Evaluation Part 8

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? (200 words)

Overall what was successful about your preliminary task?
What was less successful?
How did you improve upon each of these areas when making your opening sequence? 

Evaluation Part 7

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

What key decisions did you make about technology during pre-production/production/post-production?
Why were these decisions made?

What technology did you use at each stage? (you need correct names to identify how/where/why used)

What were successful used of new technology in your production process?

What were less successful?
What have you learnt?

Evaluation Part 6

How did you attract/ address your audience?
Refer back to the planning and your audience feedback

Do you think you have reached your target audience?
What did you include when planning your production that you thought would appeal to your audience?

Using quotes from the audience feedback address how these did appeal and why?
Overall, what else has been successful in your production according to the audience feedback?
What was less successful?
How could the work have been improved? 

Evaluation Part 5

How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

Evaluation Part 4 - Unfinished

In what ways does your media product use develop of challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

A horror is an unsettling film, which is designed to frighten and panic the audience, as well as causing dread, and alarm, invoking everyone’s hidden and worst fears. Along with captivating the audience, entertaining them in a cathartic experience, often concluding in a terrifying shocking finale.
Horrors set out to create fear in their audiences, this can be through nightmares, the vulnerability of the viewer, revulsions, the terror of the unknown, a loss of identity, dear of sexuality and alienation.

There is always a lead character, that often results as the survivor in the film; the killer of the monster often has a trademark characteristics in the way that he kills or challenges the characters, for example the type of person that he kills or terrorizes, a weapon that he uses to kill them, or a way in which he plays with peoples minds. Horrors/ thrillers are usually good against evil, with two characters complicating. The outcome is the good person always survives, defeating the “bad guy”.

I personally don’t think that our film/ opening sequence does not challenge all of the conventions or a thriller/ horror; we have a main character, and a “villain” as such, who has his signature ways of tormenting his “victim”.  

Narrative

Follows a plot

Goodwins theory

Camera angels

has a wide range of different shots, both close up and long shot, but to a point where you don’t know what is hiding around the corner, behind doors, or the camera (the shadow at the end) the use of hand held so that it looks like it is through the eyes of someone else, not being able to see the boys face to council his identity, camera angels of the pictures of the wall – panning around the room. Still shots from both a close up and long distance.

Continuity and editing;
 the use of slowing shots down – why this was done; the darkness, the use of quick cuts,

Sound and music;
As individuals we researched into the type of music that we would be using for our opening, we thought that it would be best to look at the music that has been used for other openings of horror/thriller films, after looking at many different types, we decided that we would focus more on the music that was created for the remake of the Omen, and base the music that we would be making ourselves around this.

The music that we ,made for our opening does not challenge the forms and conventions of horror films as it sets the mood and creates an eerie feel, drawing in the audience.

Mise-en-scene / expression (lighting and colour)
darkness at the beginning; dullness through out the house, the shadow

Typography;

Iconography;
the images and symbolic representations that are traditionally associated with a person or a subject;

Indexical/ iconic/ abstract signs;
the drawings that the young boy had done and put up on the wall, the teddy bears.

The children – the director and the codes and convetions that he uses – its not what you can see, its what you can see.

Codes and conventions of thriller films

Other films that are similar 

Evaluation Part 3

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

As a group we thought that Universal would be the best institution to distribute our film because they have been distributing films for years, which range from many different genres as well as new thriller/ horrors which are different from the normal slasher.  As well as this we have chosen Universal as they are a well known mainstream company which have a big success when releasing films, as well attracting people to pay to watch our film. 

Evaluation Part 2

Who would be the audience for your product?

The target audience for Walking with the dead is both young males and females from the ages of 15 – 25, who come from all different back grounds and cultures.

We researched into the psychographics of different age groups and this was the one that best suited our audiences;

Age: 15-24 year olds

Gender: male/female

Race: N/A

Sexuality: N/A

ABC: C2-E

Marital Status: N/A

Geographical region(s): Worldwide, but mainly English speaking countries.

Media Interests: They are likely to be interested in things outside of the mainstream, including less famous musicians( or even unsigned acts), small chain supermarkets such as the co-op. They are likely to read the SUN newspaper, as it is aimed at the people at the bottom of the food chain. It is also the newspaper that most teenagers read, if they read one at all. They are likely to listen to a radio station such as Radio One, as it provides them with a mixture of music, not just mainstream pop/R&B.

Psychographics: Explorers – they are likely to enjoy the thrill of the genre of my film. They are generally younger people – students.
Together we researched into who would be the best target audience by looking into the film certificates from other thriller films as well as asking friends and family what they thought of our concept for a film and whether or not they would be interest to see it, and applied this to what we had previously researched and used the two together to decide who would be our target audience. 

Evaluation Part 1

Brief

As a group, we have been working to the brief of creating the titles for an opening of a new fiction film. The titles have to been between 90 seconds and 2 minutes.

Our opening title sequence set the scene and the main character “Harry” although you never see his face or his whole body as once as we wanted to conceal his identity to keep the audience wondering who this boy is.  As well as setting the scene and the character we wanted to set an eerie mood and show that our film is a horror and that “Harry” is not your not your normal child without giving too much away.

The main genre of our title sequence is Thriller/ Paranormal with a sub genre of realist/documentative along with being a psychological thriller. 

Titles 2

After being told that we should change our title font, Megan and I went straight onto da.font.com to look at new fonts. We put "hand written" into the search bar as we knew what type of font we wanted and we wanted to narrow it down. We looked through all of the fonts that they hand and decided that this one would be the best because it still looks like a child's handwriting but it is easier to read than the last one and as well as this it is quiet bold so it will stand out better on the screen.

Journal

Thursday 10th February
During todays lesson, for the first hour we put the finishing touches onto our title sequence, we concentrated on the music as all of the editing had been done.
During the second hour of the lesson we watched everyones Title Sequences and gave them feedback. We did not have time during that hour to watch everyones finished title sequence and our group and one others did not get seen. In our lesson on Tuesday we will get our feedback from our teacher as well as our class mates.

Monday 14th February
Today we got feed back from one of the Media teachers and one the media technicians. We had been told that we was there favourite title sequence from our class and we had the least improving to do. We was told that we should cut the universal clip at the beginning as this is too long at 20 seconds. AS well as this we was told that we should change the font of the titles that have the cast and producers names etc, as a different font would have a better impact and it needs to be bigger and clearer so that it is easier to see, as well as lengthening the time that they appear on screen. Another improvement that needs to be made to the jump cuts as this does not work, it just looks like we are missing a shot.
The points that they did like was the shaddow at the end, the use different shots and the use of the static shot. As well as this she liked that we made our own music on garage band.

Now we have our feedback from our teachers, we are going to improve our title sequence so that it will be ready for tomorrows lesson. We have already started to look at other fonts on dafont.com to put onto our title sequence as well as making sure we don't have the jumpy cuts out.

Final Cut!

Universal

This is the production Logo that we are using at the beginning of our title sequence as universal is the distributor that we have chosen for out film. As well as this, by adding the production company logo before the beginning of the film will help to add will suspension as well as making it look more.

Journal

Monday 7th February
Today we put the soundtrack to The Omen on to our footage to see how it worked as this is what we decided we would base our music on, and because Megan was not in, so we did not have the music that she had been making at home on her mac.
As well as this Laura and I played around with the footage and changed some of the transitions to make some shots flow better, as well as adding a fade out to the end so that as the shadow moves across the screen, the shot will fade out as it reaches the end of the screen.
We are all pleased with the work that we have done and the shots that we have, as well as the way that the title sequence flows with the music.

Tuesday 8th February
Today Megan brought in her mac and we uploaded the music to our finished title sequence. After watching it we agreed that at the beginning of the music it needs to be more lively to grab the audiences attention. Now we are all working together to make the music better and to see where improvements are needed.
Both sets of music that we have used with our title sequence defiantly work  well with the footage that we have used, and draws the audience in even more, as it makes title sequence have a more eerie feel to this, as well as the music building up first before the title "Walking with the dead" appears and again when the scene changes from Harry walking around the house, to sitting in his bedroom.

Title Sequence

This is our title sequence, which is nearly done apart from the music. We have no put in all of the titles as, and we have all of our footage edited. For now we have put in the music from The Omen, as this is what we based our own music on that Megan has been making at home on our own Mac. We have based out music this because we like the eerie child like feel that it gives to our title sequence, and this also links into the theme of our "film" as it is based around children and there imaginary friends. As well as this, we all agreed that we like the way the music would build up before the title of our film appears on screen, this gives it a dramatic edge.

Sample Music

This is the music that Amy found on a royalty free website that we could use on a title sequence if Megan making it on Garageband did not work out in the way that we wanted. We are also going to use this music to help us to make out own final cut of music on garage band.

Rough Cut

This is the rough cut of our title sequence with the titles on the screen. We put the titles on by using dafont.com and print screening the letters, and then editing them in photoshop.

Journal

17-01-11
Today we have uploaded the filming that Megan and Laura did after on Thursday as well as the Recce shots.
I have uploaded all of the shots to iMovie and I will start editing, taking out what we don't need and putting everything in order. As well as this I am going to finish the titles.

Recce Shots

Music

Laura has been looking into types of music from other horror/thriller films, she found a sample which we could use as a template before making our own piece of music to fit the title sequence. Laura decided to pick 'The Omen's' title sequence music as a starting point on the research of music and it too has the same film genre as ours. She also wanted to look at a horror which involves a child, this is when she decided that 'The Omen' would be a good film to look into. 

The Cast

Scott Smith - Actor (Harry)...

Grace Covill - Actress (Grace)...