Our Finished Film

Here's our finished film with all of the alterations in which we recieved from our feedback.

Evaluation Task 1 - In what ways does your media product use,develope or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

1- Title Of The Film - We titled our film "Ancestry", similar to other horror films our title is a related to our film with our concept of something being passed through the family's generations. The white font contrasts the black background and the old style font helps to emphasis the generations in which this physocological illness has been passed down from.

2- Setting / Location - The location in which we filmed our opening sequence was based in a school. This helped to add tension by a much similar way other horror films do by taking a safe environment and turning it into an unsafe environment. The setting was also dark and lacked colour which helped emphasis the tense mood.

3- Costumes And Props - Our main character Ella was darkly dressed, again helping to emphasis the tense mood. The props in our opening sequence where used to show that Ella was homeless, they also showed the significance of separation from others and the unusual lifestyle which in effect shows the audience she is abnormal.

4- Camerawork And Editing - In our opening title we used fast pace editing through out to build tension for the audience. This would be similar to other horror films who are looking to do the same thing. Our editing also helped emphasis the concept of how someone normal would do something compared to how someone who is physocologically abnormal would, highlighting the main storyline of the film. Camerawork was used to help show the importance of some items aswell as showing the audience who is the antagonist and protagonist with the use of low angle or high angled shots.

5-Title Font And Style - With our title font and style we tried to be as professional as we could. We used a simple but effective font avoiding any unprofessional or basic fonts. Again the white font contrasted the black background and the absence of colour helped to make the title's look more professional.

6- Story And How The Opening Sets It Up - In the opening title we started with a small panning shot of our family tree. Straight away the audience can tell the that the family tree is important as the opening title started with this shot. We then show a number of clips and then return back to the family tree. Then this is done again. The constant return to the family tree in the opening title suggests its importance as well as the link between the family tree and the title "Ancestry". The opening sequence however starts with a vulnerable young girl who looks frightened. This sets the mood and shows the audience that something isn't quite right. The use of the props help shows she is homeless which puts doubt in the audience's mind to why she is homeless.

7- Genre And How The Opening Suggests It - Our genre for our film is physocological horror. Throughout the opening title we see a number of comparisons in which the character start by doing something normall and then progressing to doing it aggressively. These comparisons help highlight the actors physocological problems. The use of props, for example the knife suggest danger and adds tension for the audience.

8- How Characters Are Introduced - The characters in our production are introduced individually. The opening sequences starts with a mid-shot of our main character "Ella Moore" emphasising her importance. Man 1and Man 2 are introduced by a tracking shot later on in the production. During this tracking shot we can identify that both characters are not happy which is expressed in there facial expressions and also the way they act.

9- Special Effects - We used a number of effects in the opening title and sequence. One effect we included was a red filter which connotes blood. This adds a sense of danger for the audience as they know that something bad will happen. Vignette was another effect we used a number of times throughout our production. This effect created a dark boarder around the outside edges which helped emphasis the idea of the audience looking through an eye, as if it was them there. We also used flashing on some shots which in affect make the audience feel uncomfortable and overall adding tension to the opening.



Evaluation Task 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups ?

For our second evaluation task we had to compare our character to another similar character in another horror film. During this comparison we had to identify the similarities and differences.

Similarities

-Due to both characters being female and at similar age we can also exspect them to react in similar ways. This is shown where both characters panic. We can also see them run away from certant people whereas we would most likely see a male character try to defend hisself.
-Both characters are young vulnerable females which add tension for the audience. This is stereotypical of horror films making the audience feel anxiety.

- Both characters show the same role of emotions in the productions. This helps emphasis the mood and how the audience are expected to feel.

- Both the Characters have issues. "Ella" our main character is homeless and people are after her, this is also shown with the other female character as she is being stalked.

- Both characters wear fashionable clothing to show the time era in which the film was set. (20th century). This also helps to emphasis the audience and its stereotype.

Differences

- Our main character is at a slightly younger age of the one used in "When a stranger calls".

- Due to our low budget the girl from "When a stranger calls" is most definitely a better actor and therefore can express views better than our actor we used.

- The girl from "When a stranger calls" is more attractive, however i believe this because the use of high quality lighting that is more available to the producers who made "When a stranger calls" as they have a higher budget than ours.

- The clothing used by the actor in " When a stranger calls " is more revealing with her body figure whereas our main character is less revealing which helps her to remain more secretive and in affect add tension for the audience as they know very little.

Evaluation Task 3 - What kind of media institution might distrubute your media prodcut and why ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUrqpnVDX1k&feature=related

Here's a link to a Youtube video clip which consists of a voiceover explaing various parts of our media institution.

Evaluation Task 4 - Who would be the audience for your media prodcut?

Demographics

Our film was specifically aimed at a target audience aged between 16-24, both male and female and with a middle to upper class status. We believe the contents our film has to offer is most targeted to this particular audience as its thrilling and shocking and may include some scene in which the contents is not suitable for younger ages. We didn't have a particular race in which our film was aimed at, as this reduces the range of audience we can direct our film to. As our target audience was mainly aimed at age groups that we are categorised in, we have similar interests and therefore like watching similar films. In affect we could film parts that we found interesting knowing that other people in our age groups would also like. From previous research into other popular horror films targeted to similar audience, we also identified the build up of suspense within the title sequence which we also tried to incorporate into our opening title. This was done with increase in tempo of the music in the title sequence combined with fast pace editing which was in sequence with the music.

Psychographics

Due to teenagers being very outgoing , there's a strong possibility that many of them use cinema's regularly, therefore they make a good target audience for our film. Our background music progresses in pace creating tension for our audience and builds up suspense making the overall experience more thrilling. This is particular suited for our target audience as they can loose concentration quickly if a film becomes boring. We also tried to give away as little as possible in the title sequence as this would encourage the viewers to continue watching the film.

Our Responses

After we had shown our production to a small audience, we went about constructing a questionnaire to gather more advice into how we could improve our film. Here are the question's we asked :

1) Is the font we used for our titles appropriate ?

2) Is the editing sufficient ?

3) Does the music fit the images ?

4) Does the narrative make sense ?

5) Do the characters fit the genre of horror ?

6) Is the footage long enough ?

7) Did we use a range of shot types ?

8) What worked well ?

9) What could we improve ?

10) Would you watch the rest of the film ?

From this questionnaire we got very similar responses from our audience. The audience in general liked our opening title and opening sequence but highlighted that the narrative was hard to understand. Although this may appear as a criticism i found this a positive as it would be more likely for the audience to continue to watch the film to find what the true narrative was if they couldnt make sense of it in the opening. We where also complimented on the range of shots we used as the audience found this very effective in the opening, especially the fast pace as it created tension. We also got positive feedback on our font,editing,music, footage and characters, however some responses showed that a small minority found the charcters unsuited for the horror genre. We wasnt too sure if they ment all characters where unsuited or just one or two, however this is an improvement we can make next time in which we ask more precise questions in our questionnaire to gather better feedback.

Evaluation Task 5 - How did you attract / address your audience ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dzcq8Y6_kU

Here's a link to our annotated video. We did try to add the video to our Blog however we experienced some form of technical difficulties.

Evaluation Task 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product ?

Editing On The IMac

We learnt a lot when using the Mac's as it was the first time using them. We had hundreds of effects and editing options available to us aswell as free copyright music that the Mac already consisted of. Although the Mac seemed hard at first we continued to play around and become familiar with it. In the end we found the software on the Mac easier and more effective to use than Adobe Premier Pro. The Mac also improved the quality of the production as it gave a better picture from a HD camera.

HD Camera ( Panasonic HDC-SD80 ) And Tripod

Again this was another product we wasn't familiar to. In previous filming we used a basic SD camera which was ok for filming still shots however struggled with movement shots such as pans etc. This all changed when using the HD camera as it filmed movement shots very well and also gave a better quality image throughout due to being HD. The Tripod was also a well used item in our film. This allowed such movement shots to be filmed as the Tripod consists of a ball joint pivot , which in effect allowed the camera to move more freely.

Google

Google was our main search engineer. We used Google mainly for research purpose's i.e characters etc. Google gave us plenty of information we needed and as a group we found we used Google more than we thought we was going to.

Blogger

I was also new to Blogger. This was the website where we had to record all of our research, planning and filming to give as proof that we had done it. Blogger was very easy to use which allowed images to be updated very easy however we did have some problems uploading video clips to it. Blogger  was the first blog i had used , but i was impressed how you could change all of your layout, background, font etc.

Digital Voice Recorder

We used the digital voice recorder during evaluation 3 where we created a voice over for our film. This device was very use full and unlike other recorders it recorded clearly so when it was played back , it was very easy to understand what we where saying. However we did have some small problems with getting to grips with how the device worked.

Youtube

I used youtube mainly for research on other horror film in the form of horror trailers. However i aslo used youtube to add annotations to our film as part of an evaluation exercise. This was the first time i had added annotations to a film clip via youtube, and I'm sure now from doing this exercise it shouldn't be a problem to do in the future.

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

The Apple Mac was a new device available for us to use for editing this year. We had very basic knowledge of how the Mac worked which we gathered from using other Apple devices however this was the first time using this device. We spent a lot of time playing around with the Mac , which helped us to become more familar with it. We used a program called " Final Cut Pro" which is installed onto the Mac's as standard. This program was far superior to other programs we had used in the past such as "Adobe Premiere Pro " as it offered more editing techniques and effects. Once we had grapsed the concept to how to use the Mac's the editing process was very easy however one issue we did come across was the loss of quality when transfering the film from and Apple device to our school computers where we had to record our progress and show evidence of our work.

Blogger was a new website we was introduced with at the begginging at this academic year. This is where we was expected to record any research, evaluations or filiming we had done as proof. Again this website was very easy to use once you had the hang of it, however some simple processes such as uploading video's was slightly more complicated due to the use of the Apple Mac.

Looking back on our prelimenary task we can see a clear improvement in the quality of our horror film compared to our prelimenary task. This is a result of our improvement in skills and the equipment we could access.
        In our prelimenary task we filmed the footage using a standard definition camera and then went onto edit using Adobe Premier Pro. The standard definition camera produced fairly good quality footage which we could then edit on Adobe which offered a small amount of effects which sometimes made the footage look unprofessional compared to the software we used in our horror film.
        When filming our horror film we choose to use a high definition camera (HD camera) which proved to be a good choose. The footage we got looked much clearer than before and more realistic as it showed colour and tone much better. In affect this improved the experience for the audience. The switch between the two camera's gave us no problems as they both operated in similiar ways.
         From this footage we then went onto editing on the IMac's using a software call Final Cut Pro. Final Cut Pro was more advanced for this process as it offered many more transitions and effects compared to Adobe which didnt make the footage look unprofessional and allowed us to link the soundtrack and the footage together. A good example of this is when the light flashes and at the same time the music becomes louder. However we did find that  Final Cut Pro was slightly harder to operate at first , however over time we became more familiar and comfortable with the software ,which now i would happly use again in the future.
        Combining both the HD camera and the use of the IMac software we where able to create a more effective and thrilling film for our audience which we recieved some positive feedback from. We also continued to use simple skills which we learnt from the prelimenary task such as match on action and the 180 degrees rule but developed a further understanding on the effects of using fast pace editing and other effects and editing skills from previous research that your stereotypical horror audience enjoys and looks for in a horror film.


Finally i found the prelimenary task very usefull as it helps support the progress that we have made .....

Draft Edit (Horror Film)

Production / Filming Schedule

Test film - Thursday 1st December 2011 - Euans camera : Experiment with camera angles and shot types, that we could use in our actual film. Look at lighting and decided a setting in which we could film. Equipment needed : Camera, Tripod.

Film Day 1 - Tuesday 6th December 2011- School's Camera
Equipment - Camera, Tripod.
Props - Knife, Carrot, Notepad, Family Tree, Pen.
Actors - Ann Hayden (Nan)

Location : My Nans House : Film small clips needed mainly for the opening title.

Film Day 2 - Tuesday 13th December 2011- School's Camera
Equipment - Camera, Tripod.
Props - Rucksack, Sleeping bag, Book, Container
Actors - Jamie Magan, Adrain Moore, Shara Hoobs

Location : School : Film Opeing sequence

Edit Day 1 - Thursday 15th Decemeber 2011

Edit the title sequence including adding titles and names of characters, Adding music and incorporating effects.

Edit Day 2 - Friday 16th December 2011

Edit the opening scene , add effects and add music.

Storyboard



Here are our original storyboard's we used for our film. These storyboards where used as a basic platform which we could develop and progress from.

Shot List

Title Sequence:

Close up of knife chopping carrot.
Close up knife chopping carrot faster.
Close up of knife being cleaned.
Close up on kettle boiling.
Extreme close up on eye.
Panning shot's on family tree.
Close up on notepad and pen when writing.
Shots of various newspaper cut outs.
Mid shot on light turing on.
Close up on the name "Ella Moore" whilst panning across family tree.

Opening Sequence:

Close up on Ella's face, expressing her tense mood.
Extreme close up on Ella's hands packing bag.
Mid shot of Ella's packing bag in a panic.
Tracking shot of Man 1 walking into a room where he meets man two, in which he pionts to a door "She's in there".
Tracking shot on man 1 walking up to door, knocking loudly "We know your in there ".
High angle shot of Ella packing bag whilst Man 1 knocks loudly on door.
Man 1 " Come out or there will be trouble ".
Continued high angle shot.
Man 1 " Get this door open ".
Mid shot of Man 2 trying to open door.
Man 2 finally opening door, but filmed the side Ella was positioned at low angle.
P.O.V Tracking Shot of Man 1 looking down to where Ella was positioned, but now she has gone. This shot then tracks around to a shuting door implying this is where Ella has escaped from.
Mid shot of Man 1 and 2 looking at , then Man 1 pushes in front of Man 2 to get to the door first.
Close up on Man 1 and 2 looking out of the door.
Tracking Mid shot of Ella walking into the night .

Certificate Of Our Film

We decided that our film would most suit a certificate 15 as our target audience was based on 16-24 year olds being a similiar age to us which in affect makes it easier for them to relate to the film as its based on our interests. Another reason we choose a 15 certificate is becuase the contents would be inappropriate for younger ages who watch films certicated U, PG, 12 or 12A as it contains some disturbing images and events etc. We also didnt choose an 18 certificate as it wouldnt relate to our target audience efficiently and reduce the audeince we could sell our film too . We also found that the contents was not to a standard in which it could be classed as an 18 certicate.

Changed Production Logo

We decided to change the production company logo during editing of the draft copy by adding the colour red. The letters "ECKS" where wrote in red to allow it to contrast on the black background and in affect making it stand out and look more professional.