Finished Production.

This is our finished horror opening! You can see some large changes, some of these being the names coming in at different times; a cut to the final scene and some drastic editing changes.

Update

The final film has been edited, this will be going on the blog in the next weeks, some major editing changes have occurred in since the final draft was uploaded, including some music changes and drastic changes to the editing!

I am in the process of writing evaluations of our opening production, this is broken up in to seven parts; the first two parts are live on the blog at this current date. The final parts of the evaluation will be uploaded at a later date.

Evaluation 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?

Evaluation part seven compares my preliminary task (one of the first posts on my blog) to my horror production, this will show how i have applied the knowledge from the preliminary task into the horror production; i will explain and demonstarte how the rules of filming are used in both, suchas the 180 degree rule.



The above images show how i used close ups. They are both used for effect but due to the change in genre the effect of the shot changes. In the preliminary task; the close up was used to emphasise the dialogue as the goal of the task was to show a conversation, the 180 degree rule was applied in this instance much like it was when Rowen and Michael were in conversation in The River. In our horror opening; the goal of close ups was to show the reactions and emotions of the characters. We used this effectively throughout the film. The above shot shows Michael looking puzzled when he hears a rustling of the bush, another close up is then used when he is about to be killed. The image from my preliminary task shows Jonny in conversation the main effect was not to show emotion.

From the preliminary task there are many key things i have learnt and improved upon with my film production as a whole. Some of these being:

- Casting
         Ensuring the roles and characters of actresses/ actors is clear before filming, with the preliminary task it was almost ad-lib with the roles we all performed, scripting also ties in with this.
- Planning
         The planning process is of paramount importance when making a film, we made 3 in depth copies of the storyboard, a screenplay and an in depth script and a large amount of location planning. For our preliminary task we hardly planned and I feel the planning made our film much better than the preliminary task.
- Location
        When deciding on the location we had around four ideas for our production, we visited each of these and decided our filming location that way, with the preliminary task we filmed in the room it was assigned in which made it less believable as the mise en scene didn't fit the genre. Whereas, our horror  film location was perfect.
- Camera work
         My understanding for filming has increased vastly since my preliminary task, before the preliminary task i was unaware of rules such as the 180 degree rule and shot reverse shot; they now come as a second nature when filming, this paired with my previous understanding for camera work makes this one of the strong-points of my productions. We applied the shots in the preliminary task but we adapted them and used them effectively with our story to add tension and the 'scare factor' which i feel was benefited by my new understanding of filming and camera work which was gained from the preliminary task.
- Editing
          Last but not least the editing of my films, editing was always the thing i was most confident about with media due to my previous experiences with my video making hobby. In the preliminary task i adapted to a new editing programme which was alien to me at first; from the preliminary task I found it very similar to the programme I use at home (Pinnacle Studios) i learnt some methods from the preliminary task which i then used in the horror production. I feel that the editing on 'The River' is very strong and adds to the production as a whole.

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

Part six of the evaluation covers the technology we used whilst creating our final piece we have used:

- Camera
- Tripod
- Adobe Premier Pro
- Abode Photoshop
- Microsoft Excel

1. Camera and Tripod

In our group we had previous experiences with cameras and tripods from previous media productions; however, when using them this time we have learnt to use them better and more effectively than before. We were all familiar with the conventional horror camera angles/ shots, we put these into use with a mix of our previous experiences and our and new understanding of the importance of shot types. The tripod allowed us to have less shaky shots, some  are still shaky; but most of these are for additional effect such as the first person view from Rowen's perspective; which we felt added extra tension. This was also benefited by the effects added by our editing programme...

2. Adobe Premier Pro

The above image is a screen grab from Adobe Premier Pro, i have very little previous experience with this editing programmer; but i use a very similar programme called Pinnacle Studios 14 HD for personal video editing at home, so i had a good understanding of video editing and found this programme easier to use and have considered buying it for personal use. With my experience with a similar editing programme i had a knowledge of all the terminology used which allowed me to, in my opinion make a good edit for our film; the programme did give us some technical difficulties however. In our final draft we had an effect called 'ghosting' which we felt was a really good edit which added a new dimension to our most tense moments. However, after the rendering process of the video the quality of this edit deteriorated significantly making our film look amateur, we had no other but to remove it from our final production, we added a slight slo-mo effect in its place to add tension.

3. Adobe Photoshop

I have no previous experience with photshop or any similar programmes, so this was the main struggle for me in our horror film production. I now have a basic understanding of the programme, i still wouldn't be confident working with it without help from my production team, but i am now familiar with some of the functionality of the programnme. We used the programme to produce the production logo (shown above) and the 9 frames for the first  part of the evaluation. I have also used the 'lasoo' tool to edit the logo; this tool allowed us to remove some aspects of the logo which were surplus to requirements, such as some glare above the raven.  

4. Excel

We used microsoft excel to produce the graph for our questionaires, this was a simple task to conduct, i had extensive knowledge of the programme from my work experience where i had to produce much more complex charts and data, meaning this task was a simple one.

5. YouTube

I have used youtube to upload our production, this has since had 47 views ( last view count). I have also used youtube annotation to explain some aspects of the film, this was done for an evaluation task. Within these annotations i wrote short paragraphs about certain aspects such as character development, this function allowed the viewer to get a frame by frame analysis of the film and get our thoughts behind the film as they are on screen. 

Evaluation 5: How did you attract/ address your audience.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti--DRl7XYQ


Annotated via Youtube

Evaluation 4: Who would be the audience for your media product? Part 4

Target Audience Research:

As previously mentioned we asked people on the social networking sit facebook about horror films, they gave us some good pointers as to what we should do, they said they wanted high paced scenes, good music and strong, likeable characters. The majority of people who replied were between the ages of 18-24, this is the reason we chose this age group as they obviously have a keen interest in the genre.

Evaluation 4: Who would be the audience for your media product? Part 3

Psychographics:
This section will show the interests, beliefs and values of our target audience.

- Interests: Our target audience will be a fan of music, presumably metal and rock, these are 'darker' types of music, they will like our soundtrack as it is suspenseful, scary music that adds tensions to the scenes. These link to gruesome films such as ours. As mentioned in the previous posts they will be socially active and will see friends, they may watch our film in a group at a party. With socialising they will like going to the cinema and will watch similar films to ours. We hope that our audience relate to the characters as this was one of our main goals when producing this film. We ensured our characters had similar interests to the target audience.
-Beliefs: We want our audience to relate to the characters and believe it is them in the film and in that situation; we have some first person perspectives within the film to aid this belief.
-Values: We want our film to be as engaging as possible, we have made this a likely possibility with the great soundtrack and complex, unusual camera angles with add unease and suspense. We put a lot of work into the opening sequence as this is the most important part of the film to get right, with the competition in the horror market, people may stop watching a film is they do not enjoy the opening scene, we have made sure our opening sequence is filled with suspence and engages the audience, we hope this reflects the rest of the production.

Evaluation 4: Who would be the audience for your media product? Part 2

 Demographics:

We have based our demographic around the stereotypical horror fan, we did this by conducting a survey over facebook, we got information on the demographic and found our target audience from this, we have based our production upon these findings. The demographic was looked at extensively from our findings and we have found a suitable target audience from this. i will point out some of the main demographical factors below: 

- Age: We are aiming our production at 18-24 age range, our film will be rated 18 due to its gory scenes which would be disturbing to younger viewers.

- Gender: We are aiming this at both males and females, we have no gender bias within our film and feel the viewers could relate well to both genders; our two main characters are male and female, this is continuous throughout the production. 

-Class: The production will be aimed at working/ Middle class people who are socially active, these will be the people who will relate best to the characters. 

-Race: We have no racial bias in our film, none of our content conflicts with religious or ethnic views. 

- Geographical Location: our film is aimed towards people who live in the city as this is the location of the characters in the film. However we feel anyone in our demographic will enjoy the film regardless of their geographical location.

- Our film is initially about two teenagers, these are then killed off early into the film; the rest of the film is from their friends perspective and a police officer, who is seem briefly in our opening, these characters will meet be relate able to the 18-20 age range and the rest may link themselves to the detecie who is an older, wiser character, we don't regard our film a 'teen slasher' as the rest of the movie is more from the detectives perspective overlooking the murder cases near 'the river' however the young people play an important part, like a strange mix of Scooby Doo and saw. 

Evaluation 4: Who would be the audience for your media product? Part 1

 Demographics:

We have based our demographic around the stereotypical horror fan, we did this by conducting a survey over facebook, we got information on the demographic and found our target audience from this, we have based our production upon these findings. The demographic was looked at extensively from our findings and we have found a suitable target audience from this. i will point out some of the main demographical factors below:
- Age

Evaluation 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? Voiceover.

This is the voiceover for evaluation part 3!

Script for voiceover

Script for the voiceover

Josh:  hi; we are the production company behind the film ‘The River’. Our production company name is the raven which consists of three movie enthusiasts who have a love for producing films. They are me, Josh who produced and edited the production.

Ed: I’m Ed, I wrote and directed the productions

Jonny: wassup im jonny and I’m the director of photography and the scene locater like.

Josh: This is our directors cut.

Ed: our production company has experience producing films; we have produced three previous film however none to this scale.

Jonny: The initial idea was to find an independent distributor to give our production to some small independent movie theatres and to help fund the production itself.

Josh: we were surprised to receive an offer from film4 to help distribute our production. We were pleased as they have worked on other independent short horror films of a similar genre such as monsters which they had success with during the Edinburgh film festival.

Ed: Film4 has distributed popular cinema such as thrillers like enduring love; which can vaguely relate to our own production through similar conventions.

Jonny: we would like our horror short film to be distributed in a similar to that of monsters with it being shown at various film festivals and small independent theatres across the country.

Josh: Film4 allowed us to hire respectable actors and actresses such as Michael Walter de rino… and Rowen.

Ed: after the production was completed they distributed our film through advertising our film on the film4 website, slots i9n film festivals and promotional activities. All using synergy aided greatly in getting our film out there.

Jonny: We had the directors name first as they are the most ‘well known’ in a production company, this being Edward.

Josh the next to appear was myself, the producer and editor of the film. Then Jonny came last (but not least); we chose this order as it looked more professional, within the team we think of ourselves as equal, but externally people deem the director more important than the photographer.

Ed: we made sure the actors were after the production team as we wanted the actor’s names next to the characters to put a face to the name.

Josh: Thanks for listening to our commentary on our short horror film ‘The River’ hope you enjoyed yourself as much as us, god bless. Amen goodbye and goodnight blokes, much love from the big G man up there *points to sky* 

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

 Evaluation Part 2, how our characters relate to social groups.

Michael was the first victim in our horror film, we chose our victims very carefully. Both Rowen and Michael are stereotypical teenage horror victims, they are shy, nervous teenagers. Rowen is also spoilt and seems to always get her way, we thought that their persona's were perfect for the conventional horror victims. They represent the age group as they are  independent, as there is no parent or guardian with them, active as they are playing sport and have a good relationship as they are having fun with each other, the Rowens clear distress at seeing her brother dead emphasises this point. Michael represents the horror victim in the chosen screen grab, this is when the first sense of his death occurs, the scene directly after is his scream, his face shows the foreboding death which is going to occur, this is aided by the use of music. Teens are chosen as victims as they are unaware of their surrounding and are easy prey for the killers. In the full film; we would look to expand on the backgrounds of the victims.

I have compared Michael to a victim in the film 'hostel', the chosen character dies first in the film. He is an innocent teenager who is killed in a violent way similar to Michael. He also represents the social group of teenagers, a popular boy in school. He represents the conventional teen slasher victim as he i9s killed within the opening minutes of the film, With his teen life taken away from him. He was a vulnerable teen whop has caught in an unfortunate situation, which seems to occur in all horror films involving teens.

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

This post will evaluate our finished produtcion. The question which we need to relate each screen grab to is 'In what ways does your media product use, develop or change forms and conventions of real media products?'. We have been given nine sub-categories, these are : Title, Setting/location, costumes/props, camerawork/editing, font+style, story, genre, character and SFX (Special effects).

1. The above image shows our production logo. we came to a mutual agreement that this would;d be suitable for the horror genre, the raven is symbolic of death, we saw this as a fitting logo for a horror production. The raven is also coming out of a computer screen, to emphasise our function, which was the filming and editing, which people then see the death from the horror films, which is shown by the raven

Our title sequence matches the conventions of a horror as it sets the scene of the film, the pan across the river emphasises the importance f this location, when they see the title at the end of the opening we hope it becomes apparent to the audience that this location will play a huge part to the later story. However, from our questionnaires this was not made clear by the opening, but in the later stages of this film, 'The river' will relate back to this location and most of the key scenes will occur in this area. The horror film 'nightmare on elm sreet' uses its key location in the opening, with a road sign for the street being used, this is the impact we aimed to have with this opening. 

2. We introduce the two victims when they first appear on screen, this allows the audience to see who the actor/ actress is who is playing the characters, we also kept their names the same, so in scenes where Rowen shouts out 'Michael' the audience will know that is who she is calling. Horror films do not usually have the characters names appear as the initial victims do not a;ways play a significant role in the film, this is where we challenge the conventions of a horror film as the initial victims will play a significant role in the film as the storyline will continuously relate back to them and solving their murders. The music used when the characters are introduced builds tension and you know from the music that they are to be the first victims, when Michael misses te ball, the music picks up, this takes away any suspicion and gives the audience a clear understanding that Michael will be the first victim. 

3. This image shows the stereotypical horror victim, she is now left on her own after her brothers 'disappearance' . This matches the horror genre as the stereotypical victim is a girl on her own, this is prominent in horror blockbusters such as scream. The setting also emphasises the tension in this scene, even though she is in a bright area, the next scene cuts to a dark enclosed woodland area, which is a conventional location for a murder in a horror film. Death is also implied by the costume of Rowen who is in all black clothing to symbolise and connote death, a common factor in any horror film. 

4. This scene is the turning point in the film, the ball was white to symbolise purity, this is then lost when the blood drips onto the ball, the high paced, eerie music, this will make the audience jump as their is only a subtle hum over the previous scene to emphasise the radical change in pace, the previous scene was ominous as it was from the killers perspective. the music stays at a high pace until the end of the opening when the title is shown, music is a huge factor in our film. We spent a large amount of time deciding which music we wanted to use for each section and we hope and believe that each piece of music fits each scene perfectly. We used music which is instantly related to horror, but we didn't want to be completely generic with our choices, so we looked at many different sites to find the final music, we had about 25 songs in consideration, which then went down to 5 for the final piece.

5. This scene is directly after the blood drops, which we have used internally as the key change in pace, we have called it 'the ball drop' after the ball drop, the effects begin to become prominent, this is the piece with the mostspecial effects in our finished production. However, we used many more effects on the climactic scene, however once we exported and rendered the film the effect made our film look amateur, if it had have looked the way it did in the editing program it would have been the highlight of the film.

6. This was our major change in editing in recent weeks. In the above scene we used a slo-mo effect, black and white and a subtle colour correction to make Michaels body stand out more from the background, we put this in black and white to show the emotion of the scene, this was emphasised by the slo-mo. Our special effects are not to the standard of a conventional horror as our budget and resources are of no comparison, but working with what we had i feel our effects added to the film greatly. 

7. This is the first time the killers are shown on screen, the masks they are wearing are similar to that of the killer in the scream films, they keep the identity of the killers from the audience, creating a shroud of mystery, there will be suspects in the later stages of the film and the main plot will be the police officer (me) who is shown at the end trying to discover who the killers are. However, we do not actually see anyone dying, it is all implied in the opening, you instantly tjink these are the killers due to the music and the way they are introduced.

8. I used this image to show camera-work, this camera angle implies that there is a third killer, possibly the leader of the group, this has not been picked up by anyone who has watched the film, but i feel as though it could have bee executed better but due to time constriction we had no other option but to keep the footage. We this camera angle to show the two 'killers' and the victim, we used a variety of close ups and mid-shots in thsi opening, the mid shots are used when the characters are being watched and close up are used in the high paced, tense areas. This matches the conventions of horror as close ups are used in horror to build tension and to make people jump, we hope we succeeded in doing this with our camera-work.

9. The final screen grab shows our title, we added an effect so that the font flowed like a river, we felt this was a strong point of our production, we initially thought about using blue font but only further delegation we decided that this did not fit horror conventions as blue is a happy colour, the white font on the black background symbolises purity surrounded by death, this connotation is used in both our production logo and the ball drop scene. The general consensus from our questionnaires thought the title could be changed, but as a team we decided that we liked the title and it should be kept the same, it matches titles of films such as halloween, where the title is not over-extravagant like it would be in an action film or a kids film. 

Storyboards

The attached images are of our initial planning storyboards, most of the ideas we had have stuck to this. However, we have had some major differences, especially the new ending we had to add to emphasise the title. The ways we planned for the camera shots was kept similar, but our editing ideas have changed drastically. This has been uploaded late due to issues with the scanner.