Main Task Video

Our finished video

Media Evaluation, question one.

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

Media Evaluation, question two.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Question answered here:

 

Media Evaluation, question three.

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

I think that our film would be distributed by Channel 4; this is because Channel 4 is known to show independent films with lower budgets, such as The Unloved, as well as more ‘Hollywood’ films. 

 Channel 4 would also be good as it watched a lot by our target market.  In addition to this Channel 4 has a reputation for distributing products aimed at teenagers so if our film was advertised and shown on this channel teenagers may automatically want to watch it. 

Channel 4 owns E4 which has become famous for its programs with mainly teenage audiences, such as

I surveyed 26 people from our target market about where and how they watch films; the results can be seen bellow. This shows that they mainly watch films on channel four with its closest rivals being by DVD and online. As channel four has 4OD the audience could also watch it online on that website. We could also release the film onto DVD to reach more of our target audience.

Media Evaluation, question four.

                                                          

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Question answered here:

Media Evaluation, question five.

How did you attract/address your audience?
Question answered here: http://www.slideshare.net/TabathaLA/media-evaluation-12593581

Here our attracted audience gives us feedback on our film.

Media Evaluation, question six.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Question answered here : http://studio.stupeflix.com/v/sCNlZlD4J7/

Media Evaluation, question seven.

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

Question answered here: http://prezi.com/v_jwipszoeeu/evaluation-question-seven/

Finished Main Task.

Our two minute opening to a teen horror.

Non-Diegetic and Diegetic sound ideas.

In our opening two minuets we need two different tracks to be played at certain points. One of these will be played in the very opening scenes above a montage of woodland shots, this piece of music has to be slightly scary, creepy and atmospherical. The second is played as though it is coming through the radio in the car, this music will have to sound modern, popular and like something teenagers would listen to, however copyright is a problem here.

Non-Diegetic sound ideas.

Diegetic sound ideas.

Film Sypnopsis.

Overall film synopsis:
Three teenagers take a road trip to Brighton for a weekend away, however on the way their car breaks down and they are forced to spend the night in an unknown wooded area. Here they receive text messages from one of the characters phone, that he lost whilst in the wood, but when they try to call for help they do not have signal. As the film progresses each character goes missing with the implication being that they are being murdered by the writer of the text messages. The film ends with just one character left.

Specifically the opening two minuets:
The film starts with shots of a wooded area, this adds mystery and creates a creepy atmosphere for the beginning of the film. Next we are introduced to the three protagonists in the film, Lizzy, Nina and Harry, as they are driving along an isolated road, all three are in high spirits as they are on their way to Brighton. However Harry soon makes Nina pull over into the woods as he needs the toilet. When he returns, after scaring the girls, they discover that the car will not start. Harry then realises that he has dropped his phone at some point. Whilst the characters start panicking about their predicament Lizzy and Nina then receive a text message from Harry's phone, impossible as he's lost it somewhere and they are in the middle of nowhere.

Main Task: Filming.

Last week we finished all our filming for the opening two minuets of our film. Unfortunately we had some difficulty in getting all our actors to the location of filming at the same time and so decided to only use three characters instead of four, which is what we had originally planned. However I do not feel that this hindered us or the mise-en-scene of the film in anyway. In fact, using only three actors meant that we could focus more on these and get some interesting shots of them without the shots appearing to crowded.
 When we filmed the weather was consistent and we managed to get some great shots using the sunny weather to our advantage as it creates a contrast between what is happening in the scenes, it is a sort of reverse pathetic fallacy.
 We also made some changes from our storyboard and took some shots differently, all of this will be explained more fully in our evaluation.

We are now currently editing our film and it looks like our filming is fine although we may have to rerecord one character saying a line as the clarity isn't a good as we would like.

Main task: Film production companies.

As our film is an independent film with a low budget we did not think that it would be produced by big, cinema based film production companies, this ruled out ones such as Twisted Pictures, which although focus on our genre film normally work with established directors and screenwriters. So therefore I did some research into the BBC and Channel 4, both of which produce these types of films.
BBC Films- BBC films seem to do a lot of work with independent films and 'new talent' and, being the the BBC, they focus on mainly British films so whilst they appear good in these ways I do not think they would necessarily show our film. This is due to the fact that it is aimed at teenagers and is quite a 'slasher'. Generally BBC Films show and produce films that are targeted at a different audience and are also normally quite a different genre, with drama seeming to be their focus.

Film 4- Film 4 makes lots of films for both television and cinema. Whilst they have produced some quite big budget films which can be seen on their website, such as The Inbetweeners Movie, they also help to develop more independent films. They also have a wide range of genres that they produce, from comedy to horror. As well as helping to produce these films they also show them on their television channel and others that they own, such as E4. Consequently I feel that Film 4 would be the company to produce and show our film.

Main task - Filming.

We filmed some test shots for the wood scenes in our main task on the 6th February and these will hopefully be up on youtube soon. It was good to practise with the camera as it helped us to see what looked professional when we played it back on the mac and what we needed to do to improve on our shots.

Then, on the 13th and 14th of February we started to film our actual main task. On the 13th we had arranged to meet at our intended place of filming, however due to personal reasons one of our actors had to cancel last minute, whilst this was disappointing we decided to continue with our filming nevertheless. Another obstacle that we ran into was that our location was not the best place to film the shots we needed as we had not accounted for the traffic at the time of filming, but as we had researched many other locations we could quickly move to a more suitable one and begin our filming. In this day we managed to capture a lot of needed footage of our actors, including vital scenes from our storyboard. In spite of this we also agreed that we would need to arrange to meet again to film some more shots due to the fact that we did not quite manage to complete all of our footage. 

On the 14th our group went back to the woods where we had filmed our test shots and reshot some that were not quite up to standard, I feel that our shots this time around were a lot better as we had a clear idea of what we wanted and knew now ways in which to film this correctly. As well as filming shots from our storyboard we also ended up shooting some scenery that we happened to encounter as it just had really interesting mise-en-scene that we thought would create a perfect atmosphere for our opening two minutes.

Media pitch.

Here is the link to our media pitch.

http://prezi.com/qjacuaap-i8h/media-pitch/

Dates for filming.

The dates we have chosen for filming are:

30th January- Test shots of wood area and establishing shots.

13-14th February- Filming the main bulk of our opening, booking the camera out for two days means that we can make sure our filming is okay and looks alright. By the end of february half term we will have finished all our filming meaning that we have about a month to do all our editing.

Script: Work in progress.

As the actors featured in our film are all good friends already we felt that by setting a rigid script may actually hinder the film as the dialoug could come across as unnatural. So we have started to write a basic script from which the actors can create a sort of 'on script improvisation' meaning that they will still get across the meaning of the scene but be able to do it in a way more natural to them.

Animatic of storyboard.

This youtube video is just a rough animatic of our now completed storyboard.

Naming our film.

After much deliberation we have decided to call our film Out Of Service. We chose this name as we feel it fits in with the various themes shown in our film. As our film is a Teen horror we knew that things such as mobile phones and social networking should be prominent so that our audience can relate better to the film, developing this idea further led to us basing quite a lot of the film around the victims receiving threatening texts from an unknown person but not being able to call anyone for help and this then to the idea of calling it Out Of Service as the protagonists in our film will be. We also felt that although it was intriguing and quite dramatic it wasn't too over the top and suited our film better than, say, a one word title would as they are commonly used in big Hollywood blockbusters. After taking to various members of our target audience they told me that the title sounds exciting and that they would want to find out more about it.

Music in Horror Films.

Whilst researching music that we could use in our opening of a film I came across this very helpful website which gives details on music and sound effects commonly used in professional horror films.
http://www.eng.umu.se/monster/john/sound_music.htm

BBFC- Certificate Ratings.

The British Board of Film Classification.

Funded by the film industry the BBFC's job is to classify all films, DVD's, videos and even some video games.

There are a number of different classifications that a film could be and based on these our group has decided that our film should be rated a 15. This is because we will be targeting an audience of 15 and over as our genre is Teen Horror. A 15 allows us to be quite liberal when it comes to certain topics such as drugs and alcohol and it will also not hinder the violence planned to be in our film whilst still letting our film be shown to people younger than 18, meaning our film should get more profit as it has a bigger target audience.


To help us come to this conclusion we went on the official BBFC website to find the detailed classification for a 15 movie. http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/15-2/

	Universal	All ages admitted, there is nothing unsuitable for children over 4.
	Parental Guidance	All ages admitted, but certain scenes may be unsuitable for children under 8. May contain mild language and sex/drugs references. May contain moderate violence if justified by context (e.g. fantasy).
	12A	Cinema only. Introduced in 2002.Films under this category are considered to be unsuitable for very young people. Those aged under 12 years are only admitted if accompanied by an adult, aged at least 18 years, at all times during the motion picture. However, it is generally not recommended that children under 12 years should watch the film. Films under this category can contain mature themes, discrimination, soft drugs, moderate swear words, infrequent strong language and moderate violence/sex references.
	12	Home media only since 2002. 12A-rated films are usually given a 12 certificate for the VHS/DVD version unless extra material has been added that requires a higher rating. Nobody younger than 12 can rent or buy a 12-rated VHS, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, UMD or game. Films in his category may include infrequent drugs, infrequent use of strong language, brief nudity, discreet sexual activity, and moderate violence.
	15	Only those over 15 years are admitted.Nobody younger than 15 can rent or buy a 15-rated VHS, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, UMD or game,or watch a film in the cinema with this rating. Films under this category can contain adult themes, hard drugs, strong language and one use of very strong language, moderate-strong violence/sex references, and undetailed sex activity.
	18	Only adults are admitted.Nobody younger than 18 can rent or  buy an 18-rated VHS, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, UMD or game, or watch a film in the cinema with this rating. Films under this category do not have limitation on the bad language that is used. Hard drugs are generally allowed, and strong violence/ sex references along with strong sexual activity is also allowed. Scenes of strong real sex may be permitted if justified by the context.

Location Scouting!

Here are some pictures taken when I went to possible locations to film our main task. All the places are easily accessible, whilst this means we will have to plan carefully when to film as to not capture any of the public it also means that ourselves and our actors will have no difficulty getting there.

I think this part of The Thicket would be a perfect place to film our establishing shot as although it is more open plan and field more that wood it gives a good sense of where the film will be set and lets the audience see that they are in a wooded area. It means we can fit a lot of trees into our shot and show all the surroundings well.

 For the interior shots of the woods I found another part of the woods nearby to be more fitting for our needs as the trees are denser, giving it a more wild atmosphere which would suit our film well, as we don't want it to look like a public place. I also think that it would be more interesting to film here as there are many different type of trees, bushes and plants.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane.

All the boys love Mandy Lane

00:23-02:27

This film starts with a black screen and then the title of the film appears slowly using a ‘fade in’ effect.  The words ‘Mandy Lane’ appear larger on the screen making them seem more important, the use of white words on a black background means that they are more prominent and easy to read whereas when words are over an image it can make them slightly illegible. The font also subtly suggests a horror. The music playing over the titles at this point is quite stereotypical for horror films as it is quite unnerving, there is a soft piano playing high pitched notes, which is suddenly cut off by what sounds like a slash of a knife and a distorted girl’s scream. Simultaneously the words ‘Mandy Lane’ get a blood splattered effect on the white, which instantly emphasises the fact that this is a horror, and possibly quite a gory ‘slasher’.  A drop of blood then drips down from the words and the camera tilts down to follow it.

As the camera tilts the screen fades to white and there is the sound of a bell ringing, instantly signifying a secondary school.  The camera continues to tilt down and there is now a bright orange exit sign right in the middle of the screen, making it extremely noticeable. At this point there is a non-diegetic song being played, In Anticipation of your Suicide- Bedroom Walls, it’s quite a calm, soft song, which contrasts to the usual rush and fast pace of a school when the bell rings.  We next see a door being open and two young boys jogging out of it, one looks back and waves as if saying goodbye to someone, the fact that these are teenagers reinstates the assumption that this is a school and the age of these boys allows us to presume that the main characters will be teenagers. As the camera continues to move back, on a dolly, a girl steps into the frame. This shot is a close up and at this point we cannot see the girls face; only her chest and hair, and this creates a certain enigma about her.

The following shot is a close up of a boy turning his head to gaze at something as the camera pans past him, this creates the impression that he is looking at the girl as she walks past. This makes the girl seem important as people are stopping to look as her and makes the audience take notice of her more.  The next shot is a close up on her face and she is positioned quite central within the frame.  She is quite stereotypically attractive she has long blonde hair and minimal make up. This stereotype is commonly used in horror’s to mark ‘the victim’ as it implies a kind of innocence.  The background behind her has been blurred slightly drawing the focus to her even more; however you can still see that the people in the background are watching her as she walks.    

After this there is a variety of close up shots on different people, all showing them turn their heads to look at her.  The people used here are a mixture of sexes and races which implies that everyone at the school, no matter who they are, stops to look at her. This raises many questions about her and what she has done to gained so much obvious attention.  This time when the camera straight cuts back to her the camera shot is a close up even more focused on her face, possibly so you can see more of her facial expressions. The camera tracks her for a while as she walks and shows her playing with her hair, in a stereotypical feminine way.  She also looks as though she is searching for something, or someone as her eyes dart around a lot and she tilts her head.

In the next shot the camera is tracking her from behind which again signifies her femininity and sexualises her more than the previous shots which seemed to show more of her purity and youth.  She then meets up with a friend who has been waiting for her and there is a long shot of them both walking down the hallway, which is now suddenly deserted.  This is quite an eerily effect as the lighting has been specially selected to be quite white and blue, making it seem like a cold, detached atmosphere. This is sustained through the use of instrumental music  which gives a sense of foreboding.    

Contrasting to this the next few shots are of them walking outside, where it is bright and sunny, the colours used here are very warm.  We then see a car pull up towards them and the next shot is a close up on the drivers face, he also is a common stereotype used in films, he’s blonde, tanned and looks quite ‘all American’.  He calls out Mandy Lane, and after a while the girl replies, this is the first conformation we get that she is the title character. Her hesitance in replying suggests that she doesn’t know why he is talking to her or doesn’t want to reply so already we are getting hints to what their relationship is. There is then some dialogue between Mandy Lane and the people in the car, where the boys ask her to come with them, with obvious jealousy from the girls. This sets the scene for the rest of the film as it shows strains in the character’s relationships which could be vital later on in the film.

The opening two minuets end with Mandy Lane agreeing to go with them and taking her friend with her, although neither he, nor the characters in the car seem happy about it.

Research and Planning.

 Evidence of our initail planning and development of our ideas.