Evaluation 8 - Next project.

For my next project (G324) which I will produce next year I will set myself a few targets to make sure nothing goes wrong and I keep up to date on all the wok that I get given. Next year, as we will be making a Trailer and not the Opening two minutes, I feel that it will be slightly easier because you are able to give away more of the story through a trailer compared to what you are able to give away through the Opening two minutes. I feel like we will be able to get a very good Idea for our trailer because we will be able to use and exiting storyline and make it look even better than the opening two minutes that my group and I made this year.  Next year I don't think we will decide to go for a different genre other than Horror because I feel as if it is a very easy and exiting film to be able to produce. It also allows you get lots of effective shots involved within the film which makes the audience feel different emotions throughout the trailer and will allow them to be drawn into it even more. In order to make progress next year I will make sure I keep up to date on my blog, and post something each day to make sure I don't fall behind and make sure my posts stay detailed throughout the year. I will post more video diaries to  allow the marketing for our film to do even better as our fans for our film will be interested in what we do behind the scenes of our film. If I were to do anything differently this year,  I would change the time that we filmed for the part where the girl is walking through the woods. This is because as it is very bright, it does not seem that scary which can give the wrong effect that we wanted upon the audience. However, as the first time we tried to film it was too dark, meaning you couldn't see much, and the second time we filmed I felt it could have been a little darker. This means that next year, if we decide to plot our film outside, I will want to make sure we time it right to make sure the lighting is correct so that it creates the right effect and emotion on the audience. Another thing I would have done differently this year was make sure that I kept up on blog work and not push some of the activities until last minute because his meant that my storyboards didn't properly get finished until the second day of filming. This meant that we didn't have a full outline of what shots we wanted to do making the filming stage take a bit longer than it should of. However I don't think it effect our final performance as I am very pleased with how our film turned out. It just meant It was a little more time consuming than it should have been. For our filming in our next production (next year) in order to improve our film taking and making, I think we will use a tri-pod to ensure our shots are not shaky and make sure that the camera stays in focus because if it is shaking just the slightest bit the camera tends to go slightly out of focus making the shot less effective and professional. I think we will defiantly use the camera we used this time round because we found it gave clear and effective shots making our film overall extremely good just from the shots that we took, without including the angles that we put on the shots. During the editing process next time, I think I will try to include more effects and transitions to make the trailer more exiting, I think transitions will suit the trailer because we can use different techniques to make the trailer exiting and make the audience drawn in to finding out more about the film and to watching the actual film when it comes out.

Evaluation 4 - Target audience.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

For our film 'The Woods', we are aiming to attract teenagers from 15 years to around 25 years. This is because it is a horror genre and this age group is usually the ones that the film makes most of its money from through the distribution. They are the age group that uses hardware with multi platform devices such as smart phones. This means that the marketing campaign can target them easier as they can post things on social websites such as Twitter and Facebook where they can easily access and become interested in our film. The type of audience we will be attracting will be into a range of music from Topshop or Topman, River Island, Urban Outfitters. These are all very popular shops within the age group that we are aiming our main audience to be. The clothes that are sold in these shops are known to be 'fashionable' this shows that the people that shop here could be considered to conform to majority influence which would mean that if they know friends that go and watch our film they are more likely to watch it so they have conversations with new people allowing them to create a wider friendship group which is what teenagers are always trying to do. The types of music that our target audience would be into is the hit 'pop' music that is played on famous radio stations such as; Capital, or Kiss. They play a range of different music from pop, house, and occasionally they play some rock music such as Kings of Leon. This shows how our target audience will also be into different genres which means we would need to make sure we use the marketing campaign well so that our film stands out compared to the others. The TV programs that we would expect our target audience to be into would be things like, Friends; this is because it s relaxed  program to watch however is also funny which would allow them to relieve some stress that they would be having as they will be going through either GCSE's, A-Levels or even might be at University. Another program they might be into would be things like Ghost hunters; this is because it links and reflects into our genre 'Horror' because it is about people hunting ghosts and visiting haunted houses which would get the audience adrenaline going which gives off the same effect as our film does. Certain films that our audience will be into would be things like Insideous and Sinister and many more. This is because the age rating for them is 15. This means the teenagers will be able to go and see it. They are also very creepy and frightening films meaning, if they went to see those films, it is likely they would come and watch our film 'The Woods' because they have similar effects on the audience and although the storyline differs they all include a protagonist and antagonist which is what audiences in horror films want to see.  My target audience will be able to relate to the characters in my film because the age and interests will be very similar. This means they can relate into each others lives and creates a sense of realism into one another's life. They will be able to link into the characters situation because there is a very high chance that they would have felt scared that someone is following them even if they aren't. This means that can get the emotions they felt when they were being followed back into the film and make it feel like they have something in common with the character. We decided to set our film in a rural setting  because we thought that it came across to our audience as being a lot more creepy compared to if it was set in a urban setting because rural places are known to be a lot more deserted meaning if anything went wring within the film (which it does) no one would be round to hep. Therefore this makes the audience feel a lot more scared. It is a very conventional setting as typical horror movies use rural settings in order to create a creepy and frightened atmosphere within the audience. The setting is in the woods which means it is quite recognisable because most people who live in rural areas usually live near woods or near alleyways which can be linked into the woods. We decided to not take risks and go fro a non - conventional because we thought that whenever we watched the films ourselves we tended to get a lot more frightened whilst watching it which meant we wanted to reflect our emotions as an audience onto our own film so we wold hopefully get the same results on our audience. We wanted to appeal to a broad audience within the ages of 15 to 25-30 or anyone who is deeply into horror films, this meant that they would instantly recognise the symbolism within our production.  

Evaluation 2 - Protagonist comparason.

The picture on tye side shows the main girl (protagonist) from our film 'The Woods' and the main girl in Scary Movie. They show some similarities because both directors have used mise-en-scene to make them look innocent and vulnerable so that the audience feel sorry for her and know that she won't be able to take care of herself if something bad were to happen. The way the directors have made this effect on the audience through mise-en-scene is by using stereotypical features of people. For instance, 'Blondes' are know to be dumb and have no common sense, therefore they have chosen blonde girls for the protagonist act because it means the audience will automatically think they will not cope and deal very well in bad situations. Another way directors will use in costume to make the audience think this way is by choosing light and girly coloured clothes. This is because white, is known to be pure and innocent, therefore the girls who are wanted to be shown fr being innocent will wear white clothes. The girl in our film 'The woods' and the girl in there film 'Scary Movie' both have blonde hair, both wearing white and pure tops to relate to her being innocent and vulnerable. Another actress that conforms and subverts to the stereotypes of a female protagonist within horror films. Buffy the vampire has blonde hair which is meant to make her seem vulnerable however she is the one that saves the day. The way mise-en-scene has subverted the stereotypes of her being vulnerable is by making her wear dark makeup and dark clothes. In this picture she is wearing a black strap top which shows that she isn't innocent and vulnerable. The age of all the girls that are staring in these films (The Woods, Scary Movie, Buffy the vampire) are all late teenagers. This means that even young girls will look up to them as when you are little you always want to be older. This means that our product represents social groups by mise-en-scene as we have made sure that teenagers will be interested as we have made the main protagonist within the teenage social group meaning the audience we attract will be mostly teenagers.

Evaluation Targets

A good opening - but lots more to do Kathryn. Revisit your recent posts and see if there are any more opportunities to use specialist terminolgy to explore mise-en-scene, ediiting and camera composition and comment on the way you intended to appeal to your target audience even more - there's so much to comment on to show how reflective you can be. Get working with your group tro complete director's commentaries and comment more on what you have learnt from your audience feedback.

Feedback of opening two minutes

This is our feedback that we got from our audience. Overall I am very happy with it as we got no complaints about it apart from one which was about the piano noise at the end of our film. As this was the finale of our film we would defiantly change it if we had the chance. I think the reason that this was the bit that went slightly wrong was because we made it our self like other parts of our film. This meant it was huge pressure to get the non-diegetic sound right to ensure we got the right effect on the audience. This feedback was essential for the directors and editors because it allowed them to know what they needed to change to enable the film to be perfect. One piece of feedback was that the diagetic, non-diagetic and certain types of shots such as close up worked extremely well together. They said that it made the tension to b built well and allows the audience to escape real life and be thrown into the story that the film is telling.  Overall I am very happy with the feedback we were given becasueit reached the standards that I was hoping for and created the right effect on the audience that conformed to the usual stereotypes of a horror genre film.

Evaluation Activity One

Title

This shot of our title was very important for us to get it right. This meant we had to do a lot of resarch to find the correct font that suited our genre. We used 1001words to find the right one because they had a huge variety of fonts which meant it was easier to find the one that we wanted, in the end we chose this font (Ring Bearer). We chose the white font with a black background because we thought it conformed to the stereotype of the horror genre. We also included some indents and scratches across the font. This makes it look quite creepy and link into what our film is called (The Woods) because it seems as if the branches and trees from inside the woods has scratched the font itself. We have also made all of the letters in our titles capital letters to enhance the boldness and and make it conform to how horror titles usully look like. We also made the font colour white so that it stands out against the black background which also conforms to the stereotype because black is know to be a dark and scary colour. Overall I am happy with what our titles ended up looking like.

Location

The locations that we set our film in was a house in Fetcham and in Bookham woods. Bookham woods conformed to our main title as our film is called 'The Woods'. This meant that as our opening shot showed the woods itself, it meant that it helped the audience get a sense of location to enable the audience to link into the emotions that the character is showing. The woods that we filmed in looked quite creepy and enclosed as you could not see anything outside of the woods. This linked many different emotion into the audience and as the music worked together with the footage it meant that the effect on the audience was much better. Our next location was inside a house. The house relates to mundane realism which meant hat the audience can relate there own life into the film because they will imagine that they are in their own houses. As the location was set out with the right lighting in a few different shots it meant that the audience will get the right emotions connected to the shots. the lighting when the girl walks up the stairs is good because it gets lighter the higher up you go as the bathroom light is on. This makes the audience think that someone may be up there which makes them not want the girl to go all the way up creating the right effect on the audience that we wanted. We have used a variety of different shots such as high angles, medium shots and attempted a birds eye view. However we didn't end up using the footage as the lighting went wrong and we found a shot that we prefered.

 

 Costumes

 

This is our antagonist costume, we made it from scratch and borrowing clothes of off family members. We chose the brown towel covering the face with masking tape around the neck to create the shape of the antagonists head.  The mouth has been drawn on with a  black marker pen and make it look like it had been stitched. I think this creates an enigma towards the audience because they don't see much of the face making the antagonists identity to be hidden . We decided to have the mise-en-scene of the character to be wearing a rustic look however look like he is quite well off. He is wearing a brown jumper with a darker green/brown jacket over the top, he is also wearing reddish cord trousers. Overall he stereotypically looks like he has come from a rural area which links into the film because at the beginning all the shots are set in Bookham woods. This creates a link and makes the audience think that he has come from some where around where the film has been set - which will make them feel self conscious and worried through the rest of the film as they will be wondering who the person is and wont ever be sure because we have hidden his identity through mise-en-scene. the shots we have used when the antagonist is inthe shot is a angle which shows both the protagonist and antagonistwhichallows the contrast between them both to stand out. We have made the contrast huge by the mise-en-scene and camera angles. We have made the length of the shot atthe ebnd when the antagonist is in 3 seconds long. This confroms to the stereotypes of a horror filmbecasue usually as the tensionbuilds the pase of the shotws get faster and faster. This makes the audience feel more on edge.The protagonists costume has conformed to the stereotype becasue we have used mise-en-scene to dress her up in a plain white top which shows purity and innocence and also had her wear blue jeans which is casual yet links into what we needed for our film. The camera angles and shot types we have used for our protagonist are ones that mnake her look like she is being followed such as; POV shot, medium shot, high angles. The high angles make her look vulnerable adn an easy target for the antagonist. the POV shot makes it look like someone is watching her, this makes the audience feel on edge. We have also used close-ups of her face to allow the audience to embrace the emotion that she is feeling. This makes it have a huge effect and allows them to link into what she is feeling. The length of the shots for when the protagonistis in havebeen made to be quite long atthe beggining and get shorter as the opening two minutes progress. This i sbecasue we want the tension to be built and make sure the pase of shots links into the music that we have added in. The synergy of music and length of shot work well together becasue it makes the effect on the audience feel scared and makes them jump which is what we were aiming for.

 

Props

 

We have used various different props to make the film relate to mundane realism, this means the audinece will be able to link their own lives into the film maiking the film seem more scary to certain individuals. One of our props we used is masking tape around the antagonists neck. This was to make sure the brown towel stays securley on his head however, make the mise-en-scene link into it as the colour is cream making the entire outfit link into the stereotype of  rural clothing. ANother prop we used is fake blood. this conforms to the stereotype of horror films as blood and injuries are a main part of most horror films. The blood looks realistic which makes the audience feel the pain that the girl is feeling. We also used paint underneith the fake blood to show the actual cut and make it look even more realistic and allow the audicen to relate to it even more. Another prop we have included within our film is the mirror. This creates different emotion on the audience such as making them feel as if someone is watching the girl. This makes the girls reaction to the diagetic sound seem even more emphasized and have an even bigger reaction on the audience.We have involved toilet paper in our film aswel. this is what the girl uses to wrap around her cut hand. We have inculded the to make it look as a bandage however as a normal teenager wouldnt go and find a bandage if they were scared alone in a house, which links into mundane realism and makes it look like the girl is relentless to go out making the audience feel evenmore scared for her. The girl rushes to get the toilet paper which shows that she is scared and needing to put pressure on her hand. Another prop we have used is the scarf that the girl wears. It looks innocent and links into what mise-en-scene an innocent and vulnerable girl would wear in a typical horror film.  Overall the props we have used have allowed us to use different camera angle techniques and allowed the mundane realism to become even stronger allowing the audience to relate to the film and make the audience appeal even stringer if you are the type of person who is into horror films.

Special effect

  A special effect that we have used in our film is underwater filming. this created a great effect and allowed us to have a memorable shot in our film making our opening two minutes stand out. The length of our shot using the underwater filming was 10 seconds. this conformed to the stereotype of horror films as they use longer shots to enable suspense and tension to be built within the audience. the shot being so long had a great effect on the audience as the non-diagetic music in the background worked well with it to build tension. The diagetic sound of the bang at the end had a huge effect on the audience as it made everyone ump which was the effect we wanted on the audience. As the water is clear when the hand first goes into the water and gets red and murky as she washes it of, this links into the story of the opening two minutes because; it starts of with the innocent girl walking through the woods acting fine, and as she begins to hear noises and arrives at home, suspense is built more and more until the antagonist appears at the end. Overall I think this is a very good special technique because it creates more effects on the audience and shows a high range of technique using technology. The techniques that we have used to create certain effects is lighting. We have made one opf our shots a lighting that creates an effect of it being mysrterious and creepy. In order to do this we have made the topof the stairs in the shot lighter than the bottom. This makes people feel like itis deathly if the girl goes up there. This is becasue of the phrase ' going towards the light' people use this when they aretalking about death and going up into heaven. This creates tensdion in the audience as they feel as if the antagoinist will be waiting for the innocent girl.

 

How are the characters introduced?

 

For our film, the protagonist has been introduced in our establishing shot. This shows the audinec that she is the main character. Withthe use of mise-en-scene, camera work and location the audinece knows that she will be in trouble from the very beggining of the opening two minutes. The reason for this is because the use of mise-en-scene has shown the audience thatshe is vulnerable anjd innocent as she is wearing a white top and light green coat, this links into the girl being quite girly, this links into the stereotypes of the girl been vulnerable and not able to protect herself. The light green coat links into the girl living in a rural area as green is a colour that stereotypically links to rural places such as countrysides which is where the filmis set (woods). The use of camera work withthe esablishing shot allows the audnience to not know who the girl is or what she looks like as it starts of with just the girls back on show as she walks straughtdiown the centre of the woods. The camera starts of out of focus allowing the audience to feel like the girls life is about to be turned upside down. As thebshot after the establishing shot is of the girls shoes walking through the leaves it lets the engma of the girls identity drag onand makes the audience feel obliged to watch on and find out who and waht the protagonist look like. The antagonist is intorduced fullyat the very end of the opening two minutes. Hiowever the audience know that he will be coming in soobn from the use of diagetic and non - diagetic soubnd. This is becasue mysterious bangs and snaps of twigs keeps omnhappening throughout the opening twominutes. This creates tension within the audiece and makes them even more frightened at the end when they actually meet the antagionist. The use of POV shots we have used through the part of the opening two minutes where the location is set in the woods has made the audinece realise thatsomething bad is going to happen. The use of POV shots makes the audnice feel like someone is watching the innocent girl becasue we have shot them from behind branches and trees making itlook mysterious and creepy. This creates an enigma overall thriughout the whole film becasue the audience contantly wantto see the antagonist's identity so they can see what he looks like so they can keep an eye out for the rest of the film. However as we chose to cover the antagonists identy through mise - en - scene by having a brown towel over the head. This makes the audninece constantly feel on edge and makes them feel as vulnerable as the girl in the filmis playing.

 

Camera work

We have used very manydiferent techniques forour camera work, some include high angles, close up, and low angles. These different angles create manydifferent effects suchas; making the girl look as vulnerable as possible. We needed to do this becasue if we didnt, the audience wouldn't feel as frightened. The high anlge does this becasue it makes it look as if someone is watching her and following her. As it is taken from above, she looks extremly small aswel which akes her look innocent and even more vulnerable. The close up shot that we have used makes the audience know that something bad is happening and makes tension in the audience even stronger. As we have made the shot only be on screen for a couple of seconds it makes the tension even stronger within the audeince because the faster pase the shots are the more tension thats built.The low angle that we used emphasized on the lighting allowed the emotion of feeling scared and on edge because of the connotations that the lighting links into. Overall the variety of shots that we have used throughout the film has allowed us to create the right effect on the audience and has allowed us to conform to the stereotypes of a genre 'horror' film.

 

How does the opening suggest the genre? How does the opening set up the story?

The opening of our film sets up the genre of our film (Horror) partly because of the establishing shot. As the establishing shot starts of in focus and as the girl walks away she begins to get more and more out of focus. This shows that something bad is going to happen. As the diagetic sound of leaves being stepped on is in the background this also links to a creepy feeling in the film. This allows the audience to realise that something bad will happen. As the location of the film is in 'Bookham Woods' and when film start of with a girl who looks vulnerable, by herself in the woods, the audience should pick up that it is a horror, this is because the woods is known to be very scary and you are normally not allowed to walk there by yourself if you are quite young. This is because it is quite abandoned, and enclosed which makes it a hard place to find your way out of if it is dark and you are being followed by someone. This makes the audience want the girl to get out from the woods so she is safe however; we have plot twisted it and made the girl be really in trouble in the comfort of her own house. This makes the audience feel on edge as the place where they would assume to be in trouble is deserted in the woods by themselves and they would expect to be safe in there house however it is the opposite in our film. As we have used mise-en-scene to make the girl look vulnerable and innocent the audience should pick up that she will be the main target for the antagonist because of the use of camera work, e.g; use of POV shots, close ups, depth of fields within the film. The opening of our film starts of with the innocent looking girl walking through the woods by herself. This already links into the title of our film 'The Woods' because it is set in Bookham Woods. As the establishing shot goes out of focus as the girl moves further away. This links into the story because the later on in the two minutes the worse it gets for the girl. At the end it fades out and this is how it ends at the end of the two minutes which connects the establishing shot and the rest of the film. As the opening two minutes starts out in the location of the woods, it lets the audience know that something bad is going to happen because  the woods connote scary and creepy things like being followed and getting lost.

 

 

Title font and style

The title font and styles that we have used for our film took us a while to design. This is becasue we wanted to make sure we got it correct so that it conformed to the genre we chose which is Horror. We made it seem creepy and link into where the location is (Bookham Woods), in order to do this we made font of it be extended on the startibng letters of each word. This made it look like twigs sticking out of the words making it link into the location. We decided to make the colour of the font white to make it stand out. This is becasue most of the background on each shot is quite dark as we set it around 5 O'clock to make it conform to horror films as they normally set it at night time to create a scarier effect on the audience. The reason it creates a creepier effect on the audinece is because night time connotes bad things that happens, for instance, you wouldn't expect to be kidnapped or attacked in the middle of the day becasue it mnakes the antagonist easy to catch and see there identity making what they do seem pointless. We decided to put the font at the bottom left on the screen to make it look formal at first however, we ended up putting some of the fonts at the right hand side to make it seem a bit more mixed up and makes the audience look around the shots to enable them to see what we are actually filming instead of just looking at the font. We also made the titles stay on the screen for about 5 seconds each time to let make sure the audince have enough time to look at each shot type and look at the the font that we have used as we think it conforms to the genre and makes the film seem more professional.