JW - Evaluation Question Seven

Looking Back At Your Preliminary Task 

(The Continuity Editing Task), What Do You Feel 

You Have Learnt In The Progression From It To Full Product?

Firstly, I feel the most important thing I've learnt is how hard it really is to create a proper piece of media. During our prelim task, only the people creating took part in the acting. However, during our final product, we had to cast genuine 'actors'. This proved to be very difficult for many reasons, firstly, timing. Approaching the deadline, it became extremely hard to be able to gather all the cast and crew together for filming. Secondly, just finding cast members initially was very difficult, people are very reluctant to showcase themselves on a public scale, they find it very embarrassing.

Here is our prelim video:

Another thing we've improved on vastly since our prelim task, was holding the camera steady in shots where it's appropriate. You can see from our prelim task, to our first rough cut, a vast improvement in holding shots steady, and also using a larger variety of shots.

This is our second rough cut of our production: 

As you can see in this, there are lot of jerky shots and unsteady camera-work, in our final production we have completely got rid of these - we believe.

Furthermore, I feel that our group has developed it's commitment and determination levels. Each one of us has very equally contributed towards our production, whether it's been editing, filming, soundtracking etc. Each member has held their own weight and we believe that the pre-lim task helped us develop the idea of teamwork and how each member has to contribute.

Carrying on from this, we have discovered how vital audience feedback is towards your final piece, without it, (admittedly) our production would have been very poor. It gives us vital insight into what our target audience wants to see from our production and also how we can improve it.
This is an example of us recieving audience feedback on social networking site 'Facebook':









Finally, one of my individual tasks of our coursework was to create the soundtrack. This proved to be extremely tricky to do. I did lots of background research on existing sound tracks (see this post) from classic horror movies. I tried to base our soundtrack on this and I believe it will fit in with our production well.

WS - Changes made in reaction to Feedback

Whilst most of the feedback we recieved on our second rough cut was very positive, as expected there were little areas that people thought could be improved. We have listened to, and discussed all feedback. Some of the feedback has directly effected our final Production, whilst other bits of feedback have been discussed and we have decided to not act upon it.

The most obvious effect of feedback is that we have eliminated a short passage of the production. This is where Amelia goes to the window and sees the Killer's mask on the window. The reason we have eliminated this is because many people who have viewed our second film believe that this is the killer. This was not the intention. It was meant to simply be a mask hanging on the window to scare the Amelia, and wasn't meant to look like the person was actually there. It has also caused confusion amongst the audience. We are not too disappointed about this because this was a gamble we took when filming because an idea for a false scare with a cat didn't work. Eliminating this scene also means the time of our film, including Company Idents fits into two minutes and thirty seconds.


We have also deleted another shot on the advic of one of our teachers. The shot is just before Carl leaves the house and makes that short scene flow much better.


Our final scene, from when Amelia enters the bathroom until the end, took a lot of consideration and thought. During editing we sought a lot of advic on how our audience thought it worked best. The people we recieved advice from were in our Media Studies group and are, therefore, in our Core Target Audience. From them we recieved advice such as whether or not to use transitions (which in the end, we didn't), whether the scene flowed at a good pace for them, whether the camera shots worked effectively or not, and most importantly, did they feel that the scene overall was scary and an effective ending to our film opening. Views on this can also be seen on the below link.

Audience Feedback on our Second Rough Cut.

Feedback that we considered, but decided against acting upon included views that we could show more of the killer. The main reason wedecided against that is because we wanted to keep the killers idetity as an enigma. Very little is seen of the killer, deliberately, because we believe that the more time the killer spends on screen, the less scary they become. This view was backed up when we asked people in our target audience. For these reasons, we didn't change our production to accomodate this feedback advice.

TW - Overall Summary Of Research And Planning

I have learnt many things from my R+P, such as an ideal setting, common props and conventions, amongst other strategies.

To begin with, I have learnt through reading about Gothic Cinema in the book entitled; 'A New Heritage Of Horror' I have learnt that using establishing type shots that give the audience a real feel for the surroundings, as if they are in the setting themselves, helps to set the tone of the film and fully offer an eerie feeling as the film reaches it's climax, in order to fully engage the audience.


I have also learnt through deconstructing film openings, that props, in the form of a knife commonly, is key to a horror/slasher film. It is the most used prop to use as a murder weapon as it shows the killer having more power and sets them apart from their victims, for example; if they used a gun then all they would have to do is pull the trigger whereas with a knife, the killers have to plan their murders, showing they are skilled in that area. Although this prop and the mask (see below) are the most important props, further info on mise-en-scene we will be using can be found on thelinked post.


Further evidence of this can be seen in the films;Scream and Halloween (both films hugely successful, with many sequels/ homages) where a knife is used by the killer, not another weapon.


Another key convention that can also be seen in the film Scream is the use of the 'Final Girl' concept, where said girl prevails over the killer at the end of the film. This has become increasingly common in modern slashers as it opens up a whole new audience of that of teen girls/young female adults who may not be familiarised with this genre until this new concept. Although in our film opening there is a definitive victim, known as the 'Scream Queen' we would have planned for a final girl to have prevailed at the end of our production. Further character info can be found in this post where we highlight each character we need and the characteristics they must have.


Another key convention is the use of a mask. This can again be seen in the films Scream and Halloween, as well as extremely modern slashers such as The Strangers. This hides the killer's identity, although it is usually revealed at the end of the film to provide a climax. We have used a mask in our film to hide our killer's identity, to incorporate yet another common convention to our film.


We have found that 'false scares' are also commonly used, and prove to be quite popular when further suspense is needed to keep the audience guessing. Many of these can be seen in the Paranormal Activityfilms . We have not used a false scare in our Rough Cut although this may change and there may yet be one in our finalised production.

Thanks to key horror films such as A Nightmare On Elm Street and Halloween, we have discovered that the ideal location would be a very isolated, rural scene. This was hard to achieve due to where our houses were situated, although as seen in the rough cut we have tried to use significant camera shots at the beginning of our film to give the best impression possible of a lonely location.


We have also chosen our target audience to be in the age range of 15-24 in order to have a wider group of possible viewers. We also hope that if this was a full production, the use of a final girl would help bring female viewers to our production. 
   
These points are regarded as the most important parts of a successful horror film in our opinion, and the majority are incorporated into our film opening, entitled 'Oblivious' - see below for second rough cut. 

JW - Critical Analysis of Our Coursework Practical

After completing our Coursework Production, I felt it would be necessary to do a short analysis of our production, containing points which I believe we haven't done well and could've improved on.

• our panning/tracking shots were not the best. Admittedly, these were difficult to do with our limited equipment but other groups had managed to do them to a high standard, I feel if we had persevered a little more we would've been able to do them well, which would have lead to us having to do less awkward editing which isn't easy and doesn't always look as great.
• the soundtrack in our opening scene has been said to be a bit too repetitive. Despite soundtracks in slasher films being quite repetitive, after watching our opening soundtrack several times, we do feel it does get a little tedious. We now know we should have added a lot more variation to our soundtrack, which is likely to compliment the whole piece better.
• due to audience feedback and our own original decisions, we decided to cut out a scene containing a 'preview' of the mask and a large fake scare. We feel the footage we had for it didn't work well enough to fit coherently with the rest of our production, this then led to an awkward situation. We tried to fix it best we could but it hasn't worked particularly well, in hind-sight  we should have probably either re-shot or altered our story in a productive way.
• there is one shot in our production of a slow zoom on the door, this is slightly too long and would cause audiences to lose interest, we should have shortened this.
• finally, some of our shots are very subtly shaky. Despite us hardly realising this, we should have taken extra care when filming to prevent this to the best of our ability. 

Vodcast Number One

This is our vodcast summarizing how far we've got on our production. It also focuses on audience feedback from rough cuts and our target audience.



Untitled from Jem Whitehead on Vimeo.

WS - Plot Overview - Oblivious

To fully understand how and why what happens in our opening happens, we needed to see and decide how the film as a whole would unfold and develop. Below is an overview of what we planned would happen if we were to make this into a whole film:

• Carl, the boyfriend in the opening scene, is been set up for the killings of many males and females throughout the rest of the film. This is the reason why the killer is using Carl's phone to call Amelia. Although we don't see this, it is not Carl on the other end of the phone, although it is supposed to seem like it is him.
• The reason Amelia, the Scream Queen in our opening, is killed is to implicate Carl in all the other killings. From watching Slasher films such as Scream, we realised that there is often at least one person who all the evidence points towards been the killer. In our film this person is Carl (in Scream for example, there is Cotton Weary, Sidney's father etc). Another reason for Amelia been killed is of course the fact that she is a Scream Queen and has been participating in sinful acts such as drinking alcohol and having sex.
• We decided to make our killer like a psychopath who, after watching and enjoying Slasher films, has decided to make his very own film. The reason we decided that they would be a psychopath is that it gives you no limits to how far they are willing to go. They show no mercy or conscience, which is much scarier than having a killer who feels bad for what they are doing!
• If the film was to develop further, a Final Girl would be introduced. The Final Girl would actually be Carl's sister. However, we thought that if this did happen, we would have used a typical Scream Queen type actress to portray her. The reasons for this would be to make the audience feel like she was going to be killed at any moment, but just managed to escape at the last minute, providing high levels of tension. This would also allow us to incorporate Counter-Types into our film. Carl's sister would believe that Carl is actually innocent.
• We also decided that our film would end with Carl and his sister confronting the real killer, after they are trapped by the man. A fight between them would ensue before the killer would eventually be killed. Of course it would not be simple to kill the killer, as it always takes a huge number of stab wounds, falls, gunshots, bangs to the head and a lot more to kill a Slasher film killer!

We believe that the above storyline would have provided us with enough to make a full film, given the chance. We are also confident that we could have made this film exciting and quite a typical Slasher, with enough opportunities for conventions of the genre such as false scares, killings with strange and dangerous weapons, and of course, lots of punishment for those that commit sins!

All - Audience Feedback From Our Company Idents