Evaluation Question 7

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

During my preliminary task, I was confident using the equipment to film as I was familiar with the equipment we were using. So when it came to filming our thriller opening, I was able to use the skills that I had developed when doing the preliminary task making it easier to use whilst filming our thriller opening.

Pre-production is the process in which you prepare all the elements needed in a film, play or performance. For our thriller opening we had storyboarded our initial idea with comments such as if props were required in the shot and where the shot will be taken place and what show will be used. This was beneficial for our thriller opening as it set out a guideline which we intended to follow and if any changes were to be made, they would be done during the production of our thriller opening. In addition, we had ensured that the locations we were going to use were available for the dates that we had scheduled to film and that all props were bought so that filming would go smoothly.

In production, the film is created and shot. During the production of our film, we had decided to try and keep to the storyboard as much as possible. This was because it would be less complicated as it was our initial idea and making changes would affect the whole opening.  Whilst the production of our film, as a group I had found it comfortable to film as we had worked together to use the camera. Also, sharing the role meant that we all had input into the production of the thriller. We were all able to put forward the skills we had learnt and developed from our preliminary task.

Finally, post production is where the film is assembled to have continuity so that it is presentable to audiences. In post production for our thriller, we had used FinalCut Pro to edit our clips together. On this software, we had also used it to add transitions such as fade out/fade in and add titles to our opening to follow the conventions of thriller openings. After editing our clips together, we had imported it into Soundtrack Pro so that we could add a soundtrack/music to our opening. We had searched for sounds on this software which would be appropriate and suitable to use for our opening. Furthermore, we had used foley sounds to emphasise the use of some of the props in our thriller opening. For example, we had used the diegetic sound of the book closing to emphasise the fact that our protagonist was fed up with chanting and had given up on trying.

Overall, throughout both the productions of the preliminary task and our final film  I have been able to expand my knowledge on using the equipment. Also, it has assisted me in becoming more familiar with the software that we had used in post production. One of the difficulties that I had come across was matching shots together so that it would make sense to the audience and have continuity effect. However, we were able to overcome this problem by re-filming some shots so that we could then use them in our opening. In addition, I am pleased with our final product as it has come out the way we had wished for it to be.

EVALUATION; question six.

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

We had attracted our audiences through various ways such as uploading the film on Vimeo, Facebook & a trip to a local cinema (Screen On The Green)

VIMEO

  

FACEBOOK

SCREEN ON THE GREEN 

Evaluation Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

A target audience is a specific group of people within the target market at which a product or message is aimed at, in this case it is the different genre of films.

In our pitch, this is what we had decided to use for our target audience. We had decided to use teenagers from the age of 15 as we would be able to relate to what they may wish to see in a thriller. Also, this is the age certificate for other thrillers. Below are examples or some thrillers that have a similar target audience to our thriller

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation - Question 2 on Prezi

Evaluation Question 1

An opening sequence in a film usually consists of the names of the film, cast, director, producers and the production companies. These are usually shown through various graphics according to the type of film it is. 

Also, there is some sort of action used at the beginning to hold the attention of the audience. This would help in keeping the attention of the audience as they would be curious as to why a certain incident has taken   place.Another key convention is music/soundtrack, the opening of thriller movies usually have a non-diegetic sound playing which helps to build up to the introduction of our characters and the location/setting that they are in. The introduction of characters and settings are usually presented in all films, this is also another convention of film openings. 

Our thriller had followed these conventions as we had added titles to our sequence showing the thriller's name and certain cast and crew members. Also, we had shown some action by having a ghost appear whilst our main protagonist is chanting from a book. This would help to keep our audience interested as they may be intrigued as to what happens next. The sound used in our opening was not loud and fast paced, it was slightly eerie so that the audience watching would be attracted as to where the music used will lead them. I think this was useful as it helped to set a mood for the thriller. In addition, we had used some diegetic sounds to emphasise the use of some props, such as the book closing and the matchstick and candles being blown out.

FINAL EDITING

This is me and Humawin, when we were editing our rough cut final to out thriller opening. At first it was a bit difficult because we had a lot of editing to do, but then we had got the hang of it and was able to successfully complete the editing of our rough cut final. 

In our rough cut final, we used many elements of editing some of which were match cut and the 180 degree rule. When we were editing we decided were to put those element of editing and it turned out to fall in place quite well.  We also managed to use some transitions such as addictive dissolve, which worked well with the clip too. 

We were also able to put the names of the cast, director and producers. The names were in White and Red, we used the colour White because it connotes the innocence of the male and we have used the colour Red because it represents the colour of death or a supernatural force. 

We were not able to start on the sound as the deadline for the rough cut final was here, however, we did plan what kind of music we would want. We wanted to use non- diegetic sound throughout the whole clip and also use some foley sounds and original sound of what we had filmed. 

Although the editing of the rough cut final was time consuming, it was still great and a good experience.   

Summary of the film TWELVE.

In a quiet suburban town in London, a college student is dared by his friends to call on the evil spirits in the infamous haunted house, which has always been abandoned. At 12 o'clock, midnight, he chants the words of a charm book. The evil spirit of Ann Summers, a infamous and provocative girl who was honour killed by her family at her family home, possesses Olufemi Jones and takes over his body. He then silently but deadly terrorises the town by killing young children and teenagers. Ann Summers gets her revenge on the town for not being sympathetic about her death. His friends try to perform an exorcism on him but we are yet to know if it worked...

Filming Summary - TWELVE.

We had travelled to Hornchurch, Essex in the half term and done filming for our opening for a whole day. As we had booked the equipment out for the half term we were able to do a majority of our filming in one day. It wasn't too difficult as we didn't experience problems that we would have if we was to have filmed outdoors. For example, we did not need to be careful about getting in the way of bystanders as we filmed in a bathroom indoors. A problem that had occurred was to avoid getting members of our group in the mirrors reflection, however we had overcame this by the positioning of our camera.

ROUGH CUT - Evaluation

We have uploaded our rough cut of our thriller opening 'TWELVE', which I am pleased with as it has come out the way we planned for it to be as a group. Also, we were able to upload it on time according to our schedule which means we are most likely to finish before or on the deadline for the thriller openings.
To edit all the footage and make a rough cut of our thriller opening was difficult because there were some clips which we couldn't put together properly to ensure continuity effect. However, we had overcome this by re-filming and using the new clips that we had gotten for our opening. We had done two days of filming to ensure we had enough clips for our opening. This was beneficial as we had more than enough clips to choose from for our finished opening.

TWLEVE - Rough Cut

Intertexuality in TWELVE

An intertexuality technique we had used was our choice of location for our thriller opening. We had seen this location be used in 'Psycho (1960)'. As it had received a good reaction from audiences, we had aimed to receive a similar reaction from our audiences by using a bathroom as our location.

Bathroom Scene from TWELVE.

Bathroom Scene from Psycho.

Another technique of intertexuality that we had used was the hair of the 'ghost' in our thriller opening. In 'The Ring, (2002)', the child seen in the video has her hair across her face, we had decided to use this as well for our character to give her a distinguished appearance.

'Ghost' from TWELVE

Child from 'The Ring'

LOCATION; of TWELVE.

LOCATION 1; Hornchurch, Essex.

LOCATION 2; Tania's house, Hackney. 

We used two locations; we were meant to use only one, as we were not going to move our setting. However, after we had come back from Essex we were told to film outside of the house. We could not do this as Essex was very far, so Tania filmed the outside and inside of her house. We used the bathroom because you could see the mirror clearly, which is absolutely vital for our film. It also makes sense in our film to do that. Overall both locations worked well with our film opening and made sense.

CAST; of TWELVE.

Due to the fact that we only had to film the opening of a film, we only needed two actors for it. We needed a victim and the supernatural being. We chose Humawin to be the victim as normally in thriller supernaturals, women are the victims in the movie, so we flipped the gender roles. We also used a male character because it shows that not even the stereotypical view of men will overcome the 'suspense' and horror of this movie. It also makes it even more scary as a man was a victim which means the male audience will get slightly freaked out as well. For the supernatural being, we used Tania; this is because she had long hair. She did her own make up and made sure it looked scary, and made sure her hair was infront of her face at all times. We used intertextuality at this from 'The Ring' as she also had her hair on her face. 

PROPS; for TWELVE.

These are the props we used in out thriller opening. We filmed close-ups of these because they are significant to the film and add suspense to the film. It also hints to the audience what the film might be about. The props we used were candles - which were bought and gotten from home - and a book which was also brought from home. 

FILMING; pictures.

The images shown above were taken whilst filming our thriller opening. We had taken pictures of the props, characters, settings/locations and the camerawork. We had found it difficult whilst filming as our camera did not fit correctly on the tripod we had. Overall, the experience of filming was interesting and a good challenge.

Shoot 2

After receiving feedback from our teachers we had decided to go out and film some more shots that we could use in our opening. We needed to film some establishing shots and close ups of the ‘ghost’ to include in our editing.

As we had originally filmed our opening in Hornchurch, Essex we decided that it would be best for us to do our establishing shots in Hackney as it was a closer location. This was useful to do so because if the establishing shots weren’t good enough, we could easily re-film the shots.

To do the close ups we had used Tania’s bathroom as it was available to film in. This did not affect our opening as the shots only focused on the face of the ‘ghost’.

We had begun filming from 5PM onwards as it had started to get dark around that time. It was essential to film around this time, as the dark lighting for the establishing was needed. Since there was not much filming to be done we had finished by 7PM and returned the equipment the next morning at 9AM as we had it booked for overnight.

Shoot 1

The first day we were shooting, we were filming at the only location we were going to film; Hornchurch, Essex. We planned to do all our filming in one day as we knew our film opening did not need other location shots. We were lucky enough to film all of it in a day as it was a holiday and we all had busy schedules. We planned where we were going to meet up and how we were going to get there by train.

We all met up at college to pick up the equipment needed for filming. We then went to Angel Station, took the northern line to Bank station. From there we took the district line to Hornchurch station. The area in which the house was in was very quiet and it was very unlikely that we were going to be disturbed. One thing which could have went wrong is the time difference; our film opening was set to be filmed at 12 AM at night but we weren’t allowed to film at the location at that time. We were lucky enough that it gets dark quickly so we could pretend that it was actually 12 PM.

There were some problems throughout the course of the filming. One was that we were given the wrong tripod; the camera did fit and secure on to the tripod. This meant that we had to hand hold the camera whilst we were recording and panning. It was quite difficult as we were not sure if we had a steady hand and  we were afraid that it would show in the film. Another problem we had was that the space in the bathroom was very limited and all of us could not fit in there.

We eventually finished all our filming at -- PM and made sure we had double of all recordings so we could see which ones were better than the other. This is important because one shot might lack the power and acting skills than the other. We all agreed that the people who were going to go in to college on Monday 20^th February would take the equipment back to college as it was scheduled to give it back then, at 9 AM. 

Prop Shopping

As a group, we had decided to go prop shopping together to purchase the essential items needed for our thriller opening. A main object that we needed for our thriller was candles. We had chosen to buy white candles as we wanted them to represent innocence for our character whilst he chants as he is also wearing white in opposition to the spirit that later appears who is wearing black.