Second part of evaluation

Alice200

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First part of evaluation

Alice100

View more PowerPoint from 05alicerenee

Final Final cut of film

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jc9K4dD3v0&feature=relmfu

sorry i couldnt get the video up onto here. But this is our final cut of our film 'Till Death do us Part'.

Survey for our film

Our Media Film

Please can you watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR2ev-8BnhE&feature=youtu.be and then answer the following questions to help me with my evaluation

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*Required

What do you think the genre is? *

• Thriller
• Horror Thriller
• Horror
• Fantasy
• Psycho
• Psycho thriller
• other

Why do you think this? *

What type of media institution might distribute our media product? * channel 4, WarnerBrothers, Disney, Paramount

Why do you think this? *

Who do you think is the target audience? * male, female, old, young, adult, teen, child,

Did this media product target/interest you? *

• Yes
• No
• To Some Extent
• Other

Did you connect with the characters? *

• Yes
• No
• To Some Extent
• I would if i watched more of the film
• Not At All
• Other

Do you think we made the right choice of music? * Do you think it fit with our product?

What is your favorite part of the clip? * the beginning, middle, end, specific shot or scene

What do you think could be improved? *

Till Death Do Us Part

Our production sign

This is the logo that we have decided to use for the opening of our film as our production name. We decided to go for the idea of it being with a knife because we thought that would be a good idea to show the audience that this is a horror thriller film straight from the beginning. We used the colour red as it presents blood and danger and even lust which is what part of our film is about. At first we decided to have the red writing over the top of a white background as it really made the image and the writing stand out, however watching it we realised that the black background would probably look better because it gives a better sense of the film being dark and blends in more with what we are trying to put across. We thought of using the image as a knife because that is the main weapon used in our film by our female villain.

Filming the killing scene

We have been discussing on how we are going to film the killing. We have realised that this is going to be really hard as we dont know how we are going to make it look like she is stabbing him when obviously she wouldnt be able to get too close to him with the knife. One way we have tried it is filming the shadows of her stabbing him, however this turned out to be really hard as we couldnt work out the right place the lamp should go to make it a good shadow on the opposite wall withought actually getting Aveys hand and the knife in shot not as a shadow aswell.
We have been thinking about it and have decided to get avey to raise her hand with the knife in and bring it down but keeping the camera on her and not showing the victim in shot. We got this idea form Alfred Hitchcock's film 'Psycho'. This is a good way in doing the killing but not actually showing it because it shows that she is killing him but without the audience actually seeing it happen as it would have been very hard for us to shoot it so that it actually looked like her stabbing him if we hadnt done it this way.

Filming with our new actors

Filming with our knew actors is going really well. We have managed to keep on schedule of what we are filming with them each week as they are very reliable and we can get done what we need to get done. I think changing the actors was a really good idea as not only are we on schedule of finishing our film now, i think they work much better for our mise en scene. This is because as we are using Avey who has dark hair i think it comes across as much better because she comes across as much darker and mysterious when filming. I think it was a good idea that we came away from having the female villain blonde because she wouldnt have looked as dark and strong as she would with dark hair which is what we have now. 

A Dilemma

Half way through our filming it started to become really tricky. This is because we were filming in school, therefore it had to be done after school but the actors we were using were not that reliable and the days we could film, sometimes they couldnt. This is where we had to make a big decision as we didnt have long left before all of our filming had to be done.
We came to the conclusion that, from what we have filmed already we would have probably of only used a few seconds of that in our actual film. Therefore, meaning if we got some new actors then we wouldnt have lost much. Here we decided to use Josh and Avey. I think this was a really good decision as they are both really reliable and they make it look really well on screen. We have now caught up and have pretty much got all of our filming done.

starting filming

Our first day of filming went well and we managed to get some good shots taken of the scenes we wanted. To make sure that we had some good shots to use in our film, we decided to take a couple of shots of one bit from a variety of angles so that when we come to put it together we will have a choice in how we show it.

Our next day of filming we done alot more filming, and we were getting more up to date on how much we were doing each time we were filming. Therefore, it felt like we were getting on top of things. However, when we came to put it up to start editing, we realised that for some reason our light had changed between the two days of filming. This meant we would have to do it again. It taught me that we have to take a picture of how it looked the first time so that we know what it should look like the next to keep the continuity going in our film.

We had a group discussion before filming and realised that we were going to have to change Izzy who was going to play our female character. This is because most of the locations we found that would look really good in our film were around school, therefore this meant that most of our filming would have to be done during the week after school, although we realised Izzy did not have much free time just after school finished. This meant that this would limit our shooting hours. Therefore after a long discussion we decided to change Izzy to Becca Bentley for our female character.
Although Becca is not our 'typical blonde' female character which we first thought that we wanted as we felt it would be very stereotypical, However now as Becca has brown hair i think it will present the character as being a much more strong woman as the blonde women are usually used in thriller films as the victims and characterised as weak. I think we made the right decision and hopefully that will come across in our finished film which will present a very strong female character.

Panning and Zooming

We decided to try out how the red room looked when we video it. We have found out that sometimes it could make the image look a bit fuzzy, however i feel that we will be able to use this to our advantage. We tried the shot where we are going to pan along pictures and then zoom in to the picture of the victim to see if we will be able to do this using the camera. We tried it many times to try and get the zoom right without making the shot look jumpy. This is our last one we recorded and I think it worked quite well as our zoom was quite smooth untill the very end, therefore i feel that we will be able to do this when we shoot this scene for the real thing and it will work and add to our slow pace and suspense.

Premiere Pro

Last lesson Josh did a presentation on how to use Premiere Pro.He talked about the main seven things that you can do on Premiere Pro. These were; format, layout, import, timeline and edit, transitions, and texts and effects. Josh went through step by step on showing us how to do each of these things. I found this presentation really useful as it has really helped me in understanding how to use this programme properly and it will help me when it comes to editing our film. I feel that now i will confidently be able to edit our film well, including text and effects.

Lighting

We decided to start playing around with the lighting that we will have in the rooms that we will film in. One of the rooms will be used for when the woman character is printing the pictures of her victim, with the walls full of pictures of previous victims. Because of what this room is going to be used for we thought it would be a good idea of having quite a dark red lighting. We done this by getting a sheet of red transparent piece of paper and a lamp.

transparent red piece of paper:
  

We tried this out by putting the red piece of paper over the lamp, this was our first attempt:




Although, from holding it quite close to the ceiling it meant that the room went very red like this. However, we thought that it would have a greater effect and would look better if we didnt have the room as red and more a faint dark red instead. We mananged to get this effect in the second attempt we did, this is how it looked:





This is the effect we wanted for this room as it makes it look like a printing room for pictures, but also quite dark. Therefore I feel when the pictures are up on the wall and we have the props we want in there, i think it could look quite sinister which is the effect we are trying to get. I think from trying out lighting it has helped to imagine more exactly what we want it to look like which will help us more when comning to film.

Locations

These rooms are going to be the places where we film the killer seducing and killing her victim. we chose these rooms so that it would create a dark and sinister atmosphere which will complement our genre 'Horror Thriller'.

This first room is going to be the room where our man character will be sitting on a chair in the middle of the room. The lighting will be quite dark and we will be able to play around with lighting so that we can get a good effect in making it look like a Horror Thriller. The stairs also look quite sinister and will help us in getting a range of different shots.

                                             

This room is going to be the room covered in pictures to show the killers victims. This will also be quite dark but we may also have some red ligthing which will give the effect of her printing her pictures. 

I think these rooms will be quite good to use as they are quite empty therefore we could do whatever we wanted with them.

Our Characters

Male Character


For our male character we wanted it to look like he had just come back form a night out. Therefore in a suit but very scruffy. I think the way in which we want our man to look is very stereotypical of a strong working class man. However even though he is dressed this way, he is still going to look weak in the situation that he is in, which could suggest that we are trying to be different and show that woman are equal to men and don't always have to be the victims in Horror Thrillers.
This is what we want our male character to wear:

• Suit jacket, Shirt, tie, trousers, belt
• Handkerchief
• Wallet-ID-picture 

Female Character

With our female character being the villain we felt that she had to look like a very strong woman. However we have chosen someone who is blonde and skinny which would stereotypically usually be how the girl victims would look in a Horror film. However as we have swapped it round we thought it would be a good idea to keep that stereotype but make them look seductive so that she would be able to lure her victims home. We chose the colour red for the female as it is a very strong but dangerous colour. We felt we wanted her to look beautiful and pristine because of her having to seduce these men but also so that no one would expect her to murder anyone, which would add to the horror type feelings.

This is what we wanted our female character to wear: 

• Red dress
• Red nail varnish
• Red lipstick
• Black heels
• Pearls/Choker necklace/Dangly earrings

Prop List

For our film, we have thought of things in which we hope will make our film look like a Horror Thriller. We have thought of props which will help us in getting our idea and story across to the audience and making them feel a certain way. The props we came up with were:

• Lights/Lamps
• Shiny red transparent paper, to stick over the lamps to create a red light, which will create an ambiance of our photo-developing room.
• Polaroid Camera
• Weapon device - Knife / Knives.
• Bag/Towel for knife
• Chair
• Gaffa Tape
• String for the line of pictures
• Rope - to tie the man/ male character which is the victim.
• lipstick
• jewellery

We are hoping that having these props will set the scene for a Horror Thriller and create the right ambience and mood for our audience. 

Our Idea

Our idea for our thriller film is to do the sub genre of a 'Horror Thriller'. While talking through our plot we realised that it may be very hard to make sure the audience sees that it is a horror thriller in the first few minutes, as it may just look like a thriller film. Therefore we are going to have to have a think about how to get that horror across into our story line. We may be able to do this by getting a great piece of music which will help show the horror side to it. Other than this we made need to show the woman actually killing the man, however we were not going to do this in the first place because it is going to be a 15 rated film so we are not supposed to dwell on inflicting pain.We are going to have to think about how we can show that its a horror without going across the BBFC guidelines.

Our storyline is to have a woman being all seductive and killing men, she keeps pictures of all the men she has killed in a dark room. We wanted to be able to get across the idea of her printing her pictures, and then have the camera go through the picture of this man to change location to the man sitting in an empty white room where we see the woman killing this man after seducing him. To get all of this storyline into the first few minutes it may make it look too rushed therefore the idea of a dual intercutting was presented to us, where the woman can seduce the man and then intercut to her killing him and go back and forth between these two different times. This could help us get the Horror element across and would also help us in not trying to get too much into these first few minutes, as i feel the slower the scene is the more creepier it could look. 

Horror

As we decided on doing a horror thriller, i decided to look up the codes and conventions of a horror so that we can see what we need to include in ours and think of things that could make our horror thriller different to the usual horror films.

Camera Angles:
Extreme Close ups (emphasize the subject)
Tilt (to create disorientation)
Establishing shots (showing location, stereotypically isolated buildings e.g. mansions or forests)
Handheld (looks realistic, making it feel more believable)
Long Shots (help show the danger or what the lead character is surrounded by, usually isolated)
Tracking (where the camera moves at the side, following a character)
Dollying (where the camera follows the character from in front or behind, to make it feel as if the character is being followed/stalked)
Point of view shot (so the audience can see what the character sees, to feel as if they are looking through their eyes)

Codes and Conventions:
Atmosphere is usually sinister and location often appears dar and isolated.
Montage editing and quick shots in the trailer to increase tension and suspense. Often previews best bits to engage the audience and encourage them to see the film.
Dark music to help increase a frightening atmosphere.
Lead character often ends up surviving and slaying the antagonist character.
The antagonist usually has a pattern in the way they work or kill.
Usually good against evil.
Plot frequently involve themes of death, the supernatural or mental issues.

Our Planning

Once our resesearch was finished we then had to try and decide what kind of thriller we were going to make. From the research, we found out that the most common thriller movies were psychological ones, therefore we decided we did not want to do one of these as we wanted to do something different to what thriller films are out already. By bringing in all of our research and ideas we had, after a long discussion we finally decided on making a Horror Thriller. We thought this was a good idea as the codes and conventions of a horror thriller are quite clear so we thought we would be able to make it familiar but also something new at the same time which is what our audience will want.

we started out by making a brainstorm of  the plot ideas, the setting and the characters that we could use in our Horror Thrillers. Bringing in ideas using the usual conventions of a horror but also ones that would be quite different to what audiences have seen already. Here is our brainstorm:





Once we brainstormed all of our different ideas, we decided to choose one plot idea that we all very much liked. With this in our head we thought of the characters we would use in it, the clothing, the props and the different settings that we could use for this idea. This is what we came up with:





We came up with the idea to break the convention of a horror film where the woman is always the victim trying to get away and the man is the villain, we were thinking that we would change it so that in ours we would have the woman as the strong villain and the male as the weak victim. I feel that we all came up with some very good ideas on what we want to see in the opening of our horror thriller, however i feel that we need to try and stick to some of the conventions of a horror so that the audience will be able to have an idea of what type of genre it is. To help me out i am going to go and watch some openings to horrors and to see how they have made the audience feel alot of tension and suspense while watching.