Final Film

Here is the final edit for our opening scene.

Evaluation Question No. 7

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

Evaluation Question No. 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

We have learnt many things about technologies through making mistakes and learning from them and mainly just experimenting with new techniques and perfecting them. One of the most obvious pieces of technology that we are now much more experienced and familiar with using is the camera, we now feel much more comfortable with the technical sides of controlling aperture and so on.

Secondly the tripod, this is obviously a much simpler piece of equipment however after repeated use we became more efficient and saved a lot of time. also due to using a much better quality tripod than the one we had used previously in our preliminary task we were able to achieve much nicer and smoother panning shots.

We have previously used the slider in our preliminary task, however when it came to creating our final opening scene we had our past experiences to learn from, meaning that we were able capture much more smooth and appropriate shots using the slider.

One of the most notable shots from our opening scene was when we used the crane. We were very appreciative to be able to have access to such equipment. it was also the piece of equipment  that was the most fun to use, as we had not previously had experience using alternative pieces of equipment such as the crane. Without its aid we would not have been able to capture the shot we did, and our film would not be the same.

Finally, the last piece of equipment we used was the steady cam, this enabled us to get the fast paced shots of the chase scene from within the barn. When using the steady cam for the first time capturing our test footage we had originally struggled with how to balance it and the camera properly. Thankfully we made these mistakes early on and learnt from them so this did not effect our final film.

Evaluation Question No. 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

Evaluation Question No. 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Evaluation Question No. 3

What type of media institution would distribute your media product and why?

Distribution companies help a film to get exposure, it is there job to deal with advertisement, as well as physically distributing the film to theatres. Traditional methods include; posters, billboards and newspaper adverts. Whereas with the growing popularity of using social networking sites, it is much more common to advertise films through the likes of Facebook and Twitter. This method is also much cheaper, and easier to get the attention of the target audience.

Often, weather or not a film is successful in the box office or on DVD release is down to the distribution company. more recently is easier to distribute film digitally as this cuts costs rather than sending a physical reel of film to each theatre.

Here are a couple of distribution companies that would be likely to distribute our film;

New Line Cinema is an american film studio, founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne as a film distributor later becoming an independent film studio. it became a subsidiary of Time Warner in 1996 and was merged with Warner Bros. in 2008. New Line Cinema has produced films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street.

New Line Cinema is not a suitable company to distribute our film as they focus much on medium, to large sized budgets. However they do distribute films with a similar genre to our movie, we would need a company that focuses more on independent films, and sized budgets.

Working Title Films is a British film production company, based in London. The company was founded by Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe in 1983. It produces feature films and several television productions. Working Title Films has produced films such as; Long Time Dead, My Little Eye and Shaun of the Dead.

I think that Working Title Films would be the obvious choice to distribute our film as they are based in London, they specialize in small British independent films with themes of horror.

Evaluation Question No. 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

 

Evaluation no.2 from mediapuzzles

Evaluation Question No. 1

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?  

Filming Finished/Changes and problems

Finally all of our filming is now complete and we shall now begin editing, however due to incidents out of our control some of our original ideas have been made to change for example some actors were not available when we were filming witch led to changing the script, originally there were going to be three teenager in our opening scene and there are only two.

Also we had not originally planned to film in the snow, this not only made it harder to film because of risk to actors and equipment but also put us under pressure to film all outdoor shots in one day to escape the chance of the snow melting ruining continuity for our opening scene.

One other problem that occurred that led to a change of original plans was, as you can see in our story board we had planned to use an old television as one of the first shots, however we could not find a TV that we would be able to use. We had already filmed in front of green screen to prepare for what would have been a news report, since our change of plans we have just used the audio from that footage and filmed a car radio.

These problems did not effect the quality of our film drastically, however it was a shame to not have it 100% how we have planned. Luckily our planning in pre production helped us to manage out time keeping and organisation. Now we shall begin to edit our final pieces of footage.

Typography

When we chose what font to use in our opening scene for our credits, we thought that it was very important that we got the people on whom our film would be aimed at to give their honest opinion. To do this we chose six different fonts from the horror section that we personally liked from a website called www.dafont.com and then we organised a survey for twenty people to vote for witch one they preferred; here are our results.

There was a clear lead of votes for the font "No Fear" for this reason this shall be the font we use in our final opening scene.

Problems With Filming

We have now filmed a large part of our opening scene, however we have come across many problems firstly with sound, as the day we filmed on was very windy, the external microphone we used picked up a lot of noise from the wind even with the use of a wind shield  When reviewing the film we had we noticed we had made a mistake with framing as when it came to trying to edit some characters were not completely in shot, witch obviously was a big problem. Also some hand held shots were quite shaky when watching them back on the computer. Then when the snow that was previously there had now melted so we could not continue filming as this would ruin the continuity editing. It is clear that we are going to have to film again.

However we have learnt from this as we now have a boom pole to help assist with recording audio, also we are now aware of framing properly also we will use a steady cam for the handheld shots, so when we next film we hopefully will have some footage we can work with and that works well.

Problem No. 1 (Audio)

Problem No. 2 (Framing and Shakiness)

Costumes

For our opening scene we have two main characters who are both teenagers and they shall be wearing ordinary casual clothes that will be appropriate for the weather. As this will suit the role that they will be playing, however it is vital that they wear the same clothes on different days of filming to eliminate any risk of continuity errors.



The other characters in our opening scene will require actual costumes; for the Nazi Zombies we have got some World War 2 style German uniforms, we shall deliberately make them dirty and use flour to help make the actors look pale in order for them to resemble zombies and to make them look as realistic as possible. we shall also require our actors playing the role of a Zombie to wear black boots to also help maintain a military look.

Lighting

Lighting is very important for creating a certain atmosphere especially in the genre of horror, we are also using green screen for the first shot in the opening scene where we hope to capture a ''news broadcast" and then be able to put this onto an old television, we will need the lighting for this so that no creases show up on the green screen.

We had originally planned to film at night for a small part of filming, as shown in our story board however it became clear that we did not have the ability to power the lights in our chosen location for filming. So, to compromise we came up with the idea of adding colour correction to the footage.

Call Sheet

AS Media Call Sheet 1 by

AS Media Call Sheet 2 by

Risk Assessment

When planning what shots were going to be required, we felt that it may be possible that we will be at risk, and thought we would very much benefit from planning ahead, so when filming we can be cautious of any possible hazards and prevent anything going wrong for the this reason we have created this risk assessment.

Risk Assessment by

Casting

When choosing people to play the roles of our characters in our opening scene we took into account two main priority's; their acting ability and whether or not they will be reliable, such as actually being able to take time aside to help us with our filming. After taking these two considerations into account we felt it would be best to cast people who lived in the village where we will be filming and use the more talented actors for the leading roles and the less talented as extras e.g. zombies.

Guy Levin - Dewey

James Smith - Brennan

Charlie Goodman - Markus

Matthew Rose - Broadcaster 

Jack Jones - Nazi Zombie #1

Connor Triggs - Nazi Zombie #2

David Lee - Nazi Zombie #3

Shot List

On the day of filming we do not want to miss out any vital shots, so to accompany the story board we created a shot list to make sure we capture every single shot required this will help us keep track if anything needs re-shooting, if possible we may film extra shots if we happen to change our mind about certain scenes and this will also give us more material to edit.

AS Media Reshoot List by

Permission Slip

As the area we have scouted to film is private property, owned by a family member of a friend we have created a permission slip for them to sign. Leaving them the option to deny or grant us permission to film on their property.

Storyboard

Storyboard by

Ident

When tasked with creating an ident for our opening scene we were asked for it to fit in with the genre if our film, as our film is a horror and when watching horror films people's pulses have a tendency to rise, for this reason we decided to name our production company, "Pulse Films" after this.

For the soundtrack for our ident we used soundtrack pro, also to create the pulsing sound effect. In order to create the actual visual effects we used a programme called "Adobe After Effects" as we were new to this programme we found a helpful tutorial of a website called "videocopilot.net"

Script

After perfecting a rough idea for our story board we have now completed a script for our three actors and and ourselves to assist directing also so the actors understand any stage directions and of course know their lines. the script can be accessed below by simply scrolling down.

AS Media Script by

Test Footage

This very short piece of test footage demonstrates how we plan to incorporate the use of a steadycam in a heated chase scene. As you can see lighting is going to be an issue and may have to look into booking out some lights, however we are both very pleased with the effect of this tracking shot.

Nazi Zombie Location Scouting

We have found a location who belongs to a relative of a friend and we were also given permission to take photographs around the location. We feel that this site matches our needs for certain shots perfectly and look forward to start shooting some test footage.

New Storyboard

After changing our idea and creating a new film pitch we have now also began to create a storyboard for our new idea.

Second Film Pitch

Since changing our idea due to inconvenience of locations we have chosen a new genre of horror, as one of our previous main inspirations for our opening scene was Zombieland we have chosen to create an opening scene based around the sub genre Nazi Zombies.

Zombie film pitch from mediapuzzles

Change of Genre

Since location scouting for possible sites to start shooting, we came across a problem; As many crime/thrillers are set primarily in either towns or cities it would be nearly impossible to organize opportunities for when we would both be free to travel long distances to these locations with large amounts of equipment and props. Since we live in the countryside we have decided to change our initial idea altogether to the genre of horror, focussed around the sub genre of Nazi Zombies.

Music/Soundtrack

As our opening scene is based massively around slow motion and the opening credits, music is going to be a big part of the opening sequence accompanying the visuals. Together we have created two initial ideas for our opening, both can be found below, one based massively on the Snatch soundtrack and another more rock genre influenced. Both of these were created using loops in GarageBand.
Sample 1

Sample 2

Storyboard

since my last post expressing our initial ideas we have now developed an idea into the form of a story boar. A lot of the inspiration comes from the director Guy Richie with films such as RocknRolla and Snatch, however we plan to portray the opening scene in the style of Ruben Fleischer's Zombieland with many slow motion action scenes.

Film Pitch

After evaluating many film opening sequences we have began to create an idea for a final opening scene, our ideas are found in the powerpoint below.

 

Film pitch from mediapuzzles