Tuesday, 9 March 2010
Evaluation
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
I initially put together some sample scenes and gained audience feedback on these from members of my target audience (ages 15 to 25).
This was mainly positive, the audience were able to relate with the characters as they were of a simmilar age and there were some good shots however it became appartant the narrative wasnt clear and I needed more anchorage to show the slasher genre.
I edited my footage and added sound effects and music then showed my rough cut to the same audience and some older viewers than my target audience to see how they recived it.
I initially put together some sample scenes and gained audience feedback on these from members of my target audience (ages 15 to 25).
This was mainly positive, the audience were able to relate with the characters as they were of a simmilar age and there were some good shots however it became appartant the narrative wasnt clear and I needed more anchorage to show the slasher genre.
I edited my footage and added sound effects and music then showed my rough cut to the same audience and some older viewers than my target audience to see how they recived it.
The main points that came across were
- When Theo is telling the story it is obvious he is reading it which dosent fit the prefered reading as he was supposed to be making it up to scare the others.
- It was obvious when Danny drinks that there is nothing in the bottle
- The shot of the axe could be in black and white to signify the past.
- Some confusion to the narrative and who is the final girl and not enough shots to set up characters
- Theos american accent didnt work as the other characters had english accents and there were signifers such as the can of fosters which show it is a british movie
- The music was good, but didnt fit with the action eg was slow at fast paced points when it should have been fast.
It also came across that I needed to show some shots of the hospital to give exposition to where the action takes place. I decided to add a news report to give exposition rather than having the boy telling the story. I considered having a shot taken by one of the victims before they are killed apologising or possibly saying goodbye. I was inspired to this idea by scenes in The Blair Which Project (Daniel Myrick 1999) such as this one featured in the trailer
.
However I decided on the news report. This was because I believe it could help in appealing to a higher social grouping audience such as C1. In my genre research I looked into films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper 1974) and found it appeals to this audience due to its documentary style scenes for example the opening scene (http://www.vbox7.com/play:cb2ead10?r=google). I also improved the sound by adding sound effects in place where I wanted more impact for example when the girl is captured.
I whilst looking at my options for giving expotition and studying the Blair Witch Project I came across a scene I thought was effective in bulding tension and giving exposition to the location which was in the feature legnth trailer. It was a balck and white point of view shot walking towards the forrest which I incorpatated into my work by using black and white point of view shots walking towards the hospital.
Untitled from Sophie Brear on Vimeo.
I re-edited after filming the hospital scene and the news report based on my audience feedback. I cut out the reaction shots which looked unrealistic and put the shots in black and white. I also added shots of the group at the party to give more exposition to the narrative and allow the audience to relate to the characters.
From this I gained more audience feedback to improve my trailer for the final cut
- Intercutting the shots of the axe throughout the party scene and intercutting shots of the killer walking towards the camera throughout the trailer would give a daunting sense of him moving closer to his victims.
- The fade shots on the house were all inconsistent, some with fades and some without, i changed this to all the same fade.
- Add dialouge to show the teenagers are entering the hospital eg "lets go there"
- Change the "what happens when the storys you hear about" to something shorter with less words.
- Add a production company logo.
- Change the shot of the two teenagers in black and white to colour, as this adds confusion to wheather it is in the past or not.
- Incorparate more shot variation.
- Move all shots of the party to before the shots of the sign to show clearly the shift from the party to the hospital.
I filmed extra shots so I could show a variation of shot types in my trailer however this did cause some problems as I decided to add match on action of a closeup of the killers cut crushing the can, intercut between two long shots. As it was raining the first time I filmed on the two long shots the ground is wet wheras in the close up it is dry. To get around this I wet the ground with water before shooting as illustrated in the below clips however the rain was still slighly obvious which does affect the overally continuity of the shots.
I rearanged the party shots so they were all next to each other and added diologue to convey the teenagers entering the house without actually showing it as I didnt have time whilst trying to work within the timescale. I intercut the shots of the axe through the party scene as suggested in the audience feedback.
Untitled from Sophie Brear on Vimeo.
This was particularly useful in building tension as was intercutting the shots of the killer walking forwards. Some of the shots walking forward looked slighly too long which detracted from the tension rising. To resolve this I cut the clips into small sections and spaced them slighly infront of each other to give a flashing effect.
Untitled from Sophie Brear on Vimeo.
I changed the fades so they are all one consistant fade rather than some overlapping as I had before. I also felt the production logo was effective as from looking at real examples of trailers they often begin with a production logo. I also changed the shot of the teenagers to colour, however I did add a 25% black and white effect rather than an 100% black and white effect as from audience feedback I found this added some narrative confusion and altered the prefered reading of the text as some veiwers thought the scene was in the past.
Monday, 1 March 2010
Institutional Context
As my film is of the slasher genre it would generally be expected to be low budget compared to other genres such as action movies or thrillers. This means they dont often involve special effects or famous actors, but may use dirctors or producers who are well established in the industry to draw in viewers such as Micheal Bay who produced and directed high budget sci-fis such as Transformers (2007) and low budget horrors such as Friday the 13th (Marcus Nispel 2009) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010 Samuel Bayer).
Some horror films such as Scream (Wes Craven 1996) use high profile actors usually to play small roles in the opening of the film such as Drew Barrymore or Pamela Anderson in Scary Movie 3 (2003 David Zucker).
However I have looked specifically at UK horror films, their funding and how they were funded and exhibited considering new media.
I looked at a low buget film, a meadium one and one with a revlitivly high budget for the genre.
28 Days Later (2002 Danny Boyle) $8,000,000 DNA Films, UKFC
My Little Eye (2002 Marc Evans) $3,000,000 Studio Canal, Working Title
Mum and Dad (2008 Steven Sheil) $100,000 2am Prodcutions, EM Media
I belive 28 Days Later had a higher budget as although an unknown cast were used Danny Boyle was a well established director from his work such as Trainspotting (1996). Also during production some parts of London had to be shut off for up to 20 minutes at a time and police had to be used to divert traffic off the M1 for some scenes as I found in my research. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_Later#Production)
This would have increased the budget. In comparison My Little Eye is predmoninatly shot in one location, as is Mum and Dad.
28 Days Later was funded by a range of companies, which is common for a low budget indie horror compared to high budget blockbusters which are usually funded by one company. 28 Days Later was partly funded by the Uk Film Council who use money from the national lottery to fund mainstream comercially driven british films and "New Cinema Fund" to fineance films that "communicate unique ideas, demonstrate an innovative approach or showcase new voices" which means this may be the sort of company to fund my film as it is intrested in finding new talent rather then already established (http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/warpx). As they have set up the company Warp X to "source and nurture a wide range of filmmaking talent with a focus on writers, directors and producers".
They work with Optimum Releasing as their distributors so this may be a company to consider if I were to release my film. They also work in colaboration with Screen Yorkshire who fund and produce films in the reigion which would be appropriote for my work as it is set there.
Another advantage of the UKFC and Warp X is that they work with "Digital Inovation In Film" and see the potential of new media such as online sales, distrobution and marketing and are paticulary intereseted in independent film companies "The 'Digital Innovation in Film' project will team-up independent film companies with specialist partners to reach audiences in new ways. The project is the first in a series from NESTA's Innovators Growth programme, which will explore ways for creative businesses to grow by exploiting new technologies."
Some horror films such as Scream (Wes Craven 1996) use high profile actors usually to play small roles in the opening of the film such as Drew Barrymore or Pamela Anderson in Scary Movie 3 (2003 David Zucker).
However I have looked specifically at UK horror films, their funding and how they were funded and exhibited considering new media.I looked at a low buget film, a meadium one and one with a revlitivly high budget for the genre.
28 Days Later (2002 Danny Boyle) $8,000,000 DNA Films, UKFC
My Little Eye (2002 Marc Evans) $3,000,000 Studio Canal, Working Title
Mum and Dad (2008 Steven Sheil) $100,000 2am Prodcutions, EM Media
I belive 28 Days Later had a higher budget as although an unknown cast were used Danny Boyle was a well established director from his work such as Trainspotting (1996). Also during production some parts of London had to be shut off for up to 20 minutes at a time and police had to be used to divert traffic off the M1 for some scenes as I found in my research. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_Later#Production)
This would have increased the budget. In comparison My Little Eye is predmoninatly shot in one location, as is Mum and Dad.28 Days Later was funded by a range of companies, which is common for a low budget indie horror compared to high budget blockbusters which are usually funded by one company. 28 Days Later was partly funded by the Uk Film Council who use money from the national lottery to fund mainstream comercially driven british films and "New Cinema Fund" to fineance films that "communicate unique ideas, demonstrate an innovative approach or showcase new voices" which means this may be the sort of company to fund my film as it is intrested in finding new talent rather then already established (http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/warpx). As they have set up the company Warp X to "source and nurture a wide range of filmmaking talent with a focus on writers, directors and producers".
They work with Optimum Releasing as their distributors so this may be a company to consider if I were to release my film. They also work in colaboration with Screen Yorkshire who fund and produce films in the reigion which would be appropriote for my work as it is set there.Another advantage of the UKFC and Warp X is that they work with "Digital Inovation In Film" and see the potential of new media such as online sales, distrobution and marketing and are paticulary intereseted in independent film companies "The 'Digital Innovation in Film' project will team-up independent film companies with specialist partners to reach audiences in new ways. The project is the first in a series from NESTA's Innovators Growth programme, which will explore ways for creative businesses to grow by exploiting new technologies."
The growth in new technologies such as digital cinematography has been disputed however "digital cinematograpy camera sales have surpassed sales of the mechanical format" and Slumdog Millionaire became the first movie shot mainly in digital to win the Academy Award for Best Cinematograpy and go on to be the highest grossing movie in the history of cinema(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_cinematography%22%3Ehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_cinematography). The growth in new media has also influenced the avertising of films.
Although american, the film Paranormal Activity (2007 Oren Peli) had a budget of $15,000 yet took in more than $7,000,000 at the box office due to word of mouth over social networking sites such as twitter and on the Eventful website where one million people joined a pertition for it to be shown in cinemas nationwide (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/6310303/Facebook-and-Twitter-help-low-budget-horror-film-enter-US-box-office-top-five.html)
The use of social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook would be particulary useful in advertising my as the majority of my target audience, 15 to 24 year olds use thses sites. They also would be effective in cost free promoting as they allow you to make groups and send group messgaes. Events can also be created inviting users to previews etc this has been done by the distributors of Alice in Wonderlan (2010 Tim Burton)
The use of social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook would be particulary useful in advertising my as the majority of my target audience, 15 to 24 year olds use thses sites. They also would be effective in cost free promoting as they allow you to make groups and send group messgaes. Events can also be created inviting users to previews etc this has been done by the distributors of Alice in Wonderlan (2010 Tim Burton)
Some lower budget films such as Mum and Dad go straight to DVD because it would cost too much to advertise and promote them for theatrical release. In such cases to promote their films cheaply they could screen them at film festivals such as Film 4's FrightFest, which was done with the film Mum and Dad, Paranormal Activity was also screened there.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
