Final post

So after 8 months of documenting my journey of constructing my final piece of coursework the end is here!

This blog is now closed. 

Evaluation - question seven!

So this is my last evaluation post and it is my response to question 7.

Evaluation - question six!

This is my response to evaluation question 6.

Evaluation - question five!

This is my response to question five - how did you attract your audience?

Evaluation - question four!

Here is my fourth question response- Who is your audience?

Evaluation - Question three!

Below you will find my response to question four - Who might distribute your media project and why?

Evaluation - Question two!

My response to question two- How does your media project represent particular social groups?

Evaluation - question one!

So here is my response to question one: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real products?

Media showcase!

This horribly terrifying screenshot of Keeley in action is the picture we have chosen to use as the face of our movie. The picture will be used on posters to invite people to the showcase and as it will be the only thing people will see and we hope for it to be a creepy visual as an insight to what our opening is all about. 

Woman in Black racked in 134 complaints over wrong certification!

After researching a little deeper I came across a little case-study centred around our number one inspiration - The Woman In Black.
Personally I was shocked to find the bbfc had rated the woman in black a 12A, especially after I had witnessed the movie myself. Evidently 134 other people had a similar reaction! The bbfc was required to increase the rating up to a 15 and review its 'horror rules'

This is a clear consequence of grading a film the wrong certification, which shows its's extremely important to accurately label a film and not just based it on the 'criteria' that the film itself would meet, but also the short-term and long-term affect it will have on the audience allowed to watch the material.

Here's the link to the article, but I've screen-shotted an extract for quick readers.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jan/13/bbfc-rewrite-horror-rules-woman-black-complaint-gore-sexualisation

Ceritificate 18?

The group had previously discussed what certificate we would grant appropriate, we all had agreed the decision would most likely be between a 12/12A or a 15, we felt that our movie would't live up to the over excessive 'gore' that most 18s acquire.

A popular 18 horror film is 'The nightmare on elm street.' Both the 1984 and the 2014 version. The direct use of blood, guts and expletives suggest a clear division to our movie opening. (I mean even the picture makes me want to hurl.)

So what one?

During our brainstorming session we immediately ruled out the rating U and PG as our content would be extremely inappropriate for those younger audiences. So we were left to choose between 12/12A, 15 or an 18.

12/12A

Many movies are rated 12 and 12A's, one being my all time favourite 'The Others,' however movies that hold this rating are often limited to the sinister absence they can empower.

15

Films with a higher rating of a 15 are able to express 'strong threat and 'horror' more directly. Many of our film inspirations obtain a certificate of 15 for example 'Annabelle' and 'The Woman in Black' These movies all hold the blood curdling atmosphere we feel the content of our film would have held (if we had continued to make it) 

Certificate for our film.

So now our group must decide on our movies age certificate!

We've done a little research on the British Board of Film classification website in order to accurately label our movie.

Many of our inspirations are rated as a 15 but there are many varieties in different films.

Evaluation; dun dun dunnnnnnnnn

So now the film is completed and uploaded, it is time for the evaluation! 

The group is currently browsing through previous evaluations to inspire us and just building a platform to how we must answer them. 

Here are our the questions we must answer. 

Beggars Hollow - Final

So voila! Below is our final draft of Beggars Hollow ( Yes, we all finally agreed on a name)
We made very minor adjustments since the fifth draft.
After it was showed to Ms Foster she told us to adjust the font sizes of the title as she felt the title was too similar to the credits.

Also to just fad in and adjust some of our sound, for instance we decided to fade out the drone audio during the opening title montage as the cut to silence didn't hold a significant impact, as well as this it was necessary to cut down the swing shot of Keeley from behind in order to match up perfectly with the audio, this avoided any disruption to the perfect match ups later on it the film.

Lastly we have cut 'ripple productions' as Ms Foster noticed it was extremely similar to our 'river in reverse' shown just a few seconds later. The group discussed and agreed that the one production company would do, which saved us finding a second!
So now our production company just reads 'Ludio Studios.'

5th (and hopefully the last) draft.

We were advised not to include our previous production company 'Bonnie Productions' with the shot of Bonnie the dog due to the implications it caused to some viewers as they were confused by the use of the same doll,dog and actress.

So as a replacement we included footage of some ripples that we thought would look cool in reverse that we ended up never using as we used the river in reverse instead. Added onto the shot was 'Ripple productions' with the same transition as the previous production title. Additionally we included a little jingle to lighten the mood, from Epidemic.com we downloaded 'Water ripples' which was an upbeat melody with the collocation of flowing water, as well as some bubble gurgles for the sound effect.

Sound finished.

We finally finished with the sound; After hours upon hours of misery and frustration we persevered and  finalised it! Despite originally wanted a beat to play on every jump cut, we struggled with the 'flickering' scenes as every shot is only 0.1s, meaning it was virtually impossible to find a high pitched beat only 0.1s or less. Instead we just duplicated a couple sections of the tissues soundtrack which we found intense and frightening and layered them on making the volume 500% creating an extremely harrowing atmosphere.  

The mac froze :(

Above shows the crescendo which we cropped and edited using adobe audition (shown below), this allowed us to find the PERFECT crescendo to use! The crescendo we used cuts out leaving an eerie after tune which we let drone out to utter silence. We felt that harnessing the sound of silence would add to the uncomfortable tone we wanted.

Shown below is a screenshot of the jump shots with the integrated sound. As you can see the 'loud' layers are positioned right on the scene jump. We felt doing this would increase its professional look (and because Ms Foster advised us to) however despite it being the cause of bald patches I'm really pleased with the outcome of it and the impact it has on the audience.

CREDITS!?

Shown below are our final credits. We have included title names such as 'edited by' and 'sound by,' we found it was look more professional and sophisticated. We also finalised the title..FINALLY.
Originally I found the apostrophe in 'Beggar's Hollow' unappealing, however our teacher mentioned to us how its acceptable to not include punctuation such as the station 'Kings Cross St Pancras.'
We decided that we should have the title on two separate lines, thus contrasting the light and the dark on the horizon line.
 We managed to overcome the situation where my name was in a white font due to the colours in the scene, by moving the position of the text to the top left where there is high-key lighting.
Personally my favourite frame is Kelly's one, being positioned on the grass it gives the impression that the text is 'standing up.'

Sinister turn around.

So after playing around with some unused footage the group came across a scene consisting of Keeley standing right in front of the tree. Before turning around she was staring back at us waiting for instructions. Using the mouse i was able to see the scene in reverse; aka Keeley frighteningly turning around.

After falling in love with that shot we replaced the original shot that we used and set it to play in reverse. However after showing it to others we found it wasn't as noticeable as we wanted it to be, so we split the clip and freeze-framed the scene of her looking to the side so now it plays for around 0.8s to add emphasis to the action. (This is seen in the last photo.)
As well as this we included an extremely sinister crescendo that we cropped from our original audio 'tissues' on adobe audition.

Sound and Footage integration

So now we are working towards making our screeches and sharp beat changes match up with the change of scenes.

After a quick match up during lesson, Kelly then carried on after school using the sound wave feature on iMovie which helps see exactly when the build up of music is going to occur, however now we must focus on altering our clips to match the audio; additionally Kelly and I are going to attempt to duplicate some of the sharp sounds and layer them in to every scene change.

Stolen from Ms Fosters twitter the short clip below does not only empower women(!!!) but it also uses it's sound to guide the footage. (Though it seems.) Abruptly swishing through different scenes every time the beat of the music differs and changes. I would very much like to make our video turn out so well considering the integration  of the audio and the footage.