Audience Feedback

Here is what some people thought of our opening sequence:

"I liked the contrast from it being serene to the climax at the end"

"I thought it was awsome but the falling bit is a bit odd"

"OMG this is so professional!!! I really like it. Good job guys!"

"I don't really like it because you can see that it is a dummy and the skyline looks unrealistic."

"It's good, i love the paper but the skyscrapers at the end are a bit weird"

"I thought it was really good, and the credits were good"

"The shots were good and the music fit in really well to set the mood"

Overall the feedback is good, however it also shows that the end of the sequence with the dummy is not as strong as it could have been and therefore if we were to do it again we would edit it slightly differently to make the dummy falling look more realistic.

Task 7

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

Preliminary pictures

Pictures from the main task

The amount i've learnt from the preliminary task to my final product is fenominal. We had virtually no planning for our preliminary task, the limited script was provided for us and we only had to decide where to put the one light in the room and grab a couple of actors on the day. For our main task however, we had months preparation in order to decide the storyline of our production and everything else needed like which locations would be best to shoot our sequence. Furthermore we needed to decide which actors we wanted in our production and how they would benefit it.

Regarding the locations in the preliminary task we picked a location out of a hat and recieved our classroom. We had no decision making process or thought to the location. In the main task this was very different; we thought about many different shooting places and at one point we were going to shoot in Ewhurst, Hurtwood and up the road to Hurtwood where there are narrow roads which are surrounded by woods. In the end we only shot at Hurtwood at the top and bottom of the theatre which was ideal for the suicide aspect of our sequence.

In our preliminary task we didn't have much experience and were really learning as we went along. We set up a few different shots: a wide shot, a close-up and a hero shot. We should have recorded all of these shots at least twice so we could pick out the best one in the editing process, however we didn't know to do so until we had finished all of them and because we only had a lesson we had run out of time. On the other hand we had the whole day to film our main task and therefore we could experiment with a lot of different shots, for example we got the tracks out and did a tracking shot around our actor on a high angle so he looked powerful-far more sophisticated than the preliminary task.

Another aspect that differed greatly was the need for costumes. In our preliminary task there was absolutely no thought of costumes and the actors wore whatever they came in. In the main task we had to think about how what the characters are wearing would affect the audience's judgment of them. We also had a dummy which we had to dress exactly the same as our actor James so costumes were very important.

Props also differed greatly in each tasks. In the preliminary task all we had was a gun lying on the table which didn't really have much use at all. In the main task however our props had the most important roles in the sequence. We had to get a lot of paper with bank notes printed on them which worked well in our sequence against the blue of the sky plus we had to make a dummy and buy a wig for it with similar colour hair as the actor (believe you me, it is not easy to get a ginger wig).

The editing process in the main task was very different to the one in the preliminary task. For the Preliminary we only spent two lessons editing and because we were very inexperienced and didn't have much time on our hands we only placed the different shots next to eachother very roughly. In our main task we had a lot more time to figure out the style of our peice and make the cuts very smooth when the paper is falling down and gradually getting quicker towards the end where our character is about to jump. We also learnt how to use effects for example fading the titles and at the end animating a still picture so it looked like the character was falling from a high city building.

Although there wasn't any dialogue, sound was also a big issue in our main task because in the editing process we added city and wind sounds which made the illusion that our character was high up in a city building more realistic. The music we added to the peice was also really important because it added to the mood of the peice. When-at the beginning of the sequence- you could see paper falling we made sure the music was quite light in order to make the mood fairly safe and comfortable, however when the peice progressed and the audience find out the man is about to commit suicide we made the music in a lower key which made the mood more sombre. In the preliminary task we had dialogue and just used the sound from the microphone on the camera on the day. We didn't think at all about music or other sound effects.

Overall I would say that there is no doubt that the main task was more complex than the preliminary. The amount of work we put in with the planning, the different, more sophisticated shots and the editing just made our peice more professional and enjoyable to watch and as a film maker I have learnt a lot more.

Task 6

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

Task 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

What Attracts The Audience In Our Film Lw

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Task 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

I think our film would appeal to wide age range like 16- 45 due to the genre being a complex thriller rather than the classic horror conventions. This being said we decided to target our film at young adults of both gender from around 16-25 year olds. We chose this age range because the characters in the film are around the same age and there are elements of horror that would appeal to them. Although it is not essential for the audience to be well educated the film is fairly complex so it would benefit them if they are well educated in order to have further understanding of the plot.

Task 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

For our sequence we thought Lionsgate would distribute due to the fact they are renound for producing low budget films and especially psycological thrillers like our own.
Some of the more recent films include 'precious', the 'Saw' movies and 'the eye'

Lionsgate also do festivals and presentations which would be useful to advertise and get our film seen by as many people as possible.

As Lionsgate is so well known due to distributing many well known films it would be an insentive for audiences to see our film which is another good reason for them to distribute our product.

Task 2

How does your product represent particular social groups?

By symbolising the paper as banknotes we made the character in our sequence seem like a banker which then surprises the audience because they would later find out in the film that the man is mentally ill.
Because of the current economical situation where lots of people in the banking industry have lost their jobs, the fact that the man is commiting suicide makes sense to the audience. The man's situation (losing his job and his whole life as he knows it) is thus something the audience can relate to due to the resession occuring at the moment.

Evaluation Task 1

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

In our sequence we made sure we had convential film titles in order for the audience to recognise the fact it is a title sequence. We didn't want the titles to distract too much from what is otherwise happening so we tried not to subvert conventions.

As James is the only person the audience sees in our opening sequence the audience thus takes him as the main character. As he is killed off in the first minute and a half we are challenging traditional concepts and surprising the audience.

At the beginning of the sequence there is no explanation for the paper to be floating in the air, this is a tool that we used to bring an air of mystery to the peice which draws the audiences attention by making them curious.

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The editing process

Once we had loaded the film onto final cut pro we could then get down to editing. First of all we had to cut the film into the seperate shots, name them and then put them into seperate folders. We then had to decide which shots we wanted and in what order.
We wanted to add an individual style to our peice by having a lighter feel to it at the beginning which we did by encorporating the shots of paper falling against blue sky which has a rather tranquil quality. We then wanted to gradually get onto the more serious shots of James on a building about to jump so the audience only slowly realise that the man is about to commit suicide.
We learnt how to add titles to our opening sequence and then changed the font and colour of the writing in order to fit in with the style and aesthetics of our peice. We decided to make the writing white in order to match up with the paper against the blue sky and keep the whole atmospheric peaceful aspect to the opening. We also learnt how to fade the titles in and out so that they wouldn't seem too blunt for the style of our peice.
In order to keep encorporate the idea of the gradual audience realisation within the sound we decided to make it light at the beginning with bird sounds and choirs which then gradually change to a lower note when it is revealed the man is commiting suicide. Just before the man jumps we decided to stop the choir to build up the tension to a cliamax. We also used city and wind sounds in order to make the illusion that the man was really high up within a city more realistic.

The shooting day

On the shooting day we first of all had a brief discussion about what we wanted to do in our sequence and made a few changes in order to make it shorter and more peaceful instead of the hectic escape-suicide we had originally planned. We wanted to film a man throwing down paper (representing banknotes) to make the audience think he was a banker, effected by the present economy. The beginning would be all about the freedom of letting things go and only at the end we would reveal how high he actually was and that he was actually commiting suicide because he was mentally insane. To let the audience know this I made a sign saying 'pineview home for the mentally ill' and we stuck it to the wall and filmed it and planned to place it at the end of our sequence.
After the final discussion deciding exactly what we wanted to do and telling that to the actors; we went to the bottom of the theatre where we started filming a hero shot of James throwing the paper whilst tracking around. Within the tracking shots we did a close up and a mid-shot and we made him stand on a table in order for him to jump off so we could later use that and cut to the dummy falling. We also filmed James jumping over the camera which worked quite well because the illusion that he was jumping to commit suicide looked more realistic. Because of the high angle we used for these shots, the illusion that James was very high up worked well.
After the hero shots we got James to stand at the top of the theatre and throw the paper down from the top. Here we got some really good tracking shots of the paper against blue sky. We also did a wide shot of the building with James standing on top of it which we wanted to use near the end of the sequence where we revealed how high up the man was.
We then took the camera equiptment up to the top of the building, got James to stand on a table (this might be a good time to add that the location was perfectly safe because although shooting from the bottom looked like James was standing on the roof of a tall building, the top of the building is actually a grassy area with the school car park next to it) and we did a silhouette shot of James from behind, capturing the view of the vally bellow.
After the silhouette shot we then had the most fun part of the day: throwing Billy the dummy off the building. We shot this several times with the camera in different positions; shooting with a wideshot including the building , shooting from the side of the dummy with a high angle and finally shooting from behind the dummy falling. We also experimented with the way we threw Billy and found that the best way was to have three people supporting the weight and push him, this looked more like a jump because the dummy travelled further away from the building and landed evenly instead of on its side.
Finnally we shot James lying dead on the ground with fake blood coming out of his mouth and tracked round to the sign saying mental hospital with onlookers in the background. We had then finnished filming and packed up the equiptment and props.

Pre-production process

The pre-production process was very important to our group because it meant there was less time wasted on the shooting day. Storyboarding our ideas was very useful because it gave a clear idea of the sequence of shots and whether they would work. Lots of our ideas were then eliminated during this process which benefited our sequence because we could improve from our original ideas in each storyboard. Our costume and props list could have been more organised; due to our idea changing we ended up getting more costumes than we actually needed which were of no use on the day. The pre-production process taught me that in film making planning the shots is a very long process but necessary in order to save time on shooting days and to know exactly what you want the sequence to look like.

Shooting schedule

Due to our idea changing we had a couple of shooting schedules. The first consisted of talking to our actors, telling them what we wanted them to do and then going to a boarding house in Ewhurst (where the original suicide and escaping up stairs was going to take place). When we changed our idea, there was no need to shoot at Ewhurst due to the fact the top of the theatre was ideal and shooting there meant we didn’t need to travel out of the school grounds. The new schedule consisted of first talking to our actors and telling them what they needed to do, then fit the costumes and make sure they work. We then wanted to do shots which tracked around James whilst he was throwing paper. After that we planned to have a wide shot of James throwing paper off the building to show the extreme height and danger he faces. We then wanted an over the shoulder silhouette of James to show the view from behind which also portrayed the great height. After all the shots of James were completed the last thing we planned was the different shots of the dummy falling. To have this plan is really important because it means we have an absolute timetable of the shooting day so that on the day no-one could argue which shots to shoot next and no time would be wasted.

Props and Costumes

As for props we needed a dummy for the suicide and a lot of paper with banknotes printed onto it in order to create the illusion that the man was commiting suicide due to a lost job or something similar. The paper was very easy, we just printed a picture off the internet multiple times onto sheets of A4 paper. To make the dummy we found a styrophone head, an all-in-one boiler suit and some boots from the props department in Theatre. We then painted the head to make it seem more realistic and stuffed the boiler suit with newspaper (stapling the arm and leg holes to make sure the paper wouldn't fall out). To atach the head to the body we stapled the neck of the boiler suit around the neck of the head. We then stuck a wig on the head (which we perchased in 'Bits and Bobs' in Dorking). We then had to dress the dummy in the same clothing as our actor so we bought a navy blue jacket which they both could wear and jeans. This costume is very casual but also not really in fashion which suggests that the character is lacking money which ties into the banker theme with today's economy. We bought all the clothes from various charity shops in Dorking.

Casting decisions

In our sequence we only needed a young man and a couple of onlookers at the end of the suicide, therefore casting was fairly simple and we didn't have any problems. We chose James Burke (Who is also at Hurtwood) to be the man commiting suicide.
For the onlookers we had Charlotte Clarke, Laura and Will, however in the editing process we decided to use a different shot of skyscrapers to make the building look higher than it really was, rather than the one of the onlookers.

location requirements

As our production is based on a rooftop and is mainly watching paper fall in the sky, the only location requirement would be in one place outside. At our college there were two possibilities, the first being the roof of the library and the second being the roof of the theatre. We decided to choose the roof of the theatre due to it being higher up and more easily accessable.

Who would produce the film?

We decided to use Lionsgate as the producer of our film due to the fact that it's well known for producing low budget, horror/thrillers very much like ours. The most recent films include the 'Saw' movies, 'Drag me to Hell', 'The Descent' and 'Gamer'. As Lionsgate is so well known for these movies, to have them producing our film would attract audiences that are interested in this type of genre.

Target audience

As our film is not based on the classic horror conventions, instead being a more psycological thriller; we decided we could target it to a wider audience with both genders and a greater age range. That being late teenagers (16-17) to 45-50 year olds.

Our final idea consists of quite light hearted shots to begin with of banknotes floating down from the sky and the audience don't know where they come from, then shots of a man throwing them. We decided to use bank notes to make the man seem like a banker, which in the recent recession with lots of bankers losing their jobs the audience would make a connection between modern day life and the sequence. The sequence then takes a serious turn when audience realises that he is about to comit suicide-the audience also making the assumption that he is doing it because he has lost his job. We would then use a dummy for a suicide shot and then cut to a body then pan up to a sign on the edge of the building saying mental hospital so the audience then realise he was commiting suicide because he was mental.

Here the link between the man escaping and the woman being taken into the home is clear and the kidnapper's purpose to make people mental is discovered.
This sequence wouldn't have worked because it is more like a short film which is 10-15 minutes long instead of a 2 minute opening sequence. We therefore decided to take

the most interesting part of this sequence (either the escape or the suicide) and use that as an opening sequence. Due to the fact a lot of other groups were doing an escape sequence we chose the suicide idea and worked on that to create a new sequence.

In these shots the sequence would build up in suspense as the audience realise kidnapped woman is being taken into the mental home and the link between the man and her is beginning to be revealed.

In these shots the audience would understand that the man is terrified of being in the house and is trying to escape. They would still be in the dark regarding the girl, we decided to emphasise this and build up tension and at the end of the opening sequence

let the audience see the connection. We thought that a girl being kidnaped would be effective because it dwells on a topic that has been in the media a lot recently like the Madeline Mccann case, society is particularly afraid of kidnapping so using this in our production plays on aan already established fear.

After our initial discussions we storyboarded our idea in order to try and work out what kind of shots we wanted to achieve in our production. This is the first page of one of our ideas we worked on.

With these shots we wanted to make a connection with the girl in the car and the man in the cell by cutting quickly between them, but still keeping the audience in the dark.

Boo trailer

This film is an important source of research for our production because the set is very similar to what we wanted to achieve with escaping down long corridoors. It also encorporates the theme of mental illness like our production.

This was another possible set location when our idea consisted of someone escaping. It was ideal because the narrow staircase signifies the unpleasant entrapment that the prisoner had to endure. The dark, grotty colouring also emphasises the scary, disturbing theme to the story.

When we had our original cell escape idea this location in our school was one possibility to film at. We chose it because it is a long corridor leading to stairs which we wanted in our main character to run down in the sequence plus the stone wall and floor makes it look sinister which would suit the style of our piece.

Group meeting

My group consists of Olivia, Hugo, Hannah and me. Originally we chose Hannah’s idea called ‘Run if you can’ which involved four teenagers locked in a house due to psychological experiments and then being told they have a certain time to try and escape through the many corridors and staircases in the house.
We then spoke to our teacher and were told that the psychological aspect of the idea was good but otherwise it was weak and we were advised to research unethical psychological experiments. We found a couple of possibilities that we could base our film around: 1. An experiment where a scientist tried to find out if there was the same facial expressions on each person for different events, for example watching an animal die. 2. An experiment where a person listens to a high pitched noise until they can’t bear it anymore.
We chose to base it on the sound experiment and decided our opening sequence would consist of a man being tortured by sound in a cell and then escaping through corridors and staircases, then getting to the roof and committing suicide. Cut into this sequence would be another character, this time a female being dragged to the door of the house when the man jumps and then a final shot of a sign saying ‘mental asylum’.

Horror film ideas

These are the ideas I came up with for the main horror film task.

Horror Movie Powerpoint

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