Captured- Final Finished Opening Sequence

Evaluation

This is my final evaluation for our Opening Sequence. The evaluation really gave me an insight into ways I could improve and ways in which I have made progress. It was definitely necessary for tying up all the loose ends that I was still thinking about. It made the progress I have made clear to me.
[Teacher note - moved from 8th April so it appears at front of Blog]

Typical Conventions of Horror Films

-Dark Colours and Lighting
-Male Murderer
-Female Victim
-Some sort of weapon
-Scary music/sounds
-Creepy?


As a group we have been discussing conventions of horror films and these are a few of the ideas we came up with.
In our opening, we were saying we would like to involve some of these, but to make our opening different, also challenge some of them.
For example, we will be using the dark lighting and female victim, but instead of having a male killer we also have a female one. We hope that this difference will make the reader feel like this film has never been done before and they will therefore want to see the rest of the film.

Costumes

In our opening we want to create the right atmosphere in a number of different ways, and one of these ways is with the costumes. We want both of our 'killers'/'baddies', (Jade and Efosa) to be dressed in dark clothing to highlight that they are up to something, the dark outfits hold negative connotations and will immediately allow the audience to point the finger at who is who.

We would like Jess on the other hand to wear something white. We felt that white holds connotations of purity and innocence, which will help the reader empathise more with the character Jess has to play. Also we can show how Jade is corrupting Jess' purity (white) by covering her in red lipstick. Red holds connotations of hate, but can however be linked to passion and love which would be quite disturbing for the audience.

We have decided that costumes play a very big part in what you are trying to put accross, and these subtle hints will be what will make our film great. Fingers crossed!

Research on 'Why people love the 'Horror Genre'

Why Do People Love Horror Movies? They Enjoy Being Scared

ScienceDaily (July 31, 2007) — A bedrock assumption in theories that explain and predict human behavior is people's motivation to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. How can this be reconciled with the decision to engage in experiences known to elicit negative feelings, such as horror movies" It certainly seems counterintuitive that so many people would voluntarily immerse themselves in almost two hours of fear, disgust and terror.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070725152040.htm

This piece of research is from a scientific website and shows the mental and psychological reasons for people liking horror  movies.

I believe it's because it's a way of escaping from real life into a temporary, fantasy world where horrific and terrible things happen to normal people like you and me, with otherworldly sites and sounds we would not be experiencing in our everday life.


We know that what we are seeing is "not real", that we are in a "safe zone", yet we can experience the feeling of knowing what it might be like if these things we see and hear could actually happen to us...this is our imagination at work


It's normal human behavior to seek "thrills", and these things projected on a screen are emotionally "thrilling" and yet physically harmless.
Summed up in one word: ESCAPISM

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060808201355AA3SoXM

This research is from a website called Yahoo which is a place where people ask questions and anyone can put their own opinion, so this is from a person's own point of view about why people like horror movies.




The reason I chose to do this research is so we can look at the reasons people love the genre and make sure that when we watch our movie over we feel those same feelings inside.

Production Logo Research

Whilst researching production logos to get ideas for our own, I came accross this image which shows a variety of production logos around at the moment. As you can see there are a variety of different colours and images used on each, but as our opening is based on the genre of horror, we are looking more at the darker logos to add to the whole atmosphere of the film. I felt that if we used a brightly coloured production logo, it would take away from the whole effect that we are trying to get across to the audience.

We based our logo on mostly the darker examples above as we felt it was most appropriate for our opening. As you can see from the examples our uses elements from both MIRAMAX Films and Twisted Pictures.

Feelings about the Project as a whole- Evaluation

Looking back over the course as a whole I feel like I have learnt a lot about a lot of different elements of media. I have also learnt skills I can take on to later like working independently and also working as part of a group. Despite being quite stressful it has been extremely enjoyable and helped me to form good friendships. As I had never done media before, it was all new to me so I didn't know what to expect, this was another way the course has been quite difficult for me but I feel I have adjusted to it well and have done quite well.

I have also had to work on various different programs like Flash, Final Cut and Garage Band, which will help me with other things in different lessons, and also later on in life if I am asked to work with some of this software I will feel confident as I have already used it before. 

The creation of our product has helped me vastly in many different ways.

Final Few Lessons

In the last few lessons we have all been concentrating on checking our blogs to make sure we have all our links and all our labels and everything up to date. We are also uploading all of our final Opening Sequences and Evaluations so that our blogs are all ready for marking. It is really all about tying everything up and making sure it's all sorted.

Preliminary Sequence

Decisions on Film Names

We had a meeting on deciding a name for our Opening Sequence. Firstly we had an idea to have the name 'The Hidden', as it could relate to both Efosa and Jess. Efosa because we don't see him until the end of the opening and Jess because she is kept hidden from the rest of the world as they keep her in a garage.

Despite this we came up with a second idea, which was 'Captured'. We thought this was better as it has a double meaning as not only Jess is captured, Efosa takes a picture of Jess at the end so this also links in with the Film name.

Production Meeting Notes

These are an example of notes we had in our meeting. This is where we started to form the final ideas for our opening.

Shooting Schedule

This is our shooting schedule. We planned to film all our footage in two days, and we successfully completed this. Having this guideline helped us to be a lot more organised so our filming went a lot smoother. 

Detailed Storyboard

This is a storyboard for our Opening Sequence. I took a variety of shots from all over the storyboard and went into detail with them. It consists of the shot no., duration, information on the camera, sound, titles, visual style and notes on the different shots.

Detailed Treatment From

This is our detailed treatment form. It includes all the different elements of sound and visual effects we will be adding into our Opening Sequence. 

This is the planning for our Opening Sequence. Answering these questions helped me understand exactly what I had to incorporate into the planning of the opening, and things we would have to consider when creating it.  

Initial Brainstorm Ideas

This is our brainstorm of our first ideas for our opening, as you can see we always had the idea of doing the genre of horror/thriller, but had to go through many ideas within this genre to get to our final idea. 

Feedback from Showcase

Feedback from Showcase Part 3

The final question on the feedback sheet, and probably the most important, in terms of ways in which we could improve our opening was
"Did you notice any serious issues such as continuity errors, strange edits - Did anything not make sense to you?"

• "Storyline was a tad confusing but knew roughly what was going on. Maybe sharpen some of the shots a bit."
• "Sound needs a bit of work. Didn't get the bit with the train."
• "Some bits are too dark, can't see as well."
• "Camera shots are slightly jumpy."

From this feedback we now know the things in our opening to go over. We will take these away and go through each one individually and discuss ways in which we can make these better for the audience.

Feedback from Showcase

Feedback from Showcase Part 2

The second question that was on the sheet that we gave out to our audience was

"Who do you think the target audience is?"

• "16+"
• "Mainstream"
• "People who like horror"
• "15+"

From these comments we can see we are doing well in terms of our target audience as two of the groups said similar age groups. And we wanted our film to be of the horror genre and this obviously came across well.

Feedback from Showcase

When we held the showcase where we showed our audience our Opening Sequence, we gave out sheets where we asked the audience to answer a few questions for us. I have taken a selection of the feedback sheets, so we can work as a group to improve our film and also get inspiration and confidence from the good comments.

The first question we asked was "What was especially good about the film?"

• "Really good editing- Red lipstick with black and white shot and good camera work and use of sound."
• "The camera work was really good. Good use of colour. Lighting was very good."
• "Never see the face till the end. Good shots of the knife. Shots of make-up and nail varnish at the start were really good."
• Lighting suits the genre. Good acting.

Research of Possible Film Genres

Horror 
"Horror films are unsettling movies that strive to elicit the emotions of fear, disgust and horror from viewers. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and thesupernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres. Horrors also frequently overlap with the thriller genre."
I got this information from Wikipedia.
The first sentence, is an extreme version of how we would like our opening to effect people. So we will be taking some ideas from the genre of horror. 
Thriller
"Thriller is a genre of literature, film, video gaming and television that uses suspense, tension, and excitement as the main elements.^[1] The primary subgenre is psychological thrillers." 
I also found this information on Wikipedia. 
Suspense, Tension and Excitement are all emotions we would like our audience to feel while watching our opening sequence. 
Drama Film
"A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, crime and corruption put the characters in conflict with themselves, others, society and even natural phenomena."


This final information is also from Wikipedia.


After reading up on information about Drama Film, I have realised that some of these elements would be 
vital in our opening to make it emotional for the audience. 


We would like to include a mixture of all of these genres in our opening to create the effect that we would 
like to achieve. 

A Summary of Problems our Group has Faced

As a group we worked, I thought reasonably well but there were certain times where we faced problems. The first problem we faced was the fact that me and Jess were the only ones who were close friends so the fact that we had to keep meeting up was quite awkward for us. Despite this, after working together for a few weeks in lessons we started to bond and we started to feel a bit more comfortable with each other so by the time we had started filming we were fine with going round each other's houses to have meetings and organise everything for filming.

The second problem we faced was with the editing. Me and Jess missed the lesson where everyone learnt how to use the editing software, so Efosa had to go through it with us again, which delayed us in terms of our schedule. For a couple of lessons we had to work a lot quicker than the other groups which was quite stressful for us, but once we had got over this we were able to work at the same pace as everyone else. 

Another problem we faced was the fact that on our opening sequence, the dialogue was between Jade and Efosa but after our teacher had watched it she advised us that Jade's accent took away from the genre of the opening and she thought it would be better if we re-recorded it and made it fit the genre better. We stayed after school and recorded my voice over the top of the footage, which I feel was a good decision and has improved our piece a lot.

Finally, we also could have organised our time better. If we had a list of what we would be doing in each lesson and we had to meet each task, we would have been much more up to date and we wouldn't have had to worry about who was doing what, and where they were doing it. It would have caused a lot less confusion and our work would have been done a lot quicker. 

Rough Version of Our Opening Sequence

This is a rough version of our opening. This is the version we showed to our audience to get our feedback and this is where we got all our ideas to enhance our opening and make it better for our audience.
This version only has diegetic sound and it needs to be edited more.

Final Editing Progress

Today we met up as a group to talk about all the things we need to improve on our Opening Sequence. Miss spoke to us about how the dialogue in our piece took away for the genre and in some ways ruined it. So today we are going to concentrate on re-recording the dialogue, and making sure all our sound is good and works with our genre and action that is happening in the film. We realised that Jade's voice wasn't right for our opening so we are going to try mine and Jess' and see which one works best.

Comparing Pillow Talk and Fringe Essay

Essay on the comparison of Pillow Talk and Fringe

In this essay I will be comparing the editing of the two extracts from the films Pillow Talk and Fringe. Pillow Talk is a 1959 romantic comedy film directed by Michael Gordon. It features Rock Hudson, Doris Day, Tony Randall, Thelma Ritter and Nick Adams. The film was written by Russell Rouse, Maurice Richlin, Stanley Shapiro and Clarence Greene. The other extract is from Fringe which is an American science fiction television series created by J. J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci.

There is a strong comparison between pace in the two extracts. Fringe is fast and has lots of cuts whereas Pillow talk’s Pace is a lot slower and the transition between shots is a lot slower. For example, I watched 20 seconds at the beginning of Fringe and Pillow talk and in Fringe there were seven cuts, however in Pillow talk there were none. This is a perfect example of how in Fringe the pace is very fast which gives us the impression that the film is very fast paced and full of action, in comparison with Pillow talk which we would imagine to be a much nicer romantic film as it has much fewer cuts.

Pillow Talk has a much plainer approach of editing as the cuts are much slower and there isn’t much variety, whereas with Fringe there is a much more versatile approach to the editing. For example there are dissolves and wipes but in Pillow Talk there are simple cuts which follow the actress along to other settings. Despite making the extract a lot faster and more interesting it may make the actual concept of what is happening quite confusing for the audience whereas the straight forward approach that Pillow Talk uses would make the audience understand what the film is trying to get across better. The reason for the difference in editing cuts may have a lot to do with the time in which the film was created. Pillow Talk is a much older film so the budget and technology may be a lot lower compared to a modern type of editing like Fringe.

There are quite a few similarities throughout Fringe and Pillow Talk for example, both extracts use mid two shots to help the audience establish characters but in Pillow talk this is the main shot that is used where as in the Fringe extract the shot that is used the most is a close up. This could be because they don’t want any background in it and only need to see their face, but this is different in Pillow talk because the background in it is quite important. This is because the mise-on-scene used in Pillow Talk helps the audience to establish time period and setting. For example their clothing and make-up are quite old fashioned, and so is the décor of the house. In comparison, in Fringe this is very different because we only see their faces as they are close ups, so the only background we see looks like futuristic technology, which makes us understand that this is a more up to date series.

On a whole the two different extracts contrast greatly so the audience’s responses to both would be totally different. The differences in genres have a lot to do with the difference in response. Fringe is a sci-fi television series whereas Pillow Talk is a romantic comedy. The audience for Fringe is more likely to be male and Pillow Talk is more likely to be female, which is obviously just stereotyping, but obviously the reactions from these audiences could be totally different. One way the audience may have a response opinion would be on the cuts. The audience may find it easier to follow what’s going on more in Pillow Talk because there are not as many cuts and the scenes flow more clearly. For example when the lady is standing at the sink and the camera pans round and follows her to the phone so you can see where she is walking. If this was to happen in Fringe then they would use a cut to film the scene answering the phone.

Personally, as a member of the audience watching both extracts, I much preferred Pillow Talk as it suited my choice of film genre better than Fringe. I preferred the slow pace and the subtle hints of a ‘rom-com’ coming through. Fringe, was personally much too fast and I don’t like Science Fiction in the first place so the extract wasn’t particularly enjoyable for me. Despite Pillow Talk being much before my time, I enjoyed the fact that the mise-on-scene reflected the time period of the film like the telephone, the clothing of the people and the music that is played in the bar they go for a drink in. I felt like I could relate to the film more and put myself in the shoes of the main female character. All of which made me prefer Pillow Talk to Fringe.

BY CHLOE SPILLANE

Feedback

Yesterday, we created a showcase for all of our Opening Sequences and got feedback for each others by filling in evaluation sheets which included things we thought were good about the opening, things they could improve and how well they showed the genre and audience for the film. Everyone's films weren't quite finished, this exercise was simply to help us understand ways in which we could improve our films and make them as good as we possibly could.

We had to stand up in front of our audience and say our films name, and our personal group had to explain that we hadn't yet added our sound to the movie as it is still being made.

After the audience had watched our opening everyone gave us our feedback. Most of it was generally positive, but a lot of people gave us really helpful constructive criticism which will help us vastly improve and make our opening more interesting to watch. For example someone said that they thought it was a little over edited that made it difficult to concentrate on the actual story line so we can change that and make our opening better.

The exercise was extremely helpful and we are now able to improve our work in the way in which the audience would like it. I would recommend this exercise, as it has helped us to see how other people view our opening and how we can improve it.