Media Evaluation

Evaluation

Evaluation Plan

For the final 20 marks of the project, you must complete seven tasks on your blog, posting them in this order, with the question heading at the top of each task. You may do them as a pair/group, but must post individual copies on each blog. Make sure you answer each question as well as producing the visual elements.

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (I.e. of film openings)

Well in our film for our media course we did a lot of things that would conform to the conventions of a horror film. For example we used a lot of props for the killing of the victim and a lot of fake blood which I was covered in a lot of the filming time – when people go to see a horror film, they generally expect high quality special effects of a gory nature, and we attempted to provide that in the opening. We tried to make the killer like a Hannibal Lecter  were his takes time and plans out what his is going to do for his murders and finds it to be more of a sport or a hobby than an abnormal thing.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Are media product represents particular social groups by using the killer to be a upper/middle class guy, like the one out of American Psycho where some of are inspiration came from. So we thought that we could go with that idea as well but not let the audience see the killers face.

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Whilst choosing a distribution/production company for our film, we looked at various companies that had dealt similar films in our genre. So we choose on Lions Gate because Saw, Hostel and American Psycho where all in the same genre that we was doing for our film.  Also American Psycho was one of the main films we have had based our film on, and to find out that Lions Gate did them and was an independent film company fitted straight in for us.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our audience for our media film course work is 16+. We have chosen this because there is quite a lot of blood and some gory scene and we don’t think it will be suitable for an age under 16 but saying that we do have a lot of attraction for the young adults and the older adults. It would generally be targeted at an audience that is interested in horror or gory films in anyway.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Well I think we attracted are audience by putting blood and thing that would be seen as a good horror film. Thing that would make it attract the audience are horror film is its British, has blood and gory scene; has the whole classy mood to it; the use of close up shot; the shots in the view of the victim and the camera being all dazed.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I have learned how to properly use a video camera which is different to the ones at school. I think this is good because it give me a wider range of cameras I can use. I have also learned some bits to do with the editing, because we didn’t use the mac ones like we have at school we used Dale’s laptop. Finally I have also learned that putting the film on the DVD takes a long while and you have to have the proper dice for it to work.

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?

I have leant that the editing and the transforming it to DVD takes a long time to do. We leant that when we do the filming in different days that we have to make the costumes look the same.  So we had to take pictures of the costumes so they look the same as the pervious filming session. This problem was at its worst when we was using fake blood, because if you did it wrong the first time we had to wash the shirt and do it all again.

The continuity between shot was easier that the costumes because we did all the shot that would over lap first before the fake blood to make it easy for are self’s. But we managed well with the continuity filming part because we shuck to the story board and all the shot angles well. I think that the best way to deal with this is to film to much so you never need to go back, and you can always get the shot angle right.



By Tom Cartwright

Draft - Evaluation Activity 7 - What We've Learned

We learned to keep proper continuity between the shots over the course of the shooting. With few exceptions, we managed to keep all costumes and props and the like consistent. In the preliminary, we had a few problems, such as shooting different shots on different days which resulted in me having different clothing in a lot of the shots, as well as having the reflection of Tom and the camera in the shot of the door by accident. We managed to keep a list of things to do when setting up for each filming session, which included the room and our clothing, and the only thing different between each of the days generally was the newspaper on the floor (which wasn’t really detectable anyway).

During the preliminary we learned to link shots appropriately (match-on action) and keep action between them continuous. This shows through in the final product when the killer leaves the room and when he goes to kill the guy in the chair (where the blood shows up on the floor after he picks up the knife, and where the camera angle changes when he goes out through the back door).

When writing the original scripts and storyboards we had a conversation (that concluded in the abduction of one of the talkers), which we knew how to do properly due to learning about the 180-degree rule and shot/reverse-shot during the preliminary task.

Draft - Evaluation Activity 6 - Photos and Stuff

The programs we used for the different sections of the opening were Adobe After Effects CS4 and Adobe Photoshop CS5, with After Effects being used for the main formation of the video (both arranging the clips and cutting/editing each of them, like the lens blur during several of the shots).

The camera is a Panasonic ______ (I’ll write that name in later, once I remember it), and the tripod was a present from an aunt at Christmas. We went through about 5 different DVDs (1x DVD-RW and 4x DVD+R) before eventually getting the video to burn correctly, eventually landing on software called WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe, the same software used for converting the videos from .MTS to .AVI.

We’re looking into finding different software to use for the video editing process in the future, mainly to do with the quality of the image produced at the end. For some reason, After Effects has problems using HD videos, even downscaled versions, as seen by the problems with the green bar and the “yellow stained” sections of several of the shots (which we didn’t realize until post-rendering, and ended up leaving in).

Draft - Evaluation Activity 5 - Annotated Video

Draft - Evaluation Activity 1

Title Font and Style

The title's font and style reflect the tone of the opening, with the extravagant curves representing the outward appearance of the killer, who (as noted in evaluation activity 2) is a person who cares more about their appearance than what they actually do. The style of the title reflects the music being used as well - all of it comes together to have a fairly nice introduction to the character of the killer.

Setting / Location

The setting is portrayed fairly appropriately in the first few shots after the abductions, involving a panning up of the victim but at the same time showing a fairly wide view of the room, displaying the floor, the doors, the blinds, and the area in front of the victim (in the shot coming from his perspective).

Costumes and Props

The costumes were designed very specifically. The killer was designed to be fairly similar to Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, being an upper-middle class person with more dedication to his appearance than was needed for the situation - what better way to show that to have him kill someone whilst wearing a (snazzy) suit? The victim is meant to be somewhat similar to him in clothing, but the way the clothing has been designed is meant to clearly show to the audience that he is the victim in the situation from the first shot that you see him. His face, though unclear on the video, has also got marks along it, and clearly there's a lot of blood (that's meant to have came from the previous gunshot). 

The props were also chosen to create a sense of something not being right - mainly, the newspapered floor and the KNIVES. The knives, clearly, make the whole scene fairly sinister from the get go, and later on they're shown with blood on them to show that they've been used (after the timejump in the video - the second knife was meant to have been used to cut him up, but we forgot to record the shot for that, so we missed it out, which has lead to there being some confusion as to what is actually happening in the video).

Setting Up The Story

The story is set up fairly well, in our opinion, via the super dramatic skyline shot at the beginning, followed by the abrupt gunshot and the dragging of feet over the ground. The rest of it sort of follows that slightly, but it's clear from the get go that the guy with authority in the scene - the killer - is the bad guy of the situation. The lack of information on him actually being shown, even with his appearance, is also there to draw in the audience who could want to know more about him. He's clearly a guy that abducts and murders people, but the motive behind that isn't shown, and it's something that could be answered throughout the film.

Portraying The Genre

I think several conventions of the genre were conformed to appropriately. When people say "horror", they generally expect slasher flicks with plenty of gore and dread. Whilst we have deviated from it to an extent, with us not really showing anything directly (though that's more to do with the conventions of a film opening in general than the genre), we have managed to increase the pace drastically by involving a murder with the help of special effects, the kind of thing that people see horror films for (just go along with that). The very idea of killing someone for a reason has generally been kept to either action or horror films, and clearly this isn't an action film.

Character Introductions

Whilst the entire opening serves as a sort of semi-introduction for the character of the killer, there is a small introductory set of shots for the victim, that all link together nicely and, of course, culminate in his death. For example, it starts off with the feet being dragged across the floor after the gunshot, before cutting to a shot of the exact same set of feet in a chair, and panning up to the guys torso to reveal a gunshot wound. Already, that sets up the character's start with "he is shot, abducted, and taken to a room where he is to be killed", all in the space of a few seconds. Admittedly, the pacing feels a bit wrong (or at least, too rushed in to), but the introduction matches the pace of the music even if it is out of place and doesn't leave the audience waiting impatiently to find out what it is they're actually looking at.

Special Effects

Specialy effects, as mentioned before, have been used to portray the genre and to show what's actually happening even when it's not on screen. For example, the blood on the floor after the killer picks up a knife and walks to the victim clearly shows the killing of said victim, and the television-camera shot following it reveals the action to eliminate any ambiguity, as well as revealing a "trophy" keeping side to the killer (as many real-life murderers tend to do). The stray eyeball, as well as the blood-covered knives, is also meant to show that a timejump has occured and that the victim has been chopped up and put in a bag (the one seen earlier and the one he carries out of the room at the end), though admittedly the pacing is fairly off and we did forget to film one fairly crucial shot that involved the bag itself and blood, to tie everything together. I think we did a fairly good job with the special effects, considering all we had was an old toy flashing eyeball (which no longer works after covering it in blood), spare earphones (that we cut up), red and green food colouring and syrup (for the blood).

Draft - Evaluation Activity 2

 

As mentioned before, one of the main inspirations for the film opening we’ve made is American Psycho, both in terms of the character doing the killing and the method by which they do it. The character of Patrick Bateman and the character of the killer in our opening both represent the upper-middle class of society – the kind shown to the public mainly via businessmen and politicians. The kind of suit-wearing, shallow and selfish person that is more concerned about the state of the floor than the life of the victim.

One of the main themes that American Psycho portrayed was the importance given to outward appearance by people, often not reflecting their true nature – Patrick Bateman was forced to vent his anger and frustration at the littlest things through killing many, many people (whether it was real or not is beyond the point).

Though the opening does have a somewhat different feel to it than the death scene involving Paul Allen in American Psycho, there are several similarities between the two that were intended to link the characters together:

·         The room is filled with very clean colours – white being the dominant one

·         The central point of the room is generally considered to be the chair the victim is in

·         The victim’s chair is surrounded by newspaper

·         The victims wear fairly similar clothing, as do the killers

·         The table is covered in a white cloth

·         The windows have blinds on them (though ours are light coloured to match the room)

·         The killer takes pills from next to a glass of water

·         There is music overlaying the murder, and it’s being played from a stereo system of some sort

·         You don’t see the dead body – just the blood on the newspaper surrounding it

Draft Evaluation

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)

We kept generally to film opening conventions of the past, such as the use of many, many close ups and mid shots without using many long shots – the only long shot used is at the begging, in order to contrast the “before gunshot” scene and the “after gunshot” scenes. Mid shots were used in order to show something happening to the audience (action shots), like putting the bag over the head of Tom and showing the room being empty again, and the close ups were used to either follow up on the action shots or to detach the audience in some way from direct contact with said action, like the shots of the blood on the floor or the eye being picked up.

Conventions to do with the genre itself were also thought about when it came to planning the opening – for one, the horror genre is probably best known for it’s overly graphic nature when it comes to certain things, and we’ve tried to implement that in via the fake blood and eye prop. Ms. Elger’s reaction of “urggghhh” probably best shows the link between the props and the genre. The killer himself is also very detached from the actual murder, no matter his past with the victim, very much like stereotypical murderers of horror-flick fame, like Michael Myers and Hannibal Lecter.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The character of the killer best represents the upper-middle class of society, being based on the character of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, a film that – at least in my eyes – was a commentary on the shallow and selfish side of society, with a man who was driven to murder over very minute things like “whose business card is flashier”. I go into the similarities that have been constructed between the two in evaluation activity 2, but essentially the guy has been made as an unattached, unsympathetic killer more concerned about his flooring than the man he chooses to kill, very much like Patrick Bateman (who, again, is more concerned about his outward appearance than anything else, staying married to a woman he doesn’t love, etcetera.).

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Lionsgate Entertainment is the type of media institution that would distribute our film, as they’re the United States’ most commercially successful independent film distribution company, with past success with similar films to our own, such American Psycho and Saw (the former of which was one of the inspirations for our film opening). Of course, with ours, we’d have to find a British distribution company of some sort with a similar past that would distribute it within the UK.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for our media product would be from ages 16+, with the somewhat gory nature of the action being a bit too graphic for younger audiences, but having elements attractive for young adults and adults. The audience would generally be people interested in horror films in some way, or who like to have a film that poses a question throughout. The film’s storyline was always planned to question the nature of the killer, and have the audience questioning whether the victims deserved to die or whether he was acting randomly – there were elements of the original storyboard that represented this, such as originally planning to have a board of photographs instead of a television, but this was scrapped in favour of keeping the audience linked to the action with the “camera” scene on the television instead.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

The target audience for our title would be people that are fairly interested in horrors (good ones, not the more recent “RUN AND DIE” type film that dares to put itself in the genre) – in order to keep up with their expectations from past successes with films of that genre, such as Silence of the Lambs and American Psycho (which was more of a dark comedy I guess), we took inspiration from the way they work. For example, the killer’s attitude towards the murder is somewhat methodical and surgical, very much like the character of Hannibal Lector who has a past as a psychologist (and an interest in other areas of medicine, as revealed in Hannibal Rising – horrible, horrible film, but still, not the point), and the character of Patrick Bateman who uses the murder of others as a vent for his own anger and doesn’t have much empathy for his victims. These types of films are also noted for their fairly graphic nature in the effects that they show, something we also tried to so with the use of fake blood and a fake eyeball.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I’ve learnt to schedule the filming process properly in order to allow time for errors – at multiple points we came across problems in the process of handing in the draft and the DVD. The draft, for example, was left to render the day before the deadline, and it was at that point that we found out that certain file formats were just dodgy to use (.MTS videos were just horrible in After Effects, especially at the rendering stage, and were scrapped in order to use HD AVI files instead). And this final hand in, despite everything going fairly well, has gone badly when it came to handing in the DVD – we originally had a DVD+R that we accidentally used by just dragging the file to it, which of course meant that we couldn’t burn over the current contents. We then tried to use a DVD-RW, which, despite working fairly well, we found was incompatible with some DVD players and so now we’ll be getting more DVD+Rs to use instead. In future, we’ll make sure to have a backup supply of disks so we won’t come across this problem again, and I’ll be sure to hook up the two DVD players I’ve got to check compatibility of the disk.

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?

 

I’d say we’ve learned what things are more appropriate for a film than a film opening – many of the original drafts we went through were clearly more single stories that ended after two minutes, but making a good film opening setting up a story rather than finishing one up. We eventually corrected this, ending the opening at the point where the killer leaves the house (post-murder).

We also learnt how to properly make a shooting schedule and account for editing time afterwards. With the preliminary task it was more of a “shoot now, and clip together some bits and bobs”, but with the film opening we had to think of appropriate times for both of us to film, that was after school (due to the setting) and that left us enough time to finish the editing in time for the deadline. We also had to organize them a lot better, due to problems we had with the preliminary – for example, the costumes and set stay relatively consistent throughout the entire film opening with only slight deviations that you can’t really notice (like the fact that the floor has slightly different newspapers in different shots, because of the shots being done on separate days and we had to re-do the room each time).

Overall, though I’m not that happy with what we got out in the end, I’d say we did a much better job in the film opening than the preliminary task, probably helped along by the fact we weren’t censored anymore – but I miss the pizza cutter.

Thoughts on the Final Opening

There are several things that I'm not entirely happy about for the final opening. For one, the timing is just... way too fast paced, in my opinion. I probably should have spent a bit longer on certain shots, like the shot of the chair at the end. The meaning is also somewhat lost, but that's probably more due to the fact that we forgot to shoot a shot that would have made it clear what the bin bag was for (a shot of the bag with blood around it before it's picked up), because with just the shot of the second knife covered in blood (which was meant to show it having been used) and the shot of the eyeball and the empty chair with the man's shirt on, it's not entirely clear what has actually happened to him.

The shot at the beginning doesn't seem to last long enough either. It's a very, very fast jump into the fast paced second piece of music, and it just seems off.

The music fading at the end came in way too early, which we didn't notice until after we'd rendered the video.

The lighting is off in certain bits, more due to situational factors than our own choices (the sun kept being hidden by clouds in the middle of shots, changing the lighting).

The "company logo" bit could have gone by a lot quicker than it did, saving us space (because keeping to a 2 minute limit is annoying).

That "green bar" problem came back, but this time with a yellow bar, and for some reason that highlighted random parts of the videos and made them yellow as well. I don't know what the hell is wrong with After Effects.

The blood wasn't used as well as it could have been - the "spattering" that is first shown doesn't really make much sense, considering the killer cuts the guys throat in the next shot, and it's not really explained where the blood before was from.

Overall, I'm not happy with the final piece that we've handed in, but Tom was a great guy to work with and hopefully we get an acceptable mark anyway.

Film Opening - Final

THE END OF FILMING

 FILMING

We did the last day of filming yesterday and at Dale, it went very well considering we had to do the fake blood because we wasn’t sure which way we was going to do it. We tried three different ways of doing the fake blood shot.

·         WITH A GLASS OR A JUG. What we was going to do with this is when the killer cuts the victims throat the killer was meant to pour the fake blood over my shoulder with the jug of camera.

·         PUTTING THE BLOOD IN MOUTH. This was more of a last resort one and we were only going to do this one if the other two didn’t work. What would have happened was I would of put the fake blood in my mouth and when killer cuts the victims throat I would spit it out my mouth. You wouldn’t have been a bull to tell because I had a pillow case over my head.

·         THE PLASTIC TUBE. What we did was I got an old tube from my fish tank cleaned it out and suck the fake blood put in the tube. Then I raped it around my neck so you couldn’t see it and when killer cuts the victims throat I would blow out all the fake blood and it would show up on my shirt.

The shot were my feet are getting dragged we had to improvise a little bit because we needed one more person to drag me because Dale was filming it and I was being dragged. So we got this guy called Paul to drag me across concrete onto some grass.



The Fake Eye

The Fake Eye

We have changed the fake leg to the fake thumb to the fake finger and now to the fake eye.  The reason why we went to the fake eye was because of a time issues of course but the main reason was that making and look real. At one point I suggested that we could use a baby carrot and pour some fake blood on it so you couldn’t tell it was a carrot however we could find any baby carrots so that went out the window. So after we thought that we couldn’t make a finger we found a plastic eye, which alright but you can tell it’s not real. So what we did was cut up some old headphones and attaches it to the eye to make it look like the cord. We then poured some blood around it, we also poured syrup and red dye on the eye to make the blood look thinker and more realistic.

So in the end of that shot The Killer (Dale) is picking up a fake eye instead of a finger.

.

The Fake Thumb/Hand

 Fake Thumb/Hand

After changing the fake leg to the fake thumb I have been doing a little bit of research and found out that it is hard to find a youtube clip about making a fake thumb. However making a fake hand seems to be easy to find, so I looked at a clip about making a fake hand and thought that we could just make the thumb the same way you would make the hand. So im going to try and make a fake thumb for the film but if it doesnt go well then I will make a finger because it would be easier. But if it tunrs out that it is to hard to make in the little time we have i will have to use my genious ideas.





But if i cant make a good one then i will have to buy one from a joke shop. They only cost about £3 which is nice a cheap because we dont have a budget.

Editing The Vengeance of the Green Bar

You see that green bar? That damn green overlay over the bottom of that video? Well, that's there because After Effects is persistent that for me to get a video to work, it has to be a douche throughout the entire experience.

For some reason, that green bar appears over all AVI videos being used, and isn't on the videos themselves, just in After Effects. Seriously. We checked. God knows why it happens. It also appeared in the videos when we rendered them, so that's annoying.

We couldn't find a PROPER way of getting around this, so we had two choices. Either:

• Create a black bar covering the bottom and top sections of the image (you know, the classic "cinematic" look)

or

• Stretch the image slightly in order to hide the green section of the image

We tried out both of these options, and these were the results:

We've chosen to use the "stretched" workaround, because it doesn't distort the image too much, and the black bar looks just seems a tad cheesy.

So, yeah. That's how we got over that problem.

The Fake Leg

Fake Leg



On one of the sense in the story board it shows that the killer miss places a leg but we talked that for the character to be able to miss place a leg would be very clumsy and would not fit in with the description of the character, which him being organised and a clean freak. So we decided that instead of a leg he miss places it a thumb or a finger, something that is more likely foor him to miss place unlike a leg. It also fitted in well because we found out that it is very hard to make or even find a fake leg. So we thought a thumb or finger would be easier for us and more appropriate for the killer.

The Fake Blood

Fake Blood Situations 

Well yesterday was the first time that me and Dale used the fake blood. It wasn’t that hard to make, it took about 10 minutes to do. After making the fake blood we started to set up the room   which also took about 10 minutes as well. When we used the fake blood yesterday we decided to have it in a glass and with the angle we were at you HOPEFULLY wouldn’t be able to see it. However Dale decided to be a stupid and when putting the fake blood on me he wouldn’t pour it over my shoulder he thought he would just tip it on me so we could waste the blood and so the camera could see the glass.

On attempt number two we thought we could use a jug so it would be easier to pure the fake blood but it would also be harder to hide it because it was bigger. So we thought up a way of hiding the jug, because I have a pillow case on my head we thought we could hide the jug if the pillow case was at a certain angle. But again Dale has proven his rubbish blood pouring skills and decided just to pour it all over me and once again you can the jug on camera.

So finally we thought that we could just use a tube and a pump and attach it to my neck so when he “cuts my throat” we wouldn’t be using the fake blood I will. What will hopefully happen is when he “cuts my throat” I will squeeze the pump and it will come down my neck.