Our final film.

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

To see question 7 go to: http://www.wix.com/coolgirl_crazy/number-question-7

Question 6:What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

... on Prezi

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

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

Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Question 3

View more presentations from gaara4lyf09.

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Media question 2

View more presentations from laurenvlahos.

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

Question 1 media

View more presentations from gaara4lyf09.

Questionnaire on our opening.

After the film was complete I had someone to answer a few questions.
I am pretty shocked about what she commented about it, saying
that she thought our camera work was amazing! and that she would
love to watch the rest of the film if it was made. The rating on the sound
was just as I expected as we didn't really have much time to work on
that. I am very pleased with her feedback though. =D

.

Preparing my evaluation

Today in class we went through the upcoming evaluation questions. We sat in our video groups and started brainstorming ideas for these questions. We also all noted down our own ideas for the evaluation.

There are seven questions that you must answer using multi media software,for example a presentation etc.
This meeting was tough, but we discussed each question thoroughly but not detailed.

.

Feedback after first showcase =D

There were a lot of positive comments on our camera movement from this group. They also commented on the fact that the storyline is confusing, after getting this feedback it's fine as our group hasn't put our sequence into its actual proper order yet. They also commented on the black screens in between our sequence, but obviously my group and I are going to edit it so our storyline makes sense, and so there are no gaps in between our sequence.











There were some comments on the lengths of the shots, and some people commented how they thought they were too long. My group decided that we might as well cut the walking shot out completely, as it's not very important to our sequence and it would just drag on and make the audience lose interest.















Most people from this group commented on our lighting. Of course my group are aware that we need to do something about this. So I guess using final cut and the colour balance tool, we could use this to adjust our lighting, but we are going to make sure that the realistic feel is still there. We don't want to take away the realistic looking lighting, but obviously as for the nigh time scenes, it is quite challenging to get the lighting to be proper clear.







Someone in this group commented how we had no sound and that we should put some in, this is fine for our group, and this feedback is ok and understandable, as my group have not yet produced our sound for our opening sequence. We have many comments saying "good shots" .."good use of camera angles" and we are pleased with this at least, as we worked hard on our shots and getting them to look interesting.












From all of the classrooms feedback, we have decided as a group that cutting out the long walking forest scene would probably make a huge difference to the length of our sequence, and the overall understanding. It's pretty clear the walking in this sequence would just lose interest in the audience pretty quickly. We were happy with the rest of the feedback though,and I am very glad that there are no major changes needed. ^^
Our group are going to work our absolute best to cover all these areas, and to hopefully get a more positive feedback next time!

Bloody prop.

We used red food colouring to create
realistic looking blood stains onto the
victim's shirt. As you can tell the killer
tried to aim for her heart but instead
took a launch at her chest to murder her.


Here is a picture of the victim's shirt after the
stabbing. As you can see we decided to
create a hole in the centre of the t-shirt
to show the damage caused by the
roughness of the killer's stabbing.

Research into camera movement for chosen genre.

                                    POV examples

Extreme Close-ups create an intense mood and provides interaction between the audience and the viewer. Extreme close ups are common for horror movies. In a lot of scary movies, you have a handheld camera... Everything feels really still and uninteresting when its on a tripod. Also in horror movies it's better to have the camera a lot closer to the action / actors. Most people use camera movement to create a "calm,horror,calm,horror" feel to the film. Also in Halloween and Friday the 13th POV shots are used which allows the audience to 
see through the eyes of the killer/character.For our opening sequence we're going to use a variety of shots, to set this "calm,horror,calm,horror" mood a long with the fee
l of crime and suspense. We're not just going to use extreme 
close-ups the whole way through, only for the best/most affective parts of action.

Research into sound for chosen genre.

Sound is a very key thing in horror movies, if you were to turn down the audio on a scary scene the effect on the audience would decrease dramatically. Sound creates atmosphere and feelings, and can be either diagetic or non-diagetic. 

Non-Diagetic: Non-diagetic music is music which is not part of the narrative, not attributable to a source in the film, and is unheard by characters in the film. This type of music is usually used to add affective colour to the film, and play on the emotions of the audience. 

Diagetic:  Diagetic music is music which occurs within the narrative of the film. It is attributable to some source seen in the film, such as a radio, a record player, a musical instrument, a juke box or an orchestra in a concert hall. The characters of the film can hear this music.

Music in a horror film is all about adding tension and to often make the action seem more gruesome than it really is.

Most people will probably agree that orchestral music is the most characteristic type of horror film music (and perhaps film music in general). It has been used since the birth of the genre and even today is the most popular type of music used in horror films, thrillers, and adventure films. As it is easy to convey emotions and set up a certain mood. Music can help the film maker to impress the audience and make them think a certain way.

There is an audio sequence in horror films that most people recognize. A long eerie musical build-up of strings or horns as the victim approaches a closed door (for example), followed by a violent orchestral hit as the victim opens the door to encounter whatever is hidden behind it. The effect of the music rising helps to increase the audience's heart beat and excitement, it also gives them the feeling that something has to happen and will happen.

This research has helped me to understand the kind of instruments used in horror movies. In the scary parts of my opening sequence I think it would be a good idea to use eerie,music which speeds up when something is about to happen.

My Design/Name for our Company's Production

Problems encountered during our project.

Organisation

• We often forgot our equiptment and lost props, which reduced our filming time.
• We were always in our location looking around,talking rather than just getting on with the filming.
• There were times when members of our group showed up late, or were absent.
• Our planned meetings oftenly changed day.
• It snowed which slowed down our filming by two days.
• Transport to the locations often took too long.

Communication

• Sometimes we would talk over each other so our thoughts weren't heard.
• Our ideas weren't always expressed clearly.
• We would often have arguments over our ideas.
• It was challenging to contact members at times to meet up at the same time.

Technical

• The lighting would oftenly be too dark so it caused poor lighting.
• We forgot to charge the camera battery, so therefore it ran out quickly.
• There was often a lot of traffic or noises in the background while we were filming which made it hard to hear the characters speaking.
• At one point the camera was attatched too tight to the tripod, which caused a squeeking noise on the camera when filming.

Groups Dynamics

• There were often times when one person did more than the other.
• Sometimes there was way too much fussing about.
• Group didn't always make agreements.

Shootings etc.

Using final cut for the first time

In our last meeting I learnt how to edit using final cut. This was a very hard process and was very hard to get used to, but eventually I learnt the simple things and hopefully will learn the more exciting and better things later on when editing. This is the very first time I became familiar with the software but not the first time using Imovie, or learning how to import our shots. Hopefully my editing skills will keep on improving.

Research into film productions/companies

Here are some films and their production companies. I chose to look into ones similiar of our genre.

Of course these companies are massive companies, and obviously my groups company is much smaller and there aren't as many professional people involved. This just gives me some idea of the companies that would perhaps make a film like ours. I looked into British companies, American companies, and Japanese companies, and of course the major companies like Warner.Bros and Universal, or 20th century fox wouldn't be able to produce a low budget film like ours. There are way too many, so I think our only hope would be to make our way up gradually, starting off with a company website.

1. Halloween

 

Directed by:John Carpenter
Produced by: John Carpenter, Debra Hill,Kool Lusby, Irwin Yablans,Moustapha Akkad in 1978
Written by:John Carpenter, Debra Hill
Cinematography: Dean Cundey
Music by: John Carpenter
Distributed by: Compass International pictures.

2. Friday the 13th

Directed by: Sean S. Cunningham
Produced by: Sean S.Cunningham
Written by: Victor Miller
Cinematography by: Barry Abrams
Music by: Harry Manfredini
Distributed by: Paramount pictures,Warner Bros.

3.Texas Killing Fields

Directed by: Ami Canaan Mann
Produced by: Michael Jaffe and Michael Mann
Written by: Don Ferrarone
Cinematography by: Stuart Dryburgh
Music by: Dicken Hinchliffe
Distributed by: Anchor bay films

4. Sherlock Holmes

Directed by:Guy Ritchie

Produced by:

Joel Silver
Lionel Wigram
Susan Wowney
Dan Lin
Cinematography by: Philippe Roussselot
Music by: Hans  Zimmer
Distributed  by:Watner Bros. Pictures

5. Scream

Directed by:Wes Craven
Produced by: Cathy Konrad
Cary Woods
Cinematography by: Mark Irwin
Music by: Marco Beltrami
Distributed by: Dimension Films

6. The Grudge.

Directed by:Takashi Shimizu
Produced by: Sam Raimi
Robert Tapert
Cinematography by: Katsumi Yanagishima
Music by: Christopher Young
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures

6. Club Dread

Directed by:Jay Chandrasekhar
Produced by: Richard Perello
Cinematography by: Lawrence Sher
Music by: Nathan Barr
Distributed by: Fox Searchlight

7. Deathnote

Directed by:Shūsuke Kaneko
Produced by: Toyoharu Fukuda
Takahiro Kohashi
Takahiro Satō
Music by: Kenji Kawai
Liscensed by: VIZ Pictures, Warner Bros.

8. Nightmare on Elm street

Directed by:Samuel Bayer

Produced by: Michael Bay
Andrew Form
Brad Fuller

Cinematography by: Jeff Cutter

Music by: Steve Jablonsky
Themes:Charles Bernstein

Distributed by: New line cinema

9. The Exorcist

Directed by:William Friedkin

Produced by: William Peter Blatty
Noel Marshall (executive

Cinematography by: Owen Roizman

Music by: Jack Nitzsche

Distributed by: Warner Bros

10. The human centipede 2  

Directed by:Tom Six

Produced by: Tom Six

Ilona Six

Cinematography by: David Meadows

Music by: James Edward Barker
Eilam Hoffman

Distributed by: Bounty Films (United Kingdom)IFC Midnight

Codes/Conventions

They are very important as they helps us understand which characters are playing each role in the story.
 Without Codes and Conventions films would have a poor narrative and would be too confusing.
Codes/Conventions must reach audience expectations and represent the genre, without them any film
would be pointless. Conventions are the generally accepted ways of doing something, and are usually genre specific.

Codes and Conventions for opening sequences.

Codes

A code must consist of:
•  a set of signs which carry meaning
•  a set of agreed rules for combining those signs together

Types of Media Codes in Opening Sequences:

• Technical Codes
• Symbolical Codes
• Written Codes

Technical Codes: camera techniques, framing, depth of field, lighting and exposure and 

juxtaposition.

Symbolical Codes: which refer to objects, setting, body 

language, clothing and colour.

Written Codes: in the form of 

headlines, captions, speech bubbles and language style.

Conventions


.the media produces meaning by using conventions  
•  audiences produce meaning from the interaction of the conventional material in the 
text, and their understanding of convention.


They often:
- Introduce the production company/stars/directors and genre
-Set up an Enigma
-Introduce the key themes
-Introduce a main charcter or not
-Contain either a lot of dialogue or none at all
-Introduce the narrative and Ideologies
-Start off with a montage
-The tile of the film
-Credits/director/producer/editor etc
-The music/sound

Types of lighting.

First of all I would just like to say that I understand why lighting is very important for a film. There are two types, but with many within them. There are lights used within the studio, these are more expensive and take longer to set up, and are more professional. Obiviously, being in a school, we don’t exactly have the better options and we don’t get to film in the studio. Lighting is a very important siginifer to a film as it conveys the mood and sets the atmosphere of the scene/film. The lighting can give away connotations that can show the audience instantly the genre of the film. The lighting is a good way to show the audience the genre of the film, and the key themes within the film too. Lighting can also give the audience a certain idea of the characters personality.

used that are set up:

Under-lighting: this type of lighting is used mainly in horror movies to create a very mysterious effect. The approach of lighting a subject from a point below the subjects in the scene. However for highly translucent objects, the under-lighting can give you dramatic results, highlighting features which are harder to see.

Filler Lights: this can often create a better and softer picture. It may be used to reduce the contrast of a scene and provide some illumination for the areas of the image that are in the shadow. The filler lights are often softer and by definition, less intense that the key light.

Back Lights: a type of spotlight, used in photography, which illuminates a subject from behind. It helps to make the subject more rounded; it helps with the effect of the key light. Back light can also produce some interesting effects of dramatic lighting, shows performers forms while hiding their faces and cast menacing shadows on the stage floor.

High Key lighting: this type of lighting is very different to low key lighting. High key lighting is mainly used in comedian genres. High key lighting is usually quite homogeneous and free from dark shadows, creating an upbeat mood. It is often used in Hollywood movies, and can create a daytime or night time effect. The advantage of high key lighting is that it doesn’t require adjustment for each scene which allows the production to complete the shooting in hours instead of days. The primary drawback is that high key lighting fails to add meaning or drama by lighting certain parts of prominently than others. More filler lights are used when creating this type of lighting, this can appear more natural to the eye, and can sometimes fool the audiences mind my making them think nothing has been edited in the lighting.

Low key lighting: when using low key lighting it creates a chiaroscuro effect. Low key lighting often uses only on key light, optionally controlled will a fill light or a simple reflector. The term “low key” is used in cinematography to refer to any scene with high lighting ratio, it is usually mostly used in horror genres or thriller genres. Low key light is dark and shadowy and very expressive.

Catch Light: the glamorous twinkle in the star’s eyes. It helps create importance or beauty in a character, and can show status or fame.

The key light: this lighting is usually the most brightest. The main light that illustrates the subject from being photographed or filmed. The main lighting source in a scene. Used in conjunction will fill lighting and back lighting to create a three-point system. The key light is the first and usually the most important light that a photographer, cinematographer, lighting camera man, or other scene composers will use in a lighting set-up. The purpose of the key light is to highlight the form and dimension of the subject. The key light is not a rigid requirement; omitting the key light can result in a silhouette effect.

Top light: top light can produce interesting colour casts (fancy lighting word from coloured light reflection) on a performer’s hair, shoulders. It can also be used to wash the stage floor with intense colour without making your performers look like they have been painted all over.

Natural Lighting: This is just daytime/nightime natural light where you don't set up, it's already there to use. This creates realism and gives an more nature like effect to a film. Natural lighting costs nothing and is free to use as it is already there.

My article for our film.

Making our titles and sound

The first part of our titles was our production company. We decided to have a jumpy effect on this at the start of the film. The font we used was American with pointy/sharp edges. We decided that throughout our film we wanted to have credits on a black screen and with red font. We thought the red font would be more blood/violent and horror looking if they ran throughout the opening. Then "presents"comes up on black screen as the eerie sound builds and merges with the sound bridge of the train at the start of the film.

We decided to have our title at the end of our sequence to make it more exciting. We made the title bigger than the other titles. At the end we edited a creepy bang for the title when it appears onto the screen. The red font emphasises the blood from the start when the girl is laying by the tree covered in blood, and it also relates to our production name "Blood rush Productions". We didn't put any effects on some of the titles, because we wanted it to be a bang in the audience's face.

Creating the sound was the toughest part for me.

Our group spent about an hour just searching for horror/eerie/scary free to play music, but in the end

we couldn't find anything that we were pleased with, so we had no choice but to make it. The first thing we did was take away any unnecessary sounds from our opening sequence, for example the strong wind sound. We then loudened  the sound of the train, and then began to make our music. To make the music sound horror like, we changed the pitch, at some times the pitch would be higher than others,depending on the best parts which would build tension for the

                      audience.

We wanted our music to suit the action and to fit with it perfectly, we worked really hard to create a scary atmosphere and to get the audience's blood rushing. Our music is non-diagetic and is therefore made to play with the emotions of the audience, and it's to make them feel scared and nervous. We made the sound to exaggerate our action, but as well kept the natural important sounds in the background too, for example the telephone ringing or the girl screaming. I am very proud with the sound for our opening sequence, as it juxtaposes the quiet area that the girl wakes up in and makes it more emotional. The sound we created can often sound calm at times, but when it rises and gets louder  gradually it makes the audience aware that something bad is going to happen when they don't expect it. I am proud with the sound we have created, although it should be much more less repetitive, and perhaps there could be more sounds.

Meeting #10 Finishing our film

This was our final meeting of editing our opening sequence. Getting the shots in the right order and cutting them down took a lot longer than I had expected. The first thing we had to do was to edit it continuity and get the timing right, this was obviously the most important thing to make sure the storyline makes sense. To separate our scenes and to show the time passing me added a black screen with credits on, this was to separate the scenes to make it less confusing and less obvious. To separate time between the actual shots we used a cross fade transition.

The next thing we edited was lighting and speed.
Using the colour balance tool we adjusted the lighting to make certain shots look brighter and others darker. Sometimes we had to speed certain shots up, but we then decided to speed most of the killer house scene because we wanted the audience to see the pace the killer lives his life at, and we wanted the audience to feel as if they were in his shoes. One major problem was the daytime forest scene, this was the longest scene and we decided to cut it out completely as it's not the most important scene, unlike the other three scenes.

Meeting #9 Editing and trying out sound.

.

At the start of this meeting my group and I started by testing out sounds/instruments in garage band. We found that the ambient sounds were the best. There was this one called ship ambiance but garage band wouldn't let us loop it. We had many goes at this, and we found it hard to be satisfied. Another thing that we did while editing was take away any unessential sounds like wind/ dogs barking / anything that wasn't related to our opening sequence. Making and fixing the sound was a lot more challenging than I had expected. But we did this with no complaints as we knew how getting the sound right would polish it for good.

Also when making our sound we created a variety of low sounds/high sounds and put them all together on garage band. We made sure that the pace of the sound matched with the pace of the action in the opening sequence.
The pitch rised astonishingly when the victim got closer and closer to the killer until it eventually dropped down again as the next scene began. In garage band we made our sound using one main tune which will play throughout the whole sequence and just added on other sounds in certain areas which could mostly grab our audiences attention.

.

Meeting #8- Filming the first scene

When filming our first scene we started off by filming a shot of the train going by. This was extremely hard at the time because it was hard to focus the camera while panning across the train as it went past. We then moved onto the shot of the girl(me) and shot from different distances for later editing. My group think it's really important to take as much of the same shot as possible, but using as many different angles to see what works best. We then filmed a close-up of my facial expressions showing I looked a bit uncomfortable and showed how I felt about waking up on the bench in the middle of the night where nobody is around. After that it was the shot of the phone, this was our first extreme close-up of the text received from Olivia Watson's mum saying "Where are u I am worried" this is effective as it sort of makes the audience question whether there this is a sign that she isn't going to make it home.  I then came up with this idea of a shot of the swing moving to give the audience an idea that someone, somewhere is watching
or following Olivia, and that she is not safe.

Only a few seconds after that the girl straight away turns around and the killer is standing right in front of her, this is effective as the audience must haven't expected it to be so soon, after seeing the shot of the swing moving from behind the girl, the audience would have suspected that the killer was more or less behind her rather than in front. We took these range of shots to shock the audience and to make them jump. The first shot of the killer is when he right away goes at the girl with his knife to attack her, that is the first thing the audience see the killer do. My group thought that it would be interesting to get a shot of the victim up against the tree covered in blood, when you think about it, the audience don't actually 100% know if the victim is dead or not, just because she has blood on her stomach and the shot of her being stabbed quite a bit, doesn't actually prove to the audience, that she isn't alive. This shot sets up a big mystery to our opening sequence, and the office scene which comes after, about the girl missing, makes the audience wonder if they will find her body alive or dead.
                                                               I am very proud with this meeting, because our group just got
straight to work with so many ideas and just got on with it. We took so many shots, which will be helpful later on for our editing as we now have a wider choice.

Meeting #7 Editing our sequence !

Because of a incident that happend
on final cut (our project dissapeard)
our group firstly had to import our
sequence back onto the computer.
So we did this, and then straight
after we began marking the parts
and putting them together in the
right order again.

While editing, we thought about the
feedback we got from our class.
We focused on editing the forest
scene first, because there were 
many comments/complaints on
 that part of our sequence. So we
basically tried shortening each of
the walking shots(of Daniel and 
Alex as detectives). We found that
it looked less boring without the huge
amount of walking, we also decided
that we will be adding more action
to that particular scene. 

While editing, we figured out something
interesting and new. We found out that

you could change the size of the part

and that you could enlarge it to see it 

better. We also discovered a much

quicker way to trim and cut away

middle bits inbetween shots, this

while hopefully make our editing much

more quicker. 

We then moved onto the killer scene.

We decided that the close ups in the

scene would look really effective if they

were to go faster than usual, to show that

the killer is trying to get something done

as soon as possible.

 I really learnt a lot from this meeting and I enjoyed it
very much. The programme final cut is slowly becoming
more and more familiar to me, and as we edit i'm 
learning all kinds of adjustments. In a way i'm glad
we had to start over, this is because what we did
looked better than the first, this is probably because
we knew exactly what we wanted.







While editing we found a passing time 
effect, which we placed between 
certain shots so that the audience
don't get confused.



At the start I was  teaching Alex

how  to cut out parts and I was helping

him and Daniel put it together.

We decided it would be fair if we

were to take it in turns to edit the

shots  etc.


Final cut I found was a much easier and better programme to use for our opening sequence.
Imovie was the first software I used for our
preliminary "Feed the fish" task. I have noticed
my editing skills have improved since our preliminary task.


While editing, me and my group practised 
many ways of editing. We saved our project three times, one using short and fast shots and the other was longer with not so many fast cuts.
We did this just because we wanted to try new ways of editing, but as well as keep the original looking sequence. 




I personally find editing fun and I like learning the new effects of it as we go along. While editing me and my group decided that we needed other certain things to be done.

We found it hard to sometimes hear the
audio/dialogue so therefore we thought it
would be best to use voice overs, also the
lighting in some shots wasn't as clear as 
it could've been, so therefore my group
will take them shots again and then edit them
back into the story order.
We also spoke about ideas for our sound/credits & titles, as we haven't yet had time to get started in these areas, but sure will
in our next editing meeting.