Evaluation Question 1

'In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?'
Our film opening follows quite a few conventional features of a film opening of the genre (psychological horror). We named it 'past revenge' because we feel like it is quite a chilling title and fits in with being a horror. We subverted the archetype in some ways, like the costume of the character compared with the location. Usually, a location such as the one we used would be associated with middle class characters, as it is normal to have a middle class area with large houses and lot of countryside, but we subverted the archetype by going with a stereotypical lower class character, with a hoodie and mainly dark clothes, which is conventionally associated with those of a lower class. However, we fitted many conventions and went with many archetypes, such as our character having a typical middle-class dog (a westie) in the area in which we filmed. This reflects the conventional themes of the genre because there is a vulnerable young woman being victimized by a larger man, in dark clothing. This fits the conventional themes because there is normally a young, vulnerable person being chased by someone bigger and more intimidating than them. Conventionally, a film opening will open with an establishing shot, which is what we have done.  The music we have used creates an atmosphere, which makes the audience go on edge. Our area in which we filmed fits with the genre because it is a typical middle class location, and this is shown through the conventional sight of the countryside and antiquated style of houses in the background of many of the shots.
We also fitted the conventions of the openings of a horror film by using our music. When the establishing shot is shown, we have used creepy music to fit the conventions of the music used in a film opening.
A typical convention of a film opening is to have an establishing shot- an example of this is in the film Forrest Gump. They have a shot showing the place in which the whole movie is filmed, and this helps the audience to start to relate and understand the film. If this is done in the opening, it keeps the audience attached to the film and more likely to sit through the whole film. We used an establishing shot in our opening. This is read by the audience in a way to get them to connect with the film, and I believe this is what our establishing shot did. Also, the typography of our credits is fairly similar to those of similar conventions because they are quite short, which keeps the audience hooked to read the next one. Our typography was inspired by the films we researched of a similar genre beforehand, this included films such as 'Carrie' and 'Sky-fall'. They contained similar credits that appeared for the same amount of time and didn't bore the viewer.

As for the location, our opening was filmed in a very typical middle-class British surrounding, which is a Cotswold background with lots of countryside. This fitted the conventions of the openings because our actress is meant to be a typical middle-class, vulnerable young person. There was a change of plan when it came to our location, but thankfully it still all fitted with the conventions of our genre. The camera shots and edits were also conventional of an opening- it goes from shot to shot fairly quickly which keeps the audience interested, and also the sound and titles fit with conventions. We have a variety of shots, such as worms eye views, long shots and close ups, which again fit with the audience pleasures. We used a dual narrative, which keeps suspense, and also in the film opening we are setting up a crime, which means we are setting up the antagonist before the film even properly begins, and the protagonist isn't shown at the start of the film which keeps it on a cliff hanger, helping to set up the narrative.

Group Meeting

Me and hannah had a group meeting yesterday and discussed what we need to do in order to achieve the best grades possible and meet as many audience pleasures as we can. We have agreed we need titles in the film, and we need slight editing of the sound in order to make the plot more believable. However, apart from this, none of our shots need re-shooting and we have a wide range of steady shots and this is a relief. Many groups in our year had to reshoot their shots because they were shaky, but we didn't have this issue apart from a couple of shots. The shots we have done range from worms eye views, long shots, and close-ups. All of the shots are restricted to less than five seconds, which me and hannah both agree is very effective for the narrative. We also discussed what we need to do in order to find out if we are meeting audience pleasures, and we have started doing this with audience testing. We have already filmed one of these on our target audience, and will do many more over the next few days, which involves showing them the opening and asking the a range of questions about what they think should be improved and what they liked about it. Following research about audience testing, we found there are many films that were drastically changed after audience testing commenced. We made slight changes to our film after audience testing, and this is also what we discussed in our group meeting. Here is the link for films that have been drastically changed after audience testing.

https://uk.yahoo.com/movies/s/10-films-drastically-changed-after-test-screenings.html

Narrative change reasons

Me and Hannah had a group discussion about our narrative. We realised after an hour of filming our narrative of having dolls was not going to work, due to the very unrealistic qualities. We filmed a couple of scenes for the opening, including a doll.From reviewing the footage, we realised that the rest of the film would be too confusing to film, we both hadn't realised how difficult it would be to bring forward the idea of a psychological horror about two dolls, coming back to life to haunt the girl that left them in the loft. Unless our film opening was extremely scripted, we would not have been able to make our idea as obvious as we would have liked. 

Due to this, we came up with new and improved ideas that would be much easier to bring forward in the filming process, we were limited with our last idea, whereas now we can come up with new ideas on the spot while filming. 

Audience Testing: Rough Cut

Here is our video of us audience testing the first rough cut. The questions we asked included:
1: How do you feel about the narrative?
2: Do you like the range of shots we included?
3: What do you feel could be improved upon in further filming and editing?
4: What were your favourite parts of the opening?
5: Would you choose to come and watch the rest of this at the cinema?

Asking our target audience these questions helps us to see what could be improved upon, and sheds a new light onto what is good and bad about our opening. We informed them about what we already need to include from now on, such as titles and editing the sound to be consistent through the whole opening. Our feedback was fairly positive, and although they thought there were improvements to be made, we can take this as creative criticism. We asked Charlotte in this video, and she said that she enjoyed it, and outlined some things that she believes could be improved.

Rough Cut

Here is our first rough cut of the film opening. This took a number of weeks of filming and editing to get to this stage, so we are very happy with the outcome so far. At this stage, we have a few weeks left of editing to introduce better sound effects and titles and special effects, but we are very happy with this for now. We have stayed a number of times after school in order to complete this and meet the deadline, and I'm proud to say our hard work has worn off.
 We are aware there are many opportunities open where we can improve. Such as 1:27 up to 1:30. This took a number of weeks of filming and editing to get to this stage, so we are happy with the outcome so far. At this stage, we have a few weeks left of editing to introduce better sound effects and titles and special effects. We are going to re shoot specific scenes that so far are either shaky or blurry. This will only take 2 hours, which will take place on 12th March. 

Delay in posting opening

We planned to post the film on Friday evening on Hannah's laptop and upload it to you tube, where we could place a link to it in our blogs. however, since then we have realized we need an apple mac in order to upload this opening, and neither of us have one of these. As a consequence of this, we have had to delay uploading the rough cut of the film opening, including music and titles, until monday where we will have access to a mac and will be able to upload the video. This first rough cut includes the music we are going to use, the diagetic and non diagetic sounds, and the titles and credits we are going to use. We are very satisfied with this and it has taken quite a fair amount of time to get to this stage, but now we are there we are starting to recognize improvements that could be made in the editing and what we could do better. We will show some of our target audience this and film their reaction to the blog, and this will show whether our film is reaching audience pleasures or not, and we will ask the audience what they think we need to improve upon in further editing in order to be reaching the target audience better.

End of Filming

This Wednesday, we have finally finished all of our filming. We have been filming every Wednesday for about a month to get most of our work done. The first time we got some indoor scenes shot which we then decided to not use, so over the next two sessions we mainly filmed outdoors, for sessions of about two hours at a time, and we had most of the shots done and just needed re-shoots and the last scenes on Wednesday this week. Me and my group member Hannah felt that filming went very well this month, because we have got everything done and out of the way, and the people we have used as actors are experienced and so help to contribute very well to the narrative. After each bit of filming, we would review over what we had done and if something was shaky we would redo it the next week. This helped us to distinguish where we could improve, and what we were already happy with what we had done. We have now done all scenes in the Forrest, leading up to the Forrest, and everything we needed to capture with our actors.

Sound

For sound, we have used a variety of things for both the diagetic and non diagetic sound. We have used royalty free music from a website called purple planet for the soundtrack, which is meant specifically for our genre and fits in very well with the narrative. We asked some people who are in our target audience this, and they all agreed that they thought that it fitted in well with the narrative because it is fairly creepy and keeps you on edge whilst watching it. For the talking of the actors and most of the diagetic sound, we captured it whilst filming using the microphone on the actual camera itself. If we have needed any extra sound effects, we have made an account on a website called free sounds, which is again royalty free sounds that are free to download and we can use in the background of the opening. All of the sounds, both diagetic and non diagetic, have been altered slightly for the opening in the rough copy on YouTube, but they will probably be altered further from now on in order to fit with the narrative better and keep the audience happy. For example, we have used Premiere Pro to make some of the diagetic sound captured on the camera slightly lower and the background non diagetic soundtrack louder to induce more of a creepy atmosphere and this helps a lot with the opening itself. The sound has a large part to play in how good the opening is, which is why we have spent so much time researching about what we need to do in order to get the best results possible when filming.

Typography

Me and Hannah experimented with lots of different typographers whilst editing our film opening to decide on what would fit in best with our narrative and genre, and have narrowed it down to these best three. we have chosen these because we believe they fit with the narrative well, because they are all the colour of blood or very dark, and this fits in with audience pleasures because it fits in well with being creepy for the narrative. We will use these in the start of the opening to show that we made the film, and we will also use them at the ends when we make the credits for the film. These were all made on the software called live type, and we found this fairly easy to use. There is a wide range of fonts to choose from, and here are all of the ones we have narrowed it down to.