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

Since the preliminary task I have learnt a lot about the equipment and the process of making a film.

Planning and Research:

After completing the preliminary task I thought that the planning stage of the project would be easy and that my group and I would come up with an idea for a film opening relatively quickly, but even though we thought of choosing the horror genre immediately the story line took us a while to think of. I learnt that if I search existing products and how they were successful then it becomes easier to come up with an idea that works. Another thing I learnt about film making is that even if you think an idea works you have to pitch the idea to see if others think it will as well otherwise it may not be a good idea. Another thing I learnt in this stage was how much planning was needed for props and the setting for when we were going to film as there had to be enough room in the filming space and enough props to make it look like a natural environment.

Filming:

In the preliminary task we had used a quite a few different shots so i thought we had covered it all however we had filmed in a large space and with a simple plot. In the film opening the room we had chosen to shoot in was a lot smaller so re-positioning of props and placing the camera in strange places came as a learning curve to me. Another thing that I learnt when filming was that we couldn't stick completely to the storyboard because as we were filming new shots appeared to us and we changed some of the shot angles and some of the continuity between shots in the storyboard didn't make sense so they had to be altered to fit the plot we were trying to follow. Team work was also an important factor in this filming stage and something that we had to keep up even when we came across problems like trying to get the shot right and who would film that particular shot, we also had to decide between takes of that shot and there were sometimes difference of opinions but we made it work. some shots that we thought of while making the preliminary video we decided that we liked how effective they were and decided to use some of these in our film opening, shots like the extreme high angles. We also learnt about the things we couldn't do for our film opening like the restrictions on equipment effected which shots we could achieve. Tracking and pan shots were difficult to do smoothly as the tripod and camera we had didn't have the right settings to cope with these types of shots.

Editing:

this was the biggest learning curve for me out of the whole project as I had taken a step back in the post-production stage in the preliminary task. When we edited i learned about all of the programs I had to use to put all the footage into a finished film opening and even though it took me a while to learn it I managed to contribute to edit the final piece. Time management was a major factor to the editing stage as we had to work to a deadline and we were all still learning about the programs while trying to complete the task in time. We did overcome this issue through the sharing of knowledge about the programs and researching what we didn't know. Including conventions of a horror film was also something that we had to do in the editing stage as well as the planning stage because we had filmed in bright light but we needed dark scenes for the shots to fit in with the genre so that was another tool we had to work out. I also learnt that we had to accept our target audiences criticism in order to complete a film that would be watched by members of our target audience. 

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

Question 6

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5) How did you attract/address your audience?

Question 5

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

 Knowing what your target audience is a very important stage when making any media product. A target audience means a group of people that you aim your product at by what content you use e.g. Females 25+ years old. Establishing your target audience right at the beginning of your planning process means that you can plan what content will appeal to your target audience and also how you or the distribution company will promote your product to that target audience. Some marketing campaigns appeal to younger TA's by using viral marketing such as Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and online applications and competitions.


 We decided that since the genre of the film is horror the age of the primary target audience would be best at 15+ years old as the certificate of horrors tend to be 15 or 18. We settled on 15-24 years olds because the characters in the film would be within that age bracket so the target audience would relate to the characters and therefore may feel the emotions that the characters feel. As for the gender we decided that males would be appropriate to focus on as males are generally more likely to want to go and see a horror film, especially within that age range. The main character was also male so there would be a sense of relation there too. 


 Our secondary target audience would be in the same age range as our primary but instead of males they would be females. This is because some females also like to watch horror films or The men who go to see the film may want to take their girlfriends along to see it as well so we considered them as a secondary target audience so they might want to see it as well.


 This is a profile of a typical member of our primary target audience:

Name: Jason
Age: 18
Gender: Male
Interests: Music, playing guitar, watching films and studying.
Favourite films: Insidious, Saw, Shawshank Redemption, Forrest Gump and The Sixth Sense.
Favourite Genres: Horror and Comedy
About: Jason is a 18 year old student at college. He studies hard but likes to relax in the evenings and watch films. He said he is yet to find a horror film that really scares him.

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

Question 3

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2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Emel and Renai

We decided to choose Emel for the role of the victim as she could could act similarly to the way Renai acts in Insidious when she feels alone and trapped in her own house. She also has a similar look to Renai so we knew that this look would work for the opening that we were trying to come up with.

 We wanted to represent a typical woman who is at home doing what any other woman would do like watching TV or reading a book. We also wanted Emel to react to the incident in a way that other people especially women would be able to associate with so that meant that she would act vulnerable and weak against this other dominant figure.

Insidious Trailer:

 

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

Shot 1 - The Thing, 2011

 I chose to look at this film opening because it uses close-ups a lot throughout the sequence. We used this idea of putting in a lot of close-ups so that the sequence feels quite claustrophobic in parts, this is a convention used in horror films particularly and is demonstrated by the opening of The Thing. In this shot there is also credits alongside the close-up of the object to the right. We took this idea and put the close-ups with the credits in the same way, however unlike this opening we had other types of shots without credits in between the credit shots. The dark lighting around the edge of the shot is also something about this opening that we tried to incorporate into some of our shots.

Shot 2,3 and 4 - Blade II, 2002

 This opening sequence is very different to most openings but some of the ways they have put the shots together we used in a similar way. In shot 2, instead of having almost still objects, they have put the credits over the top of the action shot that's in the background. There is a tracking shot of a man walking through a room with a voice over in the background but the focus is on the closest object and the credits. This type of credit shot has been used in other film openings too but we decided to steer away from this method and more towards the one used in shot 1. This opening also cuts to action shots without credits in shot 3, and this is something that we decided to put into our film opening in between the still credit shots. We also made the decision to make the action shots quite quick instead of longer like in Blade II. In shot 4 it shows that the title Blade II is put at the end of the opening sequence, this is quite unconventional for a film opening, but we liked the idea of having the title at the end instead of at the beginning or in the middle of the sequence so we also put our title at the end of the sequence. our title was also set against a dark background, this is very conventional of horror film openings as shown in Blade II.

Shot 5 - Sweeney Todd:The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, 2007

 This shot shows the type of font used in this opening sequence is a plain, serif font as this is very conventional of horror film credits. We also took a serif font as our final choice to apply to the credits in our film opening so that it would follow this convention of horror films.

Shots 6 and 7 - Insidious, 2010

 Shot 6 shows one of the ways that the credits are displayed in this film opening. Each line of text moves in a different direction from the one above and below it (left or right) to make them more interesting to watch, there are also some words that are bigger than others to make them stand out more. We took this idea from this sequence and applied it to the credits in our opening as we thought it was a good way of making them more interesting to watch than still text and we made some of the words bigger that we wanted to stand out. In shot 7 it shows a scene inside a house in black and white with the credits in red put in the darker areas of the shot. We developed this idea by having the credits in the almost still scenes, with the camera moving around the scene slightly, like in this opening but we kept those in colour and applied black and white to the action shots to create the sense of a flashback. So we took the conventions of a horror opening from Insidious and changed the effects around slightly to give an unique film opening.

Shots 8 and 9 - Dawn of the Dead, 2004

 Dawn of the Dead opening sequence consists of cutting quickly between action shots and still credit shots. The order this openings action shots have been placed in makes it seem more like a trailer so to avoid this we did the similar thing of swapping between action and credit shots but the action shots were in order so that they showed part of a story that was going to lead onto the rest of the film. We also developed the credit shots so that the image in the background was part of the story line too.

Final Film Opening

Target Audience Screening and Re-editing

After we had finished editing the rough cut we had a group of about 16 students of aged 16-18 years old, males and females (target audience) view our film opening. After they had watched it we asked our target audience members to write down what they thought was good and bad about it and how we could make it better. Most of the improvement comments we received were that the colour shots were too bright and that the credits were too small and the font wasn't conventional of a horror and that they needed to be placed differently in relation to the image in the shot. These were all valid comments.
 We went onto re-editing the film, we desaturated the colour shots but turned the opaqueness down so that some of the colour came through and the image looked dimmer. We also repositioned the credits so they were more visible, made them bigger and changed the font from a san-serif to a serif font. We then saved and exported this film as the final film opening.

Rough Cut Film Opening

Editing

The editing went well with no major problems. We edited the shots together one by one in the order that they are on the storyboard. We experimented with a few different transitions to link the shots and effects to put onto the shots to fit the genre of film we were trying to achieve. We desaturated the action shots to make them black and white, this clearly shows that they are happening in the past, we also used a white flash for transitions to make it obvious that it is a flashback. We left the credit shots with no effects because it shows that they are in the present and everything can be seen more clearly. 
 We didn't use any sound effects as all the diagetic sounds that were needed were in the shots from when we filmed it, we did make some of the sounds coming from the shots louder like the glass smashing so that it could be heard above the other sounds in the shot. For the music we overlapped two different soundtracks from a royalty free website. 
 Then we exported the video to livetype to put the credits on. This was where the problems started. When we put the video into livetype there was no sound which meant that we would of had to put the credits on then export the video back into final cut and then try and match up the sound to the video. After a while we thought to match the credits to the video in livetype then export just the credit shots into the final cut file. Then we had the problem that when the final cut video was put into livetype the quality of the picture went down a lot so we had to do the credits in livetype, then export it as a video but without rendering the background so it went over the top of the opening in final cut.

Filming

 We started the day with the setting up of the set. This was fairly easy as most of the props were to be moved around while filming, we decided that moving the props around while filming will create more space in the room as it was too small to fit all the props in their right place from the beginning. 
 The first shot took the most takes before we got what we needed from it, this was because the falling of the lamp was difficult to get right while having the Jack and Emel struggling at the same time. The positioning of the camera also took some thought because we decided to have Rachel catching the lamp so that the attention wasn't drawn to the sound of the lamp. After that first shot the filming began to go smoothly. A couple of issues that we had were mainly to do with positioning of the camera as it was quite a small space and was difficult to get good angles. 
 We just filmed the action shots at first as they were the hardest ones to do. Another issue was placing Jack and Emel in the right place and telling them where they should move to because the shots had to link together with the movements of the actors. 
 Some shots which we thought were going to be difficult turned out quite easy, shots like the table with the glasses on being pushed over. We expected this shot to take a while to get right because of the glasses falling off at the right time and making enough noise, but it only took one shot. Also we thought that there was going to be a problem with Jack stabbing Emel and her falling backwards but it turned out that she knew how to fall backwards without hurting herself. 
 After the action shots were done we moved onto the credit shots. These were actually very difficult to take as we didn't have the best equipment for doing smooth panning shots but we managed to hold them steady enough to get decent shots. 

Risk Assessment

Shot List

Call Sheet

Props and Costumes

Props:
 Most of the props weren't difficult to get hold of because the film is being shot in a normal house setting. The location was hard to find for a while and we didn't find a place to film until a couple of days before we planned to film. In the end we filmed it in a room in my house. This meant that the big props like a sofa, a bookcase and a lamp were already in the room. This is a list of all the props we needed: 

• Coffee table
• Wine glasses
• Sofa
• Bookcase
• Tall lamp
• Cushions
• Carpet
• Knife

The wine glasses were easy to get hold of from a shop in Banbury. The carpet took a while to find but in the end we used one that was already in the room and just washed it after as we spilt wine and fake blood on it. 


Costumes:
 The costumes were quite easy to find as they are mostly normal clothes. Jacks costume:

• Black hooded jumper
• Black coat
• Black gloves
• Dark jeans
• Grey boots

Emels Costume:

• Jeans 
• Light pink top
• White jumper
• No shoes

The clothes were normal but the items were put together to create an image for each character. Jacks costume gives connotations of dark, mysterious and dangerous. The gloves show that he is careful about giving away clues to who he is and the hood means that we can't see his face so that the audience doesn't know who he is either. Emels costume gives connotations of good and feminine. The pink top shows that she is a stereotypical female and therefore more helpless and vulnerable to being attacked, she also is wearing no shoes showing that she is at home on a normal day.

Casting

 Casting wasn't much of an issue for my group and I because there are only two characters in our film opening. We had to find a woman that could scream well and look scared, this was also quite easy as we had already chosen Emel Yildirim as she is our friend and we knew she could act quite well and that we would get along well with her while filming. 
 Casting for the male part was difficult at first as we had no idea who would make a good character. We also didn't know many men who were good actors but in the end we decided to cast Jack as the man because he had the right clothes and he doesn't say anything in the opening so acting wasn't a big part of what he had to do. 
 The look we were going for when we picked these actors/actresses was that the man would be taller than the female therefore more likely to overpower her and that he would be the dominant character out of the two. 

Final Ident

This is the final ident that we chose to use in our film opening. We took one of the old ones and made changes to it from the comments we received in our questionnaire. I think that this ident is a good one for our film opening as it reflects the genre of our film (horror). The font used was one of our two top choices for the film title but we decided that it would be more appropriate for the ident and we chose the other font for our film title.

Animatic

  This is the animatic that I made and then my team mates added the soundtrack. This is to give a general idea as to how our film opening will look, with the proper footage. The music is also just a working soundtrack and it isn't perfected yet but will be when we put our film in. This is just to give an idea of when the credits will appear and what kind of shots will be used.

Results of ident questionnaire

This graph shows that my ident and jacks ident were the preferred idents of our target audience (15-21 year olds) we received comments about the idents and overall people liked aspects from both mine and jacks. In the end we chose jacks ident but made some improvements to it. 

An ident is an important thing to include in a film opening as it promotes the production and distribution company of the film, and gives the audience an idea of whether it is the right type of film for them. My group and I feel that it is something that we need to include in our film so that we have all the aspects of film openings. 

Video for ident questionnaire

This is the video of all the idents that me and my group created. We will show this to members of our target audience and ask them to choose their favourite one to go into our film opening.

Questionnaire of Fonts

We asked 15 people of our target audience which font they would prefer to see in a horror film opening. The two most popular fonts (options 1 and 2) are going to be one in our film opening and the other in our ident. The ident questionnaire will decide which font will be used for which purpose.

Storyboard

 

This is our storyboard showing the basic shots that we are going to have in our film opening. It tells us which order the shots are going in and the technical side of things, such as the type of shot e.g. medium close-up, what sound is going in the shots and what happens in the shot. It also has some basic ideas of which edits are going between shots. This will be our guide when we make the film opening.

Floor plan

 This is a rough design that we came up with of what the opening scene will look like. It also shows the path in which the characters take through the room in the opening.

Improved ident

This is my improved ident with a different effect on the picture and sound. This is one of the choices of ident that my group and I are considering.

My first ident

This is the first ident i made for my film opening for the production company. No sound yet.

Film Openings Powerpoint

This was a powerpoint I made showing examples of conventions in different film openings.

Film Pitch

This is the film pitch that my group and I presented. It shows our general film concept and who our target audience is. It then shows a couple of different typographies that we are thinking of using for our film as well as a couple of soundtracks for our film opening. 

Horror Film Opening Analysis 2

The Strangers - Horror film opening

 Shot 1 - This shot is of the production company's logo, this is a convention of a film opening as it gives the audience some information about who has made the film and is an advertisement for that company that will be seen by everyone who is about to watch the film.

 Shot 2 - This shot is an intertitle with a voice over reciting what it says on the screen. The voice is a low males voice to give what he is saying a creepy feel for the audience to know that the true events that the film is inspired by are bad ones. The colour of the text against the black background gives the line an eerie glow to it creating fear of what could happen next.

 Shot 3 - This shot is of a house in semi-darkness surrounded by trees. The semi-darkness shows that night time is coming and the dark is when the worst things happen in horror films. The house implies that whatever bad event that is going to happen is going to happen in the main characters home, this is supposed to scare the audience as the home is usually a place where people feel safest.

 Shot 4 - This shot is similar to shot 3 but now it is in total darkness apart from a couple of eerie street lights. This creates an enigma of not knowing what is hiding in the shadows, this is a convention of the genre horror.

 Shot 5 - This shot is of a car with a smashed front windscreen, in the background there are two boys on bikes looking at the car. There is also non-diegetic sound of voices talking on the phone of a woman talking to emergency services. The smashed car shows that the bad event has already happened and that it was someone being violent towards the main characters. The woman's voice sounds scared and she is talking about someone being in the house, this phone call is playing over the top of the present scene to show that what she is talking about is in the past.

 Shot 6 - This shot is of the two boys walking towards an open door of the house. This door has been forced open due to the hole in the top of it. The non-diegetic phone call is carrying on in the background to give an explanation to the audience as to what might have happened in this house.

 Shot 7 - This shot has a spinning record but its not playing anything showing that its just kept going until it run out of music. This implies that the person playing the record was interrupted suddenly and never got to switch the player off. It also creates that eerie feel for the audience as it could also mean that someone is still in the house and they don't know whats coming next.

 Shot 8 - This shot is of an engagement ring box that is closed implying that someone was planning to propose but never got round to it. This gives the audience some information about the main characters, a man and a woman who are together and were going to get engaged before someone interrupted their night. The trail of rose petals looks similar to a trail of blood giving connotations of violence as well as romance.

 Shot 9 - This shot shows a kitchen knife with blood on it and a rose petal. This shot also has connotations of violence and romance and that this couples relationship was doomed. The blood is a main convention of the genre horror and confirms to the audience that there will be violence in the film.

Horror Film Opening Analysis

Dawn of the Dead - Horror film opening


 Shot 1 - This first shot shows the genre of the film immediately from the colour of the text and the sound that goes along with it. The colour red has connotations of danger and blood showing that this film is a horror and that it will contain violence. The sound effect of the title coming onto the screen is of something splattering across it and of someone screaming, these both bring tension to the film instantly.
 Shot 2 - This shot shows someone with blood all over his face while someone is trying to hold him back. This is a very quick shot with a loud scream at the same time, this is supposed to scare the audience and show them that the film has something to do with people going mad.
 Shot 3 - This intertitle keeps in with the theme of blood and horror because the words are in red and they then splatter across the screen like blood and the same sound effect as shot one is used. An intertitle is also a convention of a film opening.
 Shot 4 - This shot shows a spokesman talking to the press about what is happening in the film so far. In the background it say 'disease prevention', showing that the spokesman is for a company that looks for ways to prevent diseases from happening implying that it is a disease that is affecting the bloody people. This shot gives some insight to the audience as to what is going to happen in the film.
 Shot 5 - This shot is of a type of cell showing that there is going to be something that changes to humans during this film. This shot is shown in between shots of people screaming and bleeding showing that the change is not going to be good. 
 Shot 6 - This shot is of a broken window of a shop and the shop is on fire. This implies that there is going to be a lot of chaos in the streets and that people are in danger. It also implies that there is nowhere to hide from these zombies and this feeling of nowhere to hide is used to scare the audience into feeling vulnerable themselves.
 Shot 7 - This shot shows a crowd of half dead and bloody people screaming and looking at the camera. This is another very quick shot so the suddenness of the zombies looking straight at the audience would make them feel that the zombies are coming for them, reinforcing the horror genre.
 Shot 8 -  This shot is of a lot of police cars driving down a street, this shows that there must be something big happening that needs police attention. It is also at night which adds to the fact that it is something very bad and most horror films have a night scene in them so it is conventional.
 Shot 9 - This shot shows a location that is well known, Washington DC the white house. This shows the president of the United States being protected by marines which implies that there is something attacking them. This is just one of the locations showing that the attack is happening world wide and there is no stopping  it.
 Overall this film opening shows the genre of horror very effectively. 

Preliminary Task Evaluation

For our preliminary task my group and I had to film someone opening a door, walking into a room and exchange a couple of lines of dialogue with another person.
 As a group I feel that we worked well and all took part in making the film. We all thought of ideas and brought them together in a storyboard that we were happy with. On this particular task none of us had any conflict of ideas so the storyline came together quickly and we had enough time to prepare a mock up video of just still images and sound.
 In the filming process we came across some problems:

• We had to film all the footage in a random order because some areas of the school were busy when we wanted to film a certain part. We ended up filming each clip in any order we could over 2 days to avoid extra people in the shot.
• We couldn't film using tracking shots easily so we ended up with stationary shots throughout our film.
• Extreme high angle shots were difficult because the tripods weren't tall enough. To overcome this problem we had to make the high angle shots quick and just held the tripods with the camera on above us as steady as we could.
• Filming a dark scene was impossible because none of the rooms available were dark enough, and if we had filmed in the dark the film quality would have been low. We overcame this problem by using a blackout to show entering a dark room then switched the light on as part of the film.

After we sorted out those problems the rest of the filming went smoothly. When we had collected all the clips we swapped out the still images in the mock up for the film footage and moved around the sound effects to fit in with what was happening in the shot. Overall the filming task went well.

Preliminary Task Video

Starting the preliminary task

 The preliminary task is to use continuity editing to film someone opening a door, walking into the room, sitting down infront of someone else and exchanging a couple of lines of dialogue.
 So far my group and I have constructed a storyboard of what we think will be a good short film including sound, lighting and transitions between shots.
 We then went around the school to test locations for our shots as well as how we were going to go about filming it, and took still images so that we could get a better feel as to what our storyboard would turn into when we film it.
 After taking the still images we put them into final cut and edited them together in order. We also added the sound effects so that we are ready to edit them in with the footage we will take.
 Problems we have encountered so far:

• Being able to film using tracking shots. With the equipment provided at school smooth tracking shots are difficult to do and therefor we have to stick to stationary camera clips unless we can find a solution to the problem.
• Filming a dark scene. Without proper lighting equipment filming people in a room that is supposed to be dark will make the quality of the film low.
• Filming extreme high angle shots. Some shots that need an extreme high angle of a person are hard to keep steady without a high enough tripod to put the camera on.

My first experience using final cut

School Promotion Video

I created this video with a group of two other people as a learning curve on how to use final cut so that I am prepared for my coursework task.
 What I learnt:

• That a group of three people is enough to take the footage but you have to be prepared to involve other people to be in the film. These extra people also have to be commited to taking part in your film so they don't drop out half way through.
• Always take more footage than you need! If you just take the amount you think you are going to put into your film, you may find that the clip isn't as good as you thought and you then have to go and shoot the clip again. In some clips in may just be a case of re-filming but if the original clip was taken in certain conditions, such as weather, you may not get the same clip again.
• Planning is very important when making a film. Because this video was just a taster I didn't have time to plan out where everything was going to be filmed and which shots worked in the video. This stage is needed to make a professional film and I will be planning every stage of my coursework piece. A schedule would be a good way of planning when,where and who is going to be in each clip, and a back-up plan would be helpful incase weather or other factors get in the way of shooting a certain clip.
• Equipment available to you must be considered at the beginning of the planning stage. Some shots may not work with the equipment provided, such as pan shots with an unsteady tripod. Do tests before filming to check which shots are possible to do.
• Leave clip handles either end of the clip of about 5 seconds so that there is enough footage for transitions to overlap.
• Lighting and sound must be considered when filming a shot. Test that there is enough light in the shot so that the camera can see the important people and objects in that shot, if the lighting is too low then it wont be very good quality. Sound should also be tested. Make sure the room is silent of all background noise if someone is talking in the clip, if the shot is outside take into account the amount of wind, traffic noise etc.

Overall the experience was good because I now know the basics of how final cut works as well as how I should go about filming. I will be thinking about all these points when making my final piece of film.