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

Evaluation Question Two

Evaluation Question 2

Update 30/3/10

Having recieved all of my feedback from Mrs Peacock, I have now done it all and improved my individual blog to the best I can.

At the moment, I am just in the finishing stages of my evaluation. I would of done it sooner but as the programme on the computer was playing up, and we didn't save everything to the G drive, we have only really just managed to get hold of our final film.

I have made a large contribution to the group blog in the last few days because as I have finished, I thought my time would be useful on editing and posting things that were forgotton about or havent been done. As my other group memebers may still have alterations and evaluations to do on their own individual blogs, I thought I would help out to try and get everything done, ready for the due date on Thursday.

Target Audience Profiles

On our group blog, I created a 'Target Audience Profile', 'Target Audience Questionnaire' and 'A Target Audience Questionnaire Feedback' page on what our target audience could be.

The 'Target Audience Profile' explains about all the different class groups such as A B C1 C2 & D and what class is relevent to our film.

It also goes on to explain about our films age certificate, and why we have chosen that particular age rating. Then, it explains about the different aspects and issues we need to consider such as age, race and religious views.

The 'Target Audience Questionnaire' is a questionnaire we set up so that we could go and ask 20 memebers of the public their views and thoughts on horror films. Then, all of the primary research we recieved helped towards our initial ideas for the making of our horror film. All the questions in the questionnaire were relevent to the plans that we had made for our horror film, although we just needed the public view.

The 'Target Audience Questionnaire Feedback' was just so that we could see the results of the questionnaire more clearly. I created bar graphs on Excel for all of the different questions asked.

I did all of the 'Target Audience' posts therefore they were all my contribution.

Evaluation Question One

Final Edit - Opening Of A Horror Film

Backing Track for our Film

Spider Eyes Music Upload

This is the backing track we used in our film. It is called 'Spider Eyes'. When looking through Royalty Free websites we came across this one. It is ideal for our movie because its deep and dark and gives off a weird sense of trouble. Also, with the high pitched 'dings' it enables the audience to try and think what is happening. It goes really well with our film. It is a typically used Horror Film track and it will sound very good when all of our film is finished together.

Prop List

Here is a list of all the props that we used in our Horror Film. I have also added some pictures of some of the makeup tecniques we used to created a bruise.

- set of keys

- white coat

- dark hooded jumpers

- dark clothing

- red nailvarnish

- red hair dye

We used the set of keys because the female character needed them to get into her house. We shot a close up of her hand when she was letting herself in the front door with these keys. We thought that this would be appropriate because it gives a sense of the unknown when she is opening the door. Very simple and basic filming, but with a great meaning.

The white coat that we put Louise in symbolises the fact that she is innocent and angelic like. Therefore giving the audience the impression that she the tragic protagonist. Also, during the filming in the darker part of the afternoon, we could always see Louise because the white coat stood out in the dark night.

Dark hooded jumpers and dark clothing was used for the stalkers because we wanted to make them contrast with the dark afternoon weather. Also, when standing behind things they wouldnt be as easy to see therefore giving the impression of the unknown.

We used the red nail varnish and the red hair dye to create some of the flashes. We used the red hair dye and mixed it in with bath water creating a 'bloody' look. Emmaline then got in the bath and we shot images of her foot as if it was her blood. We also used nail varnish as fake blood and poured in down her arms. This then was good because it look like she had be injured.

This is the picture that we took when we were experimenting with makeup, to create a brusied effect. It worked because Emmaline's eye looks very dark and has a specific bruised look. Therefore when we are creating the different flashes in our piece, we will definatly use some pictures of a bruised face.

On our group blog, my contribution was creating the Prop List and then editing some of the information in the post. Lucy and Rosiee also helped in creating that post by adding the pictures.

Shot List

This is the shot list that Lucy created for our group blog. This was the first shot list, however due to lighting in the evening it changed.

Institutional Logo

Here are our institutional logos. We chose the writing from a website; http://www.dafont.com/ where there are many different themed fonts. We decided on this one because it suited our theme of film and I personally think it looks creepy and suitable for what we want it for. I have uploaded it twice because one has a black background, and the other a white background. We decided to make these flicker from black to white a few times to make them look effective and creative. As it is only the background changing the 'fugitive productions' stays the same so that the audience can read it clearly. All that happens is that it changed colour.

Characters - Louise Chick

Louise Chick is playing our main agonist in the film. We wanted a girl, preferably with blonde hair so Louise said she would do it. We dressed her in a white coat because it gives off an vunerable and innocent look. As she came from school, she was already dressed in black trousers and boots, but because of where we were filming (ie the woods) we decided that these would be most suitable. Also, it ties in with her 'coming from work' so it worked out alright. As Louise is dressed in the white coat, because of the light we couldf still see her so it still looked better on the cameras when she was being stalked.

When casting, we wanted a 'young' looking character with blonde hair and Louise was ideal. Like Matt and Keegan, Louise was willing to take part in our film and was available to film when we needed her. Also, she would act whenever we needed her too, performing a great piece for us, for her audition piece. We later used that piece as an audio over our film footage.

My contribution to the group blog was the filming of her audio piece. Myself and Lucy both wrote the script that she was to use in her audition, and I filmed her acting it. Then I also wrote about why we chose Louise in the casting posts on the group blog.

Potential Flashes

Every few seconds, in our horror film, there will be flashes that quikly come and go to suprise and shock the audience. We have some flashes of the stalkers behind 'the girl' at various different positions so that they can flash up on the screen so the audience can see them. Also, we filmed some shots of Emmaline in the bath, sitting in some red/brown blood coloured water. They are good because we can use just little bits of them in our final film.

After we just filmed Emmalines foot floating in the bath, to give the audience a sense of the unknown. By this, I mean the audience should not know what has happended because the clip is only of her foot.

Draft Credits

These are the 'draft credits' that Emmaline filmed at home. They are really good, however they are way too long to fit into our horror film, bearing in mind that we can only have 2 minutes worth of filming. The way Emmaline filmed it, and created all the pictures is orginally how we wanted to film the credits, however we didn't realise that it would take so much time up.

Characters - Stalkers

Keegan Featherstone (right) and Matthew Bonner (left) are our stalkers. They are GCSE drama students so we thought that they would be better at acting and producting themselves, like the 'stalkers' that we need in our film. In the film, they are dressed in dark colours to convey a sense of the unknownn and a sense of evilness, darkness and death. This will alert the audience that they aren't the heroic protagonist in the film.

All they are going to be doing, is standing in various places around our located areas, looking like stalkers. But they will need to be able to act professionally when we film.

We also chose Matt and Keegan because they wanted to be in our film, and because they are drama students, if they carry on with their drama course it will look good in a port-folio or just as experiance.

We chose to cast Keegan & Matt because they were pretty much what we were looking for. Both dark haired, and have a good acting personality. Also, when we approached them both about performing in our Horror Remake, they were more than happy to do it. So aswell as finding suitable characters, they were willing and exited to take part in our film.

My contribution to the work on the group blog, was the piece on the 'Stalker Profiles'. Also I filmed their audition tape. I created both Matthew & Keegan's profile on our group blog and explained why we had chose them. I also took screen shots of them in action and added them to their profiles so that we can see their roles in the film.

Filming Update

After choosing our actors we got everything ready, so that we could go out and film.

Louise Chick - 'the girl' that is being stalked.
Keegan Fetherstone - 'stalker'
Matthew Bonner - 'stalker'

We started filming for our Horror Film opening on Friday 29th January 2010. It was cold so we decided to put Louise in a white coat, because white gives off an innocent conotation. Keegan and Matt were wearing dark clothes to give the conotation of the unknown.

First of all we started filming in the woods behind the hospital. It was late afternoon so was starting to get dark, and because its so close to the hospital we could hear the cars going past. This was good because we needed it to look as normal as possible. The woods are quite isolated and were quite muddy, so we had to make sure we filmed in a suitable light so our actors didn't injure themselves etc.

Rosie and Lucy decided that they wanted to film for these shots, so they set up behind a tree for one angle and lucy stood infront of where Louise was going to walk. Louise walked along the path as we filmed her first time, and then Matt stood behind her as we filmed another shot for one of the flashes.

Next we went to Emmaline's house to film the audition tapes. I filmed Louise, performing the 'draft' script that will be used for the over voice in our film opening. We also decided to film some of the footage when Louise enters 'a house'. We filmed from the top of the stairs so we could get a good angle when she ran up the stairs. Matt stood in the gap behind the door so that when Louise closes the door, the audience can see Matt standing behind her. This went well because as Louise walks in, the light is off, and as soon as she turns it on, the door opens so we cant see Matt until she shuts the door and runs up the stairs. This is a good effect because when we showed the clip to some of our friends, they jumped when they saw Matt. This is the sort of impression that we want to create, so its good. All in all, that filming went really well.

Because of the light conditions outside, unfortunatly we couldn't film the shots down 'Court Road' because the got too dark, therefore we couldn't make out the 'stalkers' because they are dressed in black. We tried to film under the street lamps, but because of their colour, the camera wasn't picking up the features that we needed. We therefore, filmed this scene last Tuesday, when it was earlier and the light was still good.

The next scene we shot was upstairs in the bedroom. Again, we all set up the filming cameras in the corner, and Keegan and Louise performed a scene for one of the flashes. As Louise stood in the middle of the room, Keegan walked up behind her a grabbed her, then Louise screamed. We weren't expecting Louise to scream as well as she did, so it looks so effective.

Altogether, it was a very productive filming session and we got the things that needed to be done, done. The only thing I would of liked to of done, would be to record a 'filming diary' so that I could upload it and show what we were filming when we were doing it, but because of the time and the light outside, I think it would of taken up some time that we needed to film the important parts in our horror film.