Evaluation- Marking

1) Really good first entry!
2)Another excellent entry but need to fix the font because it takes ages to decipher.
3) Not much understanding of the process of funding and distribution here.
4) No audience profile and limited understanding of audience motivation
5) This is a poor post as no attempt was made to produce marketing ideas
6) A basic post on the tech used. This was not separated into R and P, blogging, construction and post production
7) Not a director's commentart but some evidence of evaluation of the whole process here. I think there were other improvements that could have been highlighted

Level 2 8–11 marks
• Basic skill in the use of digital technology or ICT in the evaluation.
• Basic understanding of issues around audience, institution, technology, representation, forms and conventions in relation to production.
• Basic ability to refer to the choices made and outcomes.
• Basic understanding of their development from preliminary to full task.
• Basic ability to communicate.

Both boys worked on this together despite appearances. Will 11, Alfie 11

Evaluation 7

Our preliminary task was a first attempt at getting to know how to use a camera, coupled with the techniques we have learned to make the film seem more effective. Since we have never really done something like this before, it was a good learning curve to get us to understand and to help get a feel for what we would be working with for our final thriller production. Our editing in our preliminary was very much basic cuts, there were a few motivated cuts. We struggled for space when making our preliminary and as a result the 180 degree rule was broken, so it looked very ineffective. Fortunately these downsides of our preliminary definitely made us think about how we were going to improve our final product and we are proud that we overcame the difficulties we had last time. The ending of our preliminary was also rushed and the dialogue used was very loose, this made it all seem very unprofessional and rushed. Although we feel our preliminary isn't very impressive at all we still feel it was a very good experience since we learned so much just from the short time that we spent doing it, it allowed us to learn new techniques with editing and camerawork, it gave us an opportunity to see what worked and what didn't.

We feel like we've progressed immensely since our preliminary. Since we now had the freedom to make a short opening to a film of our own design, it gave us a lot more space to work with and a lot more ideas that we could try and make look effective. Our initial storyboard shows that we intended to have a lot more of an extravagant plot, with a victim being thrown into a makeshift grave by one or more antagonists, we also planned to use a shot where we would place the camera into the grave (a POV of the victim) and to shovel the dirt back into the grave (and on to the camera). However due to the lack of space we could work with as well as there only just being two of us it was soon found out that this would be very difficult to do. Therefore we aimed for it to be simple yet effective with hardly any acting in it at all, most of it would be composed of the car driving and some shots of random objects that will make the place seem very eerie.

What we think went well - We thought we managed to get some good and effective shots in our film opening such as the POV shot and long shots. We also feel that we utilised the editing very well, as we were able to do things such as saturate out some of the colour so it looks a lot more dull. Parts of our opening were inspired to that of TV show The Walking Dead, where parts of random objects that had little to nothing to do with the actual film were put in to emphasise how isolated and abandoned the setting we used was. We aimed to have our titles presented as quite eerie and much like any other horror thriller title credits opening, we believed we have succeeded in this aspect especially with the use of the font. We also feel the setting we used was very effective, we managed to make it seem isolated and quite a creepy location.

What we could have improved - Although we though our filming location was very good for our opening, it was sometimes difficult to make an effective shot with much of the ground being uneven. We had to scrap a few ideas of shots because of the factor that filming it with the tripod was difficult as it was a challenge to get the camera perfectly straight. Although we couldn't effectively execute what was on our storyboard in the first place, we still managed to change it around to make it much easier to do. We also filmed among two days this proved to be an issue due to the fact that the sun was brighter on the second day, this meant that the camera was picking up more light which made the shots much brighter in tone. This meant that Will and I had to select the clips that were similar in tones and also the clips which we needed to include had to be changed in tone if they were different.

Evaluation 6

Having never really used YouTube to upload content before, I had to learn how to get the best quality picture on to YouTube. the first time we exported our film to YouTube, the quality was under par, but we quickly learned out to export it in a higher quality and we soon re-uploaded it and it is now up to good standards. I feel it was fortunate to get to know the basics of film exporting and uploading files to a website, as a film company we would need these skills fairly often.

Another piece of software we gained knowledge of was the editing software iMovie. We have used iMovie before but it was on a very basic scale. But since we had to make much more professional content, we decided to teach ourselves about it so we can benefit our film even further with more complex editing. We learned about adding titles into our opening credits, this was fairly simple although it took us some time to decide which font and style looked most effective for our film. We also utilised the saturation tool, we decreased the overall colour in our film so it looked more dull and had more lifeless colours. The area we were filming in had quite a lot of healthy green vegetation, and this would've negatively impacted the connotations of our film. Fortunately we saturated much of the lively colour out of it so it looked far more gloomy and fitted in with a horror/thriller genre.

The camera was simple and easy to use, since we were only using the recording function. We didn't run into any problems using it, and getting the content from the camera to computer was a simple job. We did the same thing in our preliminary so we already knew how to tackle getting our content onto the computer for editing. Although it was the first time we have used a tri-pod (we didn't use one for our preliminary) it was still relatively simple to use. We quickly found out how to utilise it and get the best shots and stability, we feel it smoothly recorded all our content successfully with successful and smooth pans to establish settings as well as having really still and stable shots with little to no shaking.

Evaluation 5

We hoped that our audience would be drawn in by our enigma that we created in our film opening, we created a situation that leaves the audience with many questions that would only be answered by continuing to watch the film. For example most episodes of The Walking Dead start with an enigma that sets up the rest of the episode before going to the title sequence, we aimed to recreate something like this but instead having a more of a film theme to it rather than a TV show.

The conventions we have used include - dark and gloomy colours, tense music, enigma, danger or uneasy feeling, secluded and isolated location. These conventions were all utilised and therefore gives off a very strong feeling of the genre we've aimed for and it makes it seem like a very effective piece when all of them are used. The music we found for our opening was on a non lisence music website which was fortunate for us because we quickly found a piece of music that fit our film opening very well. Once we added then music we started to edit around it, but having the cuts happen when there is a music sting and it makes it look much more professional and effective.

The unique selling point to our film is that since our supposed antagonist was revealed in the opening, it would be largely ineffective to have the story about people trying to catch him, instead the point of view is from the captive of the antagonist and how is dealing with being kidnapped and how is going to get out safely. Since the opening clearly shows that the captive is in immediate danger, it creates an enigma as to how he is going to get out from such a compromising position.

Evaluation 4

Our target audience for our film would generally be teenagers to young adults. People from the ages 16-24. We think this because its is generally popular among younger audiences to enjoy the grill of a horror and it would appeal far more to them instead of an middle-aged or elderly person. Over all we would aim for the film to get an age rating of a 15.

We expect that people who would watch our film would also be people who have watched other horro thrillers such as SAW or Insidious. Although our film is shown to be a very basic level of those, we expect it to gain some recognition from the audience that enjoy watching horror/thrillers. If our film was to be featured on an online site such as Netflix, we hope to gain lots of recognition and hopefully continue making films in the future.

The ideal person we'd expect watching our film would be a young adult, male or female. They would be more interested in an entertainment type with that of watching TV shows like The Walking Dead and Supernatural, their music tastes could be very versatile but they'd be very interested in a modern music style as our aim was to attract teenagers and young adults. They'd shop at places that possibly offer a lot of film merchandise, since horror is a fairly niche genre we don't expect to attract a massive audience, so the people who are interested in our film will be deeply interested in the horror genre and therefore will probably have invested in some merchandise because they like the genre so much.

Evaluation 3

Our production logo (Twisted Pictures) are known for being producers and distributors of horror/thriller films. Since our film is aimed to be a thriller and horror genre it would naturally fit for this company to distribute our film that we've made.

Since our film opening was really simple it indicates that we had a really low budgets(the car was not bought for the film) This could indicate that the rest of our film could be fairly low budget. This wouldn't be the first time a successful horror/thriller film would've been made, for example the movie SAW was made on a very low budget by two young adults.

The various people we've listed in our opening are friends/guides of ours who have helped us create the opening. The order was mostly random in between but we started off with the producer of the film and who it was associated with. We then listed actors and contributors in no particular order, but at the end we put the director at the end because after analysing different film opening the director is typically credited at the end.

Films that would've been released in a similar way is very broad in terms of horror. They all tend to have the same style of trailer, film posters and opening. Our film opening doesn't seem to be different from other horror/thriller genres (an enigma at the start with a clear disturbance of the equilibrium)

Companies may be inclined to show our film internationally because it follows the conventions of many other successful horror/thriller genres. Our film is intended to be based on enigma and tension, and how it all comes back to the equilibrium being solved (if it all it ever gets solved in the film - chance for a potential sequel)

Since we are new to the film sector, our film may not go to the cinemas immediately, our first film may be featured on streaming sites for many people to casually watch. This could perhaps boost our publicity and in turn allowing our future films to start being shown at the cinema if our films on streaming sites gets us popular enough. Since we aimed to get a gripping and tense film, it should naturally be something that a company like Netflix would be very interested in, since horror/thriller are particularly popular especially to the youth who tend to be the main audience for Netflix.

Evaluation 2

Here is our only actor in our film opening, he is completely mute for the entire duration, we feel this adds to the mystery of who this character is, he is represented as being quite a hostile character, with a stern and serious expression on his face, as well as his clothes being a dull grey hoodie. Hoodies are often associated with crime, youths wearing hoodies with their hoodies up are portrayed to be in some kind of criminal gang. We decided against having the hood up because for the context of our film we thought it would

be a good idea to introduce our antagonist early. (The plot isn't about finding out who the antagonist is, its about how the protagonist is going to escape). Our protagonist has not been introduced, the opening doesn't tell us what the agenda of the antagonist is either. Much of it is shrouded in an enigma, which intends to keep the audience gripped and hopefully be interested in the film that follows.

We were very much inspired by the 'casual criminal' where the criminal doesn't look out of the ordinary, and in fact just looks like any other person except their facial expressions and body language show a bit more hostility. We were very much inspired by the character of Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad. A character who has just come out of his youth and started 'working.' He doesn't at all stand out as the criminal by what he wears, but the way he looks so stern and serious really gives off the vibe that he is not to be messed with, and is certainly portrayed as the antagonist (or anti-hero) purely through facial features and body language. His clothing tends to be quite dull which can connote that he is not a friendly character, and we have recreated that connotation in our film opening. (Although we tried to limit as much colour as we could, we felt that limiting the colour on our antagonist was extremely important for how he would be portrayed.

Evaluation 1

Title Screen - Our title opening is very basic, but coupled with the cut to black after the antagonist supposedly punches the victim, we think it works very well even if it is a basic title screen. The black and white colours and lack of anything else is quite impacting and effective.

Setting/location -Once we decided on the genre we were doing for our film opening, after some research and textual analysis we found out an effective place to do our opening was somewhere isolated, and the easiest and convenient place for us was a wood/forested setting. It appealed to us because in the right conditions it can be made to be seen to have an isolated and creepy feel about the whole place. Another factor that made us film in that location because it was so easily accessible to us as well as being close by. Fortunately for us there were some miscellaneous objects that happened to be there, which we filmed and put into our opening such as the piled logs, smouldering pile and the dog.

Costumes and props - The props and costume that we used in the opening of our film required a lot of thought, this was due to the fact that we needed props and costumes that fit into the genre and that we could also wear/use easily. Our first thoughts were that we needed a shovel in order to dig a hole to throw the victim into, however we decided against this as we would need to get a shovel and also dig a hole into our local forest which would most likely be frowned upon by the community and also could cause a safety hazard for people using the forest. We decided to use the car for most of the shots during the opening as this allowed the audience to pay less attention towards what was happening with the props but instead pay attention to the mise-en scene and also the location and setting. The costumes on the characters needed to look casual this is due to the fact that in the films theory this would cause less suspicion among the characters and this also backs up the point that people do not need to be dressed in common criminal attire to commit crimes in film.

Camerawork and editing - In our location we carefully considered our options for getting camera angles. Much of the ground was uneven and it sometimes took time to get the tripod set up in a straight position. However we found some good shots which really made some frames look effective. The shot shown above with the weltering flowers we thought was a very effective shot as it denotes death and neglect, we were impressed how much it fitted in with our genre and how we made it into an effective shot. We also found some other shots that brought out some feel of neglect and isolation such as the piled logs and stray dog, the smouldering pile also brought a feel of hostility about the place, adding this all into our opening we thought was very effective. Our editing was simply cuts, however we thought we could make the editing more effective by timing it with the music. It cuts quite often with in the time of the music stings in the music we used, this made it seem far more effective and professional. We also feel we managed to pull off our final cut to black very effectively and timed it will with the punch and it nicely flowed into the title screen.

Title and font style - We ran through a few different types of fonts and styles, we eventually settled on a plain white colour with a font that looked informal and creepy. We chose this font because we aimed to get a similar feel to how the font was used in the opening of the movie Se7en, with it looking handwritten and having quite an ominous feel about it. Some previous things we tried with the font was putting an echo effect on it, where there would be a translucent and larger copy of the text behind the initial text, we ended up scrapping this because it looked a bit ineffective, as well as looking unprofessional with titles with a lot more text because it ended up that the echo effect was squashed in the background. We also thought about using a different font colour, our first thought was using red, as it connotes danger and death and blood which are all conventions of horror. However, after trying it with the opening we soon found out it looked a bit out of place and odd, we then changed it to a basic white which keeps in with the theme of dull colours and lacking in any colour.

Story and how the opening sets it up - Most of our opening is setting the scene for our location rather than actually setting up a story, the only real plot development is at the end when we see the punching of the victim. The audience should get the idea that from these 2 minutes there is a criminal who's identity is unknown but they hold people captive for, again, unknown reasons. The opening may give off the impression that the story is about the person who has been captured by the antagonist and how they might escape or worse. Since most of the opening is clouded in mystery it's hard to get much narrative from it at all, but there is a clear disturbance in equilibrium which sets up the rest of the film (following Todorov's narrative).

Genre and how the opening suggests it - The opening utilises many horror/thriller genre. We aimed to make our opening look as lifeless as possible and get the whole area to look neglected and isolated. We believe we managed to achieve this very well, especially with the added scenes like the piled logs and smouldering pile. It created a sense of hostility and danger and at the same time an uneasy and creepy feel which we think sets the location and our genre up perfectly. The antagonist is already introduced showing that there is already a bad character out to disturb the equilibrium, which is the case in most other horror/thriller openings.

How the characters are introduced - There is only one character introduced and he remains completely mute. The name, origins and motives of this person remain unknown for the entire opening. The audience can only gather that he is most likely going to be the antagonist of the film. The purpose of this is to create an enigma about who this person, it will encourage people to keep watching in order to understand who he is and what his agenda is. The victim's identity is also kept entirely secret, they aren't even shown. There is a POV shot of the victim at the very end but it tells us nothing about who they are or how they got into this situation, this again creates another enigma which may hook the audience into continuing to watch. Our overall aim of our opening was to set up a very strong enigma and at the same time keep it very tense that would incite the audience to carry on watching the rest of our film and we believe that we have achieved this well

Film Opening- Marking

Level 4 48–60 marks

There is evidence of excellence in the creative use of most of the following technical skills: 

• material appropriate for the target audience and task; 

• using titles appropriately according to institutional conventions; 

• using sound with images and editing appropriately for the task set; 

• shooting material appropriate to the task set;, including controlled use of the camera, attention to framing, variety of shot distance and close attention to mise-en-scene; 

• using editing so that meaning is apparent to the viewer and making selective and appropriate use of shot transitions and other effects

The material was consistent with a thriller rather than a horror. Twisted Pictures is a company associated with horror. You mentioned horror/thriller as your intended genre but this feels more like the crime drama end of the scale. A good crime drama though!

I thought the titles were appropriate and like the way you timed their arrival along with the music. It didn't matter that this wasn't consistent throughout. I thought it worked well.

The music was a good choice with the right amount of threat and menace. As with the titles, you timed some of your edits with the stresses in the music which worked well. I liked the occasional uses of diegetic sound- it's hard to tell but I believe you used it when the car drove past the camera early on and then increasingly towards the end. Shame you didn't end the music and the clip effectively-it seemed to fizzle out!

The material used was very good. You didn't try to do too much and I liked the camera angles you used throughout. The setting  worked well apart from the poles and I liked the barbed wire, smouldering pile and even the miserable looking dog which added to the sense of impending nastiness. The varied shots of the car and of Alfie at the end seemed very natural and took your audience on a journey. I wish you'd done more with the end. It was a good idea but it felt a bit rushed and you should have timed that final punch with a beat of the music and ended there with the title on black!

The meaning of the sequence was obvious and I thought your choices of shot and where to cut showed a really good feel for timing (until the very end!) I really liked it. I'm going to ask a few others to watch but provisionally: 51/60

Research and Planning- Marking

At this late stage, I am going to have to write brief notes on marking.

Good intro occasional lapses in English- 'we are also implementing some thriller into it...'
The Reservoir Dogs analysis is solid but it would have been nice to have more about impact on audience which would have informed their own product more- the choice of introducing characters as Mr Blonde etc implies that the characters are playing characters...
The mood boards were more a collection of still frames but the points made were valid and would potentially have informed their own production.
There are some very good points in the detailed analysis on The Warriors but there are occasions when potentially excellent points are missed- the narrow depth of field of the character in focus in front of the blurred fairground implies what? There are also occasions where it doesn't make sense- the last sentence for example!

The analysis of Se7en is fairly good in places (the section on Somerset and Mills demonstrates an understanding of how characters can be revealed quickly through mise en scene)

I'm a little unclear about what the film opening evaluation actually is??

The post on location demonstrated a link between choice and research undertaken earlier. I could not access the storyboard. The editing and filming diary offer little insight into how the film evolved and was adapted.

There is nothing here on audience research and marketing which is a real shame. The blog lacks diversity in terms of style of entries.

• There is proficient research into similar products but nothing on target audience
• There is minimal organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props
• There is minimal work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding
• There is a basic level of care in the presentation of the research and planning
• Time management may not be good
• There is minimal skill in the use of digital technology or ICT in the presentation. 
• There are minimal communication skills.
• There is minimal care in the presentation of the research and planning.

The analysis was of a reasonable standard but there is not enough of anything else- especially in terms of planning, Of the two candidates Will took more of a responsibility than Alfie.

Will  8/20

Alfie 7/20

Storyboard

Here is a link to our storyboard for our film opeing. This was our initial idea for our film opening, but we found out it would be difficult to get some of these shots to look effective, so we instead decided to make it much more simple and make it look effective at the sme time.

file:///N:/My%20Pictures/scan.pdf

Setting and Location

Once we decided on the genre we were doing for our film opening, after some research and textual analysis we found out an effective place to do our opening was somewhere isolated, and the easiest and convenient place for us was a wood/forested setting. It appealed to us because in the right conditions it can be made to be seen to have an isolated and creepy feel about the whole place. Another factor that made us film in that location because it was so easily accessible to us as well as being close by.

When at the location there were a few things that were in our favour that we decided to include in our film. There were things that we could film that happened to be there such as a fire, log piles, a dog and some barbed wire. We all filmed a section of these to include in our film and we feel that this enhanced our film opening greatly (considering we took inspiration from the opening of The Walking Dead)

We planned to go out filming in our location towards the evening, we typically arrived on the location at about 5:30, so there was enough light for us to work with when filming, as well as getting a slightly dusky effect. The trees in the woods also helped us create a better lighting for our horror theme.

Influences

Will and I were influenced by the hot TV series The Walking Dead, this is due to the quick cutaways during the opening sequence and also the lack of vibrant colours in the opening used in order to set the scene. Our opening is similar to The Walking Dead in the way that they are both about horror drama genres. This is the reason we chose the walking dead as one of the shows we have taken influence from. The dark tone help set the scene and mood for the viewers as these dark tones allow the users to focus more on what is taking place in the scene rather than what colours are being used. The quick cut aways allow extra information about the setting and scene to be shown to the viewers but without the lengthy process of showing the audience the clips for longer and also fitting them into the current scene. This is also effective as it allows the audience to feel more engaged as they are not are watching the constant driving in the scene.

Our other influence for the opening was from the movie drive, this is due to the fact that the film has a lot of shots where the main character is driving in his car. Will and I look at this and took into account how to take shots of a moving car in the most effective way. We discovered that low angle shots of the moving car while the camera is in a fixed location is the most effective way of keeping the audience engaged.