Note To Examiners

Welcome to my AS Media blog. Over the last 6 months we have created an institution, called Moral Panic Productions, and have produced a 2 minute film opening for a Horror film, that we have named Necro5is. I have shown the research, planning and production phases of this through my 101 blog posts. I hope you enjoy.

Evaluation Question 7 : Progression from our Preliminary Task to our Final Product

7. Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product? 

Looking back at our preliminary task, I think I have progressed immensely in many different fields, especially camerawork and editing. For the preliminary task, we recorded a short scene that aimed to show different camera angles/movement, a short story and a usage of continuity editing (where the editing follows what is happening in order). For our final product, we had to produce a two-minute opening that conformed to all the stereotypes and conventions of our chosen genre (horror) and demonstrated a wide variety of camera and editing skills. Even from that, you can see where the improvements will lie.

For our preliminary task, we used a couple of shots (making sure that we met the brief for the task) but other than that did not really branch out with the shots that we use. We greatly improved on this in our final product. We researched a lot of movies, analysing the types of shots that they used and the effect that they have – then transferred this to our actual product. I produced a Test Footage post, that went over a variety of shots that we wanted to use and explained what they were and the effect that they have on the audience. In our final piece, I thought we used a good variety of shot, for example; we used a birds-eye-shot from the drone, close-ups of people’s faces during scenes where facial expressions needed to be shown, a low angle of the killer and an over the shoulder shot of Basket-Case taking the pills. I feel like our skills with the camera has also greatly improved, as we learned how to manipulate ISO to our own liking and also how to experiment with different focus points, for example shallow or deep focus. I think we have made a lot of progress in this area since our Prelim, and can hopefully continue to improve in the future.

Sound in our prelim was non-existent except from dialogue. This vastly changed in our final product, we went from using no non-diegetic sound at all to using it primarily. We added a backing track, sound effects, foley diegetic sound (like ambient woodland sounds) and we used high quality recordings of our dialogue and also our non-diegetic voiceover. The voiceover was used to explain the narrative more clearly and the backing track was used to show the genre and set the mood for the attached scenes. The comparison between our final product and the preliminary task is vast and shows an obvious growth of both skill and understanding, that was aided by research and target audience analysis (in the form of focus groups).

Another key thing that we needed to improve from our prelim was the usage of the different aspects of Mise-En-Scene. In our prelim we didn’t pay any attention to costume, lighting or facial expressions and body language. We did include a prop, the briefcase, and an example of positioning (as in our brief we were told we had to have two characters sitting across from one another). In comparison, for our final product we had to focus on mise-en-scene extensively, paying close attention to props, costume, make-up and hair, lighting and positioning and setting. We decided on an iconic setting for Horror movies, that being a forest, and as we decided on stereotypical representations for each of the characters they all had attached costume and make-up and hair pre-defined. Compared with the prelim’s single prop, our final product contained an abundance of different items, from a butterly knife to a pack of prescription pills to revision guides. Each one served a purpose in the story much alike the one prop used in our prelim but each had to be thought out. Positioning was also a key thing in our final product, and it was down to our own choice as opposed to being forced into it by some kind of brief. Some key examples were the worms eye view of Basket-Case’s foot that left space for a title to be inserted, or the final scene where the sixth character is placed in the right third of the frame, with the boggy swamp shown in the other two-thirds of the frame (which established a setting of his capture). The locations used in our final production also varied, despite being mostly set around the woodland. We had the more open areas and the thicket of the wood, each with a key reason why it had been used instead of anything else. This was another improvement compared to our prelim as there we only used one location that, whilst planned out, was not good as it was just in our school.

The final thing that was an extremely large improvement was the editing from our prelim to our final product. In between we developed a lot of key skills that allowed for the final product to look more professional and to be more effective. In our prelim we used continuous editing, which followed the current course of action, and just used cuts to transition between different shots. We didn’t do anything else to the prelim, it was all raw footage spliced and put together, mainly because we edited it on Windows Movie Maker which is a very simple and featureless application. In comparison, our final product was edited on Adobe Premiere Pro, which allowed a lot more customisation in our editing. For example, we colour corrected almost every clip in order to accentuate key shades, like deep greens, and also to lower the brightness in order for our final product to conform more with the chosen genre (Horror). Other editing techniques we used were strobing (flashing one image over another) and using a black and white filter. We were also able to tamper with the audio, changing different levels in order to produce a foley effect or able to sync the backing track with what is happening on screen by looking at the sound wave graphs. We taught ourselves a lot of the techniques used to edit in this way by watching Youtube videos, which gave a visual tutorial on how to do certain things. This allowed our library of techniques to be increased from our prelim as we were constantly learning and trying out new things. This allowed us to gain a furthered knowledge in the editing sector that can then be applied to any products that we create in the future, hopefully with further progress than this final product. 

Evaluation Question 6 : Media Technologies

In the production of our opening two minutes of Necro5is, we used 3 different computer systems, those being a Windows laptop, Desktop and a Mac. The majority of the editing was done on the laptop due to its fast specs and accessibility/portability. However, the desktop did provide a system on which we could render the finished product fast, so that is where we did that. The Mac was used to compare the different editing softwares (which will be detailed later), but we decided that a Windows computer was more familiar and as a result decided to primarily use that. Also, we found that using a mouse made editing the product far easier, as it provided a better degree of accuracy than a trackpad could.

When filming the opening, we had to decide on what camera hardware we wanted to use. Since I personally own a DSLR camera (the Canon 700D) we decided to use that. This would be better than using the schools available cameras due to its variety of features, the opportunity of an interchangeable lens and the manual feature on the camera itself, that allowed us to change the ISO or light intensity of our recording, more towards our tastes. The DSLR also produced a higher quality of final image, making our finished product look very sleek and professional. The camera was digital, meaning that we could convert the footage straight into a format that could be interpreted by the computer and edited in our chosen software. There weren't many downsides to using the DSLR, other than its size and the fact that at one point it did run out of battery during a shoot.

When filming we decided to use the Rode Videomic in order to record high quality audio for our film. This replaced the poor quality of the camera, which was quite echoed and buzzy. The mic allowed us to capture ambient sound or dialogue, both features we used in our final production. The downside of using the mic was that we had to purchase batteries as it burns through them quickly and it also provided some problems with not having turned it on and as a result having to reshoot some scenes, which in hindsight didn't matter as the majority of our opening has the dialogue muted anyway.

In order to set our product apart from other texts, we chose to include drone shots. These were filmed on the DJI Phantom 4 drone, which is one of the best drones on the market (for the average consumer at least). We borrowed this off of a family member of one of the group, who also flew it for us (to make sure we did not crash it!). Using the drone allowed us to get birds-eye-view shots of our setting, the forest, in extremely high quality (4K). These shots added a sense of prestige to our opening, as it is not something that is often seen. The disadvantages of using it were the time it consumed in order to prepare it and get it into flight, alongside the fact that it is very expensive and as a result required a great deal of care whilst in use. Despite this. I would definitely like to use it for future productions.

In regards to editing software, we sampled three different programs before concluding to use Adobe Premiere Pro CS6. We came to this choice because it was the most effective to use, containing lots of different features and a dedicated, detailed timeline and also because it could be used on Windows computers (unlike iMovie, which is only on apple products). Premiere Pro has the ability to change a clip's opacity, volume and motion (placement and zoom on the screen). Changing something like the opacity allowed us to create a strobing effect, used to tease the sixth character throughout the clip. Alongside this, it has over one hundred built in effect pre-sets, for example a warp effect or a black and white effect (both of which we used in our finished product). Also, Premiere Pro provides a lot of colour correction options, that of which we used extensively on almost every single clip in our work in order to colour grade it so that it fit our genre more clearly. It also allowed our 4K drone files to be handled, despite having a lot of frame-rate lag before we rendered the project (which is due to the computers specifications, not the software). The other programs we used were Movie Maker (for our prelim), iMovie (for our first draft) and Final Cut Pro just to test it out. The former two were just too simple to work for the final product and also did not contain enough options to change the clips how we wanted. The final program was good and had a abundance of features but is not available on Windows, so we didn't use it.

Finally, I wanted to cover all of the different web-pages I used in order to construct my blog and present my research, pre-production and post-production elements. The blogging site I used was blogger, mainly due to its ease of use and newbie accessibility. I used a wide-variety of web 2.0 tools to present my work, including; powtoon, prezi, emaze and coggle. Powtoon is a tool that allows you to create animated cartoons in order to present information. Prezi is a presentation tool that adds more movement to presentations, following a set path instead of a slide by slide layout. Emaze is your normal presentation software but is free and online. Coggle is a mind mapping site, an example of which is above. All of the web 2.0 tools aided my understanding of different topics because they put it into a more interactive and interesting format than just bland blog posts.

Evaluation Question 5 : Addressing and Attracting an Audience

Evaluation Question 4 : Defining Our Audience

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Evaluation Question 3 : Institutional Distribution

Evaluation Question 2 : Social Group Representation

Necro5is Final Video

Evaluation Question 1 : Forms and Conventions

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

• From left to right, top to bottom - The title of the film, Setting/location, Costumes and props, Camerawork and editing, Title font and style, Story and how the opening sets it up, Genre and how the opening suggests it, how characters are introduced, Special effects

The title of our film is Necro5is. The ideologies behind this was that we wanted to find a synonym of the word death but also be able to incorporate a number (5) into the name itself, much in the same way as the movie Se7en does. This is because the number five is a key topic in our film, with their being five friends. However, this also acts as somewhat of a red-herring, as we actually have six characters, the last of which is revealed at the end of the two-minute opening. Our film title uses the common movie convention of having a title that, whilst fitting the movie in one way or another, does not reveal too much about the overarching story. Despite this, we also challenged the common conventions by adding the number into the name, something that has only been done by the vast minority of films. This blending of common and rare conventions makes the final product of the film stand out to not only our target audience but also a wider audience coaxed in by the ambiguity of the title.

Title from Se7en, which we took inspiration from

The setting for our film is the forest at Thorndon Country Park. This is a very conventional location for the horror genre, due to its connotations of darkness and isolation and also its direct linking to common phobias like Nyctophobia (fear of the dark) and Mazeophobia (fear of being lost). A lot of movies use this setting for good effect, such as Camp Crystal Lake from any of the Friday the 13^th films, Deadite Forest from The Evil Dead and Black Hills Forest from The Blair Witch Project. The woodlands in these films present the ideas of the unknown, each of which containing mysteries that need to be discovered. As we took our inspiration from The Breakfast Club, but produced a movie from the horror genre, we decided to take these character archetypes out of the setting of that film and place it in the setting from a film with the same kind of casting, like The Blair Witch Project. Whilst doing this, the characters are the main focus as opposed to cheap scares – which challenges the norm for Horror flicks of this category.

Black Hills Forest, setting of The Blair Witch Project, which was our inspiration for Thorndon Country Park

The costumes that we used in our opening two minutes follow the conventions of this genre of movie very closely. Each of them link to the character archetype that is being used for our two minutes; the Basket-Case wears black clothing with ripped jeans, the Princess wears a sexually revealing dress, the Jock wears sport related clothing (like a baseball cap), the Brain is dressed smartly and finally the Criminal wears a coat with the hood up. An easy comparison to draw here is to our main inspiration, The Breakfast Club; which we followed but also adapted to fit our modern day story. Another comparison is between Basket-Case and the main character from the remake of Evil Dead, as both of them wear clothes often associated with ‘emo’ or ‘gothic’ individuals. Another aspect which we chose not to challenge the conventions of was props. For our props we used stereotypical items that could be found in everyday life and our audience could relate to having; i.e. a butterfly knife, some prescription pills and school revision guides. We also included a mobile telephone as a prop that shows that our movie is set in a very modern time- as the phone shown is a recent release. These types of props can also be seen in modern day horror movies like The Forest, where the main character is often seen holding a mobile phone.

Main character from Evil Dead, providing a comparison to Basket-Case

Every cinematic media text uses a wide variety of camera angles, movement and editing techniques in order to add variety to their product- but camerawork can also convey hidden messages (like emotions) from what is happening on screen. For our two-minute opening, we used a multitude of different techniques in order to convey our story through camerawork. For example, we used a close-up of a character's face at the end in order to show the emotion of terror, much akin to the close-up shot that is used in the movie psycho. We also used a close-up of Basket-Case’s face when she is shouting, to show her anger and how she is distraught about the situation. We used some extreme long shots in order to establish the woodland scenes, at one point using a panning shot to show a path with the light shining between the trees. Another key shot that we took was the birds-eye-view from the drone. This shot created an enigmatic quality, showing that our setting could be anywhere in the world as there was no key iconography (like recognisable buildings). It also showed the vastness of our setting, again tending to the idea of isolation. This shot challenged stereotypes for this genre, as it isn’t a shot you would normally see in a horror movie due to the expenses of filming the shot itself. For editing, we mostly used fades to transition between scenes because of their more calming nature (as our opening scenes is mostly not action-filled). However, during the killing scene and the scene at the end we used fast-paced clear cuts, in order to progress the scene at a fast rate which would increase the tension shown. Some of the other editing techniques we used were; colour correction to change the grading of the shots (warping them to the mood they needed to set), overlays (where one scene will be shown over another at a lower opacity- hiding something within the scene) and strobing, where a scene will flash quickly in a disorientating fashion.

Mid-Shot of Basket-Case detailing body language and facial expression

For our titles we chose to use the font 1942 report due to the fact that it fits with both our genre and our subject matter. This is because it has a kind of glitchy effect built into the font (where part of the word is repeated just at a different angle). We presented the titles in different sizes and at different points inside the frame. For example, when our company name is shown (after the intro) it is directly in the middle over the top of the drone shots. The reason we chose to do this is because we took inspiration from The Shining’s Opening. Sizes are also an important aspect, for example the Director and Assistant Director titles are very large, with the latter slightly smaller, compared to the other crew. Also, for the actor name, their first name is small whilst the second name is bigger (as the last name is what people would be searching for (for example DiCaprio). We made this decision based on research on the site Art of the Title, which details title sequences from lots of movies, where we saw that this is a convention of almost every film. The title positioning that we chose aimed to blend the titles into the scenes themselves, in an attempt to not have them stick out too much from what is happening on screen. As a result, we had the titles ‘interact’ with the scene itself, for example when Basket-Case steps on her actress’s name (Charlotte Johnson), it disappears. This challenges the convention of having the name just ‘be there’ as opposed to being co-ordinated within the scene itself.

Opening Credits to The Shining, which we consulted for aid on positioning our titles

The story of our film, from the opening 2 minutes at least, is extremely ambiguous. The audience will be introduced to the five key characters, and will also constantly see flashes of another sixth character who is revealed at the end of the two minutes. This character seems to be the main character as this is who is speaking during the voiceover. As we removed most of the audio, the only way that the story is shown is through the visuals that are used, and through the aforementioned voiceover. Most Horror (and Thriller) movies start off in a very ambiguous format, the idea is to build the mystery and intrigue throughout the film, instead of having it revealed in the opening 2 minutes. For example, in the movie Scream, we are introduced to a character who, five minutes later, is then brutally murdered by a masked killer. This arises questions for the viewer and entices them to continue watching- a technique we used here by also having a killing scene (that featured a masked murderer) and by having the reveal of the sixth character at the end. This leads to the audience wanting to find out what is happening, as to find out who these people are and what their motives are. 

Opening of Scream, providing a comparison of the way in which characters are introduced 

The genre for our film is Horror, but during production it also lent towards having thriller elements spliced in (for example the mystery themes). The way we decided to show the genre is through two key aspects, the lighting and the soundtrack. The soundtrack is intense and eerie, aiming to make the audience feel uncomfortable. We used Foley sounds with the screams that startle Brain, which we later associate with the sixth character, in order to also startle the audience. The lighting (and by extension the colour grading) of each scene was chosen in order to make the scenes look darker and more brooding (low-key), compared to the high-key lighting they were shot in (as it was mostly daytime filming). Some of the camera shots that we used also reflect the genre, especially the two Point of View shots (first of which being the feet running and the second being just running through the woodland). These types of shots are commonly used in films like The Blair Witch Project which, as it is a found-footage film, is mostly made up of POV shots. These connoted the idea of being chased by someone and of running in fear, which is the feeling that we wanted to portray to the audience. Finally, despite it not being extremely obvious, we did use fake-blood during the killing scene, that of which splashes up onto the killer’s mask and over his weapon (which is shown flickering in an overlay, dripping with blood). This usage of gore is a key convention of a horror movie but in hindsight we could have shown it in both more detail and for a longer period of time.

Flickering of Hammer, showing the Horror genre through gore

In most horror movies, taking the Evil Dead remake as an example, the main set of characters are not introduced until after the introduction of the film. In the Evil Dead remake, there is a whole exorcism scene that takes place before we even see the first of the characters that are followed through the rest of the movie. We decided this was not a good strategy and decided to challenge this by introducing our characters early, however we did have a sort of introduction beforehand (the opening credits, the killing scene and the film title). Also, in a movie like the original Evil Dead, the characters are introduced one by one, a convention which we decided to pretty much follow, bar Jock and Princess who are obviously in a relationship and as such should have been introduced together (even though we see Princess first). But, in comparison to our opening, the characters are focused on for a longer period of time before another is introduced, where as ours are pretty much glanced over. So, despite us challenging this trope, I think that we could have spent more time focusing on some of the characters (like Criminal), but could not due to the two-minute time limit.

Original Evil Dead characters

Our two-minute film opening did not contain that many special effects, as we did not have money to spend and also did not have the ability to create amazing CGI or visual effects like in blockbuster films. However, there are some movies that take this approach, such as 30 Days of Night, that focuses mostly on practical effects in its horror, to add that sense of realism. We put an effect on the voice-over in order for it to sound somewhat distorted, like when someone does not want their identity to be revealed on something like the news or in an interview. This adds another sense of mystery as the audience does not know why the voice is aiming to be concealed. Other than that, special effects were not common in our opening, other than colour-correction, changing some scenes to black and white (to represent a flashback)- like in one episode of The Walking Dead, and adding filters over said scenes to make then glitch/stutter/strobe, in order to increase uneasiness.

Black and White Walking Dead Flashback

In conclusion, I feel like our finished product blended a lot of already in use conventions and techniques with some genre challenging and fresh ideas, in order to create an individual piece of cinematography. We took inspiration from many horror films, and some that were not, and changed some of their conventions to fit our ideas (like converting the character archetypes of The Breakfast Club to modern day, or using similar camera shots to The Blair Witch Project). I think that researching into conventions helped us produce a better final product, especially in aspects like titling, and also expanded our media knowledge in this field.