Luke's Evaluation

Evaluation

In my AS media course I have produced a media product with the theme of a thriller. I did this with Elsa, Hannah and Dean. We had to make this all from scratch, we had to do market research and then put all our Ideas to make a final product. I had to plan film and then edit it by ourselves.
When planning our media product we all knew what we wanted what we really wanted to so, also as we are of the age 16-17 we knew what the market would want. We decided to make a thriller where It would be shot In the dark setting, In 3 different places and It would have a slightly creepy feeling to it.

In our thriller a girl brakes down In a remote area, surrounded by woods, she hears something In the woods so goes to Investigate. This first scene was shot in location 1 and mainly used medium shots, with a few POV from the stalker and over the shoulder shot in the car when it breaks down.
Then there is location 2, this is when she walks around in the woods to see if can find the source of the noise. In this scene there are a lot of POV’s from where and the stalker, so of him watching her and from her trying to look for him. In this scene we have also put in worms eye view, which is a very low angle shot. We went for a very much handheld feel, to get across to our audience that It Is very much just them 2 in the area. The scene ends when the stalker is running towards her and she screams.
Location 3 Is In a shed, where our victim has woken up tied up In a shed, again In this scene we have a few POV’s to show people what the room looks like from her own point of view, earlier on we had taken lots of photo’s of the protagonist doing her daily things, this Is to show that the stalker has been stalking her for a while and to add that extra creep factor. We had chosen that location as it was the creepiest place we knew that we close, it was a rundown shed, which you would not want to be.

When planning and filming we were very couscous about what we thought and knew our target market wanted, and what they wanted and liked what the conventions of a thriller followed. So we added In a lot of POV’s like In the forest scene, we also made sure that It was a women protagonist as when we did our market research that was what people liked, we also tried to shoot it in the evening as that was when It was dark without us It being too dark that we couldn’t film anything. Due to our market research and it showing people wanted to see conventions we didn’t think are necessary to challenge any conventions as we thought that the best effect would be that it was done like people wanted. As we wanted to add a creepy feeling to the thriller t feel into the sub-genre of a thriller horror, you can see this mostly as we have done it in the dark and from the last scene it being of the protagonist being tied up in shed. We as a group have all seen a lot of thrillers we when we were given this task lots ran through our head about what we should do in our thriller, so in a way many films Influenced us, but one that stuck out the most was hostel, the opening story line is very much like our own, but the locations are very different.

In the film women are very much stereotyped as being the damsel In distress so and the man (the stalker) very much In charge and very dominate, this was due to the thriller conventions and us wanting to keep to those, and also due to the cast that we asked to be In our media product a women fitted the role very well, as they are physically (In most case) smaller and then there are perceived to not to be able to handle themselves. This Is good as the audience will feel a lot more for the women as most people think that women aren’t able to handle themselves, this will mean people will get more Involved with the film, as In they will get sucked Into It.
I think that as this sort of film s the sort of film people want to see due to audience trends, this would be a perfect product for a large profit making organisation to make and produce, as this sort of film is a guaranteed success films like this have proven to do well, like the film hostel.
This film If released I see being a typical big blockbuster, a must see film for people that would want to see this type of film, after going In the cinema I would like to think It would also come out on DVD. I do not that that this particular film would have a sequel, but this film would be a film, for just that... watching.
Our target audience would be between the ages of 15- 40, the reason we said 15 was because that is the age certificate it would be, so legally we cannot aim it to any younger as they technically will not be able to watch it, the reason for the high end being 40 is because peoples taste of films don’t tend to change until later In life that that.
What I have noticed though is that both sexes would like to watch it as 16-17, but as you get older more into the late 20’s it moves to mainly the male market. But even though many females would like it, I would say it’s more of a male product, this would be mainly because of the dark theme to It, and that the protagonist s a female, the male may become slightly protective of the female and would like to see what happens, or they may like to see a women to be put n a very vunriable state and passive. Also due to it being a thriller-horror a lot of tension would be built, I’m not sure if a women would enjoy that and even be able to stand that.
From what we found out our target audience was very much the people that enjoy similar films available to the consumer. For example Hostel very much appealed to the male market due to it being quite a dark thriller.

Due to the fact that a women is playing the part of the protagonist it would involve the women part of the audience and they would then feel that that may affect them, and would make them thing what they would do if they were in that situations, also due to the fact she is young, it would make people age thing it could happen to them. When our main character is tied in the shed it would engage people as it would make thing wonder how she would get out and then they would start to think how they would if they were put in that situations. I personally find it frustrating in films like thrillers as they do things that people would not in real life, for example go and find what they heard in the forest... it makes you want to scream at them to run, this feeling is shared with a lot from what I found from the audience research.
By having to plan, film, direct and edit this project I have come to be more confident in what I know in media and how to use the equipment. For example, when we first started I had no idea how to use the editing programs nor did I even know how to upload the film from the camera to the Mac. To start with I struggled to cut It all, and so did everyone else in the group, but a few a while we knew that what we were doing was wrong, so we went online and then looked at the programs tutorial. What it turned out we were doing was just putting markers in the film.

Apart from the Issues with the cutting of film one of the Issues was just general working of programs such as final cut express and garage band, but that was just practice that got us over these issues, and a lot of trial and error!
What was hard was the quality of the cameras, it was hard to get the detail and then to get the professional touch we wanted when filming with low definition cameras, but we had to use what we were given and we made the best of what we had.

When adding the music that we made in garage band it did not play, what we had to end up doing is making it merge with the film which all it needed was the press of one button. After cutting everything we found that it was not really how we wanted it to be, we wanted it to be a lot dark, so what we ended up doing was play around with the effects, and we ended up changing the contrast to just give It a dark look.

Making the credits was a first for me, I never knew how to do it, but after one of my group members showed me what do it was rather easy. We looked any many fonts and compared them to many other thriller credits to see If It fitted and after a long time we found some that we did. But after that we had to look at how everything else would work, like how would it appear, for how long, and then how it would leave, and the size of everything.
When making the music it was very hard to find a base to start at, as we were very picky over what we wanted our product to sound like, we wanted music in the minor key, so it it wouldn’t be too happy and we wanted to use it to help build suspense. When we did find something we had to change the tempo a lot to make it fit in with the film, so it stopped at points we wanted it to, we also wanted certain load parts to come In places so that was very fiddly. We also wanted to add a few sounds effects over the top of the music, so we had to change it all a lot to make sure that it either one didn’t drown either one out when it wasn’t meant to, but we also had to be able to hear them both most of the time.

When we did the preliminary work we did not really take it seriously, we felt that we could go out, with no planning and then just film anything in anyway, and no one would be the wiser. That was not the case when we went and did the full product. I learnt that you had to do a lot research to see what people wanted to see and not just make what was easy for us to do. We had to look at what other films like our own were like and then look for general thriller conventions and then follow those if that was what people wanted to see. We learnt that we had to take into account everything, such as if we shot somewhere we had to think about everything that you could see in the shot, that means looking at the background and think, should that be there? When filming the final product we tried to get as many different shot types as possible without it looking silly, we used worm eye view, which was a low angle shot and many POV’s close, long and medium shots. Developing the skills need just took practice. I think all considered given what we had to work with and the time we did a very good job, we took into account what the public wanted and acted on what, and that resulted in good reviews.

Evaluation - Audience screen test

We asked 5 people the following :

- how would you rate the opening out on ten?
A-5
B-8
C-6
D-7
E-6

- did you clearly understand what was going on in the opening ?
A-Yes
B-yes
C-yes
D-yes
E-tes

- if not ? what did you think was going on ?
A-.
B-.
C-.
D-.
E-.

- do you think that the opening fitted in with the thriller genre?
A-Yes
B-Yes
C-Yes
D-Yes
E-Yes

- did you think the audio track created the right atmosphere within the piece?
A-Yes
B-Yes
C-Yes
D-Yes
E-Yes

-do you think the heartbeat helped build tension wihin the piece?
A-yes

B-no

C-yes

D-yes

E-yes

- did the audio help you understand what was going on ?
A-Yes
B-Yes
C-Yes
D-Yes
E-Yes

- would you want to watch the rest of the movie?
A-Yes
B-Yes
C-Yes
D-Yes
E-Yes

-did the lighting help create atmosphere within the piece?

A-yes

B-yes

C-yes

D-es

E-yes

- what did you think of the way the main character was portrayed?
A-Weak
B-Good
C-seemed true
D-Very good
E-realistic

- what did you think of the credits ?
A-Good
B-Good
C-Good
D-Good
E-Good


- do you think the lighting helped create the right atmosphere within the opening?
A-Darker
B-Needed to be darker
C-Needed to be darker
D-Darker
E-Darker

- what was the scariest moment in our thriller
A-the woman waking up in the shed

B-no monemt was that scary

C- the woman seeing something and screaming in the shed

D-when she is walking through the forest

E-When she wakes up in the shed

How could we improve our thriller?

Thicker forest,
Darker,
Have hood down in shed,

primilinary task elsa, luke, dean

filming finished

We have finished filming and reshot a few scenes of the car broken down as the originals were wobbly and so we re-filmed them with a different tripod making sure it was stable.
now we can start editing properly.
We have now filmed in four sections :
the first was the car break down which everyone turned up to
the second was the shed scenes which again everyone turned up to
the third as the forest scenes which dean did not attend
the fourth was the re filming of the car break down which neither dean nor elsa (who had a hospital appointment) attended

Editing the shed scene

Today we edited the scenes form the shed, we cut out the scenes we didn't want and the scenes we kept we rearranged and put in order. We will be filming the last part of our opening on friday the 19th Feb.

FONTS :D

we have looked at the fonts in final cut express and have found a few that could be appropriate for our opening.

they are ;
headlineA, Andale mono, Zapfio-Bold, Trajan pro, STFfangsong, Skia, Oska and orator STD these are all ones that would suit our opening clip, as we thought they had a creepy side to then.

Credits :)

We have looked at this clip for its titles and opening credits. We like the film but we are not doing sci-fi so the effects they use are not what we are wanting. they use blues and blacks to create a un humanly mechanical feel.

We will use white credits on a black background with a creepy font e.g. not times new roman but something different which will create a creepy effect . but the font will need to be very clear as it will be on the screen for only a few seconds. the use onf the black and white makes it clear and simple . we wont use red colours as red is usually assocated with blood and horror films.

Editing

In to days lesson we did some basic editing by separating the shots into what might use and what we wont use. The plan is to finish filming on Friday the 19th of Feb so we will be ready to finish editing after half term so it will be easier to hit our deadline :)

second day of filming

On tuesday 2nd february Elsa, Hannah, Luke and Dean filmed the scenes in the shed. This went well and we managed to do all our camera techniques well. As it was raining at the time it added atmosphere to the filming and contributed to the atmosphere.

First day of filming !!

on Sunday the 31st. We went to the road location and filmed this section of our opening . It want well !! , we worked well and got all of the footage we needed, How ever when we used the tripod it was on unsteady ground and so the shot may be slightly wobbly. We are going to upload the footage to day and see if we need any more , we also took the stalker photos with her in different outfit and different locations . This afternoon we are planning on doing the shed scene , the props we need for this after noon we will need stalker photos , rope , and a gag.

music

this lesson we have gone through the music and started to edit it. We have chosen two uncopyrighted pieces and edited them together to create the piece we want to use within our opening. We have tried to create atmosphere within the music and have done this by using a range of different tempos and volumes at different times within the piece.

Music Video

We have found some uncopyrighted music from HTTP://incopmetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/horror.

We have listened to them all and found that there were only parts of two that we could use. we will use garage band to edit the music so we can make it fit the film.

Lesson plan !

This lesson we have planned when we will be filming our thriller opening,

We will begin filming on Sunday the 31st at the road location , On the following tuesday we will be filming the shed scene.If we haven't got all of the filming done by then we can use the following sunday for extra filming time . After we have completed filming we will up load the footage to the computer and do some simple editing to see if we have all the footage we need , if not then we can use the following week to film some more .

Storyboard with sound

Props

Prop list

Car

Lamp

Pic's of Jeannie

Smoke/steam

Phone

Casting

These are the three people that we looked at to play the main part in our opening of a thriller. Each has different qualitys that we liked and needed, but in the end we could only pick one.

Jeannie.... Female 16 and has acting experience behind her. She has proven to be a good actress with good GCSE grade to back her up.

Olivia... Female 17 and she also has good acting experience behind her with good GCSE results.

Matt... Male, 17 has limited acting experience.

After looking at all 3, we desided what a female would best fit the role we wanted to fill, as it is normally a women that gets caught and is more vunrable than a man, you also feel more for a women, as they have less of a physical presence. So this ruled Matt out.
After talking about the two remaining girls, we desided to go for Jeannie. Olivia fitted the part perfectl but we felt that jeannie looked more innocent due to her small physical presence. (not saying Olivia looks manly :P) Jeannie had more of the qualitys that we needed.

Convention

Most thrillers are based on the same idea and they normally all use the same effect and camera skills to create the same effect.

They all seem to use the idea that someone is being watch and that no one is safe, this creeps up the audience as they too don't normally know what is doing the watching a following so it makes us think that if the person who is being followed and watched does not know neither could we.
The create the effect of someone being followed by using hand-held cameras to show it from the stalkers point of view, they also use back tracking and tracking to show that someone may be following just behind.
I have noticed that they use girls that are alone, due to a female normally having a smaller and less imposing physical presence and could easily intimidated they are used, and them being alone makes them seem vulnerable.

Although in some thrillers you never really find out what is causing the trouble and who is the one doing the stalking until there very end, this helps build suspense and keeps us hooked and engaged throughout the whole film and it keeps us wanting to find out, in a way it involves the audience as we start to think about who it could be and why. In some of the films you see from the antagonist point of view even when you don't know who it is, like in se7en you see what he is doing at the beginning buy you do not see his face and that entices you, it shows your that people that you think are normal from what you see can be weird and twisted when they are left alone.

Thrillers also involve the battle of justice vs. injustice where often there is a price to be paid for the conclusion of the story.

Families are used in most, as families are the things that most value the most, as we can relate to that we feel bad for the person to which it has happened too.

All thrillers have a clear antagonist and protagonist which both have their own story, which we both normally end up feeling sorry for.

When weapons/props are used they normally are large, threatening and empowering props, for example a knife or a gun.

Some other general conventions of the thriller genre are to do with sound and editing. e.g. quick cuts and camera angle changes, music that gives tension. It can be to do with lighting, especially the use of shadow. Mirrors and stairs are also conventions of thriller movies.

For example in angles and demons, the antagonist does what he has too do in order to do what he thinks is good and to help the people, so the old saying of sometimes you must do bad things to do good. But he is the one to us and is shown to be the one that is doing bad.

In The silence of the lambs opening credits the women is running through the woods on her own, and the camera looks handheld and it is tracking her, she also never looks right at the camera which would imply that she didn't know it was there, this all give us the idea that she is being watched.


So far we think we will, take the idea of a women being on her own, and also use the idea that she does not know who that she is being watched.

Self evaluation

self evaluation of skills so far (out of 5)

organization - 3
deadlines - 4
reliablility - 4

My main area of concern is my organisation, but this can be improved by me putting in afew extra min's to do stuff. For example i can put all work and ideas i get and put them in a folder and take the time to make sure that i put everything that i need into my bag for the lessons, i should get into a routine which includes me putting an hour a night into my media work.

After doing my practice filming i am confident in my pratical camera skills, i am able to understand a do pan's tilts, tracking and i am able to use the zoom effectivly.
I learnt alot from our first outing with the cameras, i was never sure how to upload videos, or how to confidently use a cam corder in the first place. IT made me aware of the things you have to look out for when recording.... such as light and other sounds and obstrucking objects.
The area i could do better in is my editing, i have not as confident at loading up pictures and films and then putting all together and managing the takes, but i can learn it all better by me putting in afew extra hours of playing around with it.

Our lighting ideas

In our clip we will make we have disided at the moment that we will use mainly natural light.

We think that our setting and the time of day we choose will be enough to create the atmosphere we are looking to make. We plan to film during the afternoon, so maybe at the start of dusk, this would make the natual light quite dull and dim.... and no colours would really stand out.... When we want to make shadows or to put ephasis on somthing we will use a touch or electric lamp to light up the area we want.

When we do a bit of our clip in a shed we would want to have maybe a TINY bit of natural light, this would make people think that the girl is locked up and it would be near enough impossible to get out, it would also signifie the fact that there was no hope, or very little hope.... We plan to use a lamp to dimly light up the shed, We thought also we could use a coloured lense maybe red, to create more of a creepy atmosphere.