Overcoming problems

This coursework wasn't without it's problems and we did come across quite a few which we had to overcome. One of the main problems was that after we had filmed everything and sat down to edit, we realised that we didn't have enough footage to bulk out our trailer. I think that this was down to poor planning as we hadn't thought about our animatics as much as we could have. However, we were able to overcome this problem because even though we didn't have time to re-film anything, we did manage to film a few more shots that we could use and also edit the other shots that we didn't like as much. For example, when Mia walks in and sees footprints on the floor, it wasn't obvious enough what she was looking at as the footprints weren't detailed enough. In the end we cut scenes up to make it more clear that she is looking at them. I think that the new editing works well because not only does it make the scene more sense, it also makes our trailer look more professional as it has faster cuts. 

Within the group we did experience some communication and conflict problems where we would all seem to agree on something and then a week later we were all disagreeing with something that we had all agreed with previously. This was a hard problem to overcome as it happened a lot, but in the end we would work it out. I think that this was a good thing really because due to every single one of us being quite headstrong, it meant that everything was thought about really carefully and we got the best out of what we could do. 

When we were creating the gif. files we did forget how to do it since doing it with the music video so we had to re-learn how to do this. Also when we did make the animations, they didn't always run smoothly so we had to edit them again in Final Cut Express which was very time consuming. In the end it was worth it as they look good in our trailer. 

All in all, I think that we could have planned our trailer in more detail to prevent us from not filming enough footage. Also on the day of filming we did end up rushing towards the end of the day to get it done because we had gotten lazy. In the future I will know the importance of planning and over filming so that our work can be even better.

Skills I have learnt

When I started this coursework I had never really used a Mac computer before so when we started we had to get used to that first. On top of this I had to learn how to use Final Cut Express, which compared to Pinnacle Studios which we used last year it seemed quite difficult when I first looked at it. Luckily it was easy to pick up and I managed to get used to it straight away through the practice project that we created which was a music video. At first it took us a while to get used to the lay out, along with the different Mac control settings. This was irritating at first because it did hold us back as it took up time. However, I am glad that we had the chance to get used to Final Cut Express as it meant that we knew what to do when it came to rendering and a better chance of understanding it when things went wrong. The most valuable skills I have gained from this is the extra knowledge of more than one editing package because now I have experience in Final Cut Express, Pinnacle Studios and also Windows Movie Maker. This will help me in the future as I hope to get a career in the media industry. 

Another thing that this project has given me is deeper understanding of Adobe Photoshop as although I did have a basic knowledge of it, the photo editing software that I use at home is Coral Paint Shop, which although is similar, it does have it's differences. Now I have a broader and more in-depth knowledge of both photo editing software and footage editing software. We did also use photoshop to create the animation with our "Nightview Productions" logo as well as our main title at the end of our trailer. We had to look up how to make a gif. file because although we had experimented with this in our music video, we had forgotten how to do it, and it took longer than we thought. I think that having the animations work really well to give our trailer a more professional look and I am glad that we took the time to learn how to do this as it has improved our knowledge of photoshop. We also used photo shop to finalise our film poster which gave it a more professional and polished look rather than just using power point as we had done to create the drafts. 

Another thing that was quite new to us was using the flip cams. Before we had been filming on normal cam-corders with a tape in them, but we decided to use the flip cams this time because we wanted the better quality that they provide. The only down side of using these is that they don't zoom in very well, so if we wanted to do that, we had to be very careful how far away we were in the first place, or consider doing it afterwards on Final Cut Express. We hadn't used them before because as they are small, if we don't have them on a tripod, they pick up hand movements very easily which would make our filming look unprofessional. However, we used tripods pretty much through all of our filming, even when we needed the camera to track something and I think that this worked well because it reduced the movement of the camera and also our footage is of better quality than it would have been on a cam-corder because we used a lot of low lights. 

Learning to use Garage Band was a big help to us because of the fact that we can't use copyrighted music, so creating our own was useful. As no one in our group had any real experience on creating music, this program was ideal as it was easy to get used to and we could taylor our music exactly as we wanted it to be. We didn't have the same practice with this as we did Final Cut Express because we didn't have to create our own music. I think that maybe we could have done with a little more practice with it just to save us some experimenting time. However, it was easy enough to use and I don't think that more practice would have improved the final outcome of our music. 

Evaluation of our trailer

The opening shot, which you can see is the first shot in the pictures above, was important because we wanted to create mystery straight away. Having the chess at the front of the frame was a decision we made to make it obvious that it is there and is going to effect Megan (our actresses) life. I think that having the chess as a close up with Mia looking at it as she wakes up works really well because the chess looks out of scale which makes it quite domineering. The only thing that I would have liked to have done would be a focus pull from the chess, to Mia looking scared; unfortunately the flip cams do not have this ability. We chose to repeat a similar shot where Mia finds the chess piece in her locker at school. Having it again meant that the audience would be aware that the chess will always be somewhere you're not expecting it, and by having it at the front of the frame is like having something at the front of your mind, which our character, Mia was supposedly experiencing. 

When we showed text in our trailer, we made sure that it zoomed in slowly. This was so that tension would build, as well as allowing the audience to read what it says properly. Towards the end of the trailer, we added text in very quick and short cuts to mirror the tension we were building in the trailer. I think that the contrast between the slower text and the fast text works well because it represents the panic or hysteria that Mia is feeling in her life due to this constantly appearing chess. It was important that we kept the same font as the poster and film magazine so as to link them all together. I think that this works well as people will know that this trailer is advertising the same film as the poster is even before they reach the end of the trailer with the title. Having the title and due date at the end of the trailer was a choice we made because from looking at other trailers, we noticed that pretty much all of them had the date and title at the end of the trailers. Keeping to this convention means that our trailer seems more professional. 

As our main character was aimed at people aged 15-20 we had to make sure that her clothing was contemporary to fit in with the similarities of our target audience. This wasn't a problem as it is what Megan would wear usually anyway. Having Mia as a contemporary teenage girl works well because it allows our audience to relate more easily to her. In the scene with Mia in the bath, we wanted to make it obvious that she was trying to drown herself, so we decided to keep her in her clothes. I think that this works well because not only is it a bit weird that she is in her clothes in the bath, but also because it does emphasise the fact that she has gone a bit mad because of the chess. Along side this was that we chose to film parts of our trailer at school which makes our character even more relatable to most of our audience. Doing this also puts into perspective how normal Mia's life was up until things started happening which works well because it hopefully makes the audience think how it could happen to anyone, including them.

This bath scene works well I think because of the bird's eye angle that we chose to shoot in and also we slowed the speed down slightly to make her eye movement more obvious. These two things combined work well because it shows the crazed side of Mia who is trying to kill herself in despair, also it creates a mystery as to if she is going to actually kill herself, and also what has been so bad as to why she would want to kill herself.

When it came to filming the scene in the kitchen with the kettle we did have trouble doing this as it was very bright outside and it took us a while to find an angle where it's possible to read everything that is written on the window. In the end we decided to have two shots in the trailer from different angles to enable the audience to read it properly. I personally think that the two angles aren't different enough and if we had a more contrasting shot this would have worked better or maybe if we had made the cut in between each shot more dramatic with a non-diegetic sound to emphasise it and to make it more scary.

As I mentioned in my blog about our animatics, we were looking forward to using a split screen and although we haven't kept to our original story board, removing the beginning of our trailer completely, we still wanted to include a split screen. The split screen helped to evolve our editing skills because we worked out how to do it ourselves, and we also made one half of it play backwards. I think that this works well because it shows how messed up Mia is, and she feels all confused. To add to this, we also made sure that the camera movement wasn't smooth to enhance the feeling of disruption. 

The lighting in the bedroom when Mia is waking up and having nightmares is important because it is quite hazy and red light, which adds a strange atmosphere to the room. The haziness creates a sort of dream like feeling which I think works well because dreams are surreal and we wanted our audience to feel like they are in the same surreal state as Mia. The reddy - pinkness of the room also adds an element of danger to the shots which also works well because it connects the trailer to the magazine cover where Mia looks hunted and in danger. 

Having the separate shots of the chess board adds the effect that there is another "player" in this game which could be anyone in Mia's life. Although Mia isn't sure if what is happening is for real or if she has gone mad, the audience know that there is someone as they can see the chess game being played. I think that this creates a mystery as to who is messing with Mia's head which is why these shots work well. We wanted the speed of the movement of the chess to match up with the speed of the trailer so we changed the speed of the footage to slow it down and sometimes speed it up. I think that this works well because again, it adds to the tension of the trailer. 

Our complete package

Our promotion package, complete with a poster, film magazine cover and also a trailer was aimed at a mainstream audience because there is a large demand for thriller films and they are often popular at cinemas to see with groups of friends both male or female.Whilst our film was for a large audience, we chose to use the production company Dimension Films under the Mirimax institute because although they are not often seen, they do produce these sorts of films. One of the main ways in which we insured that the three elements worked well together was keeping a common font. This proved hard to choose because whilst we wanted something simple and suitable for each element, we also didn't want it to be too boring. We tried looking on websites such as http://www.dafont.com/ but found that when we used the fonts they didn't look right. In the end we settled for Perpetua a common font found on Microsoft Office. In order to link the texts through font, we made sure that the title of our film was in this font on all three texts as well as additional text. However, on our magazine cover we did not use this font for everything as we needed the title of our font to stand out against the other writing on the cover in order to promote it. I think that this choice worked well becuause there is a clear link in the elements with the font design and colouring.

Alongside this we have used only the main character on the poster, magazine and mostly just the main character in the trailer. We purposly chose to do this because by having just Megan on the poster allowed us to create a lot of mystery about what is going to happen as there is no clue to her relationships with other people; this is the same with our magazie cover. In the trailer we didn't want to have lots of people because we didn't want to give too much away about the plot. I think that this worked well because by doing this we have isolated the main character which is how she is meant to feel in the film.The only thing I would change about the poster is the billing block as it does not look as proffesional as I would have liked it to. I think this is because of the font we used and also the fact that the text is too spread out.

Choosing to have a shot from the film on the front cover of our magazine was a desision we took ages to decide on. In the end we chose to do this because we wanted to really promote the film rather than the actress. In research we discovered that film magazines do sometimes have shots from the film, but it is not often. I think that our magazine cover does work well though because Megan looks scared, promoting the genre of our film, and also she does look vulnerable with her neck showing. This increases the idea that she is being watched or hunted by someone or something. Although we decided not to have a lot of text on the magazine as some magazines have very little writing, I think we could have maybe developed what we did write to sound a bit more like real life magazines and also perhaps add a bit more. We did try this but it ended up looking over crowded, but if we had spent more time trying out different font sizes and designs then we might have been able to make it look better.

Our poster shows a close up of Megan's face, except rather than looking hunted or vulnerable as she does on the magazine, I think that in the poster she looks more haunted and as if the chess that is overlaying her face is really getting to her. Although the two texts show different emotions, it works well in promoting our film because it shows the different aspects and emotions that our character goes through in the film. The trailer enhances this as it shows our character becoming more confused and more distressed as time goes on.
However, I think that in our trailer we could have built the tension more to match our poster and magazine cover by putting more shots in at a faster pace. I also think that for a thriller our trailer is a little bit too linear and whilst some of it isn't in chronological order, we do have a few sections where this happens. If we were to have even more time to improve on our trailer, I would definitely suggest filming and planning more carefully to improve our finished trailer as it ended up that we didn't have as much to work with as we thought.

               

Target Audience Feedback

Here is the set of questions that we asked people for our audience feedback on our final product. Again, as we did the first time before creating our trailer, we asked 20 people, 10 boys and 10 girls. These questions have helped us to realise what did and didn't work well with our trailer, and if we managed to please our target audience, which is important because if they weren't happy, our film wouldn't sell.

These first two questions were important because they allowed us to see if we really had followed the conventions of a thriller, which judging by these results we have as most people seemed to think that it is a thriller film. However, some did also think it was a horror film, so perhaps we did not make it obvious enough. In our first set of questions we asked what people preferred to watch, to which most people answered horror films and close behind was thriller films. We chose to make a thriller rather than a horror because we decided that to give our film a more interesting plot, we would be better off making a thriller. However, we do have some elements of a horror film, for instance the audience don't know where the chess is coming from, nor do they know who (if anyone) is leaving it.  I think that creating a thriller worked better than a horror because it allowed us to be more imaginative and also create tense moments without giving away the story.  

 This question relates back to one of the questions that we asked people before we made the trailer as well. We asked if they preferred the main characters of the films to be either male or female. The results were equal, with both sexes having mixed opinions about whether they wanted the hero of a film to be male or female. Because of this we were able to choose what we wanted as it would not disappoint the majority of our audience. I think choosing a girl to play the main character was a good idea because it meant that we could portray her as more vulnerable than we would have been able to make a boy.

Similar to this question is the fact that we made sure our main character was of similar age to the target audience. This is because in our previous questions the majority liked the main characters to be of similar age to them because it was easier to relate. I think that choosing to have our character a similar age to our target audience works well because if the audience can relate to her, then this should enhance their experience of the film as they will be able to picture themselves in her shoes, and also, as this film is slightly scary, it will put the idea into their head that it is possible to happen to them.

These final two questions give us an overall evaluation of how well we have made our trailer. As a trailler for a horror/thriller it was important for us to build the tension in the trailer to make people want to see the film. Inevitably, some of the people who answered "No" they didn't want to see the film, were the same people who had told us that the trailer didn't build tension.

I think that in some cases I do agree with these results, as I think we could have built the tension more than what we did, however there were some parts of our trailer, for instance when there are several different clips overlaying the diegetic voice of megan on the phone. This works well because there are lots of fast and short clips which increases the tension because you feel as if it is building up to something.

We also put our trailer onto Youtube and Facebook  as another way of finding out whether our trailer suits our targeted audience. Facebook gave us more reliable feedback because the people that are connected to us through Facebook are of the age of our target audience. As you can see from this print screen, we gained mostly positive feedback, though there was some confusion to some parts of the trailer. This could however be a good thing, because it makes people want to watch the film to make sense of what they are seeing.




As a class we completed some audience feedback by looking at everyone's promotional package and writing annoymous comments and handing them back to the groups. This proved very useful, especially for us because we were getting some more detailed feedback from the age group at which our film was aimed. Some feedback that was useful was that whilst some people did like the music, others thought it was a too simple and needed changing. I agree with this as I think that if we were to do it again we could have spent more time on the music.
     In terms of the poster, lots of people commented on how much they liked the fact that the chess blended into Megan's face, though someone said that it made her eye look funny. In some ways I understand how it looks weird, but other people commented that they liked the fact that her eye was odd because it added to the plot of our film. I am glad that this is the general opinion of our poster because it means that we have successfully made our film appeal to our target audience.
     A lot of the feedback for the magazine was possitive although there were comments that it didn't have much writing on it. As a group we did discuss this a lot, but as the background is busy, a lot of writing would have made it look overfull. We aren't too conserned with the comments about not having a lot of writing, because we did have other comments that the magazine worked well with our chosen image.

Our final trailer

This is the animated version of our "Nightview Productions" logo. When we created this we tried to do it in the same way in which we created the gif. file for our music video, but we couldn't remember how to do it. In the end we had to put each frame into Final Cut and put a fade transition in between each one to make the eyes look like they are appearing. Unfortunately, the positioning of each frame is slightly different so they sort of move all around the screen. This doesn't look too bad but we would have preferred it if that didn't happen. Overall, I think that the animated version of this logo works better than the still image because it reflects real life production company logos which are often animated. This also links well to a thriller genre because of the connotations of having some eyes piercing through the darkness.

So far so good

Our music before

To date, we have made some good progress with both our music and editing. Our problem  with the footprints have been solved because we edited the scene in a different way. With our previous music, everything was very complex and we had a lot of changes in the music, so nothing really fit very well. However, instead of continuing to work on that music, we completely scratched it and instead started again, only this time we have made it a lot more simple and there is only one change when the music gets a bit more intense. Because the music is more simple, it is far more effective because there isn't a constant change all the time. In our previous music, the constant change was distracting and also didn't flow very well. 

Our music now

We still have to re-film some scenes due to lighting problems, this will be good because it means we have made the most out of our shots and aren't using what's second best. Also we have a few more shots to film to bulk out our trailer. The problems with this is that we have not got much time left, and also we have to find a time when our actress is free because she is not in our media group and can't expect her to drop everything for us. 

Post Filming Evaluation

On the day, filming seemed to go quite well. We split up where we could to film different parts of our trailor and managed to get most of what we needed. However, when we got back to school to edit, we have realised that we haven't planned our trailor that well and we still need to film more parts to bulk out our trailor as it seems to not have much in it at the moment.

     Ella suggested that we don't need new scenes, but we do need the same shots from different angles. I think this could work as it gives us more to work with, but at the same time, we probably wont use them all anyway and will still need different things in the trailor. We now have a problem as we have not got that long, but Megan, our actress has gone to Poland for half a week, as has Laura. Also, finding the time to film is hard as we have to rely on Megan. This week we have to sort out fully when we are next filming and exactly what it is that we are filming so that we can get everything together as soon as possible.

     We have also had trouble with our music as when we played it whith what we had edited so far, we didn't like it at all, so we have had to start again with that. On the up-side, I am glad we have done this as we have thought more carefully about our music and it is a lot better than our previous creation. Also, it means that we are making the music and the trailor to fit well with eachother. This is different to making one and then the other to fit as they are both being made to fit eachother, allowing the music and trailor to flow more smoothly together.

     In class on Wednesday, we were discussing how to make a scene with some footprints more obvious. Amara wanted to have it so that Megan bent down and touched the footprints, but Ella and I said that that wasn't natural, and she isn't a detective. We ended up having to film on my phone what it would look like so that we could decide. In the end, we decided that a ground shot of Megan walking in would be good, as then we could see both her and the footprints in the same shot, but she wouldn't have to bend down and look at them.

In the shot above, we spent a long time sorting out the lighting of this shot as we didn't want it to look like broad day light as it is a horror/thriller and at the same time we needed enough light to make sure that we filmed in good enough quality. Overall I liked the effect that we ended up with because we ended up with eery light which works well with our genre and should make the trailer more exciting for our audience.

Another thing that we decided to do which worked well was film some scenes - for example when Mia is having a nightmare- on a tilt because we wanted the audience to feel the same discomfort that Mia (our character) was feeling. This discomforting feeling works well because it allows the audience to relate to Mia and also adds to our thriller genre.