Finished.

Sarah Nicholson 4151.

Foundation production G321 finished. 

continuity.

Final cut.

Evaluation.

Question 1.

Can be viewed at http://beckytmedia.blogspot.com/. Due to errors uploading.
Question 2.

Our media product represents 3 different characters social groups, in 3 different ways.

Our first character is the male lead. Me and Becky wanted to represent this character following the gender theory. He was dressed in smart, black clothes coming home from work, we represented this through his briefcase. This gave the audience the assumption of his wealth and power, being a smart working man. We have also linked this character to Laura Mulveys theory, putting the audience in a masculine position. He is represented as the Active character, doing the action.
This then relates to our female lead, her being the passive character of the theory, having the actions done for her. Laura Mulvey also quotes that the woman is represented in either of two ways, innocent and naive or Flirtatious and dangerous. Our character is clearly represented as innocent and naive dressed in soft, peaceful colours like pink and white, with her hair flowing and genuine happy personality. She can also apply to the gender theory in this way, having these signifiers represent her as a mother/wife figure being loving and caring. We did not just represent the female character through her clothes and personality we also represented the mother/wife figure through her actions. She acted in serving her husbands dinner and pouring his wine. We thought this would clearly represent to the audience his power and pride over the female character. Although we did challenge Laura Mulveys theory by giving the female character a knife whilst preparing the dinner, this would then signify her as maybe dangerous and a threat, therefore the audience would learn she was a confusing character to understand and that although she was represented as innocent and naive through her clothes, other small actions could represented her danger. Our last character is the stranger in the house. We wanted this character to be as mysterious as possible towards the audience. We dressed him all in black to represent his danger and threat. Me and Becky Contemplated over whether to use black or red for the character, we chose the colour black because we worried that the red may signify love and not danger, but black can signify darkness and danger together. We kept him very mysterious and hard for the audience to identify using only close up shots of his eyes or back, he had many cuts and bruises to represent his violence and dark eyes to represent his almost deluded personality. The audience always have the assumption men are stronger than woman, bringing Laura Mulveys theory forward again. This is why we used a male character for this role, because although not completely agreeing with the theory ourselves, the audience are most likely to already assume that a male character will be more of a threat.


Question 3.

There are many film distribution companys that exist. For my media product i will need a well known company that distribute all genres of films. I researched many options and narrowed down to my chose distirbutor being New line cinema. New line cinema is a multi-media company which have created some of the most succesful film franchises in history. This company will be suitable for my product being a large company of many genres, attracting all types of people.


Question 4.

Our film being a horror movie would have a large audience. Although me and Becky wanted to choose the audience suited to our film we researched some information on horror movies to gain a knowledge of what the target audience was for the genre. Here are two graphs that identify the outcome.

Researching these graphs showed us that males were more likely to watch a horror movie, and that they were in age range 18-24. Me and Becky decided together that our audience would be 18-26 couples, and groups of males in this age range. We chose couples because they would relate to the couple in our film being around the same age, we felt this would make them as the audience more involved knowing the characters are just normal people like them at the same age, and that this could happen to them. We also chose the group of males because, males being the biggest target audience for the horror genre made us think that maybe social gatherings for them would involve them in watching our film. Here are two pictures of our typical audiences.

We thought these would be the suitable, typical people to watch our film because. The group of males all seem down to earth and willing to have a good laugh together around 19 years old. The couple seem quite close around 20 years old and would sit in and watch a film.

Question 5.
I think our opening two minutes of a horror film immediately attaches the audience. From the very opening few shots the genre is clearly represented. The first 20 seconds are very fast paced and interesting. Numerous shots are used of numerous people, the audience will immediately want to know who these unidentified people are and how they relate to the film. There are many different uses of audio and flashing images which the audience will find hard to be distracted from. Me and Becky felt having the start fast paced and interesting for the audience knowing this will later relate, will want them to keep watching as to whether it will later happen to the couple that are shown after these images.

Question 6.

To create this film a wide use of technology was needed. We used a Dv camera to shoot the movie, this worked out very well. The cameras were easy to understand and use making the filming process less time consuming and easier. We edited our film on a apple imac in software called imovie. imovie is a program where you can cut clips, add titles, sound effects etc. It was extremely useful with numerous amounts of effects for editing and to lead to the completion of our film. Not being able to use copyrighted music in our film caused a problem, but was easily solved using the software garageband where me and Becky produced our own music to use in its place. Not knowing much about the technology used in our film was actually proven not to be so bad. I found the software and Dv camera easy and understandable to use making the process faster and not hard work, although the apple imacs were slightly time consuming in uploading clips and effects, it proved to be necessary and worth the time.

Question 7.

From the preliminary task to our final cut i have learnt many things. I have learnt a number of techniques and gained many skills in creating and editing my own horror film. My final cut has proven to be successful and I would not of done this without knowing and going through a learning process before. Our prelim task was created very quickly, with no aspects of planning and drafting. It has been proven to me that planning out your film before making it is extremely important. Creating storyboards helped tremendously in knowing what shot to film from what angle, what sound effects on top etc. It made the whole process of filming easier and less time consuming rather than thinking it up at the time. Learning about the software used was also helpful, it helped me to create and edit the film much faster and it was easier for me, knowing what I was doing. Feedback was also very useful, we gained many others opinions and thoughts on the film and what they thought needed improving or changing. We were then able to apply this and see if it worked well and satisfactory. I have learnt many things from prelim to my final product, from what is necessary to creating your own film to how you do it. It has been hard and easy at times but I am overall pleased with the outcome of my horror film.

Audience research.

When creating a film we felt it was important to know whether what you are creating is appopriate and to the audiences satisfaction. Following this me and my partner created a short questionnaire asking 10 people to answer. The questionnaire links to our genre chosen and helped us to decide on what would be appropriate in our horror film to please the audience and keep them engaged. Here is a graph on some of the questions outcomes.

conclusion.
The results of our graph were very succesful. We were able to apply this to our film. We added music to our film which we thoguht build up more suspense. Not using speech worked well, in keeping the film quite creepy and mysterious. We think we made the narrative as clear as possible to help the audience know what is going on, although we wanted our film to be a mystery this worked well because you could still understand what was going on just not why it was going on, causing it to be a mystery linking to our title mysteria. We always thought darkness worked well in horror films and were pleased when the outcome on this question was the same. Darkness built up the suspense and gave it a real frieght factor. Being able to represent our characters clearly was challenging but made easier by linking and realating this to the gender theory which was also wanted from our questionnaire. We were able to represent our characters as the theory, the woman being soft, loving and mother figure. The man being strong, powerful and confident. We didnt want to add violence into our film as we thought it would not send off the right genre message of horror, we wanted our film to be scary and jumpy not gory. Whilst editing we added the dark creepy noises which were wanted these worked well in also building up suspense and fear. We first planned on using a group of friends in our horror film, but after asking our audience our outcome was not to use this. We then came up with using a man and woman in our film as the main part to link their relationship into the film.

Organisation skills

The planning and organisation of my film was mainly created through production discussion. me and my partner planned out many tasks together and split other tasks equally.
We firstly discussed what we needed to do for our planning, we came up with a list of important tasks:

- character/actor interviews

- location

- title

- props

- costume

- shooting schedule

- release forms

- shots planning

- storyboards

- overview.

we then equally, and fairly split these tasks to the appropriate person.

I carried out the character/actor interviews asking numerous questions. The characters in my film are all adults so i had to do my best in representing them as this. I chose the larger stronger looking boys to play the main character men roles and the slighter smaller as the smaller roles. The main girl role had to be a traditional wife figure also looking older. This was very useful in best suiting the actors to the roles in the movie. This was a success to our planing and i feel i really suited the correct characters to the correct roles.

The location was decided by my partner. She took location photos of my house and hers and we had a discussion on the best suited. We chose to use her house as our location due to many different useful parts which her house would connect with, i.e her front door leads on to a hallway which we will be able to build up suspense using numerous shots of a character walking down to engage the audience to who this character is.

The Title will be part of our production discussion in both creating ideas and suiting the best to our movie. We came up with a list of ideas such as:

- Taken

- 3.33

- The minds of others

- Took

- Captured

- Unexplained

- Mysteria.

All the titles relate to the film in different ways. we finally came to the decision of 'Mysteria'. we thoguht this would be a excellent title for our film connecting and linking to mystery. Mysteries are hooking and engaging and this is how we want our film to be represented. it also releases a uncomfortable feeling using 'Mysteria' instead of 'Mystery' it gives it more of a deep meaning.

There were many props needed in our film and we both created a list. My partner then collected the props, and the best suited props. We used a posh, wealthy theme in our film so our props had to be at this standard. We used more expensive utilities and ornaments, such as china plates, posh wine glasses, expensive wine etc.

The costume for our characters/actors was planned by me. I wrote the list of characters and then wrote the kind of personalities i wanted to represent them as. I then was able to link this to the kind of clothes that personality would best suit. The main girl role i wanted to represent as a wife figure linking to theorys such as Laura Mulvey, saying woman were either represented as innocent and nieve or flirtacious and dangerous. i followed the innocent and nieve side and then was able to link this to the gender theory of woman being represented again as gentle, loving, caring, linking to innocent and nieve, this is how i really wanted to represent my character so her costume was created in soft, girly colours such as pink and white, i also used costume like fluffy slippers to really link this to peacfulness and softness. The main man role i also wanted to link with his personality, i once again linked this to theory such as gender theory representing the man as strong, powerful, confident etc. i then was able to decide on costume such as a suit to show wealth and power. The costume of the dead people was quite easy as they would be only quick flashes. i tried to represent them as normal as possible, so that when they were killed it did'nt look fake and obvious. I was able to use things for their face costume such as white, pale foundation to represent death, lip liner to represent the cuts and blood etc. i think all the costume was appropriate and worked well with the character, linking to their personality how i wanted.

The shooting schedule was created by my partner. she created a table of dates and times and what we were planing on shooting then. this worked very well and we were able to stick with the table and have everything done on time. A shooting schedule was very important so that we would not fall behind and we could keep on track feeling confident.

I was in charge of getting all the release forms completed by our characters/actors. I printed of the correct number of forms and asigned a day to go around complete them. This was succesful and each actor managed to sign their forms.

There are a numerous amount of shots used in our film, and it was both of our decisions on what shot to use where. We used shots such as close ups, long shots, over the shoulder shots etc. We tried each shot in many different angles and movements to see which was best suited for the action that was happening. We both agreed and compramised well in this and found it a easy task to complete together. It was very useful trying out different shots and then being able to choose.

Our storyboards were 12 pages long with 47 different shots. Creating the storyboards was very useful in the making of our film and they really made it alot easier to film. In our storyboards we had to decide on many things such as, sound, shots, props, costumer, setting, shot size etc. We both worked on this together agreeing on the best suited. It was quite a hard task to complete being so many things to complete and so many things to choose from. Overall it was very succesful and our stoyboards were very detailed and apporpriate to our film.

We both then were able to write a overview of our film following all of our planing. This was a a easy task and very useful to the explanation for our film. We then went on to create 12 pages of storyboards with 48 shots. These were very useful in helping us to film, we had a clear knowledge of what to shoot, wat angle, postiton etc, what sound, dialogue etc. Here are some examples.

Textual Analysis

To learn techniques and gain ideas for my film, I watched and analysed a number of openings to related horror movies. This helped in ways of learning how to really emphasise the horror genre and how the opening engages the audience.


Texas chainsaw masacre
The establishing shot of Texas chainsaw massacre really gave us great ideas for my own horror film. We learnt many techniques of the camera in shots and movements. It starts off with old movie blurred lines and flashes of police. This is shown in black and white to represent it is older than the present. The flashing lights and flashing shots of bones, police tape, and blood really emphasise and create the suspense for the start of the movie. These are all very useful signifiers, signifying danger. The social contract is a ongoing change, playing with the language to use signs of codes and patterns in the images. A dark deep voiceover of a policeman talks over the images, they use the technique of not showing the speaker to emphasise the images behind. The narrative is clear this is the past by then shooting to a shot in colour of modern people. The codes and conventions are clear associating the first shots to the genre and showing this is going to relate and be likely to happen for the conventions.


White noise
The establishing shot of this film is created through writing speech. In pure silence the audience is attached by gaining an interest to what is being written. The suspense and fright of the genre is then immediately represented through quick jump cuts of video blur and the loud noise. The title then suddenly jumps into the video blurs creating a freight and fear to the horror film. This then represents the genre. The video cuts then carry on introducing character names through writing. Then with the video blurs still jump cutting a very long panning close up shot of a cd player is introduced this is a real stereotype to give you a strange assumption of what this linked to. The codes and conventions are very clear, the codes clearly associating with the genre. The video blurs are a clear signifier, signifying danger, suspense, freight, confusion etc. the movie represents its horror in a different way to the other two films, using writing speech to engage the audience and build up the suspense and interest.


The omen
The establishing of the omen, really attached you by the use of sound. Starting off with high, piano notes played to create a creepy and weird atmosphere. It automatically attaches the audience by then using a panning shot across the room, it keeps you engaged to find what ever this is at the end of the shot. The pace then gains and quicker shots are added using flickers and jump cuts. Many close ups are used to make you feel more in the scene and keeping your mind interested in whatever is happening. Once again the social contract plays through signs and codes, using words, letters etc. many signifiers are created through use of mis-en-scene, signifying that it is leading you to answers and creating suspense through the fast paced music. The setting is represented in many panning shots of the room and the character is represented in mainly close ups. The narrative is not clear to the opening of this horror movie which then I feel keeps you interested to keep watching to find out. The film also like the ‘Texas chainsaw massacre’ builds up its tension through sound which engages the audience to keep watching.


Watching the 3 openings really taught me how to create the suspense to a horror film, emphasise the narrative and genre, and engage the audience. Most techniques relate to the sound being used really building up the tension and creating suspense at time necessary. The shots of the camera and the camera movements keep the film moving and exciting, using things like jump cuts and panning movements really gets your mind involved and you become engaged and excited. It has been useful to learn these techniques and it will be very helpful in creating our own horror movie.