Film Brief RESIT!!!

As a group, we all sat down and drew up a mind map of all our potential ideas for our horror film. We began to think about the plot and the main storyline of our horror film. We have decided to base our media piece around 'psychological stalking' rather than just having a typical murder mystery.

It's based around a group of mentally and psychologically ill men that are looking for defiante features of different women where they could create their own perfect being. The victims are the women that match what the stalkers want, and they will turn out to having a cross on the selected body part. This will hint towards the actual plot, however leaving the audience wondering what exactly will happen next. Each of the victims will be followed home, or to somewhere where they are going to be alone. The main plot focuses around the Male Gaze Theory were women are seen as obsessions, therefore the female parts of each of the protagonist characters are something that the antagonist villans want. The plot opens up and the audience can see what the storyline is when a number of different women experiance the same type of attack. 'The Decent' is the only film that we could compare stroylines too when a group of 6 women go caving and get attacked by men. As a gender, women are seen as more vunerable to men therefore we made the women the protagonist characters. In our horror film the women are all attacked by different men that are all un-known to ther audience, however they have a destinct accent and look about all of them. The women are identified by their femanine features and taking to a house in the middle of the countryside, where they are butchered in an un-humanly way for the mens enjoyment. 'Enya' is the main character that ends up being the only character thats still alive, and whole.

We will use a lot of typical codes and conventions that are regularly seen and used in horror films to create the tension and fear we desire. For example we will mainly use darkly lit rooms and use colours such as reds, black and browns. This will be to make the set creepier and more intense for the audience to watch as everything isn't as clear when the lighting is dimmed which emphasises the audience's fear of the 'unknown'. Vladimir Propps theory can partly be applied to our horror. Todorovs theory of Equilibrium is also implied in our horror as the plot begins with typical lives of the 6 females. A disruption occurs which is their attack and abduction, for Enya to disruption is resolved and she fights and successfully saves her life, although it can be argued that the plot does not enter the 're-equilibrium' as their lives are heavily disrupted and the other 5 females lives are not saved.

Draft Script - RESIT!!!

Preliminary Task Evaluation - RESIT!!!

Unit G321 Preliminary Task Evaluation

1. Do you feel your piece of film demonstrates continuity well? If so why?
I think that our piece doesn’t really demonstrate continuity because when I first walk into the room, the door slams and then when I sit down it slams again. When we were editing this piece the programme we used kept freezing, so we couldn’t actually watch the whole piece until after we had imported it. So, unfortunately the piece didn’t demonstrate continuity because of the fact we couldn’t watch the whole piece to see what needed changing. If we had, I think we would of realised and made changes to our final piece.

2. Have you demonstrated match on action; shot reverse shot and the 180-degree rule? If so why are these editing techniques useful?
When filming our piece we used shot reverse shot and the 180-degree rule. These techniques are useful because shot reverse shot can give the audience a close-up of the character that is talking, and then can flick to another character when they talk. The 180-degree rule is useful because it shows the scene and the characters all in one. So, when filming using the 180-degree rule, Georgie and I were always seen together, and the surrounding scenery.

3. How do you feel your group worked together?
I think our group worked really well together because we all listened to one another and gave some good input about how to edit the film. There was 3 of us, so when it came to editing, all of us had a go at doing it. As it was our first piece I think this would have been useful because then later on, they would know how everything works. But, as a group I think we worked really well and came up with a good piece.

4. If you were to film this piece again, is there anything you would improve on?
If I was going to film this piece again then I think I would look at the mise-en-scene a lot more because the actual scene was set in a bar, and because we filmed this piece at school we had to use an art classroom. So everything looked a bit weird. Also, the props we used could have been more realistic.

Also, I would consider using a few different angles and shots with the camera. When I passed over the wood saw to Georgie, the audience couldn’t really see what it was, so if we were to do this again, I would of liked to get an extreme close up of the tool before Georgie put it into her pocket.

When we were editing the piece, because of the programme it kept freezing so we couldn’t really see what we were doing, and had to guess where to put screen transitions in. If I ever had to do that again then I think I would like to work on a different programme, so I could see if there were any mistakes.

5. Did you plan your video well, or could you improve on this?
When we first got the preliminary task, Miss Hobbs had written out a script for us to film, so we didn’t really need to plan what we were going to film, or what the piece would be about. We didn’t however plan the angles or action shots of the cameras. We set up three; one camera always filming a close up of me, one always filming a close up of Georgie and another filming a mid-shot of the both of us. Then we chose which scenes we wanted and put them together to create our piece. If I did this again then I would plan more, so I knew exactly what I was doing.

6. Did you use transitions within your piece?
When we were editing our piece, we left all the transitions until last so that we could decide where they were going. I think we used the transitions well because on every new scene, or when we used a shot reverse shot, we faded in and out. We also used other transitions, and we made the whole piece turn black and white. This was because we thought it looked better and it went more with the style of the piece.

7. Have you learnt anything about the editing software whilst doing this exercise?
Whilst doing this piece, I have learnt how to use the software. Unfortunately, I didn’t really like the programme because it was really slow, and when we tried to watch our video, it kept going jumpy and it froze a lot. I managed to work out how to use it, but I still don’t really like using it because it takes a lot of time because its so slow.

Preliminary Task - Did You Bring It? RESIT!!!

Evaluation Question Six

Evaluation Question Four & Five

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

The horror movie that myself and the rest of my group, Fugitive Productions, produced is potentially going to be aimed at a wide range of audience.

Our film suits all categorys of class groups - A B C1 C2 D E.

Although we want to attract a wide audience, we will be aiming our film at an audience that falls into the class groups C1-E. This is because these groups are for people that are un-employed or have part time jobs, or that are still in education. Therefore, they have more time to sit down to watch a horror movie. The age ranges for these groups starts from between 15-25.

There is not a gender issue with our horror film as we will be aiming it at male and females. From our questionnaire, the majority of people that answered it were male, however we still want to keep it open and advertise to interest both genders. Although our horror film is typically like any other, by having a female protagonist and two male antagonists we hope to generate interest between both genders because of the actual storyline for the rest of the film, 'Shadowing'.

Although we want to gain as much public interest as possible, due to the content of our film, we have had to make the age certificate an 18. Following on from some pirmary research, we found out that the majority of people that are going to pay to go to the cinema too watch a horror movie, would prefer the age certificate to be 18. Due to the violence, sexual references and pure gore of our horror film we have decided that the age certificate of 18 is suitable.

Our film is quite a mainstream film, as it fits in with all the other horror conventions therefore we want to be able to show it to a wide range of audience. "Shadowing" fits in with the horror films that are out in the cinemas, and out of DVD's now, so hopefully will fit into the industry.

The opening two minutes that we have produced will hopefully attract alot of attention from a wide range of audience. As the film is set, filmed and produced in England I dont think it would ever make it into a big name film, because we would need to gain an institution that would distribute it and take it to Hollywood. However, because it was a small budget film we didn't have any major A-List actors therefore it is unlikely it will make it very big.

As we are advertising towards our social class groups (B-E) the age range is from 15 to about 25. Unfortunatly though, due to the fact that we have set the age certificate at 18, we are cutting a larger majority of the target audience already. However, we would then need to make sure we advertise properly to re-gain the interest in order to cover what is missing.

If this film was actually created and made, we would hope that the institution Working Title Films would take the film, and try to distribute it in order to make it well known. Advertising in 'Empire' magazine would be a good way to reach out to our target audience because it is a magazine aimed at 18+. Or, another way to advertise would be to create a trailer for 'Shadowing' so that it could be played and shown in cinemas such as the Odeon, in the advertisments before the showing of a film. However, the film would have to be a rated 18 certificate, because we couldn't advertise to under 18 because it would be faulse advertising because they wouldnt be able to see our film.

Here is the link to my 'Target Audience Profiles'. You can access the target audience questionnairem the questionnaire feedback and some things about the target audience. You can also access Fugitive Productions group blog on target audiences from that link too.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

When coming up with the initial ideas for our film "Shadowing", we wanted to make it attractive to both genders and to a majority of different ages. At first we didn't want to just create a horror film that attracts a male audience, therefore we wnated to include subjects that apply to both genders in every day life. For example; to attact our female audience we decided to use a female protagonist character so that the audience could relate in some way to the girl in our film. Obviously they wouldn't be able to relate exactly to the female that is getting stalked, however they will be able to relate to the situations she is in when she is walking and alone, in icolated areas when travelling home from work. By doing this, Fugitive Productions would like to think that we could attract a bigger female audience that perhaps other typically horror films attract.

To attract the males, we made our two main antagonist characters male. This is because typically, the majority of an audience for a horror film is mostly males because they like to watch gorey and full horror films. Unlike the female character, we were hoping that the male audience wouldn't relate to the male characters. Therefore, our main plot would hopefully intise the male audiences to come and see it. We have also made it quite gruesome therefore it will attract that side of the male audiences.

For the age range, we have tried to attract people from the age of 18. This is because the age certificate for our film is an 18. However, typically you dont really find people middle aged and over 50 coming to the cinema to therefore, we would hope to advertise and aim to that category of age. Also, to attract the older generation to come and watch our film, we made it so that it was quite a phsycological thriller, therefore making it into more if a puzze.

Films like 'Shutter Island' (2009) are a stereotypically great phsycological thriller, therefore attracting many people of different ages. Our film, 'Shadowing', is alot like that of 'Shutter Island' with a puzzle to piece. We didn't want to create a film that people just watched hours of killing and gore. Therefore, the opening two minutes contain alot of flashes so that the audience automatically get hooked onto it, to try and work out the puzzle. Again, this is how we attract our potential audience.

Evaluation Question Three