Evaluation Activity 1

The way our media piece challenges and competes with existing products is that it uses aspects familiar with films on the market such as The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity.

A simple, bold font is used for the titles, making them clear to read and producing drama. The colour red which is used for the main title has connotations associated with blood, gore, death and danger, which reflects our chosen genre.

All of the frames we used to create our opening scene storyboard in the picture above are taking place in the 5 different locations that we had planned to film our opening scene in:

- Two frames are located in the boiler room
- Two frames are located at the nature reserve
- One frame is located underneath the school stage
- One frame is located in my utility room
- The final frame is located in Hayden Simmon's bedroom (Group Member)

All these locations are purposefully dark and eerie in order to create tension and atmosphere that relates to the genre of our opening scene; 'horror.'

In our opening scene we used various props, these consisted of:

- Fake Blood
- Kitchen Knife
- Oil/Petrol Can
- Water
- Rope
- Duck tape
- Bin liners
- Chair
These props were used to empathise horrific situations that the main character is in during our opening scene to an audience. These props also helped us to produce tension and atmosphere that related to the genre of our opening scene, making our media product more successful.

In our opening scene you see numerous different costumes, in different parts of our opening scene, in different locations. Our opening scene was meant to convey the idea of a dream/premonition taken place, not being set in present time. this meant we used different costumes in order to portray this element to an audience further. Some of the costumes we used were visually effective, produced by the use of fake blood and media makeup. This improved the professionalism of our opening scene as our costumes were believable creating tension and atmosphere and making our opening scene more successful.

The camera work looks professional as the use of a tripod enabled us to capture steady shots. We used a range of different camera angles and techniques such as:
- A close up shot, which tightly frames a person or an object. This will help to distinguish our main character as well as to show detail; such as characters emotion. This shot should help to create atmosphere and tension for our opening scene causing it to be more dramatic and successful,
- A point of view shot, which shows what a character (the subject) is looking at. This will cause the audience to interact with our main character, as a point of view shot will force them to sympathise with his situation making them more emotionally involved.
Which helped us to create a more effective, successful opening scene.

The title of the film is in Red writing on a black background so that it stands out from the rest of the titles which consist of a black background with white writing.

All of the frames have a different image from the opening scene in 5 different locations that we set our piece in; 2 frames show in the boiler room, another two show in the nature reserve, one other shows under the stage, a different one shows a hand at a back door and the final one shows the scene in the bedroom. All these settings are dingy and dark to set the atmosphere for the movie.

in our movie we used numerous props consisting of, masking tape, fake blood, bin liners and make up. These are all used to assist us in creating the atmosphere and tension that we wanted our opening scene to portray. For costume we decided to use numerous different costumes for different settings as it is meant to be a dream and set at different times on different days and someone wouldn't be wearing the same clothes each and every day.

One of our group members Hayden Simmons decided to be the actor in the film as we had to substitute the actress we had lined up at short notice. Which left myself and another member of the group, Michayla Oglesby, to do the camera work. We set the camera up at each location with a tripod so that the camera would stay steady for us to be able to film each shot. All of the editing of the film was mainly down to my two myself and Hayden Simmons as we had problems with uploading our film because of the high quality of the camera content, it had to be converted. We then had problems with the programme we were using and had to transfer all of the film clips onto another log-on to be able to edit them. After we had done this my group members done the editing in their free periods and when I was off poorly. They used the programme premier elements to upload the film onto and then edit the film adding in the titles and effects that made our opening more effective for it's audience.

The story of our film is about a man who has a split personality disorder and we try to represent him as the victim right through the film so that the audience sympathise with him until the very end when they find out he's actually the killer. The opening scene sets this up because it See's a serious of events in his dream where he looks like he's a victim and he's been kidnap ed, kept hostage and tortured.

Our genre for the film is a horror and the opening suggests this by the disturbing and horrible things that are happening to the man in his dreams.

There is only one character in our piece and he is introduced in many different situations all at once as he has flashes and repetitive part of dreams all the time of himself. His dreams see him as a victim which is what we want the opening and main part of the film to portray.

We used a rewind feature so that at the end when the dream is coming to an end all of the main parts of his dream rewind and seem to undo themselves before he wakes up. we also used a fast-play feature which made a slow clip play in a fast version so it looked slightly distorted and not in sync to what it would normally and also looks effective for the image that we want to come across to our audience.

Evaluation Activity 2

Our media product does not particularly represent a social group as it is a horror designed to be different and not fit any stereotypes as the story is designed to shock and be scary, but yet form a supernatural reality.



The image above incorporates a picture of a character called Marie from Haute Tension (Left) and our own main actor Hayden Simmons (Right)

The similarities in terms of appearance are that in the opening scenes compared to the opening scene of Haute Tension are that both characters have clothes on that are ripped and bloody, also they both have a split persona which is a main key in both films.

The differences in terms of appearance are that Hayden is a male and the Haute Tension chrachter is female, obviously this is going to create different circumstances because of gender issues but mostly the roles are the same as they are both psychopathic killers that are shown in different perspectives throughout the film plots.

Evaluation Activity 3

A production company is responsible for the development and physical production of a new media product. Therefore considering that me and my group members; Zak and Michayla were responsible for the development and physical production of a new media product, (being an opening scene)we could say that we have acted like production company throughout this whole process of producing an opening scene.

A production company may also be directly responsible for the raising of funding for the production of this media product. Our budget was extremely low and we spent less than £10 buying any needed props for our footage that we filmed. However if we were to create a professional media product that was defined as 'category A;' meaning the film was made with entirely British resources, most of the funding for our media product would be supplied by the British film council.

Institutionally our film would compete with existing films such as:
- Paranormal Activity,
- And Blare Witch Project.

This is because both of these media products are low budget films, produced on hand held digital cameras, similar to ours.

We used these films to research what people are named in the titles. We found that the titles of a film normally include these people:
- The production company/producers,
- Cast and crew,
- Film distributors,
- Director,
- Film name,
- And sound producers.

Titles are normally used as a recognition for all of the various people that worked together to finish and release a media product. This knowledge informed our group that we should mention everyone that helped to make our media product happen as a recognition in our titles. This again makes our media product more successful and comparable to existing media products.

Another role that a production company takes into account is finding a suitable institution to distribute our media product.

A film distributor is an independent company who are responsible for the marketing and circulation of movies in theaters, and for home viewing (DVD, Video-On-Demand, Download, Television etc). There are many respected, recognisable film distributors, some of these being; 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers and Universal Studios. These film distributors are amongst some of the best in the film industry which we should definitely consider a partnership with to distribute our media product. However these films distributors favour films with genres other than the genre that we chose for our opening scene. After doing some research i found a well recognised film distributor who favour films with the genre horror, this film distributor is called; 'Lions Gate.' It would be a sensible decision to use Lions Gate to distribute our film as this institute is typically known to distribute existing media products with the same genre as ours, knowing the best ways to market and circulate our media product, making as much profit as possible from our film.

Evaluation Activity 4

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This is the typical target audience example that we are trying to create our first scene for as they enjoy scary movies very much. Typically after analysis and questioning of the subject we concluded that they would dress in dark clothes reflecting their scary movie and supernatural interest as this is the colours they enjoy wearing because it may relate to there personality. The music that they are interested would be up beat, 'heavy' music that you would find in a scary movie to build the tension in the atmosphere.

However previous target audience research informed my group that:

The horror movie age/gender profiles which I found whilst researching into a potential target audience, both support the outcome of my results in questions 1 and 2 from my audience questionnaire.

From looking at the results I collected from question 1 from my audience questionnaire. You can clearly see that more males answered my questionnaire than females.



This supports the 'horror movie gender profile.' This informs me that our media product which we are going to produce should be aimed more at males than females, due to my own research on horror films supporting existing research.

However a quote from Jim Braden, a representative for Dimension Films, stated that:
"For a horror film to be successful today, it has to appeal to everyone."
This advises me that we shouldn't neglect the idea of a female audience from our media product that we are going to produce just because in theory it would attract more of a male audience.

From looking at the results I collected from question 2 from my audience questionnaire. you can see by observation immediately that most of the people who answered my questionnaire fit into the age category: 15-29.



Again this supports the 'horror movie gender profile.' This informs me that our media product which we are going to produce should be aimed at the social group labelled, and suggests it might be 'Emo,' as well as an audience ranging from the age of 15 - 30 due to my own research on horror films supporting existing research.

Evaluation Activity 5

We addressed our audience by asking close friends and family to watch our media product, we did this because mostly they fit in with the audience we have chosen to target.

Some aspects we used to attract people were to send links on our blog and Facebook to promote this to audiences that fit our target audience.

Our film relates to other similar films such as the Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, this is because the are filmed with non professional cameras and in an armature way where it was purposely filmed badly. This has a very good effect as it looks like it actually is reality.

In our film I think we succeeded in the task of using the correct genre conventions, use of music. This is because we believe we used the right techniques and music tracks that suited our genre which was Horror.

Our film in theory would have one very good characteristic that will allow it to be widely sold as many people would enjoy it, this is because the plot would be so detailed and entertaining, this would be our unique selling point as we can relate that we cannot compete with major companies that have a much wider range of software and technology to enhance the video capabilities but with our plot we feel we do not need all of the special effects because our storyline solely is what we feel a match for the existing products, especially things such as Paranormal Activity and the Blair Witch Project.

Evaluation Activity 6

In the process of creating our media coursework I feel i have learnt many things, I have thurther developed my use of editing skills techniques that include time stretch and shrinking, use of effects and transitions and to use and understand editing new software (Premiere Elements 8.0).

Also my filming techniques have improved dramatically as i have learnt how to successfully use a tripod and create different shots that make the mese en scene to look lots more appealing.

Below are some of the hardware equipment we used:







Resources we have used are:

- Two Different Video Recorders
- Camera
- Internet
- Mobile Phones

I have learnt that the making of films rely deeply on good filming and swift, efficient, technical use of editing software. Throughout the whole project we have used many different types of software as we have needed to d various things.

The programmes that we have used during the production of our opening scene include:

- Microsoft XP Operating System
- Adobe Premiere Elements 8.0
- Adobe Fireworks CS4
- Microsoft Office Word
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 7
- .MOV to .AVI Converter
- VLC Media Player
- Microsoft Office Powerpoint

Also some websites to recognise are:

- Art of the Title
- Slide Share
- Survey Monkey
- Vimeo

Evaluation Activity 7

Looking back at my preliminary task, I feel I have learnt a great deal since I first used a camera and we start to practice filming from different angles and the different kind of shots that we could use. As a group we have worked together to bring ideas to attention that could work well. Since our preliminary task I have learnt masses about filming because I was in our preliminary task and didn't get much time to film. I have learnt about all of the different camera angles and shots that can be used in a film to make the action look more effective and fit in better with the theme. Shots such as the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot/reverse shot are all things that i have learnt to use when editing it into the final product and to use the camera t film so that it can be edited in the first place. I have also learnt that using a tripod instead of holding the camera (like for the preliminary task) makes the camera much more steady and look much more professional.

Also my editing software knowledge in Premier Elements has improved a great deal. I have learnt most aspects of the things that it can do to a video and the different effects that can be edited.

- Use frames from both tasks show what I know about shot types, edit terms and techniques

Final Production of The First Scene

Violative Hostile

Media Main Task Final Production from Zak Wattiez on Vimeo.

Audience Feedback Questionnaire And Analysis

Reviewing the questionnaire has brought me to the conclusion of our potential audience, we though to decide our audience age range we would have to research, we found some very interesting websites and deducted many things about how aspects of films can create the age range it is for.

Below are some of the aspects we looked at and studied:

'Horror movies are particularly popular amongst males and under 25's. With over a third of a typical horror movie audience aged 18-24, they are a highly effective means of reaching an audience not afraid to go out at night' - Courtesy of Val Morgan Cinema Network


Horror Movie Age Profile



Horror Movie Gender Profile



Here is the link to our Audience Feedback Questionnaire
After we had completed our media product we decided to create an audience feedback questionnaire which gave us feedback on how successful they thought our opening was.

To create my questionnaire I am going to be using a website called; 'Survey Monkey.' this website enables me to create an online questionnaire using a range of different question formats, such as:

- Multiple Choice,
- Matrix of Choices,
- Rating Scale,
- Single Text box,
- Comment Essay Box Etc.

Once the questionnaire is completed I can post it onto our Facebook and wait for people to willingly complete it. 'Survey Monkey' automatically collects the results and sorts them out into tables so i can easily analyse my results.

The Analysis of the questionnaire is as follows:

My results were collected and graphs were produced with an in depth analysis for each question, this is shown below.

Analysis:

All the graphs I have produced were created by copying and pasting the tables of results from survey Monkey, onto excel I then selected the results question by question and using the graph format to turn my results into various graphs to present my results.

After we had completed our media product we decided to create an audience feedback questionnaire which gave us feedback on how successful they thought our opening was.

to create my questionnaire I am going to be using a website called; 'Survey Monkey.' this website enables me to create an online questionnaire using a range of different question formats, such as:

- Multiple Choice,
- Matrix of Choices,
- Rating Scale,
- Single Text box,
- Comment Essay Box etc.

Once the questionnaire is completed I can post it onto my Facebook and wait for people to willingly complete it. 'Survey Monkey' automatically collects the results and sorts them out into tables so i can easily analyse my results.

Below is a link that will show you the audience feedback questionnaire that I created:

Audience feedback questionnaire

My results were collected and graphs were produced with an in depth analysis for each question, this is shown below.

Analysis:

All the graphs I have produced were created by copying and pasting the tables of results from survey Monkey, onto excel I then selected the results question by question and using the graph format to turn my results into various graphs to present my results.

Question 1. Main Task Brief: 'The titles and opening scene of a new fictional film, lasting a maximum of two minutes.' Above was the set brief for our media main task. After watching our opening scene that we have produced, do you feel that we have accomplished our set brief?

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Looking at the results from this question, on the whole everyone seemed to agree that the opening scene that we produced accomplished the brief that was set for our main task.

In conclusion to my analysis of this question, my group are informed that we successfully achieved our main goal to accomplish our set brief.

Question 2. What genre category do you feel our opening scene; which we have produced, fits into best and why?

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You can clearly see from the graph above that there is a 100% consensus across the people who answered this questionnaire, that our opening scene fits into the genre category 'horror' best.

Taking into account that our chosen genre for our media product was indeed a 'horror.' This shows us that our in depth research on common media conventions associated with the horror genre, enabled us to effectively create a successful opening scene which fulfills its purpose.

Question 3. After watching our opening scene do you think we have maintained a steady, professional use of the digital camcorder

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Again you can clearly see from the graph above that there is a 100% consensus across the people who answered this questionnaire, that we maintained a steady, professional use of a digital camcorder.

The film industry is extremely competitive and in order for our media product to compare and compete against other existing media products we needed our opening scene to look as professional as possible. The outcome of this question has informed us that they feel that we have met this level of professionalism, meaning our opening scene is a success.

Question 4. After watching our opening scene, could you please explain what you think would happen in the rest of the film?

This was an open ended question, below are some of the replies that we received:


"The person in bed is dreaming about something that's going to happen to him in the future and the rest of the movie would these events gradually coming true, i think judging by the opening scenes he would die at the end of the movie."



"It looks like someone is being tortured. I guess the person would be trapped and trying to escape captivity. It doesn't look like there will be a happy ending i.e. I don't think the person will survive until the end of the movie."


These replies tell us that our opening scene has mislead our audience. The people who answered our questionnaire believe the main character is a victim, which is how we intended on portraying him in our opening scene. Our success in misleading the audience means that when they realise the truth towards the end of the film a bigger shock factor and impact will be created during the climax, making our film more successful.

Question 5. Do you feel the use of a soundtrack has contributed to creating atmosphere and tension for our opening scene, making it more successful?

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We had always intended on using a soundtrack in our opening scene after the results we received from question 7 in my audience research questionnaire. The results were as follows:

100% of the people who answered my questionnaire chose this answer. Another member from my group had a similar question in their questionnaire and received exactly the same outcome. This informs me and my group that we should definitely use a soundtrack as one of our media conventions in our opening scene, in order to create the right atmosphere and setting for a film, as well as building tension and creating a fear factor for the audience.

Music is a form of media that can influence how an audience feels, playing with their emotions and portraying different messages and feelings. So it was obvious to my group that a soundtrack would definitely contribute to creating atmosphere and tension for our opening scene, making it more successful. This is reflected in the outcome of results shown in the above graph.

Question 6. Would our opening scene that you have just viewed, make a successful opening scene for a professional media product?



The results for this question show us that an audience feel that our media product would be a successful opening scene for a professionally produced media product. In conclusion to this we feel that our hard work has paid of considering we have produced an extremely successful opening scene, worthy of comparing to existing media products in the filming industry.

Question 7. Below, could you rate how successful you think our opening scene is:



For this question I used a 'rating scale' which enabled the people who answered my questionnaire to rate how good or bad they thought our opening scene was. The options from which they could choose are as follows: awful, not very good, average, good, amazing. The results to this question were:

- Awful:0%
- Not Very Good:0%
- Average:0%
- Good:64%
- Amazing:36%

From our previous questionnaire where an audience had to rate how good they thought the opening scene from; 'Dawn Of Dead' was, we received this outcome:

Overall the opening scene from; 'Dawn Of The Deal' scored highly by the people who answered my questionnaire being categorised as a 'good' opening scene.

Our opening scene received exactly the same outcome. Looking at both of the results my group are extremely pleased that our opening scene scored exactly the same rating as a professional existing media product. This informs me and my group that our media product is comparable to others meaning our opening scene that we produced is a success.

Question 8. Could you please give us any feedback explaining; what you didn't like about our opening scene? what you did like about our opening scene? and how we could improve our opening scene?

This was another open ended question, below are some of the replies that we received:


"The acting was really good.. Considering the facilities and equipment you had available to you i was really really impressed. My favourite part was the bloody hand on glass. It actually scared me. I also really liked the moving camera effect in the woods scene because it created a sense of panic."

This comment shows how effective this person found the effects and camera angles we used, I believe from this we can deter we completed what was asked of us and that they enjoyed the piece, they even said themselves in parts they was scared, and this was one of our goals.


"I really liked how visual everything in the opening scene was as it made it very dramatic, one suggestion i would give for improvement would be some of the shouts from he character being in darker surroundings it would maybe give it more tension as an audience would generally have an irrational fear of what they can't see."

This comments shows improvements we can have to suit there needs better, but making the atmosphere more tense we can consider but it was not one of the major aspects of the film, as the film was a premonition of a dream and not meant to seem like reality.


"The only thing i wasn't particularly sure about was when the character falls to the floor and it repeats when he shouts, i think it didn't look quite so professional as the rest of it."

I agree with this persons perspective on our film, there was parts that were repeated and it didn't look the most professional, but because of being in a group we all had to do a shared amount of work, and this reflects in the film as editing skills change throughout of were we all took turns. We are sorry this happened and it might not look brilliantly professional but we all had to have a chance at editing.


The majority of the feedback was extremely positive informing my group that we achieved all of the goals we had set ourselves in order to produce a successful opening scene.

We did however receive some positive criticism, which we took into account, understanding how we could improve our opening scene further if we had the chance to remake it. Some of the criticism we received about our opening scene was:
-The repetitive shots became to repetitive,
-Our locations could have maybe been darker to create more tension for our opening scene.

In respond to this feedback we would change our opening scene by filming different footage to use in our media product, making our opening scene less repetitive. Unfortunately we don't have access to the technology which would allow us to film in darker locations. A solution to this would be to find an effect in the software we used; 'Premiere Elements Pro 7.0' which would make our scenes darker creating more tension for our opening scene.

Conclusion:

Overall after analysing our audience feedback questionnaire my group have come to the conclusion that we achieved all of our set goals and produced a successful opening scene which can be compared and compete against existing media products considering our time and money constraints.

Film Editing

Currently we are editing the film cuts at the minute, although we thought this was simple we have encountered quite a few problems as we used two different cameras as the camera the school supplied us the battery ran out so we used my personal one, this was all fine until we needed to put them onto the computer, as the first school camera had a tape which had to be imported using a FireWire (FireWire Information - with recognition to Apple) cable, and my camera that plugged in and was recognised as a mass storage device; the problem with this is that it recorded the files in format of (.MOD) which was a problem merging these with the software we were using (Premiere Elements 7.0) as it did not recognise it.

To resolve this problem we had to convert the file type which involved us downloading some software that converted the video codex. This worked but when we tried to import it into Premiere Elements we again had a problem where it only read the audio track and not the video so again we had to convert the file format, but in a different codex.

We are using Premiere Elements 7.0 to create and edit our film, this is workable for us as we know it is not an amazingly complex software but as it is the only available to us we know that we have to edit our film to the best of our potential using the assets we have readily available.

Aspects in which we are considering using in our opening scene are:
- Recognition to the company that supplied us with our soundtrack
- A created production name which would represent our group.
- And the name of the lead actor

Below are still images of the titles used in our finished media product:

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Film Editing:

Uploading Footage:
We are using Premiere Elements 7.0 to create and edit our film, this software is workable for us as it is not that complex and allows us to easily edit our footage. This software is the only available software that we know how to use and edit our footage to the best of our potential.

We are now going to edit the footage that we have filmed, although we thought this was a simple process, we have encountered quite a few problems. These problems have occurred because we used two different cameras due to the camera that the school supplied us with, ran out of battery. Therefore we used one of our group members personal one. This was all fine until we needed to put the footage we filmed onto the computer. The school camera used a tape which had to be imported using a Fire Wire (Fire Wire Information - with recognition to Apple) cable, where as our group members camera that could be plugged in was recognised as a mass storage device; the problem with this is that it recorded the files in format of (.MOD) which created a problem merging these with the software we were using; 'Premiere Elements 7.0,' as it did not recognise it.

To resolve this problem we had to convert the file type which involved us downloading some software that converted the video codex. This worked but when we tried to import it into Premiere Elements, we again had a problem where it only read the audio track and not the video. Therefore we then had to convert the file format in a different codex.

Editing:

We decided as a group it would be best to edit our footage together. This way we can all individually express our ideas, making decisions together and hopefully producing a more successful opening scene.

Below are screen shots taken to show some of the editing processes we used in the production of our media product: click to enlarge

Once we had finally uploaded all of our footage that we had filmed onto the software we started the editing process by deleting all of the footage we weren't going to use.

Once we had filtered out our footage, we needed to duplicate some of our selected shots in order to create distorted, repetitive shots. We are doing this so that we can convey the idea that a dream/premonition is taking place in our opening scene on screen to an audience. This distortion will also produce tension and atmosphere relating to the our chosen genre; 'horror,' making our opening scene more successful.

Below you will see annotated screenshot informing you how we were able to duplicate our selected footage:



We decided that repetitive footage didn't distort our shots enough for the effect we were trying to create and achieve. Therefore we decided to reverse, slow down and speed up some of our footage. This would definitely indicate to an audience that our opening scene is a dream/premonition.

Below you will see an annotated screenshot informing you how we were able to reverse, slow down and speed up our selected footage:



Once all of our footage was in place, leaving space for titles which we will be adding later, we decided it was time to add a very important aspect of our opening scene; the soundtrack. To add the soundtrack into our opening scene we selected the 'get media' option and chose 'from files.' We then found our soundtrack and dragged it into the software where our movie file was. Our chosen soundtrack was in place, so we played our opening scene. During this we found that some of the sounds we captured whilst filming didn't match the ambiance of the rest of the opening scene. To solve this we needed to un-link the audio from the video and delete any un-wanted to audio from our footage.

Below you will see an annotated screenshot informing you how we were able to un-link the audio from the selected footage:



In our initial ideas we discussed the possibility of using a monochrome scale effect for our opening scene to visually inform the audience that our opening scene wasn't set in present time.

Below you will see an annotated screenshot informing you how we were able to change the colour of our opening scene from 'natural' to 'monochrome:'



However after changing the colour of our opening scene we decided that the monochrome scale took away our visual aspects, decreasing the amount of tension and atmosphere produced that related to our chosen genre; 'horror.' The natural colour made the wounds and the blood more noticeable and vivid than the monochrome scale, empathising the situation the main character is in during our opening scene creating more tension and atmosphere. Therefore we decided as a group to keep the natural colour as we felt this made our opening scene more successful.

Our opening scene was finally coming close to completion. After watching our opening scene over we decided we could make our opening scene more polished and professional looking by adding smoother transitions between the shots. This will improve our opening scene visually and hopefully make our opening scene more successful.

Below you will see an annotated screenshot informing you how we were able to add smoother transitions in between our shots in our opening scene:



We finished our opening scene by adding our titles and exporting our opening scene into a movie file. this would enable us to burn our opening scene to disk and upload it onto Vimeo where we could embed it onto our blogs.

Completion of Filming

We have now finished our filming and very anxious to edit, we feel it has gone quite well despite having to film on different occasions because of darkness, permission and weather issues.

We have a large range of clips to edit and are very happy with the clips we did shot.

Film Name and Titles

Our possibilities for our names for our film are:

- Doppelganger
- Dissension
- Hostile
- Parodox
- Violative
- Repugnant
- Vis-á-vis
- Ornery
- Violative Hostile

The way the structure of our titles are going to be conveyed are..

Semiotics: : Equipment, Props and Make Up For Filming (Revised)

Semiotic Elements:

All of the semiotic elements we considered during our first filming process remained exactly the same. However we have changed and edited anything that we needed to due to our previous circumstances:

There are many different factors that we needed to consider before we started filming on Sunday, some of these factors are; What props do we need? Lighting? Costume? Makeup? Equipment? Set? All these questions needed to be planned out so that we are ready for filming.

Here is a list of equipment we shall be needing in order to film:

- Digital Camcorder
- And two tripods, two different sizes for different shots

Looking through our plot and at our storyboard we previously created for the opening scene that we are going to produce we decided on a list of all the props we felt that we needed in order to film; this list is shown below with included pictures of the props that we have selected:

- Fake Blood
- Kitchen Knife
- Oil/Petrol Can
- Water
- Rope
- PVC Tape
- Bin Liners
- Chair

Most of these props that are going to be used, were found round our houses as normal day to day supplies that we all had. However we had to go out and buy fake the blood from a shop called; 'Harlequins' so that our opening scene would be more visually believable.

Preparing to film with our initial actress playing our main character, we had pre-bought some tops and jeans for Vicky to wear whilst filming some of the scenes, due to the amount of dirt, water and fake blood that we wanted to apply to the clothes in order to create a more visually successful opening scene. However due to the circumstances that arose we took the clothes we had brought for Vicky back to the shop as we had kept all of the receipts and used some old clothes that had and was prepared to use.

The Make Up will be applied by a professional/qualified media make up artist, who happened to be a group members mother. Hayden's mother happily volunteered to do all the media makeup, consisting of artificial; scars, cuts, burns, bruises and wounds. We felt this was a huge advantage for our group because we don't have the funds or technology available in order to produce the special effects that we needed in order to compare with existing media products out there with the same genre. Therefore this will visually improve our shots, creating a more realistic, believable opening scene for an audience that we will be able to relate to existing media products out there.

Health and Safety:

All of the health and safety factors we considered during our first filming process remained exactly the same. However we have changed and edited anything that we needed to due to our previous circumstances:

The locations we are using at the school had certain health and safety procedures that we had to go through before we are allowed to film. Underneath the stage and the school basement are both out of bounds for students due to health and safety. This meant we had to get permission from the head teacher as well as the school caretakers. We were each taken through health and safety risks we had to take into account whilst filming in these areas, some of these factors were:
-Removing the trap doors that lead to underneath the stage
-Walking down the stairs leading to the school basement carefully
-Entering and Exiting underneath the stage safely.

We also had to consider other health and safety factors involved with the filming for our opening scene. Screaming, crying, shouting and blood are all being used in our shots that will be filmed at the nature reserve. We realised that a passing citizen may assume someone could possibly be in trouble or hurt and contact our local police service not knowing what is going on. To overcome this problem that may occur we wrote a letter to the local police station indicating filming dates and where we will be filming just in case, as well as creating signs which we would place around the nature reserve whilst we are filming for any passing citizens to indicate that filming is going on. The letter we wrote to the police station and the signs we created are shown below:

(Click to enlarge)

Camera Angles (Revised)

Below is a list of all the camera angles and camera techniques we have planned to use in our opening scene; explaining what each of the camera angles are and why we want to use them in our media product.

Camera Angles:

The camera angle marks the specific location at where a camera is placed to record a shot. A scene may be shot from several camera angles and produces different shots which in effect leaves us with a different feel of the overall film, characters and elements of the filming.

Close Up Shot:

In film, a close up shot tightly frames a person or an object. Close up shots are one of the standard shots used regularly with medium shots and long shots. Close up shots display the most detail, but they do not include the broader scene. Moving in to a close up shot or away from a close up shot is a common type of zooming.

We are planning to use a close up shot in our opening scene in order to distinguish our main character as well as to show detail; such as the characters emotion. This shot should help to create atmosphere and tension for our opening scene causing it to be more dramatic and successful.

Medium Shot:

In film, a medium shot is a camera shot from a medium distance. A medium shot is usually a shot of a person from the knees up/waist up, however in some standard texts and professional references, a full length view of a human subject is called a medium shot.

We are planning to use a medium shot in our opening scene as they are relatively good at showing a characters facial expression and body language, depending on where the character is placed in the shot. This again will create atmosphere and tension for our opening scene causing it to be more dramatic and successful. We are also going to use a medium shot to represent the importance of the character in our opening scene to an audience.

Long Shot:

In film a long shot typically shows the entire object or human figure and is usually intended to place it in some relation to its surroundings. It has been suggested that long shot ranges usually correspond to approximately what would be the distance between the front row of the audience and the stage in live theatre. It is now common to refer to a long shot as a "wide shot" because it often requires the use of a wide angle lens. When a long shot is used to set up a location and its participants in film, it is called an establishing shot.

We are going to use a long shot in our opening scene to show shots of thrilling action in order to create atmosphere and tension for our opening scene causing it to be more dramatic and successful. We are also going to use a long shot to establish different locations to an audience which all have significant importance to the rest of the film, hopefully creating un answered questions and confusion among an audience, captivating them from the very start of our film.

Two Shot:

A Two shot is a type of shot employed in the film industry in which the frame encompasses a view of two people (the subjects). The subjects do not have to be next to each other, and there are many common two-shots which have one subject in the foreground and the other subject in the background.

We are going to use a two shot in our opening scene to introduce an anomalous character to our opening scene and showing the emotional reactions between the two subjects. Again this will create atmosphere and tension for our opening scene causing it to be more dramatic and successful and create un answered questions and confusion among an audience, captivating them from the very start of our film.

High Angle Shot:

In film, a high angle shot is usually when the camera is located above the eye line. With this type of angle, the camera looks down on the subject.

We are going to use a high angle shot in our opening scene in order portray our main character to an audience as vulnerable or powerless. This should help us mislead an audience by conveying a false message on screen, making them believe our main character is a victim. This therefore will help create a bigger impact on the audience for the climax of the film when they finally realise the truth.

Dutch Angle:

Dutch tilt, Dutch angle, oblique angle, German angle, canted angle, or Batman Angle are terms used for a tactic often used to portray the psychological uneasiness or tension in the subject being filmed. A Dutch angle is achieved by tilting the camera off to the side. Many Dutch angles are static shots at an obscure angle

We are going to use a dutch angle shot in our opening scene so that we can portray psychological uneasiness to an audience. This psychological uneasiness relates to the genre of our opening scene that we are going to produce and would give an audience an awareness and realisation of our genre. It will also help to create atmosphere and tension for our opening scene causing it to be more dramatic and successful.

Camera Techniques:

Tilting:

Tilting is a technique in which the camera is stationary and rotates in a vertical plane. Tilting the camera results in a motion similar to someone nodding their head.

We are going to use the technique of tilting in our opening scene in order to create atmosphere and tension for our opening scene causing it to be more dramatic and successful. We would do this by showing one part of an object or subject and slowly revealing more and more.




Panning:

Panning refers to the horizontal movement or rotation of a still or moving video camera. Panning may also be referred to as the scanning of a subject horizontally on video or a display device. Panning a camera results in a motion similar to that of someone shaking their head.

We are going to use the technique of panning in our opening scene to create atmosphere and tension for our opening scene causing it to be more dramatic and successful. We would do this by showing one part of an object or subject and slowly revealing more and more.

Plot Synopsis (Revised)

Our plot synopsis remains unchanged as we were all still happy with our storyline and plot. We only needed to edit the name of the main character.

Below is our edited plot/opening scene synopsis.

Plot Synopsis:

Mitchell is a young man with a disorder unknown to others as well as himself. Mitchell has a split personality doppelganger disorder where he possesses two very different personalities and wakes up thinking that he has just encountered another nightmare, when in fact he has enacted it. Furious families from Mitchell's unknown victims plot for their revenge, leaving Mitchell fighting for survival whilst discovering the truth behind there actions.

Below is a synopsis for the opening scene that we are going to produce with an included summary for why we made these decisions.


Opening Scene Synopsis:

A series of flashbacks combined with premonitions(Which will reveal parts from scenes that will come later on in the film.)visually inform the audience by showcasing short snips of Mitchell captivated, running and tortured portraying a 'damsel in distress-in theory.'(This will force the audience to sympathise with Mitchell creating a false sense of security, making Mitchell the last person the audience pinpoint to be the killer, creating further mystery and curiosity and leaving the audience in a trance wanting to know who? Why? Being drawn in and captivated from the very start. This will create a bigger impact on the audience for the climax of the film when they finally realise the truth.)Mitchell's other personality will also have his turn in the spotlight, as the audience will see short snips of this side of him taking action.(The audience do not know about Mitchell's personality disorder and therefore will be mislead from the opening scene thinking that they are seeing Mitchell getting some sort of revenge, not realising that Mitchell is in fact the hunter; not the prey.)The opening scene finishes with Mitchell waking up thinking that he has just encountered another nightmare.(Again misleading the audience in order to create a bigger impact on the audience for the climax of the film when they finally realise the truth.)

New Time Plan

We again finally came to the point in the development of producing our own media product where we needed to start the filming for our opening scene sequence.

The first problem we needed to overcome was 'time management.' Therefore we created a new time plan that we could use, which would again inform us when all three of us are free to film as well as myself being free to act. Our media coursework deadline was drawing nearer so we made sure all of use cancelled any plans we may have had in order to complete all of our filming. We also decided to include our own personal deadline that we could stick to in order to make sure our filming didn't drag out longer than it needed to. The new time plan we produced is shown below:




After re-creating our time plan you can see we have created a deadline for our filming to be finished by the 25th February. The days we have made sure we are all free to film and in my case act are:
- Saturday 20th February
- Sunday 21rst February
- Monday 22nd February
- Tuesday 23rd February
- Wednesday 24th February

Filming Process Two

Below is the updated letter to the local police authority and the poster with the latest filming dates on.






Below are pictures that are of our actor when he was costumed and had his make up applied:







Also below is the weather overview for our updated dates:

Charachter Profile (Revised)

Below is the charachter profile of the final actor for our main role.

(Click to Enlarge)

Acting Conflictions & Changes

Due to undisclosed circumstances we now cannot use Victoria Thurston for our acting, due to time constraints and availability of Vicky we decided to make an informed decision to use a fellow group member (Hayden Simmons) to be our main character.

Changing the main character at the last minute is hard work and means we have to rethink everything and make sure that it all works. We thought everything through and think all of the main aspects will work with the new actor, a new character profile and a new plot synopsis would probably be needed but other than that it all fits in with what we want and have previously planned.

Filming Process

We have came to the point in the development of producing our own media product where we need to start the filming for our opening scene sequence.

The first problem we needed to overcome was 'time management.' In order for our group to film we had to create a time plan that we could use, which would inform us when all three of us are free to film as well as the actress we are using. Each of us have different plans on different days of the week making it hard to distinguish when all of us would be free together so that we could film. therefore we created a time plan on excel where we could visually see when all of us are free and that time plan is shown below:


(Click to Enlarge)


After creating our time plan and looking at the days we are free to film, we decided that we wanted to film on the days were all of us could be present, these days are:

- Sunday 7th February
- Monday 8th February
- Tuesday 9th February
- Wednesday 10th February

We chose to do this because we each wanted to have the same amount of inclusion and input for the production of our media product in hope to create an opening scene with the best possible outcome.

Another thing we had to look at was the weather and times on sunset as we want to film around the time of dusk, as this is england we do not always get the best weather and the times of sunset varies throughout the year dramatically, so we thought it was vital we checked it to see if it ios predicted to be ok for the set dates we have planned to film and luckily the day we are outside the weather and lighting is meant to be:

(Click to Enlarge)

To find out the weather predictions I used BBC Weather

Health and Safety:

The locations we are using at the school had certain health and safety procedures that we had to go through before we are allowed to film. Underneath the stage and the school basement are both out of bounds for students due to health and safety. This meant we had to get permission from the head teacher as well as the school caretakers. We were each taken through health and safety risks we had to take into account whilst filming in these areas, some of these factors were:
-Removing the trap doors that lead to underneath the stage
-Walking down the stairs leading to the school basement carefully
-Entering and Exiting underneath the stage safely.

We also had to consider other health and safety factors involved with the filming for our opening scene. Screaming, crying, shouting and blood are all being used in our shots that will be filmed at the nature reserve. We realised that a passing citizen may assume someone could possibly be in trouble or hurt and contact our local police service not knowing what is going on. To overcome this problem that may occur we wrote a letter to the local police station indicating filming dates and where we will be filming just in case, as well as creating signs which we would place around the nature reserve whilst we are filming for any passing citizens to indicate that filming is going on. The letter we wrote to the police station and the signs we created are shown below:

(Click to Enlarge)



Camera and Tripod:

Now that we figured out the dates we were all available and free to film we needed to book out the equipment that we intended on using. The equipment we have booked out are:

- Digital Camcorder

- And a tripod

We booked both pieces of equipment out on Wednesday 3rd February which we are allowed to keep until we have finished filming.

Budget:

Our budget is obviously very low as we are students and are not receiving funds by anyone. All together it has cost us around £20 for any of the equipment and props that we needed.

Semiotics: Equipment, Props and Make Up For Filming

Equipment and Props that we are using in our first scene production are:

- Fake Blood
- Knives
- Oil Can
- Water
- Rope
- Chair
- Tripod
- Clothing that we are providing for the main character Vicky Thurston
- Camera for filming

Most of these props that are going to be used, were found round our houses as normal day to day supplies that we all had. However we had to go out and buy fake the blood from a shop called; 'Harlequins' so that our opening scene would be more visually believable.

Some of the scenes that our main actress will be shooting involves getting incredibly dirty. This is because a lot of dirt, water, fake blood and even the possibility of tearing some of her clothes will be used in our shots to create a more visually effective opening scene. We understood that it was too much to ask our actress to supply these clothes that we intentionally are going to ruin and therefore we measured Vicky, taking down all her sizes, went to a cheap clothes shop called; 'George' a subsidiary company of ASDA and bought some plain tops and a pair of trousers for Vicky to wear during filming.

The Make Up will be applied by a professional/qualified media make up artist, who happened to be a grup members mother (Hayden Simmons). My mother happily volunteered to do all the media makeup, consisting of; scars, cuts, burns, bruises and wounds. We felt this was a huge advantage for our group because we don't have the funds or technology available in order to produce the special effects that we needed in order to compare with existing media products out there with the same genre. Therefore this will visually improve our shots, creating a more realistic, believable opening scene for an audience that we will be able to relate to existing media products out there.

Soundtrack, Copyright Eligibility and Letter

Below there is some information about copyright I found to help me understand more about the law and stipulations about this area of media protection and also there is information about the choices we made involving copyrighting and using a soundtrack.

Copyright Information:

© is the standard symbol stating that something is copyrighted and protected from use other than what is permitted.

'Copyright is the exclusive right granted to the author of an original work, including the right to authorise or ban the publication, distribution and adaptation of that work. Copyright only lasts for a certain time period after which the work is said to enter the public domain. Copyright applies to any expressible form of an idea or information that is substantive and discrete and fixed in a medium. Some jurisdictions also recognize "moral rights" of the creator of a work, such as the right to be credited for the work. Copyright is described under the umbrella term intellectual property along with patents and trademarks.' - Wikipedia

'Document granting exclusive right to publish and sell literary or musical or artistic work' - Google Definitions

Obtaining Copyright:

'It is normal to request permission via the publisher of the work. The publisher will often have a permissions department to deal with such requests, or may use the services of a copyright clearance or licensing service. If the publisher cannot give permission directly, they will certainly know who you should contact, (as they will have obtained permission themselves in order to use the work in the first place).

If for example, the copyright owner is personally known to you, it may be possible to obtain permission via a private agreement. In such cases you should ensure you get an agreement in writing to avoid any future disagreements.

For website content, it is normal to contact the webmaster of the site. The webmaster may either give permission directly or refer your request to someone in the company who can deal with your request.

For photographs, (i.e. wedding pictures), it is normally to contact the photographer, (or company), that took the images. As they will normally control the rights to the photos, and will have their own reproduction or duplication charges.' - Copyrightservice


Information about the soundtrack, copyright and the outcome of our decisions:

For our scene we thought we should incorporate a soundtrack, this is because in our questionnaires we received information telling us that we should use a soundtrack, especially mine where 39 people said that they would like to hear some type of sound.

This influenced us and basically made us decide we definitely need a song in our scene as it is obviously what the audience like to have incorporated into there idea of a 'perfect' film beginning.

To do this we thought about the ways we could obtain a sound track; our options were to either create our own or use an existing piece of work. Thinking about time constraints and levels of skill you need to create an original piece that sounds sophisticated and sounds 'the part' we decided it would be best to use an already existing piece.

The major problem with using an existing piece of material is that most will be copyrighted and have protection to use these, this is when a piece of work is protected from use of people that do not have permission and to obtain the right to use this you would need the owner/s to agree to you using the material and they would specify under what conditions you can use this.

We thought about this thoroughly and researched all about copyright which led us to writing a letter to the company we want to use the sound from, as this is for educational use and will not ever be publicly presented or used for any commercial purposes we did not see any reason why we couldn't.

Below is the letter we wrote to Overture Films to obtain copyright use of the soundtrack we decided we wanted to use:




We wanted to use a soundtrack albumn from the film Pandorum, we decided this after lots of searching and thought it was most appropriate and below is a representation of the track we are using:

Untitled from Zak Wattiez on Vimeo.

Storyboard

Below is a simple storyboard of the frames that will be included in our scene:

(Click to enlarge)

After thought and process and we have decided to change the storyboard as of the 1st of February, it is now the following image:

Camera Angles

Practice Camera Angles from Zak Wattiez on Vimeo.

Plot Synopsis

We felt as a group that we needed to create a plot/storyline for a whole film in order to create a more meaningful, successful opening scene. Therefore underneath is a short Plot synopsis for our whole film.

Plot synopsis:
Michelle is a young woman with a disorder unknown to others as well as herself. Michelle has a split personality disorder where she possesses two very different personalities and wakes up thinking that she has just encountered another nightmare, when in fact she has enacted it. Furious families from Michelle's unkown vitcims plot for their revenge leaving michelle fighting for survival whilst discovering the truth behind there actions.

Below is a synopsis for the opening scene that we are going to produce with an included summary for why we made our decisions.

Opening scene synopsis:

A series of flashbacks combined with premonitions(Which will reveal parts from scenes that will come later on in the film.)visually inform the audience by showcasing short snips of Michelle captivated, running and tortured portraying a 'damsel in distress.'(This will force the audience to sympathise with Michelle creating a false sense of security, making Michelle the last person the audience pinpoint to be the killer, creating further mystery and curiosity and leaving the audience in a trance wanting to know who? Why? Captivated in the film from the very start. This will create a bigger impact on the audience for the climax of the film when they finally realise the truth.)Michelle's other personality will also have her turn in the spotlight, as the audience will see short snips of this side of her taking action.(The audience do not know about Michelle's personality disorder and therefore will be mislead from the opening scene thinking that they are seeing Michele getting some sort of revenge, not realising that Michelle is in fact the hunter; not the prey.)The opening scene will finish with Michelle waking up thinking that she has just encountered another nightmare.(Again misleading the audience in order to create a bigger impact on the audience for the climax of the film when they finally realise the truth.)

The Script

Retro Scripting:

Whilst looking at how to convey the script and what type to use, through research and lots of thought we thought due to our circumstances we should use something we researched called retro scripting.

A retro scripted script contains a plot outline and leaves dialogue deliberately vague for interpretation by the actors/actresses through improvisation. This technique can add strong realism and characterization to dialogue making the film come across believable and natural to an audience. This technique is commonly used in low budgeted films and sometimes the use of this technique causes the film to be incredibly successful: for example; 'Paranormal Activity.'

The technique of 'retro scripting' is used mainly in 'home made films' with low budgets that cant afford special effects and high-tech equipment. Because we are producing a 'home made' media product with no budget and the use of one hand held digital camera, we want to try our best to relate our media product to some type of existing products already out there. Therefore we are going to use this technique for our opening scene that we are going to produce. We feel the use of this technique may help us to achieve and produce a more successful opening scene because we will be able to create strong realism and characterization to dialogue making the film come across believable and natural to an audience.

Inspiration:

The opening scene that we are going to produce, we can highly compare and relate to existing media products that involved extremely low budgets, (if there was any budget at all) and minimal technology.

Existing media products, some more successful than others, that used this technique are listed below:
-Summer Heights High
-Trailer Park Boys
-The Blair Witch Project series
-Paranormal Activity

These films used a technique where the directors 'attempted to focus on believability rather than action and gore,' In these films they believed that; 'a "higher degree of plausibility" was created for an audience as they were "more invested in the story and the characters."' And therefore technique called 'Retro scripting' was used.

To help us learn about Rectro Scripting we used the following websites to provide us with the knowledge we need:

- Wikipedia
- State Master

Filming Locations

Our filming location is not in one set place, it is in a few locations located around where we live (Whittlesey, Peterborough) and below is a few still shots of places we have planned to film at that we produced by taking pictures from a digital camera and uploading them to a computer, then distributing them onto our blog addresses:

Any of these pictures below if you click them they will enlarge in your browser





The two still shots above are pictures taken from the Whittlesey Nature Reserve



Above is a picture taken from under our schools stage, we feel this looks very intimidating and gives the 'horror' type look we are looking for





Above is also a shot from our school, this is our boiler room, we had to obtain permission and supervision to go into the boiler room because of hazards, this took time but in the end evaluating what the area looked like we as a group are pleased with our decision to film in this location as it fits its purpose very well









These four pictures above are from a group members house, these are also where filming is going to be produced and created, this is beacause it will make the first scene have more of a storyline.