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.

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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.