Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 2

Media Evaluation Question 2 on Prezi

Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation Question 1 By Hannah Woods

More Feedback

Although our focus group was successful and we received a lot of feedback, I thought having more opinions on our piece would help us understand where we went wrong and what went right. To do this, I posted our video on the social network site 'Facebook' so that peers could comment. 

Final Focus Group

This is our final focus group. We received extremely good feedback: 

• They were genuinely scared as they didn't know what was going to happened due to the figure getting closer and closer to the girl. 
• There was mystery within our film as you didn't know who the characters were. 
• The noise when the girl was about to turn around was successful. 
• They would watch the film 

Improvements: 

• Add more noises of the crunching leaves at the end
• More effect on the production company title

Final Focus Group - Questions

To see what others thought about our final opening sequence, we had to do one last focus group. This was to see where we went wrong and of course where we were successful in filming. Doing this, we would then learn for next time what we need to improve on and where our strengths were. We decided to use 3 people in our focus group, 2 of them are past media students who would have knowledge on opening sequences and the other who isn't. This would leave us with a larger range of opinions. 


These are our 6 questions:




1)  What do you like about this opening sequence?


2)  Can you clearly see the storyline or is there still some mystery and want to find out what is going to happen?


3) What do you think could be improved and why?


4) What were your favourite parts?


5) What did you think of the sound at the end?


6) Would you carry on watching this film judging from the opening 2 minutes?


We made sure they were open questions so that our group would be able to discuss in full detail 

Directors Commentary

Below is our opening sequence's Directors Commentary where we have talked about they we have used certain shots and effects.

Our Final Opening Sequence

Production Blog Entry 9 - Editing

As our filming previously went extremely well, we were able to put together and edit the folowing part of out sequence. This was less complex to edit and was a simple storyline. At  the beginning, we put together different clips of the teenagers walking through the forest, using different clips and angles made it look more like someone was watching them. 

We at first used the clips of the teenagers talking about the building, however we decided this was unsuccessful as the acting was bad and simply just used the clip of the teenagers looking at the abandoned building. By adding an eerie breathing sound to this certain part of the film it created the sense that the building is almost haunted due to the presence of the girl and these teenagers were going to become part of this haunting. Also we decided to put at the end of our opening sequences a shot of each one of the characters with a loud noise during. This made the audience realise that something bad is going to happen, and also by decreasing the brightness and increasing the contrast drastically it made the clip look almost dream like and scary. For this to work well and look scary we cut down each of the clips down to milliseconds which was difficult.

We also added sound to the teenagers walking through the forest. This was a piece of happy music that we thought would create a feeling that they had no idea what was going to happen. However, after a lot of peer feedback we decided to get rid of this and add more natural sounds of the forest such as crunching leaves and birds. The other sound we added was when the girl was about to turn around. This piece of sound built up tension as when the father is approaching her there is again a eerie sound of a breathing/wind. However, when she turns around there is a large crashing sound, this would shock the audience as we increased the volume and it emphasises the fact that we do not see her face but draws them in to see what she looks like.

We also changed the titles and credits as this was something we had to improve on as it didn't really signify our genre of horror or more importantly our plot.  We changed the credits to a more simple font and changed the colour, this was white with a slight glow. We kept them in roughly the same places with a few alterations so that they were visible but also not distracting. We also added in two more credits of the actor and actress we used.

 

The other part we had to change to improve our opening sequence was the production company and title. Our production company was deemed inappropriate by our teacher as 'we've got wood' sounded too much like a comedy film. We used the thesaurus to find a word that would link in a lot better with our genre, this word was 'unearthly' and named our production company 'Unearthly Pictures'. When we created the title for this, we also kept it very simple and used a 'scratched' font. 

The title of our opening sequence 'Malignant' also had to be changed as it was too complex and looked bloody. Instead we kept it very simple by using a font that looked quite old but also in a way eery. By adding a shadow effect it enhanced the supernatural theme to the opening sequence as the girl is possessed. 

Production Blog Entry 8 - Filming

Today we went out to film the next scene whereby there were four teenagers walking through the forest previous to the building, and then come across this abandoned factory.  We were able to get all the actors to come on the day which was previously an issue with our opening sequence.  We also had to make sure we would get there in time so that we had enough natural light to work with, also the weather of that day was extremely successful. It was quite misty which added to the eerie effect that we needed. 


We managed to film everything we needed in this one day. We filmed from a variety of different places and angles, for example one shot was through some trees which made it look like someone was watching them. Also, Tommy and I filmed a variety of dialogue where the teenagers were talking about going in to the building or in this case refusing to.One extremely successful shot was where the teenagers were shown to be looking at the building, they had the backs faced to the camera and framed slightly to the right so that the factory was clearly on show. This made it clear that they were going to be a main part of the film and will be associated with the building and the unknown character inside. 

 

We did however encounter some problems whilst filming. One being the quality of the actors, when looking back at the clips that acting was quite poor. This could easily and quite dramatically change the atmosphere we wanted our clip to portray as it could reduce how scared they are meant to look. Another problem we also had was the wind. The wind did mean that you couldn't understand some of the dialogue and also as a whole reduced the quality of the clip. 

Feedback Of Our Opening Sequence

As we finished our opening sequence as a rough cut we uploaded the video to YouTube to gain some feedback from others and more importantly from our teachers. With feedback we could then improve on our opening sequence to gain the best mark possible. 

The above screen grab is a comment from our media teachers on our YouTube video to help us improve. Due to the feedback we received we are going to make some changes to our opening sequence: 

• First of all we will alter the font as this is dropping our marks. Not only shall we take on board the comment and make it more scratched we shall also change the colour as I believe it looks too blood red which therefore doesn't really relate to our storyline on it being based on a possessed girl.
• Another element that we will add to our opening sequence is another scene at the end after the title. This would make this look more like an opening sequence other than a trailer. We have decided to film 4 teenagers walking through a forest and finding the abandoned factory. 
•  The four teenagers we will use are Michael and Luke from our group and our two friends George and Katherine. So we do not have the problem before whereby our characters were busy with other commitments we have decided to film in the half term where this wouldn't be a problem. 

Production Blog Entry 7 - Editing

We were now able to create a rough cut of our opening sequence due to the filming we did earlier. Now we just needed to add in the main bulk of the clip as at the moment we only had the establishing shots edited.

Myself and Tommy came back and did the majority of the editing. We started off by editing the walk through the building of the father. Here we used jump cuts so it built up tension but also it enabled us to use more shots as the clips would be too long. This was a simple technique whereby we cut and deleted small parts of our clips. We also here changed the brightness and contrast to ensure it was still creating an eery feel. Another technique we used in our opening sequence where the father was walking through the building was modifying the speed. We slowed down  the clips down to 80%, this also built up the tension and made it look more scary.

 




We also imported our LiveType credits into our opening sequence. We positioned these so they didn't distract the audience away from the main piece but were still clear for the viewer to see. We firstly added our names to the clips. I think that the names 'Hannah Woods' and 'Tommy Bowdery were the most successful as they were clear to read but also didn't take the audiences attention away from the clip. However, we did encounter some problems. First of all, the title 'Luke Dixon' was hard to read due to the positioning and the colours clashed with the busy background. Also the title 'Michael Kirby', was however distracting as I believe it could take the viewers attention away from the sign that it was placed on reading 'Danger Keep Out' 

We also had to add our production name and the title of our film. We added our production title 'We've got wood' after a clip of a large hole in the building. This was extremely successful as it added tension as the audience wouldn't know what they were going to see, also having the title there broke up the establishing shots to the main part of the opening sequence.

Also we added the main title 'Malignant' to our piece. Like intended we added this just as the possessed character was going to turn around. This was successful as it built the audience up to see something scary therefore adding mystery to the film.