Evaluation Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

Evaluation Question 3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback is the most significant part of making a product as the audience is who the product is being made for, so we had to ensure to  keep going back to our  target audience as this was a fundamental part of our project as we could then keep adapting our production to our target audience. 

At the beginning of our project we sent out a questionnaire to 10 people aged 15-20 this helped us collect information about their film interests and experiences. We had already decided a target audience before sending this questionnaire out. Our target audience are 15-20 year olds, both genders, students who enjoy horror films. This helped us choose what kind of horror film we would create. We decided that we wanted to create a docu-horror. We decided to use pie charts to show the results of our questionnaire as this made the results easier to understand.  They gave us some really good feedback on how to keep them interested in the film and to watch the trailer.

Producing a trailer for a film where we fit into the target audience category was exceptionally valuable as we could compare our trailer with professional ones that catch our eyes. This made the editing procedure easier for us as we knew what kind of things would work and what wouldn’t. 

Once we had created some draft trailers we decided to show them to a focus group, we thought that we should use people we trusted in this group as we wanted them to be very honest with us so that we could get the most information from them as possible, we also wanted them to act as though it was a professional trailer so that we could find out what would make them want to go and pay to see our film. They told us how they believed we could improve our trailer to make it successful. After the first meeting with our focus group we found that their feedback was very helpful and decided that we would carry on with this focus group throughout our production process. 

Statistics show that most 16-18 year olds have the highest amount of disposable income, as many of them have part-time jobs and don’t have to pay living expenses, such as, rent, food, bills etc. This helps us as my target audience falls into this category, which means that I can price my magazine at the higher end of magazines.

Evaluation Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary texts?

Evaluation Question 1: In what way does you media product use, develop or challenge the forms and conventions of real media products?

FINAL FILM POSTER

FINAL MAGAZINE FRONT COVER

FINAL TRAILER

This is our final trailer for our film Exodus, we listened to all the constructive criticism from our focus group and from our teacher and edited our films to what they told us would work.

Film Magazine Front Cover Drafts

This power point presentation includes the images of my draft magazine front covers. Everytime I added something that changed my front cover I saved it as another draft, this enabled me to keep track of my progress throughout making my magazine front cover.

Film Poster Drafts

This power point presentation includes the images of my draft posters. Everytime I added something that changed my poster I saved it as another draft, this enabled me to keep track of my progress throughout making my poster.

Making of my Film Magazine Cover

Making of my Film Poster

Magazine Front Cover Flat Plan

Film Poster Flat Plan

Film Magazine Deconstruction

Film Poster Deconstructions

Focus Group Comments for our Final Draft

We decided that we would show our Final trailer to our focus group to find out if there was any last little bits that we should change.

We gathered up the group and after showing the trailer asked them whether there was anything they thought should be changed.

They thought that the panorama clip and the clip of Chloe and Nusrat talking were too light, therefore, we added an effect onto the final clips that made them darker.

This was the only comment made about the Final Draft therefore this was the only change we made.

Final Draft Trailer

After creating our own draft trailers we all looked at each other’s and decided what we liked about each of them and what aspects we didn't want included in our trailer.

It was decided that my trailer was the most successful as a trailer because of such things like the transitions between clips, the arrangement of clips, as the narrative was still clear but it wasn't too linear.

We took onboard the comments made about the music and therefore added a track towards the end of the draft where the music started to build up, we believe this built up the suspense that was needed. We therefore chose this as our final draft trailer.

Final Storyboard

As a group we sat together and discussed the comments that we recieved from our teacher and decided that it would be a good idea to create a new storyboard to which we could film some new scenes and adapt our trailer to what our focus group and teacher have pointed out to us.

We moved some of the clips around as well as adding some newly filmed footage, we did this to make the narrative more known while still avoiding making the trailer too linear. 

We also added some titles throughout the trailer so that our audience could follow the narrative, we believe that this enitices the audience in.   







Music

We decided that throughout our film trailer we wanted a ‘backing track’ of music to be played as we thought this would give our trailer character and some depth. We decided that we wanted a track that was quite eerie as we had looked at other film trailers that had used children laughing in them, this portrays innocence. We researched into 1970s records that we could find on vinyl as we thought the sound of a crackling song would be eerie.

We researched on YouTube 1970’s vinyl to find some songs that we might like, and then we thought we could go to charity shops or music shops like HMV to find the song we wanted on vinyl.

The Beach Boys- Wouldn’t it be nice: we didn’t think this song had the right impact that we wanted as we thought the chime bit at the start would work well, however we found it too jolly and not how we remembered it.

John Lennon- Imagine: However this track was too sad and too fast for what we wanted, therefore we didn’t think this was the right track for what we wanted it to do.

The Beatles- Here comes the sun: Again this song was happier and faster than what we remembered it to be. Again this isn’t what we wanted as we wanted a strange kind of scary song.

Elvis Presley- Love me tender: we thought this song was perfect because of the kind of song it was, it was slow and a innocent kind of happy, I have the inside of a music box that played this song so I played it to the others and we all agreed that the sound the music box chimes gave were perfect as we could control the speed that it was recorded and could also control the volume of the track.

 

In our final decision we decided that we would use my music box and record it on Adobe Audition this way we could edit the length and volume of the tack as well as the speed.

 

Teacher Feedback

In addition to showing our trailer to a focus group we also showed it to our teacher, she gave us some really helpful constructive criticism.

 Our teacher believed that there were a number of things that should be changed to make our trailer successful and to get us the best marks possible.

As a group we all agreed that the storyboard we had used was too linear so we decided to change the clips around a bit and changed the opening frame to the clip of us walking towards ‘Bonnie’, our teacher thought this was too random and that there was no real purpose for us placing it there.

Miss suggested that we used a clip that would vaguely introduce the audience to the narrative of the film. Also in this clip someones ear came into shot, this took the focus from ‘Bonnie’ which wasn’t what we wanted, this clips was also too wobbly, this distracted from the main focus area. Therefore it was suggested that we used a tripod to film as then there would be minimal camera shake.

The Clip where Chloe and Nusrat are talking needed to be re-filmed as neither of them were completely in shot and they kept turning their backs towards the camera, which muffled their voices and made them sound like they were mumbling. This made it hard for the audience to focus on the dialogue. Our teacher suggested we re-filmed this and researched into and filmed it in ‘shot-reverse-shot’

Our teacher thought that the ending was too linear and seemed like the end of the film, but also felt that the clip we used at the end was wrong as in horror films the ‘scary’ character is usually silent as this adds to the mystery of the character, however we had ‘Bonnie’ screaming into the camera, this therefore took away the mystery of the character.

Miss agreed with our focus group with how more narration was needed, we thought about having a narrator to speak over the trailer, however we finally decided on having ‘titles’ coming up in between clips as we thought this wouldn’t take away from the song we have in our trailer and we also believed that it would guide our audience through the trailer.

We also decided to change the music at the end of the trailer as it was too calm and innocent we wanted to build up tension and make our audience feel uneasy.

Focus Group

After creating our first draft for our film trailer we decided that we would ask some students from 6form to view our trailer and tell us whether they liked it or not and what bits they thought we could change.

Here are their thoughts:

Stephanie Woodberry, 18
Good points: - The music is eerie and works well.                                                                                          -It’s jumpy, this added to the mystery of the trailer.

Bad points:    - The clip of Nusrat and Chloe talking are too sudden between that and                                the next clip.                                                                                                                 -The trailer is too short and very confusing, there is no clear narration.

Liam Mulkerrins: 17
Good points:- I like the panoramic view, it works well!                                                                                   - I like the way you used the zoom.                                                                            
Bad points:   - You should make some of the clips darker and add some effects                                    - You need less echoing noises and any dialogue should be louder.
Nikki Robinson: 18
Good points: - The Makeup and costume are amazing!                                                                               - The Scream at the end works really well.                                                                                 
Bad points:   -The trailer has too many cuts and is too fast in between clips.

Kayleigh Wood: 18
Good points: - The music is innocent but is eerie at the same time                                                                - The Newspaper clipping makes it seem more realistic.                              

                       I like the way your character moves,  it’s interesting and makes her seem and you feel uneasy

Bad points:   - I think the music should stand out more                                                                                   - At the end the music should draw out so it draws the audience in.                  -  I think the trailer should be darker and you could use some effects.                                      - I think the newspaper clipping should be longer.

Carved Tree

This is a image of the carving in the tree like I said in the previous post we thought this could show how Bonnie had deterioarted and gone crazy. 

Draft Trailer

This is our first draft of our film trailer. We wanted our filming to be influenced by Oren Peli in the way he makes it seem like the character is filming the shot. However after creating this draft we thought the camera was too wobbly and that the camera angles were not as clear as we wanted.

Film Titles

As a group we discussed many different options for film titles, and we managed to narrow it down to one.
Title 1; 1974- We decided that this could be a straight forward yet powerful title as it was the year that Bonnie went missing. We thought this would have some depth to it as well as the audience wouldn’t initially think of a horror film when they saw it, however we decided against this title as it wasn’t complex enough and wasn’t as powerful as we wanted our title to be.

Title 2: MISSING- Again we decided that we liked the straight forwardness of this title, however we felt it was very cliché and therefore we didn’t believe this title would catch the audiences eye

. Title 3: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF BONNIE LAWSON- We got the idea of this title from the film ‘The exorcism of Emily Rose’ We really liked how it reminded us of a newspaper headline, But the only problem with this title was that it was a long title and we had researched other horror films and their titles we short, snappy and striking and this caught the audiences eye, for example ‘Insidious’ and  ‘The Possession’

Title 4: DISAPPEARANCE - After deciding ‘THE DISAPPEARANCE OF BONNIE LAWSON’ was too long, we decided that just ‘DISAPPEARANCE’ would be more striking, we had a rule that we would just have one worded titles. However we thought that just like ‘MISSING’ this would be too cliché and sounded more like a documentary than a horror film. Title 5: EXODUS- As we liked Disappearance we decided to research into synonyms of it. We found the word ‘EXODUS’ and decided that it was mysterious, and striking. It also sounded like names of other horror films for example ‘Insidious’

Costume

As a group we decided that we wanted our character to portray a innocent young girl who went missing on her way home, therefore we wanted a costume that would show this innocence as well as fitting with the time period that we wanted to focus on.  As we wanted the costume to look like it had come from the focused time period (1970) we wanted a dress that was colourful and fitted the decade of the 70’s. we decided that as we didn’t have a large budget for our film we would go to our local charity shops to find the costume, we also thought that we would get the desired type of costume in these shops rather than retail shops. We brought 2 dresses, one black and one blue with yellow flowers, we decided we would photograph our character in both dresses, however the blue one really was what we all had in mind for our character to wear. The blue dress however was a size 20 and our character is a size 8 therefore we had to use safety pins and the belt on the dress to make it fit her, however I believe the length of the dress was perfect as even though it was slightly long for our model it could trail in the mid which made the dress look older.  


Costume 1:
The first costume that we brought was aplain black silk dress that we thought looked like a nightie. Once our model tried it on we decided it wasn’t suitable for our character as it was short and modern and shower her as more of a young adult rather than a child which wasn’t what we wanted out character to portray. The dress was also very dark, which contrasted with her hair and complexsion (after we did her make-up)  

Costume 2:

Our second costume was a light blue dress with a yellow floral pattern which was a size 20. However once our model tried it on it fitted her better than we thought it would- even though she is a size 8- we had to use some safety pins it pin it tighter at the back. As a group we all agreed that this dress was perfect for what we wanted our costume to look like as it was innocent and fitted the decade of the 70’s. The colours in this dress (light blue and yellow) are normally associate with children, innocence and summer. The usual costume for the ‘horror child’ is usually a long white dress as again this portrays innocence therefore our choice of costume slightly brakes the boundaries of usual horror films. The colours of the costume were brilliant as the pale colours contrasted so well with our characters black hair and pale face. overall we decided that this dress was perfect for our cotume and therefore decided that this would be our FINAL DRESS.

 

However it had been raining the week before we filmed out on location therefore the field and the forest we filmed in was very muddy and it was cold therefore we decided that we couldn’t get zuzie to be only wearing socks like in our original idea, therefore we asked her to wear some short wellies that seemed very 1970’s, however we tried to film her feet as little as possible, also the dress that we chose did a brilliant job to cover them up.

Hair + Make-up

We wanted the make-up to look zombie like but not too over the top as we didn’t want it to look as though she was dressed up for a Halloween party with a lot of face paints on, so we made sure that we only used less than more. In the story Bonnie had gone missing and been lost in the forest for a long time but had somehow stayed the same age and turned strange and ‘messed up’.

We went to our local fancy dress shop and brought some white face paint, we also used black eye shadow and eye liner  to make her eyes black. We also brought some black hair spray as our model had three different colours in her hair and we tought if it was black but still had some flicks of the mousey brown in it as it would  look messy but for the effect we wanted it would have to be black.

Her hair is naturally long and straight, however our model had curled her hair, this gave a really good effect and made it really easy to mess up and drape across her face. Also most horror movies have  girls with long straight hair in it so we thought the curls would make our character a bit different.  

Carving 1974 into the tree

We decided that we could carve the year that Bonnie went missing (1974) in the tree we decided this after doing some further research into the film director Peter Greenaway and the use of numbers in his films. We believed this would show how Bonnie went missing and went crazy while trying to adapt to her new way of ‘life’.

This is an image of Chloes, however seeing as I am in the image and therefor couldn't take a picture of myself carving the tree I asked Chloe for her permission to use her image.

Type of File Error

When we tried to use Adobe Premiere Pro 5.5  for the first time our video files wouldn't work and there was this error message that came up

Because of this we couldn't view our files. After Googling why this was we found out that my video camera that we use to shoot the film used the file format of MOD and unfortunatley Premiere Pro is not compatable with this software, therefore I went online and converted all of our files over to a MPG format this way Premiere is compatable with it.

Oren Peli- Influence

Chloe has researched into the film director Oren Peli and as a group we decided to use him as an influence for our film, we decided this because he directs low budget horror films, this is like ours because we obviously don’t have a big budget. The way his films are conventional with the way he always has unsuspecting victims who then fall into the clutches of the ‘villain’. Peli only uses less known actors as his main characters, by doing this he has stopped the audience from relating the actor to a film they have previously seen them in, also the fact that they aren’t well known makes his films more like a documentary rather than a fictional horror movie. Our main interest with Peli’s work is the way they are filmed; they are filmed almost as though the characters are the directors this makes the movie scarier as it seems realistic. For our trailer we wanted it to be as though the girls are filming it themselves, as though they were documenting their experiences.

Our Final Storyboard

This is the storyboard we have chosen to use to help us while we are creating out film. We decided that all of our individual storyboards had some good aspects to them so we decided that rather than using one of them we would create a final storyboard which would encorporate all of our ideas.

Below is the final storyboard. It includes information such as, what sound we will use, weather it will be diegetic or non-diegtic sound, in addition to the length of the shot and the camera angles.

Thinking of a name for our child character

As a group we researched into childrens names for girls, we needed this for the news article which the young girl will be featured in. We decided that her name had to be a common name in the 1960's/ 1970's as this would seem more realistic than if we used a name that is popular  now but was unheard of in the period that we wanted our character to have been born in. We wanted the name to represent innocence such as 'The exorcism of Emily Rose' does. To find a name that fitted with our chosen period of time we Googled 'Popular baby names of the 1960's-70's' and looked through the website to help us fine some ideas. Here are some of the names we discussed:

Alice: We thought that Alice did portray innocence, however we believed that this could make the audience think of films such as Alice in Wonderland, and decided that the name seemed too modern.

Autumn: This is quite a unique name however we believed this name was too modern and wouldn't seem realistic with the fact that the girl was supposed to be from the 1970's.

Sophie: Again like the others this name seems rather modern, and we really wanted the name of our character to be authentic and seem 'old fashioned'.

Molly: We rather liked Molly as a group, however we realised that there is a large amount of young people with that name now, so therefore decided it would not have been the best choice.

Bonnie: We really liked this name as it seemed 'old fashioned' and very innocent, also there is a Nursery Rhyme called 'My Bonnie' which we thought people might relate to their childhood.

We decided to look for a surname for our character as well as we would obviously have to include that in our Newspaper article as well. After some discussion and some more Googling of 'Common surnames' we came up with Lawson as it is ranking 150 at the moment and we thought the overall name seemed very innocent.

Therefore we decided on the name Bonnie Lawson.