Evalation Activity 7

Now, as I look back onto our preliminary task and even earlier stages of my blog. I can see how we have progressed with the editing and how much smoother and consistent our film is. We have also increased the amount of editing skills and shown a wider range of shots with in the correct places. We used some jump editing, added a granite affect and defined the lighting on each scene which gives it a better overall look. I personally think that our film was realistic and what it contained would be what you would have expected to see in a thriller opening sequence.  We both enjoyed creating the short films, but can also see the improvement in our skills and confidence which then produced our overall thriller film using a wider range of skills and technologies.

Evaluation Activity 6

During the production of our film, my partner and I learned how to use many new pieces of technology, which include:

·         Garageband- which was a product that I had never used before, which we then used to create our music in our film. We took time in choosing the music making sure it fitted to the scenes and used fades in and out, making it run smoothers.

·         iMovie- we used mainly for out preliminary task, and it was my first time I found it fairly difficult but as I got used to it, it became a lot easier, we both experiment with affects and adding music.

·         Apple Macs- which we used throughout the whole course, preliminary, main movie and creating our blogs as we were going along.

·         Video camera- both my partner and I knew how to use a camera, the difficult thing was, knowing how to create the tension and which shots did this.

·         Camera- we used for casting and location shots.

·         Tripod- was used to keep the camera still, however we didn’t use it that much due to a lot of our film being hand held which fits to thriller genre.

·         BlogSpot- which is where all of our work has gone on to, after you get used to the fact of it and learn how to organise your work it is an easy more efficient way of producing work.

I now feel more confident using these technologies and enjoyed learning the new skills.

Evaluation Activity 5

A typical thriller tends to use specific camera shots in order to emphasise and create tension, such as:

·         Long shots- introduce the audience to the surroundings, which would normally be eerie and where the action is going to take place.

·         Close up shots- which also create tension, either used on a person’s face to show emotion or on an object to highlight for a reason you would later find out.

·         Hand held/ following shot- which suggest someone is being followed.

·         Jump shot- this is regularly used within a thriller, at a stage where there is a lot of things happening. Usually put with dramatic music or added noises which add to tension.  

·         Dark settings/ lack of lighting- used in thrillers to surprise you as the audience watching, the dark makes people look more intimidating and scares others.

·         There are not as many graphics- unlike horrors thriller tend to use less graphics, tends to be more visual and psychological.

·         Music- tends to be played in the background of scenes, which is non diegetic. This creates tension and helps determine the mood by the genre of music.

Here are some clips from the film which Eva and I produced, which fits to the conventions of a thriller.  However I think we challenged them, by using a school setting even though it is targeted at an older teenage audience.

Evaluation Acitivity 4

The audience for our media product would be for both genders of a teenager or younger adult. Their interests would be similar to the stories which they are watching in programmes of films.

These would be the  features of our typical target audience:

•  They would shop in the main stream shops, such as Top Shop, River Island and All Saints.
• The music that they would listen to would be off the charts.
• Television programmes that they would watch would be soaps or comedies, that can allow them to relate to the story.

Overall, we have discovered from our feedback that our characters and story line met the expectations of our target audience.
This is a picture of a male and female that we surveyed as our expected target audience.

Evaluation Activity 3

Evaluation Activity 2

Evaluation activity 2

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Evaluation Activity 1

Evaluation activity 1

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Film Planning

Between Eva and myself, we had to plan our filming in order to stick to our deadline. We started filming in the middle of December, and finished in January 2011.


December 21st 2010:

• We filmed our fist scene, where Eva was running up the road, with the camera following as though it was from someones point of view.
• We also, filmed the shuffling through the pictures, which showed all the girls that the man was stalking. I filmed whilst we used Eva's hands in the shot.

January 6th 2011:

• Due to christmas, we were unable to film for a while, but as we came back to school, we could use the library facilities. We filmed a conversation between Max and I, talking about the incidents that are occuring with in the area. This is vital because it can make the messgae we are trying to send out to the viewer, clearer.

January 10th 2011:

• For the scene in Costa, we had to ask the manager and customers for their permission in order to film. Eva stood in side and filmed through the glass window, to make it look like I was being followed.
• The final scene was then filmed, in the grave yard, we chose this because it was a well illuminated area as well as eerie which then linked with our genre.

January 12th 2011:

• As all of our filming was finished, we were left to put it onto the Imacs and start editing.

• The editing then took use through until the beginning of February, as we had alot of cutting to do due to fliming a lot of footage.

Script
 After deciding to change our idea, we wrote this script for the dialogue scene between Max and Sarah. I think this is vital because it starts to build up the story through conversation.

Sarah and Max were sat in the school library studying.

S: Did you hear about that girl that went missing the other day?
M: Yes, saw it on the news, Mum and Dad are being really weird about it. They wont let me go out anymore.
S: I know, mine are exactly the same, you know what party the other night. I wasnt allowed to go, so annoying.
     But it has been like 4 girls in the last five months
M: But it will never happens to any of us.
S:No well it never does... well anyway I have to go and meet my Mum, but I will see you later.
M: Ok, see you later...Oh wait you forgot your phone!

Sarah leaves to meet her mum.


Target Audience

We originally carried out a survey to question people from around the area, varying from different ages and genders in order to pick our genre for our film, we asked 10 males and 10 females. Males seemed to prefer horror, thriller and action, where as women preferred romantic comedies. However, some females liked to watch action and thriller depending on the film. Our actor and actresses were both in their teens making it more appropriate and relatable to our audience.

Music

We used garage band, which is an application on an Imac.We then used this after our film was done, music is a compulsory thing with in a film because it adds tension to the atmosphere. At first it was hard to get the hang of it, due to only using it once before. We took tim ein going through all the different instruments and melodies to ensure that we have the best suited to the film.

Editing

After we had filmed, we discovered that we had filmed quite alot for each scene, therefor we had to cut a lot. After sorting out between the both of us which parts we wanted to keep, we then moved on to adding transitions, such as fade to blacks and fades to whites. There is also a section where we used slow motion, when Eva is running this made it look professional, we also removed the volume which allowed us to hear the natural sounding which added to the verisimilitude.
In the dialogue scene, we used many different shots which made the editing for difficult, we used over the shoulder, two shot and shot reverse shot throughout the conversation allowing us to focus on the speaker. 
As Sarah was walking past Costa Coffe, we added a jump cut which my partner had seen in SE7EN, I think it worked it went well with the rhythm of the music and made it seem more eerie. 
Finally, at the beginning we used a voice over of someone screaming, to make it seem louder which then added to the atmosphere.

Planning of Obsession

We changed our original idea, because it proved to be too difficult with the number of characters and we felt as though our animatic lacked the mystery which a thriller should hold.  However, we are combining ideas from this into our new film and still using the same genre.  

Final version Obsession

This is our final version of Obsession, we added a logo and some finishing touches.

Obsession

This is the final version of our opening sequence.

Preliminary Exercise

For this task, we were asked to do short film with some specific specifications, which included:

•  a short amount of dialogue between two people, using two shot.
• match on action shot
• shot reverse shot

Company Logo

We created this ourselves, by simply adding our printed writing over an image. We felt as though it was professional, but simple. The 'SE' abbreviates Sarah and Eva.
This will be put onto the first section of our opening sequence.

Casting

In our opening sequence, we chose to use ourselves as the characters. We did this because we felt as though it was easier, one of our main problems for our original idea ( Birthday Suprise ) was the fact that the number of characters needed was alot higher, which proved difficult to organise. As one of us was in the shot, the other would film which too enabled both of us to practise each skill.

( Do shots with Eva)

Location

We used many different places for our opening sequence. Here are the location shots of each and why we thought they would be affective with in our film.

This was used in our first scene, when the first girl was begin chased by the kidnapper.  We chose to use it because we tried to use Marlborough High Street, but struggled to balance out the noise of busty traffic and our little bit of dialogue. We also added a slow motion affect to the running and a granite colouring to the picture, which I think made it a lot more eerie.

 

The scene in the Library was used mainly to tell part of the story, we felt as though we needed some dialogue to make the audience more clear of the story line. It is a conversation between and boy and girl, about the missing girls. We added quiet music in the background, to add a tempo to the conversation.

Our third scene was walking past Costa Coffee, we made it look like someone was following her by videoing through the window and following through the door. We also added another affect and a jump which gave it individuality as none others had it. We had to ask Costa coffee for permission to film as well as the customers in the first half of the shop.

This was our final scene, when the second girl was grabbed. We needed the scene to be in the dark, so we used the grave yard as it had quite a lot of street lighting which added to the realism.

Animatic

This is our animatic for 'Birthday Surprise', we used a range of different shots and angles which I think make it more realistic that someone is watching her. We put it onto iMovie, so that we could put it into a short film, that enabled us to add connotations, reasons why we used specific shots, what music we were going to use and what affects we thought these things had on the overall opening sequence.

However, we have recently changed our idea, as we needed quite alot of characters which seemed hard to organise and we felt with our new idea, which is called 'Obsession' offers us more range in things in which we can do.

Treatment

We originally had the idea of 'Birthday Surprise', but decided to change it due to developing our planning and realising it was too predictable. We have stuck to the same genre of, crime and thriller, because we felt it was a genre that offered us more options. We based our new idea around our original, and proceeded to film.

Treatment- 'Obsession'

Obsession is based around the idea of a stalker, teenage girls keep going missing within weeks of each other and police can’t seem to find anything to tell them who did it. We are showing two girls going missing, with in the same area. It is put into two parts, at the beginning one girl is taken, who was on her own, then we go into a discussion with another about how her parents are becoming a lot more strict because of the recent incidents. We then follow on to ' stalk' the same girl on her way home from school, we use point of view shot here all the way through.

We used Costa coffee in our film and had to ask permission from the manager, in order to allow us to use it. We chose to do this because it seemed more eery and realistic, as she was being followed.

In the first scene, when the first girl was being chased, we added slow motion affect to it, we did this becuase we felt it added to the tension. We also added granite, to another scene which gave the picture a different affect with colour. We also added two skips, as she was walking which went well the bass of the music.