Commentary

We have now recorded our comentry evaluation for our film "Avenged" we did this buy doing a voice recording on Sountrack. Firstly we made a script with each group contributing equally and giving their input on what they have learnt and generally evaluating our film. After our recording was completed we then exported the final copy of our directors cut to quick time.

Main Task Final Video

Rough Cut

This is the most recent rough cut of our video. Our rough cut is only a minute long because we did not have an ending.

The history of our genre- Horror/Thriller

A Horror film is a film that wants to make the audience feel fear, horror and terror. Their plots normally involve themes of the supernatural or a main murderer of criminal. In history the early horror movies were mainly based on classic books of the same genre for example Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man and Phantom of the Opera. However mordern horror films mostly involve ideas preying on the insecurities of life now for example serial killers and terrorists. Horror films have been criticized for including graphic violence, paticularly in mordern day for example "Hostel 1+2" and "Saw". Nonetheless, the horror genre is still on of the most popular genres to date with many respected and well-known directors for example; Alfred Hitchcock, Roman Polanski and Stanley Kubrick.Richard Donner, Francis Ford Coppola, and George Romero have made forays into the genre. Some horror films also incorporate elements of other genres such as science fiction, fantasy, mockumentary, black comedy, and thrillers into the films.

Using Live Type

Our group used Live Type in our piece for the opening credits. We did this by typing our chosen wording on live type and then adding effects, colours and fonts. For our “An E.S.J Production” we decided to use an effect that looked as though the text was being written on as you watched it, we also decided to do the text in blood red, again to fit in with genre. Another way we used Live Type was for the end title “Avenge”, we wanted to make the title minimal for extra suspense so we chose a font and changed the colour to blood red.

Using Sountrack.

In the final Stages of the production of our film clip we use soundtrack in order to make sure that our diagetic sound that we had captured while filming was not to loud and perfectly in time with what was going on. We did this buy first importing our video to soundtrack and then by using the razor tool we cut the sound into different clips. This meant that we were much more able to turn down and up certain points of our film. For example we decided when on soundtrack that when the killer said “Recognize me now” it wasn’t creepy or tension building enough. To solve this problem we decided to slow down that particular clip and also make it quite so it appeared a whisper. In our film we wanted to demonstrate both use of diagetic and non-diagetic sounds. However we felt that lots of non-diagetic sound would not fit with the build up in tension of the scene and felt it important to keep music to a minimum. We did however create a clip of two drum beats that sounded, when we had slowed them down, very similar to a heart beat. Our group decided that this clip would be effective to connote that the girl was really scared and also to build up suspense.

Feedback

team
Your work looks pretty good at the moment - blog could do with more detail
Issue around the dissolve - fix Monday
Any stuff you can think of re: genre is really going to help you with evaluation
Try this
http://www.horrorfilmhistory.com/
Look at history/ codes and conventions and how films are sold to audiences

Draft Edit

We have just completed our draft edit of our final sequence. We created this edit on final cut using our footage we have already shot.
we used a lot of varied shots including close-ups because these type of shots are used frequently in types of films around the genre or horror.
our opening shot is a close-up of our main characters eyes the immediate reaction to this is that with the motion blur it tells the audience that the character has been drugged and not in a normal state of mind.
we have used the blur to exaggerate movement this is similar to a shot in the film Saw 1 when the character is first confronted with the idea of the death mask. The exercise was very useful as it higlighted things that we need to improve on for our final piece. For example it is important that we now capture some minor shots of movement so that all our shots continutity is proffesional. We were also able to get feedback from the class, we did this by asking them to fill out a short survey on thier views of the film. We gave out six questionarres and gave three to males aged 16-20 and to three females also aged 16-20. We chose this sample as we wanted the opinions of the film from people that were relevant to our target audience. Below is an example of the questionarre given:

animatics

This is the animatic that we created as a group in lesson using still images to help us create a better vision of our final piece.

storyboard blade runner / saw / nightmare on elm street

above are the first ten shots taken from the opening of Blade Runner.

we drew each shot then captured them using photo booth. 

Nightmare On Elm Street

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=q8X7SQDzLZQ

Shot 1 - Long Shot showing a plane 

Shot 2 - Medium shot of person sitting down

Shot 3 - close up of outside of the plane

Shot 4 - Medium shot of person

Shot 5 - Medium shot of another passenger asleep

Shot 6 - Two person shot of lady and person

Shot 7 - Point of view shot of person

Shot 8 - Point of view shot of lady

Shot 9 - Two person shot of lady and person

Shot 10- Close up of person

clerks opening narrative

http://www.mediaknowall.com/alevkeyconcepts/narrative.html-

We learnt about narrative structure. We learnt key media phrases such as,
Equilibrium - The world is in a state of harmony.
Disequilibrium - A disturbance causing the harmony to stop and not go back.

Todorov - Equilibrium - Dantes day off.
- Disequilibrium - phone rings.
- New equilibrium - End of film.

Dante ---> Phone ---> Goes to work.
Linear narrative.

Genre leads to expectations.

http://www.filmeducation.org/secondary/concept/film-narr/docs/narr3.html

video clip

This is a videos of different clips taken from the film Hostel. We chose this video as it is similar too the narrative of our film, we will use what we have learnt from the clip in our final piece.

research production meeting

we watched a program about film production on estream. then we formed the production company 'E.S.J productions'.
Ellen was assigned the position of director.
Sarah was assigned the position of producer/ camera woman.
Jenny was assigned the position of editor.
we've all decided to put our creative input into the writing.

Before deciding on our final coursework project we completed activities to help broaden our knowledge of production and film.
An example of this is:
- Analysed the openings of films such as; Wild at heart, This is England, Clerks, Natural Born Killers, Fast times.
- Practised Animatics. (Taking pictures)
- Storyboarding
- Script planning
- Film test shots
- Learnt how to use 'Live Type'