Favorite genre for film

My favourite genre in movies is horror, although I mainly prefer ‘zombie’ horrors as they offer a lot of action ( which I also like ). There is a lot of effort which goes into it such as editing, acting, make-up and the time to create it all.

I have two preferred horror films, Zombie land and Shaun of the Dead, both being exceptional and tense whilst also maintaining some comedic value to it. Shaun of the dead has great actors, including Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Kate Ashfield. A lot of effort went into making the film, especially the makeup and making the story, whilst it is dramatic and funny at the same time. To be able to make that kind of film it takes a lot of effort which makes the film even more respectable.

Another benefit of horror movies is that they release built-up tension, via the stimulation of one's personal fear level, so there is also a benefit to watching horror movies!

Characters used

As we only had two characters in our trailer we were able to task our minds with much more determination on those two characters and use our creativity to create what we thoughts was the best costumes which we could find at that time, as we bunched together some things such as a trench coat, a horse mask and a Kukri blade for the antagonist. Also seeing as the two characters did not talk much due to us deciding on not including any dialogue, we pondered on the thought that it would make them seem just emotionless and vague characters which is extremely boring, since horrors generally rely on creating a stereotype such as in teenage horror films where a powerful murderer finds and usually ends up killing the group of teenagers, each inevitably being given a certain way of behaving, such as the blonde girl usually being the first to be killed as well as the smart nerdy dude being killed second to last with one of the quiet female characters. With the protagonist we hoped that we could apply some kind of emotion to him, which we did but it was hard to spot, as the only expression you could get from him was pain. In human nature we generally feel bad if we see something in pain and want to help it to some extent, which is why we tried to show the protagonist as a vulnerable and somewhat impeccant person.

production difference

Our production is different from others of horror films since we were mainly focusing on having a Friday the 13th themed story line, since we have the antagonist who is chasing after the protagonist but at the same time can be killed fairly easily if the protagonist had a weapon, the antagonist also has a machete which he will then use to kill the protagonist further into the trailer, or will he? Through this we left a good enigma and a cliffhanger ending to see whether the fallen over protagonist will survive the Michael Myers lookalike. Generally other people who produced a trailer for A2 had stuck with more of a possession and ghostly horror film which creates more spooks and less goofs and gaffs like our film. I believe with a film including malevolent phantoms the antagonist generally wont be seen and only requires fairly exceptional acting from the protagonist in order to get a higher grade, but with our film we placed a mask on the antagonist to make him somewhat anonymous but also something which the audience can see, so we had to get a taller person to make him seem more intimidating. The change between both our films and others' films is important because both groups need to be able to clearly display that they are capable of doing something which they plan out to do, and with both groups planning different variations of one genre they need to make it clear for the audience most of the time so that there aren't so many questions being asked and that there are enough answers.

generic conventions

generic conventions have been adhered to since we stayed with a fairly classic old school style of filming where the protagonist is being chased somewhere, for example Attack of the killer tomatoes which is a fairly old classic film where the antagonist overpowers pretty much everyone else. If we had subverted the horror we wouldn't have included any blood and it would have seemed more like an action or a comedy film since it is so crazy, so the blood and the use of a weapon helps the audience determine that it is indeed the horror film which they wanted to see and not something else, such as a romance.

mise en scene

I believe that the make up and the costume gave it away for our horror film, since we had the antagonist wear a trench coat and have a horse mask, which is although fairly funny in certain contexts, it can be quite disturbing in others, such as a dark building located in the middle of nowhere with a massive forest which has no end (Not actually the setting but we imagine it so for immersion). With any horror film, all you have to do is change the color scheme to a much darker tone and you have the shot. It can be as simple as filming outside whilst it is really sunny and then all you have to do is as said, location sorted for the horror film, which is what we tried to do however we got to the location a bit late and had a dark setting anyway, which funnily enough someone gave bad feedback about. We also included a lot of blood on the protagonist since we wanted the audience to know that he was injured and trying to escape from the antagonist. If we had made a proper film the story would have been explained a bit better but since we didn't have much time to film we had to focus on the shots.

genre and how its conveyed

The genre of our film is horror, we conveyed this to our audience by using everything that we knew, this being how to make the location seem more ominous and mysterious by making it darker, as well as including fake blood which we used fairly well in order to create a good look on the protagonist. Also we had used one of the most basic things in horror films, a omnipotent being randomly chasing the vulnerable protagonist. Of course there should be a story behind why this is happening but it would be explained much more in the real film. We tried to add as much immersion for our audience through the use of over the shoulder shots of both the protagonist and the antagonist, although we gave the antagonist much more prevalence over the trailer.

male gaze

Since our whole cast were males, we decided that the male gaze is fairly important in understanding our trailer, since there is so much violence and chasing going on it would be hard to understand, and having the male gaze it would be easier to conform to the trailer and understand it since males may see the trailer as more exciting than it actually is since it has a quick clip of fighting, since our main target audience were teenagers, and since the majority of people who view action and horror are stereotypically male, so we realised that in order to improve the immersion for our audience we would have to apply basic scenes which contained action in order to attract that audience.

User and gratification

The main user and gratification that the audience can appeal to in our trailer is social interaction. This is mainly because people would be more than likely to talk about it after watching. such as the following day they may group up and start talking about what their opinions of the film was, such as positive and negative criticism. For example, one of the actors in our trailer does taekwondo and does a kick to the antagonist. This could enable the audience to feel more immersed as they may do martial arts themselves, so they can relate to the character, as well as talk about the kick in a conversation with their friends which may then result in them talking about other martial arts and branching off the conversation into other topics. Our trailer may also spark debates on what props we used, such as using fake blood, where people may talk about what they thought about how the blood affected to trailer and if it made it conform to horror much more than if there wasn't any blood. Another topic that people may talk about is the music which was used. This could spark long conversations since that music is such a wide topic which sparks pretty much everyone's interest, such as what music they are into, so our trailer would begin that conversation.

Another user and gratification that we can relate to mainly is to entertain. although our trailer is fairly short it enables our audience to have a sense of escapism for that short time, as they are constantly wondering what is going on. It lets them exit their daily lives through the means of watching an unconventional horror film, as the thing which happens in the trailer most likely would not happen in real life, so to say it is something different for them to see, it distracts them from reality.

Comparing: Last year's film to this year's film

For our first year we decided on making an action film, since we believed that it was easier and we were more willing to do a fight scene, however this year we wanted to keep it more relaxed, and still applying action into our trailer, yet not as much. A good example of this is we initially had a scene on last year's film which foreshadowed a fight scene, where the protagonist (who had a gun) was chasing the two antagonists. However this year we only had one bit of fighting where the protagonist kicks the antagonist away.

In last years film we opted for little transitions, and if we did use a transition we wanted to keep it basic such as a quick cut from one clip to another or a fade to black to symbolise a change in time for the audience, we decided that this would be best for the film since it was action and we needed fast paced cuts to keep the action going. In this year's film it was very similar, where we decided to use a lot of match on action to keep the action going since the trailer was so short we couldn't afford wasting time on slow shots. Due to the fact that we first decided to start the trailer off slowly then build up the tension we firstly started off doing fade to black shots then again using simple cutting transitions from one shot to another.

The main effect that we achieved from last year was that we made people enjoy the film more since it had a better fight scene and generally had ironically funny shots, we also made the music change at certain times during the trailer in order to change to atmosphere, changing the audiences' mood, which is the main purpose of music from our opening two minutes of last years' film. In this year's film the main effect that we had on the audience is that we had them becoming curious as to what is going on and leaving many questions unanswered, to spark the imagination of our audience, such as why is a man in a mask chasing a guy covered in blood and why are they at a guides hut.

I believe that this does show progression in our skills since we were finally able to understand how to change the audiences' mood just by creating an atmosphere with music and a few camera angles, which we used in this year's trailer. By using this knowledge of the horror genre, such as making the lighting dark, near night time and adding a few dim lights it makes everything seem much more dangerous, and since a lot of people have a fear of the dark, if not what is in the dark, so this trailer would be a catalyst in provoking that fear, making the immersion of the film much better.

I believe that this year's trailer is better than last year's opening two minutes in involving the audience because we got a lot more positive feedback than from last year, and generally the audience seemed to enjoy quite a quick trailer, since our old one had some structure and story but wasn't described as much, so we decided to stay the same but instead for a purpose and not by accident, as mentioned earlier we tried to help spark the audience's imagination through not giving a story, but instead letting them imagine one.

Screengrab

Remember to discuss narrative/genre/representation/media language/audience in your evaluation

                                                    Setting/location

We decided to put our settings at the same place as where we filmed last year. This was mainly due to the fact that we were familiar with the surroundings and we knew which places were going to be affected by lighting, and since a lot of horror is to do with lighting we had to limit ourselves to where we filmed, as we only got limited lighting from the scout hutt. Our main focus was filming at this scout hutt because it was a great standing point for our filming and a easy platform to start off from. The location was also cut off from society and was far away from any highstreet, and since Oxshott is generally a quiet place we had very little issues sound wise for filming, however we did have to endure through a long session of fireworks as well as a dog in a garden which was barking endlessly.

Costumes and props

Our costumes and props were fairly basic, as we only had two sets of costumes, some generic fake blood and a villain with a mask. Some other props were a bit risky for us since we had to get the cameraman to stand on top of a ladder at its highest setting, which was fairly wobbly and did cause some concern, but we were able to get the shots from the ladder unharmed and move onto the next shot. 

Camerawork and editing

Camera work was one of our main focuses, as we knew that we would not be able to do any editing outside such as special effects which will be talked about further on, so we had to prioritise shots such as quick panning shots known as whips, which make a scene such as an object being thrown seem as if it hits the actor as it blurs out the screen for just a millisecond. Our editing was limited due to the fact that apart from not having as much knowledge as a industrial grade film maker, we didnt wan't to make the trailer look to crazy with special effects being placed everywhere.

Special effects

For our special effects we decided on keeping it fairly simple and plain. Although this method is boring our group thought that it would be best for us since we didn't plan on using many special effects. However one interesting thing we added to the text to make it seem for flashy and horror like is that we did some good edits to make the tect flicker as if it was a dim light, which makes it look much cooler and original like a horror film, where everything is dark.

Story and how the trailer sets it up

The story is quite advanced in our standards, however we were unable to display the story very well, since it was such a short horror trailer we had to jam pack it with action and quick match on action shots, which made it seem a bit crazy and over the top. Some feedback we got from one student was that the trailer just seemed like it was two people running around. In order to convey our story which was in depth and detailed we should have made the trailer a bit longer and used subtitles to describe what was going on and how everything was happening as well as why the characters are in that location in the first place,

Genre and how the trailer suggests it

The genre which we aimed for was Horror, the trailer suggests it through the use of blood, the music being eerie but not sci-fi, but more fitting for a fast paced chase scene between the antagonist and the protagonist, also the use of blood is an instant give away that there will be some kind of fighting, and blood genuinely supports the role of horror due to the fact that someone has been injured. Also the protagonist in the first few shots seems to be rushing away from somewhere and panicking, meaning that there must be some sort of monster following him?

How characters are introduced

Characters are introduced quite quickly into our trailer, also since our trailer is very short in comparison to most horror films we had to suddenly burst in both of our characters as soon as so that we could create at least a vivid story for the viewers to understand to some degree. The antagonist is introduced through a high angle shot and the antagonist in the horse mask is looking up towards to camera, which instantly tells the audience that he is the bad guy. The protagonist is introduced through him walking injured across a pathway or forest.

The title of the film & Title font and style.

The title of the film is quite a long title compared to a lot of horror films, however there are some which are the same if not longer, such as Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th. Our title was mainly based on the idea of confusion, where our character is stuck in a building with some condition confused and doing the same thing constantly. Since we were doing a horror film, and wanted to include blood for our protagonist, we decided on a dark theme for our title, where we had red and black. the title took a lot of editing to do such as erasing and using advanced editing on photoshop such as editing a picture on another tab then moving it to the main tab, like the picture on the top right. 

• Research and planning

• Research and planning

We firstly got inspiration from Friday the 13th, where the antagonist is much bigger and more intimidating than the rest of the cast, especially the protagonist. Another film we took inspiration from was Billy Black Christmas, where the antagonist suffocates the protagonist, and completely dominates the situation, whilst being psychopathic and causing the protagonist to be fearful and try to run away. however something we decided to change from the film is that the antagonist talks, whereas ours does not, and simply remains a silent killer, building much more mystery around the character which is much like Friday the 13th, and thought it would work well with our theme. Our audience which we mainly focused on was teenagers and young adults, mainly due to the fact that we wanted a fast action fast paced film with some fighting scene.          

 The audience informed our thinking of our media production through the means of creating more of an intense atmosphere and giving us ideas which were helpful in opening our mind and creating some more scenes or at least being able to edit some new things into the film using Adobe premier elements 10. The inspiration from film enabled us to have new ideas on either the protagonist or the antagonist, and since we wanted to focus on the antagonist, we took a lot of inspiration from the character Jason Vorhees.

 In order to record all of this research we put some blogs on blogger to create a kind of folder, so that it was easy to access. However we discovered that we would have to have some sort of internet to access these files, so we decided to send these to our other Gmail accounts and save the files on our home computers, as well as saving them on the school computer so that there were several versions of the files just in case one of them got deleted.

 For our primary research we mainly focused on smaller questionnaire which we put onto blogger, where we asked several people from our class what title they preferred for example, even though we did have a good idea of what title would be more fitting, a lot of people's votes were quite staggered so that we had to make the final decision ourselves.

 We used the primary research to make sure that we had a base to start off, and that we had some ideas of what to call our film for example, or another example is what music we should have used. We then used secondary research to double check on what we had done and made sure that everything was in check, however we did come across some troubles as we didn't want to do another questionnaire, so we did a quick survey which we didn't put on blogger.

 The results informed our production as we were able to discover a lot more about what people would prefer and how they thought our initial ideas would work in the trailer itself.

 A couple of the main uses for this kind of research is to find out what our target audience would prefer and how they would like that to come about, if we do not follow what they want to some extent then they will not get as much immersion from the trailer.

 Since we had to change the main story about halfway through the editing process we did not follow the script and storyboard as well as we could have, which meant that we could have lost some good grades as we did have quite a few good ideas in our head which were on the storyboard which we had forgotten a couple of months later. We did plan to have some dialogue but again as we were filming the shots we were too concerned on making sure every shot was perfect as we had limited time, and spent the majority of the first half shooting to fix the lights at the scout hut we were situated at.

* How have you developed these skills at A2? I have developed these skills in A2 through being able to write a script and a storyboard effectively.

Movie Feedback Essay

Most of the people talked about the lighting issues, such as not being able to see the antagonist, as well as a fair amount of analyzing on the shots, and how the lighting affected how they saw the protagonist. Some good feedback is on the close up shots of the antagonist is that we should have made the shot a bit lighter so that it was more visible, however I would go against this thought since majority of horror films are dark, as it builds more intensity. An interesting point which was made was that there should have been more dialogue in the film, although we decided not to include dialogue because we wanted to build mystery around the antagonist, which we got inspiration from Friday the 13th. This and the fact that our trailer was fairly short, so that we were unable to add much dialogue without ruining the intensity. We did have some opportunities to add some dialogue when the titles came up halfway through the trailer. Our trailer was about 52 seconds long so if we did add anything it would ruin the music. Another comment which was added was that the music was good because it builds up suspense, and that is good because one of the main focuses of my editing was the music, since music is often used to build tension  in many classic horror films.

Other than this the feedback was mostly critical, which is what is needed in order to create a better film. And the feedback was good since my group has understood somethings, although there may have been some disagreements on some things overall there were many things to work on to improve, as well as the people who did the feedback were a part of the audience which we were targeting.

Movie Feedback uncut

Movie Feedback

• Creativity

• Creativity
Last year we ended up doing an action film, however this year we did a horror film to try and spark our creativity, since in actions films all we got was a low grade, so we thought that with horror we could use more creativity in order to get new shots, find new action sequences and be able to use the light theme to our advantage, it was new for us because of the sudden change in theme and we were able to plant new ideas in our head. Last year we were using the ideas of fighting and one of friends gave us an idea which helped us create something new and original.

our main ideas came from inspiration from a film called Friday the 13th, where the villain wears a unique mask and carries a knife around. However the way we went about displaying the antagonist is through quick shots and the antagonist took up the majority of the screen time, since we wanted to see the view from both sides, where we did a behind the shoulder shot of the antagonist at the beginning and ended up doing a different behind the shoulder shot. however last year our ideas mainly were improvised on the spot and we used techniques which we learnt and combined with our creativity in order to create some shots for example during the introduction scene we combined a high angle shot of one of the antagonist's feet and then a dolly shot from in front tracking his face, which was a good introduction of the character.

 Although our group had conflicting ideas on how to approach a certain shot, we ended coming to agreements and we were able to try out different shots and see which one worked best, luckily all of our ideas worked and we were able to work together fairly well, sometimes if one person couldn't come up with an idea another person would come up with an idea which makes the shots more enhanced and fine tuned for action, such as quick changes in camera angles. Apart from the occasional disagreement in shot we were able to work together fairly well as we were all close friends so we wouldn't fall out or anything petty like that, we were able to understand each others' point of view and we all have fairly creative minds and were willing to do things like take-downs on the fight scene fairly realistically in order to get a good shot.

We mainly changed things by adding more props into the shots, or a better example being a different fight scene, since we had two fight scenes planned out we mainly decided on using the second one since it was much less painful and a bit easier to film due to the flips and dangerous take downs which were included in the first fight scene.

 although most of our creativity was drained through filming shots we were able to come up with some overly imaginative color schemes  which inevitably ruined the whole film so we had to go back and take off the layers of color so it seemed less cartoonish. We also used some transitions to make sure that we would show a change in time or a change in character so that the audience can easily make out a change.

 On one shot we put in a more of a darker tone to kind of change the theme, where the sun was quite blurred out but at the same time you were able to see the top character. The reason we did this is because we wanted to add a hazy theme from a point of view from one of the antagonists where he is a known drug dealer and so that we cant see the protagonist behind the hut. The camera then fades focus and changes so that you can see both antagonists, so it makes it seem cooler for the audience. Throughout some parts of the trailer we were able to add a hint of saturation in the color to make it seem more like sunset.

 The intended outcome of the production was mainly just for entertainment purposes, since it is an amateur film we found some scenes to be ironically quite comedic, since it is an action film and we had no direct comedy included. For example when the lighting suddenly changed from sunset to night then back to daytime, which was simply a mistake on timing during the film.

 Camera shot choices were fairly well chosen, where we increased the drama through the use of suddenly changing shots and making sure that each shot linked with the other, along with some mistakes.

 We have been able to develop these skills through to A2 as we advanced and used our creativity again to discover more shots and use the knowledge we gained from AS and applied it to our new film Delirium: Insanity. We were also much more comfortable using Adobe Premier Elements 10 since we had used it before and now knew where most things were, such as transitions and how to change the volume of music, as well as mute videos with ease.

• Digital Technology
* How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

The main editing software which i used was Adobe Premier Elements 10, which was the platform which i spent the most time editing on. However I also used Windows Movie Maker Live in order to start as initially I had more experience with it in the past so felt more comfortable editing. Although editing using Windows movie maker Live was much easier at the cost of not having enough variation, meaning transitions would be basic and it would be much harder to edit the music.

For filming we used a camera, a light so that we could focus on the antagonist when the panning shot was used along with the match on action. We also rented out a scout hut so that we could use the lights there since it was fairly dark and the lights illuminated the area slightly giving it a darker tone. We also used a ladder to get a high angle shot of the protagonist leaning against the tree, as we were not tall enough to get the shot. Another piece of equipment we used was a tripod which we attached a camera to in order to keep the filming more smooth much like a glide cam.

The pros of using Adobe Premier Elements 10 was that we could apply several layers of music and apply sound effects without the music having to stop which would be the case with windows movie maker or other free software. During the editing process although at first it is hard to understand how things worked since it was so advanced once we got into the swing of things we could include sound effects which work with the music to increase the intensity along with being able to cut a section from the film and mute it. The great thing about the software adobe being so advanced is that you can get better results from the editing rather than having to stick to simple and boring transitions. The pro with the equipment we used such as the tripod was that we were able to hold the camera  a bit steadier and because of this we wouldn't have to film with a shaking hand and if we were to use the audio from the camera we would sometimes hear the breathing from the camera man so if we got a good shot that we wanted to use the audio for, such as if it had dialogue in it we would have to mute it and just apply music then do another shot with dialogue which might not be the same quality. The good thing about using a torch is it makes the antagonist seem more threatening towards to protagonist and also towards to audience, since the audience tend to see things from the protagonist's point of view which would increase immersion of the film. Also it makes it easier to see the antagonists' face instead of having to do even more editing and possibly ruin the film by having to apply a filter to make it lighter, when horror films should be dark.

 The main ways the technology was used to create the production was through editing and blogger. Adobe played the biggest role technology wise as we had to complete all of the editing using this, and had no other platform to work on. The other software which we used was Blogger, Where we were able to talk about how we edited, show the audience the behind the scenes shots as well as talk about our film and our story before we had actually released it so that they could get an idea of what it is. Another benefit of blogger is we were able to plan out what we were going to do for our film and if we forgot about it we could also go back to the blogger and check again to make sure we are on the right track. Blogger also helped our group keep in check and keep up to date with tasks to complete, for example if we had an empty blog we would have to fill that in so that we could complete the task on adobe, in this example planning out the Title.

 Technology enabled the production to be developed through the means of keeping it mixed up and at the same time Adobe Premier Elements 10 allowed a broader horizon of editing to be completed, whereas other technologies would not have sufficed due to the simplicity. Sometimes advanced can be better in production, especially if it is A2 coursework. Blogger enabled us to plan out the editing much better than if we were to write it down in word and have to document everything in different folders which would be far too complex and would only make things much harder and more difficult to process meaning more time is spent in planning than actual editing, so blogger was easier to use in order to plan out things so that we could edit straight away with little to no worry about confusing things.

 I have developed these skills through the two years as at first Adobe Premier elements was uncharted territory for many students when first approached, however once the basics are mastered, such as clipping, entering text, and being able to find your way around the whole software becomes much easier with practice, for example at first I couldn't even find out how to get transition up, but once you are shown and get into the habit and also finding the right button, since there were so many options and edits to chose from it was hard to make the choice of which one fits well, so after being able to find out which transition or sound effect fitted best in the scene was probably the hardest thing. However after time, I am now able to edit much more effectively and feel more at home with the software, and realized after a while its not so much about guessing which transition goes with whatever scene but it is more about what your intuition tells you, such as a common fade to black which relates to a change of time of scene.

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