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.