Evaluation

 

Evaluation



Bloody Mary Title screen

When we started the production of the opening of the film, as a group we realised that it would be hard to create the idea of a soldier going off to war as we couldn’t get access to any costumes and we couldn’t find anyone who would be in our production. From this happening we had to create a new idea for our film, so we used the idea of Bloody Mary, that we had recently presented an idea for in our pitch.

From this we developed our idea further and looked at horror films such as saw and paranormal activity to get inspiration, however we knew to an extent what we wanted to achieve even though our ideas evolved as the filming process went on.

 

Q1

Our film ‘Bloody Mary’ has a female antagonist which is unconventional in a Horror/Thriller as you are normally shown a male antagonist who usually goes after a frightened woman. This is seen in the film Halloween where Michael Myers goes after a teenage girl after previously killing his older sister as a child. By having a female antagonist we as a group are challenging the conventions of a horror film. However the characterisation of Bloody Mary is quite creepy which tends to be seen in any horror film as something has always happened to the character to turn them into a killer, in the case of our film you see this when the character Sian is murdered by Beth.

This still from the film shows Max, but at the same time we overlayed the clip of Bloody Mary as he is telling Kirsty not to be afraid.

 

We have also used a male protagonist in the opening, this is because he would later become an important role in the film and become the hero due to the fact he’d be searching for Kirsty. This follows many film conventions as a male is always shown to be strong and heroic, which we want Max to be throughout the rest of the film. This follows the conventions of film noir as a male detective is always there to rescue an unfortunate female, which in the plot of our film fits Max’s character.





Seance scene- Lighting source
for this scene was the candles.

In the film we have also had to incorporate lighting this is because a horror film will normally be filmed at night and the lighting is one of the main conventions of a horror film. In the opening you will see that we have used candles which are typically used in séance scenes. We have also incorporated a flash in one scene using a camera flash, by doing this we was able to create tension as the subject in the light couldn’t actually be seen.


You're the reason I'm dead -
the text Kirsty recieved.

The only other lighting we had used was a streetlight, webcam this meant you could only see the characters face and nothing else which worked better with the flash as nothing was given away. We also used a phone which became major in the plot.

 

 

The music that we have also put in our opening isn’t too creepy as we have tried to use the idea that Kirsty is listening to music, this means the piece we used had to be suitable for somebody to listen to so we couldn’t use sound effects, but at the same time we had to pick a piece that suggested something to the audience, you can hear this in the lyrics ‘Where did I go wrong I lost a friend’ hinting to the fact Sian had died but at the same time suggesting Kirsty has done something wrong, this being the Bloody Mary Curse. Where we could we have used church bells and other creepy sounds to help create a tense atmosphere throughout, you can see this in the graveyard and also when the screen goes to white noise.

 The original clip of the graveyard, here you can see that it was in colour.

Below another clip of the graveyard scene where we have changed the colour of the clip using Premier pro.

Other things we have also included in our film that show some of the conventions of a horror film are the fact we have used young girls, we have done this as a girl tends to be more vulnerable, especially when there alone, but it’s also iconic in most horrors.

The main setting of our opening was in a house. The reason we did this is because you are bound to feel safe there, however it’s ironic that no one is actually safe in this genre of film. The house is also located in a small village which for a horror film follows the conventions as many people are left in their houses but something always happens.

Q2




Psycho

In the opening of our film, there aren’t necessarily many social groups, however the characters in the film are teenagers, which in a sense would show them to be more naïve than they might be if they were older. In a horror or thriller it would tend to be the idiotic teens that are bound to do something stupid and turn up dead later on, which you see slightly in the opening of the film however there is a cliff hanger at the end of the opening where nobody knows what happened to the character Kirsty. In horror films the girls or women in the film are white, single and always shown to be the victim, however in our film this has been changed and challenged as we have brought in two females that both become murderers which isn’t usual at all but we thought this was a good idea as you are always seeing a strong male who goes after someone weaker than themselves. Another factor you can see in our film is that we only have Caucasian actors in it, this is typical of many Hollywood films especially some of the films made in the 60’s like Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

Q3

Twisted Pictures logo

By looking into different Horror and Thriller films like Saw and Seven, I have been able to find out about what studios would tend to distribute this genre of film. This includes Twisted Pictures who are known to produce the saw series. There are also studios that would distribute Horrors and Thrillers such as Lionsgate, who distributed films like the Hunger games and Texas chainsaw massacre. New Line Cinema also a film studio distributed the thriller Se7en.

We have also looked at Paramount who have been involved with the Paranormal activity films but as our film is more of a smaller independent movie, Twisted pictures would be more suitable to help us distribute a film like ours as they would be able to help us on the production side of the film as they are an independent company, but at the same time, they could team us up with a main studio. At the same time we would also have to think about the budget for our film, by looking at the first Paranormal Activity there estimated budget was $15000 (IMDB) and then by looking at the budget the first Saw film had it was $1,200,000 (IMDB). Realistically if we were making our film the budget we would use is £10,000 as it’s more affordable for us, but at the same time this is because we are a new film company starting out and we wouldn’t be recognised like Lionsgate or Universal, given the reason we wouldn’t be able to afford a high budget, however after the first release our profit margin should rise enabling us to spend more on production, this is exactly what happened to the Paranormal franchise as there estimated budget is now $5,000,000.  As a new company we would have to lay money aside for special effects if we included them in the film, locations we might need to use or even studio space, but there is also the large cost of the actors we might want to be in our films as the more experienced they are the more they cost to hire or even keep on for sequels.

Q4

As a group we have also thought about who our target audience would be. As a whole film with the ideas we have had it would make the film an 18 as we wanted to show how Mary got pay back on those who hurt her, but also the ones who did the curse. However the opening of our film is more likely aimed at an audience aged 15 onwards, this is because there are hints of violence and the potential film the could follow doesn’t have to be as gruesome as it might be as an 18 but there would more than likely be some to keep the audience interested in the film. On top of this we have to think about the different social classes that our film might be targeted at, people that might be lower class might not be able to afford to go to see a film as well as buying it, however someone of a higher class would be able to this means will need to set a price that everyone will be able to afford and it also means it won’t take too much money off somebody that doesn’t have it. The way we can set these prices will be by looking at ABC1 and C2DE social grading’s so we can find out more about the people we are targeting with our product, for instance someone middle class or someone who’s working class.

18 age certificate

15 age certificate

 



Q5

If we were a major film company we would also be looking at how we could attract the audience and also how we would address them. We would do this by marketing the product and creating merchandise. Examples of these marketing methods are things like promotional posters for billboards and cinemas as they would be able to advertise the film before it’s actually been released, making people aware of it, but we’d also have a movie premier as well as letting our actors do PR junkets, chat shows and interviews. 

We would also use viral marketing strategies by using social networking sites to share pages and also clips of the film, this allows people to become part of the film as they could help find clues or even have to take part in activities to be able to see more, this worked for the film The Dark Knight rises, when fans would go in search of graffiti bats to reveal character posters. Merchandise is also important as people are likely to get more excited and will want memorabilia of the film, whether it’s an action figure or costumes of the characters, however all of these methods are able to entice the audience. 



Bat graffiti that was used as part
 of The Dark Knight Rises campaign.

But without looking at the marketing side, when making the film, we have left a cliff hanger in the opening. This can be seen as a technique to entice the audience into watching the film. This is because suspense and tension throughout start to build and the audience become curios as they want to see the ending. We thought the use of a cliff hanger would be good as it gave us something to use as a marketing strategy, for example the opening could be leaked to the public and just by not knowing what happened to the character, this would initially make the audience want to see more, giving them the desire to come and see what else the film has to offer.

Q6
From the process of constructing the opening to Bloody Mary I have learnt more about the editing side of making a film as it took more to get our final result, for example you never kept anything the same for that long as there might be an extra bit of film that you had recorded that would fit better so it would be changed, we’d also see what would work better. 

During the process I have also been learning about the different ways you can edit the clips together, using dissolve, a fade that could go to a black screen or a white screen as well as the different affects you can put onto the clips you have. For example we have put a clip on top of the other by making it smaller and putting it in the corner of the screen, we also added noise onto some of the clips using the filters that were available to us and it made the webcam clips look more realistic as they were too clear when we recorded them on the camera. 

A still from our film opening, as it was a clear image
we added grain to the clip to make it look like
a web cam quality image.

But when we was using the camera we found it easy to use as we’d previously used it to film our preliminary task. One successful thing that did come from filming in the dark was that the camera went out of focus at one point then came back into focus, this created an effect before we even edited the clip. 

We had to create our own titles. To create the Bloody Mary titles we used the same writing and changed the colour on each slide, this changed the colour from white to red and when played as a sequence is meant to symbolise the blood dripping.

And for our studio logo to have a silhouette flash up, we created the image first, which contained the name of the studio and then used a clip I had previously recorded with the flash on it to put onto the studio name. However as it was part of another clip we had to edit the clip, this included adjusting the brightness so that it would stand out as well as changing the opacity of the clip so that it didn't cover up the two red S's. 

To start we put the two s's together with the writing underneath, but we didn't like the white background.


So we then used a black background with white writing, this meant the red and the white stood out and the colours we decided on now suit the horror theme.


We then decided to include the silhouette and this is a still of what it looks like when it flashes onto the screen.




Q7
From the preliminary task I have learnt that it’s always going to be hard to work in a group as everyone’s always going to have different opinions to you and because of this you have to learn how to incorporate everyone’s ideas into the making of the film to get a successful outcome. The other issues we faced this time round was that it was harder to get everyone in the group together to film as someone might have plans when you arrange to go out to film, this leaves some of the team doing more than others which did happen at times, however in the preliminary task we filmed at the sixth form which meant we were going to be able to film without it having to be planned.

In terms of using the camera equipment I have found it easy to do as we as a group have had experience before. However when filming for our opening we have used two different cameras, this includes the HD video camera and a Cannon 1100D which isn’t a traditional film camera, but even in this case we managed to get successful shots. 

The shots we did get all kept to the 180 degree rule, which was important as one step over can change the way the film is seen and this could potentially confuse the viewer. Also as we never used many technical shots, we were focussed more on close up shots of the characters Max and Kirsty as we had to see there reactions but at the same time we had to make the shots look like a webcam was used. The other major shots we included were pans and we used one high angle shot, by doing this we were able to move on from the preliminary task as the shots we used were more diverse. 

Even though we had learnt from what happened before we couldn't stop things happening during production, this includes group members not being there on certain days which we couldn't exactly control but we got around it by taking to the roles of each other, so if we wasn't meant to film we would have to which insured that we would have footage to edit.