Evaluation

http://prezi.com/gms9yhi4legz/payback-time-prezi/

Payback time Prezi on Prezi

Final Cut

For bigger screen go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoP-A4Rbnfc

Evaluation

1. My group and I have now completed our horror opening sequence, and we believe we have included a range of conventions that are typically used within similar media products.We  believe the conventions we have used indicate our opening sequence best fits the psychological horror subgenre  as the stalker is mentally torturing the victim, stalking her and playing mind games which is usually shown in other psychological horrors.

I believe our horror movie has similar conventions to the psychological horror 'Gothika' as although the storylines are different it's based on revenge and the main actress being tortured by someone. This is what happens in our horror opening sequence.

Usually there is a female victim within horror films that is known to get stalked, frightened and even killed, the murderer is generally a male as they are know as the more dominant, aggressive sex whereas females are more vulnerable and emotional.We have demonstrated this in our opening sequence as we show a young female being stalked by her best friends boyfriend, who is out to get revenge for the death of his loved one. It is clear she feels threatened as when walking home she is constantly looking over her shoulder.

Another convention we have noticed in typical horror movie is the use of gore which usually includes body parts, blood and horrific footage.In the making of our opening sequence we have taken inspiration from the Godfather part 1 as although this isn’t a horror film, there is a horrific part which shows a man waking up in bed with a horse head covered in blood that was put there by someone seeking revenge, this relates to our opening sequence as a heart from the victims pet dog had been placed in a box by the stalker as one way of getting their own back for their unfortunate loss.

Q2. Our opening sequence represents social groups in a number of ways, as there are two young girls who have a close friendship but one girl is much more intimidating than the other, she is then over powered by the male character who is out to get revenge.It is stereotypical for the male characters to be much more dominant and powerful than the female in most horror films.We believe our horror opening sequence best fits around the ages of 18 to 20 as the characters playing the murderer and victim are around that age therefore the audience could relate to the ‘young love’ storyline.We also believe our film will appeal more to the female gender as we have shown two young girls wanting to party and then showing how vulnerable teenagers can be.Due to the conventions we have used such as drink driving, partying, young love and vulnerability we have came to the decision that out horror opening sequence best fits a teenage audience that are familiar with these things that happen in everyday life and can relate to them in their own way. 

3. When looking at distributing our full film I would say that it would fit in being a saturation/ wide release Hollywood film that gets released in all cinemas and then about 3 months later will be released on DVD and blu-ray disk.

If this were to happen distributors to look at working with would be Universal, Lionsgate Films, or New Line Cinema. When looking at these companies they have many of the newly released horror films under their belt that have been huge hits. These films include; The Wolfman (Gross to date $137,332,000), Nightmare on Elm Street Remake, Cabin Fever, Hostel, Friday the 13^th Remake (Gross to date $91,379,051), Saw, Land of the Dead (gross to date $46,770,602), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Remake (Goss to date $107,071,655), House of 1000 Corpses, and The Devils Rejects.

Thinking about directors a name that always seems to come to mind, for me, is Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino has done many different things, such as; directing, screenwriting, producing, cinematography, and acting in many films. Hit films directed by Tarantino include; Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill Vol. 1, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Sin City, and his most recent movie being Inglorious Bastards.

Another person to look for is Eli Roth. Roth, like Tarantino directs, produces, writes and acts in many films. His movie career includes; Cabin Fever, Hostel, and Hostel pt. 2. The fact also that Tarantino and Roth have worked together before with small budgets to make a movie and they turn into great successes seems to be a way forward. This is apparent especially with the movie hostel as the budget was $4.8 million, but the movie, worldwide, has earned to date $80,578,934.

I believe with a mix of one of the three distributors, Tarantino, and Roth the movie could be a great success.

4. Looking at Merchandise and franchise opportunities I do not think that the film would be to the level of creating a franchise such as Saw or have merchandise to back up the film. The movie would be a smaller Hollywood release but with great potential to have maybe a prequel that would be able to explain the hostility of Jonathan and the volatile relationship between Kristie and Jonathan.4. The film we have created is a psychological horror and the audience we intended our film for would be 18 and older as we gave a certificate of an 18 rating for the film. Even though there is an 18 rating, I think Payback Time would appeal to many teenagers and young adults. The cast when making the full film would mainly be all teens and I believe the audience can relate to the film more that way. When looking at the death of Chloe especially, I think some teens will understand what Jonathan was going through because a lot of teens unfortunately die so friends, relatives, and boyfriends/girlfriends of anyone that has died will understand the pain that Jonathan goes through with Chloe drink driving. 

When looking at similarities with other films I would say our film is a one of a kind but would take inspiration from things like Hostel and The Devils Rejects.  I would say that from The Devils Rejects that we would take the power of manipulation that the Firefly family had in the movie. Jonathan could even work on gaining his family, or if a prequel were made it would show his bad family life and maybe just put him with a bunch of people like the Firefly family. In this picture that I have included from Hostel we could change the beginning to exclude Kristie finding her dog or add more flashbacks to Jonathan dismembering the dog like this man is doing with bodies. Over all I think that any young adult and teen could love the movie.

5. What we believe will attract our audience is that we have a full teen cast, which is our audience target of 18.  We believe that they will relate to our cast and the situations they may get them selves into, such as peer pressure and drunk driving, leading to fatal accidents.  I believe that our audience will relate to our drinking scene very well, as it is a common activity for our target audience to pursue.  The gender of our audience is male and female, as our mixed sex cast will attract this. We have used one specific point of view shot in our opening, which is a P.O.V of the stalker following his victim, we have used this because we believe that it makes the audience wonder what will happen to the victim and make them wonder why the stalker is following. I believe that our audiences are being put in the position of both our victim and stalker, so that they can see both sides of the story.  This leads the audience to choose who is right and who is wrong in the opening sequence. This creates the impact of confusion on our audiance, they are being given two sides of the story, this confuses them because they try to decide who is right and who is wrong and which side they will support.  It also shows the reason behind any killings and torturing to come. The way in which we create suspense is by not showing the identity of the killer at first, but we do show it quite soon, this is because of the genre of psychological horror. The audience needs to see and feel both side’s pain and misery and what has happened on both sides to cause this.

6. We have learnt several things from the use of the camera equipment which we did not know before this project.  For example, camera's have advantages and disadvantages, a disadvantage would be that camera's do not work well in the different weather conditions, e.g rain or darkness. We found out that the tripod and other essentials were hard for a group of three to lug around. Advantages of the equipment would be the ability to get steady shots e.g steady pans, close ups and more. One of the main problems for constructing our project were the dates, times for the cast and settings. Some times it was not possible to get everyone together on the same day, so we had to sit down and work out a timetable on available days. We had new equipment to be used to our advantage for our film.  However we did not believe that we needed most of the equipment due to our story-line and different scenes. Using iMovie for our editing was quite simple, it was not that hard to figure out and use.  What I learnt about editing is that it needs time and a lot of work put into it, this is because if you rush your editing you can tell in your video, this lowers the quality of your film. I found that the effects in iMovie were really useful for the mise en scene of our film, this is because we could film during the day and turn it to night for the scenes that require darkness.  Garage band was another software we used to improve our film, because in the silent parts we could add music to make it more attracting to the viewer, I found it a useful software to use for our film and easy to make good tracks.

7. I believe that we have progressed in the full product stage compared to our Preliminary task, this is because of several reasons.  First of all in the planning stages we did not really get to plan as long or as much for our preliminary compared to our full product, we did not get to research genre, similar movies or conventions of genre's in our preliminary whilst we could in our full product.  We did not get as much time to storyboard to prelim so intern it was not as well thought out as the full product.  The animatic really made our storyboard come alive and make it a lot more interesting and easier to understand.  We knew a lot of the shots that we needed to use from this and how to edit it correctly, this gave us a huge advantage compared to our prelim. I believe that our specific shot types have improved because we used more shot reverse shots in conversations and point of view shots to show peoples views.  With the equipment we felt a lot more confident because we knew how to use it professionaly which made it easier to film and create our movie opening.  I believe that our product fully fulfills the brief that was set to us, with our variety of shots, smooth editing and use of garage band to create our set tracks for our scenes.

Software Used

We used different types of software to create our video's rough and final cut.  First of all we used iMovie to cut and create our film, we also used GarageBand to create our music for the film.

iMovie -

This software was useful in making our full film to the best quality possible with adding special effects, doing our editing and cutting down our long scenes.

GarageBand - 

This software was useful for making the music and certain sounds we needed for our scenes, such as the car crash scene.

Rough Cut

Evaluation; This is the rough cut for our horror based film, Payback Time.

So far the shots in our movie sequence are very varied. There are close-ups, long shots, point of view, tracking, medium shots, and high angle shots. These contribute to the storyline in a lot of ways because when Kristie is being followed, the viewer is actually following her, and the shot in the car can make you feel like you are in the car crash with Kristie and Chloe.
There are a lot of different locations also; the park, Chloe's house, a dark place where Jonathan sits to reflect about Chloe, Kristie's house, and Chloe's car. All this definitely helps build a story-line and keeps a viewer interested instead of having one long shot throughout the sequence in the same location.

With the sequence there is an awful lot of editing done. So far there are many transitions, text for actors and people that worked on the film, the scenes at the park were darkened to give a more moody feel, the speed-ups when the girls are having shots, extracted audio for playback over shots, and a few sound effects. Having these have helped us speed up our movie, and made it make more sense to the viewer. 


Still to do: Unfortunately we weren't able to include all of the shots we have filmed. The other shots we have to add is Kristie's dog being delivered to her and her opening a box to find gizmo's heart with a note and some car scenes; we would like to show Chloe turning the key of her car and putting her foot on the gas pedal.
As far as editing we would like to add dates to the corner of a few shots, we feel this will add to the story and it will make more sense to the viewer. Also to be added is a soundtrack. For the dog walking scenes at the beginning I think soft music will work, when going into the scenes at Chloe's house we might speed up the music for a more fast paced build up. When getting to the scenes of Jonathan more sad music will come in to play very softly behind the audio of "his thoughts" and then following the scene of Kristie putting the posters of her dog you will build up to the tension to then cut the music before she opens the box and then end with a scream.

What I like and dislike about the rough cut is, I like the way we used the daylight and were able to turn it darker to fit the mood of the scene, I also like the props we were able to get our hands on, I also like the way we used editing in the voice over scene.  What I dislike about our film is the way that we use music, I believe we may not have spent enough time on it.

Risk Assessment

Camera Safety. 

- Don't shoot in the rain. 

- If it starts to rain, cover the camera and/or pack up. 

- When not in use always put the camera in the bag. 

- Always use a tripod, so there is no chance of dropping the camera.

- Be careful when filming in public areas, don't get people in shots without permission or they might get angry / Stop filming when people approach the area. 

Other risks.

- Scene brightness, if it is to dark beware with movement, don't trip over equipment.

- Car safety, wear seatbelt, don't move whilst driving.

Time schedule

Asses 7 Animatic

This is a animatic of our storyboard, it displays most of our shot's in the clip.

Asses 8 Shooting schedule

Shot	Type	Duration	Location	Mise en scene
1	Over the shoulder	2-4 sec	Bedroom	Low-key lighting
2	Med-long shot	3-6 sec	Living room	Natural lighting
3	Med-close up	2-4 sec	Living room	Natural lighting
4	Med-long shot	2-5 sec	Living room	Natural lighting
5	Long-shot, tracking shot	4-8 sec	Street	Natural lighting
6	Med-long shot	2-5 sec	Street	High-key lighting
7	Med-shot	2-5 sec	Building	Natural lighting
8	Med-long shot	2-4 sec	Bedroom	Low-key lighting
9	Extreme close up	2-4 sec	Bedroom	Low-key lighting
10	Long shot	1-3 sec	Park	Natural lighting
11	Close up	1-3 sec	Park	Natural lighting
12	Med long shot	2-3 sec	House	Natural lighting
13	Med long shot	2-3 sec	House	Natural lighting
14	Close up	1-3 sec	House	Natural lighting

Asses 6

Actor’s	Locations	Prop’s	Costume
Jonathan (b f)	House/Bedroom	Car	Casual-clothing
Kristie (victim)	Street	Wine glasses and bottles	Mask
Chloe	College		Hoody

Asses 5

Plot Synopsis

The storyline of our horror will be based on two young girls who are best friends but each of them are very different characters, Kristie is a manipulative person who pressures her vulnerable friend Chloe into doing things she would rather not, a lot of the time Chloe does things to please Kristie as she is scared of loosing their friendship.

One night both girls are sat talking, Kristie decides she wants to go out partying and persuades Chloe to go along, although Chloe is not fond of the idea she begins to start drinking alcohol anyway, as the night carries on Kristie believes it would be a good idea for Chloe, who has recently passed her test to drive them both into town rather than them having to pay for a taxi, Chloe refuses to go along with Kristie’s plan and strongly believes it’s a bad idea, but Kristie being the dominate character she is wont take no for an answer.

Little do they know, during Kristie pressuring Chloe to do these things Chloe’s boyfriend rings and she accidently answers it in her pocket enabling her boyfriend to hear the full conversation and what they where planning to do.

Before her boyfriend has the chance to do anything, both girls get into the car and with them being under the influence of alcohol find themselves having a huge car accident.

Unfortunately Chloe does no survive but Kristie pulls through, Chloe’s boyfriend who is heart broken cannot believe he has lost everything due to her controlling friend and wants revenge, as time passes Chloe’s boyfriend spends most of his time planning revenge by following Kristie and making her fear for her life.

Kristie knows she is being followed but doesn’t know who it is, moths go by and things are being posted through her door and she is being constantly threatened Kristie thinks she is going mad, and no one seems to care as the police and her family think it’s all in her head and she is just grieving for her friend.

Chloe’s boyfriend thinks it’s to easy to just take her life and starts making her life hell by destroying anything and anyone she cares about.

After Kristie has spent years of her life looking over her shoulder and being constantly stalked she ends up in a mental home where she is beyond help, Chloe’s boyfriend believes her has created the perfect punishment and she got what she deserved.

Opening Sequence

Our opening sequence will be up to the part where Kristie is being constantly followed and fears for her life, we believe this will be an interesting sequence as it pulls the viewer in and builds up tension about what is going to happen to her.

Also with Kristie not knowing who is following her it creates a sense of mystery to the sequence. We hope to make our opening sequence as interesting as possible, making it easy to follow and leave our audience on a cliff -hanger and wanting to watch more.

Target audience appeal

Our film will be targeted at people aged 15 and over, although our horror does not involve a lot of blood and gore which you would expect to see within a typical horror film, we are focusing on people who enjoy being built up for an interesting plot which the tension alone scares them. With our film, the audience are made to believe that in the end Kristie will get killed whereas we’ve added a twist to our film by letting her survive but her ending up in a mental home, therefore we are targeting people who like a twist within horror films.

Creative Techniques

As our sequence is mainly linked in with horror due to the amount of tension we wish to create we are thinking of using sounds such as:

Incidental music- to create an atmosphere

Strings/ Drum beats

Also we believe low key lighting would be a good source to use to create an atmosphere.

We are also thinking of using some interesting camera shots such as high angle\low angle shots, point of view shot, extreme close ups and over the shoulder shot, we are also thinking about how we could create some interesting angles within the car all of these shots we hope to achieve and build up a lot of tension and atmosphere.

A Nightmare of Elm Street 3

Asses 2

Analysis:

My analysis is on ‘A Nightmare in Elm Street 3’ the opening.  The clip start’s of with a quote from Edgar Allan Poe, who is a famous poet, “Sleep, those little slices of Death. How I loathe them”.  The clip then goes on to display the film institution and then the film title, which is in red, which suggests it is a horror and there will be blood in this clip. 

What happens:

The clip starts with a pair of hands that are mixing ingredients together, which then turns out to be a young girl trying to cover some sort of glass with newspapers, she is creating a house of paper, we then find out that she is doing this to try and stay awake, she also eats coffee beans and drink pop.  We then hear that she has a shrink, and she is having “awful dreams”, which suggests some sort of sort of past and a possible storyline.  She then falls asleep looking at the paper house were she ends up in a creepy dream world that is based around her paper house, in the dream world she in confronted by several children singing a unusual song, there is then a small girl who rides into the house and the girl chases her to save her, after she catches up the little girl says “Freddy’s home”, they then try to escape as she ends up believing she has woke up when she is really still asleep, ‘Freddy’ then takes control of her body and tries to slit her wrists, she then feints which is the end of the opening sequence.

Elements:

First of all there is two close up’s used right at the beginning of the clip.  It show’s us ingredients being mixed together, this is linked with horror because as you can only see hands and the black in the background you believe they are some sort of murderer placing there victims news articles on the wall.  Next there is a bird’s eye view of the hands sticking glue or some sort of solvent onto the paper, which could also suggest horror because of the same reason as my first point, the sticking victim’s articles to the wall.  The next shot that suggests horror is an over the shoulder shot of the girl’s mom looking down on the girl listening to her not wanting to go to sleep; this suggests a horror genre because there is some reason she doesn’t want to go to sleep.   The camera next slowly zooms into the creepy dollhouse; this suggests the horror genre because the house is dark and half covered by shadows, which looks quite creepy.  The next shot is an tilt up plus a zoom out of a house that looks creepily like the doll house she made, this links into horror because the shot is framed by dead tree’s and small children playing in old styled clothes.  We then go to a tracking shot following the girl who is running through the nightmare house; this shot suggests horror because dark and messy hallways also frame it.  We later view the girl and little girl in a long shot, which is framed by bodies, this links into horror because of the dead hanging bodies you would not have in a normal dream.

The next element I will look at is editing in the clip.  The first piece of editing we see is of the quote of the poet, this piece of editing suggests horror because it is of a quote of dreams and is in red, which suggests something of the storyline.  Next editing used is music, which is also classed as postproduction; the music is creepy and builds the tension.  The next editing used is a cross cut which is used frequently within the first minute cutting from different activities, from using scissors to using glue, working on newspaper articles which makes us believe there is horror in this because he way the camera is framing these edits and that serial killers usually do this to paper’s.  Next piece of edit used is a cut away, used at 1:25 to 1:27 showing the hand gluing at different angle, it cuts from the first shot to a different angle then back.  A shot revere shot is used next during the conversation between mother and daughter; this shows us the genre of horror because within the conversation “nightmares” are mentioned. There is a match on action when the girl runs into the dollhouse through the main door, this edit shows horror because of the creepy settings and as she slightly pauses worrying about running into the house.  There is a continuous zoom which cuts within the scene during the period the girl is falling asleep, this displays horror because she is looking at the dark spooky house as she falls asleep which may show there is going to be a dream of some sort there.  There is next a match on action used when the young girl is running through the tar, from her face to her feet to her face again, showing her actions, this displays horror because it shows us the emotion of her.  The next piece of editing is a cross cut which is used from the end of the dream to the girl waking up in her bedroom screaming, this displays the horror genre because it is usually what happens after a nightmare, waking up in the bedroom screaming.  The next piece of editing I noticed was elliptical editing were it cut from the girl’s bathroom to the mental hospital.  In the clip there is also slow motion used when she firsts enters her dreams of the young children.

The next element I will look at is sound.  First of all there is silence at the beginning of the clip were the quote is shown, this shows the genre because it is a silent and tense moment.  The music then gets louder when the title comes up on the screen, showing that it is a horror from the tone of the music.  Through the first few minutes there is orchestral music used as the young girl creates the dollhouse, this music will be used because it builds up tension of the clip.  There is then diegetic sound of the girl mixing the ingredients together.  There is then a loud blast of music played in the girls bedroom, showing that she doesn’t want to go to sleep, this may display horror because she is trying to avoid something in her dreams.  There is then dialogue heard for the first time in the clip and it is a conversation between the mother and daughter, the mother speaks like she doesn’t care much and the daughter speaks with a low tone, creepy and disturbed voice which is typical in horror victims.  There is next the non-synchronous sound of a man shouting from downstairs, which shocks us slightly because we didn’t expect to hear him. As the girl is falling asleep there is a sound bridge used from when it goes low music to her falling asleep to slightly higher again when she wakes up, perhaps it goes low because it relieves the tension of the viewer however as soon as it gets louder the tension increases.  There is singing next of small children that is low toned and creepy singing of an old song, this shows the horror young children can bring.  There is then low tension building orchestral music used as the girl walks down to the basement of the house, this is used to of course build the tension of the viewer.  There is then the synchronous sound of the fire setting a light and the heaters starting to blow hot air used to scare the viewer and making us wonder what will happen next.  There is next a sound perspective, which is loud music being played however we can still hear the girl screaming, this is to still show us she is scared.  There is then a sound bridge used from the girl at the end of her nightmare to her waking up, this is to show us that she has just had a nightmare and to shock us.

The final element I am looking at is the mise en scene of the opening sequence.  First of we are greeted by a dark room and some ingredients, which shows us that something is being made, the dark room shows horror because you cant see anything in the room. We next see a pair of scissors used to cut out articles; this could show us horror because it could be a murderer cutting our victims articles.  We then see some sort of article-covered wall, which could even more suggest the murderer and article type of beginning.  We then see that the actress is dressed in pyjamas and half asleep from her face expression, this could show that she doesn’t want to sleep for some reason.  The tone of the mother’s voice is strict when she tells of the daughter; this shows her emotion towards her daughter being awake this long.  The décor of the big scary house is rotten, broken and dark, which suggests horror because it is a typical scene in a horror film.  In the house here is blank expressions used on the children, which suggests they don’t really know what to do.  There is a scared expression used on the girls face as she runs from Freddy, which shows us her emotion at the time.  The children at the house are dressed in like pre-war clothing, which suggests they died at that time.  Shadows and low-key lighting is used throughout the hallways of the house, which shows horror because of the dark and spooky circumstances.

So overall I would say that the beginning of ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street 3’ is a typical beginning for a horror throughout it’s use of cinematography, sound, editing and mise en scene.  It uses the camera to display the emotions of the victims, which is typical.  The editing uses various cuts to show situations and movement. The mise en scene shows us the décor, sets and clothing of the horror, which is important. The sound is the most important aspect of a horror, because if there was no sound there would be no tension building and no one would be scared or shocked.

TITLE ORDER-

It starts off with the name of the company, New Line cinema, and Smart Egg pictures. – Then the name of the movie is displayed next – Then the major star’s to the minor stars. (most to least known) – then the co-stars. – Then special star appearances. – Then the cast is displayed, art directors, production manage, first assistant director, second assistant director, special effects, makeup artists, effects, editing, associate producer, photography director, exec producer, music by, exec in charge of production, co-producer, screen play, story by, producer, director.