Evaluation Question 1

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

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FOR THE OFFICIAL VOICEOVER PLEASE CHECK OUT OUR VIDEO OF ALL THE EVALUATION QUESTIONS AS MORE INFORMATION IS PROVIDED 

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

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Supernatural Vs Natural

We did research into whether our target audience was more interested in supernatural or natural films. With 19/30 agreeing that natural is better. 

We will now  choose actors and develop our plot . We want our characters to be believable to that of teenagers in society. We also want our killer to be able to look like the average teen with a tough edge 

Gang crime

One study for the Home Office found thatup to 6% of 10-19-year-olds belonged to a gang in England and Wales.

In 2008 Strathclyde Police estimated there were 170 gangs in Glasgow, with 3,500 gang members aged from 11 to 23. The previous year, the Metropolitan Police said there were 171 gangs in London.

Gang expert Prof John Pitts estimates some 600 to 700 young people are part of gangs in the London borough of Waltham Forest alone.

At least half of the 27 murders of teenagers in London in 2007 were gang-related, according to the Metropolitan Police. Officers in Liverpool and Manchester have said in the past that 60% of shootings are linked to gangs.

The majority of Britons will have little or no direct experience of gangs but they are still frightened and fascinated by them in equal measure.

This is why we feel it is an excellent area to link into our film 

VLOG

 video blog or video log, sometimes shortened to vlog (pronounced 'vlog' or 'v-log') is a form of blog for which the medium is video, and is a form of web television. Vlog entries often combine embedded video (or a video link) with supporting text, images, and other metadata. Entries can be recorded in one take or cut into multiple parts. The vlog category is popular on YouTube.

Video logs (vlogs) also often take advantage of web syndication to allow for the distribution of video over the Internet using either the RSS or Atom syndication formats, for automatic aggregation and playback on mobile devices and personal computers 

I made a VLOG mashing together footage from Grace's,Milly's and my phone to show our journey through this film opening.

http://magis.to/LS17WV1AGwc6fDEPYnZLAnk

This helps people get to know us and therefore be more willing to look at or buy our film after production

I used this app named Magisto. I used online tutorials  like the following to help create the best vlog I could

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9z5OKqOzp0

Promotion

It was essential to promote our film to raise awareness and deliver our film to a wider audience. We did this through Social Media. 
Due to our film being of a low budget we used free ways of spreading our film online.
However if we were a high budget film we would use ideas including bus advertisements, TV adverts, trailers before Youtube clips and Newspapers

This is an example from Youtube of advertisement

Filming schedule

It was essential for us to stick to a tight filming schedule as to meet the deadlines and have time to make relevant changes

We met Monday before school to plan for the week ahead and discuss any new ideas .

After editing on a Thursday (which gave us time for nighttime to commence so we had the darkness needed in our opening) , we would film . Our lesson on Friday we would analyse footage and plan what else we needed

Sunday we went back to our location of Calverly Park to film the additions 

Our timetable is a key feature on all of our bedroom walls! 

Health and Safety

We felt it was important to look at Health and Safety to ensure the smooth running of our film

Actors
Not putting them under physical/ psychological  strain
Rests between running scenes
Making sure our location was close to public areas (not isolated)
Make sure the area was a safe one

Location
Carpark was empty (as possible)
Had high visibility clothing between shots and if filming

Equipment 
Car turned off so it couldn't move

Credits

In a motion picture, television program or video game, the opening credits are shown at the very beginning and list the most important members of the production. They are now usually shown as text superimposed on a blank screen or static pictures, or sometimes on top of action in the show. There may or may not be accompanying music. When opening credits are built into a separate sequence of their own, the correct term is title sequence (such as the familiar James Bond and Pink Panther title sequences).
List in order: (Due to our play only being 2 minutes we are focusing on the top 5 credits)

Director

Producer

Executive Producer

Top Billing Actors

The Movie Title

Key Cast Below the Title Billing

Screenplay Writer

Director of Photography

Film Editor

Original Score Composer

Production Designer

Costume Designer

Special Effects/Visual Effects Supervisor

Evaluation

Our most useful pieces of information?
Our director research gave us a wide range of methods of how to work and ideas. Also our research into Japanese horror helped us realise we had over stylised our film to be likes Japanese horror when we wanted a film opening more applicable to everyday life.


What do I know now I didn't know before?
We have gained a broader understanding of how to use different technologies including the Macs and iPhones, including many Apps. I personally have grown in understanding the use of transitions between clips and how to place them appropriately. 


What was our greatest challenge making this film opening?
Our greatest challenge was getting our music to fit our film due to our film and music heightening in tension at different points.Also our fractured filming at the end required a fractured sound to match  

Is there typical conventions in which our media product is promoted?
Yes, social media is a common way for low budget films to raise awareness and share their product.


What is the most effective way of promoting our product to our target market?

After looking at Instagram,Twitter and Facebook statistic in relation to our target market I saw an opportunity not only for free marketing but the ability to reach mass numbers of people quickly and effectively. 

Initial narrative

This is our initial narrative:

1. We start with a black screen, fading into a girl looking round the car park with a torch. All you can see is a basic outline of a girl, holding keys also, the torch light is flashing round the screen.
2. She is running through this dimly lit car park, looking around her very scared as if something is chasing her. She runs to her car and struggles to fit the key in the lock, her hands are shaking and she is very scared.
3. A shot of her keys is shown as we see her drop her keys on the floor within her panic.They are under the car.
4. We then cut to a bathroom scene. We see a women in a bath (but do not see her face) and we see her painting her nails a dark red. There is a laptop on the loo, watching CCTV which is an online game.
5. We then cut back to the eerie car park and there is a shot looking under a car to see keys and her hand reaching for them. But then another hand reaches across and grabs her hand.
6. We then cut to the back to the bathroom scene and see the woman picking at her skin which makes it bleed- the blood drips down her arm and she watches it drip down into the water and spell out our title 'Immersed'.
7. It then cuts back to the car park to see a creepy smiling man looking at her from under the car.
8. It then cuts back to the bathroom where the woman is in her towel getting out of the bath, she goes to the laptop- it then zooms into one of the CCTV screens of a girl on the screen. On the CCTV screen we see the girl lying dead next to the car and her neck is bruised where she has been strangled to death.
9. After realising it is her lying dead in the car park (the audience does not yet know that it is her, apart from subtle hints throughout).
10. It cuts back where the girl in the bathroom is stressing out and switches the laptop off immediately. 
11.  In the suddenly black screen reflection we see her face and she is the girl from the car park and behind her is the same man from the underneath of the car.
12. The screen goes black and the credits role.

Story line

STORY LINE
We drew inspiration from other films when developing our story line yet wanted to produce something that hasn't been done before, avoiding the usual horror story cliches. We knew we wanted to produces a psychological horror so at first we focused researching Japanese horror, from there we watched the films in our previous blog post to see how "jumpy" moments were delivered and what was effective to the audience. The following were are three ideas after the brainstorms on our previous posts:

1. Set in a Car Park, a girl is being followed by a stalker. She is running on the phone scared and there is a black out.We hear breathing/whimpers and then zoom into her rocking in a corner. She hears a click and gets up, finding a Polaroid camera. Within this she see's a photo of her with a man behind her, turns round and see's he is there again, black out. 
2. Set in a Maze, a man is being chased round and he is bloodied and bruised. We are proposed a question as the audience member whether the person chasing him is real or his mental illness is making him paranoid. We will hint throughout, leading the audience to believe the man chasing his is  fake. Yet at the end the man running is tapped on the shoulder, and slowly turns round. 
3. Set in a Carpark and bathroom, there is a laptop sitting on a toilet and a lady listening to classical music in the bath. On the screen a women is being slowly taunted then murdered with jumpy events throughout, it is portrayed as a game. It is a CCTV camera filming. When the game on the laptop shows "Game over" the lady in the bath looks into the laptop, her reflection shows she is the women who has just been killed, we then see another  reflection of the person behind her. We jump from the two scenes throughout. 

VIDEO MONTAGE OF OUR RESEARCH INTO JAPANESE HORROR

Financial Demands

MONEY

We felt it was important to note the financial demands of each idea as it could hinder our ability to execute the piece to its best if we can not afford all the criteria.It also may help us choose which story line we will choose as our final. 

The following is a table of all the costs for each idea/story line we have proposed and considering. From there we went on and made a graph so we could visually compare the data clearly. 

From this we felt that the financial  demands of the Maze idea were to high and that we could develop a better idea which was cheaper, we also felt that due to Penshurst maze always being open to the public it may be hard to film. We drew to a conclusion that our Game idea was most suitable as it was not only the strongest story line but also financially more realistic. 

Story and mood boarding

Within our lessons we have created an initial story board for our film opening. We also created a mood board. 

Horror Prezi

Our Horror Prezi

This is our Prezi of our Horror genre as we have chose to do a psychological horror drama for our coursework film opening. Enjoy.

Representation of Gender

After creating our poll we felt we should investigate gender within the media. We have therefore gained a deeper understanding of gender representation. We looked at this in class and chose to continue our learning outside the classroom.

Film Openings

We have been looking at film openings in class in order to begin our research of their typical features. We researched codes and conventions and chose to delve further into their generic structures.(See following posts). Here are some spider diagrams of our research into typical film openings.