Welcome

Hello and welcome to my blog!

Use the links lists and blog archive (on the left) to navigate through the blog for easy use.

This blog contains all you need to know about "Wrenched" Rasam Productions debut film.

Feel free to comment on any of the posts/videos vodcasts or podcasts.

I hope you enjoy my blog as much as I enjoyed creating it!

Have fun!

ALL - Wrenched Final Cut

Here is a video of our final cut of our opening 2 minutes to a feature length slasher film.

Evaluation Question 1

 Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e of film openings)

Here is a short podcast in which I talk about the ways in which film openings adopt similar ways to introduce characters and titles etc

 

My film opening challenges the conventions of a typical slasher opening because the girl in our film appears to be a typical scream queen when infact there is a twist and she is actually the killer. We build up the man to be the killer in the opening sequences using narrative enigma to conceal his identity, we also have him wearing a blue boiler suit; which is an intertextual reference to Michael Myers from Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978). Therefore if people have seen that film before they will expect the man to be the killer. We had the man act really shifty within the house as best we could so that he would seem to be the antagonist, we also used a few high angle shots of the girl to make her look vulnerable and low angle shots of the man to make him look more menacing and powerful for good effect. We decided not to go down the route of using a big knife as the weapon in the film and decided to use a wrench instead; we also played on the words abit and it eventually changed to "Wrenched". 

However we do use several "normal" conventions such as having the titles being played over the establishing shots and having our company idents before the opening sequence begins just to draw the audience in a bit. Also typical for a slasher we wanted to conceal the identity of the killer and the best way to do so; was to use a mask. Our mask is also an intertextual reference to Halloween as it is all white and simplistic, again if the audience have seen the film they will pick up our prefered reading.

We tried to make our film opening use the same conventions of a typical slasher soundtrack by using long and low keyboard/synth sounds. Using films such as Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984) and Halloween as examples, they both use similar soundtracks and with the technology that is available today, we could take these aspects because they work so well and adapt them into our soundtrack. The aim of the soundtrack was to build suspence and make the audiences heart beat abnormally like a typical blockbuster slasher/horror would.

From watching and deconstructing several film openings (which can be found on this blog) we learnt the ways in which slasher films use editing within their films. Older films in this genre don't tend to use many special effects which was really useful for us as we didn't have a budget for our films, also with the technology on the Macs we could get close to the effects of the 80's films. Films more up to date though are extreamely high budgetted and depend highly on special effects, blood and nudity to become successful which was a no go for us. Therefore we had to adapt our film to be similar to the films from the 70's/80's and work with the technology and budget we had available. A prime example of how the budgets have changed is the original Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984 having a budget of $1.8m (a link can be found here.) whilst the remake from 2010 with the same title has a budget of $35m, a link to the budget can be found here.

After looking in detail at film openings I have created a top 8 list for the conventions (remember this doesn't mean the rules, it is just what usually happens in an opening) of a film opening.

1. The company idents will play before the opening begins (Production and Distribution Companies). These idents can be edited to suit the movie such as the Warner Bros logo for the Harry Potter franchise, this is to connote the genre of the film.
2. An establishing shot to give the audience an idea of the genre. Maybe a haunted castle or a council estate to give an idea to the audience of where the film is set and what it is about.
3. A key character such as the protagonist or the antagonist is shown with usually a MS/CU. This will be to introduce the audience to them, so they know who they are and what they are like.
4. Some sort of sound effects or soundtrack will be played throughout, maybe starting over the top of the company idents to draw the audience in and immerse them into the film.
5. The names of the starring role, can be presented as "introducing" if it was that actors first film. If it is a very famous actor it can be shown first as a selling point to the movie such as "Arnold Schwarzenegger" people who see a famous actors name will be attracted to it no matter what the film is about.
6. The name of the director and producer. Can be presented in different ways such as "A John Carpenter film" or "A film by John Carpenter" or just simply "Directed by John Carpenter".
7. A narrator is used in several films usually to tell part of the story or if some of the audience have not read a book (if the film was based on a book for example), they can just listen to the narrator and they will have an idea of what it is about. It's also just an easy and slow way to start a film without large explosions and special effects, it keeps the cost low.
8. High explosives and special effects are used not only for entertaiment but also to connote the genre of the film. Films such as Star Trek use these two aspects in the whole of the opening, as the film is Sci-fi it contains space ships. There is a battle between two spaceships which therefore contains multiple explosions. However explosives and special effects are very expensive and are only used on large blockbusters.

In conclusion we have used the forms and conventions of a real media product which follow the "top 8" above by:

1. We have used company idents before the opening sequence begins, e.g when "Rasam Productions" and "Full Throttle Entertainment" come up on the screen like a typical film opening.





2. We have an establishing shot to give the audience an idea of the genre/location.






3. We introduce the protagonist and antagonist in the opening sequence.






4. We have a soundtrack being played.

5. We have the names of the starring actor/actress in the form of titles played over the sequence.







6. We have the names of the director and producer played over the opening sequence.







However we do not have the final two "typical" conventions that I found when I deconstructed most openings. Mainly because of the budget which limited us to not having high end special effects and explosives but also because we need to cause tension and not have a narrator talking over the top of the sequence. We believe that having the majority of the forms and conventions in our film, it will be successful and it works well.

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 2: How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

Social Class: In our film opening we represent two different social classes using the two main characters. The two main characters are the Man (Jason) and the Girl (Nancy) however we also see a picture of a third person by the name of Freddy (Nancy’s boyfriend), we do not get to see him in person in the opening though. The girl in our opening is living in a middle/upper class house, we can tell this because of the girl having two cars on her property. The house is semi-detatched; neat and tidy which is typical for this social class. The man is portrayed as working class, mainly because of the job he is doing, being scruffy with the clothing he is wearing, having dirty hands and knocking mugs of coffee over and not mopping it back up.

Gender: Our film opening has both male and female characters and we wanted to adapt the stereotypes into the opening. We had the girl in the kitchen and getting tea for the man who is typically doing the job. We adapted some archetypes into the opening too as we had the scream queen (which was actually a twist because she was the killer) as the girl in the film. We chose to have a scream queen because of the male gaze. Males will be attracted to the film because of their being a blonde protagonist.

Sexuality: The two characters within our opening are straight (hetrosexual). We thought this would be the best choice because in the slasher genre there isn't a wide range of homosexuality. It would have also been hard to find two actors/actresses that wanted to show their homosexuality on our film so we chose to go with that decision

Age: We aimed our film at the age range of 15-24 mainly because most of the films within our genre are in this age range and we thought it would be easier to find actors within that range. I created a post in more detail on the Target Audience. Both of our actors are within our core target audience so they would actract an audience similar to their age. Typically for a slasher the audience would be male becaue of the gore, horror and sexual actions within it.

Ethnicity: Both of our actors are white and British because the area we live in is predominantly white British. With us only filming the first two minutes of the film we would have had a chance to get some actors from a different background in and have a wider range of ethnicity within the film.

Physical Ability/Disability: We don't portray the characters of having any disability. This is probably because we were not looking for anyone who had a disability for several reasons. Just like for the sexuality section I believe that it would be extremely difficult for us to find someone who had a disability and would feel comfortable acting infront of the camera but also having it shown to alot of people on Facebook and YouTube etc. People with disabilites are not common in slasher films however, there is a very famous character in  'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre' called Franklin Hardesty whom is in a wheelchair.

Regional Identity: Due to our film being set in Yorkshire, regional identity is portrayed by the characters, using things such as Yorkshire dialect "bloody hell!" but also the location and props etc. The establishing shot is of the counrtyside and stereotypically people think of people in Yorkshire to be farmers. Also the fact the mechanic is working class and asks for four sugars in his tea could also signify he is poor/working class and a stereotypical Yorkshireman.

The male character in our film

Michael Myers from Halloween

The Man: in our film opening is portrayed as a typical Yorkshire man, a dirty unhealthy farmer, the social class is typically working class and we could show this from the man’s speech but also the clothing he is wearing and the job he is doing in the first place. Therefore using this stereotype we could easily get our point across what the man will be like. We chose the clothes he wears very well to portray his occupation but also as a intertextual reference to the slasher film Halloween. We tried to make the man’s age seem around the 30-50 range however we don’t show any anchorage of this in the opening. We did not have any actors available in this age range so we had to improvise; we used narrative enigma to hide the actors face so we never saw that he was fairly young. Having the man in this age range, we thought would attract an audience of a similar age range because they could relate to him. We wanted to adopt the typical “old man” stereotype and make him grumpy and miserable.

Here is our Scream Queen

Alfred Hitchcocks Scream Queen

The Girl:in our film opening is portrayed as the typical teenager; she is wearing a hoodie and talks with slang and an accent. The teenager stereotype is very strong as older people complain all the time about them hanging around in hoodies causing trouble. We chose a girl with blonde hair because we could easily portray her as the typical scream queen in a horror film, however we decided to cross her with the teenager stereotype so instead of wearing very revealing clothes just for the male gaze we decided she should wear a hoodie so that she had strong teenage stereotypes. We also portrayed the girl as working class because she was from Yorkshire and the typical Yorkshire person is from a working class background. We showed the girls sexuality because she gets called by her boyfriend (Freddy), when the phone (the phone also connotes that she is upper class because it is an expensive phone but it also connotes the time period because people wouldn’t have that type of phone 10 years ago.) rings it has a picture of the two hugging each other but it also has three x’s after his name to denote a relationship. The revision timetables on her wardrobe connote her age and also that she is organised.

Evaluation Question 3

 Evaluation Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media and why?

With so many horror films being released annually there are a certain ammount that really make it big time and create a new franchise, a perfect example of this is Saw, a whole new idea of horror films and now 7 years later they are onto their 7th film in the franchise. Another example of a very sucessful franchise that is recent is the Scream Franchise, they are now up to their 4th release this year. There are also regular remakes for example the most recent ones Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street and a slightly earlier one The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Taking these into account we have evidence that the target audience for film is not gone, people are still interested in this genre of film (slasher, a sub-genre of horror) therefore we believe our film could fit into the market and be sucessful.

With our film being created on zero budget (also known as Indie) we would need to find a distribution company that wont be too expensive, so this rules out any of "the big 6" film companies for example Universal Pictures.

Or I could choose Warp Films as they are a UK based company and produce low budget films which are also very successful. Donkey Punch and Dead Man's Shoes are good examples of what Warp has produced, very low budget (compared to the Big 6) yet they can still make a good profit. However our film has a budget even much lower than this small indie company; therefore it does seem a bit too far away for us. Even with a budget of less than £50 there are still examples of films getting into cinemas with Colin; a £45 film which made it to the big screen, so it is a possibility this could happen to ours.

After research on the internet and from my own knowledge I found out that the best choice for a distribution company would be Optimum Releasing, giving the fact that we have no budget to work with. Optimum Releasing is a fairly low budget British Distributor company which is ideal for our film and would fit perfectly into this company. They release over 200 films a year and are one of the most prominent distributors in the UK independent film and world cinema market. Optimum Releasing work with Warp FIlms in distributing some of their most popular films This is England (£1.5m Budget) and Donkey Punch ($3m or about £1.8/9m) which both have budgets less than £3m which is very low budget compared to American films.

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for our media product would be for 15-24 year olds because of the part in our film when the man starts sniffing the girls underwear connoting a sexual reference, therefore it would be for an older audience. Also the language and gore within it which would be for an older audience. Later in the film there were plans for it to get worse but just for the opening we would keep it for the audience of 15-24. There is a post here which backs up what I said in a bit more detail and gives links to the BBFC website which has the guidelines for the age ranges of films.

 The age range of both the actors is within this age bracket and therefore it would attract similar ages to the actors, the sexual references however would appeal more to a male audience because of the male gaze but also that stereotypical males prefer horror, as a contrast to girls which stereotypically prefer rom-coms. However with the twist in our film, having the girl as being the killer would appeal to a larger female market because they will want to see and find out what happens; but also men like women that can fight and would therefore love it (for example Lara Croft, a perfect example of a killer that is solely made for the male gaze audience)We took this into consideration and therefore we thought we went with the appropriate age bracket. The age of the girl is connoted by the exam timetables which are on the wardrobe as the man walks into the room, this can link to the audience of the film.

Evaluation Question 5

Evaluation Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?


Here is our latest rough cut in which I explain how we addressed/attracted our audiences. I used the annotation tool on Youtube to do this and I think it worked really well!

Throughout the course I have been updating this blog and posting links to any recent videos such as Rough Cuts or Behind the Scenes which I had uploaded to Youtube. I then posted them to Facebook and recieved feedback on any piece of work which I then tried to improve as best I could; using the feedback. Using this we could get family and friends to give us feedback which we could then screenshot and give as evidence, there was also a larger audience on Youtube in which we could do the same but appeal to a larger audience.




I have embedded our final cut here

Evaluation Question 6

Evaluation Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?


Here is a video of me talking about the 6th evaluation question which is "What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing your product?"

Evaluation Question 7

Evaluation Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I have recorded a video of me talking about the improvments and lessons I have learnt since recording the prelim task to producing our final product.

Here are our prelim videos





And here is our Final Cut

RS - Most Recent Call Sheets

callsheets1

RS - Most Recent Story Boards

storyboards

RS - Vodcast Number 7 - A Quick Summary

Unfortunatley Windows Movie maker has decided to make the audio not match the visual, so sorry for that! Im not sure what to do:(. Anyway here is our 7th Vodcast. In this one I summarise the things we have been recently doing, plus what we will be doing in the next couple of weeks. Sorry for the video not being very long, and the lack of blogging recently!

RS - Third Company Ident

This is our most recent company ident for "Full Throttle Entertainment". It was created using Livetype software on the Macs at school by Sam Pollock. We recorded the footage using the school cameras and tripods at my house, we then imported the footage as background movie and then added titles over the top to finish it off. Any feedback on it we would really appreciate!

ALL - Rough Cut 3

This is our third Rough Cut of "Wrenched" the opening 2 mins to a feature length slasher film. Please feel free to give any feedback on the shots/narrative for ways in which we can improve on! It will really help! As usual, it is a rough cut so not all of the footage will be in the final cut. We will be re-shooting a fair ammount of the shots next weekend, such as the ending and the kettle sequence so feel free to give us feedback on any of those bits as we can make changes as soon as! Thank you

RS - Horror film Quiz

I decided to make a short video quiz on youtube today to improve the range of multimedia on my blog. It was also a chance to show off my ICT skills and have a bit of fun in the process. The annotations work better on youtube itself so it is adviced to do the quiz on there! Feel free to leave a comment saying how easy the quiz was! or if you want me to make another one.

ALL - Rough Cut 2 Feedback

Click on the picture to enlarge!

Reading the feedback we recieved on the second rough cut we had a discussion about how we are going to make it more obvious as to why the man is killed and redo the ending again due to it not making much sense. The re-filming will be done tomorrow.

ALL - Rough Cut 2

Here is the second rough cut of our opening 2 mins to a feature length slasher film.

ALL - Fifth Podcast - First Evaluation Question

Here is our fifth podcast in which we discuss the first evaluation question of our coursework. "In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?"

You can find links to our previous podcasts here.

ALL - Sixth Vodcast - Changes

In this vodcast we discuss the recent changes to our opening 2 mins of our feature length slasher film "Wrenched" and the audience feedback we recieved to make these changes. We also talk about the feedback we got on our second Rough Cut and our re-shoot which will be happening next week

RS - Deconstruction of Star Trek (Practice Evaluation Question)

Star Trek (J.J.Abrams, 2009)
Budget: $140m
US Box Office: $260m
UK Box Office £20m

• The company idents play before anything. The companies that play are Paramount Pictures Spyglass Entertainment and Bad Robot.
• Non-Diagetic sound played throughout the company idents on screen, the sound then stops when they finish and it transitions to the opening sequence.
• There is an initial establishing shot of space and then a space ship moving past the camera, anchoring the genre.
• Theres no mention of "A film by" or "Directed by" etc, there is also no date/time/year shown on the screen.
• We here people talking over a radio, we assume it is from the people abord the space ship
•  There is sequence of people abord the space ship, discussing another ship approaching them through a black hole.
• There is a long sequence of the ships battling
• The whole opening sequence ends at 11 minutes which is when the main title for the film comes up

RS - New Working Title + New Narrative

Firstly we have changed our working title to "Wrenched" the reason for this is because a wrench is used as the weapon in our film. The name has not been used before (we cannot see any with the same name on IMDB) and it fits in better to our narrative than our previous workting title.


After recieving feedback on our rough cut and sample footages we came to the decision to alter the narrative/synopsis of the film to make it a bit more understandable, the mise en scene work better and maybe tweak a few problems we had.

I have also got persmission to use Jem Whitehead's band The Feedback music, this music will be played on the radio/cd player that the man in the garage will be listening to.

The ideas we have come up with for the new narrative are:

· Fade into a shot of a rural location, possibly on a high hill (To anchor the location)
· Fade into a long shot of a house, with a garage to the side of it. Rock music playing quietly in the background, signifying it is coming from the garage and someone is in there.
· POV shot tracking up to the house, music getting slightly louder
· The POV shot gets close up to the house; you then hear a car engine “failing” noise coming from the garage. The camera pans around to look at the garage door.
· Close up of a wrench being slammed onto a work surface
· Man working on the car shouting “god dammit” signifying he is frustrated with the car not working. The music is now full volume linking to the man’s emotions.
· CU and LA of someone’s feet walking around in the garage (the shot will be under the car)
· CU of a dirty oily hand opening the car bonnet
· The man picks up a half empty, dirty mug of coffee, he spits the coffee out because it is too cold, and slams it onto the work surface.
· Possibly a couple of shots with the man in the boiler suits hands over the bonnet, or his head under the bonnet at work.
· We will experiment with a few more shots for coverage and then decide on what else to add the day after.
· The music then cuts (the girl has turned off the music)
· The man hits his head against the bonnet of the car, because he is surprised to hear the music stop, so he looks up from the engine, but hits his head in the process.
· The man says something such as “Bloody hell, you made me jump there lass” We want the man to have a Yorkshire accent, because the stereotypical Yorkshire man is a dirty, smelly farmer.
· There will be a shot reverse sequence; however we will conceal the identity of the man for narrative enigma signifying he is the killer.
· The Girl replies with “Sorry for making you jump like that, are you okay? I just wanted to know if you wanted another cup of tea. My step-dad called and he wanted to say he will be another 15 or so mins”
· The man replies with “Ahhh smashing lass, yeah that would be grand. Do you mind if I nip to the loo to wash my hands?” This then cuts to a CU of the man’s dirty/oily hands.
· She replies with “Yeah, that’s fine, its right at the top of the stairs, I’ll just be in the kitchen”
· We see someone pick up the wrench when they exit the room, however we don’t see who has taken it for narrative enigma.
· It fades into a high angle shot of the girl filling the kettle with water and then her putting it onto the stand, then an ECU of the kettle light turning on.
· CU of the man’s hands being washed and steam from the tap (links to the kettle boiling)
· Cut shot back to the kitchen, and the girl is laying out a mug and dropping the spoon into the mug with coffee on it, foreshadowing something.
· Cut back to the man in the bathroom which is empty, we hear a quiet sound of a draw opening in the background
· Cut shot to into the hallway, a POV shot of someone opening the door slowly and we see the man’s arms.
· Cut shot again to inside the room and a drawer opening, we see the item in the drawers, women’s underwear.
· CU of clean hands rummaging through the drawer.
· Cut back to the girl in the kitchen, camera close to the kettle so we can see that it has nearly boiled. The girl is in the background putting the coffee away.
· Cut back to the bedroom, a hand picks up a pair of knickers, the shot stays with the knickers out of shot (as if being brought up to the man’s face) we hear a loud sniffing noise.
· Cut back into the hall with the door being slowly and carefully closed
· The man goes back into the bathroom to wash his hands, he reaches for a towel, and we see a masked figure in the mirror stood behind him.
· CU of hand holding the wrench, and it being flung towards the head.
· ECU of the kettles light going out and the kettle finishing.
· We hear a loud crash on the floor.
· The shot stays in the kitchen and we hear someone running down the stairs
· And finally a loud scream

ALL - Rough Cut Feedback

In this video, we showed our rough cut to the class. We then asked for feedback on the whole rough cut, and they gave us ideas of how to improve it. The camera seems to have cut random bits of the footage resulting in little bits being cut out, therefore, not running smoothly throughout. The footage is also filmed without a tripod, so can be very shakey at times, it is probably best to just listen to the audio whilst doing something else, or you might feel a bit sea sick!

After recieving the feedback we have taken the film opening apart and thought of new ways to convey our narrative a bit better. Here is a link to a post, in which we listed the changes we will make. It was posted the day that we recieved this feedback.

ALL - Still Shots from Sample Footage

The mask

 

The Boiler suit

 

ALL - Fifth Vodcast - Feedback on our Rough Cut

Here is a link to our company blog. www.rasamproductions.blogspot.com

In this vodcast we discussed the feedback we recieved for our rough cut and changes according to the feedback. 

ALL - Fourth Podcast - Feedback on our Rough Cut

Here is the fourth podcast in which we discuss the feedback we got on our rough cut. There will be a video of the feedback uploaded later this week.

RS - Rasam Productions

I have recently made a blog for our company Rasam Productions. This blog will be useful for posting Behind the scenes, vodcasts etc onto and finally our full cut once we have finished.

Rasam Productions

RS - Coursework Changes

Due to a long discussion with each other and our media teacher we have come to the decision to change most of our synopsis. From our feedback we needed to give a better reason as to why the man would go to the house in the first place, also why the girl would kill the man, and to hide her identity using narrative enigma in the process. We will keep the same characters and the same twist but just tweak the narrative a bit to make it portray to the audience a bit easier.

Michael Myers (Halloween)

• The man will be working on the girls car in her garage 
• He will come into the house and ask if he can wash his hands because he has just fixed the car
• There will be a sequence of shots when the man is in the bathroom washing his hands
• A masked figure will come behind him (the girl in disguise) and stab him with a knife
• The girls boyfriend will arrive and see a mask on the floor, picking it up and asking what it was, the blame is pointed at him.
• This will be similar to the Scream (Wes Craven, 1996) twist in which it gets blamed on different people, and we don't find out the truth until later on in the film, after the opening 2 mins.

Boiler Suit

We thought that we would have to make the man look more menacing, and therefore make the audience  believe he is the killer. We will change his costume, so he will be wearing a boiler suit, the reason for this is to make him seem like a hideous creature, crazy, and wanting to kill this defenceless girl. He will also have oily rags, and be a bit animalistic. Boiler suits have been used in films such as Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978), the killer Michael Myers wears the boiler suit to mask his identity but also to make him seem a bit more creepy. We will also add fake blood (after he has been stabbed) and oil to the boiler suit to signify he has been working on the car.

RS - Coursework Update

After screening our opening to the class we recieved some feedback (a Youtube video will be published in the next few days, showing the feedback recieved in the lesson) the feedback consisted of making it more obvious as to why the man goes upstairs in the first place. Maybe changing the costume of the man a bit, to make him look a bit more menacing. They also told us to think a bit more about the ending because it is not "quite there" yet. In tomorrows lesson we will brainstorm a few ideas as what to do and then produce another rough cut to screen and get further feedback on.

Therefore we will need to secure another date/weekend for further re-shooting, on this day we will also create a "behind the scenes" and a vodcast and podcast. These can all be viewed on my Youtube channel. They will be added to the relevent playlists, when they have been uploaded to Youtube.

Sam and I are away on a Geography trip on Monday(7th)  and Tuesday (8th) which will leave Asa alone for two lessons, therefore we need to think of something we can set for him to do, but also something we can do whilst on the trip to make sure we do not fall behind, this could be thinking deeper into soundtrack ideas, or further company ident ideas.

RS - Coursework Re-shooting + Update

Due to camera technical errors we will have to film a couple of shots once again to them being broken when we upload them onto the Macs at school. This will take place on Saturday/Sunday because it is the only days we can meet up together. On either Saturday/Sunday we will also be doing our weekly Pod/Vodcasts so they will be up by next Monday.

We also seem to have a problem with our second company ident, the footage is fine, however sound does not seem to be working on it, we will need to talk to the schools Media Technician to see if he can help us get it to work.

ALL - Company Ident Photos

Here is a couple of Ident photos we took whilst we were filming it. Sam will be editing this ident tomorrow and Tuesday on Livetype. Once we have the second ident fully edited we will upload it to Youtube and then Facebook for feedback, Once we have the feedback we will do all we can to improve it.

ALL - Behind the Scenes of the Re-shoot

Here is a quick video of behind the scenes of the re-shooting today

ALL - Fourth Vodcast - Re-shoot Summary

Here is our fourth vodcast in which we talk about us finishing the re-shooting today

ALL - Reshoot Photos

During the re-shoot I took photos to use as evidence

ALL - Third Vodcast - Mise en Scene + Genre + Target Audience

This is the third Vodcast in which we discuss the Mise en Scene, The Genre and target audience for our film opening. Apologies for the camera angle not being perfect at times and cutting Asa off at certain moments. Here is a link to the BBFC 15 rating guidelines as I said in the video. Here is a link to our blog post on Target Audience and one here on Casting and Creativity.

ALL - Meet the group

Asa Newmarch
Nickname: Ace of Spades
Role: Cinematographer
Favourite Film: Inception
Famous Quote(s): "Where is she?" "Where have you been?"
Hobbies: Gaming, Watching Anime, Surfing the web
Favourite TV Show: FullMetal Alchemist 
Subjects Taken: Media Studies, ICT, Buisness Studies
Idol: Guillermo del Toro
 

Sam Pollock
Nickname: Cherub
Role: Director
Favourite Film: LOTR FOTR
Famous Quote(s): "The game" "1-0"
Hobbies: Football, Cricket, Facebook
Favourite TV Show: The Simpsons
Subjects Taken: Media Studies, ICT, Geography and English Literature + Language
Idol: Steven Gerrard

Rob Shaw
Nickname: Stanley
Role: Producer
Favourite Film: Tron Legacy
Famous Quote(s): "Stella!!!!" "Dingham"
Hobbies: Gaming, Blogging, Guitar
Favourite TV Show: Mythbusters
Subjects Taken: Media Studies, Geography, English Literature + Language, ICT
Idol: Matt Bellamy

The Group

 

ALL - Third Podcast - Feedback

This is our third podcast which is about the feedback we have recieved from our footage and company idents, and what we have done to make changes to them.

RS - Company Ident Draft Feedback

Click on the picture to enlarge!

I uploaded our Ident Draft to Youtube and then onto Facebook to get some feedback on it. After reading the comments we have decided to have a brainstorm of fonts, and try and choose the one that we think works the best. I will then re-upload the draft with the new font and post to Facebook again to see if it gets the same/similar comments or if their opinion has changes. We will also think about making different to the Doctor Who opening, so it will make our Ident unique

SP - Second Company Ident Draft

Here is the second company ident draft, it was created on LiveType and then sound was added using Imovie. We added a few sound effects to the Ident to make it a bit more interesting and to fit in with the text moving toward the screen.

SP - First Company Ident Draft

Here is the first draft of our Distribution company Ident "Rasam Productions". Sam Pollock created this using Livetype. However it is a first draft so it has not got any sound on it yet.

ALL - Deconstruction Round-up

After watching our 20 film openings we have pulled a range of ideas from several different films together, we have put together "The Top 5 best ideas we have picked up":

1. POV shot used from the original Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978): This is the shot when Michael is a child and goes into the house to kill his older sister. We see the knife in the foreground and the girl in the background about to be stabbed by him. We have chosen this because imagination is better than what we can record because of our budget. POV shots also make the film more immersive and draw you in more.

 Watch the first 30 seconds of the Halloween Trailer to see what we are on about

2. The narrative enigma used at the beginning of Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984). This sequence of shots is amazing for us, when Freddy is constructing his glove contraption, we don't see above his shoulders once which is the idea we implemented into our film opening. Using this technique we can conceal the mans identity, this will make the audience think he is the killer when infact he isn't.

3. The false scare after the opening of Scream (Wes Craven, 1996) The Jock boyfriend, makes his girlfriend jump by putting his hand on her shoulder, the audience think that it is the killers hand on her shoulder but it is his instead, a useful twist.

4. The mise en scene in the opening of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974). This uses it to a good extent, it makes you wonder what has happened to the corpse and also what the flashing in the back ground.

5. Dutch angles used in the opening of My Bloody Valentine (George Mihalka, 1981). The whole aspect of not knowing who the people are, mixed with the narrative enigma of not being able to see their faces makes this opening very successful. 

RS - Target Audience

Our aim is to make our film a rating of 15 (BBFC Rating). The reasoning for this is because of the actors ages, sexual references, strong language and bloody violence. However we don't see the man getting stabbed therefore it is not as violent as an 18 rating film. The girl is wearing revealing clothes which backs up the reasoning behind the 15 rating. We expect the majority of the audience to be male, because of the sexual themes in it but also the ammount of gore.

We know that there is an audience available for this genre because we have seen the success of films such as Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978). Scream (Wes Craven, 1996). And Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984). Using these three as examples we know that our film fits into this genre and has a similar audience to these, teenagers from around 15-25, both male and female.