The final product

Evaluation

Jess media evaluation

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Audience Feedback

Audience Feedback

The whole of our group posted our opening to our thriller on facebook so that friends could have a look at what we had been working on and give some creative criticism as to what they thought was good and bad.Some of the critisism we gotthe music is nice and atmospheric and combined with the long lingering shots of the trees and the way the camera pans round, it adds an eerie element of suspense. but your names don't have capital letters. We all got pretty much the same feeback as we all have the same friends on facebook, but here was a printscreen from serena's facebook with feedback.


The sound was commented on in every comment, and how they liked the music, and also that they liked the whispers that came out of the locket.

Some feedback hannah got off her facebook:

 i think it's a great opening, as it doesn't have to much of a story and leaves the viewer engaged. I like the suspense of the pans, but feel they do slightly drag on. I love the music as it adds to the suspense, and i love the title at the end 

 I loved the music - really chilling! And the whispering was great, I have to agree :) I think this is a really cool start!! 

Love the timing of the music and the whispering. Really builds up the suspense! Love it!

Some feedback i got off my facebook:

its really good.

Love the music in the background, really makes the thriller sound eeary.

I really like the font. really creative.

choosing the font

Our group has chose a font called crappy dan. This is because it seem's chillike wich fits in with our idea, and it also has a scary edge about it.  it also not too cliche like some of the fonts we looked at. It is also easy to read wich is important to the veiwer, because  it is important people can read the credits in an opening or it wont be successful.
here is what the font will look like:

Choosing the name

A few weeks ago we had a group discussion about the name of our movie. We had to keep in mind any themes we have and what exactly our story is baout. We then thought of words that wouuld realte to this such as woods, dark eary and looked them up on an online thesauras to find deeper meanings or words. We ended up with, "Broken Whispers" and "The Unheard".

We felt The Unheard has a  more effective scarier sound too it, without giving too much of the plot away, it was more mysterious and the use of the word "the" makes it sound more effective and punchy, like in similar themed films such as "the ring" or "the dark knight", it therefore fits in nicely with films of a similar genre.Wedecided that broken whispers was a bit boring, not effective enough, and doesnt fit the genre. It was a good starting point to build on, but sounds too cliche.

Addition Scene

Our group added on an additional scene to our movie of Callum (the actors) mum ringing him to find out where he is because she had not heard from him. We decided to do this scene because it could have maybe made our film a bit more interesting. We added it into our movie to see how it looked. We then decided when watching it that we did not like it in the film so we took it out. We decided to not add in the phone scene because the sound was all crackly.

Choosing Music

Our group looked at non copyright tracks that would be suitable for our movie, that we could download for free and would not be illegal. We wanted something spooky sounding to fit in with the thriller we were making. We listened to a few tracks and decided on one song that fitted in, and put it as the backing track for our movie and it plays through out the whole thing.

Rough Cut After Initial Filming

We did our initial filming, in the right location, trying to get it as perfect as possible, we filmed on a rainy day to make it look gloomy and scary. We found a clearing in a really densely forested area and shot between 3 to 5 to give a darker lighting. We made sure we filmed it as many different angles using different shot lengths so we could come back and see what worked best. We then edited the shots roughly together and put some sounds on top to give an idea of what we want it to look like. We also added in a blinking bit, but it looked wrong and not like blinking at all. After reviewing it we want to make some small changes, so we are going to reshoot the following weekend, we want to change:


- more sound, as the actor is totally mute.


- one shot has bad framing at one point, the actors head is not fully in the frame, so we will reshoot this

- film a few additonal shots to lengthen the piece, perhaps of the actor running through the trees


- we want to add a shot in, a mid shot of the actor lying down, to go between the long shot fo the tree's and the close up of the face, so it flows better.

- change the over the shoulder shot to a point of view shot, so it looks more natural

- film a few additonal shots to lengthen the piece, perhaps of the actor running through the trees

- we are also adding in another actor just to stand within the tree's to give a scary look

This will help our group have a better understanding of how to improve our filming, although we liked the first one, we did need to make some changes, so re-filming will give us the oppertuntuity to do this.

New Drafted Storyboard

This is the new storyboard we are going to use for when we reshoot. Its not much different ot the old one, but has a few new additions and ideas for the reshoot, this way we know exactly what we are doing when we reshoot and we will stick to it.

Props

Here are a few props we decided to use in the opening.

Location Shots

We have decided to film the opening of our film at black park, as it is densley forested and to give the feeling of isolation , this will make it look scary and bleak. When we filmed, it was a rainy day, this made it look even gloomier to back up the scary gloomy feel. My main role was to take my camera and take a few shots at the exact location we are going to film.

This was an important step in deciding where to film, we knew we wanted an isolated densely forested area that was away most people, so it took us a bit of time to find the exact area.

Our Brainstorm

This is our brainstorm deciding on a sub or a hybrid genre for the thriller. We watched examples of a few ideas we like to help us come to a conclusion. We worked together as a group to come up with this mind map discussing the different variations of the thriller genre, then to choose one. 

Final Schedule

As a group we decided on our final schedule. We should stick to this unless the weather is really bad and we will have to re-schedule.


14th - Talk to actors/ actresses about time they have free
15th - Plan out a plan of the day
16th - Start going through the storyboard with actors and actresses
17th- Try out some shots at home c.u, m.s, etc.
20th - Meet up with actors/ actresses and try out some shots
21st - Film the nights scene
22nd - Film the day scene
23rd - Edit and delete unuseful material
24th - Edit
25th - Do some reshoots
27th - Do final reshoots and editing ready for monday morning


I have posted this blog because bad weather and ILP days so we have become behind with shooting. As the holidays are coming up soon it will be a perfect time to catch up and get our shooting out of the way so we are up to date.

shooting schedule

As a group we come up with a new shooting schedule. We all compared our free's and come up with this...

January
Tuesday 25th January - In the media lesson go and check out the woods opposite school and find a decent well covered area to film.

Wednesday 26th january- Finish off filming if neccasary

Friday 28th - Show Mr Ford and Mr Michie our opening 15 seconds and the sequence (un-edited) to see if we have kept in the 180 degree rule

Monday 31th January - depending on Sir's view on our sequence either find time to re-shoot or get on with some editing.

February

Tuesday 1st February- Editing or reshooting

Wednesday 2nd February- Editing or reshooting

Friday 4th February- Show sir editing so far or reshoot work

Tuesday 8th February - Editing, Do questionaire and print out for audience to fill in

Wednesday 9th February- Editing and set up with sir if we can show our work for a week on friday

Anamatic - Draft 1

textual analysis

  
This was quite a good font but as a group we decided it did not fit in with our childish immature theme, but the scary side to it would have looked quite good.

As this font only came in caps lock, we decided that it would be too in your face and it was not the best for our film, although we did like the background to this font.

This is our chosen font as it is childlike and fits with our film because be portrayed to be very sadistic given the music portraying a hate feeling or a revenge feeling.

This text seemed a little too innocent for the begging of our film. The childlike writing was good for fitting with our film but it did not have a scary side to it.


Looking at different fonts helped me because i had to decide on a font for our film, so researching different fonts helped us see what was suitable for our film. For example we could not have a font like kristen is to feminine for a thriller. We decided to go with a different font than imagend after putting the font with music and after experimenting.

Planning

Schedule for filming-
November
24th-Individual planning
25th-Show initial ideas
26th-Blog ideas
27th-Blog ideas
28th-Day off
29th-Lesson
30th-Lesson
December
1st-Put pictures of props on blog
2nd -Day off
3rd-Lesson-Talk about filming etc
4th-Day off
5th-Blog
6th-Lesson
7th-Lesson- look at storyboard make final adjustmnets , scan it to computer
8th-Set up filming
9th-Day off
10th-Get camera and start setting up
11th-Film at 8-9am at black park
12th-Day off
13th-Lesson
14th-Lesson- look @ footage
15th-Blog wat we did
16th-Day off
17th- Make sure blogging is complete
18th and onwards - Christmas Holidays after we return we will edit and put in the soundtrack to the footagge and make sure it is good enough to be presented to examiners.

Storyboard of our idea

This was an establishing long shot showing the setting at the beginning of our animatic.

The camera then zooms into the location, showing the locket on the floor.

The next scene is a long shot of luke finding the locket on the floor and picking it up. The camera from behind at a high shot.

The camera then turns to the side of him, still at a high angle so we can see his body language picking up the locket.

The camera then went to over the shoulder. This shows the locket in luke's hand clearly open, and in perfect focus, whereas luke's head is not in focus. This automatically makes you focus on the locket.

The camera then goes to a low angle looking up at luke, so we can see his reaction when he opens the locket.

The camera zooms into luke's face (close up) to make his reaction more clear to the viewer.

It then zooms into and establishing extreme close up to show the inside of the locket again to show an extreme close up of the person inside the locket.

It then shows a long shot of the locket on the floor, with luke backing away from it with a shocked expression. The camera in the same angle as what he is.

It then shows the locket dropped on the floor ( establishing extreme close up) in the leaves.

It then shows an extreme long shot of luke running away with a shocked expression.

Me and luke decided to take pictures as a rough idea of what our animatic is going to look like. We have taken various shot's with various scene's so when we make our animatic we know exactly what were doing and we are organized. 

Continuity Task

planning for continuity task

This is our storyboard for what we would be filming for the continuity task. Before we mapped it out we went to look at our setting to make sure we could film there, that it wasnt too busy and finally that there were classrooms free so that we could film inside them for a number of our shots.
In our continuity task we had to use he following checklist:
-Shot reverse shot
-Two shot
-DON'T BREAK THE 180' ANGLE !
-Walking through a door
-Sitting down
-Walkning out the door

Our first lot of filming we did was good and we acted well and the camera was steady and smooth as we tracked and panned, however we had a squeaky tripod which thorugh the sound off a bit, then when we came to edit our work we found out we had broken the 180' rule , so we had to start again and start from scratch since when we went back to filming the rooms we initially thought of using were being used and had classes taking place. We then kept to the same storyboard but worked around the mishap. We managed to get all the shots perfectly with a few dodgy camera work with a slight bump here and there, however we didnt have enough time to perfect the shots and edit them accuratley.

As this was just a task to get us into the real thing with less mistakes i think we did okay, we now know what to do and what not to do and leave us with plenty of time to correct mistakes if neccasry and to put in our soundtrack and edit more smoothly

This is going to help me because i now know what exactly i will be doing and i will be organized