Evaluation Task 7

                            VS

When we first edited our preliminary task, it was the first time that we used Adobe Premiere Elements which meant that our editing wasn't the best that it could have been, and that the editing was very basic. The shots were edited very quickly and the shots of me and Jess talking end very quickly as we wasn't used to using this software. We didn't use very many camera shots, we only used mid shots, long shots, over the shoulder shots and the 180 degree rule. Looking back at our preliminary task now, I can pick out lots of things that could have been improved on, lukcily when it came to editing our main task, we had had alot more practise of using Adobe Premiere Elements so we knew more of what we were doing. 

Evaluation Task 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
In the time that I have been using editing software I have came across many different softwares. At first I didn't have a clue how to use Adobe Premiere Elements, but after practising to use it became a lot more easier to use as I found my way around it and found everything that we needed to make our main task as good as We could. 
We had a few technical difficulties when editing our film together but then after a while we found a way around it and found out how to make our problems better. 
One of the other pieces of equipment that we had to get used to using was the camera we would be using. At first this was also difficult but after filming a few clips we figured out how to get the sound going and got the hang of using it.When filming our clips we always had to consider where to place the camera, for example, for the clip of the clown jumping up the kitchen window we had to make sure that the camera wasn't visible one bit, this was difficult as you could see it in the reflection but in the end we figured it out as got it in the right position we needed to out it in so you couldn't see it. 
Whilst editing our final task, I developed many skills when using Adobe Premiere Elements. I learnt how to add in music and change the volume to make it higher and lower, and how to make it fade in and out. I also learnt how to speed the clips and slow them down, I learnt my skills with very little help so I think the editing of the final clip was good considering that we learnt how to use Adobe Premiere Elements from scratch. I think I could still improve on my editing but I still think it has improved a lot from the first thing I edited on the software.

Evaluation Task 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

Music and Sound
We played a creepy soundtrack throughout the majority of our opening titles, this would then give the audience a clue that it is going to be a horror film and that something bad is going to happen. To build the tension up we also included creepy music to show that something was going to happen to the woman that was home alone. We also included the laugh of the clown to show that he is out to cause danger to people and to show he is getting close and closer. We decided to use music to build up tension because then the audience would then want to watch to find our what happens to the innocent woman.

Similarities to other movies 
We decided to link parts of our movies to other clips that we liked in movies that created a creepy atmosphere. We liked the part in Scream when they focus on the sharp kitchen knife to make it seem more scary, so we used a similar clip in our film, when we filmed the woman putting the kitchen knife back into the stand, to make people get the idea that something bad will happen. We also liked the idea of the scenes in IT when the balloons pop in peoples faces so we used this idea in ours too, we just didn't use fake blood in the balloons because we figured out that it would have took us too long to get the correct shot of it.

Genre Conventions
We use a lot of genre conventions in our film. But the main one is focusing on Trunco the clown, as he is the main evil character and we want people to know that he is dangerous and is our to cause harm. We used the idea of a clown as the main character as clowns are usually seen as innocent and friendly, but our clown is completely different to that stereotype so that's what makes our film so interesting and this would be a good selling point to our film as our audience would want to find out why the clown has such a big aim to go out and kill.

Evaluation Task 4

Questionnaire
We did a questionnaire in our groups at the beginning of our main task to research into what type of horrors people enjoyed the most and what sort of age group we should aim our film too. On the left is the results that we got back from our questionnaire. From these results we then developed our plan for our horror and that's how we came up with our idea.

 

Gender and Age Rating
We decided that we would aim our film at both genders, but we discussed that it would be watched more by men because women are usually put off of horror films because of the gore and jumpy parts. Our age rating for our film is 15+ so the people watching our film would be 15 and over. We discussed that it should be 15+ because it doesn't have that much gore in it, its just mainly jumpy bits, and this film would attract mainly teenagers. You find these days that teenagers mainly like to watch horrors together whilst they're having sleepovers with their friends or at the cinemas. Also most of the people that took our questionnaire were in the age rand of 16-18 so we figured it would be mainly popular with this age range.

Evaluation Task 3

Evalution Task 2



In our opening titles we tried to make our clown, Trunco, quite similar to the clown, Pennywise in the film IT as we thought that he came across as a very threatening, scary character, and thats how we wanted our clown to come across as we wanted our film to be as scary as we could make it. The difference between Trunco and Pennywise is that Pennywise looks much more scary than Trunco, and that's simply because we didn't have the skills and makeup to make Joe look that scary and creepy, but we still based the look of Trunco around Pennywise and tried to make him look quite similar. 
There is also a few differences between Trunco and Pennywise. One of these differences is that in our film, Trunco kills mainly older people and goes for them whereas in the film IT Pennywise captures and kills little kids. 
Pennywise is often recognised by playing clown music or doing his clown laugh when he's around. We thought this was very effective and included this into our film, but instead of playing the music or laugh when the clown is around, we played it when the clown had done his damage to show that he has been there to cause harm to everyone and that he has left his mark there. 
We decided to do a film based around an evil clown character as clowns are usually seen as innocent and something that is associated with children as they are usually very friendly. That's why we chose to use a clown as our main character as it goes against the stereotypes and makes it alot more creepier as clowns are supposed to be nice, not going around killing people for no reason. 

Evaluation Task 1

We chose the title 'Dead Funny' for our opening titles as we thought it had a ring to it. We thought it sounded good using an oxy-moron as the words dead and funny aren't usually associated with each other. Also, we thought this would have a connection to the plot of our film as there is a lot of death involved, and the clown's signature noise after he's killed someone in the film is a freaky laugh. Laughing is usually associated with the word 'funny' so that's how we linked these words together.

The setting and location for our opening titles was filmed in Joe's house. We all agreed that this would be a good location for our opening titles as the street that Joe lives down gets very dark at night and also his kitchen had a big window with a view of the outside so it was good for the shot of the clown standing in the window. Also the lighting in Joe's house and street turned out better for our opening titles as it made it seem eerie and mysterious.

For the clowns costume, we ordered the creepiest one we could find, simply to make it that little bit more scary for the audience to watch. We decided to use only a few props for the opening titles so it was more focused on the props that we used. The props we included were;

• A red balloon- we chose to use the colour red as it represents danger and it also the colour of blood so it would have given the audience a bit of a clue to what might happen.
• Red fairy liquid- to represent blood when it was being poured onto the knife. We wasn't trying to make it look like actual blood, we just wanted to make it seem creepier and give the audience more of a clue that our opening titles was a horror.
• A sharp kitchen knife- to pour the red fairy liquid on when the woman was about to wash up and to do a close up on when the woman was putting it away after washing it up.

For our camerawork we used quite a lot of close ups just for the fact that it made the tension build up and make it more intense. We also used a few long shots to show the setting of where our opening titles was and to show that the woman was vulnerable as she was on her own. We decided that for our editing we was going to use very quick shots to show that the woman was getting more freaked out as the time went along.
 

Our Opening Titles

Raw Footage

Filming Footage

This is a short video clip of Joe explaining about the clip we was filming at the time of him filming this video.

History of Horror

I did some research into how horror has changed over time and compared out films, to how new films are these days.

Horror films in the silent era



From this video clip, you can see how much horror films have changed since the late 1800's. Horror films then, were not really as scary as these days as you can see from this video. Horror movies in the silent era were, in my opinion, not scary at all as there is no noises to freak you out or make you on edge. This video just shows how important sound is in horror movies as it takes the whole element of horror out of it.



Horror films in the 1920s

From this picture you can see that since the 1800s, the horror films started to change a lot, as instead of having unrealistic characters that make it not scary at all, they started to use scarier costumes that actually add a sense of horror to the films.










When horror films started to get scary





 

In the late 1920s horror films started to get creepier and scare people more, from this clip of dracula, you can see how much films had changed from the 1800s. The films still werent as scary as films these days but they were starting to work up to that.

The late 1900s



This trailer of 'Dead Alive' shows how much the idea of horror changed, horrors these days are much much more scarier than what they used to be, they are a lot more gorey and scary for people that watch them. From this research I have learnt how important sound is in horror films and that it takes a lot more gore to make a horror film seem more scary. This has helped me in my main task because now I know what to inlcude to make our opening titles are scary as possible.  

Our Titles

 




Too make our film title we used premeire elements, as thats what we are making our film on and its better to use as its a good editing software and is easy to use.





This is our finished film title, we decided to use fair ground type writing as it would fit into our theme of the scary clown. We liked this font the best as it stood out to us more. We used the deep red colour for the font as it represents blood, and this is what our film will be including, because of the clown that goes around killing innocent people.

Editing Our Opening Titles

 

 

On this clip we made the time shorter to make the fairy liquid move quicker
 on the knife so it looked better, if we didn't make this clip shorter
 it wouldn't have looked as good.

These are some pictures what were taken of us of evidence of us editing
our horror film opening.

Sound Effects

Here is evidence of our sound that we used in our horror film opening. We got the sounds off of a royalty free website.

Talking about Horror

Here is a short video that basically talks about the horror genre and how horror movies are edited and tweeked to make 10x more scary. It talks about the types of camera angles that are mostly used in horror movies to make it creepier. I watched this and got inspiration for my horror film opening to see how I could use these camera angles in my opening titles to make it as scary as I can.

Our Production Logo

We chose to do our logo like this as we thought it fit in with the name of the production company's name. We chose to name the production company 'Sadistic Studios' because it sounds good because of the alliteration, and you would be able to tell that it would be a horror film as the word sadistic is usually related to horror as its another word for 'scary' and this is what we want our film to be like.

Filming our opening titles



 This was the first time we filmed, but we got half way through and the camera battery died, but luckily we learnt from this and improved our ideas as when we was watching all the clips back most of them was bad and could've been improved.

  

 

This was the next time we filmed, we felt alot more prepared and confident with filming and our filming went really well in my opinion.

 

 

 We started off filming outside as we needed it to be getting dark when filming the first scenes because if it was pitch black the shots didnt turn our very well (as we found out when watching our first attempts of filming).

 

 

 This was when we was doing the shots of me washing up inside, I really liked this shot as it looked really effective and once we've edited all of our clips together it will look even better.

 

 

Joe and Jemma took it in turns to film my parts in the opening titles just to make sure we was all doing equal amounts of work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 We had to use a stick from a mop to wind the microphone around since we didnt have nothing else to use, but this worked out fine as our sound came out perfectly clear.

 

 

 

 This is the shot we filmed of me putting the knife back into the stand, we tried to include the sound into this to make it seem more creepy.

 

 

Costumes and Props

We had to change the props we were going to use as some of the things that we tried turned out too hard to do. Joe is starring as the clown and he is wearing a very freaky clown costume. This is the one we ordered as this was the freakiest one we could find.

The clown will be carrying a balloon, which he will leave outside he woman's house. We are going to use a red balloon as red is associated with blood and danger, and this is also what the clown represents. I will be playing the part of the woman, for my costume I will be wearing white to show my innocence and to show that I'm not bringing harm to anyone in the film. We decided not to fill the balloon with blood as it would have been tricky to do as we needed to fill the balloon with helium also to make it float. Instead of using blood we came up with another idea to get Joe (the clown) to sneak up on the woman (played by me) with knife in his hand. The woman is going to be looking at the balloon confused, as she doesn't know why it is there, and then the clown comes up behind her and pops the balloon suddenly, then woman screams and turns around to see the clown standing there behind her. Were using a knife for when the woman (played by me) is washing up at the beginning, we will be doing a close up shot of the knife and are going to try reflect the light onto the knife to make it seem danerous and give a hint that something bad is goin to happen. We are also using red fairy liquid to represent blood when we are pouing it on the knife. There will be the props we will be using to create out horror film opening.

 


 

Film Schedule

Analysis of Props

We analysed what props we could use in our horror film opening, and how we could make them look even more scary than usual. I analysed some of the props from the movie Scream and tried to see how they was made to look scarier than they would normally look. 



The knife the girl picks up in the beginning of the movie
 comes across scarier than usual because the light is
 being shined onto it to emphasise how dangerous and
 sharp it is.



They have made the knife seem alot more scarier than
usual by putting fake blood all over it to make it obvious that
scream has killed someone before that and is going to kill
the people in the scene.



When the phone rings the take out all of the background
 noise so you can just hear the phone ringing and it seems
 more intense when she picks up the phone as you don't
know who it could be.