Evaluation - Question 8

The prelim in my eyes was more of a learning experience then a test of quality. Since then we have broadened our skills so much by experimenting with the technology. As we became more confident, we realised that we can do almost anything with the equipment given to us.

We have developed stylised editing since first doing the prelim and have learnt how to construct different things together. The jump cuts look so effective due to making them black and white, negative and embossing two clips over each other; all things we never knew how to do at the start of the course.

We have also learnt to take attention to detail with things like the mise en scene as it really did make a difference to the outcome of the opening. She looks scary, but we can still see an innocence in her. With the use of a simple dress, we have mastered the art of representation.

We have considered the location and how it will effect the film. I turned out to be very effective as some of the feedback complimented the eerie woods.

The sound used in the prelim was pretty simple, but we have made it more interesting by adding sound effects, like the broken chair and the forest sounds. We have showed that we can work with different.

All in all i think the work we have done looks not only more professional but more aesthetically pleasing. Through editing, we have taken seemingly boring clips and turned them into interesting and scary pieces. I personally think our work has developed from the basic setting  an camera shots to unique angles and effective editing.

Question 7

What have you learnt about technologies?

Throughout the whole process we have learnt to use different technologies as we go along.

The JVC cameras.

The camera's that let us create the actual film aswell as the prelim. The cameras helped us achieve a proffesional quality film. They can be complicated to use, we had a lesson prepping us with how to use them.

 

Memory Cards.

 They were essential in holding all our film work. They slot into the cameras and directly into the Apple Macs. Without them, we couldnt't store all of the work so far.

Video Drive.
Simila to the Memory cards, it stores all of our filmw work, bnut also, all of the editing, sounds and finished woirk we have constructed together,

Macs.
This is where we did all of the editing, aswell as using quicktime and other sodftwares. There were two types of macs, one with a splitscreen and one Apple mac.

SOFTWARE 

(Livetype, soundtrack pro & final cut pro): This is where all of the clips are created into an opening. Each programme let us do a different thing to construct the film together. For example, create titles, sound and actually edit all of the clips together. We did run into oa few problems, but our teachers and the technicians at he college were very helpful.

Quicktime player.
Allows us to making screen recordings to show how we've worked.

Digital and Flick camera's.

Allowed us to record what we've done over the eyear, and record people's reactions to our film in a quicjk and easy way.

Blogger.

This very website that allows us to share our ideas and catch up on work we may have missed. It is so much more interesting then writing essays on paper, and it allows us to post videos and pictures.

Question 6 - Audience feedback - Cinema Experience

The next lesson after watching our films at the cinema, I went round to other AS media students to see what they thought of the film.

Class Feedback

Just some feedback from the class, the people who watched it first after it had finished :)

Evaluation 6 - Audience Feedback

This was a writted review by a girl in another AS media class as she didn't want to be recored! Enjoy!

 

"Your film was actually one of my favourites out of the entire thrillers!!
The location you used was perfect for the story. The storyline was very, very interesting and clear. The costume of the dead girl was so believable.
I especially enjoyed the close ups and the eerie movement up the stairs. The shots used were varied and they fitted in with the whole atmosphere.
The soundtrack was high pitched but it had an eerie and creepy vibe.
Personally, I dislike the whole concept of ghosts etc. However, this opening had me gripped from start to end!!
Overall I thought the film was unbelievably amazing!"

Question 4&5 Continued... Hurtwood House Media

Hurtwood house media.

Hurtwood house is a boarding school in Britain. To create their media thrillers, they are given a budget, giving them an edge and allowing therm to make a more realistic opening.

The thrillers are put on youtube and viewed by the public. They are also put onto the website for Hurtwood house so that students and adults interested in the school can view it. On youtube it received 823 views showing that the internet can gain a wide audience for independent companies.

The particular opening i have seen is one set in a tube station. The station was hires using the budget, so the platform was empty. the opening features a man boarding the tube and turns out to be the only person in the carriage, apart from a creepy girl who appears. The opening is genuinely thrilling and creates suspense. Not a huge amount of editing techniques were used but this is made up for with the use of flashing lights and unique angle of shots. i particularly liked when the camera was on the floor and filmed the female slowly walking towards it. this put the audience in the position of the young man and made me feel quite disturbed.

The mise en scene used was very similar to what Erika wore, with a white dress and bare feet. However the make-up of the girl was more thought about and made her look dead.



Evaluation - Question 4&5

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? How will you attract/address your audience?

As our opening is made from a small independent company, a small distributor would be used to distribute the film. We have a low budget, so we cannot use advertising, however, using the internet, we can still get our product out directly to the public.

To get the film out to the public, there are different websites we could put it on, seeing as we don't have a budget for a chain of cinemas. By putting it on social networks such as facebook or twitter, the film can get out to hundreds of people if it if viewed, then shared. The video would be getting out to our target of older teenagers plus, as they are the people who typically use social networks.

Also, the opening is up on 'Vimeo,' a website that holds profesional movie clips which are usually viewed by people that have to be logged on. This limits the amount of people that can view the film. Youtube however has a large audience as any member of the public can view a video without being logged on.

Next tuesday, we will be watching all of the openings in the cinema 'Screen on the green' which is an independent cinema, as chain cinema's such as 'Vue' and 'Cineworld' would only play bigger budget films. As all of the students are going to be watching the opening, we will be getting straight to the bottom end of the catchment of older teens.
There will also be a dvd release so we can take the films home with us. The video is also on the blog, which will be viewed by other students.

Using these methods, we are getting straight to our target audience and bringing the film to them.

Evaluation - Part 3 - Who would be the audience for the thriller?

Audience Factfile

Name: Evangelie

Age: 22

Occupation: Student

Enjoys: Cinema,
Favourite Films: Looking For Eric, The ring

Favourite Thrillers: Seven, Phonebooth

Favourite T.V Show: CSI, The Vampire Diaries

Favourite Music: The Klaxons, The Killers Ect.

We thought a female would enjoy our thriller more than a man, as our thriller is a supernatural sub genre, an on the spectrum, women tend to favour this more then men. The age is more towards the bottom end of the target as young people are the main target for cinema, having mor free time and money. However, she is old enough to stand the scary nature of the thriller.

Adults usually have a facination with solving mysteries, which is why she likes the programme CSI and would also enjoy watching a thriller that can have alot of twists. Her favourite films include Seven, a thriller that we based our opening on. She also likes 'The ring', a film constantly being compared to ours. Also, in her favourite films, she likes Looking for Eric, a small budget film, showing she might have an interest in independant cinema.

This is just a typical breakdown of the films target demographic. We originally wanted to target the audience at females from the age of 15, as we showed in the pitch.

However, this age is starting a little young and the finished opening actually hints to an older demographic of late teens to adults.

Evaluation - Part 2

The representation of social groups are important in thrillers as they can determine what kind of audience the thriller will be aimed at. In the opening, two main characters are used, one a girl and one a boy. We have followed the typical stereotype of the female being vulnerable. The mise en scene suggests her innocence and age. She has long, blonde hair, like many of the 'damzel' characters in other films. As she looks quite younThe film leaves us fearing her, even though she is innocent, due to the eerie forest setting and distorted editing.

The second character is a male, who remains unknown for most of the opening. The shots of him flicking through the pictures show his obssesion with the young girl. He does not represent a large proportion of people as he is isolated and alone. However this stereotype is necesary to creating his mentally ill persona. The fact that the audience can't relate to him makes them more curious about him. There are many films with a female obsessor, for example 'He loves me, he loves me not'. But this film features a male being obsessed with a girl, similar to 'The lovely bones'.

Evaluation Question 1

In terms of the timing of the titles, we have kept to the conventions of a normal thriller. Analysing a thriller opening showed us that titles usually last for 2-3 seconds depending on the importance/ how many people are in the title. The titles follow the order that a normal film does, with the producers and production companies as the first names, then the  main actors as well as editors. The title comes up roughly in the middle of the title, and stays on for a few seconds. These things are all conventions  of a film opening.

As we based our thriller on seven i want to compare both openings.

The first thing that looked similar was the titles. on the black screen, the titles stood out and was made effective by the flickering effect and broken ghost font. Seven also used this technique, making the titles jump into different areas on the screen. They eventually merged the subtitles into the action, something we did not do. both thrillers used white typography to stand out against the black.

There are close ups of a man flicking through a book, whilst we have Nathan flicking through photographs, this illustrates obsession and mental illness.


Seven merged to clips on top of each other, and we did the same with various contrasting shots.


The genre of the film is a supernatura; thriller, which you can tell from the clips of the girl in the forest with the shot of an empty forest behind her. This makes her look ghostly and not there.


We have used a small production company 'old mill productions' to show that we do not have a big budget are a small production company.

EVALUATION

The feedback from our first viewers who where our former pupils.

Final edit of title sequence.

Screen Recording Of Sound

Due to the sound not being in sync to the music box we had to  redo the sound to go with what was occurring on screen. Here is another screen recording illustrating this;

Screen Recording Of Edting

Here is our latest footage illustrating what we have just done;

Finalised Sound

We decided to compile both the original music box (for a short period) and the music I made on Soundtrack Pro to combine both effects with a chilling, direct approach. As well as an atmospheric feel, due to the forest sounds we used. We also used the creaky sounds made by Poppy which accentuates the creepiness of our thriller opening. For the final sounds Charlene and Erika suggested using an explosion as the "Dadada" effect occurs to intensify the situation and to use the razor tool to cut it into pieces so there is a back and forth constant "boom" prior to what is going on, on screen.

Sound

The sounds that were put together for the begining of the opening is a forest sound with birds, to signify that we are in the forest. To make this sound more suspensful we put in the heartbeat.Finally, the deep ambient noises adds a dark foreboding.

The next sound is 'Music box' sound consisting of high pitched at the end is a faint mischevious giggle which will be the voice of the dead girl. I think it is effective in creating a creepy atmosphere without using classical music or piano, like so many other films. We have decided not to use the creepy mechanical 'Seven' sound as it did not fit in with the forest shots.

Editing titles

We were posed with the threat of losing our desired font for the most blandest font on livetype when finally being played in the cinema. This is due to the fact that the Broken Ghost font is an imported font and only the Macs we were working on contained the font. So to resolve this issue we had to save the font onto our hard drive and for the most part re-apply them when we edit on another Mac.

Editing - Titles

Here is a screen recording of our group developing the titles to resemble the Se7en timeline.

Adding Color

Here is a screen grab of us adjusting the colors of an unedited clip. We firstly tried using the color correcter in Final Cut Pro to gain the same effect as the previous, only it didn't. We experimented using a variety of of tools when finally we were told  we could copy the settings and apply it to the clip, saving us a lot of time.

Sound Editing II

Illustrated by the screen recording , we were trying to replicate the same sound as the Music Box which proved to be partially difficult as most of the sounds in Soundtrack Pro sounded very harmonious and upbeat where it is supposed to sound very dark and bleak;