Evaluation 9 (Liam)

9. What was your contribution to the process during the planning, production and post production stages? I feel that Josh and I worked very well together as we got it all done but still maintained a high standard of work. We split the workload fairly equally, although I'd say Josh probably put more effort in getting the project finished off as we approached the deadline. Throughout planning, producing and editing the film we worked together well and got the job done efficiently so we can be very pleased with the effort we've put into this, and, as you can tell from the picture, we had fun in the process. The first thing we had to do was plan our film by carrying out research and creating storyboards, scripts etc. for our project. We discussed which of these would be most appropriate for either of us and split them between us. I wrote up the script and shot list, and provided the recee as the project was to be filmed just outside my house, whereas Josh took charge of creating the storyboard and looking into title and audience research. This all came together well and we managed to get actors who we are both friends with which made filming much easier. Here is the shot list I produced. During the production of the film we decided that Josh would take the role of 'cameraman' and i would be more of a director. This suited both of us and clearly worked well, but at times we gave each others' job a go to make sure we were learning new skills. I was extremely happy with Josh's camerawork and felt that I directed well, by stepping in when i felt something wasn't quite right, but letting Josh have a say in the decisions as well. I think the fact that we went out of our way a number of times to improve on our film shows how comitted we both were to this project. Also, as the location was just outside my house i provided food and drink before every shoot we did! Once we finally finished producing our film, we moved onto the 'post-production' stage. This included editing the film, creaitng the soundtrack and putting them together to create the final product. As we had two macs to work on, we decided it would be best for me to work on the editing of the clips we had and Josh to create the soundtrack. I was happy with this as I had enjoyed editing and adding effects in the past and felt confident with it. We would often in lessons show each other the work we had done and then give each other our thoughts which i thought was an effective way of getting the project finished more quickly, but both of us could contribute towards every aspect of it. As i mentioned earlier, I do feel that Josh did slightly more work during this stage as he used more of his free time adding the finishing touches. Overall, I think both Josh and I have worked hard and contributed pretty equally to this project. I think it has helped that we have got along well throughout and have therefore worked for each other aswell as just for ourselves. We used our lesson time in the mac suite well and also spent a fair amount of our free time either filming or planning our project. I feel that although we may not be the most talented media students we have put in enough effort to be proud of our work by the end. Liam

Evaluation 9 (Josh)

9. What was your contribution to the process during the planning, production and post production stages?

I feel that I contributed to every stage of the whole process, as did Liam. I feel we both had to contribute alot of time and effort because our group is only a small group, with two members. Other groups could split their workload three ways where we had to always do half each.
Starting with the planning side of the process, myself and Liam split the pages we had to do in half so we both did an equal amount. I remember in particular that I did things like the IMDB research, storyboards and textual analysis sheets which required watching two horror films as research. I also took my camera and took pictures when went to a potential location for our horrorfilm with Liam, and I helped construct the Powerpoint we did on our film 'Alone'. Here is a picture of the IMDB research I did.

Furthermore, I think I contributed well to the production of the film. I went to every filming session apart from one which I could not make, for medical reasons. I also always took half our equipment to and from college, with liam taking the other half. When we were filming, I tended to operate the camera whilst Liam looked over the shoot, ensuring the footage we was getting would be valid and good enough to use in our production. Overall, I think we both contributed well to this phase of the process. Here is an example of a storyboard we would use when filming to ensure we were on track.

The last few stages of the whole process was the post-production stages. The main thing I did in these stages was create the soundtrack for our film, using Garageband. I also did help and advise Liam with the editing side of the side of the process, although the majority of the credit goes to Liam for this. Me and Liam both kept our blog up to date, normally after Friday lessons. You can see where we have both blogged we the "J&L." signature at the end of each post. When the deadline was nearing, both me and Liam met up afew times outside of scheduled lesson times to finish off our film and make sure everything ran smoothly. On one of my days where no lessons are scheduled for me, I came in and worked by myself on our film/sound for around an hour and a half, because Liam had to leave for his lesson, which is no fault of his. I think this is one of the many things I did which showed I was very commited to this film. Below is a shot of some of the work I did on garageband, which went towards the final sound in the film.

Alltogether, I think I contributed greatly to all areas of this whole process. Also, I feel that what I added to this film I did so to the best of my ability. Another point to add was that I was always up for any extra work and was constantly trying to arrange dates and think of the best possible thing for our film. But most of all, I feel that putting this film togther was a good team effort, and both of us contributed individual skills to this film, and this is perhaps the main reason I see this film as a success.

Josh

Evaluation 8 (Liam)

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

I think that it is clear to see the progress we have made when comparing our preliminary task to our final project. All areas of our film have been improved, including editing, sound and camerawork.

The first thing I think has got better is the camerawork, especially the ability to keep a steady shot. Although this wasn't a major problem before I think it's safe to say that Josh has perfected this in our final product. Also we have worked on making sure there is enough lead and head room in each of our shots. Here is a shot from our prelimiary showing that we left a lot of head room and didn't really vary our shot types.

Our editing has also improved as we have cut out any continuity errors by taking small details into account from one clip to another, such as which foot our actress used to take her last step in one shot and her next in the next shot. We've also used effects and transitions where needed but tried not to use too many to ruin the content. I think if we were to do this project again we would have spent more time thinking about the effects we would use on our film rather than them being a spur of the moment idea as this gave us less time to experiment with them and choose the right one.

Obviously the sound is now much better since we were introduced to GarageBand. We were able to produce a much more relevant and unique soundtrack to the one in our preliminary task as we could more easily edit different sounds together. Although it does fit with the clip in that task, we have now looked more into the conventions of our genre and been able to come up with a much more relevant one. I think if we did do it again we could improve the sound a little though, as at times it could be used to make our film fit the conventions a little more by adding a few sudden sounds when clips cut back and forth.

Liam.

Evaluation 7 (Liam)

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

During the production of our project we have used a number of different technologies, including iMovie, GarageBand and Blogger.
The main software that was used was iMovie, which we used to create the film by putting the clips together and adding effects where they were needed. This is a very useful programme as it uses fairly basic controls but still gives a quality outcome which is helpful for us as we hadn't had a lot of past experience with film editing. Here is an example of the range of effects that can be added to your film.

We also found GarageBand to be a useful yet not too complicated programme for putting together a soundtrack for our film. There were a number of samples to choose from on the system already, and we could easily mix together different sound clips to create our own unique soundtrack. This definitely gave our film a bit of individuality as we know that it is highly unlikely that anyone will have the exact same sounds as ours.

Blogger is the website we have been posting our progress on and I think it has definitely helped us with the planning and structure of our project. By regularly updating it, we showed how we progressed through the project and it also gave us a chance to display what we had come up with.

Liam.

Evaluation 6 (Josh)

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

From looking around on the internet, there is a variety of ways that we could get a british horror film producer, for example Hammer Film Productions, to take interest in us and help us distribute, exhibit and produce on a much wider scale.

Hammer Film Productions is a film production company based in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1934, and the company is best known for a series of Gothic "Hammer Horror" films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. There are plans for a remake of the film The Woman In Black to be released in 2011, starring Daniel Radcliffe.

We would be more than satisfied with a big production company like Hammer backing our film. We think that they would be able to do everything we are trying to do but on a much bigger scale. Whether it be getting us in to big film festivals such as Frightfest or helping us distribute or product to a wider audience.

To attract a big production company such as Hammer Productions we would have to start small, perhaps at a local film festival such as Mayhem Horror Film Festival, which occours every year on the 28th of October to the 31st of October. The good thing about this film festival is that it is local, in Nottingham. And then if our film becomes bigger, Frightfest would be an ideal festival for us to showcase our film to a much wider audience. Frightfest is without a doubt the biggest UK horror film festival - It attracts thousands of fans each year for 5 days packed full of films.

Little deaths is a film that is going to played at Frightfest this year. There is picture of the film on the left. It has gained alot of recognition as a smaller film, and this is what we would want to do if we could get our film to be in a film festival such as Mayhem, or even one such as Frightfest.

Josh

Evaluation 5 (Josh)

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

As discussed in question 3, our target audeince is teenagers and young adults. The specific age group for this would be somewhere around 15-29 year olds and this is because of the reasearch we did of IMDB. Personally I think we did a good job when thinking about how well we targeted our audience as our film has the same kind of tension/atmosphere as popular films such as Paranormal activity, that our target audeience enjoys. Below is a picture of our IMDB reasearch, which statiscally shows it was a good decision to pick this target audience.







From looking at our audience feedback forms on the right we can see first hand that a sample of our target audience enjoyed this and would watch the rest of the film, because it is 'mysterious', which is key to our film style. You can see this is our target audience because the person is male, and is 17 years of age. So overall, I think we were effective in reaching our target audience, as he states he enjoys the film. Also, he thinks the audience for this media product would be a male and a teenager, which would suggest we were successful in reaching our target audience.

We used many different means to make this film appeal to our target audience. For example, we decided to cast a young girl as the main character as we think that she appears vulnerable and this will attract our target audience to our film. Also, this is a typical convention of our genre of horror film. Another thing we used to attact our target audience to our film was mise-en-scene. For this we used items like headphones which meant that the girl could not hear what was going on around her. I feel little things like this all add to the suspense and feeling of the film, and this helps us to attract our target audience. 

Josh

Evaulation 4 (Josh)

4. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Personally, I think our horror film does a good job of representing particular social groups. When thinking about how horror films 'traditionally' represent social groups, the image of a somewhat young, vulnerable woman victim always comes to mind, and it was this that we decided to use in our film. Other social groups that are represented in horror films are that men in general are usually the ones which the audience sees to be the threat, we also have this idea in our film.

To the left is an example of a male being the main threat in the film "The Shining". 

And to accommodate the representation of women being vulnerable victims in our production we decided to cast a young girl as our victim, as we knew that this would be the most effective with our chosen target audience. Also, we made her wear ear-phones to add to the mise-en-scene, and also so it made her seem more vulnerable, because she could not hear what was happening around her. Below is a screen shot of our film, which shows a clip of our actress when she is alone and

vulnerable.

From looking at the questionnaire on the right you can see that we were effective in representing these groups often seen in horror films. The feedback included a comment on the male character which was exactly what we were trying to achieve.

Josh