Our Evaluation

Evaluation from our class

When our opening sequence was shown to the class, they had to write an evaluation for all the opening sequences. This was marked on our, Camera work, selecting mise-en-scene, editing, post production, titles, use of diegetic and non-diegetic sound and producing a sequence that is readable. Also we had a few extra questions to talk about for example, how sucessful is the opening sequence in engaging the audience, is the genre reconisable, outline one outstanding feature and outline one feature to improve. The highest mark we could get is a 4 and the lowest is a 1. When ours was shown we expected a reaction to the meat eating thing and we did around half the class looked away or said 'ewwww'. The majority of the class gave us 4's for our work and the lowest we got was a 3. So we were happy with our results. Everyone said it was engaging but some found the over voice confusing. Everyone recognsized the genre as a horror/thriller. Everyone said the one feature that stood out was the human body (meat) being eaten because it was gore and repulsive. We took out the fake eye close up because many people said it wasn't good. We also changed the titles so they matched the production name 'Departed Rose' and our film name 'Daughter of sin'. We used live type to get this effect of the words being written in a italic handwriting font.

Daughter of Sin

Daughter of Sin finished shooting

Once we finished shooting we had a look over what we had done and because Louise played the part of the girl on the phone and the killer you can tell the killer is a girl. So we changed the narrative to the girl on the phone is talking to her friend who is the killer about her missing boyfriend. As the conversation is taking place the killer in moving some meat about and when the message is played as an over voice it creates a narrative of the killer has killed the friend's boyfriend. one way we engaged the audience was with the gore clip at the end, the killer eats some of the meat (the boyfriend), we wanted to make the audience go (ewwww) and this is hopefully what we would achieve. We wanted to get the same reaction from our film that Saw 2 got when we showed it as our research, which was everyone covering there eyes and looking away.

Storyboard for our new film

Our new Main task

We kept to the name Daughter of Sin, so we had some idea on what to do. Our narrative we tried to keep similar in some ways (horror/thriller film).

Narrative: The plot of the story is a girl is on the phone to (flirting) to the killer of the film. He is in a secret place and has torture devices all over the place. That was our only idea for the narrative.

Camera Work: We will have tracking shots of the killer's secret hide out, close up of the torture devices also close ups of the killer's hands (blood covered), Close up of the girl on the phone.

Mise-en-scene: We kept in the same place the garage and kept to the spooky and creepy atmosphere. This would help to engage the audience.

Sound: We weren't sure whether to have music in the back ground or just diegetic sound, we had an idea to have the phone call as a voice over and have all the shots of the killer and the secret place.

Problems with the main task

After are results day we planned to re-shot most of our production, due to shaky camera work and not walking out of shot so we couldn't edit. Also one of our actress' had her hair cut so we had to redo all of her shots but her mum wouldn't let her out do re shot so we either had to change the idea, find someone else or do it with only one actress. We decided to ask our teacher for advise, he said it would be best to start another one but we only had a week to shot, edit and show it to the class. Our new idea was still in the same mise-en-scene but different narrative and characters. This time it involved only one person in shot, someone over the phone and the narrative involves another person that is in the plot.

Re-shoots for 'Daughter of Sin'

We filmed out first couple of scenes on the 15th of February and completed our filinf on the 24th of February. However, when we up loaded our film and started editing we found that some parts of it needed re-shooting due to various of reasons.

They are as followed:

• The eye shot of person A (Scralet); we are going to do an extrem cole up shot to show her emotions.
• The establishing shot of person A (Scarlet) looking around the room. When we did the first shot of this sequence it was too slow and it was tricky to edit.
• The reverse shot of person A (Scarlet) and person B (Meera) havein a conversation to each other. When we tried to edit, we could not see person B (Meera) due to the lighting as it was too dim.
• The two shot of person A and B captured by the CCTV on a high angle; because the sound of the over voice was cut out due to not giving few seconds before shooting.
• The two shot of person A with the gun entering the frame. We are going to re-shoot person A coming in to the frame and film person A turing round to person B to shot her.
• The sound of person B heavily breathing after being shot. The sound of breathing is needed in the back round as person A tries to get out.
• We are going to shoot the scene when person A drops the gun down and then person B picks up the gun in a CCTV shot.
• One continuous shot of person A shooting person B and running to the door.
• The shot when the door opens, we are going to do a point of view shot in a low angle where person A and B is sitting down.
• Towards the end of our film, we found out that we needed the sound of scream after a gun shot. This is because we tried to find sounds of screams however they were not the right type of sound that we needed.
• Also do the over voice again of the mysterious person in a much deeper voice.

By Sung min and Narmadha

On 15/02/10 Did our first half of our filming

On 22/02/10 We looked for royalty free music

On 24/02/10 Finished filming

On 26/02/10 Up loaded our film and started editing

Story board for our main task

By taking photos for our storyboard, it helped us when filming. This is because from looking at the storyboard we knew where to place the camera and characters, this made it easier to film and mke sure that we don't cross the 180 rule.

Questionnaire

1. What gender are you?
male

female

2. How old are you?
13-15

16-18

19-22

23-25

26+
3. Do you enjoy horror/thriller films?
Yes

No

4. Do you watch horror/thriller films on your on?
Yes

No

5. Do you prefer to watch horror/thriller films in the cinema or at home?
Cinema

Home

6. Do you buy/rent/both?
Buy

Rent

Both

7. What do you expect to see from a horror film?

8. What in your opinion is the best horror/thriller film?

9. What in your opinion is the worst horror/thriller film?

10. Do you enjoy the gore factor of horror films?
Yes

No

11. Do you think that music adds to the horror atmosphere?
Yes

No

12. Do you get scared at all?
Yes

No

13. If yes, is it during the film or afterwards?

14. If yes, why?

15. What is your favourite horror/thriller movie villain? (Vampire, Zombie, ghost, monster, pyscho)


By doing a questionnaire we were able to find out:
>Who was our target audience
>What we have to do to achieve a target audience
>How people would react to our film opening
>What kind of villan people prefer
>If we would need to make an age barrier on our film

Main Task

Our classes main task is the opening sequence to a film. We decided to do the genre horror and do something similar to our researched film (Saw 2.)

Mise en scene
For mise en scene we planned to film in a secure room with little lighting. (we took one light bulb out to make the room dimmer). This will add to the effect of a horror film. An idea we had was to film in Big Yellow Self Storage but we were unable due to the fact that they prohibit filming.
The next idea was a room near Sung-Min's church but she was unable to get the room for the time we needed. So...We ended up filming in Louise's garage which matched our expectations of a horror film and our planning. The idea of using school girl costumes was to show how innocent the girls were and how they changed during the opening sequence as the costume changed (i.e blood on it) they changed violent and dangerous (the colour red symbolises violence, danger and the coming of death). The prop used was just the gun, this was aquried by Louise's brother.

Narrative
The narrative was created by Louise, she watched over countless numbers of horror films to decide on this film. Some films watched were: Saw 2, Battle Royale, Scream, Saw, Psycho and Silent Hill. The idea we had was to replicate Saw 2 from our research. So we were going to have a death at the beginning and a torture room or chamber. Louise thought of the idea of friends fighting each other, we started with saying there was going to be 10 people but due to lack of space we decided on 2 people instead.

Camera
We borrowed the camera off of a friend (Jake Lawerance) and his tri-pod. We decided to use a few high angle shots to show the audience they are watching over the two friends and that the two friends are being watched by someone the audience will later find out. We used many POV shots to involve the audience in the horrific atmosphere. We didn't use any low angle shots on the two main characters because neither of them are more superior than the other. However we used the low angle shot on the gun to show the gun and the person holding it is in more power than the two characters.

Sound
The only diagetic sound used during the filming was the rain and dialouge. The rain added effect to the film because you could hear it very well on the roof of the garage. We plan to use tense music to draw the audience in and create a sense of horror.

By Hannah and Louise

Our presentation: Feed the fish

What went well

We didn't cross the 180 degree rule, which was a big achievement for us. Editing went well, for most of us it was our first time editing and we learnt new skills that day. We believe that our tracking shot was clean and wasn't shaky. We were able to change shots easily through editing and the use of varitey when it came to shots e.g close up, medium shot, reverese shots.

What didn't go well

The establishing shot was changed so instaed of tracking upwards it tracked downwards. The reason we changed this was because the next shot was a person walking up the steps so it looked weird and the audience would think we are at the top of the building due to the establishing shot then get confused that we take another set of stairs. The tri-pods were annoying because they were stiff and were hard to move about easily without the camera shaking and without making a noise.

What we would change

The opening shot (establisdhing shot) instead of tracking the building we should of tracked person A walking into the building. Have person A walking into and out of frames instead of starting the shot with the person A in the shot. If we had more time we would of changed our setting so it's more of a spy short film. We would of changed the costumes, so it's more of a spy short film.

What we learnt

We learnt that sound was important and was hard to capture on the normal video cameras, due to the small microphones. When tracking a building if the next shot involves stairs then we should track downwards not upwards because it will confuse the audience. That a variety of shots makes the short film look good and well rehersed. That sometimes zooming can be bad because our eyes match the camera and can't zoom so it confuses the audience.

Dates:

27th of January: First day of filming

29th of January: Redid filming and started editing

1st of Febuary: Editing

2nd of Febuary: Contined editing

3rd of Febuary: DONE! :)

Storyboard for feed the fish

By taking photos instead of drawing we were able to aline the video camera with the photo; which made filming alot easier. Plus none of us wanted to draw!

Feed the fish Preliminary task

On the 25th of January 2010 we recieved a preliminary task called 'feed the fish'. We decided to take photos of our storyboard instead of drawing, through this we learnt that taking photos for storyboards is easier due to we can a line the camera with the photo and can see if we are crossing the 180 degree rule.

Saw 2 Research

On the 19th of January 2010 we recieved a group presentational task as part of our Foundation Production, we had to present to the rest of the class on the codes and conventions of an esiting media text in the same genre of our planned production. We decided to research about Saw 2; in our presentation we had to include: camera work, editing, mise-en-scene, sound, titles and narrative.

Juno Analysis

On the 12th of January we analysed the opening sequence of Juno. We looked at:

• Music
  

• Mise en scene


• Costume


• The animation technique


• Interesting slides

The music is by anti-folk artist Kimya Dawson it is similar to singer Bob Dylan and helps establish the low key feel of a US independent movie. We learnt that the lyrics are important and how we can use other peoples music to create atmosphere.

For mise en scene (which is the most important part in establishing the tone and genre as well as the lead character.) The shots of the various shops helps to develop the narrative as we see Juno's small town. We learnt that we can use mise en scene in our movie to give more information.

Through costume we can see the class system of which Juno is in the middle. She wears a lot of jeans and baggy tshirts which highlights her boy-ish nature and reveals to the audience she is perhaps something of a tomboy.

The animation technique fits in with the US independent movie style by alluding to independent comic books such as Ameican Splendour. Interesting slides and push edits used also relate to the comic book theme. The unfinished drawings reflect the incomplete environment. From this we learnt how animation can lead us to think about how we can show the character.

The 10 best movie openings

On the 11th of January we studied the 10 best opening films. The top 5 were (starting with 5th) :

• Once upon a time in the west
• Halloween
• Reservoir dogs
• The spy who loved me
• Jaws

We watched Once upon a time in the west, we looked out for camera work, editing, sound and mise-en-scene. For Camera work we noticed a tracking shot which showed the relationship between the cowboys. In editing there was a long take when the fly was buzzing around his face. It is all real time the characters have to wait for the train so the audience has to wait too. Sound, the sound was diegetic; there was ambient sound and hyperbolic sound of the train, and NO dialogue which gave the sequence more versimilitude. Mise-en-scene, the charcters matched there outfits as in tatty and untidy.

published by whole group

Introduction

On the 5th of January we looked at what makes a successful; title sequence of a movie; these are

• Establishing location
• Introduce Characters
• Set up narrative enigma
• Establish themes and genre
• Provide Institutional information
• Create expectations
• Engage expectations

Also along with the same date we were given a video brief of our preliminary exercise and the main task. We watched the beginning of Kidulthood and researched on the opening of the film. We ticked boxes on what the film had and didn't have for example, indication of place, information about genre and patterns and types of editing that will be echoed in the rest of the film.

From researching Kidaulthood and researching what makes a successful title sequence, we learnt that; we need to take on every little detail, in every single element, and be consistence.

Published by all group