Evaluation

What i have learnt from doing story boards is that they are really helpful for when it comes to filming. it gives you a better understanding of what shots/camera angles you should use in the film, by having the story board with you whilst you film the film could help so much in the matter of that one misplaced shot could change and mess up the film. The story board can help so a lot with what the mise en scene could include within the shot as well.

 There are many ways for someone to create a storyboard, they can either create it on a computer and use the technology to make an advanced story board, or you can use the traditional methods of a pencil and paper. How a story board is created is all through imaginary, because all you are given is a script and from the words you have to turn that into to a image so that the director could can you it in the film. 

Story Boards

Because we have a big group we decided to cut up the script into 4's, this is so each member of the group would get there own part for the script. then depending on what kind of style you want to do the story board it is up to you. for me and my part of the script i had the last part. i decided to create the script with the standard pencil style, i felt that it would be more comfortable for me to do. Here is my part of the story board:

I think that these storyboards did turn out quite good, the effect i tried to give of was a rough sketchy picture. the point of a story board is to give you a rough idea of the camera angles/camera shots that would be used in the short horror film, it could be used for a guideline for the shots in the film. 

Evaluation

From what i have learnt by looking at the audience responses and the horror industry, is that in the modern era a lot of people do prefer horror films to any other film genres. This is because of the recent film releases of certain films that have been based on around true events that have happened within someone else life. so knowing that things like that have happened in real life it starts to create fear within someone and will start make them paranoid, and that is a great thing for the audience to have for the purpose of the director, they want to create that fear inside of them so that the audience get tensed and start to get scared. 

from looking at the audience comments on some certain films they really like the horror film to have a great story line, i think this is what i have learnt from looking at the audience research. so hopefully by taking this knowledge in our script we can make a really good story line for the film and make it unique and scary so that we can start to create fear in the audience. 

Audience and Institution Research

I think that when it comes to horror films there are many name out there that people could name that have had a very high successful rate with there films. Here are just some of the names of those Directors/Producers: James Wan, Tobe Hooper, Roman Polanski, Tod Browning, Sam Raimi, Wes Craven and Alfred Hitchcock. These directors/ producers have all been apart of some of the best horror films made such as films like Psycho, Halloween, Scream, Drag me to hell, Saw, etc.

I think that horror films are usually aimed at the age of 15+. This is because the idea of a horror film is to make the audience feel uncomfortable and feel on edge. I think that because the age that this is usually aimed at, this allows the film directors to let there imagination run free with the ideas that they want to put into the film. I think that what people would like from a horror film is basically for them to witness a really good story with parts that make you feel on edge. A lot of people do like to go and watch a horror film just to see if they get scared. But personally I think in order to get scared or feel uncomfortable with the film it has to have a good story line in order to let the story and the scary scenes link.

There are many ways that the director can target audiences to see their film. Because of the technology outburst with the modern society, social networking sites are probably the fastest way for people to know about the latest films. Another way is through TV, because a lot of the youth watch TV, they are usually fed the information about a new horror film through adverts. This is where the film could catch the youth’s eye, and also by showing a trailer during the adverts the youth would be intrigued to find out what happens in that horror film. Posters around place such as on public transport. This is because a lot of people like to travel to work on public transport, and this is where the film companies could put there posters because they can catch the eyes of these people and this could interest the people.

Now I am going to look at what the audience have taught about films that have been released already. There opinions on films are important as the films themselves, by knowing if the audience's comments are positive or negative could make or break a film. The first film I am going to look at is-

The Conjuring: 'It's atmospheric, terrifying, and brilliant in its intricately placed bouts of horror and suspense'

'A strong cast and an atmosphere of real dread mean that despite a catalogue of immediately recognizable ghost devices, The Conjuring amounts to more than the sum of its scary parts.'

by looking at these comments I would say the film is quite good according to the audiences' comments. Looking at the comments the audience think mainly the big success towards this film is mainly because of the audience, the cast have successfully done there job and made the film believable. Also the according to the audience, the suspense build up in the film was really well done. This is so that it made the film more jumpy/scarier, and the film directors have done that that because of the way the audience mention that they found it scary. Overall this film did really well because it gave the audience what they wanted to see from a horror film.

The second film I will look at is-

Insidious: The film never approaches being scary, but its colossal silliness makes it both intriguing and unpredictable

Good for a handful of jumps and guilty giggles before it quickly reaches for the slipshod, hokey contrivances you don't expect until number 2 or 3 in the franchise

By looking at the comments towards this film there are some quite mixed opinions on this film. A lot of comments do say that this film has a great story, but they think it isn't really a horror film, it is just a bit jumpy at times. Also people are saying that this film is one of the scariest films that they have seen. Because of really different and unique story line people might think that the story is not for them. But the directors have done well overall on the film, because it did make people scared so it has done the job of a horror film. 

Ideas Stage

To start of the idea stage, we as group thought that it was a good idea to do a quick brainstorm of what ideas we would like to put towards the short horror film. here is my brainstorm of what i would like to put into the film. 

As a group we decided that we would try and be different from other horror films so we thought that we would do a first person type of film. films such as Blair Witch project, paranormal activity, etc have done films like this and all these films have been successful. so hopefully we can do well with our film and make it as believable as possible for the audience. with these ideas that we have all produced we hope that we could then put these together to give us an idea for a good script and make a good a short horror film.

There was a lot of discussion within the group about what we could with this horror film. we all had great ideas and we wanted to put them all in, but we had to be sensible about the ideas we chose and how we put them together. After the discussion about the choices we made, we were all happy about the concept of the direction we are going with this film. 

As you can see in the idea brainstorm there are certain words on there that are red, this is because these were the main words for what we could use in our film. as a group we discussed the main conventions of what is included within a horror short film and then we set our selves different targets so that we got our part of the film ready. 

Evaluation

What i have learnt in this weeks lesson is about the genre 'horror' what i did this week was basically to look at ready made short horror films and to break down the main parts of the short horror film and have a look what things they have used to create the horror film. things that were being looked for was things like sound, mise en scene, editing, camera angles, etc. by understanding these conventions and also knowing where they should be in a film. this would help us all as it gives us an understanding of what should be in a short horror film, and also when everything should be placed. how this would help our film is that it will make it more professional and make it look much better. now that we have this knowledge of the conventions all we need to do is now put them into action into our short horror film.

Also now because we know and understand the meaning of a horror genre after doing some research on it, this will benefit us on how we can add links of a horror film into our short film to make it that scary. from what we have learnt by looking at the horror genre is that everything is mainly dull/negative. something bad intend to happen a lot. so now that we know this we can add things like this into our script to make it the best as we can.

Short Horror Films research

Before we start to think about making the story for our short film, it was best to get so research done on how and what to include in to a horror short films. i think by looking at some short horror films could help us a lot as a group because it can give us fresh ideas for our story and by using the ideas we could add our own twist on to them.

Also by researching horror films we could get an idea of all the conventions that are used to make a short horror film, things such as sound, text, film title, actors, etc.

Now i will be researching on some horror films, the first film i will start my research with is:

Lock Up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH95Ls5mZJU

At the start of this  film, first of all the production company appeared this shows the audience the company of the film it was produced with. here it shows that with the colour of how it presented it has the word 'Bloody' in the colour of red this is known as colour representation.

After the production company has been shown the title of the actual film then appears on to the screen with a small animation. Here the word lock has been smartly presented because in the letter 'O' instead of the hole there is a the symbol of a key hole in which way could be related to the name of the film 'lock up'.

The main actor is firstly introduced as a person who is working in a office and has a pretty good job that pays well, how you can tell is because of the way the man is dressed and well groomed. and also it shows he is a family man because on the phone it sounds like he is talking to his wife and taking about his kids. the shot for this scene is a simple panning view starting behind an object then slowly panning to the left to capture the man on the phone.



The first real part of any sign of it being a horror film is when the man is about to leave the office building and about to turn of the lights and just when he does he hears a noise. he then turns around a responds with a nervous 'hello'. The camera is zoomed in the face of the man to produce a close up of the face this is to see the expression of the mans face within this situation.  And after he says 'hello' there is just silence. as he is about to lock up he then notices he forgot his keys in his office then he goes to get them, but the lights all of a sudden don't work in building so he pulls out a torch.

When the man picks up his keys, he then start to walk back out the office he starts to walk down a corridor. he is stopped in his tracks because of a sound he hears, the camera is then zoomed in to the face to capture his reaction to the sound.

He then starts to walk more faster with an anxious look upon his face, then again from the noise he hears again he turns around tries to see what the noise was, but there was no noise. he then carries on walking, after a while his torch starts to flicker and then turns off.

When the man starts messing around with his torch he then gets it to work again, but there is a face behind him and leans towards to bite his neck. 

The next film i will start to look at is:

Amy's Touch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01AI0lAq_uY

Again at the start of the film before it starts the production company is shown on the screen. with this company logo it is quite simple with there effects. this could be done so that it is just focusing on the name of the production company itself.

again after the production name, the title of the film appears on the screen, again with this title scene it shows a very simple text of the actual name of the film. with this effect it could look a bit boring but the person who has edited this film has saved the title scene by adding some soft spooky music, this now makes the title scene even scarier as it just shows it simple.

it then starts to show establishing shots of the location of the film and where it is being set in. then there is a narrator explaining each scene that appears on to the screen, it is basically explaining the story of the film. the first person to be introduced is the little child, she is shown as a normal girl playing with her toys.

when she is introduced, that is when the narrator start to introduce to the audience that this is a horror film, because he is talking about a monster living under the little girls bed. then shortly after this has been announced, another shot of the little girl is presented on to the screen but she is with her mum, and the narrator is explaining to us what the mother and daughter are speaking about, which is about the monster.

When the little girl explained about the monster to her mother the narrator explains that the mother has no interest and calls her a 'silly girl' and from then the mother didn't believe her. the narrator then starts to explain the next scene which the little girl getting ready to go to bed. and shows that the little girl has a special magic torch that kept away the monsters, so every night explains the narrator the little girl stayed awake. here we are shown a close up of the girls face to see the emotion on her face. Then the narrator explained she would fall asleep in the day when she felt it was safe.

One night the narrator explains that the batteries from her magic torch ran out. all of a sudden you hear a loud scream, the mum then walks up the stairs to see what the noise is.

The mum then walks into the room and finds Amy sitting on the floor in the corner of her room, the asks whats the problem, Amy then point to underneath the bed. here i think the person who edited this scene did really well because just before the mother sees the monster the music used was really spooky and could then start to build the tension between the film and the audience, because they didn't know what to expect. Then all of a sudden with the music being played it was sudden high pitched noise and then the monster appears on to the screen.

Then the mum is dragged under the bed and never to be seen again. after this has taken place the camera turns around to face Amy and then zooms into her face to capture her reaction to what has just happened.










I think what i have learnt from researching both of these films was that i personally think music/sound plays a massive part of a horror film. i like the way it builds up tension just by adding a bit of music. i think it is the music that does make the audience start to feel a bit tensed and gain suspense towards the film, and then it is all the matter of making that scary scene unpredictable as possible. that is how to get the audience scared of a horror film.
Also most horror films are within a dark surroundings, i guess this makes the horror film more scary because no one knows what to expect from the dark. so i think that the time of the day you do film is very important because of the mood it can build up within the audience.

Horror Genre Analysis

What are the conventions of a horror film?

Well within a normal horror film you would expect to get a scare from it, either a jump or a scream or to get a fright. people go to see a horror film for this. so what they would expect from the film is that there is either a person with a negative past or maybe due to a lot of old films a religious meaning behind the story for them to try to convince the audience as much as possible with the story to try and scare them.

also when it comes to scenery within a horror film it is most likely to be in the night, I think that is because in the dark everything seems to be easier to scare someone, because everything can be hidden, so people can use that and use it to make people jump with sudden actions. also with the scenery a lot of film do take part in the woods were it is wet, damp and cold, I think that why a lot of horror film directors do this because using the conventions use usually get in the woods, it easier to scare a targeted person because you never know what can happen because of the surroundings in the woods.

I think that what a lot of people like the use of sounds this is because it builds up tension inside a person and can get them at any time. with the use of sound it can lead to anything, it also can be used to build up fake suspense, so that it fools the audience into that something is going to happen. I think it is clever of the people who make the sound for the film because I think in a horror film it is the main thing that makes a horror film what it is, with the suspense and tension from the sound can have a massive effect with the audience.

Due to recent events with recent film called 'paranormal activity', this film became very popular very quick. this is because of the use at the end is had the line 'based on a true story' this had got peoples attention very quick, because of those simple words it scared people more. I think that this is because of them words people thought that they could relate to it, if they have witnessed any paranormal events in the past, and then they could think that what happened in the film could happen to them. I think due to this craze, film directors started to base their films of real life stories. This is now getting more views from the audience just so that they can find out about the story, and see if they can relate to it. so I think that a lot of people now like to expect the horror films created these days are based on a true story.

Evaluation

What i have learnt from looking at my research of what a short film is, i now understand the definition and also what he purpose is for a short horror film. knowing this will benefit me for when it comes to actually producing the actual film. also by understanding what the actual properties of a short film means helps in the case of knowing the actual time length of a short film, the main conventions used in the short film, also things like the cast names, director, producers name. all these things would be important to put into the film.

how knowing this information about the short film is that i can put theses conventions into our group film so that it makes it as professional as possible and also believable. the things that will be the main part of the film would be things such as the characters, also the music used in these short films can be very important, the sound can either break suspense or it can build it.

Main codes and conventions trailers/short film

What is a short film?
A short film is any film which is not your standard feature film, which is normally 90 - 120 minutes. According to the academy of motion picture arts and sciences they define a short film as 'an original motion picture that has the running time of 40 minutes or less. There are two types of short films, professional or amateur. Short films are usually screened at local, national or international film festivals. A lot of people create short films for any profit, but just for fun. At times they might have a low budget, or if they are sponsored they might have certain things for there income that goes towards the films.

The most popular type of short films were comedy, there any many funny faces of the short film world such as Charlie Chaplin or laurel and hardy, etc.

These big names made short films really popular, but in todays world people forget about short films because they are shadowed by normal featured films. Hopefully big film companies such as Pixar, DreamWorks and Warner Brothers are trying to bring back short films, but they are going to feature mainly animation short films, because they think with todays modern era people would enjoy animated short films more due to the society with live in.


The main thing to understand when making a short film/trailer is that to understand what is the purpose of their job. so by re searching on what there job is, here is what i have concluded in a short paragraph of what there purpose is:

As because a trailer/short film is pronounced before the actual film is out. The purpose of the trailer/short film is that it gives the audience a advertisement or you could say a commercial for the actual film that will be announced release. 

What a trailer consist of is that a collectible of shots are made into a short 2-3 minute preview of the film. the purpose for this is that it attracts the audience even more to go and watch the film, it is like a tease, because you have viewed only a little bit of the film, you are most likely if interested want to view the whole film to see what happens at the end. an important technique that they use in trailers is that they always depending on the genre of the film would show the parts that would attract the audience to watch the film, for e.g if it is horror film the people who create the trailers would then pick from the film the scariest parts of the film a put them together to build the 2-3 minute montage of all the scariest parts. the plan is to that because they are showing the scariest parts of the film this would then draw the audience to film even more, because then the audience is most likely to think what is going to happen in that film. 

What are the main codes and conventions that are used in a short film? 

. film production logos

. film title 

. directors name/produce name

. age certification 

. actors involved 

. music 

. release date

. last up to 5-40 minutes (depends on film)

Evaluation

I learnt in this lesson what brief i was going to do. i was proud with what work we will be doing, i felt that this brief would suit me well. i enjoy the fact that we will be creating our own film, and also the brief projects that came with it were really good as well, this is because due to me being a graphic student and one of the brief projects is creating a poster for this film, so i was looking forward to this part of the project. The other project brief was for us to create a review page for the film, because we have had experience on making a review for a form of media. so overall this project was a good decision.   

How i have prepared myself for this brief is by doing research on short horror films. and how this will help me is that it would give me a better understanding of what i need to do in this project. hopefully this would prepare me for what i need to understand as well understand what i need to do. 

The Brief

Hi, my name is Ajay Chander and for my A2 work for media i had a choice out of various briefs on which one i would like to work on for my project. When i decided on which brief i wanted to choose we had a choice to work in a group or work as an individual, i decided to work with a group because i feel within a group i can learn more things and also share my ideas with people and get a better feedback if needed. the brief that we decided to do is:  

10. A short film in its entirety, lasting approximately five minutes, which may be live action or animated or a combination of both, together with two of the following three options

. A poster  for the film

. A radio trailer for the film

. a film magazine review page featuring the film 

from the three options we had to choose from we decided as a group to do a poster for the film and also a review page for a magazine. why we chose this is because with the poster including myself an another member of the group we have had experiences in designing posters from other subjects that we are taking, and also with our last media project we had to design a magazine so therefore all of our group has had experience with working on a magazine. so we thought because of these benefits that we have we can go with options and therefore we are able to show of our skills.