shown with any scars or blood on him but does have the same concered/alarmed lok on his face that Felix has.

Question 3-Which kind of media institution might distribute your product and why?

I believe the distribution company that would distribute my film is 'Brain Damage Films' (BDF). The reason why this company would distribute my film is because for the past 14 years they have been one of the largest and most respected independent horror film distributors world wide. They specialize in distributing horror films and therefore help get smaller films off the ground and give them the green light to showing audiences their films. Another thing about BDF is that they have distributed a large amount of 'slasher' horror films and the majority of them have been successful, once the films have been released they sell DVD versions of the films on their website. So like other media products they have distributed my film is conventional to all the things that they stand for.
Although Brain Damage Films are an American based film company they've distributed British horror films before, I think that they'd show my film to an American and English audience. In response to this I would show their logo at the start of my film along with the ones I currently have.

Question 4-Who would be the audience for your media product?

This is Yomi Yusuph, he is an 18 year old boy from London but he currently lives in Medway. He is currently a sixth form student and in his free time he enjoys going to the cinema and socialising with his friends. As he has a lot of leisure time he likes to go shopping at the local shopping centre and buys clothes from Zara and Topman. Yomi’s favourite films are The Purge and Insidious 2, he visits the cinema twice a month and his favourite genres are horror and action.He watches all his films at the cinema as he lives close to an Odeon, he goes with friends so they can enjoy the experience together. He isn’t a fan of watching online films but the ones he does enjoy in the cinema he purchases when they’re available on DVD. He watches a lot of television and his favourite series to watch are Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead and The following. Yomi listens to music mostly from Kanye West and Jay Z, he would be the perfect audience member for my film because horror is his favourite genre and he enjoys films with an enigma. Yomi also likes films that use jump scares and I personally think that my film includes many of these throughout the length of the film.

Question 5- How did you attract/ address your audience?

To address my audience I made a video of feedback from showing my film. I also gave out a questionnaire asking these questions:

What was your reaction to the movie?
Would you recommend this to a friend?
How would you describe this to your friends?
List parts of the film you did and didn't like
Did the actors act professionally?
Did you enjoy the idea of the movie?
Do you think the movie met the conventions of horror?

The video above show the audience's response to watching my film. 

Question 6: what have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

All the technology I used during the process of pre-production, production and post production are above. Throughout this question I'll explained how each of these products were important to making my film and how I used them to construct my final extract.

Picture one is of a tripod was used for the filming of the main task. It was key to the main task as it meant my camera work was steady at the points I wanted it to be and it made tilts and pans easier to perform. A main reason why the tripod was important to use was because the videos I watched online on Film Riot said that films with tripods were much more highly rated and more pleasing to watch than films with hand held cameras. Although the majority of horror films used hand held cameras I believe my film was a lot better with a camera used on a tripod.

The next picture is off a HD camera. This was what I used to film my main task, it’s essential to the main task as without it there would be no film. It produced videos throughout the entire project, not only for the main task video but for the audience feedback and for rough cuts. The camera was used throughout the entire process, from day one I used the camera to record a video of the pitch and from then on it was used for rough cuts, filming the final film and to video the audience feedback.

Picture three which is of my memory stick. This has been used throughout my main task and preliminary as I have used it to save rough cuts, sound effects and pictures. This is probably one of the most important pieces of hardware as it has everything saved to it that I used to make the main task. Also used this to save updates and to show progression of each rough cut. Also all the computers I used for the main task were public and therefore anyone work I done would’ve been open for anyone to access. The memory stick helped me during pre production as my pitch and initial ideas were saved to it and during the production because each video clip we made were saved to it.

My fourth picture is of a computer, none of this would've been possible to make without the use of the computer as it kept everything stored and meant I could upload things to blogger, go on YouTube and research things on the internet. The main things I done on the computer were update my blog, research cinematography to find out extra tips and find sound effects. Although I used my memory stick to save most data on, my computer also had a few files saved to it just in case there was later on a problem with my memory stick or I couldn't retrieve the files from another source.


My fifth picture is of an iPhone, this was used during production of the film so that everyone was able to meet at the same place and time. The phone was also used as a prop during the extract and to take pictures of the location (location shots) during pre production. The phone was used multiple times in all 3 stages of production, I've already mentioned that I used the phone for location shots and story board in pre production. During production the phone was used as a prop and to take pictures to show skills progress in the build up to the final clip.

My final picture is of earphones. Earphones were a very important part of our pre and post production. The reason for them being important were because during the pre production we looked for sound effects and used them to listen to each sound clip and find the correct ones that we wanted to match our story line. During post production, earphones were even more important. This is because we used them to listen to how each sound effect matched with out video clips and if the original sound effects didn't fit then we had to go online and find new ones to fit our film. The earphones were mostly used to listen to the audio of the clip during post production so we could hear if there was dirty sound or any interruptions of other background noise.

Question 7- Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the main task?

Preliminary(above) and main task (below)

Since doing my preliminary task I feel like I have progressed a lot not only as a cinematographer but my whole sense of film language. This is because during the preliminary I didn’t know many of the different shot types or why certain shots were used. After doing some research and watching many Film Riot videos on YouTube I knew exactly why I wanted to use some of the shots I used, for example I learned that canted angle shots are used mostly in horror films to show the viewer that something’s wrong or something bad is about to happen. Therefore I used this camera shot when it was appropriate for filming.

During my preliminary task I made many errors such as filming in a bad location. As the co-location scout I should have chosen a more appropriate place to film because the building I used caused echoes to the voices of the actors, the way I solved this problem in my main task was by not using dialogue, for the dialogue I was going to use it was pre-recorded on a pod casting kit so that there wouldn't have been  any errors made with the speech and there'd be no dirty noise in the background. Overall this turned out to not be a problem in my main task as my final clip used no dialogue whereas my first rough cut did. In the preliminary the title used was very basic and just appeared on a blank background. After watching a few openings to similar films I decided to put the title on screen with an establishing shot in the background.

The major mistake I made in my preliminary task was accidentally using a jump cut, this happened by mistake as I stopped recording one part and then recorded again a few seconds later. The problem with this was that the actors had moved and therefore it was confusing to the audience and could be seen as a continuity error. In my main task this wasn’t a problem as I used long takes and therefore there wasn’t a lot of cutting done by the editor. 

Also in my preliminary mise en scene wasn’t concentrated on as our actors were just dressed in their standard school clothes whereas in my main task the victim was wearing a tracksuit with headphones in. This is a standard outfit that a  male would wear whilst they're going for a jog.

Preliminary (above) main task (below)

Finally the sound effects used in my preliminary task were very ‘classic horror’ by this I mean they’re all the type of sound effects you’d hear when you watch a horror film and this can get very repetitive if you’re a viewer that watches many horror films. This was different in my main task as I spent longer trying to find good sound effects which would fit the film and make the mood scarier. The sound effects worked a lot better during my main task even though I used a lot more than what I did in my preliminary.

AS Media- 'Bella' (YouTube)

Preliminary Film

http://jessbethmolly2014.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/preliminary-task-film.html

This is the link to mine and Molly's preliminary task.

Skills progress- Camera angles.

I researched camera angles using this link:   https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=camera+shots+and+angles&safe=strict&biw=1242&bih=612&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=MD2RVYC6Cc-V7AaohYLQBw&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ#imgrc=GGZ0AQ64_BqfxM%3A  using this link allowed me to become a lot more comfortable and have a lot more knowledge of camera angles. Before we film we will run through where i will stand and how i will hold the camera etc to make sure we our fully confident. I took some photos of Theo guiding our actor Charlie, Theo was the director so it was down to him to tell Charlie what to do, Theo will do this so i will  feel more confident about where to stand with the camera.
We will do this so i know  exactly where Charlie would be at the beginning and end of each clip, this will help us because when it comes to the editing it means there will be no jump cuts and the clips will flow and therefore the film will hopefully look good. As you can see i took some photos with my friends to help us understand camera angles a lot more. These girls also do media however were not in my group. This helped me gain a lot of confidence about the different types of angles and how to take them also it helps us see what the audience will see.

Skills progress- Editing the film

To edit the film we used the software called Sony Vegas, no one in the group knew how to edit the film which was very frustrating. I edited the film and watched many Youtube tutorials to help me gain the confidence. i knew a lot at the end of the film editing process for example, we wanted to make the colour of our film a a lot dimmer and dark coloured than it actually was. So i learned to change the colour of each clip. I learned how to use a lot more of the tools on the camera such as focus peaking, a histogram view in both shoots and playback mode, and built-in interval shooting. It also has a "Motion Panorama" mode that allows for fluid, single-sweep panorama images up to a full 360 degrees I played around to make sure I was comfortable with the camera, filming with affects on the camera made it a lot more easier to edit as the picture of the filming was already set on the camera. This video helped me to understand the first few stages of editing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwPCGhNcnGg  as you can see from the video it explains how to colour the clips, unfortunately i couldn't edit all the clips at once i had to do it individually which was very time consuming however meant i  gained confidence. To change the colour i typed in to the bar 'tone, contrast, saturation' this allowed me to adjust the tone etc to how i wanted the clip to look like, i had to do this ti each individual clip so i made sure in wrote down the number i out each clip too so each clip would look the same.