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.