Group - Evaluation Question 7

Group - Evaluation Question 6: Voiceover

Group - Evaluation Question 6

Group - Evaluation Question 4 & 5: Screening

Group - Evaluation Question 4 & 5

Group - Evaluation Question 3

Group - Evaluation Question 2

Group - Evaluation Question 1

ERT- Risk assessment and call sheet

KG - Results from audience screening

This are the surveys we gave our target audience to fill in after having watched the opening to our film.
The results suggest that our audience enjoyed the film and wanted to see the rest, with our sound being identified as the most effective element.

KG - Belated Audience Survey Results

These are the results from the survey we created on SurveyMonkey.
We used this survey to test our idea to our target audience and to get inspiration on any areas we were still unsure about. We created the survey using SurveyMonkey as mentioned above, and distributed it to our audience via email and Facebook, as this was where the majority of our target audience could easily and quickly be reached.

Group- Evaluation plan

Question 1 - "In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?"
Lucy's writting the script for the directors interview. Must include sound.

Question 2 - " How does your media product represent particular social groups?"
Emma's writting the script for the directors interview.

Question 3 - " What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?"
Katie's writting the script for the directors interview.

Questions 4 & 5 - "Who would be the audience for your film? How did you attract/ address your audience?"
Emma's writting a questionnaire for the screening and a script for director.
Katie, Emma and Lucy filming and asking opinions on the film opening.

Question 6 - "What have you learnt about technologies from the process of making your film opening?"
Katie's writting a script for the directors interview.

Question 7 - "looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?"
Lucy's writting a script for the directors interview.

We have decided to answer the majority of our questions through a directors interview, we're also going to create a poster to put in the background of this. To get our audience research we will ask them to fill in a questionnaire as well as asking them for their opinions. We will include clips from our film as well as still images to back up some of our points made during the interview.

KG - Evaluation Planning

So we have all done the rough answers to the evaluation questions, we just need to put them together. So how would everyone prefer to do this?

Also, we need to come up with some questions to ask our audience after they have watched the film about whether it met expectations, was appropriate etc.
I figured that for this part we could use Survey Monkey again to construct our questionnaire and then email it to people with the link to our video on Youtube, and we can utilise the fact that our target audience are primarily on facebook and distribute it that way as well so that our survey can be filled in. The sooner we do this the better.

So any ideas?

Group - Final Opening

Group - Rough Cut

This is the rough cut of our opening minus atmospheric music and titles.

Group - First edit of stairs

This is our practice of continuity editing, however it is not perfect as there are a couple of jumps. We also think the clip might be too long as it does not tell us anything vital to the storyline.

KG - Improving Blog

I don't know if you two have read this post on the main blog, but I thought I would include it here anyway for you:

These are things that all need to be completed on our blog:

1. Write reflections on your shoots - what technical issues did you encounter? Did you shoot outside of your storyboard? How did you come up with creative solutions on set? What worked and what didn't?
2. Ensure that your pitch slides with summary feedback and audience research are detailed on blog - Just need to add notes pages to this, but they are on slide boom, just needing to be embeded.
3. Go back through your posts and make sure you have commented on each other's posts
4. Look back at your research - are there any shot ideas you could add to improve your work?
5. Discuss and plan shoots and editing on your calendar sheet
6. Find and sample fonts - use www.1001freefonts.com. Post on blog
7. Spend some time reviewing possible sound effects and ambient music. Post on blog
8. Spend some time looking at other films on youtube. Post any interesting observations on blog
9. Complete any risk assessments / call sheets for weekend. In word, save document as jpg and upload onto blog as a sample of your "logistic organisation". - We completed this, but by hand so we may need to just copy them so we can include them on here.

I have put in red the ones that I think might be missing from our blog.

KG - Reflection on Editing and New Storyboard

We have missed quite a few lessons because of mocks and 'activity days' at TWGGS, and so haven't had as much time to edit as we would ideally have liked to have.

However, I think we are keeping on top of it, there is clearly a lot we need to do, with sound being a big issue. But we have planned our time this week to enable us to have at least 6 hours editing this week, with opportunity for more should we need it.

Editing has been going well, we have strayed rather a bit from our storyboard, the main idea is there, but when filming we decided that some of the shots on the storyboard were irrelevant and that some different ones were better suited in their place. As well as adding in a few shots that we had not thought of previously that when in the location seemed fitting.

Upon editing the beginning of the opening, we found that although it was good, it was a bit too much like a trailer and not an opening. We were revealing too much too soon, and didn't have enough of an enigma about our film, so we are having to re-do the beginning and cut it up further, and rearrange it to create our desired effect.

And so in aid of that, I have drawn out another [very quick, rough] storyboard, from the shots that we already have, just because it helped me visualise it, and should help us in editing during the rest of this week.

LS - Filming (16/03/10)

Last night we did filming so that we could do continuity editing. We also filmed some shots of Lydia's hands in order to create the horror feeling that something is wrong with her.

Problems we encountered
- In some shots the girl's hair is down, however in some shots her hair is up but there is no scence showing her putting her hair up. To overcome this we thought we could get her Mum to put her hair up, however we then remembered that her Mum is dead and the girl cannot put her hair up herself.

How we are going to overcome this problem
- To overcome this problem we are going to film a POV shot from the doll so that we cannot clearly see her do her hair, however her hair is put up.

LS - Evaluation of filming (10.03.10)

On this shoot we filmed the shots of the girl in her bedroom. One problem we encountered many times is that the doll would not stay in one position and as a result the continuity is effected. Another problem we encountered was the lighting outside the bedroom window as it got darker throughout the shot and our reflections in the mirror and window. Overall, however I think the shoot went very well and we did not have to change our storyboard very much.

Group - Walking Practise

After watching this back we noticed that the storyboad can be seen lying on the pavement. This is something we didn't consider and is something we need to remember when filming again.

Group - Animatic First Draft

ERT- sound samples

• http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=71674
• http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=39661
• http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=14355
• http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=44201

Here are a couple of samples of sounds i have found. Most of them i think will fit in with the scene in which she is walking to school.

What does everyone think of them??

KG - Target Audience

We have decided that our target audience is the 15-21 age bracket, with the gender divide being steered more towards females, as they will associate with the main character more than men.
We think that 15 is an appropriate age, similar to many of the films we looked at, particularly The Ring, as our story is of a similar style and the horror involved is more psychological as opposed to violent. This film is not suitable for anybody under 15, even though the main character is under that age bracket, however people above 21 may find this film enjoyable too.

KG - Summary of research on Sound and SFX

After reading up on Sound and Special effects in the Guardian guide to making video we have found that in terms of sound the most important things for us are:

• Not to layer too much sound, not to simply mask it with sound.
• Be careful with licensed and copyrighted material, so look for websites providing royalty free music and sound effects.
• We need it to sound as real as possible, as well as having atmospheric music in places, so we need to think about room-tone.
• We need to choose sound that doesn't have any previous connotations or links that may detract the attention away from where we are anchoring it.

In terms of Special Effects, there isn't much that we require for our particular idea, although many of them sounded very interesting and would have been fun to play around with. The section on horror was very useful and many of the shots suggested we had decided to use anyway, such as:

• The 'back of the head' shot - we wanted shots like this [more P-O-V style], but on reading this article we have decided to experiment with emphasising this in the horror style for effect.
• The 'Killer's eye view' shot - we wanted P-O-V shots of both the girl and the doll for contrast, so in the theme of our film it is debatable as to who the 'killer' is and so whose eye-view it is, but having both will help create this atmospheric ambiguous effect.
• The 'killer in the mirror' shot - we are attempting this in a way, in that the doll will constantly find its way into the shot, whether it be visible in a mirror or just slightly to the side, but either way it will always be visible.

ERT- evaluation of filming 4/3/10

Today was our first day of filming so it was very experimental with many of te shots we were amiing to use. We tried out different angles, movement and lighting in order to get everything the exact way we wanted it. We filmed the second half of our opening sequence which include 4 different locations (Bedroom, Bathroom, Hallway and Outside). We found shotting outside the hardest because of inconviences such as cars and people passing by, however with many different takes we managed to avoid such hassles. As well as trying to get all the shots done quickly so there wasnt a dramatic change in lighting.
Whilst filming we thought of other angles that would be more effective than what we had originally planned in our storyboard, as being in the location with our actor allows you to think clearer. So although we changed our minds and got other ideas we took many different shots so that we could compare them on a bigger screen and check that they all fit together well.

Over all i think our first filming session was a major success and hope the rest goes as smoothly.

KG - Pitch SlideShow

Pitch

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Above is the slideshow we used for our pitch, as presented to the rest of the class.

Below is the pitch with the notes pages put in place of the appropriate slides so that the information might be seen.

Pitch Notes Pages

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Group - Preliminary Task

ERT- New location

ERT- Research

• We have looked at 6 films in detail: “The exorcism of Emily Rose”( Derrickson 2005), “Sixth Sense” ( Night 1999) , “Hide and seek“ (Polson 2005) , “Childs play“ (Holland 1988), “The ring” ( Verbinski 2002) and “ The hole” ( Hamm 2001).
• All of these films are relevant for us because they all include children or girls and are horror films. The majority involve death, missing people or psychological problems.
• We learnt from doing a technical analysis on the first 2 minutes of the films “Exorcism of Emily Rose“, “Sixth sense“ and “hide and seek“ that there are a lot of different shots used in such a short time, and that it works very effectively in the horror genre by hooking in the audience. A lot of close ups are used of both the characters and other objects, this increase concentration and mystery as the audience try and find the links and necessity of each item or expression of the character. They are all generally set in dark and isolated areas with old fashioned set . All 3 tend to have a soundtrack, which is of a low pitch and slow pace. In some shots there are noises added such as screaming or bird sounds or the wind, creating dramatic tension. Each of these films included little dialogue in the opening sequence which creates the mystery.
• From analysing the other three films we could see that two of the films include the conventions of thriller films as well as horror, and the other just horror conventions. The locations created in one circumstance is a girls room, which is a location we ourselves would like to use. The film made it fit into the horror theme through mise-en-scene, lighting and sound. The room included simple objects nothing to distracting but still held all necessary items for example a bed, it was dark and had a big bare window which created a spooky and mysterious atmosphere.
• In conclusion from this research we can see that using a lot of shots is effective, using dark lighting works very well to create a fearful atmosphere and a soundtrack should be used which has a slow, monotone and low pitch.

ERT - Possible Character

KG - Film from BBC Film Network on Horror

I was exploring the internet, and found this video which I thought was quite useful particularly the bit about Locations. So I thought I would put it on here so you can see it.
The other videos on the site to do with horror, were interesting to watch but involved tricks about blood and decapitation etc. which is not relevant for our particular idea, and the one about creating good horror characters wasn't particularly useful - I didn't think so anyway.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/features/how_to_make_horror_movie_look

KG - Photos of doll

Here are some photos of the doll, I thought that when we film it, we could maybe focus on the eyes a little - we need to personify the doll somehow through our filming without it actually talking, and I thought particularly with this doll the most effective method may be with the eyes. We will have to see I suppose.

LS - Possible Character photos

I took some photos of my sister, however I was unsure of what she was to wear and what position for her to stand or sit in. I chose to dress her in pajamas as this is quite child like and for her to sit down as this creates the sense of vulnerability. If you have any more ideas of how the photos should be, comment below and I can take some more.

LS - Reccie Photos (possible location)

Below are photos of my bedroom. When filming we can move furniture and remove photos and objects off of the walls and shelves.