So many things! To start of with, I couldn't even name half of the shots I have used in my film back then, for example the panning shot, I would have just thought it was turning the camera. I have learnt how vital the number of different shots and angles in a film are, but more importantly that you should never use the same shot for more than 5 seconds, as the audience will then get bored and not find it as interesting. This is extremely important in horror / action films as you want to create suspense and not boredom.
Another important issue I have found since the prelim task is how important the cast is in comparison to who you want to view this film. For example, if you want an action film you do not normally want to see a pensioner walking to the tills in a supermarket, you want pure action! We have used this in our film by selecting a young blonde female for the male gaze, the teenage audience and the female audience because of romance we brought into it by her going to meet her boyfreind. More importantly, we chose a female to play the main protagonist & villain to add drama and shock in our film, as this is usually the scream queen and not the killer.
A huge issue we have had to tackle in our full product is editing, which we did very little of in our prelim task. For our main product we had to edit the sound, lightining issue, adding a blue filter, a voiceover, cutting shots, adding shots, and much more!
I have feel I have learnt a huge amount since looking back at the prelim task and the things listed above are just a number of them!
Well to start off with, the filming equipment we used was new to our group, which included the Camera, Tripod and Boom Microphone, so we had to play around we these before we could start filming anything. Once we started the actual filming, we realised that it was important to keep the Boom Microphone close to the cast, but not in shot, as it would be very difficult to hear the audio otherwise.
Another problem on our first night of shooting was the camera, due to the light difficulties and no place to plug in an elecrtic lamp. Even with the night filter on, we still didnt get the quality we needed so had to reshoot. On our reshoot we found it much easier doing it in the day, then using other technoligy to edit it to make it look darker, but more importantly the blue filter.
For editing all of our footage, we used the programme IMovie, which we found very difficult to use at the start but then got used to it the more often we used it. By the end of our film we were managing quite complicated things on IMovie, such as balancing the light quality to put on a blue filter but not ruining the quality of our film, and also adjusting the sound so we got the right pitch of sound for whenever one of our cast was speaking.
Throughout this coursework task, another programme we have used is blogger, to keep an updated blog on the events which have taken place in order to complete this coursework to a standard at which we are happy. We have learnt many things on blogger during the way, such as learning how to change the time setting so that our followers didnt get popups at 3 am, to embedding video clips and hyperlinks through texts, which enhance the level of ICT used on the blog.
Another programme I have used when I have not been using IMovie is Windows Movie Maker, which is identical to IMovie, but on my computer at home runs faster than IMovie. The other benefit of using Windows Movie Maker is because uploading videos and images is a lot faster, so I have used this for different things such as short films to location scouting.
We decided that we wanted the audience for our film to be a teenage one, due to the popular demand for films now at our age range, but we did not limit our audience there. We tried to get our film to appeal to as many different catagories of people as we could, for example, we had the main protagonist as a blonde young female, which appeals to the male gaze, but also to appeal to the female gaze we added the idea of romance, with the main protagonist wanting to meet her boyfreind to tell him something. Also to appeal to a young audience we used a teenage cast instead of an older cast, but an older generation might also enjoy watching this film because of the genre, not because of the cast.
We attracted our audience in many different ways. The first, and most appealing to us was Youtube. This is because of how widely spread the audience on here is, and how active and busy the website is. It is the largest video website currently on the internet.
Our second idea was to put our video on Facebook, which is currently the largest social networking site available, but more importantly, together in our group we have over 500 active freinds on the website, most of whome will be happy to comment and watch our film, which will in return give us great audience feedback.
Well to start off with, we would set our hopes high, which a lot of films do, and aim for some of the biggest distributers. Due to the biggest film industry being in America, thats where any film would love to be shown, as thats where it would be best known. The first thought would be the Big 6 in America, which comprises of 20th Century Fox,Warner Bro's., Paramount, Columbia, Universal and Walt Disney. To be linked with any of these Big 6 would then give you the best possible links with the biggest distributers.
For example with Universal, if you had a contract with them then they would put you in touch with Studio Canal, which is the largest distributer for films across Europe. This would then largely help your film in being recognized as it would be distributed in the two largest film continents.
With Columbia, their distributer is Sony Pictures, which would also be very good as it would link you with the rest of Sony.
However, this would just be what we hope for, and not be being realistic. In looking for a film distributer, you would think of looking for a good Indie company based in the country you set your film, for example for my film it would be England. I would then go into detail about each company, then narrow down my search by looking at a genre distributer, for example Hammer Film Productions, which specialises in Horror films. The reason that this company would be very good for my film would be due to the specific genre in horror, which I have already mentioned and because they would know more about this than any broad distributers, as broad ones do not have specialities.
There is a large variety of Film Distributers for every type of genre you can think of, but the problem is finding the perfect one for your film, as it is hard to persuade a company to distribute for you, as it is a huge business.
With our production, we decided to use a countertypical villain in it, which is of course the blonde teenage girl. The reason we have gone against the norm is due to the shock that the audience will recieve when they suspect that the girl has been killed by the stalker, but then infact kills the stalkers.
An example where this has been used is in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but instead of the main protagonist killing the vampires, she is the vampire. The reason that Buffy the Vampire Slayer became so popular was because something like this hadn't been seen before, as with Twilight, which again links to our film with the idea of vampires.
The video below shows parts of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but also shows that this particular social group which is 18-32 year old blonde girls has an appeal on a male audience which is known as the male gaze. We incorportated this idea into our film by choosing a blonde lead character over a brunnette.
The reason that we felt that our main protagonist should not be linked to any steriotypical youth culture of today is because it would ruin the idea of our genre, which is gothic horror. This is because you do not expect the main protagonist in a gothic horror to be drinking, smoking and socialising with freinds much.
The clothing is also very important when linking to social groups. In a film when trying to appeal to a male gaze, you do not expect the main protagonist, if female, to be wearing, for example some trousers, you would be expecting her to be wearing a skirt and a low cut top. Also the colour of the clothing can play a large part in the genre, for example in a Rom-Com you would expect some bright colours, whereas in a gothic horror you would expect dark blue / black.
To start of with, the setting in any horror film is crucial, as this plays a large part in why the victim can't escape from the killer. Over time, there have been many different settings which make the victim feel isolated, for example in Shrooms, the setting is some Irish woods, which is an isolated place and also a stereotypical place for a murder in a lot of films. The reason that this particular setting was probably chosen was due to the title, Shrooms, which links to magic mushrooms which then links to the woods. As our film opening is also based in the woods, we looked at why this setting is so relevant to horror films, and the conclusions we came up with was that it is a dark, isolated lonely place, that you don't often visit at night.
Another film setting we looked at because of its isolated setting was Creep, as it is situated on a railway line at night, which is stereotyped as a dangerous place, due to the accidental deaths because of trains. In this film however, they have turned the stereotype of dangerous trains into a good thing, because it would mean civilization, which the main protagonist is looking for, due to being chased by a creature.
Another key trend a lot of films use it to show in some way where their film is meant to be based, so that you can get a clearer idea on how people there might speak. For example, at the start of Bride Of Chucky, you see an American flag over the top of a building, which anchors the audience view that it is either set in America, otherwise it is an American based building. With our film, we used a clear Yorkshire accent and set it in the forest to signify that it is based in England.
For our cast, we chose to go against the common stereotype of having a male killer, instead we had a female killer, although we changed it by having her being stalked by a male victim, which links back to some common stereotypes. The key change we made was that instead of her being killed by the stalker, she actually killed him. A television program which has the same sort of scenario is Buffy The Vampire Slayer, where the girl is the hero, but kills the vampires. We followed this counter-type for ours to shock the audience, as they would expect a blonde female to be killed, and not to be the killer.
In our film we also decided to include a voiceover to describe the narrative, as it can be quite confusing, so we did this to anchor down the preferred reading of the film.
For our production titles, we decided to use the idea that originated from Halloween, which is to make the titles glow red, which can signify danger. Here is an example of a video created to show how ours looks compared to the original Halloween.
