Evaluation: Technology

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product and looking back at your preliminary task, what did you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? In the pre production, looking back at the preliminary task, I think I have improved well in terms of time management. I have been more organised and on time which meant that I got all the filming done within a day.  This is good as I didn’t have to go to stress of finding a day everyone was free and meant that we had more time to edit (post production) our film to make sure it was as good as we could make it.

When it came to filming the opening film, I had prepared a shot list to take on the day.  I did this so I knew what I had to exactly cover. Although, if I did not do this it would of wasted time on not knowing or forgetting what shot comes after what which meant I also saved time. I have learnt that when doing the preliminary task it was harder looking at the storyboard and not knowing what shot angles or shot sizes were needed which is why it took longer to film. Therefore I made sure I had a shot list as it was easier to follow on the day.

Also, when looking back at the preliminary task, I had learnt a lot about different elements such as filming and the camera and how its used. Therefore when I came to the main task I knew what I was doing when filming and editing go this sped up the process. Things I learnt in the post production (editing) included adding soundtrack, titles and transitions. This was a key thing tat I needed to learn in order to successfully edit our footage. I learnt from my mistakes form the preliminary task, therefore would correct this and avoid doing them again in the main task. These mistakes included using the wrong lenses for the wrong shot or forgetting a shots list making it harder to remember what we needed to film. This is a part of being organised and from learning from this mistake I was able to become more organised in the main task.


Technology Prezi

Evaluation: Audience

Who would be the audience of your media product and why? and how did you attract/address your audience?

How did you attract/address your audience? Whilst conducting research in our planning we found out that most horror films were rated 15+. We decided to rate our film a 15 because we had to take into consideration of our target audience.  A film rated a 15 means no one under the age of 15 is classified to watch the movie. Things shown in a 15 movie include:  Strong violence, frequent strong language, drug taking or discriminate language or behaviour. We conducted a questionnaire to find out what attracted our audience to our film and these were the results. From the questionnaire I carried out, I can tell that 99% said they thought the target audience was a rating of 15. This means that we have addressed our audience right.  Also we were able to identify that the audience were attracted mostly by the soundtrack and different shot sizes and transitions moving in and out of a blurred effect. However some were not to keen on the title being as engaging as they thought it would be.

Who would be your audience for your media product? As a group we also considered the use of the camera as this element is very important for attracting and addressing the audience. We decided that we wanted to use a range of camera angles to ensure a range in our opening. we wanted to use a point of view as this angle encourages the audience to sympathize with the protagonist and hopefully understand his situation. The aim of a horror is to play with the audiences mind. I feel that we have achieved this. I think that it would appeal more to a female audience, mainly teenage girls. This is because they can easily relate to the character and place themselves in the protagonists shoes. We decided as a group that our target audience would be between the ages of 15 and 20 as this age range is most likely to watch our production. Although this is the aim, the social group may stretch to attract other viewers of different ages and genders as well, as not everyone has the same film taste. I feel that both genders will sympathise with the protagonist as she is young and vulnerable but at the same time plays the evil character in the film.

Personally I think that by having a female character who is in power is a good idea as she is not presented as a typical female stereotype. Therefore because there is a twist of characters playing opposite roles, means that a larger audience of male and females will want to watch something different that doesn't follow an average plot of a horror film where a man plays the evil character and the women is a genuine lovely girl.  Our male character is also older than the female and this could suggest a wider male audience that can relate to him as a ‘adult’.

In my opinion, I think the target audience we choose worked well as from the feedback we were given from our focus group shows that we achieved our goal of attracting the audience of 15+ teens. 

Evaluation: Representation

How does your media product represent social groups? 

Both genders are revealed in the opening film, starting off with the old man and his dog along with the young girl.  We chose to use these characters because they are both vulnerable, have less power and are both in ‘need for protection’. Therefore both characters helps build up suspense in the audience.  Also, the evil character (Evangeline) has the biggest impact on the audience and strikes fear into them as her face is barley shown so portrays the feeling of the unknown.  Women are usually treated as the victims of the film and the men as the evil characters. This is because they are stereotypically shown to have more power than women, however we decided to go against this and reverse characters.  In some ways they are representative of the gender roles they play.

Patrick is the first character introduced in our film opening.  The old man who is shown to be walking his dog in the forest. His clothing is stereotypical, as flat caps are commonly worn my old men and we can tell that colours worn are all earthy and plain. When planning a costume for this character we took into consideration in order to portray an accurate representation of the elder generation and make the film more realistic.

The young female is portrayed to being powerful in our opening scene when she kidnaps the dog off the old man. This shows that she is more powerful and in control. Additionally, this goes against the female stereotype of being vulnerable and genuine. In our film she is however stereotyped as a young girl who is wearing grey tracksuits, trainers and a hoodie. During the film the girls face is covered by her hood. This could link back to the old times when women were not important enough to be shown  and instead had to cover their identity.

In terms of age it is clear through the protagonists looks and clothing that he is an old man. The fact that the antagonist is a small height also suggests that she is young, although. We decided the make the antagonist female as it is stereotypical that males are usually stronger whereas women are presented as weak and helpless. So we wanted to change their roles around to make it more unique and to go against the stereotypical considered.  The mise-en-scene of location we filmed in reveals that it is forest through the trees and empty land. This suggest that the emptiness and loneliness of the owner and his dog may suggest something could be wrong or that danger is heading his way.  It also makes the scene realistic as it’s a usual thing to go and walk your dog in a forest. 

Evaluation: Distribution

Distribution Prezi What kind of media institution might distribute your product and why?

Distribution Prezi

Evaluation: Media Conventions

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

Setting: The scene starts off with a blurred effect which transitions into a clear shot of the setting of the car park. Then there is an establishing shot of the forest  which is used to establish the setting. There is diegetic sound that follows on from the previous scene. Also there is a grey coloured filter on the shots to portray a dull and grey atmosphere.  We did this because our film is a  themed horror and so we tried to link it back to this.  We used this idea from our research of the film () which uses this technique as well. 

Characters: Credits begin as the scene starts. They are a component of a film opening. The scene after sets the scene of the forest. The first character is identified but only becomes clear when they get closer to the camera. In this case the first set of characters introduce dis the old man walking his dog. This creates enigma and suspense. It makes the audience question who the character is and what role they play. When the second character is introduced, the music starts to get faster as if something bad is about to happen. Again, in this case we introduce Evangeline who's face is covered which also creates suspense. 

•Genre: There is ambient sound that is used to create an unsettling atmosphere. Also the scenes are set with a dull and grey background on purpose to portray the feeling of horror and suspense.  There is a minor dark under tone which creates suspense. We did this by filming at the time it got dark and by editing the colour background.  We also filmed in empty area which connotative loneliness and fear that if no one is around your all alone. 

Distribution: Our opening film starts of with the introduction of the media institution that distributed our film. This is also another convention we researched. There is diegetic sound that begins to help set the atmosphere.  M&M studios is what we decided our media institution should be and this is our first credit shown.  It appears as soon as the scene starts.

Title: Our title is shown right at the end of the opening scene. The title is white and is shown on the right top corner of the screen as the diegetic sound fades out. Our font of the title is made to look creepy to link back to the genre and to make the audience carry on watching. It also creates enigma. 

Evangeline - Final Film Opening

Editing Journal - Main Task

In this blog, I will explain what went on during the Post Production.

 Main stages of the editing process:
1. Select footage
2. Trimmed it
3. Put on timeline
4. Transitions
FIRST CHECK IN
5. Add music
6. Add effects
7. Credits - fonts and titles
SECOND CHECK IN
8. Lengthed transitions
9. Rended in to out everytime new material was added.

Lesson 1 -
In our first lesson of editing, we imported all of our footage and ordered them in chronological order on the timeline. This meant that we had to watch over the footage as well so we knew what each shot consited of. By doing this we selected the file we needed and clicked import. Then we dragged each shot onto the timeline. We did this by holding down on the shot and moving it. This was an straightforward step that we were able to do with no problems. We watched over the footage to make sure we didnt miss anything out and that everything was in order. then we were bale to start trimming our shots.
Lesson 2- 
Once all of our footage was in the right place, we started to crop each shot to the right length of what we neeeded. By doing this we inserted video effects - transform - crop and dragged it over to the timleine. After doing this to all the shots, we watched over the footage to make sure it made flowed well even though there we no transitions but we were going to add this in later on. Then, we then began muting sound that we didnt need. The sounds we kept were the sound effects and dialogue that needed to be heard to make sense of the scene.
Lesson 3- 
Lesson 3 consisted of adding transitions in between the shots so there was a smooth flow. We managed to this well and used a straight forward transition. After, we began looking for sountrack to go over the muted scenes. we used youtube to research for music. 
Lesson 4- 
Then we began adding in our credits and titles. By adding a title we choose title and added a template. Then we gave the template a name and pressed ok. In this case the title of our production was 'Evangeline'. Then we added credits. we started off by adding text to the shot we wanted our credits in. Then in the title panel we clicked on the roll/crawl options below and apropriate direction and then clicked ok. We were unsure on how to add titles so we asked our teacher for some help and researched on ways to do it.
Lesson 5- 
This is where we had our first check in. The feedback we were given were that we needed a slower fade in of the credits and titles so it was easier to read and didnt look so rushed. We were also told to change the opening shots to black transitions. We were also told to consider putting our credits onto a black screen but we felt like this did not make the scene look good so we kept what we previosuly had. the positive feedback we were given was the sound track that we used as it went really well with the shots. 
Lesson 6- 
We started off by adding effects to our shots.  To add an effect, we slected the clipscomand-clicked on the desiered clips. Then we started to drag and effect. We selected the clip and double clicked for the effec to show. we then asked our focus group about what effects looked good and what could be added. We were given feedback and were told that making shots darker would look better and add an scarier effect which is what we were aiming to do. As we were unsure of how to make clips darker we used google to help us. We made our shots darker by going to the effects panel and opening video effects and then colour correlation. we dimmed the brightness and contrast which worked well. It didnt make our footage blurry which is what we didnt want it to do. This worked well and made our footage look better.
Lesson 7- 
We were given more teacher feedback about the speed of certain shots. we sped up and slowed down some shots. we used the speed/duration command to do this. we inserted the panel and choose a clip to speed up/slow down. then we used the speed to speed/slow it down and then clicked ok. we expermiemneted different speeds before we found the right one that looked good.
Lesson 8- 
Next, we had our second edit check in. We were given back feedback which was to change the fonts and make them all the same colour on the credits. This was because our title was not the same font as our credits. firslty, we change all of our fonts to the same as our title, but we did not like it so ended up chngingt he font of the title as well so it fit with the credits.  We were also told to make the length of our transitions longer. We also made our transitions longer from 1 second to 3 seconds. We did this by double cliking on the transition and in the effects panel choose the trim in icon and dragged in onto the timeline.
Lesson 9- 
The last thing that needed to be completed after finishing all the editing was the rendering from in to out and exporting the file. To render in to out we choose sequence - render in to out and then when all the bar at the top of the timeline changed green we were ready to save our project and export it.

Filming Journal - Main Task

In this blog,  I will explain how the day went when we filmed our main task, things that went well, any problems we encountered and how we solved them. 

The day we filmed our production was on Sunday 14th January. Filming so early on in the year meant it was cold and dark which would of made a good contribution to the theme of our film as it was horror based. We started filming around 3pm. We brought our storyboard and shots list as a guideline on the day. We also brought with us a tripod to film still shots. When filming we managed to get a variety of still shots along with some panning shots. During the day we visited different areas of our location to film the shots we needed. We filmed our shots in chronological order starting off with the shot in the car park. We thought that this would make it easier when it came to editing and it would of looked better as it got darker through our scenes. We took several shots of the car turning in because we noticed that our first shot was to blurry.  After filming in the car park, we then walked into the woods to film our next set of shots. Our next shot started off with our characters walking towards the camera. This was a straightforward shot as no movement was needed with the camera and our actors  were well prepared and knew what they need to do. However, the next shoot we filmed was a panning shot where dog (buddy)  was chasing one of the actors (Evangeline). This shot was harder to film than we expected as the dog did not to what we asked it to do. This also meant that Macy had to go on set.  Therefore to overcome this problem we bought with us some dog biscuits to bribe buddy to move where we wanted him too.  This went well as we finally got the shot we needed.  Our costume plan went really well as our actors had no problems getting the costumes they needed as they already matched the type of costume they would wear on a daily basis. Also, we were unable to film at the top of the hill as one of our actors playing (Patrick) was unable to climb the hill therefore Macy went up with our other actor to film the shots we needed. 


We were very productive in filming our main task as we got all the shots we needed in the one day and therefore didn't have to plan to film another day. It went smoothly and there were no big problems that we encountered which would of stopped us from filming certain shots.

When filming our Main task, we realized that it got dark to quickly, and therefore the shots we filmed were to dark to be able to see what was going on. However, this only affected one of our shots at the end of the scene where one of our characters were tied to a tree. We solved this problem when we came to editing our film and used a tool to lighten up the shot so it was easier to see. In the future, to improve I think it would of been better to film earlier on in the day as it got dark to quickly and this affected one of the important shots we were meant to film. Also, this would have given us more time to film more shots of the area to add into our main task.

Overall filming took 3 hours.

Talent Release Form - Main Task

Risk Assessment - Main Task

Old risk assessment


Final risk assessment

Cast Research - Main Task

In the opening sequence of our film only two characters are used.

      Patrick-




Name: Keith Todd
Age: 71
Height: 5'10
Hair colour: Grey
Previous experience: Extra in films and TV advert roles.
Reasoning for choice: We chose this person to be our actor for Patrick as he has previous experience with acting for camera. He also fits the description of the character and the age of the actor helps to create a sympathy for him.




Evangeline -

Name: Evangeline Hayward
Age: 10
Height: 4'6
Hair colour: Red
Previous Experience: Attends a drama school where she has learnt about acting on camera. She has also been in theatre productions and undergone LAMDA examination.
Reasoning for choice: We chose this person to be our actress for Evangeline as she has previous camera and acting experience. She also fits the description for the character of Evangeline as she has curly red hair. Finally, the age of the actress helps to show the theme of childhood innocence.

Costume and Makeup Research - Main Task

For our opening sequence of the film  there is only two characters shown; Patrick and Evangeline. Both characters have modern clothes on which confirm to their stereotypes.

Patrick -

  

Patrick wears stereotypical clothes for a man of his age. As we can see from these photos the colours worn are all earthy and plain. When planning a costume for this character we will take this into consideration in order to portray an accurate representation of the elder generation and make the film more realistic. Flat caps are often worn by older men. "In British popular culture, the flat cap is typically associated with older working class men, especially those in Northern England, and the West Country". Therefore it could be classed as a symbol to suggest the age of the character.

Flat Cap. In Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/11/17. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_cap#British_popular_culture

Evangeline - 

 

Evangeline is an average 11 year old. She is more of a 'tomboy'. These photos show different styles of outfit for young girls. The first outfit has very 'girly' connotations owing to the fact there is a lot of pink and the girl is wearing a skirt. However, the boots show a more 'tomboy' aspect to the outfit. The second photo is a mixture of both styles of outfit. It has a 'tomboy' feel to it but uses the colour pink to make it appeal more to the female gender. Lastly, the final photo shows a very 'tomboy' outfit choice. The colours used are stereotypically associated with the male gender. The checked shirt is often associated with cowboys suggesting a male influence. When considering our costume choices we need to take into account that Evangeline has been living outside for up to 5 months. This means she will have dirty, ripped clothes and messy hair. She would also have very dirty skin and cuts and bruises on her face and body. This will make the clothes appear more dull in colour and she will blend into the surroundings more.

Props Research - Main Task

For our main task we will be using props to help create a realistic feel and atmosphere. We will need to research our choice of props in order to have a clear understanding of what we will need.

Car-

 

We will be using a car in the first two shots of the opening scene. In order to use this prop, we will need a licensed driver to film this scene, as this is a legal requirement.

Rope-  

We will be using rope as one of our props towards the end of the opening sequence. We will need to use it to tie one of our actors to a tree, which creates a tense atmosphere at the end of the opening scene.

Dog Lead-

We will be using a dog lead briefly at the beginning of the scene where the man takes the dog out of the car. The lead will be held by the actor throughout the shots 3-7.

Storyboard - Main Task

Location - Main Task

For our Main Task we have chosen to film at Cookham River, specifically Cock Marsh for the majority of the scenes. In order to have a good understanding of our filming location we have done some initial research in order to get a feel for the environment to help us with the planning of our film. 

Map Of Area - 

Terrain - 

• "Most of the walk is on level grassy footpaths with no stiles. There is one short, steep climb up Winter Hill which can be avoided if required" 

• "Walking boots are strongly recommended and some parts of the route are prone to flooding in the winter."

Cookham and Cock Marsh Walk. Retrieved 4th January 2017. From https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/maidenhead-and-cookham-commons/trails/cookham-and-cock-marsh-walk#Terrain

Images - 

The area shown above is at the top of the hill. We will use this area when filming shots 10, 11 and 12. We chose this location for these scenes as it is enclosed when dark will give an authentic creepy feel to the scene. 

This a long shot of the hill where we will be filming the majority of our opening sequence. The chosen location for filming is at the top of the hill in the heavily wooded area.

At the very beginning of our opening there is a scene where a car drives along the road and into a carpark. This section will be filmed at Cookham Moor Car Park. We chose this location at it is often quiet giving the scene a more eerie atmosphere.

Shot List - Main Task

Costume and Props list - Main Task

Props List - 

When filming we will require very few props.

• Rope - To tie the man to the tree.
• Dog Lead - For the man to use when walking his dog.
• Car - For the man to drive at the beginning.

Costume List - 

• Patrick (Old Man) - Flat cap, Coat, Trousers.
• Evangeline - Dirty and ripped clothes (Jumper, Leggings, Gloves.)