Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Before i began the corse i had no idea on what type of tecnoloigies it took to create a film, obviously i knew that the camera was essential but i had no idea on what other techniques were involoved in the filming and editing process.

When we began the corse we were shown a variety of different shots that should be used when filming, this included establishing shots, 180 degree rule, match on action and shot reverse shot. Being shown how imporantant it was to get the shots right definatly helped me when filiming our preliminary and main task.

Once we had studied a range of shots, we were introduced to our preliminary task which was to film a conversation between two people using the shots we had learnt about in the previous lessons. When we had filmed our preliminary task we were then shown how to use the editing progamme, only the basics as the preliminary task didnt need to be edited outstandingly. I took a backseet in the editing for the preliminary task so i wasnt as confident at using it as Tim who had already had some experience with using the programme.

When the preliminary task was edited it was time to start our main task, this took alot more thought than our preliminary task as this was a much more advanced task. But on the other hand we also found choosing which shots we wanted to use alot easier because it was still fresh in our mind from when we done the preliminary task. It took us numerous attempts to film our preliminary task as we hadnt framed the fooage correctly the first time. So by the time it came to our main task we were alot more confident in using the camera and tripod. This meant that we didnt have to refilm any of our main task, we produced the footage in 3 parts as we didnt have the time to get all the footage in one day. We also had to be carfull at what time we shot some of our footage as some of the items we needed were in use, like the dark room for example. We used footage from all three times we filmed which i was very pleased to see that our work hadnt gone to waste.

We then had to capture the shots but where we had done this before in the preliminary task it was much easier than we thought, it also took us less time than we thought as we were used to using the programme. Then we had to start editing, i took a backseat in the editing for the preliminary task so i thought i would really try to help out in the editing process for the main task, which i did, i found that me and lainey worked well when we done the editing and we managed to get alot of the editing done quite rapidly. We did have to slightly rush our project at the end as we needed to decided what order we wanted the shots in, also the music, and effects. So, i used alot of my free time to get the project finished.

I think i have learnt so much from the hole process of filming and editing, i now feel confident to ba able to edit and film on my own which i think is a real acheivement in itself. I have learnt not to leave work till last minute so i deffinatly think this course has given me a better sence of time managment. I also found it really helpfull working in a group as i learnt to listen to others ideas, which i think worked really well as we all pitched in and im really pleased with our end product. :-)

Question 6: What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Prezi...http://prezi.com/uv8ocopv_qtg/

Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

As we had to produce a horror film, we needed to take into acoount how we would attract our audience. We wanted to get a broad range of actors/actresses as we didnt want to limit the amount of people that watched our production. In our production we had a blonde, and brunette which meant that it would attract a number of male veiwers as there is diversity within the casting. If we were to have only used blonde actresses this would have limited the amount of veiwers because not all men/women find blondes attractive. We wanted to build suspence as soon as the production started as it will immediatly make the veiwers want to watch more rather than getting bored. I think we succesfully acheived this due to the girl running away from something, but the veiwers do not know what the girl is running from so this all adds to the supsence through out the production. Also, we set our film in the forest, this means that anything could happen, the audience does not know what is in the forest and therefore this may attract them to the film as they want to find out. On the other hand if our production was set in an abbandoned house we automatically know that there will be something unatural inside the house. This is why i think that the forest is a good setting, by using the forest as the setting i believe will help to draw a range of different veiwers to our production.

Question 4: who would be the audience for your media product?

As we had to create a horror film, the market for our film would be 18 and over. This means that there would be limitations as to when we could advertise our media production. As the market would be 18 and over we would have to be carfull on showing the advertisment, we would have to make sure that it is on the appropreate channel at the appropreate time so that parents and children were not affended in any way. We have done alot of research and found that our majority audience would be male, minority female. Our film had been based on a teenage camping trip, we hope that by doing this it will attract the teenage audience as this type of film is steriotypically veiwed by teenagers. By using a blonde female we hope that it would attract the male audience, we would also like to think this would attract the female audience as they may want to know what happens to the female.

Question 3: what kind of media institution would distribute your media product and why?

As our film is a horror film, we would have to put restrictions on when and where we could distribute it. There are many ways that we could distribute our product through the media. For example;
-magazines, news articles
-Tv advertisment
-bilboards
-social networking site such as facebook, myspace and bebo
We would have to make sure that we used the right kind of advertising for example, for tv adversing we would have to make sure that it was on the right channel at the right time as some of the footage would be unsuitable for young children.
We could realese our production in the cinema and then it would go onto dvd then eventual tv, sky films and box office. When we would release the product would also be imporatant, i think it would be good to realese the product around halloween as this is the time of year that fits well with the horror genre. As we had to create a horror film, the market for our film would be 18 and over. This means that we would not to be able to use any child freindly institutions as our product would not be suitable for this market. As our market is 18 and over we would need to approuch an instituion that has delbt with horror films for the older market. There are a few film distributers that i think would make out film an immediate sucess due to how well known they are. For example, 20th Century fox, Paramount and Warner Bro's are all very well known within the uk so if one of these were to distribute our film I think it would be a sucsess.

Question 2: How does your media product represtn different social groups

Our media product is based on teenagers on a camping trip. There are many ideologies that have been given to teenagers. Most of these ideologies are negative, many people believe that all teenagers do is go out, and indulge in drink, drugs and sex. On the other hand or aswell as this many people beleive that teenagers are lazy, slobish and selfish. These beleifs have obviously been given to teenagers because of the society we live in today. The belifs behind these ideologies are true to some extent and it seems these ideologies have given us teenagers a name. I wanted to express this in our media production. We wanted to conform to the ideologies that are put onto teenagers as these belives are true in many cases. A good example of a typical teenager is from a film called mean girls. This film is based in a high school and it is all about a girl becoming popular. I think this film really highlights what is important ot teenagers and in this film it is drugs and sex. I also think this film is a good exapmle as it really highlights the different social groups of teenagers.

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products

Typically a horror form would consist of the same elements. Even though there are many different types of horror film such as, gory, supernatural, paranormal, psycological and thriller. All of these horror films usually have the same key elements. These elements consist of a villan or group of villans, and most of all there is allways a victim. The veiwer usually sees the film through the same view as the victim which is why the films are seen as being scary. We used the typicall element that are widly seen in a horror film. We had a killer and a group of victims. We decided to create a mysterious opening. We looked at the opening of shrooms and the blair witch project, in the opening of shrooms we see a girl running away from something, this automatically tells the veiwer that there is something chasing the girl, but the audience does not yet no what it is. In our opening we used the same idea as this by following a girl running with a hand held camera. I think by using a hand held camera it adds to the scary effect as we are seeing what the victim is seeing. This bulids a really mysterious atmosphere. We did not challenge the forms of a real media product as we didnt think that the film would be as effective. This is because if we had no victim or killer the film would not be scary as there is nothing happening to build up suspence for the audience. Suspence is what makes a horror film, with out it i beleive that the film wouldnt come across as scary.

OUR FINAL OUTCOME!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmdiTr2c1uQ&feature=channel

Dialogue

We only have few lines of speach in our title sequence this is because we thought it would be more suspenceful if we used the shots to explain what the film was about rather than using actors to expalain through dialogue. The dialogue we did used was between me and lainey when we found the bag of the missing girl 'natalie grey', at this time we do not know that natilie grey is missing were as the audience does. So from this diologue the audience can tell that something bad may happen.

Camera&Equiptment

The camera we used was a Sony Dv Handcam. Everyone was given this camera to use so it was how each group filmed that makes our title sequence different. We used a tripod for some of our shots, this was beacuse we needed the camera to be steady so all of our shots were not to busy and shakey. For our running shot Lainey ran behind me and shot me running from behind, this shot turned out very shakey but this is how we wanted it as it was supposed to look asif i was being chased. we also did another chase shot of me holding the camera. I held it up by my face, and ran so to the audience it looks like you are looking through my eyes. I think this builds tention really well.

Actors

Me and Tim are the main actors in the title sequence. Lainey has a small line answering one of my questions. Lainey and I are part of the group of teenagers who go camping, and we will find the bag belonging to Natalie Grey. There will be some speech asking who's bag it is and wondering who Natalie Grey is. They are supposed to be a group of clueless teenagers camping in the woods, oblivious to danger.

Tim played the murderer. There is no speech required for the killer, because we dont see his face and don't directly know who he is. The veiwer would easily recognise that tim is a male due to his physic. We chose Tim to play the killer because he is so tall and broad. The fact the killer preys on innocent youth is emphasised by Tim's physique, which is intimidating in itself. Tim will also be available to film whenever we plan to film, so casting was easier because of this factor.
I decided to be the unknown gril that is being chased by the murderer. I was quite happy to volinteer to be the main charecter. My group also thought that i would be the most effective actress for this as i have some of the same features of natilie grey, Blonde hair and blue eyes. There isn't too many similarities but there are some which links the unknown girl to the killer and Natalie Grey, like out of the two girls featured, who the killer was more likely to prey on.

The killers clothes are all dark and this shows how he is a dark character. The girls clothes are lighter and fashionable, teenage clothes. They are mainly what me and lainey were wearing that day because the unknown girls are supposed to just be teenagers going camping, so we wanted to keep the clothing casual.

Props

We used quite a few props to create our title sequence.

We used the darkroom and all the props inside the darkroom such as the tongs and photo developer. We thought the darkroom would work well in our title sequence as it creates a 'eery' feeling as it is obvious that the photograph the killer was developing is an image of the unknown girl that is seen thoughout the film (ME).

Another prop we used was the newspaper articles that were found on the internet, from these images we created a board of a variety of the images ripped and roughly placed. We done this as in our film the murderer (tim) circles the image of natilie grey with a pen, this shows the audience that the murderer may have been planning to kill his victims.

We also used a range of different bags in our film. We thought it was important to show that it was natalie greys bag so we added a tag onto it which we have a close up shot of in our title sequence. We did this because we wanted to show the veiwer that natilie grey was already missing.

22nd feb

We have now finished our main task. We manged to add all of the titles in time for marking. I am really pleased with our final outcome I think the effects we added to our shots have really helped to set the scene. We added effects such as different contrast levels to make our film look like we shot in the eveing rather than the day time. We finished the shots and made some shots longer or shorter. For example, Me Running. It is in slow motion, with heavy breathing as the audio. This creates quite a bit of tension and is good because it then contrasts with the speed of the train later and the Natalie Grey tag on the bags.We added some natural background noise so that there was more audio than the music. We also added a scream at the end of our film so it adds suspence and makes the veiwer want to find out what happend. We re-recorded the audio and edited them back into the sequence because the original audio wasn't very clear.
I am really plesed we managed to produce our main task on time, me and lainey really put the effort in to finish our film on time and i think we did a good job!

22nd feb

Music
The music used on our title sequence is called 'Ghostpocalypse 4 Temptress'.

It is quite eerie and chilling, and it builds up, creating a little tension.

Me and lainey looked at quite a few websites to get this music from. It took us quite a long time, but we found it in the end.

I wasnt able to add a preview of the music because i was unable to turn it into a vidio as it was just audio. Lainey managed to add it from her home computer and it has been posted on her blog.

Blair Witch Project

Here is a trailer to a film that i think relates to our film in some ways, like us they have used a handcam to record all of this footage, they have also set the film in a forest so i think it realtes to our title sequence quite well.



We have used this trailer to base our title sequence on. I like the shakey cam effect when the teenagers were running through the woods, also the running is shot from behind so you cannot see their face which also is how our title sequence has been shot. It creates a bit of tension for the audience because it appears as if they are closer to the person/thing than the actors on screen.
We liked the idea of teenagers camping in the woods and that something scares them.

The lighting changes throughout the film as the teens saty in the woods for days, so this means there are parts where the film has been shot in day light and parts where it has been shot at night. The night shots are always the more 'eery' as we can only see the actors face and we cant see what is around them. The lighting in the trailer is dark which gives the audience a more dramatic feeling as we cannot see what is happenning around the actors.

Due to the lighting, and style of the film, it gives a very diconcerning, eery feeling. The scene where Heather is talking into the camera, making her apology to her parents etc, from 1:26-1:34, is good as it adds to the ominous feel of the film.
In this shot she is saying goodbuy so it is clear to the audience that something bad has happened. This shot makes the audience feel uncomfortable and scared for her, which is the sort of effect we would like to create.

friday 12th feb

On monday, we carried on editing the shots for our film. We have had a little trouble on agreeing what we wanted to do but finally we decided on what order we wanted to put the shots in. Me and Alice were looking at the start of other films to see what credits we needed at the beggining, we managed to find these and wrote them down for when we needed them.
Then on wednesday we had another lesson which we didnt get very much done as i think there were to many of doing the film. So, me, lainey and alice stayed after the lesson and manged to find our music we wanted to use for our film. We then added the music. Today (friday) we are finishing our film by adding the effects and titles. I am really pleased with the way our film is looking at the moment, i think it had really progressed in the last couple of days and am very happy with the way it is coming along. Now we just need to get it FINISHED!

Friday 5th feb

Today we logged the rest of our shots. we managed to get the camera to capture so we captured the shot that we had recored in the previous lesson. We then began to edit the filming, we havent got alot done so we really need to get on with editing now so we can be finished for friday. We still need to add qall the effects music and directors names so we have alot to get on with. Im worried that we wont finish in time so today (monday 8th feb) we are planning on editing in our frees so i am hoping my group is still up for doing this.

Wednesday 3rd feb

When i first started media i wasnt to keen on the course, i thought that we never got much done and found it quite boring to be honest. Now i am enjoying the classses alot more, I am attending each lesson which means my group is getting alot more work done as i am there to pitch in. I admit my attendance has been quite poor. But i have realised that if i out effort in i get alot more out of my media class. i also think my relationship with my group has improved alot which makes me want to come to lessons, I will deffinatly not go back to my old ways as i would like to get a good grade in thos course. I am very happy with how our filming is going and once we have shot the last shots we need to get we can start properly editing! Woop!

Wednesday 3rd feb

Today, all of my group were here so we were able to get some of the shots that we had planned to do. We managed to shoot a variety of different shots of tim cirlcing the board. We also got a shot of tim developing a photograph in the dark room, and also the dirty hands shot. Now all we need to do is get a shot of tim with the knife by his feet. i think now we have these shots it will really improve our film because we needed something to scare our audience. We also tried to capture these shots today but unfortunatly we were having trouble with this so we have decided to try and do this on friday instead. Hopefully we will also be able to do the knife shot on friday aswell. Once we have got these shots and captured them we will be completly ready to edit. We have begun to edit already but without all of our shots it is quite difficult.

Broken

Here is another film that i think related to our idea of the forest stalker well. In this film the actors are being hunted by someone and this is the same type of film we would like to create. As this is a trailer it is very graffic, we have to remeber to make our beggining credits not as graffic as we dont want to give to much of the story line away.

The trailer starts with a slow peiceful peice of music and then is cut into by someone talking, i think this works effectivly as the music is broken into by the sound of a worried person. I like the idea of using sreams and heavy breathing as it really adds to the effect that somone is after them, this is why we think it would be a good idea to use sound effects such as these during our opening credits.
At first some images come up of the scenery such as trees and birds, this is a contrast to the film as it puts the message across of a peicefull place, and infact it is the complete opposite. Most of the shots are dark and mysty which shows that something bad may happen as this is what we would expect in a horror film. There is alot of flashing from shot to shot which builds up tention, we need to think about this when editing our beginning credits as we really want to put out the same sort of feel as this horror film. Also the lighting is dim in all the shots and the colours of the background have been changed so they flash in other colours (red) this is to build suspence and i think this film has done it effectivly. I think they used the colour red as i think it supposed to represent blood. We can tell from this trailer that the people are being brutilly murederd which is why the colour red is shown through out the trailer. I hope we can create something along these lines.

Monday 1st feb

We have also been looking at the trailer 'shrooms' we want to create the same sort of film as this, we have been looking at this film to see what shots they have used in the start of the film and are trying to create our own versions. this is the beggining of 'shrooms'

Monday 1st feb

On monday me lainey and alice started to edit our shots. We put our shots into the order we wanted them to be, and began to edit the shots to make them shorter. We have decided to do quick snap shots in our film. We want to have a range of different shots with the names coming up with a black screen in between the snap shots. We had a few arguments about what other shots we needed, but finally decided that we need to get some shots of a knife so our film makes more sence. We are planning on filming more on wednesday the main shots we need to get are;
-Tim in the darkroom developing photos
-Knife swinging by tims feet as he is walking
- Dirty hands, (with or without a knife)
I think once we have got thses shots it will improve our film dramatically because at the moment we have lots of shots of running away from someone, and i think we need to give the audience an idea of who or what we are running from. So hopefully if tim is in the next lesson we will be able to do this.

Friday 29th Jan

On wednesday we logged all of our shots so we no which ones to capture. Today we are hoping to capture our shots as we did not have time to do this on wednesday. On wednesday we also reshot one of our shots as we thought it needed to be better. Tim is going to be late today as he has the dentist so we are waiting for lainey to arrive with the vidio so we can begin capturing our shots. Hopefully if this all goes to plan we can begin to edit our shots today.

Wed 27th jan

Today we are planning on putting our footage on to the computer so we can begin to edit it. I am really looking foward to editing our footage as i cant wait to see our final product. Hopefully we will be able to capture most of our footage in todays lesson, so we are ready to edit on friday.

Monday 25th Jan

Today, we filmed our main task! We decided to make the most of our free periods and my hole group come out to the forest and we managed to get some really good footage. We got a range of shots, including a train, and a shot of the slasher in the distance. I think we all worked really wel together.

fri 22th jan

We created our missing persons board today. We collected the images and collaged them together to creat our board. We then decided we should film our missings persons board so we could start our filming. We did a range of shots of the missing board, now we need to film the main part for our main task. On monday we are hoping to go to the forest and film our main task.

main task

We now need to film our main task, we have definatly decided on the idea of a slasher film, it will be based on teenagers going on a camping trip in the forest, we will be creating our 'missing persons board' in the next lesson, we have collected our images for the missings persons board so now all we need to do is make it.