Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation Question 2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Here is our video containing the relevant answers.

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our feedback events took place after our presentations of our work to the other members of our media class and our teacher. We used a variety of methods to gather our feedback such as audio recording, as well as a question and answer, and a video of feedback with question and answers.

Evaluation Q4:

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

For this question we will be posting various images and screen captures of the new technologies we used, including softwares and evaluating there usefulness and how they contributed to our project. We will be explaining what we used them for and the reasons why we felt they were the best for the task we chose them to do.

The equipment

Cassettes are almost obsolete in the film industry as hard disk drive has taken over; but the is a disadvantage to this as work can be lost this way and there is no hard copy like there is with a cassette tape.
an advantage of using a tape is that you will always have the original footage, some it can be part of an archive; if any work was to be lost you can always use the raw footage as you will have it all recored on tape.

Final draft AV 2.5

The Final Draft AV 2.5 screenwriting software from final draft is a screenwriting suite designed specifically for screenwriters. The software allows you to work in a two-column workflow, featuring a dedicated channel for video and another for audio. Since it is designed for screenwriters, Final Draft AV will automatically keep these columns aligned correctly when text is added or deleted from either one. This is an excellent tool for anyone writing scripts that require separate audio and video columns. We used Final draft av to write the script for our film, having the separate audio and video columns are useful as the script flows better and is easily read for us as the creators and for our actors to learn.

Storyboard Quick 5

Storyboards are graphic organisers as a series of illustrations or images displayed in a sequence for the purpose of pre- visualising a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence, including website interactivity. Storyboard Quick 5 is a storyboarding software application for creating and editing digital storyboards. used primarily in the film and TV industry by film directors, producers, writers, it is used to produce a visual layout of media projects for communicating with crews and/or clients before commencing the main product process. This is the use we had for storyboard quick as we planned out our film and using storyboard allowed us to add and abstract scenes we felt were not necessary or fitted better.

Soundtrack Pro

Soundtrack pro is a music composing and audio editing application, it has professional instrument loops and sound effects. We used Soundtrack pro to create our sound track to accompany our film. We chose the most suitable sounds from the array to best fit each scene and give the audience the right feel.

Live Type

Live type is a programme developed to create animated title sequences for video projects. We used live type because of the variety of formats it carries we were able to create conventions in our titles, as well has having a moving background of fog; keeping in tone with the genre.

Photoshop

Photoshop is a graphics editing programme, as an image editing programme, you can use photoshop to alter images like photos, downloaded icons and scanned artwork. Altering an image includes doing such things as changing the colours within an image, modifying the size and scale of an image., or putting one picture 'within' another. Alteration also includes technical modifications such as changing the mode of image compression from one type to another, or changing the number of bits used per pixel. But, aside from altering images, Photoshop has a vast array of tools that help you "create" images from scratch. On the web, you will often need to make custom icons, buttons, lines, balls or text art. Photoshop makes all of this excessively easy and fun. We used photoshop to create our film poster, the many tools available on Photoshop allowed our group to create the type of poster we wanted with the effect we felt right for our film.

Final Cut

Final cut express is an editing application it is designed for advanced editing of digital video as well as high definition video. It has the ability to keyframe filters, motion path and opacity keyframing; as well as ripple, roll, slip, slide, and blade edits. Other features are picture in picture and split screen effects along with chroma key. Chroma key is a feature of final cut we used for our film.
Chroma keying is a technique for compositing two images or frames together in which a colour from one image is removed, revealing another image behind it. We used this technique to create our news report, we placed a green screen behind our actress as a colour it is consider to be least like skin tone, if our actress wore any green clothing she would have been replaced by the added image. For our added image we chose a spiralling world which we thought most resembled already established news reports so we thought it most appropriate.

The Softwares

Quark Express is a software that we used to create our film review, the images are the logo for Quark Express and the other is Quark in use.

Quark express is a computer application used for creating and editing complex page layouts.QuarkXPress document contains text and graphics boxes. The boxes can be reshaped, layered, and given varying levels of transparency and text alignment. In addition to the basic functionality font, alignment, spacing, and colour, the package also provides its users with professional typesetting options like kerning, curving text along a line, and ligatures. The software allows both box positioning and graphic or text positioning within a box with an accuracy of one-thousandth of an inch.
It was a very useful software to use and with previous practice with the software easy to navigate for the creation of our film review; the software allowed us to recreate the plan we had of our review, and the idea we wanted to follow the theme of our film

Prezi

Prezi is a presentation application tool it uses a single canvas; text, images, videos and other presentation objects are placed on the infinite canvas and grouped together in frames. We used Prezi to present our storyboard in a different way, each scene was added to the prezi in a different way and users can zoom in and out in order to follow the story in a fun and different way.

Divshare

Divshare is a type of host were you can upload videos, photos and other files; you can host them for as long as you like and free of charge. The files can then be embed anywhere. All of our groups audio files are hosted on divshare; audio from our peer feedback and our treatment presentation with question and answer are the types of audio held on there. It is easy with them all in one place so the whole group can access them and then post them to there own blog.

Scribd

Scribd is a document sharing website, which allows users to post documents of various formats and embed them into a web page. My group posted our rough draft and final treatment, along with our prop list, review, shooting schedule, and script onto scribd. Using scribd made it easy for the group to all access the work and be able to post it on each of our blogs. It is simple to use all of the work is hosted in the same place.

Youtube

You tube is a new technology that is a free platform for exhibiting our work; we used it for posting our animatic; first draft of our film, and final film. By posting them on youtube they are easily embedded onto Blogger. Youtube also provides feedback from a wider audience as people are able to comment on the videos.

Blogger

The application Blogger is a new technology presentation tool; Blogger is the application that we used to host all of our research and planning, along with the ancillary tasks, and the evaluation.
Blogger is a very useful application and the most efficient way to present our work. The advantages of using Blogger are: Blogger caters for multimedia artefacts so our group was able to embed our film, animatic and other videos and we felt relevant to our research. Along with being able to upload images from photoshop, and google etc. It can be accessed all of the time and automatically saves our work, so there is no loss of work; it is also easy to edit using Blogger without having to re write a whole post if it were hand written. The information can be shared through Blogger as well, so my other group member could see my progress and like wise I could see theirs.

Final Poster &Film Review

Review With the ReviewDue to technical problems we were unable to get back onto our magazine review so we were unable to change the content from Lorem Ipson to actual content. Here is what would have been our magazine review below:
So what's the story - A young girl meets a young guy through a social networking site,but before you think okay another chick flick where they meet and fall in love, just wait one minute. We see the young Laura (Charlotte Simms)going to meet him only, he's a no show.Left feeling rejected she makes her way home and gets on with her day. Off she goes on an innocent walk with her dog into the woods - we think not! Add in some tense action, a slightly scary but weirdly confusing picture and you have some serious suspenseful thriller on your hands. Look out for the intended twist, is it Will (Gregg Smith)? What happened to that other girl? Will we ever know?
What's it like - This ambitious, well directed film firmly places these unknown actors on their way to stardom and fame, you'll be definately wanting to know what happens next!
Grip onto the edge of your seat anyone?
Cherub Productions for their first short - Absolutely brilliant.
Running time - approx 5mins
Verdict - A suspensful mystical thriller!

Film Poster & Magazine Review feedback from peers

Draft Film Poster & Magazine Review

Review 1
As you can see our movie poster has a few faults. The writing is really hard to read so we put a white outer - lininng/stroke around it while placing an opaque box around the title so we can see what the titles say whilst still seeing the picture underneath.
Our magazine review also has a few faults, The boxes are uneven and so is the run a round around the quote in the middle of the text. The red circles look out of place and unproffessional, this needs to be changed.

Magazine Review Research

As you can see we have some hand drawn plans that we wanted our review to look like, it was just a basic idea but we really liked it. The other two pictures are from a review magazine, we have circled the conventions that we really liked in these reviews and wanted to use on our own review.

Movie Poster Research

Beastly is a film that is similar to ours because of its mystical content. WE really liked this poster and wanted to copy the way that the boy's face is half light and half dark, but we realised it would be really hard to achieve the look that is shown is this poster here so we opted for an easier image to work with.
The poster is a very good advert for your film so it shouldn't reveal too much but also revealing enough so that people want to see it.

Film Brand Research

Ancillary Task Introduction

For our Ancillary task we will have to create a single page spread of a magazine review article and we will have to create an A4 poster that promotes our film.
We will create the review by using Quark and we will create the movie poster by using Photoshop.

Construction 11 - (Final Cut)

This is our final film

Construction 10 - (Re-shoots and Re-edits)

As before the re-shoots and re-edits went fine, the feedback as i mentioned before is on the earlier post.

Construction 9 - (Evaluation of target Audience Feedback)

Construction 8 (Target audience feedback)

Construction 7 (Re-shoots and Re-edits)

After listening to our peer's feedback we obviously decided to change our film according to most of the changes they said. Our peers acted like our target audience, some members were and some poeple said they would go and see it if the film was really out in the cinema etc.
We made changes to the actual film and to our soundtrack, the changes that we made are on the last post.
The re-shoots and re-edits were successful each time that we did them.

Construction - 6 (Evaluation of Peer Feedback)

Changes 29 seconds - fade through black from news report to the titles. cut the length of the titles down - too long. 53 seconds - cut the first part of the shot, the pan is jerky. add some reaction shots. Atmosphere noise isn't needed in the soundtrack - too overdone 1 min 16 secs - continuity error with Charlotte and her phone. Add a clock in before and after to show the passing of time and break shots up, too long. 1 min 50 secs - start of shot is jerky, cut out jerks. A bit too long - shorten it down. 2 min 9 secs - pause as Charlotte opens the fridge - Cut it out. Change the soundtrack, make it sound more romantic so we can't guess what's about to happen, add spine chilling 'stingers' every time Gregg appears. Shorten the scene where Gregg appears behind the tree. Cut scene of Charlotte and dog going into the woods. When Charlotte gets killed add camera noise as she takes pic of werewolf. News titles on each news report Add ident at the start of film. Good Idea's good framing in the woods Nice camera sounds when Charlotte is taking pics of casper Flicker shots of Charlotte looking around the woods Nice green screen

Rough Cut Feedback

Obviously peer feedback is really good especially if your peers are the same age as your intended audience which is what has happened for us.

Construction 4 - Rough Cut

Editing - Problem

We wanted to add a picture of a moon to show the passing of day in our film and it was to also follow the conventions of werewolves coming out at night and turning in the full moon. The big problem with it though is that our media teacher explained to us that to photograph or film the moon would be really hard as you need really expensive equipment to get a photo that will be clear enough. Our teacher tried to take a picture for us with his expensive equipment but even then it wasn't good enough for the effect we wanted in our film so we ended up buying a stock footage moon and just putting that in instead.

Editing

Our editing process is going well, we are using

• Final Cut AV - to edit our film


• Soundtrack Pro - to create and edit our soundtrack


• LiveType - to create our tiltles, to create the background of our news report (the movie comes out of this program)


• Youtube - to host our final film.

Construction - Shooting on location (day 3)

Today was the woods shoot! We got so much filming done today, we had to make some changes to the animatic as some of the chances we came across were too good to miss. For example Lucy's dog Casper started barking because he had heard another dog and we thought that it would be a really good shot in the film. We also had the idea to do some really quick pan shots around the woods which increases the tension and atmosphere in our narrative. We had some trouble with keeping up with the filming along with casper, he kept trying to run after Gregg who was running away in the shots (Gregg was meant to be running away) but after a few takes we managed to get the effects and shots we wanted. As long as we don't need to re-film any more scenes we have finished shooting!!

Construction - Shooting on location (day 3)

Good day today! We have successfully filmed our living room and bedroom scene. They are exactly how we wanted them, the lighting is really good. We are on schedule which is good and we are really happy with how everything is going. We need to be really prepared for our big shoot in the woods.

Construction - shooting on location (day 2)

Day 2 - We have got so much filming done today, we re-filmed the cafe scenes and the News report scene. We made sure that our camera was on auto focus instead of manual focus which made a massive improvement. Here are the results: Here is the old (on the left) and new (on the right) cafe scenes. Here are the old (on the left) and new (on the right) News report scenes. As you can see both look considerably more proffessional and believable.

We had to refilm the kitchen scene again aswell due to the focus problem.

Construction 1 - Shooting on location

Today was very unsuccessful! We started filming and didn't realise that the camera was on manual focus which meant that all our shots were really really unfocused. We didn't realise until we got back to school and started uploading our footage onto the mac. It's a slight hurdle in our progress but we are going to re-film on our next shooting day. We know what we have to do now so it shouldn't take too long. We will have to remember to put the focus on auto!! We had been filming our cafe scene, we have made the set ourselves out of a grey free standing board, some hand made signs and a table and chair in front. We showed the footage to our media teacher and he made us aware that it didn't look proffessional or convincing enough. Lucy has asked her boss for permission to film at her cafe where she works so we have a cafe location. Our teacher has also gave us the idea of doing a green screen for our news report which will be brilliant. We are going to follow a tutorial as we havn't got a clue how to chroma key.

Construction - Preparing for the shoot

For the shooting we will need:

• A HD camera


• A tripod


• A clapper board


• Our shooting schedule


• Props (according to what scene we are shooting)

We had to check the weather reports for when we were filming in the woods as we had to be sure we could get all the wood scenes filmed in one day in case we had bad weather.

We will all be responsible for the camera work and directing, we may just naturally select roles when we get to shooting. By sharing roles it will be easier and we will all know what is going on, by choosing roles this may upset group members, or leave people out of the 'loop'.

Shooting Schedule

Shooting Schedule
A shooting Schedule is very important as it lets all members of the group and all your actors and cast know where they need to be at what time. It lets people know if they need any props, what scenes they are doing. It's generally helpful for everybody, it's a great way to organise your team.

Animatic Feedback

Animatic

A shooting schedule helps you to film as it shows you the order of the scenes and what is meant to be happening in the scenes. This animatic was produced using Final Draft Av. The animatic can be used for referencing in both filming and editing stages.

StoryBoard

A2 Media Storyboard on Prezi

This storyboard was produced using Prezi. By having a storyboard you can see clearly how your narrative is going to pan out and how it will work out with the other scenes.

Props List

PROP LIST neck of the woods
All props are relatively easy to get hold of and really cheap to buy so we should be okay with getting them.

Costume Research

There are only two characters in our film so the costume research didn't take us too long. We wanted to create the atmosphere of innocence and evil so by using binary opposition and dressing our charcters in opposite colours we were able to create the atmosphere we wanted.

Charlotte is playing a young girl who is very innocent hence why we wanted her to wear light colours (her white t-shirt) and girly clothing (her pink cardigan).

Gregg is an older teenage boy who is a stalker and a werewolf so obviously we wanted him in dark clothing to represent evil but we wanted to keep the representation of teens so we dressed him in a black hoody.

As shown here, Twilight uses the same binary opposition by dressing Bella in light clothes to show her innocence and vulnerability whereas Edward is dressed in dark clothing to show he has a dark secret and that he is dangerous.

For our locations we will need:

• A Kitchen


• A Bedroom


• A lounge/Living Room


• A cafe


• An exterior of a house


• A wooded Area

As you can see the pictures below are similar locations to the ones that we need. A big problem with locations is the space, you need a large enough space to fit all the equipment you need for example a tripod extended fully, all your props, your filming team and your actors. Another problem we encountered was that to film Gregg in 'his' living room we needed it to be dark to fit in with the genre and atmosphere of the film whist it being light enough for us to film and capture good shots.

1. Cafe - For our cafe we needed a large enough space to fit our equipment but we didnt want it too big in case the audience didnt believe it was meant to be a cafe.


2. The lounge - We wanted a neutral theme but we wanted it to be dark so it would fit with the theme of the film and Gregg's personality as it is essentially 'his' house.


3. We didnt need anything specific in the kitchen apart from a large window from where Gregg could be staring into the window at Charlotte who is in the kitchen.


4. Outside view of house - Nothing specific needed here, we just needed a normal, decent looking house for Charlotte to pretend to enter.


5. Wooded Area - We needed a decent sized clearing that both actors could move around with ease(7), with enough tree's and bushes to conceal Gregg efficiently for some of our shots(5).


6. Bedroom - For the bedroom we wanted it to be stylish but neutral, so it could be either a boy's or girl's bedroom which gives us more options for our actual location.

The script

Neck of the woods Script
This is our script for 'Neck of the Woods'. This will tell us exactly what needs to be said and where throughout the film. In our film we have a very little dialogue, we think that by not adding lots of dialogue into the film the atmosphere will be more tense and exciting. We made our script using Final Draft AV.

Our final treatment

media_treatment finished

After receiving our feedback from the class we revised our treatment and finalised it. The main thing that we changed was that we added a news report at the end to complete our circular narrative for the fact that there was a news report of a missing girl at the start and then there was a news report of a death of another victim at the end suggesting that gregg was responsible for the first girls disappearance.

Feedback on final treatment idea.

After our group had presented our final treatment idea's the other group's had to comment and give us constructive critism and feedback. After we recieved the feedback we had to decide if we were going to change our idea regarding the other group's comments.
By recieving feedback we are able to obtain an outside perspective on our idea, we get to know what other people think, whether it's good or bad etc what they think works and what doesn't.

Target Audience

The audience that will probably watch our film will be 15-20 year olds. There will be a range of ages due to the hybrid of genres that we have included, mystical and thriller, so because of this hybrid genre it will appeal to two or three different sets of audiences who like the particular genres.
Our film would have a 12A rating as there is a death scene and some scary stalking which some parents may not want their children watching but other than those scenes there is nothing totally disturbing, there are no sexual scenes or bad language so a higher rating is not needed. I have looked on the IMDB (International Movie DataBase) to support our rating and many of our similar films ahve the same rating depending on their content. Twilight has the same rating and it has more scenes of a violent nature and some sexual scenes whereas ours contains none. By setting a age rating to a film you are effectively saving your own skin in case someone too young watches it and is seriously harmed either physiologically or psychologically by what they have seen.
A problem with rating your film though is that if it does indeed include 18 rated scenes and language then there is less of an audience to come and see your film rather than a 12A film, as even though your ideal/target audience would be from 15-19 older people may also be interested and come to watch it too giving you a greater audience and a greater profit.

similar films - van helsing

Van Helsing is one of the most bizarre and mystical thriller/adventure's around. You have Frankenstein's monster, Jekyll and Hyde, Vampire's, Werewolves and much more.Our similarity is simply for the fact that both films contain werewolves. The difference is that in van Helsing the werewolves are hunted and in our film they are the hunter.

similar films - The wolfman

similar films - Twilight

Again Twilight is a similar film due to the werewolves theme. Although we are going to challenge a lot of films conventions by having Will (the werewolf) live alone and hunt alone. Films like Twilight and Dog Soldiers show a pack of werewolves living and hunting together. I think by showing a pack and not a solitary wolf, the werewolf character will not be as alienated by the audience which will change the feel of the film.

Similar films - Dog soldiers

The similarity between this film Dog Soldiers and ours is that the werewolves hunt people for food. In this film any humans who enter through the forest are eaten, in our film Will (the werewolf) hunts girls off the internet for food. By using the internet as his hunting ground we bring in a real problem that people can understand and empathise with, you never really know who you are talking to on the internet, it shows the real dangers you can encounter on the internet.

Similar Films - Gingersnaps II

This film is called Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed. This film is very similar to our film as they use the same conventions. The fact that Gingersnaps uses a werewolf is the main link between the films. Another convention that is similar is that the girl who is the antagonist is a victim of the werewolf. But the difference is that the girl also acts as a sort of heroine!

similar films

there are many films that use the same conventions as we will be using for example:
dog soldiers
underworld
blade
aliens/predator
jason
freddy kruger
halloween
sleepy hollow

Conventions

Conventions are used to add visual meaning and depth to a film, for example romantic genres are obviously about love and will include conventions such as a niaeve girl and a haphazard boy. They will have to overcome an obstacle to fall in love. These are common conventions found in most love stories and romantic films. The same applies to all other films.

Our film this year is a mystical horror, so to create this genre of film we need to know what different conventions are used in similar films of this genre so we can either use them or challenge them.

Common elements in psychological thrillers are mind games, psychological themes, stalking, confinement/deathtraps, horror-of-personality, and obsession.

Common elements in mystical films usually involve magic, supernatural events, make-believe creatures, or exotic fantasy worlds. The genre is considered to be distinct from science fiction film and horror film, although the genres do overlap.


So some other conventions we may consider for our film would be:
A damsel in distress
A hero/heroine
A mystical creature (this is normally evil)
Fear
Gore (Overlap with the horror genre)
A twisty plotline (you have to guess what's coming next)

So by exploring the conventions of our genre we are able to understand how to involve and entertain the audience while keeping the narrative within the specific genre.

First draft treatment

Neck of the Woods Treatment



This is our first draft of our treatment. We wrote these after our group treatments were presented to the class so improvements could be made. (In audio file below)

Treatment presentation

Here is an audio of our group presenting our treatment idea to the rest of the class, after the class had the opportunity to ask questions if they did not understand or had queries to how feasable our treatment was. After this if any major problems had occured, for example they did not understand our treatement we could change it and improve it.

Examples of Short's

Here are a couple of famous shorts that helped inspire us. All of these examples are from Youtube. As with most shorts these have a surprise ending wich makes the viewer think ''ahhh''. This seems to be a very common ending which is popular. We particularly loved the titles in the short 'Bitch' as they move along the conveyor belt on the items of shopping, we tried to incorportae this onto our film by putting our titles on the news report.

The Black Hole


Bitch


Desire. A Love Story

Short's

Since the 1980s, the term "short subject" has come to be used interchangeably with "short film," an international, academic term used to mean a contemporary non-commercial motion picture that is substantially shorter than the average commercial feature film. There is no clear definition of the maximum length of a short film, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences classify it as 40 minutes, while the Internet Movie Database refers to any film lasting less than 45 minutes as a short subject. The short-film form is to the full-length film what the short story is to a full-fledged novel.

Short filmmaking is massively growing in popularity among amateurs and enthusiasts, who are taking advantage of affordable equipment and with certain websites which encourage the submission of user-created short films, such as YouTube, Openfilm, BritFilms and Newgrounds have attracted large communities of artists and viewers, which increases their short's popularity giving them the chance that they may be recognised and be asked to work on paid projects with different companies.

Our Group's Original Idea's

At the start of the course all of the class had to individually come up with an idea for a short film. We then had to present our idea's to the class. Our idea's were marked under things like practicality and originality.

My original idea was about an older brother who turns into a werewolf with the transition lasting over a couple of days, on the last fatal morning he kills his younger brother who takes a photo of him in his werewolf state on his poloaroid camera. This polaroid picture idea let's us have a werewolf in the film without having an actual werewolf (e.g someone dressed up or trying to afford CGI)

Phoebe's idea was about a loner boy who arrives home to hear a news report about a killer murdering young girls. The murderer's clothes are the main focus of the news report and as the boy goes upstairs he then puts on the killer's outfit.

Our Group!!

This year we have been put into groups. My group consists of Phoebe Smith and Lucy Cluely. I am very happy in my group as we are all very creative and we can work well together.
Lucy is a very happy person who will take the lead when she feels she must and can put a very good argument together.
Phoebe is brilliant at putting idea's across and can work out how to bridge our idea's together. She can also think of idea's to link all our other idea's together.
We gel very well together as we all have basic technology skills which enable us to work on the programs and software that we need to bring our idea's to life.