Evaluation 4

How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

Throughout the process of this project I have used many different media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluating stages. I have used different types of media technologies so that I could get my points across in different and more interesting ways.

The media technologies that I have used most frequently throughout my posts except from the mac computers were slide share http://http://www.slideshare.net/upload and Kizoa slideshowshttp://www.kizoa.com/. I used these programmes the most because I found them much more usefully and less complicated unlike prezzie http://prezi.com/login/. Slideshare was simple all I had to do was make a project on PowerPoint and then download it onto Slideshare which would compress the slide show into a mini presentation. I found Kizoa very helpful but only used it when I wanted my images to not be layed out in a boring way. I only used it for images since you could only add text on it if you payed.
The common programmes such as Powerpoint, Photoshop and Word, I used regularly when constructing, researching and planning. However, I didn't have to use Photoshop that much since the image that I used for the poster didn't need extra editing since I did that already through manipulating the light on the set. Powerpoint was most used when I was evaluating my work since I didn't want too much writting on my blog and having it on a Powerpoint/Slideshare made it look more interesting.

When researching via the internet to get as much information on the conventions of horror, the layout of synopsis, poster images, stock characters, information on trailers and so many more that is shown on my blog. I found that with the help of the internet I could expand my knowledge in all of the information that we needed to learn to be able to produce a trailer, poster and magazine. The internet also benefited my groiup and I, since we were able to put our final product onto Youtube and our final ancillary texts onto Facebook, here we have used synergy throught video uploads and social networking sites. Having access to these network sites helped us to feel more confident about our production work and be able to recieve positive comments or some criticism that we may of needed to hear.

For our construction we were given video cameras to film our trailer. This model of camera was efffective but very easy to use which made the process less stressful and more fun to work with.
The hardest problem we had with the camera was not being able to have a light attached to it, this was a problem since we wanted shots in the dark to convey horror genre but when we tried shooting without lighting the footage came out too dark and we had too re shoot.

Evaluation Question 3

Here is a video for one of our audience feed backs. My group and I wanted to know what our target audience felt about our trailer and whether they felt that we establish the horror genre well or not.
Subject 1 said that she could recognise all the horror conventions in our trailer, she could also recognise the stock characters easily. Subject 1 also said that she thought the music worked well with our trailer this is very positive feedback since we had some doubts that we weren't fitting with some of the horror conventions. However, the music is a positive because it does relate to our target audience.
http://lowrihorror.blogspot.com/2010/12/evaluation-question-3.html

Here are some audience feed back from our facebook campaign for the trailer: Seeing this sort of positive feedback has given my group and I much more confidence and feel that we have got what we wanted to get across to our target audience. We did get some criticism on the camera angles but when re editing we realised that we actually had a range of different shots. However, if we had more time there would've been a possibility of having a bit more of a range. This can also be seen on one of my older posts
http://louisaswithenbankhorror.blogspot.com/2010/12/target-audience-profile.html

Jeffrey J Ropar Very disturbing, ah, so ...WELL DONE!! Great acting and directing and editing... have to work on the camera angles though....

Heather 'meme' Robertson Wowser, this is kinda scary. well done girlies, love it. xx

December 3 at 2:38pm ·

Jessica Baranov This is brilliant! i love the filming, acting, and editing. it works perfectly :D.December 3 at 6:30pm ·

Here is also a bit of audience feedback for the magazine cover:
Most people thought that the magazine cover worked well and still had a horror theme to it. However, there was only a little criticism which I agree with a little bit that the sentence 'TOP 10 MOVIES' doesn't really work well for a horror genre magazine. On the other hand I realise why that is useful to be on the cover, since it shows that it's a film magazine and that our trailer is in the rank of top 10 films which makes a better publicity for us.

• 

  Kate Iorga very nice

  December 3 at 2:25pm ·
• 

  Jessica Baranov I like it, personally i think that the 'top 10 movies of 2010' doesn't really fit in with it.

  December 3 at 6:23pm ·

Evaluation Question 2

Presentation2

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I Will Sin commentary

Evaluation Question 1

Presentation1

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Font Designs

I designed these titles on the website www.dafont.com, I found that this site was the best to use since it has a range of horror genre styles and it helped me to become more creative in what I wanted to achieve.
When looking at titles for horror based films I realised that they were always bold, eyecatching and sometimes the font is quite scratched up. The first too titles are both scratched and look worn away. I thought about using a font like this because I was influenced by the film 'I Spit On Your Grave.' However, I didn't think that this would suite our film poster since the image is quite a statement on it's own I thought that having font like these too would take away from the impact of the image.
Instead I decided to use the third font style because it still has a horror feel to it but is still simple and not too dramatic. This font style worked well with the image and even though it does stand out it doesn't take it away from the image on the poster.

I Will Sin Trailer

Target Audience Profile

Here is information on what we found out about age certificates and our decision on what age we think our trailer should be viewed at.
http://lowrihorror.blogspot.com/2010/12/age.html
My group and I needed to have more information and feedback from our target audience to see if we were meeting their criteria of horror expectations. We decided that the best way to receive this feedback was to upload our first edit of the trailer, the poster and magazine cover to a facebook website that we made. We did this so that we could see not just the positive feedback but criticism as well so that we know what to develop and what to keep.



horror trailer feedback - make slideshow

I Will Sin Magazine Cover

http://d-akinyemiabs.blogspot.com/2010/12/textual-analysis-of-magazine.html

Poster Evaluation

Shot list and Script

Media slideshow

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I Will Sin Synopsis

Beth Summers (Louisa Swithenbank) is a shy and lonely girl who lives her life in books and longs to feel excepted. She is constantly bullied at school by most pupils especialy by three boys, Dan Woods (Jack Dalziel), Mike Jones (Alex Parez) and Jake Lanes (Daniel Rodiguez).
Beth finally gets invited to what she thinks is the best party of her life in the heath. Beth finaly feels that she has began to make friends. However, once she arrives to the heath confusion begins to hit. Out of nowhere Beth gets violently attacked by the three bullies at her school and can't understand why they're treating her in this way. She is tied to a tree and left to suffer.
Beth finaly escapes and sets out for her revenge.
She will feel no remorse and will sin to succeed for her own sanity.

New Idea

When I went home after school I was having trouble thinking of a plot for our horror trailer, then I realised that the characters that my group and I have are all teenage boys. I then researched all horror based trailers that had boys as victims and the women as the fighter, teenage stereotypes and the school life for a teenager.
This is what I found:





These trailers both inspired me to come up with a new horror trailer. I decided to do a storyline of a girl who gets bullied by three boys in her class, they then stitch her up and invite her to a made up party on the heath. Here they tie her to a tree and are violent towards her because she is from a different social status at school to them. The girl then gets her revenge, just like in both trailers of 'I spit on your grave' and 'The Final'.

This is our storyboard for our new idea 'I Will Sin'
http://lowrihorror.blogspot.com/2010/11/i-will-sin-storyboard.html

Changes

http://lowrihorror.blogspot.com/2010/11/i-will-sin-storyboard.html

My group and I filmed our horror trailer for 'Final Deadline' however, since we don't have a budget to make the trailer our lighting was too dark for the camera. We tried to work with some lighting that we had but when we needed to do scenes that were in the cemetery the lighting was too weak and the footage was just too dark to put on the trailer.
When we were told that we couldn't use certain footage we decided to change our whole story line since we had to film over the weekend and getting the characters that we had used for 'Final Deadline's' trailer would've been too late of notice. Instead we asked three boys if they would be our characters for our new trailer.

Flickr slideshow

Here is a slide show of our flickr photostream where we have uploaded images which helped us to explore and develop themes and settings for our trailer.

Shot types

Shot 1: Mid-shot of teacher, slightly from a low angle.

Shot 2: Clip of production. 'A production by Twisted Pictures'

Shot 3: Close up of Jessica. To have insight of characters and make a first impression.

Shot 4: Long shot of building.

Shot 5: Close up of Dan.

Shot 6: Long shot of male and female running, characters unknown to audience.

Shot 7: Close up of Josephine.

Shot 8: Long shot of character who is blacked out and not seen.

Shot 9: Mid shot of the back of Dan and slight view of Josephine's face.

Shot 10: Long shot of Jacob sitting on floor in building.

Shot 11: Over head, mid shot of Jacob being dragged along floor.

Shot 12: Sentence 'DYING TO MEET IT...'

Shot 13: Mid shot of black bag over characters head.

Shot 14: Title 'FINAL DEADLINE'

Shot 15: 'Out Summer 2011'

Final Deadline script

Shot 1=
Teacher: "For your final grade, in groups your making a horror trailer".
Speaks from the front of a classroom to students.

Shot 3=
Jessica: "I know this building".
Speaks to group.

Shot 5=
Dan: " Ive heard about that place..."
Speaks to group.

Shot 6=
Dan: "... people have died there".
Voice over clip of people running.


Shot 7=
Josephine: "Sounds like fun".
Speaks to group.

Shot 9=
Jacob: "Let's go then".
Speaks to group.

Shot 10=
Josephine: Screams.
As hand with blood is spread against a window on a door.

Shot 11=
Josephine: "What was that?"

Shot 13=
Jacob: Screams.
Gets dragged along the floor.

Randy's Rules

This clip is from 'Scream 3' where the character Randy is expressing the concepts of the horror genre.
Whilst watching some 'Scream' film clips I've noticed that it is quite similar to our own concepts for our trailer. In the sense that it has the stereotypical stock characters such as the wanderer, the jock, the popular girl and the virgin.

Exploring Themes

I went to West Park's abandoned mental institute where my group and I want to film for Final Deadline's trailer. I took some images on the building site but couldn't take any more since I didn't have full access to the inside of the building. However, I then decided to explore horror themes such as, abandoned objects, motifs of colours and many other themes that I have explored through my uploaded photos that are on my flickr account http://www.flickr.com/photos/lswithenbank/
I decided to use flickr to upload my photos since it is a visual history of everything I've every uploaded onto it and I thought that all my images would be perfect to upload onto a site like flickr.

Risk Assessment Research

I researched into risk assessments and things that I need to include to ensure that the health and safety of members of staff and actors are perfectly fine.

http://http//www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/filmmaking/guide/production/health-and-safety

'Producers should ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that persons working with and for them are not exposed to risks to their health and safety. An example of what may be considered reasona

bly practicable would be if location filming was taking place in a warehouse with poor lighting. It would be appropriate to ensure that extra lighting is used and that all sharp or otherwise hazardous equipment is made safe.

You should have at least one experienced member of the crew who is aware of health and safety issues.

Some genres may pose more risks than others i.e. horror or action films or scenes involving animals. The production team should discuss safety issues before filming begins and take steps to avoid or reduce the risks identified.'

This is what I found that the members of crew and actors need to be aware of.

Final Deadline Risk Assessment:

• Know where the fire exits are.
• No use of real weapons.
• Get to the building where filming will be held well/the surroundings.
• Make sure that everyone stays in groups whilst filming.
• Don't take food or drinks onto the site.

I Will Sin Risk Assessment:

Here we assessed what could be at risk when filming for our crew and actors.

• Hazard Identification
• Associated Risks
• Persons At Risk
• Control Measures
• Consequence, Likelihood and Risk Rating

Student Action Plan

Today my group and I also wrote down an action plan of all the things that we need to do before the following week. The plan consists of

• Planing our setting,props and actors that we need. This must be completed by the 4th November.
• Upload our concepts video.
• Take still images at the cinema of the film that we are seeing to show how we're exploring horror genre.
• We need to upload images that we took to show how we were exploring different themes of horror and specific colours.
• We need to also include a video recording of our target audience questionnaire.
• And complete our filming over the weekend.

This action plan proves that my group and I have a lot to do but, in order to complete this target we must stick to what we have set our selves.

Marking the Advanced Portfolio

Today in the lesson I was asked to evaluate my electronic format of research and planning. With this evaluation I had to give my self a level for each criteria that should be included on my blog.
Once giving my self a grade I showed evidence of how it was blogged and my action plan that I needed to do to complete all the criteria.
I found that there are two main criteria that I have failed to meet but will do so this weekend; to ensure I get the best possible grade.

Film Trailer Title

The title that we chose for our film is 'Final Deadline'

My group and I decided that this title was a clever title to use since it is a play on word. For instance,the first meaning is literal, the students have a deadline to hand in their media coursework. The second meaning is expressed in the word 'Dead' which links into the title. This relates to the trailer where all of the students get killed by one of their fellow students.

Our title relates well to our target audience since it's about the final piece of coursework that's needed to be handed in. All of our target audience can relate to the meaning of this title, which makes it quite successful.

In our research we found that lots of Slasher/Horror movies related to a specific time on the calendar. Such as, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Black Christmas, Valentine's Massacre. Moreover, further research into the texts showed that these dates relate back to an event that causes the killer to be out for revenge. For example, Halloween is the exact time Michael Myers the 'psychotic killer' , gets institutionalise and comes back 'for a mindless rampage'.

Our Synopsis

Synopsis for 'Final Deadline'

Four media students in their final year of sixth form, have to make a film production for media. The grade that they receive for this production determines whether they go to university.

The filming production is taken place in a mental institute.

The only person taking the project seriously, is grade A student Jessica Woods.

She is the wanderer of the group and separates from them to explore the mental institute to finish the project on her own.

Whilst Jessica is exploring, the 'Jock' of the group, Dan Moorse decides to play tricks on his girlfriend, Josephine Khemet who is the popular girl.

The last of the four; Jacob Roper gives up on the media project and decides to relax in one of the rooms in the institute with a beer and a cigarette.

All the characters slowly begin to get killed by one of their fellow possessed students. This killer has been possessed by the lost souls of the mental patients.

Jessica (the killer) returns to school with the footage of her fellow students' deaths to receive her A grade.

Planning

Mental institute- Planning

My group and I thought that it would be interesting to set our horror trailer in a mental institute. We have been researching into settings and West Park mental institute is one of the setting that we might do our filming at if we get permission. I have also taken some of my own pictures which I will upload onto the flicker website.

http://www.abandoned-britain.com/index.html

Lu

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Researching Horror Magazines

Horror Genre Magazines:


http://www.dreadcentral.com/fangoria

The main image is a close up head shot of a zombie. The image presents to the readers/audiences what the magazine is about.

The font of the title 'Fangoria' symbolises fangs of a vampire which links to the horror genre of this magazine.

Concepts in horror trailers

Themes/Motifs/Ideology:

'Chain Letter'

When watching the trailer for this film I straight

away realised that mobiles where in most of the shots therefore would be a motif during the film. Having mobiles as a motif

informs the audience that the target audience are people who are accustomed to using technology like mobile phones.

These images are the motifs:

This motif of the mobile phone also links well with the title as it plays on words with it. The title is called 'Chain Letter' which you also receive through text messages.

The audience are also introduced to the weapon(a chain)that is used by the killer in the trailer which also links well to the word 'Chain' in the title. The theme being the chain also, in a comical way it plays on words with the plot of the film.

These are the examples:

Researching Characters and Costumes

My group and I were asked to research a range of horror films and link our own conceptions to it. The concepts that we were asked to look at were props, locations, settings, mise en scene, characters, costumes, plot lines, summary, narrative, themes, motifs and ideology.

Characters and Costumes:


blog 2 - picture slideshow

Researching costumes and characters I have found that in most horror genre based films they don't usually use human looking killers. For instance in the film 'Chucky' they use a doll creating more thriller and alluding the audience, making them think that the doll is just a doll and harmful. However, once the character Chucky starts to kill it has more of an effect on the audience and shocks them in a much more dynamic way. I have also realised that if the killer (protagonist) is a human and not a creature or monster they usually where masks to hide their identity. For instance in the film 'Strangers' the characters who are the murderers all where masks this type of costume gives these characters a superior feel meaning that it makes their characters even more intensely scary and since we the audience don't know who's under that mask it keeps mystery and therefor superiority.

However looking at so called killers who are human and don't hide their identity also can be quite thrilling and have a major effect on the audiences emotions. For instance looking at the trailer 'I spit on your grave' the protagonist of the film ends up being the killer and tortures the men that hurt her. The protagonist who is a woman creates a dehumanised character within the actions she does during the film (torturing). The protagonist creates the tension and puts in on the audience without having to hide her identity. The fact that she doesn't hide her identity makes her character even more scary since it makes the film so much more realistic almost saying anyone can be a killer to get revenge.

Iconography and Ideology

• Horror Iconography and Ideology:

horror posters - slide show

I decided to use a slideshow to show the images of the posters to make my blog less boring. Since I haven't used a slide show like this before I thought it would be interesting to experiment with. I found this slide show very simple to use but found that I couldn't put text on the slide show, which would have made it less confusing.

Saw:

T The title that we can see on the poster is quite small but effective since it merges with the gruesome image.

The title ‘Saw’ is in a white colour to make it stand out since it’s quite small.

The font of the title look as though they are the man’s teeth, this makes the title very effective.

In the poster we as the audience only see the image of a man’s moth wide open and a bit of the bottom half of his face. Like many horror posters they try not to show a lot on the poster so that the audience are more intrigued (as this poster does).

In the image it is very obvious to an audience that the man is in pain, we can tell this because most of his teeth have been pulled out and there is a hook in his mouth.

Even though we can’t see most of his face we know that this character on the poster is being tortured. Like most of ‘Saw’s’ posters they always show someone being tortured so if a ‘Saw’ fan you can tell what is going on in the poster without giving away too much of the plot of the film.

The tag line ‘ Opening wide this Halloween’ is very humorous and relates well to the image.

The Last Exorcism:

The font of the title ‘The Last Exorcism’ is quite Gothic this relates to the time that the film is set and creates a spooky atmosphere to the poster.

The colour of the font is black which contrasts with the bright off white background.

The use of the bright background creates shadows from the image of the girl on the wall, this makes the poster more effectively scary and informs the audience of the genre of the film.

The image of the girl on the wall is very haunting and the position of her body makes her look unnatural or inhuman; the positioning of her body is quite spider like. Since the image of the girl is in the corner of the wall it could be said that the photographer decided to position it this way so that it would look as if the girl is ready to pounce out of the picture. This makes the image more thrilling and makes it a must see.

30 days of night:

The main colours of the poster are black and red. These colours are associated with death, night, blood and fear. This meaning that the film might consist of these themes.

The Blair Witch Project:

The title is written like you would see witchcraft written. This could be a link to the title being ‘The Blair witch project’. The letters are very spaced out from each other, representing isolation, which links to the image of the woods.

There is then a short paragraph on what the film is going to be about, the word ‘disappeared’ makes the audience curious and adds to the effect of horror.

The image is of a wood, this gives an insight into where the film will be set, and also it is written in the small paragraph.

The image looks like a negative Polaroid, which adds to the found footage. This makes the tree’s stand out and look ghostly and have a spirit feel to them. The colours black and white remind us of death.

From analysing both of these horror film posters I have noticed that they both have some similarities. The font styles of both titles are in capitals this could be that they want their audiences to be drawn in by the title and remember the name of it. Both images don’t reveal too much of their characters faces, this technique that quite a lot of horror posters do is to intrigue the audience and really make them think about the film and what it might be about. The colouring of both images are quite interesting. They’re both similar in the sense that the lighting is quite light to exaggerate certain elements of the image. For instance ‘The Last Exorcism’ uses quite a light background to create and exaggerate the shadows on the wall. In the ‘Saw’ image they have used light lighting to emphasise the man’s mouth to create a gruesome feel.

Conventions of a horror trailer

'Devil' synopsis

Looking at synopsis and the similarities that it shares with other horror synopsis:

These colours represent:

Green: Characters

Orange: Protagonist

Red: Plot

Blue: Villain

Devil:

The film begins with a person committing suicide by jumping from a building narrated by Ramirez (Jacob Vargas) who mentions that his mother tells him stories of the Devil roaming the earth, and it always begins with a suicide. Detective Bowden (Chris Messina) is called to the scene to aid in the investigation. Bowden is a recovering alcoholic devastated by the death of his wife and child in a hit-and-run accident by a driver who was never caught. As this is happening, five strangers, who have committed various crimes in the past, step onto an elevator located within the same building where the suicide has taken place.

The five strangers include Ben (Bokeem Woodbine), a temp security guard with a violent past; an elderly woman (Jenny O'Hara) who is a compulsive thief; Vince (Geoffrey Arend), a mattress salesman who moonlights as a con artist; Tony (Logan Marshall-Green), a former mechanic who served in the U.S. military during the War in Afghanistan who is now seeking employment within the building; and Sarah (Bojana Novakovic), a greed encompassed heiress meeting with her lawyer in the building.

Strange things start to occur beginning with the elevator becoming stuck between floors. Then, after the lights go out, Sarah is inexplicably wounded on her back. The remaining occupants of the elevator quickly begin to suspect Vince of having committed the assault. Slowly, one by one, the five strangers start to die. First, Vince is killed by a shard of glass from a mirror which slices his jugular vein. Detective Bowden, sensing a connection between this and the man who earlier committed suicide in the same building, is compelled to further investigate. Checking the building's guest log, Bowden finds that only four people have missed their scheduled appointments that day: Sarah, Vince, Ben, and Janecowski. The investigators misinterpret the latter as Jane Cowski and assume this is the old woman's name, leaving Bowden suspicious of Tony who appears to be the only undocumented occupant.

With the help of the buildings security team, Bowden examines security footage and discovers that the old woman had stolen a wallet prior to entering the elevator. The office building's repairman is sent down the elevator shaft to fix it, but plummets to his death. During a power outage, the old woman is found hanging by the neck from an electrical cord and presumed dead. Sarah and Ben turn on Tony, while Bowden begins to suspect that Sarah's husband has hired Ben to kill her. A security guard inspects the basement and electrocutes himself attempting to secure a hot fallen wire. The lights go out again and Ben is dead with his neck completely twisted around. Each thinking the other must be responsible for the murders, Tony and Sarah prepare to fight each other with broken glass, but Bowden seemingly manages to calm them. As Sarah prepares to take out a shard of glass hidden in her back pocket, the lights once again go out and her throat is slashed. The mystery seems solved, when a tattooed woman arrives and informs Bowden that Tony is her fiance, and was at the building for a job interview. Only then is his full name revealed to be Tony Janecowski.

The old woman suddenly rises and appears behind Tony. It is now apparent that she is the Devil who has taken a human form. Having dispensed of the others, The Devil tells Tony its his turn to die. Detective Bowden watches through the CCTV as Tony confesses to killing two people in a drunken hit-and-run accident. Tony had been trying to grab another beer while driving and had not seen where was going. Tony says "I'm so sorry." and Bowden had a car wash coupon that says "I'm so sorry" on the back. At which point the Devil is forced to spare him (as he confessed his sin and apologized for it) and disappears as the firemen finish breaking into the elevator. Detective Bowden realizes Tony is the one who killed his wife and son, but expresses his forgiveness en route to the police station following his arrest.

The film ends with Ramirez telling the audience that his mother always reassured him at the end of her stories, "If the Devil is real, God must also be real."

www.imdb.com/title/tt1314655/synopsis

Once looking at the synopsis for the 'Devil' film I found that it has some similarities with the film 'Saw'. For instance in both films the characters have all committed a sin or have done some wrong in their past, where they are then tortured by the villain for doing so. I found that these type of story scar their audiences by trying to show a lesson such as, 'if you don't follow the moral codes in life then you will become that victim.' (social control)

I also thought that the 'Devil' film brakes the rules of horror conventions by teasing the audience and then doing something that they wouldn't expect. For example having the villain as an old woman instead of the stereotypical murderous male character. This completely breaks the conventions.