At the beginning of the year we had to create a preliminary piece where we practiced using the cameras as well as practicing using the school editing software to see if we could make a real looking end product. The preliminary exercise had to include a match on action which I used a back gate for as well as a conversation between 2 people whilst using shot reverse shot on a 180 degree line. My preliminary exercise went well and I think I matched my shots up well. This preliminary exercise was good practice for my end product and helped me get used to thinking about my shots before I took them and showed me the importance of planning before I filmed my piece. It also helped me to start to get used to using editing software as I had never used it before. Since I am a year 14 student my preliminary exercise was deleted to save school memory, not realising that I was coming back for an extra year so my apologies that I cant upload my preliminary exercise.
I think that this was a necessary thing to do before filming my end product as it helped me get used to filming and editing my final product.
My final product was a vast improvement from my preliminary exercise as I used a great deal more shots that were edited together far more effectively to give a higher quality final result.
My final product was far more demanding in the fact that I had to design the editing based around the soundtrack I used where as I had far more freedom in my prelim.
And finally I believe that I make a far more effective and exciting final product than my prelim and I am proud of what I have made, my target audience seems to be pleased with what I have made which is my main focus of designing this piece. I think I have made a very detailed and effective horror film opening that uses many typical horror movie conventions to make this as effective and gripping as possible.
Sunday, 8 May 2011
Evaluation of my 2 minute film opening
I believe that my 2 minute opening uses a variety of different horror conventions effectively throughout the entire production. It uses the dark eerie lighting throughout the entire production, the overgrown alleyway really helped to capture this darkness in the chase scene as you can tell from the difference in lighting in the opening 2 shots, this was a slight downfall at times however as the digital camera I was using was very light sensitive, if there was too much light then getting a normal looking scene was quite difficult to achieve. If there was not enough lighting then the scene looks too dark, making the transitions between shots not flow as smoothly as i had first intended, here are some examples to show you the difference in lighting I had due to this problem of sensitivity with my camera.
In some scenes this problem made it very difficult too see what exactly was going on, one of my scenes was meant to be a POV of one of the infected chasing the main character, however due to the problem with lighting you could barely see the small scene. My target audience did not seem to notice however so maybe I am just being too harsh on myself. I believe that this problem made parts of my introduction lose continuity, however my target audience seemed to rate it highly and nothing was mentioned on lighting in my comments. Here are some examples of what I mean:
I think that my film opening effectively uses sound throughout the entire duration, I worked particularly hard on this part of editing to ensure that my product made the most of the soundtrack and that the pace of editing matched and reflected the pace of the music. Here is my film opening again to show you what I mean:
My film opening uses a wide variety of short and long shots to ensure that my end product was as smooth as possible, this was another point that was mentioned by a peer media student in my consumer feedback which supports my point. I tried to use a variety of more imaginative shots such as the infected running into then back out of the camera to reinforce to the audience that there is no camera there making the scene look more lifelike as well as the close up birds eye view and the stationary on the floor shot I used aimed at monster fodder, both of these quick shots were used to speed up the chase scene and were used in conjunction with editing to make my opening as effective as possible. In my POV shot of the infected I used quick cuts to speed up the chase scene and masked them as the infected blinking, I believe this was an effective method of speeding up time as the origional chase scene was far longer than what is in my opening, I wanted to make sure that I did not drag the scene on for to long and more my target audience.
My film opening was obviously shot in an isolated location of an alleyway and a close which is a typical horror convention, isolated locations are used primarily to reinforce the point that there is no help coming for our protagonist which makes the audience worry more for them when something dangerous comes along. Again as I said before during the chase scene I used monster fodder to show the audience what happens when the infected catch who they are chasing, the mysterious man appears to be dead, but later on in the opening it shows that actually he has just become one of them. I brought him back into the opening by using him in a jumpy scene which are typical of horror scenes to give the audience a quick thrill of excitement.
Usually there is a disruption of normallity in horror films, however an infected chase and murder scene does not happen in real life so my target audience get their normality from real life. My opening also starts off backwards if that makes sence in the fact that it starts off with a chase scene then introduces the story, just to give the audience a taste of what's to come in the rest of the film. Horror films typically use this to introduce their main threat through the use of monster fodder, I have used the same technique but without it actually happening in the film due to the use of the dream sequence.
Thursday, 5 May 2011
Consumer Feedback
To see what some of my potential consumers had to say I posted it onto my youtube account and onto my facebook profile along with a small questionnaire to see what they had to say, here are my restults:
My results show that from the small majority of potential consumers that watched it the vast majority of them did like it and that the 2 people that said it was alright said that zombie/horror was not their thing, meaning that they are not my target audience, however even though zombie/horror is not their preffered genre of film they both said that they wanted to watch the rest of the film which is great as this means that I have intrugued not only my target audience but those that I have not aimed my film opening at, I have catered to a larger audience than I had origionally thought according to these results. There were many comments on the pace of my opening, that it was fast paced and helped to add to the tension, this is the exact result I wanted from my audience and I am glad that they picked up on this. They also mentioned how the editing matches the pace of the music well and that this also helped to add tension to the opening which again is exactly what I had set out to do. The majority of consumers did worry for the main characters safety which is again what I had set out to achieve as this argubely shows that the audience has built up some sort of relationship with Tom's character in a very short space of time, this makes the audience interact more with the film making them pay attention and be more suseptable to higher suspense and jumpy scenes, making the horror work far more effectively at scaring and thrilling its audience. Many of my target audience comment on the scene where the gun doesn't work, I did this to again heighten the suspence at the end as it seems like he is safe with the gun removing him from the danger but he is not, sending him straight back into the peak of the danger.
Overall I am very pleased with this feedback, on average I scored 7/10-8/10 which is a great end result, I have recieved many positive comments from my target audience which is great as it tells me that my film opening is successful in making my target audience want to watch it.
Obviously this is only a small test posted on my facebook page which arguably only applies to my friends however I recieved a range of comments and each person stated their own opinions so there is some reliability to these results.
Overall I am very pleased with this feedback, on average I scored 7/10-8/10 which is a great end result, I have recieved many positive comments from my target audience which is great as it tells me that my film opening is successful in making my target audience want to watch it.
Obviously this is only a small test posted on my facebook page which arguably only applies to my friends however I recieved a range of comments and each person stated their own opinions so there is some reliability to these results.
Infection
Here is my final 2 minute film opening:
The actors that feature in this film are:
Tom Hazel who plays the main hero (yet to have his name revealed to the audience).
Sam Catto who plays the infected man in blue.
James Page who plays monster fodder (corpse) and infected at front door.
Myself who plays the infected man in grey.
Other corpses in street were played by neighbours of Sam Catto's.
When it came to editing my piece together I started out with around 60 different camera shots i had taken lasting 5 minutes long in total which I had to go through and pick out the best and most effective shots to narrow down to the required 2 minutes. I enjoyed editing my footage and got carried away so much that I forgot to take pictures or record me editing which is frustrating when it comes to uploading what i have done. I am however very pleased with my final product and think that I have made an effective piece.
When filming and editing I kept in mind to have a variety of long shots and short shots to help break the clip up and make it flow better and make the scenes visually more pleasing. The opening starts straight in the action, throwing the audience in the deep end so to speak. The hero is ambushed by 2 shady looking characters that try to tackle him to the ground, making feral like noises. I started up my typical horror music to abide by horror film conventions and immediately cut this to a pan/tracking shot of them running round the corner, during this chase scene I mixed things up shot wise to build up the tension and put emphasys on speed and trying to escape. My favourite shot that I used had to of been when Sam runs into the camera then immediately out of it just after this scene as if there was no camera there at all, considering the pace we were running at pulling this particular shot off took a couple of attempts but was well worth it looking at it now. I tried to keep the faces of the infected men as hidden and blurred as possbile to keep the audience intrigued at the beginning as to what exactly was happening, it keeps the audience on their toes and makes them question what they are seeing making them interact with the text which is what I had intended to make them do. Again i used an arial shot which worked particularly well at blurring everyone that ran past it adding to its mystery followed straight after by a corpse on the ground, this is another enigma code I have added to make the audience think who is he and what happened to him, leading to the obvious assumption that that is what will happen to our hero if they catch him. The fact that there is a corpse out in the open also shows that this is not an every day setting our character is in as people do not just get murdered and left where ever, it helps to reinforce the audiences thoughts that the men that ambushed our main character are not just thugs and that they are more primal than that. I then used a POV shot of one of the infected to show how they percieve things, giving the audience an insight into their minds so to speak where the heavy breathing and quick flash cuts reinforce to the audience that there is something wrong with the men. Tom opens the door to what we presume is his home ovbiously leaving the infected behind him time to catch up, tom turns around and drop kicks the infected to push them back and tries to close the door, there is then a close up as the other infected puts his arm in the way to block it. Tom panics andpushes himself off the door, pushing the infected back for a split second and giving Tom extra time to get ahead where Tom shuts them into the room. The shots i have used here have been simple but effective, cutting the camera to the side to get a clearer view from Toms perspective, getting up close and personal with the zombies so to speak, this gievs the audience the effect that they are there with him and really helps to raise tension. Tom tries to find a way of escaping but all the exits are either locked or he is cut off from, here i used a event pan/crop option on this piece of footage to give this panning zoom on the door as he tries to open it. I used another typical horror convention of trying to make the audience jump with another infected man coming to the door as Tom tries to escape out of it, making him panic and run upstairs. Shots like this are typically used to give the audience a sudden burst of fear, get their hearts racing and again making them respond to what they see making them more active in their viewing. Tom runs upstairs into his room where he seems to be searching for something, this makes the audience question what it is hes trying to find and again makes them interact more with what they are watching. Our questions are soon answered as Tom finds his gun and aims at the door, the music starts to reach its climax as the scene becomes tenser, I intended here for the audience to feel a sigh of relief that he can now turn the tables on his attackers but at the same time make the audience worry and panic because they must be about to attack him at any moment and designed it so that the music helped to add to this panic. This is another one of my favourite shots where the camera goes into a first person view of him holding and aiming the gun at the door, the door slowly opens when we finally clearly see who has been attacking our hero, we are revealed who they are at the same time, here I intended for the audience to feel the same emotions as Tom by putting them into his shoes. We now want to see if he makes it out alive, the camera cuts to a mid shot of Tom trying to shoot the infected but he has no bullets, this immidately takes out any feelings that he was safe as the gun is now useless, Tom again panics with the audience making them emphasise with him. The infected then throw him onto the bed where they proceed to eat him, the audiences fears come to life here were the complete opposite happens than they wanted, a dream fade out effect comes in confusing the audience as to what is happening but then Tom wakes up panting after having a nightmare where once again the audience are relieved that he is okay, there is then a pan of the street outside littered with dead bodies with a voice over of the character, 'This is my life, always running, never knowing when one of those things is going to find me' this voice over is used to tell the audience that yes it was a dream but it is his reality in the film and effectively is an introduction to the character without obviously saying 'hi i am...' the name of the film then comes up at the bottom of the pan and there is a fade out.
I think that this film opening does a very good job of setting up a relationship between the audience and the main character, it makes them worry about his safety even though they know nothing about him. It uses many typical horror film conventions to make it work, the use of dark/sinister lighting throughout, the use of a sinister and thrilling soundtrack that reaches its creshendo as the story reach its own and that the editing matched this pace of music. There is monster fodder shown in the form of many corpses littered through the streets and a close up on a corpse in the same alleyway the hero gets attacked in. The use of the alleyway and the culdesack is an isolated location making the chance of help arriving very slim, adding to the audiences fears for his safety. The use of the voice over tells the audience that this is the protagonists normallity and that he is used to trying to survive making him an admirable character.
The actors that feature in this film are:
Tom Hazel who plays the main hero (yet to have his name revealed to the audience).
Sam Catto who plays the infected man in blue.
James Page who plays monster fodder (corpse) and infected at front door.
Myself who plays the infected man in grey.
Other corpses in street were played by neighbours of Sam Catto's.
When it came to editing my piece together I started out with around 60 different camera shots i had taken lasting 5 minutes long in total which I had to go through and pick out the best and most effective shots to narrow down to the required 2 minutes. I enjoyed editing my footage and got carried away so much that I forgot to take pictures or record me editing which is frustrating when it comes to uploading what i have done. I am however very pleased with my final product and think that I have made an effective piece.
When filming and editing I kept in mind to have a variety of long shots and short shots to help break the clip up and make it flow better and make the scenes visually more pleasing. The opening starts straight in the action, throwing the audience in the deep end so to speak. The hero is ambushed by 2 shady looking characters that try to tackle him to the ground, making feral like noises. I started up my typical horror music to abide by horror film conventions and immediately cut this to a pan/tracking shot of them running round the corner, during this chase scene I mixed things up shot wise to build up the tension and put emphasys on speed and trying to escape. My favourite shot that I used had to of been when Sam runs into the camera then immediately out of it just after this scene as if there was no camera there at all, considering the pace we were running at pulling this particular shot off took a couple of attempts but was well worth it looking at it now. I tried to keep the faces of the infected men as hidden and blurred as possbile to keep the audience intrigued at the beginning as to what exactly was happening, it keeps the audience on their toes and makes them question what they are seeing making them interact with the text which is what I had intended to make them do. Again i used an arial shot which worked particularly well at blurring everyone that ran past it adding to its mystery followed straight after by a corpse on the ground, this is another enigma code I have added to make the audience think who is he and what happened to him, leading to the obvious assumption that that is what will happen to our hero if they catch him. The fact that there is a corpse out in the open also shows that this is not an every day setting our character is in as people do not just get murdered and left where ever, it helps to reinforce the audiences thoughts that the men that ambushed our main character are not just thugs and that they are more primal than that. I then used a POV shot of one of the infected to show how they percieve things, giving the audience an insight into their minds so to speak where the heavy breathing and quick flash cuts reinforce to the audience that there is something wrong with the men. Tom opens the door to what we presume is his home ovbiously leaving the infected behind him time to catch up, tom turns around and drop kicks the infected to push them back and tries to close the door, there is then a close up as the other infected puts his arm in the way to block it. Tom panics andpushes himself off the door, pushing the infected back for a split second and giving Tom extra time to get ahead where Tom shuts them into the room. The shots i have used here have been simple but effective, cutting the camera to the side to get a clearer view from Toms perspective, getting up close and personal with the zombies so to speak, this gievs the audience the effect that they are there with him and really helps to raise tension. Tom tries to find a way of escaping but all the exits are either locked or he is cut off from, here i used a event pan/crop option on this piece of footage to give this panning zoom on the door as he tries to open it. I used another typical horror convention of trying to make the audience jump with another infected man coming to the door as Tom tries to escape out of it, making him panic and run upstairs. Shots like this are typically used to give the audience a sudden burst of fear, get their hearts racing and again making them respond to what they see making them more active in their viewing. Tom runs upstairs into his room where he seems to be searching for something, this makes the audience question what it is hes trying to find and again makes them interact more with what they are watching. Our questions are soon answered as Tom finds his gun and aims at the door, the music starts to reach its climax as the scene becomes tenser, I intended here for the audience to feel a sigh of relief that he can now turn the tables on his attackers but at the same time make the audience worry and panic because they must be about to attack him at any moment and designed it so that the music helped to add to this panic. This is another one of my favourite shots where the camera goes into a first person view of him holding and aiming the gun at the door, the door slowly opens when we finally clearly see who has been attacking our hero, we are revealed who they are at the same time, here I intended for the audience to feel the same emotions as Tom by putting them into his shoes. We now want to see if he makes it out alive, the camera cuts to a mid shot of Tom trying to shoot the infected but he has no bullets, this immidately takes out any feelings that he was safe as the gun is now useless, Tom again panics with the audience making them emphasise with him. The infected then throw him onto the bed where they proceed to eat him, the audiences fears come to life here were the complete opposite happens than they wanted, a dream fade out effect comes in confusing the audience as to what is happening but then Tom wakes up panting after having a nightmare where once again the audience are relieved that he is okay, there is then a pan of the street outside littered with dead bodies with a voice over of the character, 'This is my life, always running, never knowing when one of those things is going to find me' this voice over is used to tell the audience that yes it was a dream but it is his reality in the film and effectively is an introduction to the character without obviously saying 'hi i am...' the name of the film then comes up at the bottom of the pan and there is a fade out.
I think that this film opening does a very good job of setting up a relationship between the audience and the main character, it makes them worry about his safety even though they know nothing about him. It uses many typical horror film conventions to make it work, the use of dark/sinister lighting throughout, the use of a sinister and thrilling soundtrack that reaches its creshendo as the story reach its own and that the editing matched this pace of music. There is monster fodder shown in the form of many corpses littered through the streets and a close up on a corpse in the same alleyway the hero gets attacked in. The use of the alleyway and the culdesack is an isolated location making the chance of help arriving very slim, adding to the audiences fears for his safety. The use of the voice over tells the audience that this is the protagonists normallity and that he is used to trying to survive making him an admirable character.
Editing
After I finished filming my work it is clear that to make any film opening have a good quality, smooth flowing, effective finish that it needs to have quality editing done to it. I will be making sure that the editing matches the pace of the music, making sure that there are no continuity errors so that my audience continues to be under the illusion of my final product and just polishing the final product to make it run as sooth as possible.
Sony Vegas Pro 8.0 also comes with many different effects that I had at my disposal, however during a film opening I could not really use some of the flashier edits as it would not make my piece flow as I intended it too.
To edit my work I have used Sony Vegas Pro 8.0, this particular piece of editing software is by far the easiest software to use in my opinion compared to other programmes such as FinalCut Pro on the school MAC's and enabled me to so some far more advanced pieces of editing such as zooming in and out of certain parts of the clip. Just drag a piece of footage down onto the playhead and click the Event pan/Crop button on the clip were you will be promped with this menu, here I have simulated the prompt with another piece of footage I was editing.
Sony Vegas Pro 8.0 also comes with many different effects that I had at my disposal, however during a film opening I could not really use some of the flashier edits as it would not make my piece flow as I intended it too.
To edit my work I have used Sony Vegas Pro 8.0, this particular piece of editing software is by far the easiest software to use in my opinion compared to other programmes such as FinalCut Pro on the school MAC's and enabled me to so some far more advanced pieces of editing such as zooming in and out of certain parts of the clip. Just drag a piece of footage down onto the playhead and click the Event pan/Crop button on the clip were you will be promped with this menu, here I have simulated the prompt with another piece of footage I was editing.
Sound
From what I have learned from looking at many different horror film openings it is clear to me that every successful horror film opening uses an effective accompanying soundtrack over the top of their footage to effectively set the mood of the scene and add to its mis-en-scene. However good quality effective sound tracks are protected by copyright infringements meaning that I cannot use them without having to ask for the artists and or record labels permission before I can use it, so instead I decided it would be far easier to search the Internet for some royalty free music to go over the top of my soundtrack to add to its overall effectiveness. I found a great deal of soundtracks perfect for my horror opening on the website http://www.purple-planet.com/ under their many different genres of music. I had the challenge here of finding the right track that would match the right mood that I wanted portrayed to my audience. Here are the 2 tracks that I narrowed down to in the end.
Into Battle:
I liked this track, it sounded tense and really helped to show the tension I was trying to portray to my target audience, however it seemed to be the same most of the way through and I thought that this may bore the audience so I decided not to use it.
Turning the screw:
In the end I decided I would use this track, its perfect for my scene. The pace of the music starts out slow but gradually builds to a climax as my hero gets cornered and really helps to build tension when it is needed.
Into Battle:
I liked this track, it sounded tense and really helped to show the tension I was trying to portray to my target audience, however it seemed to be the same most of the way through and I thought that this may bore the audience so I decided not to use it.
Turning the screw:
In the end I decided I would use this track, its perfect for my scene. The pace of the music starts out slow but gradually builds to a climax as my hero gets cornered and really helps to build tension when it is needed.
Props and Equipment
When it comes to filming my production I must make it as believable as possible to keep my audience maintained in a trance like state to speak, using props are a very good way of maintaining this illusion and help make a character or a scene more believable. This is key when it comes to making my film opening as I want it to have a film quality look to it, obviously this cannot be done with the cameras we have available too us so I will make sure that everything else filming and editing wise is pristine. To help me achieve this level of precision I will make the most of the media equipment that I do have at my disposal.
Props:
The main prop I used in my film opening was a replica Makarov pistol that was supplied by one of my friends, it plays a key role in my film opening when it appears that the main character is safe and ready to take on the zombies when in fact when it comes to shooting the pistol the main character realises that it has no ammo, once again making the audience panic for the mans safety.
Other more subtle props were the clothes my infected were wearing, to keep the opening believable I made sure that my infected were wearing casual clothes to emphasise the fact that anyone can become infected and that no one is safe. However to make the scene look more believable I should have made their clothes and the faces of the infected grubbier to show that they are more animal like in their thinking and do not care for cleanliness.
When it came to filming my work the most basic but most important piece of equipment I had at my disposal was a Panasonic SDR-S50 digital camera provided by my school, it was the newest camera that I had at my disposable, however is not high definition as I would have preffered to film with a HD camera to make sure that I ended up with a higher quality finished product.
To make sure I kept my camera shots as steady as possible when they were meant to be steady I used a tripod provided by my school. This was proved to be very useful when it came to filming almost every shot that I took, especially the panning shot of the corpse ridden street, and gave me some very fixed quality looking shots. The adjustable legs made it very easily fit into any location I needed it at as well at most heights and the adjustable handle made panning shots slow far smoother.
Props:
Other more subtle props were the clothes my infected were wearing, to keep the opening believable I made sure that my infected were wearing casual clothes to emphasise the fact that anyone can become infected and that no one is safe. However to make the scene look more believable I should have made their clothes and the faces of the infected grubbier to show that they are more animal like in their thinking and do not care for cleanliness.
Equipment:
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