Evaluation - Question 3

Evaluation - Question 4

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

Research:

Google - This global search engine was used to research the majority of our short films, giving us greater knowledge on what kind of features and themes are seen in them. By using this, we could look at examples of short films and the people that created them, allowing us to get an idea of the plots, ideas and conventions used in many of them. We also used it to look in to the films seen in the horror genre, as well as the plots and themes seen in them. 

Short of the week - This website was very useful in researching examples of short films that we learned from for our own project. It releases new short films every day, which are broken down in to different genres and themes, which was very useful to look at both short films as a whole, as well as the horror genre within it. Through using this, we took inspiration from other films seen on the site. 

BBFC - When making researching our film ideas, and devising a plot, this website was crucial to deciding the age rating that our film would be. As this is the governing body on the censorship of film in Britain, the information and guidance found on its website was very important in choosing the right age ratting appropriate for our film. With this in mind, we decided to choose a 15 age ratting, as the dark themes and quite disturbing themes found in our horror film could be seen as inappropriate for younger audiences.            

 

Meta-Chart - This website was a key component in compiling the date from our film questionnaires, as it was used to create graphs of our results, better presenting there findings. It allowed use to input all the data from our surveys in to a customizable graph maker, which could be changed to however we wanted, allowing use to make clear and accurate charts to show the differing opinions of our audience.
     

Planning:

Blogger - As we did in our AS level, we used the website 'Blogger' to create a blog for our film, which is where we posted all our research, planning, ideas and additional work for our project. It was very useful for the group as we were able to collaborate on work together, meaning we can all contribute to the project, as well as allowing us to edit posts when ever we want, improving them when new ideas were formed, as well as adapting to new feedback. However, as useful as it was, we also found issues with the formatting and filing system Blogger uses, as it was quite inefficient, making it hard sometimes to find posts deep in to the blog. 

CeltX - This software is what we used to create the script for our film, instead if a normal word document. As this program is designed especially for creating scripts, it was very useful when creating ours, as it allowed us to easily and correctly write out our scripts, with proper directions and descriptions used. It also let us change and adapt scenes as our plot evolved with new ideas, a very useful feature. This specially designed format allowed us to professionally present our idea, so all could easily understand it.

YouTube - This website was again used previously in our AS year, but more so in this year. We used it to upload preliminary projects and rough cuts of our film, allowing examiners to see our work, as well as ourselves, which was useful when getting screen shots for later use. We also used it at points to educate us on how to use other pieces of software, such as Photoshop, as curtain techniques were difficult to us.     

Construction:

Camera - When it came to actually creating our film, we used a Canon Legria HFG25 to record our film. This camera was a improvement on the model we used in our AS level, with better quality of video and sound, as well as a wider range of adjustments available for us to use when filming our movie. With the addition of a tripod, the camera set up was able to produce interesting and almost professional shots, with a sharp contrast from last years film. In addition, we were able to create interesting scene transitions with clever camera techniques, accompanied by video editing, such as a zoom in to a characters back, going through a doorway, which would then transition to a new shot as the camera zooms back out.

Premier Pro - This software was used to edit and order our film using the scenes we created using our camera. Due to its high quality and professional appeal, it was extremely useful when creating our film, being as essential as the camera itself. With it being a professional piece of software,  used on actual Hollywood films such as Gone Girl,  we found it difficult at points to use, but soon learnt how to effectively, which allowed us to create our final film as we envisioned and to a high standard. As well as cutting and ordering our footage in to order, the software also allowed us to create different effects over it, adding to the fearful and supernatural themes seen within horror films. Some of these effects are shown bellow, such as mapping on a light source in the bedroom scene to make the effect of an open door. We also created a dream like effect through some light distortion effects that help to differentiate between reality and the dreams.         

Photoshop - We used this software to create posters for our film that would in theory be released before the film itself. Similarly to 'Premier Pro', this software was difficult to use at first, as it complex and detailed nature meant there were a lot of different component that went in to creating a usable film poster example. However, after doing some greater research in to the software, as well as some trial and error, we managed to learn how to create a professorial looking poster. While being a hindrance at first, the detailed features became a very useful part in creating the posters, as our work was of a higher quality all around.

 

 

Evaluation: 

Prezi - We found that Prezi was a very useful website for presenting much of our evaluation work in a easy and productive way. It allowed me to make presentations that included many different media aspects, including text, photos, videos and audio files, which are useful in presenting through a wide range of medias, showing understanding of them all. The software it's self was also another great use of differing media, as the moving circle concept of its presentations allowed us to show our work in a interesting and different way. 

 

 

Google slides - Similarly to Prezi, google slides was useful in presenting our work in a clear and easy way. As it works in a similar way to Microsoft PowerPoint, I already knew how to use it, as it was almost the same design and also very user friendly. By being able to present our work through multiple media form, we are able to create interesting and engaging PowerPoints showing our work, as well as our understanding of the forms of media. In addition, as it was all online, being able to work on our presentations wherever we wanted to was extremely useful, making all our work more efficient. 

 

      

   
 

Evaluation Question 4

Sweet Dreams - Post-Production Process

Editing is the process of selecting and preparing audible and film to create a piece of media. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, organization, and many other modifications performed before the final piece is released as this allows the editors to solve any issues that have occurred or work around them to create a complete piece work.

Here we'll be explaining what software and techniques we used during Post-Production of our final film and how we got round any issues that came up during the editing process. In this process we used After Effects, Premiere Pro and Audacity to create our final product.

While filming the scenes in Jamie's bedroom, we needed a bright light that would shine through as his door opened and then would stay there for the rest of the scene. We were unable to do this practically and instead opted to create the effect within Adobe After Effects. I started by lightening the original footage and added a soft glow around to give to create the brighter light effect, I then overlaid the new brighter footage onto our original footage in the composition sequence. Once I'd done that, I created a mask and animated it to look as if a door was opening and the light was casting onto the bedding and onto the bedding. With the mask being animated, it allowed me to control how the light acted within the shot and how fast or how slow the door opened to create the effect.



 

We then exported these scenes out of After Effects and then added into our Premiere Pro Edit File which would allow us to continue editing the film. With the help of After Effects, this allowed us to create the sequence we originally envisioned but weren't able to achieve on the day due to lighting issues and not being able to create a light source bright enough to create this effects.

 

 

We were also able to add this effect to the rest of the sequence which made the scene look more realistic as the light didn't vanish within the next shot. As well as the light source, we also darkened the surrounding room, this emphasised the light which made the sequence look more mysterious and the light source look more supernatural and alien to create a sense of unease in the audience. 

 

 

The next thing we did was adding a layer to most of the film, expect the sequence in Jamie's bedroom and the ending sequence, this gave the whole film the dream/nightmare feel to it which also helped the audience differentiate between the real life sequences and the dream/nightmare sequences.

 

This was achieved by using a channel blur by turning the percentage of the blue and red channels up 50 which created the coloured outlines of each character and object within the scene, we also added Gaussian Blur of 120% and a feather of 759.0% and Lens Distortion with a curvature of -10 to the edges which would warp/distort the footage and create the completed dream sequence.

 

 

 

A problem we encountered while adding this layer was during some scenes the effect became too much and would blur the entire shot which mean for some shots we had to go through and adjust the amounts for each effect so that it would remain constant throughout the whole short film.

 

 

The final big effect we did was adding a mask around Jamie to make it look as if he's in total darkness and is being trapped in eternal darkness. This was achieved by adding an oval mask around the character, inverting it so the effects were added around Jamie rather then in front and then adjusted the darkness to -100 and the contrast to 100 which created the blacked-out background as well as the look of eternal darkness.

 

In the overall film, we also enlarged a lot of the clips which removed unnecessary background and large open spaces within the frame which could take away from the scene and distract the audience, this was mainly visible during some close ups and medium shots, especially within the corridor scenes as there were a lot of shots which showed more of the background and objects in the corridors, this took away from the viewing experience and distracted the audience as focus would be on the background as it was more noticeable. With Premiere Pro we also added a letterbox wide-screen movie format which made our film look more cinematic and appealing to the audience.

 

We also used After Effects to create the credits at the end of the sequence. We used a free After Effect template which made creating the credits a lot easier and made them look more professional as all the writing was pre-set to move at a certain pace in time with each other which made this a lot easier as we didn't have to waste time matching everything up and could instead focus on finishing the film.

 

 

And finally we used Audacity to adjust Sam's vocal performance as El Cucuy, people agreed his voice was menacing and fitted the character but could still be improved upon which is why we used Audacity. We looked for inspiration for adjustments we could make to the voice which is where we came across a Doctor Who character called The Candy man which featured in a serial called 'The Happiness Patrol' and was broadcast from 2nd - 16th November 1988, for the voice of this character, the special sounds office at the BBC overlaid two copies of the recorded dialogue but at different pitches, one was the original recording and the other had been adjusted from a G to an E which created this distortion between the two when played back which is what we liked as the distorted voice could represent El Cucuy's distorted personality. So to create this, we used Audacity to lower the pitch of our voice and then exported both the normal sound file and adjusted sound file together which created the distorted and unnerving voice that is featured in our final piece.

 

 

 

 

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 3

Audience Feedback from the Final Film

For our final questionnaire, we published the final film to YouTube and handed out a questionnaire that people could fill in to give us our final lot of feedback. Our final cut looked alot more professional that our rough cut which we’d previously posted as it was completed with video and sound effects, transitions as well as music.

Over all the feedback was very positive as people said they really enjoyed it and would definitely watch if it was a feature length film. Other people praised the effects and said it make the scenes look unnerving and so did the ending as Jamie, fades into darkness while El Cucuy torments him. One of the effects people complimented was the 'Alpha Channel Blur' as they said it helped create the sense of a dream world that El Cucuy was haunting Jamie in while not taking away from the film.

People also enjoyed and understood the storyline a lot better then our rough cut because we’d added in the missing voice overs that caused the confusion within the audience. They also praised the acting, with numerous responses commenting on Sam's performance as El Cucuy which they thought was amazing and he fit perfectly in the role as he has a great mix of craziness and creepiness but also had a very dominating screen presence.

As well as compliments, some people also suggested some changes we could make if we were to do it again.

These included exploring the storyline a little bit more which we agreed we could of done if we had more screen time and if we’d of planned the sequences a little bit more. Other people said they’d like to seem more development of the characters but understood how we were unable to do this well because of the short amount of time we were given.

Another thing that was suggested was that we could of made the film look more cinematic by using color correction and maybe using some more cinematic camera techniques which we also think would of worked as well if we had more time.

One thing we’d like to of done which was mentioned a few times was to explore the characters more because our viewers don’t really know who these characters are, where they come from and why they’re like how they are because then our viewers would either be able to align with them or dis-align with them. This is another thing we'd of liked to have done if we'd of had more screen time then six minutes

People also mentioned there was a few continuity errors during our exterior scenes, for instance: the footage at the church jumps from light to suddenly really dark which creates a continuity error as these scenes were shot later at night which meant after we’d shot the previous scenes numerous times, the lighting had changed considerably.

Radio Trailer Research

Film Radio Spots 2013 - Gravity, Pacific Rim, The Conjuring & The Great Gatsby from Angell Sound Studios on Vimeo.

What is heard in a radio trailer:

A voice-over narration that gives a brief overview on what the film is going to be about.

Music in the background that links with the genre, or is in the short film.

Dialogue from the film to give a feel of the unknown as you don't know what is happening.