Evaluation.

1.              For our project our task was to create an opening scene which lasted for two minutes of a horror film, to create this we worked in a group of three, this group included, Ben Barber, Amber Foster and Candice Witherden. Our initial idea came from each of us having an input on what we thought would make a good horror film, we then combined each of our ideas together. We also gathered a lot of ideas from research we carried out and mind maps in which we created. For our research we looked at target audience, this was to find what age group our film was best aimed at, gender and what people thought made a horror film scary. We also looked at previous films and reviews; here are two links to two films in which we looked at: The thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25_MNd-RDa8&feature=player_embedded#at=102, we also looked at the exorcism. You can also view these on our blog. These short trailers influenced our ideas causing us to change our initial idea; this meant us adding more gore and suspense to the film. We also then decided to base it around real life true stories; this added to the amount of horror to our film, for example, young girls being abducted. Our group has worked well together during the making of our film and we all got on well and listened to one another’s inputs and ideas to make to film better. However, we did endure a few troubles across the way as actors pulled out but we managed to find people to this which made the film successful.


2. The forms and conventions of the horror genre are stylised techniques that are used to create fear and suspense as the audience watching a horror film want to be scared and it allows them to be scared without being in danger like the characters in the actual film. Some films that we have studied are ‘Scream,’ ‘Halloween’ and many others; these all included the convention of a horror film and allow the film to be as terrifying as possible. These films have included the lots of elements that scare people and combined them, for example blood for people who are squeamish and to make scenes seem over the top and extremely brutal and gory. Another way producers scare people is by making the films as realistic as possible so people connect with what is happening and this allows them to be paranoid and makes them more scared.

We used this research to find out what scared people when watching horror films and then included them in our film, for example we found the most effective genre for scaring people was psychological as people are more afraid of what they can’t see than what they can see. It is important to research so you know your target audience and the key elements you need to include to make it as successful as possible. Some conventions we found out may actually have the opposite of what it intends to do and may switch people off as they feel like they have seen it all before and know exactly what is going to happen. We decided to challenge the more graphic horror conventions such as blood, killers, weapons and creatures/monsters such as in ‘SAW’ and to go with the psychological techniques such as not giving everything away to the audience, only suggesting what may happen, this reduces the ‘full on’ effect and allows tension to be built up by using music tempo and modulation, the camera shots like POV, low shots, giving false alarms as well as distorted images which unsettle the viewers. These will get the audience on the edge of their seats.


3. Our horror film has a certificate of 15. we have made our horror film 15 as we don’t think it has enough horror and gore to be 18 as there is not strong language, we actually have no scripted words for our film and there isn’t any violence that you well see, but there is a bit where the girl gets possessed and kind of attacks herself a little. one film you could link our film to is “Shutter Island” as It's 1954, and up-and-coming U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Boston's Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. He's been pushing for an assignment on the island for personal reasons, but before long he wonders whether he hasn't been brought there as part of a twisted plot by hospital doctors whose radical treatments range from unethical to illegal to downright sinister. Teddy's shrewd investigating skills soon provide a promising lead, but the hospital refuses him access to records he suspects would break the case wide open. As a hurricane cuts off communication with the mainland, more dangerous criminals "escape" in the confusion, and the puzzling, improbable clues multiply, Teddy begins to doubt everything - his memory, his partner, even his own sanity. Written by alfiehitchie
Shutter Island (2010)
138 min - Drama | Mystery | Thriller - 12 March 2010 (UK)
The most popular star rating was 8.0/10




Users: (137,950 votes) 744 reviews | Critics:
415 reviews Metascore: 63/100
(based on 37 reviews from Metacritic.com)
Drama set in 1954, U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels is investigating the disappearance of a murderess who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane and is presumed to be hiding nearby.
Director: Martin Scorsese
Writers: Laeta Kalogridis (screenplay), Dennis Lehane(novel)
Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Emily Mortimer and Mark Ruffalo
Our target audience is going to be females 15-21.Using the post bar charts from IMDB user ratings we found out that the post common certificates used is 15 and 18. Another thing that we found is that the people who watched the most horror films is females under the age of 18 and this is because females are easier to scare then males especially when the horror film has a genre of psychological. This can be the most horrific as it lets the audiences imagination take over which can scare you even more.

4.         The genre horror represents social groups in many different ways, for example they represent young females as being the most vulnerable. We know this due to research and many films have a young female actress to play the main character, for example, the film; Scream. Although some films do feature males as being vulnerable for example in Saw, most horror films represent the male actor to be the one that causes all the events as they are represented as more powerful. A film to support this is Nightmare on Elm Street, as it is the male after the female. Stereotypes made in society also support this idea of young females being more vulnerable. This research shows that young females are easier to scare in the representation of the genre horror. To accommodate these representations in our film, we used a young girl as our main character who is taken and held hostage. This is representing the vulnerability of the young girl. We also used a male as the kidnapper to represent dominant ideologies such as the male being more powerful. We also used sound and music to create tension and build up suspense, this was to draw the viewer in and represent the females as vulnerable and powerless as she didn’t know where she was or what to expect. Also in parts of our film we used make-up to show the audience that the girl was more vulnerable as she became possessed by something but she doesn’t know what, this made her helpless and in fear of what could happen. This is also a representation of dominant ideologies in society. Here are some images to support our points:

5. During our opening scene we attracted our target audience in many ways, using different techniques and conventions. Our intended target audience was a certificate 15, we also aimed or film at females. I think we targeted this very well as we used our research to help us know what to put into our film. We used a bite in our film, with blood all around it; we also had a dead body under a sheet which had blood all on her face. We added this as from our research we found that adding gore to the film, drew our audience in and kept them engaged, it also made it scarier as the audience didn’t know how it happened and represents the vulnerability of females. To target our group we used a young female actress, this was make it more realistic like it could happen to our audience this also made them feel more vulnerable and adapt to the horror genre, making it scarier. We also used slow but jumpy music in our production to target our audience. We did this to build up tension and suspense and also draw them in to want to keep on watching. The jumpiness of the music will also create a sense of horror. In one part of the film we used fast flickering lights, we did this because it built on the genre of horror and kept our target audience almost frightened of not knowing what was going to come of the darkness and into the light next creating a sense and feeling of horror.


6. Fantastic films is a OSCAR winning film production company and focuses on high quality genre and niche films. Fantastic films are at the forefront of producing varied and groundbreaking films of the highest quality. Fantastic Films is based in Dublin. John Mcdonnell and Brendan McCarthy and they have a combined experience of nearly 50 years in the film industry. Fantastic films has produced and collaborated on a variety of film projects and have received over 50 international awards. They have recently completed work on two innovative horror feature films, Wake Wood (2008) and Outcast (2009). Which were originated and developed by the company.

Wake Wood is one film that relates to our film as she becomes possessed and the description for the film is: The parents of a girl who was killed by a savage dog are granted the opportunity to spend three days with their deceased daughter. This has been one of their best sellers. It relates to our film as the girl gets possessed like there is something within her and makes her go supernatural.

Hammer Film Productions is a film production company based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic "Hammer Horror" films made from the mid- 50s until the 70s. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, Film Noir (which means that the films have a darker light) and comedies. During its most successful years, Hammer dominated the horror film market, enjoying worldwide distribution and considerable financial success. This success was due, in part, to distribution partnerships with major United States studios, such as Warner Brothers. They have made films such as The Resident (2010) and The Women in Black (2011) and The Resident relates to our film as it is based on a vulnerable girl as in our horror film the girl is very vulnerable. The synopsis of the film is: After separating from her husband beautiful young Doctor Juliet begins a new life in Brooklyn. Her stunning, spacious loft apartment seems too good to be true and when mysterious occurrences lead her to believe she’s not alone Juliet discovers the unthinkable…someone is watching.

It relates to our film well as it shows that the powerful character is stereotypically the man and in our film this is shown.

There are three points that these companies will help us if we were associated with them:
First is that these production companies would benefit us as if we use them we would be under their name so this means that people have expectations as when you hear Hammer straight away people will associate it to horror and people will expect a good horror film this will mean that more people will wont to go and see it as past films from the Companies (Fantastic Films and Hammer) have been good films.
Second is that they will help with the advertisement things like, Trailers which is the main attraction for people to pay money to come and see the film in the first place. They will also do posters, websites so that people can see what the film is about but not too much and they would benefit us as they would supply the capital for allowing the marketing for our film to get into the cinema as it is very hard to get your film into the cinema if you have not produced a film before and are not well known in the film industry. The third point is that using Hammer or Fantastic Films as it will give us a much more varied and wider range audience and a bigger one at that which means that we would make a lot more money even though we would have to give the production company a cut but we will still make a lot more then if we didn't have a well known company to work with.


7.
Technology such as Internet has helped us to make our film as is has allowed us to research many different elements of horror film; such as the target audience our film was to be directed at. (www.imdb.com) It also helped us to get some inspiration from previous horror films and see what created the most horror so we could attempt to replicate the ideas, most of the clips can be found on www.youtube.com. Similarly blogger and internet site allowed us to store all our work and log all the progress we have made which is key for critically evaluating what we have made and look for improvements. It also structures the work we upload so it is easily found and allows us to see what we still have to complete e.g. ‘the script’. Imovie is the software we are using to create our film. It allows us to edit the clips we’ve made however we want, for example: transitions between clips, screen titles as well as managing the length of our film and many others. Imovie and garage band link together well as after you have created your track on garage band you can drag it across to imovie, which definitely helped us.
The technology we used certainly made us more creative as it allowed us to explore all of it’s facilities for example on garage band there are hundreds of different sounds, as well as numerous transitions on imovie to allow the film to flow seamlessly. The technology helped us greatly in ordering and the structure of our film especially using imovie as it has a clip area which you can place in any order you wish, also blogger helped us to have control over the piece as everything is stored in one place.


8. 
The difference between the preliminary to our end product is that we filmed our preliminary only once as we thought that it would be enough and for our preliminary film it was alright. We could have done with another day to do a bit more filming, just to get everything perfect and so the actress felt more comfortable and knew what she was doing. With our full product we filmed 3 times but we changed our location once and couldn’t film one time as we didn’t have a battery. So overall we tried to film 5 times.
    In the full product we felt that we planned out what we were doing much more and that even though we changed what we were going to do three times we had enough material to work with. We had enough material not to do what we originally idea was and what our story line was going to be. We learnt from our preliminary film that you need to shoot at least two times as you can watch it the first time and then go back and film what you can improve and see what you can do to make your horror film at the best level possible. If we had to do our Horror film again we would definitely film it at least one more time and make sure that we knew what we were doing from the very beginning as we changed our idea so many times, we didn’t really know what we were doing some of the time. We would definitely do the filming straight away so that we could do a lot more with our editing as the editing makes the film much better.

9.             There were three areas to cover in the making of our horror film, these stages were the planning, production and post production stages,  for example the filming, directing and editing. As a group our contribution was equal the diagram above represents this:

Myself, Amber Foster did the majority of the planning of the film, for example I found us a place to film and did the folder work by carrying out research into other horror films to gain ideas. I then helped on directing the film by giving my input on what I thought would look best and as a group we combined all our ideas together to ensure a good outcome and equal contribution. An example of this is the scanning of the foot at the beginning of the clip; I suggested this to build up tension from the very beginning and draw the audience straight away whilst keeping them engaged. For the editing process of the clip, I contributed by adding sounds to the soundtrack to create tension and build up suspense, I also suggested where to split or get rid of a part in the film which was not needed. If we were to do this project again I would have more input on the filming of the clip. Also to improve our clip the screaming could of been used more effectively but there could also of been less of it as some was unneeded another improvement would be to use a wider range of shots and angles and add a different setting to make it more effective.

My contribution, Candice Witherden to our horror film is i didn't do as much folder work as the others  but in my opinion made up for it in the filming side as i did most of it but not all, with the filming we used all different angles to make it much more effected and i did some of them but Ben did the others. I also asked the actress to be in our horror film and got her in, then created her make up, hair and the costume. The soundtrack i think we all had a piece in that with adding music to create suspense and create tension, i think this was shared equally. The editing is something that i would have to say i enjoyed the best and was mostly in control of but the others did help and say what was needed or not needed in our film. For example i would edited something and then they would tell me if it looked good or not and then they would do the same. If we have to do this project again i would help with the folder work more. i think with the planning we would have to think a bit harder and make sure that what we planned is what we were going to do as we changed our idea so many times that sometimes we didn’t know what we were doing. The filming was not too bad but i think more angles and shots would have made our piece much more entertaining and that just having our film in one location was too boring it would have been much better if we used at least one more location. The soundtrack is not the best as we didn’t give ourselves enough time to work on it and that there was way too much screaming and they over lap which doesn’t go with the film itself, this confused a few people.  

Overall in our group we agreed that each of us contributed equally in all the aspects of our planning, production and post production stages.

Personally during the planning I (Ben Barber) helped do the lighting sheet, the reccee sheet, came up with many of the ideas that we used in our finished product for example the strobe light scene as well as the food tray scene. I also contributed to the script, shot plan, make up sheet equipment sheets, which we had to do so we knew what to take out equipment wise. During the production of the film i roughly did half of the filming for example, the point of view (POV) shot of the girl was filmed by me, as well as the opening pan of the girls foot. I also co-directed and made sure everything went smoothly. On the computers I helped create a soundtrack for our horror film using music software called Garageband. I selected the appropriate sounds and arranged them into our film so it would fit to the action in the film. I have done some other things but cannot remember off the top of my head what, for example some more of the sheets.