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.