Evaluation - Becy Stanley

3. Before we began our media project we took some time to look into film viewings and ratings of already existing films. We used www.imdb.com to find the information and searched for popular known horror films. When looking at the information of the views we saw that it was fairly equal as to which gender watched them, however there were certain films which mainly females viewed, such as The Grudge (ratings shown below) and The Excorsist .

	Votes	Average
Males	29,689	5.7
Females	6,359	5.7
Aged under 18	552	6.0
Males under 18	372	6.0
Females under 18	179	6.2
Aged 18-29	22,387	5.6
Males Aged 18-29	18,083	5.6
Females Aged 18-29	4,225	5.6
Aged 30-44	11,132	5.9
Males Aged 30-44	9,445	5.9
Females Aged 30-44	1,577	5.8
Aged 45+	1,932	5.8
Males Aged 45+	1,576	5.9
Females Aged 45+	333	5.4
IMDb staff	6	6.4
Top 1000 voters	530	5.6
US users	11,517	5.5
Non-US users	22,609	5.8
IMDB users	43,933	5.7

From doing the research our group decided to aim our horror film at females under the age of 18, and so have a film rating of 15. I then went away and did some research into what we were able to show in a film rated as 15, and found out that we weren’t able to have a lot of violence or strong language within it which worked well alongside our initial idea of the film.

When doing the research we found that males seemed to prefer ‘slasher’ films as they liked all of the blood and gore, seeing organs being brutally ripped off etc where as females seemed to much prefer psychological films as it made them feel vulnerable to whatever was out there, this was the reason we decided to create a psychological film for our assessment. To use this information to help us with our planning we decided to have a young girl as the threat as it goes against dominant ideologies, surprising the audience when they realise that the girl is the threat all along.

4. Our film represents social groups with the way we showed the middle class woman pushing her pram stopping to see if the young girl was alright and check that she would get home okay. To show this we had her dress in ordinary clothes, nothing too showy so that she wouldn’t stand out too much, as obviously the main focus wasn’t particularly on her, as it was on the girl as she was the threat. We didn’t want the girl to seem like she was obviously the threat straight away, so we had her dress in plain clothing, a cardigan and white dress, trying not to show too much of the blood straight away so that she would start off seeming like she was going to be the victim.

Typically in psychological horror films, they tend to be rather naturalistic, so that the audience can relate to it and see themselves being in the part of the victim and it happening to them. We also did this by setting it in an environment that people are used to, a local park which was easily accessible for everyone in the group to get to, this location is a place that many teenagers can relate to as it’s a common place people gather, or walk past most weeks.

9. During the process of planning the film, I helped come up with the initial idea with input from Emma, produced part of the storyboard, wrote up the shot list, helped fill in the recee sheet, helped Liam fill in parts of the pitch sheets, produced the powerpoint with Emma for our pitch, filled in the lighting and film outline sheets. During the first filming I was unable to help film and had to take part as one of the actors as our original actor was unable to make it last minute, although I helped film with Emma the second time and edit the film in class while Liam was away and unable to do so, we cut out parts we didn’t need and made the lighting darker so to look spookier. I also recorded the soundtrack and then edited it to fit the production with Emma.

Evaluation Questions - Emma Davis

1) We made a horror film which was inspired by the idea of 'The Orphan' directed by Jaume Collet-Serra in 2009. We used a young girl as the threat and an older woman as the victim in our film, which goes against dominant ideologies so is likely to surprise the audience and keep their interest. We filmed our production twice as the first time there were a few continuity errors. However, the second time we filmed there was disruption from passers-by and we were unable to find a suitable sized pram, so we went back and used the original film, although some of the continuity errors are still clear. I worked with Becy Stanley and Liam Frazer whilst making the film and it was an effective relationship as we all put in our upmost effort into planning, filming, and editing the production. We overcame problems by working together as a team and consulting each other on what we thought was best, such as Liam being away for some of the editing, we overcame this by coming in at lunch times to edit our production. Another problem we experienced was Becy being away for some of the planning of the production, we overcame this by working in our own time to make sure the planning was completed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6L4jZqUXVk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ywOPNNii9w

2) Psychological horror is a subgenre of horror in which the threat is not obvious, but rather a normal human, whose identity is often not revealed until part way through the film. Psychological horror tends to be more subtle than other genres of horror, as it works on the factors mentally affecting the audience rather than of graphic imagery seen in other sub-genres. It creates discomfort in the audience by exposing common psychological vulnerabilities. In psychological horror the essential element is to frighten the audience mentally, whereas this is not the case in ‘slasher’. Here are some examples of psychological horror films:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg4mPJdyg_E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFVyAjj3Bs0
We used this research to develop our film in terms of the threat and the victim, the audience do not see any graphic imagery in our film, instead we used blood on the young girls dress to connote that she had killed the woman. Her horrific identity is not revealed till near the ending of our film, as the blood on her dress at the start of the film could suggest that she has been the victim. It is only when she takes the woman around the corner and we hear the woman’s screams that the audience know that the young girl is actually the threat. Our films challenges forms and conventions of real media productions, as it is the young girl that is the threat rather than the usual idea of an older man or woman. This surprises the audience and is likely to keep them interested in the film as they are not expecting an 'innocent' looking girl to be the threat. I researched other psychological horrors such as The Orphan, Paranormal Activity and The Shining, and looked at previous students work. The psychological aspect of the production being the young girl alone, and the audience not knowing why or what she wants to do with the baby, the audience is likely to feel protective over the baby as it's mother is now dead and it cannot protect itself.

9) During the planning of our production I completed the script, some evaluations of other films and productions made by previous students, the film outline, half of the storyboard, the makeup design sheet, the Recee sheet and the character design sheet. During the filming of the production I filmed the majority of the shots, working with Liam as Becy was starring in the film, because our actor could not film at the last minute. This included the tracking shots, an over the shoulder shot and the establishing shot of the park, as well as some close-ups and mid-shots. I worked with Becy to edit our film as Liam was away, including sorting out the continuity errors and the darkening the lighting to make it look spookier. Me and Becy also worked together to produce a soundtrack for our production.

Evalutation Part 2

5: How did you attract/address your audience?

• Use your knowledge of your intended target audience and evaluate how well you think you targeted them
• Use your evaluation research (questionnaire) to see how effective you were in reaching your target audience
• What did you put in the film to target this group (actors, music, mise-en-scene, generic conventions?)

We attracted our audience by using a common horror film genre, one that most people would have seen in the past. We also used horror film features such as a younger girl as our protagonist, a freaky setting that the audience can relate too and a plot that might be relatable to other horror films. We put a younger actor in our film to attract the audience of fifteen year olds.

6: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

• Carry out some research on www.imdb.com look at the production companies of some BRITISH horror films that are similar to yours
• What would these companies do for your project - why would you use them or would they use you?
• Consider distribution, exhibition and production for BRITISH films, how does your film relate?

Such companies as black and blue(www.blackandbluefilms.com) would help boost our project as it’s a very popular horror film company with a good background behind it, we could use them for extra budget as well as a good advertising source, any movies created in the future could be put through this production company.

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

• Consider the different technologies you have used, the internet, Blogger, Imovie, Garageband how did they help you make your film?
• Did the technologies help you be more creative?
• Did these technologies help you exhibit your film or improve the structure or your control over the piece?

We’ve learnt about several different technologies as well as using several different technologies, with such things as the internet and Blogger we were able to present our work side of the production in a more detailed and professional way. They made our work easier to access and more creative as we had many functions to attempt to use to help present our work. Having a blog, as well as such software as iMovie and Garageband made it possible to create our own tracking music, have a twenty four seven running webpage that anyone could view, the ability to add extra work whenever we wanted as well as having the ability to improve the presentation of our work.

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

• Evaluate the differences between this production and your preliminary task
• What have you learnt from your preliminary task and how did you use this to improve your Horror Film?
• If you were to do the production again how would you do it differently?

The main differences between our preliminary task and our full production is the professional shots used in the second filming, as we learnt from our mistakes we created in the first film the second one looked a lot more better, as well as this we were able to use a lot more features on the iMovie. We also had access to garage band in the second filming meaning the tracking music actually was created for the clip, not for another movie.

9:  Final Question (Answered by all group members) - What was your contribution to the process during the planning, production and post production stages? (give specific examples of what you did)

Preliminary filming

This is our test shooting, it didn't go according to plan as the weather became really windy and raining, so there were droplets on the lens. The actor wasn't up to standard and so we had to choose somebody else for our final filming. We haven't really edited this so there are several copies of certain shots.

Completed Film

This is our completed film, woooo it's over! :D

Class Evaluation

The film is now complete, we also completed a class evaluation in which they gave us a mark out of 60 as to what they thought it was worth, giving us feedback on their thoughts; our average score was 46/60 with comments such as "the background sound interrupted the film", "it wasn't clear what was wrong with the girl" and "the creepy nursery rhyme music worked well".

uploaded from folder, emma liam and becy