Evaluation by James Brammer

Evaluation

By James Brammer

The story of our film is about a psychotic young man called Conrad going round his old ‘friends’ that abandoned him as his life fell to pieces and his family left him to fend for himself and gets revenge on them for his own personal misery. The title sequence is based around a nightmare, in which Conrad goes round his former friends - because of his lunacy and being driven with hatred and rage – and butchers them individually in a forest. The dream ends abruptly as Conrad faces his old best friend (Tom) in a stand of and then Tom awakens from his dream to his friends (Jake and Zach) shouting him from the window and they all leave.

 By doing deep research into the horror genre we have found out our film is typically a horror/ slasher film because the area in which the dream/chase sequence takes place is deep in some woods, where nobody else is around. This is a standard scene for most horror films as it creates an eerie surrounding in which sinister things take place. For example, the killer from Friday 13^th film is resurrected from deep in a lake and usually makes his kills deep in the forest at night. Another feature our film has in common with Friday 13^th is that both our films involve a group of teenagers going out for a party in the woods only to be brutally slaughtered by a psychotic killer.

Our film is aimed at a national British audience as it was filmed in some woods in Staincross Common (Barnsley) and therefore a British audience would be able to relate more to these surroundings than an international audience. Also, our film is aimed at teenagers looking for shocks and scares in films they pay to see, mostly at the age of 15-25 and male. It is also aimed at those who would enjoy trying to figure out how the chase scene at the beginning has relevance to the film before it is put into context (a little bit of a puzzler) as we got the idea of ‘premonitions’ from the final destination films.


We explored the target audience with questionnaires to see what kinds of people would want to see the film if it were put in cinemas and from this we developed our target audience profile. 

Our film could possibly be distributed by either a small British distribution company or a larger, American company such as New line cinema which is a major horror film distributor. This is because our title sequence is similar to final destination (which had a major international audience) in the way of it not being a linear process of filming (we start the film by showing the end chase scene). If New Line Cinema were to distribute our film, it would need to be modified to suit a wider audience with more characters and a deeper plot line. Also they would have the money to back up the sounds for the film and we could use original tracks or buy rights to previously made tracks by famous artists to use in or film.

They are also able to distribute this film in many more types than a smaller distributor such as 3D, IMAX and Blu-ray.

In contrast to this, a smaller British distributor may also be interested, as horror films are a common route to go down when working under the Microwave London micro-budget scheme (which is roughly £100,000) as it would be less spectacular than the major American distributors, but be more appealing to the British national audience.

Because of the research we have done, we depicted our film typically as horror slasher, as it has important features in this genre that we have used. Using correct mise-en-scene such as deep red on dark backgrounds (this is to represent blood and a sense of danger to the film) and non-diegetic sounds such as the drum music in the chase scene and the diegetic sounds such as Jake screaming which all contributed to helping us create our own typical representation of suspense and action which are common features of horror films. We have used certain costumes for the characters so the audience knows roughly who they are as people. For example, the way Conrad is dressed:

This dark outfit tells the audience that this character is obviously not friendly and tells them the others need to be careful.

Our film is representing contemporary UK teenagers as we have stereotyped them with things such as following the fashion and drinking illegally, being irresponsible and not wearing the correct things for a camp-out. We have also stereotyped the killer, with dark clothing and always with his hood up. The Mask is an added feature to bring his true psychoticness into the scene:

As you can see from the previous picture, we have specifically used low angle shots on Conrad to symbolise he is the dominant character at this point. We have done this on another separate occasion as well:

We have also used a high angle shot over Zach’s shoulder to show he isn’t dominant and that he is a weaker character than Conrad:

We have used a mixture of fast paced and slow editing, to give our film a different feel at different times, such as the beginning of the film being a fast-paced part and involving lots of cross-cutting as there was a lot happening in a short space of time, and near the end of the dream sequence where Conrad is sneaking around the woods trying to get close to Tom which is a slower pace of editing, as we wanted this to be a suspense moment in the film where the audience doesn’t know what is going to happen.



The main colours that appear in horror films are dark ones (usually red) to symbolise the danger of something bad going to happen. We have used this in the text to give a hint that the film will involve deaths and danger. The dream at the beginning of the film creates tension and shows that it is important part of the film, to make it more clear to the audience we have used some credits and subtitles e.g. at the beginning there is ‘We all have dreams’

and shortly after where we see this:

These titles show the audience roughly what our film is about and gives them a hint that we will be going back to this even later on (as it is a dream/premonition). We have also used a hazy background for the actual title of our film:

This makes it look more bloody than the other texts, which gives a greater indication to the audience that the action isn’t over. This cross-fades onto the next shot of Tom waking up from the nightmare you just saw.

In our film, we decided to go with stereotypes mostly and didn’t really challenge them. For example, For Conrad we went with the typical dark and mysterious figure – you don’t see his face – that you would expect to go on a killing spree. As for the rest, they are just typical teenagers you would expect to be out on a night having fun and drinking (typical teenager behaviour) however the three of them aren’t typically the kind of people who would ‘hang out’ normally. In this we have briefly challenged and gone against the stereotypes and social norms of teenagers. Although, With Conrad we had to show that he was a disturbed and slightly sadistic individual, and this was down to his parents and entire family abandoning him (which we would have included if we had filmed the full production), which was included in his character profile.

As our characters are all male teenagers, we didn’t really have to think about how we portrayed different ages, genders or groups, but we did challenge the group identities by putting three unlikely friends together. If we had gone through with filming the rest of the film, we would have undoubtedly gone ahead and possibly challenged other stereotypes of other people, such as females and other age groups, as the three friends are college student, so we would have put something in there to show that college tutors are dominant during college hours and if we introduced one of the characters having a girlfriend, we could have challenged the normal stereotype of relationships.

After the dream sequence has ended, we introduce the group of friends properly, and in doing this, we use high-angle shots on Zach and Jake and a mixture of close ups and medium shots on Tom, to show that he is kind of the leader of the little group, and the other two aren’t as important as him.

I think our film reaches and addresses our target audience quite well, as we have included features that we have discovered our target audience expects to see in the horror slasher genre

and by doing this, it helped attract the target audience.

I showed our film to an audience of 10 people, which we used to judge if our film reaches the target audience as expected or if it reaches a wider audience than we originally thought. 6 of them are within our expected target audience and the other 4 are there so I received a cross section of a wide audience and their comments based on what they saw. 5 out of the 6 target audience said the film was very fast paced and that it was good overall, however the story line was a little difficult to follow as to what we had filmed, although when they saw the synopsis for the full film, they soon understood what we were trying to do. They also commented that the music was a good match and made an exciting and thrilling contribution to the chase.

The 4 out of the target audience plus the remaining one of the target audience said that the technical aspects were good, with good choice of shots and music, they continued to comment that although the film looked interesting, it was a bit too surreal and sinister for what they usually like, however if given the opportunity to watch it, they would hesitate before declining.

From this reaction, we can see that our film has branched a little beyond our target audience, but not so much that our original target audience wouldn’t want to see it. So overall our film matched the target audience and went over, which can only mean that it appeals to a wider audience and therefore our film was successful.

If we were given the opportunity to edit the film further, we would have included more POV (Point Of View) shots

and we would have included a voice over of Tom’s thoughts as he wakes up from his nightmare.

During the planning for our film, we used a lot of different software on the Apple Macs such as word, which we used for doing the treatment to our film and the rough draft of our script, as well as the research stage of our planning. We also used Celtex to actually produce the script in the correct format, which it is designed to do automatically. Another software we looked at was Adobe Photoshop Elements, which we used to create our production logo

and our film title.

We made these decisions because they were the best and most appropriate things to use for the planning of the film.

In pre-production we wanted to go with a digital camera, but on recording, we discovered that using tape was better for the opening sequence, using this change in technology, we have gained a fuller understanding of how different cameras operate. We also discovered that POV shots were a good way to simulate someone running and panicking, as the camera shakes, giving the audience the same feeling that the character is feeling.

For editing the film together we used Final Cut Express, which is a very good editing software, with lots of editing effects we could use, such as cross fading shots and dissolves. as well as being useful to control levels of the sounds on the tracks we used. 

 It was also used to slow down a shot at a particular moment during the chase sequence.

We also used iTunes and Quick Time media player when we were trying to find sound tracks to use for our film.

We used Google blogger all the way through, to keep track of what stage we were at with our planning and production. Overall, I think using all this special software has helped us improve our film a great deal, however using Photoshop was difficult, as sometimes it didn’t do exactly what we wanted, so we had to find alternatives which took time and didn’t turn out exactly how we wanted. By doing this, we have learnt a great deal about what technologies are used in the film making process and just how much time and organisation it takes to produce even a half hour TV show.

EVALUATION

Alexander Grigoryev

At the beginning of this project me and my group members made a research on films on same genre as ours which is horror. We also found out that our film is more horror slasher movie because it has psychotic masked killer who kills teenagers in forest, and some films with similar storyline as ours (Friday 13th, Saw etc.) also were slashers so we decided that our film is going to be this genre. Horror films are made to scare people, usually trying to do something unexpected and unpredictable for the audience to happen. We tried to stay with usual color schemes for horror films (dark red, black) and it also gives a clue for the audience what kind of film is that. Our film is unusual because in the beginning we show a dream sequence of killer killing friends of main character (Tom) which will happen further on film. We've put titles in the beginning about dreams and last line said "Do you really want them to come true" saying audience that this dream is much more important than just a dream.

 Our film is non-linear because of the dream sequence at the beginning that is repeated again at the end of the film, as it is a nightmare that comes true and predicts what is going to happen later on in the camp out in forest. The dream at the beginning of the film creates tension and shows that it is important part of the film, to make it more clear to the audience we have used some credits and subtitles e.g. at the beginning there is ‘We all have dreams’.

We used red for all titles to stay with style of the film. When I was making film title I made a red mist kind of representing the mist in the forest but at the same time it coloured as blood so it showing death and danger.

Also when I was making our production company logo i wanted to show what kind of films we're doing so it's red and because it called "Russian Roulette Productions" I used an image of the revolver.

 

All the way throughout the opening sequence we used non-diagetic music and sounds. In the dream sequence we used music which builds tension and make it scarier. Then we used a sound of Tom waking up like a drum showing that he woke up after this dream scared.

I relied on Tom to edit the film and we all were helping him as well. We put a lot of work in putting it all together and trying to make film go smooth and look as professional as possible with material we had. Here's an example of our timeline:

We have used different types of shots throughout the sequence to show importance of characters. Most of all we showed Tom giving a clue that he's the main character and that he's going to live in the end. For killer we used low-angle shots to show that he's in power of the rest of characters. We've finished the dream on Conrad "jumping out" on Tom with the knife. Even in this scene we showed Conrad in position of power (low-angle shot, Conrad is above Tom in shot). We made Conrad to look as scary as we can. We used a mask and dark clothes to show that he's a "villain".

  

Our film is about typical UK teenagers just living their lives and don't care about anything but parties and fun. They're going to camp in forest. They're having partying, having fun and getting drunk so it was easier for killer to scare them and kill them.

I was in control of most parts of making our film. I've created logo for our company and our film title, created a storyline for our hole film and was deciding who is going to do what. I was helping all of my group members doing their part. For example when Tom was editing I gave him main idea on how to do it, then I was checking from time to time the process and helping him and deciding what to do best.

Our film could be distributed by both, British low budget companies like Warp or American big budget companies like TimeWarner because our media product is similar to some big productions e.g. "Friday the 13th" or "Nightmare on Elm street" which had a big audience and were really successful and also it is filmed in Britain which would be good for the audience in Britain. Big budget companies would

help us to make the film look more professional and maybe change some parts of our film to make it better and get bigger audience.

The audience for our film would be people aged 15 - 38, but mainly targeted at younger audience because this film is about teenagers and also younger audiences enjoys horrors more than older audiences. Obviously main audience would be British because this film is made in UK.

Technology we used was pretty simple but useful. Camera was small so it wasn't hard to take it anywhere we want, but its quality and the thing that it's a tape camera made it much harder to make our film. We also used zoom recorder to get better sounds and dialogues. And we used Final Cut Express to edit our film which was very useful software. We used Facebook for a questionnaire we created on Google about our film, and we also put it on our blog. We got a lot of people to answer the questionnaire to get what people think about whole film.

Haydn's Evaluation

Click here for the evaluation on Google Documents

EVALUATION

By: Tomasz Kubanski

To start my project so it could be reliable and as professional as it can be, me and my group members did deep research into the genre (which is horror) and we found out that our film is classified to more specific genre type which is horror slasher, because of the main features (psychotic masked killer).

I found out that there is a lot of tension going on in horror films after I watched some of them. They were here to make people scared as the audience were thinking what is going to happen next, which is mostly unexpected and hard to predict in horror films. The main colours that appear in horrors are dark and there is also a lot of use of red, which is a stereotype that the dark is scary and that red represents blood and danger. Another thing that I found out in opening sequences is a use of stereotypes to give the idea what the film is about and what genre it is e.g. if it is a dream or something that happened in the past and it is a sequence from someone’s memory it is likely to have filters that change the colours to more dark to make it unclear, also echo is very often added to sequences like this. Our film is non-linear because of the dream sequence at the beginning that is repeated again at the end of the film, as it is a nightmare that comes true and predicts what is going to happen later on in the camp out in forest. The dream at the beginning of the film creates tension and shows that it is important part of the film, to make it more clear to the audience we have used some credits and subtitles e.g. at the beginning there is ‘We all have dreams’

Then later on we can see this:

 These titles should make the audience think to show that the dream has impact on the film and that we are going to get back to his dream later on in the film. All titles are red as it is one feature of the genre to make it scary and so it represents danger, they are also in the same font so it looks smooth and professional e.g. our film title, with red and black dark background and red title in the middle

Even our production company logo is in red with dark background to make it all in the same format and so it matches the rest of the film and what our production company is mainly doing

 In the dream sequence we have placed a drum non-diagetic music to build up the tension to make it scarier, also we have used creepy and low sounds later on so it matches with the genre and so it builds up the tension e.g. the sound after Tom wakes up is showing that he is stressed, scared and didn’t enjoy it.

There are some examples of the the timeline which is showing how much we have done on editing the sound to make it sound clear and smooth and so it matches the genre:

We have used different types of shots to represent the importance of a character at particular time and place and who is the strongest one. We have mainly used low angle shots on the psychotic masked killer as he was the one with knife and was dangerous e.g. we used low angle shot on the voice call to show his power after he killed two friends of Tom and that he is going to get Tom as well, at the same time showing he is stronger than Tom at the moment. To represent the Conrad (psychotic masked killer) we have used a mask and dark clothing which makes the character more scary.

Our film is representing contemporary UK teenagers that are careless and not responsible, by going to a forest to camp out and make a party where there is not safe as it is a wild life forest unprotected and not suited for camps. Defenceless teenagers that are drinking alcohol and making party at night in woods where no one can see them and help in case of emergency. They are also dressed inappropriately for camp like this as they are wearing jeans and nice outgoing clothes, which make them an easy target for the psychotic masked killer.

                  












We were following stereotypes about young people which are not responsible, following the fashion and breaking the rules. When I was editing the film after the group made the first template I thought about  the structure and editing that would match characters and what is happening (Dream, running away, fear) and I have decided to use fast paste-cutting which would match characters because they are young and it is always seemed that young people are making and doing things faster which would represent young people the best, especially modern young people. To represent what is happening I have used crosscutting, which again was fast so it followed the structure and so it created tension and give the idea of a danger and speed in which things are happening. The rest of the group liked the idea and said it looks good. I think the editing is describing the characters the best because they are young, not responsible, not organised and the editing is representing all these stereotypes as well as that it is a dream, because of fast crosscutting between locations. The sound also have represented that they are young and in danger as there was a non-diagetic music of fast drums, which shows that they are in rush and that they are running.


Our film could be distributed by both, British low budget companies like Warp or American big budget companies like TimeWarner because our media product is similar to some big productions e.g. "Friday the 13th" or "Nightmare on Elm street" which had a big audience and were really successful and also it is filmed in Britain which would be good for the audience in Britain. Big budget companies would probably change the content to make it more spectacular, use better mise-en-scene which would make it more realistic, more professional and could use some music that would match the film better as they have money to produce their own music or buy rights to add already existing ones that are marked as copy rights. Big budget companies would also try to maybe add some more characters and friends to make it more spectacular, make more tension and being more interesting e.g. "Friday the 13th" is showing much bigger group of friends in scarier location. Example: in this trailer of "Friday the 13th" we can see 4 or 5 groups of different people that go to the forest and each have similar story (partying, camping, no adults), which is showing how big budget films are different. 

Companies like Metrodome with low budget might also distribute our media product because of location (UK), also because they are more likely to finance ideas for films for people in the UK and productions that cost around £100 000 and it is reachable for our film because it can be less spectacular but still good enough to distribute and the budget would be enough to finance this film. The location is very attractive for Metrodome as it is a British film that is filmed in Britain which attract the audience.

A good distributor with big budget has also bigger choice in how they can make the film, which includes technologies e.g. TimeWarner can use technologies like 3D, IMAX, Blu-ray and digital sound which would attract more audience and would have a lot more attention, also they can advertise it on their TV channel which is called Home Box Office (HBO). Whereas companies like Metrodome with low budget don't own big TV channels and can't afford technologies like this but because there are also cheaper and still very popular technologies like digital sound they can still produce a good film and they can use websites like Facebook or apps for smartphones to distribute it.

The audience for our film would be people aged 15 - 38, but would be mostly focused on young people as it is mainly about teenagers but also for British people as it is filmed in Britain. It would also attract the audience from films like "Friday the 13th" as it has similar story, it would be for both genders and for people that like horrors, especially horrors with psychotic killers. Because of location it would attract a lot of audience from Britain and some European countries if it would be distributed world widely. It would be very attractive to the British audience because it is a film in Britain that is very similar to very good productions like "Friday the 13th" or even "Final destination" which in case of success would pull up the standards in British industries and would bring a lot of audience from Britain.

During the production technology was very useful, especially the camera that was quite small so it wasn't heavy and we could take it to woods with no bigger problems. We have also used zoom-recorder to have better quality sound as in some cases when we used longer shots the camera's voice recorder wasn't good enough to get the sound and we have used zoom-recorder to catch the sound from these scenes. I have also learnt quite a lot on how to use these equipment which would be good for future and I also gained some experience with using this sort of equipment. For opinions from other people I have used Facebook, Google questionnaire and Blogger because I have added the treatments on the Blogger then based on this I have made the questionnaire and I posted links on Facebook so people could find it and have a look at this. Google questionnaire was very useful as it is easy to use and all of the updates and opinions were emailed to me e.g.

At the end of production we had to edit the film and sort it so it could be finished properly and we have used a software called Final Cut Express which was very good as we could add transitions, effects, music and video generators which helped us in achieving what we wanted to add to our film. With low budget it is very good as we could make nice, professional and good looking piece of filming.  If we had bigger budget we could think of better technologies that would attract the audience (3D,IMAX etc.), but our film would aslo be good with low budget as it shows it can be made on cheaper equipment and on different types of technology.

A Dream Comes True Final Export

A Nightmare on Elm Street opening 15 minute analysis

James Brammer

This is very similar to how we are going to show our film title and at this point in the film; there is a scream, which we are also going to have in our film. However the eerie dream like music in this film will be replaced by something a little more sinister. However this film was made in 1984 so due to technological advances we would be able to do this to a greater effect.

These next 2 shots show the chase scene with a shaky camera and the main character waking up very frightened. Both of these are similar to our film with the way they are filmed and how the music portrays the action within the shots.

This shot shows the main character with her friends, which is the same as what we are doing.  

In this shot, you see the main character putting on a brave face in front of her friends whilst she is still contemplating what her dream meant and she is certain that nothing good can come of it. As the eerie music starts playing in the background, her friend to the left confesses that she also had a dream about the same ‘creep’ on the same night. This unsettles her further as she now has proof that something bad is going to happen.

Analysis of the first 15 mins of "Friday the 13th" by:

Tomasz Kubanski

On this three screen shots of "Friday the 13th"similar location and time is shown to what we are going to film. The forest and late evening times are those two most important features of our film because it makes it more scary, which relates to the horror genre because of creepy locations. At the beginning there is non diagetic sound of drums to indicate danger and fear, also an echo sound effect is made to the voice of characters, showing it was something that happened in the past with addition of black&white filters. This is similar to our sequence from Tom's dream because we are going to put echo effects to show its a dream. Then we can see group of friends going to camp out in forest and stay overnight, which means that these people are not really safe alone in forest which again relates to the genre because it makes them not safe as they not well prepared for dangers.

After they find the place to camp out, they make a little party (eat, drink and having laugh). They spread out, some stay at the camp and the rest go. The group is split up which makes it easier for the masked killer to kill them. It is similar to our film because as an effect of the psychotic masked killer appearing on the camp out Tom, Zach and Jake split up which makes it easier for the masked killer to kill them (Splitting into small groups make them weaker).

The masked killer is appearing on the screen with creepy non diagetic sound as the character look up at him which indicate danger. It's dark and we can't see the face because of light and the mask that the killer is wearing. Dark lighting make the killer more anonymous, more scary and more dangerous because the dark light indicate that he has bad intentions and bad side of his personality.

Two characters find an abandoned house, as they go along they find a lot of different stuff from the past that belongs to the masked killer with non diagetic music to represent mystery, past and interest of the character. One of the characters find a picture in medallion of the masked killer's mum and she looks very similar to that woman on this picture. It relates to our film in terms of finding abandoned house, but in our film it happens at the end. In general "Friday the 13th" is similar to our film and appeal to the same audience.