Final Film

EVALUATION - QUESTION SEVEN

Evaluation 7 from tyler_beever

EVALUATION Q7 - (Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? )

Evaluation Q7 from Kiera Tolhurst

Evaluation Seven

During our preliminary exersize we followed a character walking down a coridior, opening a door and walking across the room to sit down and have a conversation with somebody else. We had the conversation stick to a couple of lines. We looked at the best ways in order to make our films continuity perfect so that it looked right and that it did not have any characters moving one place to another without an explanation. This allowed us to look at using a 'shot reverse shot' in order to have a conversation between the two characters so that the audience could follow the conversation. We also looked at using the '180- degree rule' so that we didn't break it so that our film didn't look disorted and strange. Also our group looked at using a 'match on action' when the character came into the room and pushed the door handle down so that it showed a closer shot of the action.

For our Preliminary task we didn't have a full idea in which we were going to follow which meant that we didn't have a script. This meant that the filming took longer than it should have and it was a lot more complicated as we had to pause after each line to discuss what we were going to say. We also wasn't sure on how to use the camera and tripod which meant we spent a lot more time setting up than we should have. However this allowed us to learn from the Preliminary task and how importaint it was to prepare what we were planning to do.

Throughout filming we have discovered various types of editing and meathods of filming in order to make our film look proffessional. This meant that our film has progressed a lot since the preliminary task. We have discovered techniques such as a graphic match which makes the scene move a lot smoother and it gives us a way in which to make the film more interesting. However we did use shots such as the 'shot reverse shot' which we discovered through our preliminary.

We have also expanded our knowledge on how to express certain aspects of the film such as the genre or the emotions of a character by using certain shots as well as using music to make the film run smoother and look interesting to an audience. By using close ups of the characters faces it allowed the group to express more emotion and to allow the audience to empathise for them which we used during the falshback's with Bree, Carter and Elias however during the preliminary exersize we stayed with medium and medium long shots.

During our two minute opening we have also discovered how to use jump cuts which we used during the end with Piper to add an atmosphere to the scene which we didn't include in the preliminary as it didn't include much of an atmosphere. During the flashbacks we also made sure that the lighting was dull in order to create a sense of mystery to the scene and allow the film to build on the panic of the group. Overall I believe our group has developed a lot since the first preliminary task and we have used these in order to create a highly developed final product through our research and practice of various skills.

Evaluation 7

EVALUATION - QUESTION SIX

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

From the start of creating and producing our media product, we used various different forms of technology to help produce an effective product. The main and first form of technology that we used was Blogger. The use of blogger allowed us to collectively upload our ideas, research and the things we had produced to help us keep it all together and build on our ideas. The internet browser Google helped us to research into the genre of Supernatural Horror and its iconology, shots, camera angles etc. It was very effective to use. 

The creation of the script for 'The Remembering' was created on a software app called 'Celtx'. I believe this was an effective and successful software app due to the format of the app being in a script style form which allowed us to create the best script possible to follow. 

As we came to filming the first two minutes of our media product we used a Canon 700D camera due to the resolution on the camera to be high quality and the functions of the camera to be easy to use and have it produce some remarkable shots that would express certain aspects of the film. For the news reports during the flashback to Piper's death, we used a VH1 recorder device to get a clear and effective monologue so the audience can understand what the news reporters are stating. After matching the sound up with the footage a radio voice effect was added to the recording to give it an eerie tone. 

     

After completing the filming of the footage we needed to create the first two minutes of the film, we edited the footage on a software app called 'Adobe Premier Pro'. The software app allowed us to edit the footage in various different ways such as trimming clips, editing sound and matching shots to create an effective piece of film sufficiently and accurately and give it an all round professional look and style.  

With the first two minutes finished, we uploaded it to the popular social media viewing app 'Youtube' as the film could be published to a widespread audience, and for anyone that was filling out our final questionnaire, they could access the film easily and hassle free.  

Our research and all of our ideas were placed upon Blogger throughout the entirety of the process to help us produce 'The Remembering' and allow us to look back and evaluate how successful our media product has become. 

EVALUATION Q6 - (What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?)

Evaluation – Q6 from Kiera Tolhurst

Evaluation Six

Evaluation 6

Evaluation 6 from L0ui5P1P

EVALUATION - QUESTION FIVE

Evaluation 5 from tyler_beever

EVALUATION Q5 - (How did you attract/address your audience?)

Evaluation Q5 from Kiera Tolhurst

Evaluation Five

Evaluation 5

Evaluation 5 from L0ui5P1P

EVALUATION - QUESTION FOUR

Evaluation 4 from tyler_beever

EVALUATION - Q4 (Who would be the audience for your media product?)

4 Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience of our film is directed towards a unisex audience of all ages ranging from 12 year olds upwards and because of the jump-scares, eerie music etc it is not suitable for young children. Typical audiences for a horror movie would be someone who enjoys seeking for adrenaline and thrill through the use of stereotypical horror features. It is also targeted towards a person who will delve into sub-genres of film and enjoys watching a diversity of different films. For example, the sub-genre of supernatural horror is quite specific.Teenagers were our main audience for this film and we followed this by using modern slang words like 'selfie' and 'spin the bottle' in the dialect between friends. 

To depict an appropriate target audience, we conducted a questionnaire around our class. Even though this could give quite biased results, the questions were quite generalised so we still received some suitable answers which helped us to choose an accurate target audience for our film. Some typical questions asked were:

Evaluation Four

Evaluation 4

Evaluation 4 from L0ui5P1P

EVALUATION - QUESTION THREE

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

An independent film distributor may distribute our film as it is ran on a smaller budget compared to the 'Big Six' and will be targeted towards an audience that are into supernatural/horror. 

An example of an independent film distributor that may distribute the media product is Icon Film Distribution: 

Icon Film Distribution is a leading UK independent film distributor collaborating with local and international filmmakers on the very best of independent film. 

Formed in 1999, Icon Film Distribution is one of the UK’s leading independent film distributors generating in excess of £150m at the box office with a library of over 200 titles ranging from mainstream hits such as Paranormal Activity, 30 Days of Night, Transporter 3 and What Woman Want to specialist break-out titles such as Tom Ford’s A Single Man, La Vie En Rose, Man On Wire, and multiple BAFTA and Oscar®nominee Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive. 

On 23 September 2013 IFD was re-launched backed by investment company New Sparta founded by Dr Jerome Booth. The acquisition, which includes titles released though IFD’s output deal with Lionsgate and the UK library, will see IFD acquiring and releasing films in all media. IFD will work with existing and new partners to deliver effective campaigns for quality distinctive material.  

A popular film that was distributed by Icon Film Distribution is Paranormal Activity.  

Summary: A haunted house makes no secret of the fact it's not pleased with its new tenants in this independent tale of supernatural horror. Katie (Katie Featherson) and Micah (Micah Sloat) are a twentysomething couple who've just moved into a new home in San Diego, CA. Katie has an interest in the paranormal and believes that malevolent spirits have been following her since childhood, though Micah is not so easily convinced. However, after several nights of loud noises and strange happenings, Micah starts to agree with Katie that some sort of ghost may have followed them to the new home. After a paranormal researcher tells the couple he can't help them, Micah decides to take control of the situation and sets up a battery of video cameras so that if a spirit manifests itself, he can capture its behavior on tape. Once the surveillance cameras are in place, Katie and Micah bring in a Ouija board in an effort to talk to the spirits, a move that deeply offends the ghosts.

EVALUATION Q3 - (What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?)

Evaluation Q3 from Kiera Tolhurst

Evaluation Three

Evaluation 3

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

As a group, deciding which distributor was most suitable for "The Remembering" and which would grant most success was a difficult decision as each group member had their own ideal distributor and argument as to why their company was the best, in the end we managed to cut it down to 3 different distributors.

BH Productions

Blumhouse Productions is an American film production company mostly known for their production of low-budget horror movies. Blumhouse has produced iconic horror films such as Paranormal Activity, Insidious and Sinister franchises and closely focuses on the supernatural side of horror films. Blumhouse Productions would be a good distributor for "The Remembering" because they produce low-budget horror films passing them onto bigger companies to distribute them worldwide earning a high gross. Blumhouse specialise in supernatural horror films which is the genre for our film therefore their expert knowledge would benefit us the most and help produce a great film with scariest scenes possible to frighten and grip our audience.

 

 

 

Icon Films

Icon Films is a UK film distributor company who collaborate with local and worldwide companies to help independent films be the best they can be. Icon Films is one of the best film distributors in the UK and have helped distribute top end films such as Paranormal Activity and Transporter 3 and have generated £150million at box office making them a very successful distributor. Icon Films would be a good possible choice of distributor for The Remembering as they successfully distribute small, independent films and lead them on to success and a high gross but have additionally distributed top end films and led them on to success proving that this company is effective and reliable and a good choice of distributor in order to make a successful film. In the end it was Icon Films who we chose as our distributor for The Remembering as the company is a local and individual one which more or less guarantees a high chance of success due to its past and examples of movies that its distributed. Comparing Icon Films to the other companies, whilst BH Productions is a good choice of distributor, it focuses on producing more than distributing and therefore wouldn't be as successful as Icon Films would be in terms of actually distributing the film, not producing.  And in terms of Warner Brothers, this huge conglomerate company would be too big of a company to make them our distributor and wouldn't distribute our film. Instead we should look at smaller, individual companies such as Icon Films as a desired distributor as they are more likely to work with us and can still guarantee a success and high gross.

 

 

 

Warner Brothers

Warner Bros. is an international company and one of the largest television and film companies in the world- and arguable the most known. Warner Bros. additionally works in distributing supernatural horror films and has distributed famous horror films such as The Conjuring and Sinister leading them onto high grosses at box office. Furthermore, Warner Bros. is a huge conglomerate company and have worked with BH Productions on many accounts before and would therefore be a great choice of distributor- whilst Blumhouse could expertly produce The Remembering, Warner Bros. could distribute it across the world increasing it's population and summing up a huge and impressive gross. That alone is one of the reasons why Warner Brothers would be a choice of distributor but secondly the size of this conglomerate would guarantee success and an attraction for worldwide audiences, plus, the money they could spend and smaller companies filling in on improvements would help produce an amazing film and lead The Remembering on to great success.

EVALUATION - QUESTION TWO

How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

As our group were producing and piecing together our media product 'The Remembering', the first social group we thought of and ultimately chose to use was around the age of 15 to 16 years old. With the narrative being around the death of a friend in a friendship group that comes back to haunt them a year on, we saw this as a more tense and suspense filled age group due to stereotypes of them having 'social lives' and the actions in the narrative will question everything about their day to day lives. 

The portrayal of this age group was shown through various stereotypes and shots such as the close up of the 'Cours Light' beer bottle and the medium low angle shot of all the friends clinking there drinks together. This was to signify the stereotype of teenagers having 'gatherings' and drinking around that age. 

Furthermore, another quite common stereotype of the age group we chose is that they are demonstrated to like to take a lot of selfies on an expensive mobile (as an example). Carter is shown to be taking a selfie of himself and Elias and Bree through a pan shot to signify the age group and its stereotypes. 

EVALUATION - Q2 (How does your media product represent particular social groups?)

2 How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Because the plot of our film revolves around how a group of teenagers deal with the haunting of their best friend, we decided to include the absence of adults and parents to highlight their vulnerability. The three teens are forced to become independent and make their own decisions in the plot. A stereotype of teenagers/children in horror movies are that they are extremely susceptible and exposed to the horrors of spirits etc. As well as this, the stereotype of teenagers being more easily frightened is present in our opening sequel to increase tension and fear levels. Even though we didn’t challenge stereotypes in the opening sequel; progressing further on to the film shows how Carter is guilty for the death of Piper. This challenges the stereotype of teenagers being innocent and vulnerable.

Creepy young/teenage girls have become iconic within the horror genre. The image of the disturbingly eerie young teenager has become a stereotype in horror, but the fact that it still remains alarming while being so familiar is evidence to its ability to frighten an audience.

Even though it is never clear in the opening sequence that Carter is guilty for Piper’s death, if studied carefully, we included particular shots which portrayed some kind of separation between Carter and the other two friends. For example, in a dialogue scene, Elias and Bree are shot together in one frame at a medium close up level. Seconds after, Carter is shown sat across from them in a shot on his own which makes him more significant and isolated from the two friends.

Because the time period is set in the present 21^st century, the three friends were dressed in a modern fashion. Their casual outfits in the opening sequence also represents the idea it was just a normal day for them before they were visited by Piper’s dead spirit. Piper is shot wearing a white dress, which she wore the day she died, and we chose this to show her innocence before she was killed. The stereotypical connotations of the white dress being linked to hope, innocence and unity is challenged in the opening sequel as Piper’s haunting actions near the end of the two minutes contrast with these stereotypes.

Evaluation Two

We tried to incorporate representations of teenagers from around the ages of sixteen to eighteen during our production of the film. We mainly looked at their actions, costumes and characteristics of the group so that we could incorporate some of the stereotypes of teenagers in a social group. As our story focus' on four friends, one of which dies and comes back to haunt the other three. Bree, Carter and Elias find themselves haunted by Piper and they are all around the age of seventeen besides Piper who died at the age of fifteen.

During the opening sequence we wanted to look at the costumes that the group were going to wear during both the flashbacks and the modern day. For the girls during the flashback we had them in younger clothes with a white dress for Piper who needed to look more innocent. Bree wore more stylish and modernized clothing such as a shirt and jeans and during the modern day she wore a modern fashion jumper. For the boys we had Elias in glasses during the flashback however in the present day we had him without as most teenagers opt for contact lenses.

We also had the group using more modernized idiolect such as when Elias suggests taking a 'selfie' and Carter suggesting a modern, teenage game of 'spin the bottle' to convey the social group we had chosen to focus on. We tried to use colloquial language to define our group and make sure our representations were clear.

We also tried to make sure that we used modern technologies to show the teenage social group by using a smartphone which is stereotyped that teenagers are 'addicted' to them to allow the audience to see clearly which social group they are in.

We also incorporated a breaking of a representation from the two genders we looked at. Our group attempted to break stereotypes by making the two males during our opening sequence panic. By having the group crying out and screaming during the flashbacks it allowed us to move away from the stereotype of men being strong and emotionless by having them just as upset as Bree.

Evaluation 2

2 How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The particular social group we tried to represent were teenagers around the age of 16-18. In order to convey this representation we paid attention to characteristics and costumes that matched the stereotypes of our desired social group. The story of “The Remembering” is centred around a group of close friends; Bree, Carter and Elias (around the ages of 17) who become haunted by their friend Piper who holds a grudge over the group as she blames them for her death.


In our opening sequence, Piper’s ghost begins haunting the group and her entrance is through a stereotypical- teenage party game: ‘Spin the Bottle’, all teenagers have played this party game at least once so to convey the social group we chose this activity and matched it with the film’s sub-genre creating a spooky twist. Furthermore, we used teenage idiolect; such as “Selfie” which further evidenced the desired social group and made a clear representation and with our film being set in modern times we made sure to pay attention to the common colloquial language and popular fashion trends our particular social group say/wear to make our representation as clear as possible. When Tyler, who played Carter, took a selfie we focused the camera on his phone and then cut to the flashback of Piper’s death incorporating a match-on-action edit and a link to the sub-genre. Moreover, for our representation of teens we used the common fact that a teenage friendship group doesn't tend to be too large and they usually associate with their best and closest friends; which is why we used a small character list. In a teenage group their is usually always a leader which is why we gave the character Carter more lines than the other character as we followed the stereotype of the male being the alpha of the group. In their teenage years friends are really close and we hoped to convey the bond in this group in our representation along with the popular fashion trends and games that teens often play at parties.
Within the friendship group there are 2 boys and 1 girls, in our character profiles we decided to describe Elias especially as the more leading and courageous as male’s are stereotyped to be more courageous than women and often take charge, in order to portray fear we used Georgina’s character, Bree, as the one who would be most scared and the stereotypical frightened girl who relied on the male’s for protection. Contrasting to this, when the paranormal events occurred both Carter and Elias, the male friends, were presented as frightened and the stereotypes of the fearless males was broken. The stereotypes of our social groups costumes, characteristics and language helped present a clear representation.
The ghost of Piper is presented in a white dress as she is depicted as innocent due to her death not being her fault. In the scene when Piper is introduced she is stood staring back at the group through the window, during this she is wearing her white dress which is emphasised through the light of the sun making her look faint and light, similar to the representation of a ghost. Moreover, the wind on the day of filming helped represent Piper's ghost as the dress blew in the wind similar to how a ghost's silhouette flickers in horror films and by standing still with the dress blowing around her Piper could be represent as a ghost through the bright white colours (additionally conveying her innocence) and the elegant flicker of her dress like a ghost's spirit.

EVALUATION - QUESTION ONE

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

• The Narrative of our media product is the death of a young girl named Piper Tolhurst who returns as a supernatural antagonist to haunt her friends a year after her passing. As you find out towards the end that Carter was responsible for her death by drowning. It is unclear throughout the majority of the product as to why Piper is haunting her friends to entice the audience and create more suspension.   

• The product is linear during most of the narrative, however in the middle of the first two minutes and at other points throughout the narrative contain flashbacks to help the audience gain a better understanding as to what happened to Piper. 

• The credits are shown at the very start of the narrative as each character is shown to signify who they are before the jumps and the tension is forwarded onto the audience.  

THE GENRE OF THE MEDIA PRODUCT IS SUPERNATURAL HORROR.  

• The use of the fast pace editing at the very start of the two minutes and the narrative as a whole as the camera moves towards the friends signifies that the camera may be the presence of a deceased character.   

• Piper is seen peering in and knocking through the garden window through a medium close up within the first opening two minutes of the product to give the first initial jump scare with the use of the non-diegetic sounds of banging edited into the product. This gives emphasis upon the genre instantly and effectively.  

SOUND 

• Throughout the majority of the narrative there is an underlying sinister track of music playing and added shorter but tense sound effects which are matched up to certain parts within the product to give the best supernatural effect it can. Such as the two loud tense thuds on the close up of the bottle suddenly coming to an end spinning to emphasise the horror of Piper being stood in the window.