Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Evaluation

Cut wood evaluation

For My AS Media Coursework I made a 2 minuet opening sequence to a film, working in a group of three with Jess Hill and Ellice Macro who are other students in my class. My main contribution’s where acting and editing, I played the killer in our film and edited certain parts of our sequence. We all took turns in the making of the film however and all 3 of us did our fair share of Acting/Filming/Editing.

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

Our film fits mainly into the genre of horror, we have used many different conventions to try and achieve this. Our setting, lighting, music, editing and effects all come together to make the film fit into the genre of horror. Our film was not fully typical of a horror film because we show our killer to be friends with the girl he is trying to kill in the opening sequence. We did this to try and make our film stand out from the crowd of horror films a bit more and I think that by creating this fascinating enigma we are still keeping to the basic plot of horror storyline’s but adding a small twist. I think the basic principals of the idea’s we have used here where successful however as shown in our audience feedback we could have been slightly clearer with them. To an audience the ‘3 days earlier’ part of our sequence turned out to be quite confusing due to the audience’s lack of knowledge as to what was going on. I think by using a voiceover or some dialogue we could of explained what was happening slightly better. I think our film fulfils the requirements of an opening sequence because it shows everything the audience needs to see in the first few minuets of a film. The protagonist is shown very early in the film and we meet the killer, although we do not see his face it gives us clue’s as to who he is, this creates an enigma in the film early on as well. We show connotations of the horror genre in our clip by using the Mise en Scene effectively and showing the killers weapon, also our editing particularly adding the black and white effect gives of themes of horror.





How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our film shows a representation of teenagers as our whole cast and storyline is played and based on teenagers. We have shown the carefree attitude of teenagers as we have shown our characters walking through some woods happily before Mark became the killer. We have also shown female vulnerability and male’s physical dominance over them, we showed this when mark was following Jess through the forest obviously intent on killing her as we showed Ellice already dead on the floor.

When choosing costume’s to act in we particularly considered colour of clothing, for example I am wearing darker colours when being shown as the killer to give connotations of evil however when the friends are walking through the forest I am wearing lighter clothing to show that a change has happened to me in the three days running up to becoming the killer, this creates an enigma as to what happened in the 3 days. When Jess is running through the woods as fast as she can and is screaming it shows how scared she is of Mark, this represents the theme of physical male dominance over female’s and the fact she cannot fight back. Also the fact that Mark is walking when Jess is running shows that he knows he will catch her emphasizing his physical superiority. Our setting, which was cut wood and our lighting, which was when we filmed at between about 7-8 at night, is used to give a low-key lighting effect in woods, which is a typical horror setting. We filmed as the sun was setting to give the impression that Jess did not have long left till it was dark and she would be stuck in the woods on her own at night being chased by a killer. We aspired to create this situation because it is one that we think would appeal to our audience and make them want to continue watching.



I think we have adhered to the general stereotype’s of teenagers in horror, we have done this by showing teenagers general carefree attitude 3 days before the killings and the disaster that generally befalls them later on In the film with the death of Ellice and the immanent death of Jess. We have also kept to the stereotype by showing the vulnerability of teenage girls, who are frequently shown to be preyed upon by men in horror films. A video and evaluation is shown on our blog of the film Black Christmas, which is a film we have, took many themes of teenage horror from, particularly Teenage Female’s vulnerability in horror.

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

We have chosen DNA films as the media institution we would like to distribute our product. This is because they have released similar films of the same genre in the past like 28 days later and 28 weeks later. We believe they would distribute our product because our film is a fresh British teenage horror that has an interesting storyline.



Who would be the audience for your media product?

I think our target audience for our film is most likely to be male or female 16-25 year olds with interests in the horror genre. I think we have a very broad mass audience because horror is a very broad genre; horror films have always been typically quite popular in the 16-25-age range. I believe this is a good age range to target because a lot of people between 16-25 go to the cinema regularly and financially good because it is an age range of people that typically have more money than older people with Kids and a Morgage. Also for promotional purposes 16-25 is a good age range because a lot of forms of media are focused on them, for example reviews of the film in young people’s magazine’s and on Television Channels targeted at them like E4. I do not think the age range should be extended younger than 16 because horror does not typically appeal to younger Kids, also I do not think it should be extended older because im not sure older people would we interested in a ‘Teenage’ horror film. I do not think Ethnicity or Nationality play much part in the target audience for our film because there is no representation of either in the film and the viewers Ethnicity or Nationality plays little part on the appeal the film would have on someone.


How did you attract/address your audience?

Our film began with a disruption in the narrative; we started our film before introducing the characters showing the film at what would be the climax of the action in the film. We did this with the intention to show what happened in the build up the events shown at the beginning of the sequence in the rest of the film. By not giving any basic info about characters or settings immediately in the opening sequence we have started with a disrupted equilibrium, the desired effect of this is to create enigmas as to what has happened in the build up therefore persuading people to watch the film and find out. We created a sense of time by showing ‘Three days earlier’ in text after we had shown the scene of what would happen later on in the film on in the film, this tells people how many days the film will be based over showing the events building up to what is shown in the opening sequence. The enigma’s are created by the immediate disruption in the equilibrium at the beginning of the opening sequence, they are also created by the scene after the ‘three days earlier’ because our protagonist is shown with the teenager that is earlier shown to be the killer, this creates the questions of what happened, why it happened and what the eventual result will be. Binary opposition is used in our sequence in my view very effectively, this is because we have started our scene with obvious conflict between Mark and Jess when he is trying to kill her and contrasted it with Three days earlier in which there seems to be no disagreement between the characters. This points out to the audience that there must have been a conflict over views or actions during the Three days between the scene’s again creating enigmas.






We have not used many narrative devices in our sequence; all we used throughout the 2 minuets what the ‘Three days earlier’ text. Our original intention for this was to not give much away and keep suspense high as to what was happening, however we have discovered from our audience feedback that this became too confusing, particularly shown on question 4 of the audience feedback. We have built up tension in the opening sequence using a combination of different features, one of the most effective of which was our use of music which got steadily faster paced as Jess ran through the woods, this built up to the final clip in the sequence before Three days later was introduced.

Another thing was the contrast between Jesses fast paced running and Marks steady walk following her, this gave the impression that mark was confident of catching her building up tension to when it would happen. The tension is built up in our opening scene and is contrasted with the scene after the three days later because ambient natural sound is used and the characters look happy and in no hurry to go anywhere unlike Jesses running through the woods. The message that we convey foremost through our film is the carefree and naïve attitudes of teenagers, we show this through the happy way the characters are shows three days earlier contrasting to the events of later on in the film. Jesses screaming was a large part of the sound in our film; we used this to convey the very real feelings of danger she feels and to create a mood of suspense. The music we used mainly worked well with our shots, however we received minor hints about some parts of the chase sequence in which the music did not match to well with the shots with the music being fast paced for some slow shots, this is shown on question 8 of our audience feedback. The lighting of the film is meant to reflect the mood of the film at the time, we used very low key lighting for the chase scene to match the dangerous situation Jess was in and we used more high key lighting when the mood was more jovial in the scene three days before. A shot that was quite effective in my opinion and also shown in our audience feedback (Question 9) is the handheld shot of Jess running through the woods this created a very fast paced feeling to the scene and enhanced the sense of urgency that was trying to be related to the audience. The effects that were used to the best effect in our film I believe was the use of black and white, this was used effectively because it enhanced the low key lighting and added to the feeling of danger in the scene, it also contrasted to the brightness of the shots of the three days before sequence.




What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
The use of various technologies’ in the production and research of our product has been vital and educational. The research of the genre of horror to discover the important features of what makes a horror film was done over the Internet, as was the uploading of videos onto our blog for analysis to show what things from other films we wished to incorporate into our own. The use of the cameras for filming was a new experience for me and I have learned about how important different camera angles and range of shots are. The editing of our footage was also a new experience for me because I had never done anything like it before; I learned the importance of transitions and how crucial different effects where to making our film believable. I found that even though we didn’t have a budget for our film like professionals there was still a lot of things we could do to our shots to make them look more effective. I would say one of the most important things I have learned about editing is the use of music and the timing at which you use it because I think it is a very vital factor in creating the desired mood of your film.

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

When we did our preliminary task my entire group knew very little about working with cameras or using editing software, this meant that the quality of our Cutwood film was drastically better because we have learned more as we have gone along. In our final product our transitions where alot smoother than our preliminary because of our experience with the editing software. Also after we had done research on ways to create characters we had a much better idea of how to present individuals in our actual film. Mainly we had a much better knowledge of the importance of lighting and sound for our actual film and this really showed in the quality, as there was no sound or altered lighting in our preliminary task. I think the stark contrast between our preliminary task and our final film shows how much we have all learned about filming and editing, when doing our preliminary task we had no real idea of how to present our characters or which location to film in and the result was a very amateur looking sequence, the fact that our final product looks like a very believable opening sequence just goes to show the importance of different themes and conventions and the progress we have all made.






Conclusion?

I think our overall performance in our film was very good, I think we have used all the conventions needed to make a film fit into the horror genre and created a sense of realism in our scenes. We have created a good storyline with an interesting twist and included many enigmas in our opening 2 minuets that will persuade people to want to keep watching. I think our portrayal of the characters has been effective and the audience picks up on the way we wish to present the actors. Also I think we have created the mood we aimed for in the film and built up suspension throughout the first part of the sequence. We have used a range of camera angles and have smooth transitions between shots, also I think we have used different effects in editing to good effect. Things that I would do differently if we did the film again would probably be to make things slightly clearer in the transition between equilibriums and possibly show Jess actually getting attacked or coming into physical contact with the killer to relate more of the story to the audience. Also I think I would be more careful when matching music with the shots because some of the timings seemed out of place on our final product. Overall I think we have created an effective opening sequence with a good storyline that has been related to the audience well.

Mark O’Brien

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Evaluation by Ellice Macro



Sixth time luckyyyyyyy
I did have a load of effects and good fonts on this
but when i put it on the blog.. everything went wrong, so here's the simple version. Finally.

Jessica Hill evaluation lad! :)

Cut wood evaluation.

For my AS Media coursework I did a two minute film sequence and I worked with Ellice Macro and Mark O’Brien. We all took turns at acting/filming/editing. My particular contributions were acting as I was featured in almost every clip, I also did some of the editing and some camera work in the shots I wasn’t involved in.

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

The genre of our film was mainly Horror we used music, costume, setting, lighting and effects to show this. It was vital in using these things as if we hadn’t the film wouldn’t look like it belongs to the horror genre. When editing we decided to change the majority of the film to black and white as the film looked more serious and mysterious.
Within our film we ‘twisted’ the story a little as Mark our killer was shown to be friends with the protagonist Jess in the three days earlier part, this was to create enigmas as to why someone who’s friends with them would turn into a killer? We did this as it wouldn’t be something we normally see in a horror. We thought this idea would be likely to prove successful as it was a twist in the film. A film I looked at that has a ‘twist’ in was the others, which I looked at the opening sequence for in our blog.
http://jessellicemark.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html

We think our ideas did work but there were things that could have made it clearer, from our audience feedback I can see that we should have made the ‘3 days earlier’ part clearer, perhaps include some dialogue to give the audience a better idea. Also if I had actually been attacked it might draw the audience in more. We should have considered these things during filming.

Our film fulfils the requirements of an opening sequence as it gives a basic storyline and shows the protagonist and the killer throughout the two minutes. It shows costume/weapons/props and effects used in the editing process which show connotations of the horror genre. An example of this would be the end shot of a zoomed in close up of marks hand holding ‘the weapon’ it is also in black and white as most horror films use low key lighting.


How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our film uses teenagers, males and females and also represents criminals as Mark was the murderer.

In our film Ellice was shown to be killed and obviously I was next. We used females for these parts and a male as the killer. This can show the venerability of females, especially young females in contrast with men. It can also show issues of the stronger sex and power.

For my costume we used makeup and made my hair quite messy to make it appear like I had been running through the woods for 3 days. I wore something simple as it was easy to run around in and fall over when appropriate in shots.
When in the three days earlier clip I was shown in what someone would wear on a normal day to show that nothing was out of the ordinary. Mark when we saw he was the killer wore black as a connotation that he was the ‘bad guy’ we also zipped his hood up, just cropping his eyes into camera as it did not give away the character completely.

We did not use speech/dialogue or voice over throughout our clip. The only sound that was made from a character was I screaming which obviously showed fear and let the audience know I was the protagonist throughout the film.

I was running mostly throughout the film, this created enigmas such as, what is she running from? Who? Why? And so on, this was also pointed out during our audience feedback.

We filmed at ‘Cut wood’ park which is where the name for our film came from. We filmed at about 7/8ish at night as it was going dark to get a low key lighting effect when filming. We have actually captured the sun set in some shots; here is an example from one of our film stills.


As mark is the ‘teenage killer’ I think we chose a good location and time to shoot as I represented him in the way we wanted to portray him to the audience. I think we did this well as our audience knew immediately mark was the killer, we also show him in the light of day when we were ‘friends’ we put this section in colour as it shows myself and Mark getting along.

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

We have chosen to use ‘DNA’ films to use, as they have produced similar themed/genres of films such as 28 days later, 28 weeks later these were mentioned in our audience feedback. Another film they have produced that can be linked is ‘notes on a scandal’.
I think that this film company would take on our film as we have used the horror genre which is mainly the genre of films they produce.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

In terms of gender I would say its equal for both males and females. For age I would say a range of 16-25 as People younger than this may not watch the horror genre and people over that age may not be interested in this sort of film. Our main audience would be people of that this age that are particularly interested in the horror genre.

This is a good age/gender range to target as most young people do go to the cinema to see films, this is a good point financially and for good word of mouth or perhaps bad.
If this film were actually being made we would use someone who’s a traditional actor for the horror genre. A secondary target audience would be older people or a different race. I think our film is for anyone really except people younger than 16 because horror films are usually set for people over the ages of 15 or 18.

How did you attract/address your audience?

In our film we started off with a disrupted equilibrium as it was showing clips from after the disruption had happened.
A sense of time was created by our clip in the middle showing ‘3 days earlier’ re storing the equilibrium before anything was disturbed. Our understanding of the characters is shown clearly as the protagonist (I) is shown in almost every clip and the film would follow me throughout, this would show a good understanding of Marks part as the killer because he would be the one following me. The story is set by already knowing something’s wrong by the mise en scene, from screaming-costume.

Enigmas are set up in our film and we know this from question six of our audience feedback
‘6) What, out of the sequence, would make you keep watching?
Find out if she is killed and why she is being killed’

The main point of the film is to find out Marks reasons for trying to kill me, or is he successful in killing me? This would keep the audience interesting and keep them watching.

Contrasts in character have been created between me and mark, as we are shown as friends and then enemies. This would also create enigmas to why he has befriended me?
There is a long shot of the three days earlier part which then zooms in on me and mark and in this part we are shown as friends, laughing and getting along to show the audience that we were friends.

We have used only ‘3 days earlier’ this part was unclear to our audience and we now know that if we were to redo this, we could make this part clearer by adding dialogue explaining where we are/why. We added the three days earlier caption to show what was happening before the equilibrium was disrupted.

We have built tension throughout the clip and I think in some parts the music went well as it was slow paced then fast paced. We have built tension as in one part of the film Mark was walking yet I was running which is showing no fear at all from mark.
We did this to show the fear of the protagonist from the killer; it also represents the power structure.

I think that a key message our film sends out is
• Keep your friends close and your enemies closer

As mark and I were close and then he turns on me, this we don’t know creating enigmas to solve by watching the rest of our film.

In our audience feedback a particular point about our music was made. It was very fast paced which did not match some of our shots, an example of this was the zoomed out shot of marks feet as he was walking slowly. Our first panning shot of the woods went well with the music as we filmed to it. I think the lighting was quite decent in every shot as we wanted it to be quite low key, this was enhanced by the use of the black and white effect added throughout the majority of the film.
I think another particular shot was quite effective was when Mark chased me with the camera hand held; this created a ‘blur witch’ sort of filming affect. We thought this shot was one of the strongest as it showed a different use of the camera and disorientated our audience.


Effects applied to our film were slowing down/fastening up a clip this was to change the pace of the tow characters to show the contrast between them.

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

Use of technology in our work has been vital.
I firstly uploaded our drawn out spider diagrams. I did this simply by scanning them in and uploading them to http://tinypic.com/ which then converted them into HTML.
I already knew how to use a blog and how to post etc, so when doing this process I found it quite easy. I also knew how to embed video clips and upload etc so these parts were easy.

The most difficult parts were filming and editing. The camera was tricky to use and it was hard to remember not to tape over previous work etc, but I do understand how to use it now.
Editing also got confusing as sometimes I cut the wrong part of the clip etc.

I have learnt that by using the editing software it can change what we filmed dramatically and is crucial in defining the genre. Obviously we had limitations during filming as we don’t have the money to create the sort of films that are shown in the cinema but with the camera/editing software we managed to create a believable opening sequence.
We filmed a few shots several times as the characters did things wrong/didn’t get the right angle/disruptions during filming. E.g. someone walked in on our shot so we had to redo.

An effective way to upload our audience feedback was to actually film our audience giving us answers to the questions we asked. This was easier then we could re watch it and note every detail of what the audience said to us. It also shows what the audience really think as we didn’t cut out any of the clip.
This shows good use of technology and what we’ve learnt to use throughout this course.

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

Our preliminary task was based on the western genre. We did not carry on basing our film on a western as we have no means for the mise en scene of a western. Our preliminary task used dialogue and shots were a lot longer and used a tripod throughout. In our actual film we used shorter shots and no dialogue between characters as it would have given the whole story away immediately. We also used a range of camera angles/framing/composition and use of the camera during our film.

As our preliminary and actual film are different genres we used different editing to create effects. The acting in our actual film was taken more seriously as in the preliminary we had to shoot several times as it was not taken seriously. The lighting used for our film was low key and filmed out doors as if we’d filmed inside it would have been limited. Outdoors we had a lot of options; we also managed to film in two different woods, which wasn’t noticed by the audience.

We filmed at different times of the day for our film. ‘3 days earlier’ was filmed during the day to show how rapidly mark turns against me. We also filmed the close up at the end of mark holding the stick during the day, this was not noticed as we used a black and white filter over the top and the helicopter in the background created a nice sound effect because we slowed this clip down.

Conclusion?

I think the initial idea for our product was successful as we thoroughly thought out what the story line is, and what would happen in the rest of the film, and how to keep the audience watching by creating enigmas within the first two minutes.
We used a range of different camera angles and use of the camera which proved to be successful as in contrast to our preliminary were we limited ourselves with the use of the camera.

I think that we did a good job of acting in this film but some parts could have been done more seriously and instead of looking straight at the camera we should have pretended like the camera wasn’t there.

I think if we were to redo this film we could correct our mistakes and make things clearer.
We should have used different paced music in some clips and should have made the ‘3 days earlier’ part clearer. It was clear to us as we knew it involved friends going to the woods to ‘camp’ but this wasn’t made clear to the audience, perhaps if we’d of shown the actors setting up tents etc this would have created a better mise en scene but we did manage to capture myself and mark getting along which was vital of the audiences knowledge as we wouldn’t know who was actually following the protagonist.

I think we should have thought things through more thoroughly when filming although are initial idea proved to be good as it created an interesting intriguing storyline for the viewer.

Jessica Hill,x

Friday, May 8, 2009

Acting.

Throughout the film all members of the group have contributed.
Jess was the protagonist througout the film and mark was the killer. Ellice was in one shot, and we had two other extras to be in the '3days earlier' part of the clip.

In this film still we see Jess falling over to see a dead Ellice on the floor.
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In this film still I am hiding behined a tree. We can see that makeup has been used to give effect so it appears that i have been in the woods for 3days.
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I am featured in other film stills which i will include in my evaluation, i am showing these ones to present all characters that were in the film.

stickers.
In the film still above we see marks eyes and myself. Mark intentionally wore his hood up and zipped up his jacket to crop just his eyes in this shot.

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In the film still above we see the extras used for our 'three days earlier' part of the film.

In this last still again we see myself and Mark before we realise that he is the killer.
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I will show and explain the rest of the film stills in my evaluation.

There was no dialouge used between characters.
The only sound we hear is the screaming & music.

Jess,x

Story Line Of Our Film

The basic story line of our film is a group of friend's that go camping in some woods in rural country side. We show the friends walking on a path through some wood's walking happily in our film. However something happens to the friends which causes one of them to turn on the rest (Mark). In our clip we are mainly showing what happens three days after the happy scene of walking through woods. The chase scene shows Mark following the last friend remaining alive(Jess) trying to kill her, in the scene one of Marks friends he has already killed is shown to show what marks intent in with jess. This scene end's showing only his eye's and with Jess hiding behind a tree in the background. We did not want to give much away as to the identity of which friend the killer is because we wanted to create suspense throughtout the rest of the film , however in the happy scene we did zoom in on Mark and Jess to show they where friends before he turned. The rest of the film would mainly be about what happened to make mark turn on his friends and show the events of the three following days following the happy scene at the end of our opening sequence.

Making our film

In the making of our film we all did a bit of everything, including filming, editing and acting. We did this so that no one got loaded with doing to much of one thing. We filmed the most part of our film in cutwood in Rishton and we all acted in the scene's and took a term at filming. We gained understanding about the effects of different camera angle's and the importance of the time of day you film at. During lesson time we edited our film together using mostly the clips we got from cutwood, however we found that we needed some extra shots and filmed them in Corperation Park in Blackburn. When editing our film we discoevered the importance of music and the big effect it can have on the mood of the scene's, we also learnt about using visual effects like making some clips black and white and speeding up and slowing down different scene's. We edited the main part of the film into black and White because we thought it would emphasize the darkness in the scene we where trying to create. When filming our scene's we tried to fit into the classic horror genre or lots of fast short shots and different camera angle's to give the impression of panic and fear. Overall we think that we have ticked many of the boxes that make our film fit into the horror genre and were glad that we all tried abit of everything in the making of the film.
Mark

Audience response


1) What genre does the sequence belong to and how could you tell this?
Thriller/Horror
Typical connotations of horror genre - black and white, music

2) Who were the main characters in the sequence?
Jess Hill and Mark O'Brien

3) What details made this clear?
They featured in all of the shots
Jess Hill being the protagonist

4) What is happening in the sequence? Is this clear?
Yes, Jess is being chased by Mark with a stick, trying to kill her. 3 Days Earlier part slightly unclear

5) What could make it clearer?
If she was actually attacked

6) What, out of the sequence, would make you keep watching?
Find out if she is killed and why she is being killled

7) Did the pace of the sequence feel right to you?
Too fast music-wise, but the running was good

8) Do  the images work well with the music?
Yes, but some shots dont fit - the slow pace shots and fast music

9) Does it feel visually interesting? Are the shots interesting or fairly typical and okay?
They're good: the shot of jess running and also the hand held camera shot. Also the final shot with the stick swinging is quite effective.