lukes blog

WBS 7 Media Evaluation.

Q1 – Our film is a stereotypical horror about a young male suffering from paranoia and schizophrenia. We did a lot of research in to classic films from the genre of horror / thriller for example 'Silence of the Lambs' and 'The Strangers', we researched the common narratives that appeared throughout the horror genre and discovered that isolation, suspense and inferiority are all very common conventions within horror films. Danny plays the part of a young male roughly 20 years of ages we decided to make him this age as there are often young males (usually the protagonist) appearing in films of the horror genre. When dressing the antagonist (The Scarecrow) we thought it would look very menacing if he wore a mask as it would make him appear emotionless and quite daunting. Also we saw masks used a lot during our research e.g. 'Jason', 'The Strangers' and also 'Predator' so we found that the usage of masks was a very common convention in the horror genre. When selecting the weapon of choice for the scarecrow we thought that using a gun wasn't scary enough as you don't have to be close to the victim to use it which means you don't get the feeling of being caught so there isn't much a 'rush' involved so we believed it was in out best interests to use a close proximity weapon such as a knife as it complies with the generic conventions of the horror and thriller genres. Our movie is set in and around a forested area so the location is quite secluded and quiet making it a good place to film a horror movie, the original plan was to film in darkness but because of the cameras response to low light we had to shoot in the light , this is not typical of films from the horror genre however with the use of the sun we were able to create silhouettes giving the effect of darkness.
The narrative structure of our film is quite thought provoking. It is about a young man suffering from mental illness that believes that a killer ' the scarecrow ' is stalking him however because the manner of his illness other people e.g. doctors believe that the killer is just an illusion and a side effect of paranoia, we have used this narrative to leave it up to the audience to decide weather he is real or not increasing the tension of the narratives.
We have used a lot of diagetic sound within our movie in order to increase tension and uneasiness throughout especially to highlight shots of significance we also decided to include next to no dialogue throughout as it would subtract from the action and what the audience could see.

Q2 - In the second question of the evaluation I will be discussing the representation used in our trailer, weather it is stereotypical or not or even balanced and also the different social groups and issues that arise in out two minute trailer.
In the first shot of Danny (playing a diagnosed patient of schizophrenia and paranoia) we are confronted with the image of an unconscious young man lying amongst the leaf litter, this instantly shows behaviour that is extremely counter typical of a young man of twenty five throughout the trailer we notice that there is no dialogue and no interaction with other human beings what so ever. This is to show the audience that out character is very unsociable and lonesome, these characteristics are also counter typical of a man in his early twenties. Another thing you will notice in the trailer is the fact that our victim is always shown to be on edge, he also breaths heavily showing panic and distress and his body language shows that he is a generally insecure person further enforcing the idea of being counter typical.
When choosing the costume Danny was going to wear we knew that we wanted to give the impression that our victim was just an everyday guy that you wouldn't expect to be in circumstances out of the ordinary to relay this message to the audience we dressed Danny in very bland clothing e.g. dark coloured tops and jeans with white trainers. When dressing our villain (The Antagonist) we wanted to make him stand out and make him seem as surreal as possible so we dressed him in a very formal black dinner suit and a red tie we also thought the contrast between his very formal appearance and the woodland scenery would look very unusual and thought provoking for the viewers. We also went to the trouble of buying high quality fake blood for the murder scene to make it look as authentic as possible (thanks to Danny)
with regards to the camera shot selection our group wanted to portray the mood of the film as effectively as possible to do this we used a few long POV shots held by Danny without the tripod so that his stressful body language would mimic the movement of the camera and reflect his emotions accurately. When shooting The Antagonist we shot him in front of the sun so a silhouette would be cast and making him look mysterious and stereotypical of villains from the horror genre.

Q3 - Our movie trailer is from the psychological horror genre with themes similar to “The strangers” and “Hannibal”. If our trailer was made into a full length feature film then it would probably be produced by one of the larger production companies like Sony or Warner Brothers due to its highly popular and mainstream target audience. Because our film would be very high budget it would be necessary to spend the correct ratio of money on advertisement and distribution. This means we would have to organise junkets with members of the cast to promote the film and making film trailers like the one our group have made. Although making a profit would be very important to the production companies because of their wealth and international links it would not be a significant blow to their bank balance whereas a loss from a smaller much more vulnerable company would most probably result in the company folding e.g. cipher films.

Q4 – Our target audience for ' Are Nightmares Real ' are for males and females between the ages of 16 – 22 in the ratio of 51% to 49%. We found out the most popular age groups for a film of our genre of film as we handed out questionnaires amongst the pupils of our school as well as certain teachers.
the majority of our demographic audiences would be from the classes B, C1, C2 and D as they would mainly be from a working class and middle class background. Our psycographic audience would potentially be esteem seekers and innovators. Because our audience isn't very mainstream we would need to contemplate what media technologies to use in order to attract the biggest audience.
Ethnic background and culture was not a serious issue as long as we got the age and gender factors right because we felt that the issues that arise in our film are quite general and can happen to anyone. Also having a large range of people with different ethnic identities watching the film would broaden the potential audience.

Q5 – The audience chosen for our film was 49% female and 51% male with ages ranging from 16 – 22 years of age, from the demographic classes B, C1, C2 and D. as our film is a hybrid containing horror and thriller themes people that would go to see the film are likely to have the psycographic profile of an esteem seeker or an innovator.
As a group we have decided that out film would have an 18 certificate because the narratives that are contained in the film are that of the horror genre and not suitable for younger children or adolescents.
When casting for our movie we thought that giving Danny the role of the main victim so the age range between the victim and the target audience would be similar and they would be able to relate to Danny more easily.
Shooting locations were hard because we wanted to film somewhere that was dark but we came to realise that our camera wasn't able to pick up the small amount of light available and so the quality was very poor and the only choice we has was to re shoot in lighter conditions.
Our elected filming location was the wooded area surrounding the copper horse as it was relatively easy to get to and also gave a large impression of isolation and was also very quiet.
Costume design was increasingly important in order to make our film as authentic as possible especially as most of the illusion of terror was down to the mysteriousness of the ' Scarecrow '. we wanted the Scarecrow to look intellectual and intelligent so we dressed him in a black dinner suit and a red silk tie, however this look alone was not controversial enough nor did it install the type of fear we wanted it to in the audience. To achieve the look completely mike made two stitched masks, the contrast between the suit and the mask worked very well.
Lighting was the deciding factor that we had to plan our filming around. As we could not afford out own ambient lighting we had to make use of the light of the day in order to get good quality shots, unfortunately we learnt the hard way and were forced to re shoot after filming at dusk because the video quality was very poor, the second time around we also had a HD camera at which made good use of the light we had and produced some very high quality shots.
We knew from the start we wanted our camera shots to disorientate and cause confusion. This is why there are a lot of running POV shots and close ups to make the viewer feel uneasy, we also used lots of cold, hard cuts in order to not subtract from the mood of the film.
We made a soundtrack for our film on Garage band but unfortunately we discovered that the general theme of the instruments on there were too upbeat and subtracted from the horror narratives within the film.
During the editing process we decided that our transition between shots would filled but hard cuts in order to keep the feeling of suspense, our second main editorial point is the use of slow motion to disorientate and cause uneasiness with the audience this was exasperated by a blurred film over the top.
We wanted the titles to reflect the genre of the film so we used …....... on the mac book to make them. We used quite a bold font and coloured it red to go over a black background which worked really effectively, we also applied a ' shiver ' animation to the writing so it moved on screen, this effect worked very well with with the black background.

Q6 – throughout the process of planning, filming and editing our projects we have been made to come to grips with using many new media technologies in order to achieve the high quality finish we wanted.
The technologies used include:
DV/HD camera.
Apple man book pro.
Final cut express.
Garage Band.
Internet.
When I first started using the DV and HD cameras it was a big step up from the previous experience I had using the camera on my mobile phone but I was able to adapt relatively quickly this was just as well because it was partly my job to shoot and advise filming angles. I found the camera controls and buttons pretty easy to understand especially as the HD camera utilised a touch screen making the process much faster. The main difficulty I had was keeping the movement of the camera as still as possible when capturing the more detailed delicate shots. This was also a problem for me when filming on the tripod although the screw cap that made it possible to adjust the tightness of the camera helped a lot.
After filming our movie sequence we decided to take some still shots of everyone in costume mainly to put on our blog I found this very easy because of previously using the camera to film the project.
When using the mac book pro I was completely stumped at first as me nor the other group members had used a mac before however, once we had all grasped the the different format of the operating system and the programs it had we found the mac invaluable to the completion of our project. The first piece of software we had to use was Final cut express we found this fairly easy to use and to good effect however we required some help from the teacher in order to successfully use some of the software's more advanced features. The second piece of software we used was Garage band, the initial use of the software was tricky as we didn't know how to search through the entire library of instruments but I after we worked this out it was very simple. Me and the other group members created a full soundtrack to our film with a couple of days this was necessary as the the syllabus this year prevented us from using material already copy written by another label.

Q7 – when planning for the preliminary sequence the first thing we did was drew up rough sketches of where to shoot, what shots would be most effective and what each character was going to say. We also decided on the two main characters (Danny and Mike), because of our smaller group size compared to other groups (3) we realised that there could only ever be two characters as we needed one person to film the sequence. Our decided location of shooting was along the maths corridors as they provided some good potential for a good variation of shots including tracking shots, high angle shots and pan shots. We wanted to include a location like the maths corridors in our final project as it was quite a gloomy location with lots of angles to play with and we thought it would look good at night which would fit well with the conventions of a horror film, however when it came to filming at night we came to find that the camera wasn't very light responsive in dark conditions. Another thing that gave us trouble was shooting with hand held cameras in the sequence this meant that the maximum shooting quality we could achieve was not going to be anywhere near as good as if we were shooting with the tripod.
Once filming had finished we edited the sequence on the mac book we used final cut express to edit, this process was fairly simple as the editing we did was fairly basic e.g. cleaning up transitions between shots and also correcting the light slightly bring out the best quality of picture possible, Aswell as this we also sampled a few effects that we might consider using in the final piece. We also found that filming the preliminary sequence that didn't give us much experience with time management as we were all in school and there for we didn't have to arrange anything in terms of filming dates or times. At the start of editing the preliminary sequence we had a minor problem as we couldn't upload our footage to our mac however our teacher let us use his own personal mac and everything ran smoothly.
With regards to mise-en-scene the detail to lighting, costume, sound and props was very minimal. For example we didn't use costume in our sequence as we were shooting in our school uniform, however when we did our final piece we planned our costumes very carefully along the guide lines and conventions of our genre of horror. Secondly in regards to lighting while filming indoors during the day we were able to produce some fairly high quality shots because of the schools lighting however we were not able to afford our own lighting when filming our final project so we had to rely on the position of the sun to give us good quality film mostly shooting with the sun behind us. Lastly the sound in the preliminary sequence was very basic we didn't edit out any of the background noise the only sound was the dialogues that Mike and Danny read. The sound in our final product was much more detailed we created sound effects the piano on Garage Band and incorporated them in to enhance the suspense and scarier moments with the movie.