AS media final cut - Alone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x2qoCOKQvg

Dear Examiner

Dear Examiner,
We hope very much  that you enjoy reading our blog as much as we enjoyed making it.
There are categories on the top left you can use to navigate or by date in the panel directly to the left.
We have tried to make it as interesting as possible by using interactive media, visual representations of our ideas, and even sometimes some humour!
We have completed our coursework and are very proud of it and all of the skills we have learnt throughout the project
all that's left to say is thank you for reading this,
and enjoy!

Evaluation

Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
 
Question 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?
 
Question 3 - What kind of media intitution might distribute your product and why?
 
Question 4 and 5 - Who would be the audience for your media product? How did you attract/address your audience?

Question 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of contructing this product?

Question 7 - Looking back at your preliminary, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Evaluation Question 4

Questions answered: 

Who would be the audience for your media product

The audience for our media product is the 15-25 year old age gap we believed that the use of a classic horror film setting of an abandoned building, the use of a young female protagonist, a child actor and the feature of black and white. 

• The target audience would be attracted to the young female actor as they can feel sympathy for her as she's alone and about to embark on entering the house alone.
• The white and black feature shows the audience it's not set in modern day and is an alternative modern horror movie, contrasting the others.
• The use of a child actor would attract the the target audience as well because it contrasts the view of child innocence.
• The classic horror movie setting of an abandoned building attracts the audience because it conveys loneliness, abandonment and isolation, leading the audience to feel more sympathy for the young female actor.

A video evaluating the target audience and how we attracted them. 

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/ address your audience.

With the use of social networking e.g facebook and twitter.

The use of social networking for our target audience the 15-25 year old was a huge advantage to our film opening. The use of twitter by linking our teaser trailers, posting poles, posters, questions and pictures allow people to Retweet our tweets gaining us promotion for our film opening and creating a buzz about about it. Our target audience are more open to going to see our film in a group or after its been recommended by there friends by status, tweets or comments. 

With Facebook we made a page to promote our film opening by having teaser trailers and polls on the page to attract the audiences. Also with the use of cookies we could see what they liked and talked about and so then an advert for our film comes on the side of there page leading to the trailer to promote our film further.  as people were talking about it and also allowing our target audience to hear reviews and responses to our film opening.

With YouTube we could also promote our film opening by using a wide range or tags so that when they search horror, black and white etc. Our film opening comes up and they can watch it and then like it and link to there friends, our it on Facebook or twitter. The use of social network allows us to promote our media product and also allows us to access our target audience on 15-25 year olds. 

Evaluation Question 1

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

Conventions used
A typical convention of Horror films for all audiences is turning normally secure and safe places or people into a threat, such as in the film the Woman in Black (click here for full post) for full and  The Children (click here for full post)

We used this convention in order to make the audience feel uncomfortable and shocked, which is why we had the main villian (according to Propps characters) as a seemly innocent female child, as this stark contrast between the normal perception of children and the shock of her makeup and threatening actiosn withing teh opening help to vastly build the audiences tension and fear.

Another very stereotypical convention we use was the 'haunted house' as seen not only in films such as the Woman in Black (click here), but also gothic novels such as Frankenstein (click here), which also helped portray our Gothic theme

(click here for full post on final location)

We wanted to use this convention in order to obviously signify the genre to the audience and also because there are no other houses around it it gives the audience the impressions she is isolated and alone, linking to our title. The fact that is derelict and abandoned, as well as signifying danger also gives the impression that she has been abandoned to the audience and the broken gates and glass create a feeling of foreboding, as it foreshadows violence.

Another convention we used was that horror usually contains pathetic fallacy, which normally means storms and violent weather. such as Wind Chill.

Although we could not control the weather, as it was windy during production we added strong wind sound effects to convey the tension and danger in the opening, and also the loud noise makes the audience feel uncomfortable so they are tense for when the girl appears.

Another convention which we used is the female protagonist, as in films such as I Spit on your Grave the 'hero' (according to Propp's character theory) is always a young female, as they are considered as vulnerable and allow the audience to sympathise more and therefore become more involved with the story.

We thought this would help the audience to distinguish our genre and also help them become more gripped by the story and encourage them to keep watching.

A particularly specific convention of the gothic sub-genre which we wanted to include was candlelight, and more specifically, antique (or old fashioned looking, Victorian) candelabras. We noticed this used in Gothic films such as Sweeney Todd in which most scenes are lit by candles or lamps. (click here for props research)

We used only candlelight apart from a spotlight on the main actress's face to create a feeling fo the unknown and also used a candlebra on the mantelpiece of the fireplace to emphasise the victorian influence and the gothic sub-genre

One convention which we challenged is that most modern films aimed at young audience are in colour. We were inspired by some of the first horror films such as Nosferatu (click here for full post on gothic films) which although at the time they were filmed had no choice between colur and black and white created a convention in their own right which has been lost over the years as younger audiences become more impatient and more keen on visual spectacle than on the storyline

 

We chose to challenge the modern convention of full colour always being used for films aimed at young audiences, as we wanted ot have a unique selling point and also felt it would help create a gothic atmosphere and enable us to intertextual reference within the rest of the film (had we made it) to the original horror's to create a sense of a time gone by, with connotations of things that are gone or dead, adding to the spiritual aspects of the little girl.

For the titles we decided to use a convention of gothic, and as it is often linked with Victorian times, the Gothic genre is often represented using serif fonts, as they look more traditional and old fashioned, which we also noticed in our research into other Gothic media

We chose to use a simple serif font to highlight the gothic theme and also to make a link with Victorian times (click here for post on the Victorian era) which is when the little girl is from.

Overall, we conformed to most of the conventions of Horror as we wanted to make the genre immediately clear to the audience, and we felt challenging too many conventions would confuse the audience, and make the opening less dramatic.

Questionnaire Response

15 people, male and female between the ages of 16 and 19 took part in our survey at our screening.
Below is an example of the responses we recieved, then after that are the full results for each question, and how this affected our final changes.

Did you enjoy our film opening?

14/15 people answered yes

What genre do you think this film opening is? (open question)
horror- 12
psychological horror - 2
psychological thriller - 1

This proves that our piece clearly communicated its genre which confirms that we accurately used all of the codes and conventions of horror that we researched.

 

Do you think the font for our credits fits with the genre of the opening?

 

Yes - 13

Didn't like the colour/the red was too bright - 2

Although 2 people said they thought the red was too bright in comparison to the black and white footage, we decided that because this was such a minority we would keep our stylistic choice as it is shocking to the audience and provides a strong contrast and makes the audience feel slighly uncomfortable.

What would you change to improve it? (open question)
Although this was an open question we did recieve many similar answers

Many of the suggestions for improvements were differences of opinion such as the red font and the black and white and because these are so key to the style of our piece we decided to keep them how they are.
Quite a few of the responses were in relation to the actual footage, meaning to change them we would have to re-film, which would be impossible within our timescale. However we have decided to make some final adjustments to the part with the mirror as although we can't change the footage we will try to add some sort of sound effect when she sees her to add more shock to that moment.
We are also going to adjust the sound at the end as although we initially wanted silence we have now decided to have sudden loud noise to shock teh audience and make them feel uncomfortable.

What was your favourite part? (open question)
This also recieved many similar answers.

The most popular part of our opening was the end, which we have decided to slightly adjust to make the most of the climatic moment in order to maximise the impact on the audience, making them want to watch the film.

The mirror part and the music were also popular so we have kept the music exactly how it was and added more sound effect to the mirror part to make the most of the shock to the audience

 

What was your least favourite part? (open question)

We have again grouped similar answers to provide quantitative data which we can the represent and analyse

 We are going to re-adjust the end section which includes the title. We are going to reorder the footage and the title so that it has a more shocking impact on the audience.

We are nto going to change the black and white as we have researched this stylistic choice, and although it does not appeal to all of our target audience, it provides a unique selling point for our film and the rest of the film would not all be in black and white.

Narrative Theory

Aristotle
Aristotle proposed that all narratives should have a 'unity' of time and place, suggesting that they should be told in chronoligcal order and in real time

However, from our own experience we know that consuming narratives has changed vastly since then, so we will not be applying aristotles theory to our work as we have decided it will be more interesting if we tell the story in a non-chronological order.



Freitag
Proposed there were 5 parts:

• Exposition
• rising action
• Climax
• Falling action
• Resolution/Catastrophe

Although we are making a film opening, so will include exposition by showing the young woman first who is clearly the protaganist, and the setting which is an abandoned school, we will also include the rising action, as we feel by beginning around the middle of the narrative it would create mystery for the audience and heighten the tension so we will use shots of broken glass and blood to foreshadow conflisct, and of the little girl advancing towards the young woman to create the rising action, building up to the climax, which is where our opening will end.

Levi-Strauss
He proposed that in every narrative there should be binary opposition, e.g good vs evil or light vs dark.
We will create this opposition in our opening by using dark and bruised makeup and low key lighting to demonstrate to the audience that the little girl is the evil force, and the opposite for the main character, keeping her fairly well lit, but with some shadows to make sure there is an undertone of fear in the opening.

Vladimir Propp
Came up with the theory that every character is part of one 'sphere of action' which included heros, villains, helpers, dispachers (who send the hero on their quest)

In our opening we will include only two spheres, as there are only two characters, neither of which are speaking roles, the main character will be a victim hero (the centre of the villians attanetions) while the little girl will be the villian.

We think this will be particularly effective as young children have connotations of innocence, and to make the villian a young girl will shock the audience.

FIRST CUT - Alone

This is our first cut of our Media AS project 'Alone'.

 

New Storyboard for second location

New Location Pictures

When we went to visit our location I took pictures of the main aspects that we use in out film opening. I looked at lighting, angles, age of the rooms and the safety aspect. This are some pictures of the part of our location we can use for our film opening.

In this picture the background being more lit up captivating to the audience and makes the actor, Katie to become out of the dark and in to safety. It is a clear contrast in lighting and can be used to increase the tension of the piece.

This picture shows a main aspect we wish to use in our film opening which is a mirror, where we can use its reflection to show Lily at one point to terrify the audience, also we can use the reflection from the mirror of the light to contrast the darkness of the hallway.

This shot was effective as it shows the house being broken, wrecked and ruined. It gives the impression  of abandonment and this shows  the desired effect for our audience.

This is the front door from inside the building, this is a good place to film because the natural lighting is very strong and the ceiling, walls and floors are covered with dust, breaks and portrays a feeling of abandonment and loneliness which is what out film opening is based on.

This is really effective lighting and the position of the mirror and doll create an eerie, creepy atmosphere and scares the audience.

Location and Prop Video

When we visited our location we took props with us and included them in a few shots, we used different lighting, camera angels and shots to create an effective piece to scare and increase the tension of the audience. We used a doll, teddy bear, mirror and a rocking horse as props and then used different location within the building with the props to scare the audience.

We believed some of the shots were effective, the lighting with the mirror and doll is really creepy and the slow pan increases the tension slowly, leading the audience to be on edge and feeling tense. The shot with the rocking horse was good but we put the horse in between the window frame so the lighting was not as good as it could be and so was not as effective.

New Location Moodboard

We have found a new location for our film opening, it is a Manor House at a Farm near Maidstone.  This is also abandoned but contain a more safe and secure structure and also has good natural lighting and the building is also dated to where we wish to use.

This is pictures from outside the building and from one within the corridor. When we visit the location we shall venture inside and capture different rooms, shots, angles, lighting and possible spots to film Lily and Katie within.

Location Problems

When visiting our location to film our media we suffered problems which lead to not being able to film at the location, it had been boarded over so within the building there was no natural lighting, entrance or a sufficiently safe place to film with Lily.

We however were able to film from outside of the location with our young actress, Lily. We got some good shots, angles and effective clips of her and the location.

This was on the driveway leading up to the driveway and this were the shots we took showing the girl staring and following our main character, Katie.

This was outside of the door of the school and we thought this was effective as it shows the girl has moved and that she is there to scare and intrigue the other character. The shot of the location also show the broken elements of it, the doors, windows and building structure. This represents the girl also as being broken, lost and alone.

 This is a great shot and angle because it shows the location really well but it also shows Lily very clearly holding a doll, which is one of our props. Her white dress also contrasts against the building to make her stand out.

Fake Blood

We were keen to use fake blood in our film opening, we thought we could use it to creep and scare our audience, we thought we could also use it as a colour element as we wanted to experiment with having the blood as the only colourful item.

So we made different batches of fake blood and tested them. We thought the less we made the more blood like it looked, as it was darker and thicker, however didn't spread on paper well so we experimented with different thickness and came to the conclusion to use a thinker substance made it look more blood like.

Location Video

We visited the location today to explore the different rooms, buildings and the natural lighting available.  We took pans of all of the rooms we thought would fit in to our film opening, as some contained graffiti and wouldn't fit in to our victorian aspect.

This video has helped us see the different aspects of the location we can use for our film opening, it also shows different aspects of rooms that we can use and by also using the lighting, camera angles and shots we can manipulate the location to enhance and captivate the audience as well as hopefully scaring them.

Location Pictures

When visiting the location I took pictures of aspects of the building we could use in our film opening as a effective way to scare and intimidate our audience. We took in to consideration the lighting, architecture, reflections and shadows. This our the pictures we believed showed the things we wanted to include in our film opening.

We liked this room because the natural lighting was bright and cast interesting shadows inside the room.

We liked the courtyard of the building as it included over grown branches and trees and created an effect of being abandoned and being left 'Alone' referring to the title of our opening piece.

 

We are particularly interested in the corridors of the building as it showed the age of the building as well as being a good way to have the older actor being isolated and alone. They are also all over the building so we can use so many different locations, shots, angles and lighting to scare our audience. The corridors we are interested in using are shown below.

The building had other building extensions and this one particularly stood out to us as the natural lighting gives an angelic feature of the story and if we placed Lily at the end of the corridor in the light it will cause the audience to get scared easily.

This is also a good shot to use as the light you can see in the distance is a staircase our actor will climb and this can be used to show the little girl Lily. 

This rooms are also good because they have broken glass, floorboards and shattered windows this creates an immediate sense of tension.

This windows create an eerie feel as the paint is coming off, ones broken, one half open and ones completely closed and the background shows that the building is in the country and isolated from modern day.

This staircase has a victorian aspect which is of course the period in which the little girl Lily is from, the window in the distance shining in natural sunlight is great lighting which we can explore to use in our film opening.

This mirror is a huge aspect we want to use in our piece as we want to conclude the use of reflection in our piece in different methods, this mirror is also huge and covered in marks and rubble around it showing its abandoned 

This staircase shows the school's victorian architecture and also the four archways contrast each other as the bottom two are filled with darkness where as the top ones have natural bright light flooding in through them.    

This views from a roof part of the building and gives a good establishing shot of the courtyard, other buildings and gives the impression of abandonment and loneliness toying with the title of our film opening.

 This staircase is something we can explore to use as it has rubble and rubbish on it and the lighting gives it a bright light therefore contrasting the girl when she appears.

The pool is also a great way to use reflection, the school materials also chucked within the pool can be used to manipulate the camera angles and lights to intimidate and confuse the audience.

This is the front door and is the shot we plan to use as the older actor walks in to the building showing her entrance and the rubble and broken pieces over the floor establish the location to be abandoned. 

This picture shows a certain part of the school that had been ruined by a fire this is something we can include in our piece, as its covered in black rubble giving it a sinister feel, and creating curiosity in the audience as to what happened in the building.

This shot is also something we wish to include as we can have the younger actress, Lily either appear in the dark cellar or the brightly lit window.

This the stairs down to the cellar which at first glance looks like a black wall therefore creating a sense of unknown took take this picture we used lights and we are keen to show this in our piece and incorporate the use of torch to light up the face, shown in pictures below.

 

This are outsides shots of the building that show how its been ruined, smashed and broken giving a creepy aspect to our film opening, pictures representing this our listed below.

 This shots show the building from outside, from the back, front and side. This have overgrown roots and branches all over it showing abandonment. It also shows that the building is old and contains Victorian architecture but with the use of scaffolding shows a modern aspect. This shots also have different lighting and therefore we can use which one we thinks appropriate to set the location for the audience.