Friday, 13 April 2012
Progression from AS to A2:
I think this year has challenged me and Manny more the last year, reasons for this include that this year we had to make a trailer rather than a opening sequence and a trailer is not a continuous story and therefore more locations,shots,and footage was needed, which was actually quite difficult. But we planned our locations from the start so that was OK and even though the grave yard that we initially planned to be one our main settings wasn't available to shoot in we opted to film our footage in 3 or 4 different locations which is different from last year as we only used one or two locations. Also this year we have to produce print products which means we had to divide our time more between the two as essentially we are doing two projects, whereas last year we only had the opening sequence to concentrate on so that made it tougher. Also from last year we learnt that a lot of things can go wrong during editing and shooting processes so we tried to be more careful with our time this year.
I used more technology than was used last year we used a new program called sound booth to correct sound, which was an issue because we shot some of our footage outdoors and therefore some of the sound came out unclear and we had to change that. I also used photoshop and fireworks which i had very little if any experience of those programs and i basically edited the poster and magazine through the method of trial and error and now know editing techniques such as the feathering tool which i used for the blurriness and mist on the poster. On the magazine i learnt how to layer things correctly so that everything was in the right order as at first things like fonts kept changing colour when i put them onto the canvas, but soon found out this was due to them being under another layer and that i needed to bring it to the front by putting that layer at the top of the menu on the right hand side of the screen.
Overall this year was much more work heavy and more planning had to be done so that we could fit everything in to the time frame that we had and admittedly it was much more of a struggle towards the end, this is because there is more to think about when making a trailer and you have to compare it to others more than you would a opening sequence i think because you have to have the horror themes running through it as well as having a clear narrative and a clear structure as well as linking in the print products with the trailer. I think this year because we were doing a horror genre piece we had to concentrate more on the mise en scene than last year as this is essentially what makes the genre obvious and attracts the audiences attention so quite a lot of thought was put into that.
I used more technology than was used last year we used a new program called sound booth to correct sound, which was an issue because we shot some of our footage outdoors and therefore some of the sound came out unclear and we had to change that. I also used photoshop and fireworks which i had very little if any experience of those programs and i basically edited the poster and magazine through the method of trial and error and now know editing techniques such as the feathering tool which i used for the blurriness and mist on the poster. On the magazine i learnt how to layer things correctly so that everything was in the right order as at first things like fonts kept changing colour when i put them onto the canvas, but soon found out this was due to them being under another layer and that i needed to bring it to the front by putting that layer at the top of the menu on the right hand side of the screen.
Overall this year was much more work heavy and more planning had to be done so that we could fit everything in to the time frame that we had and admittedly it was much more of a struggle towards the end, this is because there is more to think about when making a trailer and you have to compare it to others more than you would a opening sequence i think because you have to have the horror themes running through it as well as having a clear narrative and a clear structure as well as linking in the print products with the trailer. I think this year because we were doing a horror genre piece we had to concentrate more on the mise en scene than last year as this is essentially what makes the genre obvious and attracts the audiences attention so quite a lot of thought was put into that.
What i Have learnt from audience feedback
After doing some audience research in order to find out if people appreciated the trailer and print products that both Manny and myself made i found that there were quite a few improvements that could have been made to the trailer in order to make it better.
I found that people couldn't here some of the sound clearly, for instance the scene where i am standing at the top of the stairs, i think i am too far away from the camera and this is the reason that people can;t here that part of the dialogue clearly enough. We could have used sound booth more to bump up the volume of some of the quieter sound that people found hard to hear. Although many people found that the voice overs were very clear and that they cleared up what the narrative was a lot of the time and definitely gave the plot shown by the trailer a sense of direction. Overall many thought it was a decent trailer and that they would go and see the film because the suspense attracted them and they were eager to see the ending which is what we wanted when we were making it.
I think there was a slight lack of narrative in the trailer, and this was down to us not planning well enough ahead and we didn't give ourselves enough time to shoot enough footage to establish the narrative well, this is the reason why it is a bit rusty. This was detected in audience feedback, although people knew the trailer was horror they sometimes asked me after watching the trailer what some of the story was meant to be, they were clear on most of it , i think the trailer just needed something extra to show how the boy was linked to the death of his parents and how the thing that possessed his parents is the same thing that has possessed the boy. In order to do this we would have had to film more footage and in hindsight i think it was down to the planning stage. The trailer was an overall success but there are elements that i would change if i did it again.
People were generally quite impressed by the print products, i think people liked the magazine the most out of the two which was a surprise for me because i actually preferred the poster, so this educated me on what other people thought. The only thing they would have changed was some of the font colours on the magazine because they blended in with the background image too much. Also with the poster they thought the lines around the image could be blurred out a bit more. but overall they thought the print products looked quite professional.
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I found that people couldn't here some of the sound clearly, for instance the scene where i am standing at the top of the stairs, i think i am too far away from the camera and this is the reason that people can;t here that part of the dialogue clearly enough. We could have used sound booth more to bump up the volume of some of the quieter sound that people found hard to hear. Although many people found that the voice overs were very clear and that they cleared up what the narrative was a lot of the time and definitely gave the plot shown by the trailer a sense of direction. Overall many thought it was a decent trailer and that they would go and see the film because the suspense attracted them and they were eager to see the ending which is what we wanted when we were making it.
I think there was a slight lack of narrative in the trailer, and this was down to us not planning well enough ahead and we didn't give ourselves enough time to shoot enough footage to establish the narrative well, this is the reason why it is a bit rusty. This was detected in audience feedback, although people knew the trailer was horror they sometimes asked me after watching the trailer what some of the story was meant to be, they were clear on most of it , i think the trailer just needed something extra to show how the boy was linked to the death of his parents and how the thing that possessed his parents is the same thing that has possessed the boy. In order to do this we would have had to film more footage and in hindsight i think it was down to the planning stage. The trailer was an overall success but there are elements that i would change if i did it again.
People were generally quite impressed by the print products, i think people liked the magazine the most out of the two which was a surprise for me because i actually preferred the poster, so this educated me on what other people thought. The only thing they would have changed was some of the font colours on the magazine because they blended in with the background image too much. Also with the poster they thought the lines around the image could be blurred out a bit more. but overall they thought the print products looked quite professional.
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Presentation: again
Here is the presentation, unfortunately there is only half of it here because it wouldn't load up other wise because the file was to big so i split it in half using windows live movie maker, this took an absolute age to upload using vimeo, therefore i will try and upload the other half if i have enough time, but you get the gist of what the presentation was like from this :
Presentation Manny and Beth from Beth Graham on Vimeo.
Presentation Manny and Beth from Beth Graham on Vimeo.
Slight Delay
Whoops! just realised that my videos haven't fully uploaded and only 2 minutes of each have uploaded, i have just realised and remembered the limit on the video for that site is only 2 minutes , so now i am uploading the videos, the presentation and the commentary in vimeo after i have just made an account which i should have done in the first place. It seems to be taking quite a while but they will still be uploaded by the end of the day. Also i am editing my audience feedback and that will also be uploaded by the end of the day :)
Thursday, 12 April 2012
Genre/Narrative
The film "Deranged" was conformative to other Horror/Thriller films of the 15 classification in some ways but diverted from them in others such as the plot.This was in order to make our trailer unique and standout from others in that genre, as that is what catches the audience's attention, something that is different and intriguing whilst still fitting in well with the horror genre.
The narrative of the trailer is the utmost important component of the trailer as it is what sells it to the audience and ultimately provokes them to go and see it in the cinema or buy it on DVD. The narrative can be presented in many different ways throughout the trailer, through camerawork, framing of shots,lighting,dialogue and positioning. In the trailer for deranged the camerawork presents the narrative adequately, the weather in the shots was captured to show darkness and dreariness and so it looked more downcast to the audience signifying a dark twist as at first the shots were fairly bright but throughout the shots it has always been cloudy representing that that ghostly figure has always been haunting them and has been there from the beginning. but it turns significantly darker towards the end of the trailer showing things have got the worst that they can possibly get. The speed increases inducing panic for the audience which is what the audience is meant to feel whilst watching something from the horror genre. I think the audience feel both sympathy and resentment for the boy because of the way that he is portrayed, he is portrayed as being possessed and victimised by these evil forces but also as a predator towards the end of the trailer when the audience realises that he is the reason for the murder of his parents. There are high angle shots of the bodies throughout the trailer making it seem as though the murderer has lots of power, the camera also flashes over these bodies without a lot of delay and their faces aren't clear and so making them seem insignificant and that these aren't the only bodies that have been found. They repeatedly flash on the screen throughout the trailer showing that there are high numbers of murders and that this is the result of the boy changing and being possessed.
The mise en scene also gives a lot away about the narrative and genre as does the lighting. In the beginning the boy is wearing everyday clothes that a normal boy his age would wear but toward the end of the trailer you can see that his clothing becomes much darker as in the shot where he is walking around in the dark he his wearing a dark hoodie so that his face isn't showing adding to the sense of mystery. Obviously the lighting changes as this is stereotypical of a horror film that it becomes dark and intense. But in our trailer we challenge these conventions as normally all the shots towards the end of a horror trailer are dark whereas in ours there is a few lighter shots still portraying the young boy's vulnerability like when he is in the forest and is turning round, which i think still makes him look quite innocent,and still showing that it is aimed at a audience of a lower age.
There is a theory that every narrative follows a 3 way structure in the beginning there is a balance, an equilibrium then there is something that disrupts the balance resulting in disequilibrium and then there this gets sorted out so that it then becomes balanced again to a certain extent. In deranged there is this clear narrative as the starting equilibrium is when Josh is in a normal family and just carrying out normal activities that a boy his age would do, and this is shown by the montage of shots at the beginning of the trailer showing him having dinner and him watching TV with his family in a normal family setting. The disequilibrium is when his parents are killed and he gets possessed this takes up most of the trailer portraying this story, the shots of the bodies are shown to show that the murders have taken place and we also show blood which is also a convention of the horror genre. Also the boy being possessed is quite a common plot for many horror's examples being insidious and paranormal activity so again the genre is really clear. We also show the phone call having dialogue expressing that hes changed and something has happened to him. But in the trailer we can't show the balanced equilibrium again, we have to leave that to the audiences imagination so that they have that sense of mystery that leaves them guessing so much that they have to see it to find out what happens. The balanced equilibrium of the narrative, and ultimately the ending, would be that the audience would find out the reason why hes changed and what actually happened to his parents and if he ever escapes this evil ghost figure.
Often narratives often include the same themes of characters as well as usually there is always a victim and always a villain and sometimes in a horror the police in deranged there is a villain and a victim but they are the same person making the film different, there are police detectives to add to the sense of mystery as well.In fact there are almost 2 villains as the possessor is a villain as well, so some could say it is actually the possessor that is the villain as they are inside the boy and controlling him.
The narrative of the trailer is the utmost important component of the trailer as it is what sells it to the audience and ultimately provokes them to go and see it in the cinema or buy it on DVD. The narrative can be presented in many different ways throughout the trailer, through camerawork, framing of shots,lighting,dialogue and positioning. In the trailer for deranged the camerawork presents the narrative adequately, the weather in the shots was captured to show darkness and dreariness and so it looked more downcast to the audience signifying a dark twist as at first the shots were fairly bright but throughout the shots it has always been cloudy representing that that ghostly figure has always been haunting them and has been there from the beginning. but it turns significantly darker towards the end of the trailer showing things have got the worst that they can possibly get. The speed increases inducing panic for the audience which is what the audience is meant to feel whilst watching something from the horror genre. I think the audience feel both sympathy and resentment for the boy because of the way that he is portrayed, he is portrayed as being possessed and victimised by these evil forces but also as a predator towards the end of the trailer when the audience realises that he is the reason for the murder of his parents. There are high angle shots of the bodies throughout the trailer making it seem as though the murderer has lots of power, the camera also flashes over these bodies without a lot of delay and their faces aren't clear and so making them seem insignificant and that these aren't the only bodies that have been found. They repeatedly flash on the screen throughout the trailer showing that there are high numbers of murders and that this is the result of the boy changing and being possessed.
The mise en scene also gives a lot away about the narrative and genre as does the lighting. In the beginning the boy is wearing everyday clothes that a normal boy his age would wear but toward the end of the trailer you can see that his clothing becomes much darker as in the shot where he is walking around in the dark he his wearing a dark hoodie so that his face isn't showing adding to the sense of mystery. Obviously the lighting changes as this is stereotypical of a horror film that it becomes dark and intense. But in our trailer we challenge these conventions as normally all the shots towards the end of a horror trailer are dark whereas in ours there is a few lighter shots still portraying the young boy's vulnerability like when he is in the forest and is turning round, which i think still makes him look quite innocent,and still showing that it is aimed at a audience of a lower age.
There is a theory that every narrative follows a 3 way structure in the beginning there is a balance, an equilibrium then there is something that disrupts the balance resulting in disequilibrium and then there this gets sorted out so that it then becomes balanced again to a certain extent. In deranged there is this clear narrative as the starting equilibrium is when Josh is in a normal family and just carrying out normal activities that a boy his age would do, and this is shown by the montage of shots at the beginning of the trailer showing him having dinner and him watching TV with his family in a normal family setting. The disequilibrium is when his parents are killed and he gets possessed this takes up most of the trailer portraying this story, the shots of the bodies are shown to show that the murders have taken place and we also show blood which is also a convention of the horror genre. Also the boy being possessed is quite a common plot for many horror's examples being insidious and paranormal activity so again the genre is really clear. We also show the phone call having dialogue expressing that hes changed and something has happened to him. But in the trailer we can't show the balanced equilibrium again, we have to leave that to the audiences imagination so that they have that sense of mystery that leaves them guessing so much that they have to see it to find out what happens. The balanced equilibrium of the narrative, and ultimately the ending, would be that the audience would find out the reason why hes changed and what actually happened to his parents and if he ever escapes this evil ghost figure.
Often narratives often include the same themes of characters as well as usually there is always a victim and always a villain and sometimes in a horror the police in deranged there is a villain and a victim but they are the same person making the film different, there are police detectives to add to the sense of mystery as well.In fact there are almost 2 villains as the possessor is a villain as well, so some could say it is actually the possessor that is the villain as they are inside the boy and controlling him.
Script
In the first stages of our planning we produced a script for some of the scenes, below is an example, when it actually came to filming we changed some of the dialogue so that it would fit beeter with the shots and in the end trailer some dialogue was cut out. To be fair there wasn't a huge amount of dialogue in the trailer this is because of a few reasons, one we thought we would be able to create a plot without dialogue and just voice overs and because we were concentrating on how the shots looked rather than how the narrative will flow, we only picked up on this later in the process of creating the trailer and had to shoot extra footage with dialogue to make it extra clear what the narrative was and who the boy was and what he was doing and how he had changed aswell. The script gave us an idea of how the shots were going to play out and the theme of the dialogue but i think we ended up editing the actual words that were spoken quite a lot. Therefore the script did guide us but we ended up changing it. But atleast we had a plan for what we were going to say which was useful when it came to shooting.
Call sheets
Here are the call sheets that were used towards the beginning of the planning stages again i dont't think we uploaded many then. These were used to previously warn actors the time and location that we were shooting, this is so that they would know and everything would be organised. Although it was Manny's family who were playing some of the characters it is still important to let them know what is happening so that they can plan ahead and let us know if anything conflicts with the times that we had set. It also lets them know what costumes they are going to be wearing so that they turn up in the right kind of clothing to create verisimilitude in the trailer. Also it lets them know what the shot consists of so that they can practice how they are going to act or they can practice any dialogue that we want them to say in advance.This part went smoothly and the initial shooting times were well kept to. This shows that this type of organisation was fairly effective in the planning process.
Log sheets
Here are the log sheets that we made before we started editing the footage to record what shots we had and then decided which ones we wanted to use. We hadn't uploaded them when we were planning and so are uploading them now, clearly it would have been better to upload them then but we can't change that so here they are. They helped with organisation during the editing process. When we were shooting the footage we could write down ideas for when it came to editing so that we would remember them and also we could write down the content so that it would take less time in the editing process to find which shot that we wanted to use. If we could go back i think we could have done with using them a bit more so that we could have kept more organised and would have planned our time well in advance so that we could meet the editing deadlines more sharply than we did. As you can see this is only for one day and because we were rushed towards the end of the project we skipped making the log sheets due to the time constraints therefore in the end only one log sheet was produced.
Tuesday, 10 April 2012
Evalutation: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary products
I think the Trailer and the print products together are fairly effective in grabbing the audience’s attention, as the plot is quite different and having the recognizable image of a child as the staple image on each of our print products looks different to the normal poster where normally the film is based on adults or is of a higher certificate. But a child is more intriguing than other characters, although it seems wrong to include a child it means that the film will be more talked about and this would raise awareness of the film, there would be more hype surrounding the film, it isn’t just a complete replication of another horror film. Other films that have featured children have been quite successful, so people are getting desensitized to the fact that children getting possessed is wrong. Films that have been successful include the exorcist and insidious which both feature children as main characters.
The ancillary texts are also as effective as the main trailer as they all link together by having the same text of the title deranged throughout the products; also we have used the same colour scheme for both of the print products as well as the titles featured in the trailer. Also the Tag line for the film is featured in all of the products, but I think the font is different in the trailer, to in the magazine and the poster, as we only came up with the font for the print products after we had made the titles for the film trailer, therefore we didn’t change the font in the trailer.
The ancillary texts are also as effective as the main trailer as they all link together by having the same text of the title deranged throughout the products; also we have used the same colour scheme for both of the print products as well as the titles featured in the trailer. Also the Tag line for the film is featured in all of the products, but I think the font is different in the trailer, to in the magazine and the poster, as we only came up with the font for the print products after we had made the titles for the film trailer, therefore we didn’t change the font in the trailer.
Evaluation: Question 3 : What have you Learnt From Audience Feedback?
The effectiveness of our products is evident in our audience feedback. I have asked a few people, both media and non-media students whether they liked the print products, I have done a questionnaire asking questions such as “Is there anything we can do to improve the Poster?” and do you think the poster fits in with the horror genre?” The general feedback turned out to be positive, especially the poster.
We also did audience feedback at the beginning of our project to ask people what they thought of the plot and also we asked which genre of film people enjoyed. The result of this questionnaire was that the genre horror was the most popular. This is why we decided to create a trailer of a horror film as well as the ancillary products. We thought that this would be a good idea as we could be quite creative with horror genre both in the trailer and the print products.
When we had reached the point that we thought our trailer was nearly complete we carried out a questionnaire to see what an actual audience thought of it rather than ourselves as we had been looking it for a while and thought it would be good to get a new perspective of it. One of the questions we asked was :
Does the music match the pace of the trailer?
some argued that towards the end of the trailer the music wasn't fast enough and if it was louder and faster it would seem more like a horror and would be more frightening. Others agreed that the pace matched the music well and that it shouldn't be changed, as the majority thought that the music should be faster and louder we did play around with the music a bit more and found a better music piece that would fit the genre as well as maintain the right speed for our trailer to create suspense. But we didn't ask anyone if they liked the new music and pace which we should have done.
We also asked whether people thought the trailer was effective and if it would provoke them to watch the whole film?
The answers were mixed 6 out of 10 people replied that they would watch the whole film as they found it intriguing and they understood what was happening in the trailer. But the other 4 people said they would not watch the film all the way through partially because they didn't prefer this genre and they did think that having a child as the bad person was a bit weird and creepy. From this Manny and me learn that overall more people would watch the film but we could have improved this statistic by maybe altering our plot slightly so that the child wouldn't look so evil and we could made the character appear a bit more sensitive in the beginning so that the audience would know why he turned evil. We knew that we could have included more footage to portray this.
In addition to this we asked if the editing and camerawork was good?
Many said that in some areas the camera showed a lot of red, and this ruined some of the effect of the shot but others disagreed with this statement and said that the red added to the sense of horror and fitted well with the genre. Because of this we tried to reduce the amount of red shots but quite a lot of our footage was red so it was suggested that all of our shots should look a bit red towards the end this would make the trailer and shots look more consistent. The audience especially liked the editing of the titles and made it look like a real trailer. Also we were told that some of our shots were too long and were not similar to any other trailer and made the trailer run more like a story rather than having various bits from the film that still told the story effectively, there fore we had to shoot more footage and had to improve the narrative and reduce the timing of some of the shots which would also improve the pace of the trailer.
We used other media platforms to gain audience feedback such as facebook and the Blog, the blog would allow anyone in our media class to comment on the ideas and work we have done and anyone can suggest improvements.
We also did audience feedback at the beginning of our project to ask people what they thought of the plot and also we asked which genre of film people enjoyed. The result of this questionnaire was that the genre horror was the most popular. This is why we decided to create a trailer of a horror film as well as the ancillary products. We thought that this would be a good idea as we could be quite creative with horror genre both in the trailer and the print products.
When we had reached the point that we thought our trailer was nearly complete we carried out a questionnaire to see what an actual audience thought of it rather than ourselves as we had been looking it for a while and thought it would be good to get a new perspective of it. One of the questions we asked was :
Does the music match the pace of the trailer?
some argued that towards the end of the trailer the music wasn't fast enough and if it was louder and faster it would seem more like a horror and would be more frightening. Others agreed that the pace matched the music well and that it shouldn't be changed, as the majority thought that the music should be faster and louder we did play around with the music a bit more and found a better music piece that would fit the genre as well as maintain the right speed for our trailer to create suspense. But we didn't ask anyone if they liked the new music and pace which we should have done.
We also asked whether people thought the trailer was effective and if it would provoke them to watch the whole film?
The answers were mixed 6 out of 10 people replied that they would watch the whole film as they found it intriguing and they understood what was happening in the trailer. But the other 4 people said they would not watch the film all the way through partially because they didn't prefer this genre and they did think that having a child as the bad person was a bit weird and creepy. From this Manny and me learn that overall more people would watch the film but we could have improved this statistic by maybe altering our plot slightly so that the child wouldn't look so evil and we could made the character appear a bit more sensitive in the beginning so that the audience would know why he turned evil. We knew that we could have included more footage to portray this.
In addition to this we asked if the editing and camerawork was good?
Many said that in some areas the camera showed a lot of red, and this ruined some of the effect of the shot but others disagreed with this statement and said that the red added to the sense of horror and fitted well with the genre. Because of this we tried to reduce the amount of red shots but quite a lot of our footage was red so it was suggested that all of our shots should look a bit red towards the end this would make the trailer and shots look more consistent. The audience especially liked the editing of the titles and made it look like a real trailer. Also we were told that some of our shots were too long and were not similar to any other trailer and made the trailer run more like a story rather than having various bits from the film that still told the story effectively, there fore we had to shoot more footage and had to improve the narrative and reduce the timing of some of the shots which would also improve the pace of the trailer.
We used other media platforms to gain audience feedback such as facebook and the Blog, the blog would allow anyone in our media class to comment on the ideas and work we have done and anyone can suggest improvements.
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