Psychological Horror films..

Here is a list of some psychological films that we looked into in order to follow the correct conventions of what the should include.

Black Swan
The Blair Witch Project
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
The Butterfly Effect
Carnival of Souls
The Cell
Come and See
Dark Floors
Dark Water
Forbidden Siren
The Forgotten
Grim Reaper
The Grudge
The Haunting
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
The Innocents
Jacob's Ladder
Ju-on
Kairo
Kaun
Les Diaboliques
Marianne
The Mothman Prophecies
One Missed Call
Neon Genesis Evangelion
The Others
Pulse
Rasen
Repulsion
Rosemary's Baby
Salad Fingers
Secret Window
Session 9
The Shining
The Silence of the Lambs
Silent Hill
The Sixth Sense
Suicide Club
A Tale of Two Sisters
The Uninvited
Whispering Corridors


Samantha

Complete

After numerous weeks of completing my evaluation of my AS Media horror film that i have created. This was after completing numerous excersises that helped with the production, editing and distribution of my horror film. In my evaluation i had to include things such as, the research we carried out, the feedback we were given aswell as creating a film poster that suited our film. We also had to comment on how our film follows the conventions of the sub-genre and how it targets our audience.

Samantha

Garage Band tutorial

Here is a tutorial on how to use garage band which is a program that we had to use to create the music for our horror film and assure that it fitted well. Tutorials on Youtube were very important so we were able to make the music after never using the program before.

Samantha

Issues we faced

During the process of filming we came across 2 problems that effected our filming. One of these was the weather. Because we began filming in February time it meant that the weather was changing making it effecting the date of our filming. This was because of issues like the snow which meant that if we were to film, we wouldn't be able to assure it would be there again meaning that the continuity of our film wouldnt be good.
Another issue faced was the booking out of camera's, as we wanted to book out a camera at the point of half term, however there were none available. This meant that in future we would have make sure we were more organised with booking out camera equipment.

Samantha

If we were to do it again..

If we were to start the process of our filming again i think i would ensure that all the planning was appropriate so we new exactly what shot were needed and could follow these very good.
I think that the group i worked in were really well as we all stayed well communicated so we knew when and where to meet in order for us to film our project. I think the story line of our horror was very good however i think we needed to be more prepared for issues that we faced during shooting.

Samantha

Transitions

Here is an example of a transition that we used within our horror sequence. I think that this was very effectively used as it made the shots flow without jumping and helped the continuity of these shots. I also believe that this shot helped the audience understand the setting and the storyline of what was happening at this point as they flowed into eachother.

Samantha

My evaluation

As today's deadline approaches, I have ensured that I looked over my blog to check that everything has been included and it has. This means that I have now completely finished.

Sorraya

iMovie

Here is a iMovie tutorial which is really helpful and explains how we edited our software to create our final piece. When looking at the tutorial you can see how professional the software is and how it has allowed us to create our film. iMovie was a very beneficial software to have and without it our film wouldn't be the same. The numerous special effects and transitions on iMovie allowed us as a group to play around with different effects and add these to our film, eventually reaching a conclusion on what looks and works best for us. We found some highly effective transitions (for example when Annabel's eyes are moving frantically across the screen, there is a dissolve transition from that to her walking through the woods. Overall, iMovie was a very useful and professional software.

Above is the example that was previously mentioned of the characters extreme close up shot having a dissolve transition onto the next shot of her walking through the woods. This is the midpoint of the dissolve as both shots are on screen.

Sorraya

So Far..

At this time i have almost finished my evaluation after completing my prezi presentation last night. This means that all i have to complete is my question 5 then my evaluation will be complete. This means adding the extras and talk about the feedback we recieved with our film.

Samantha

Things to work on for the future

For future references, I think the main aspects that I need to work on improving are the soundtrack and carefully considering my location choice. The fact that the weather delayed our filming so much means that in the future, I would preferably choose an inside location because it means that we wouldn't be delayed as much in terms of filming and this would give my group more time to focus on editing. Not only this, filming in a public location means that you cannot guarantee privacy, however we did not suffer greatly from this. In terms of our soundtrack, compared to other films made by students in the previous years, I feel that our soundtrack lacked variety. Although it was a good piece of music, it did not vary greatly throughout our entire film and because of this I feel the music did lack slightly. Therefore, in regards to future filming, I would take the time to carefully consider where I'm filming, the problems that may occur because of this, the variety of my music and how much time we have left to complete our music.

Sorraya. 

What have you learned?

Overall, I think doing this exercise has taught me a lot about how to control a camera and how to create effective shots that portray things such as power, weakness ad equality. Without this exercise, I wouldn't of been able to fully understand how useful these shots are. Compared to my preliminary exercise, I have learnt a lot more about creating a continuity cut as my editing on the preliminary exercise was extremely poor. I think I worked a lot harder and payed a lot more attention to detail when editing the footage and this resulted in a realistic looking film because there weren't any major jumps. In this exercise, our entire group spent a lot of time filming and this enabled me to take a lot more care when filming to ensure that my shots were good enough and matched our standards. Because of this, we ended up having some good shots in our film. I think learning these has given me the experience needed to film projects in the future (e.g. media A2 music video) and because of this I feel pleased that this exercise has made me more skillful in both recording and editing.

Sorraya

What was difficult about this project?

When looking back, I think the most difficult/challenging aspect of producing our film was the fact that we had chosen to film outside. The thing we hadn't thought about was how predictable the weather was going to be and because of this, we suffered a lot of setbacks when it came to producing our film. On our first filming schedule, the heavy downpour of snow meant we couldn't film due to continuity errors that would occur if we had to re-film. Also, on many other occasions, the heavy rain made it difficult for us to film certain scenes and to even use our camera equipment incase it broke. Because of these difficulties, we ended up very rushed for time to finish filming, whilst many others within our class had finished all of their filming. We did actually manage to have our film done on time, but the weather certainly delayed us and meant we weren't able to finish our filming on the times we had hoped for.  I found that when it came to filming, it was also difficult to exactly replicate all the shots we had intended to do. This is because whilst we filmed we also thought about how we would then take this footage to make a continuity edited piece, so when filming certain shots, I struggled to see whether or not the shot was good enough to be in the film. However, because of this, we ended up filming many takes of the same shot and this meant we did not have to go back to re-film shots we had already done because even though we may have faulted in one shot, we had filmed another replica to replace it.

Sorraya.

Looking back - Changes that we made

When looking back at our initial film story line, several aspects have been changed. Our original idea was to have our title sequence to take place within a house. The idea was to have lights flickering, music playing randomly etc. However our feedback from our class mates suggested to us that the house in our title sequence was unexplainable as they didn't know whose house it was and what relevance it had to do with the film. Not only this, we also decided to have the character holding a knife because we wanted to have a severe threat within the film. However, it was revealed to us again through audience feedback that there was no explanation as to how the character gets a knife. This resulted in a big change for our film title sequence because the entire plan of it needed to be different. From this we concluded that the shots which revealed names of actors, producers etc would all have the font written on what appears to be a burning book. And even though we kept factors such as lights flickering, we made sure that this happened in an empty room so that it gave the appearance of the character being in a mental asylum. Overall, this ended up being a better option because it made more sense to the viewer and after showing the title sequence to the viewers, there were no criticisms relating to it not making sense. We also decided to remove the knife because this was unneeded and only left the audience confused. In conclusion, I think the changes we made as a group benefitted our film as they allowed us to make our film clearer and more believable for the audience. I think the large amount of planning and preparation that we did made filming a lot more easier because whenever we were unsure as to what we were doing, we could always look back at our shot list/story board etc to find out exactly what shot type and scene we should be filming.

Sorraya

Websites that helped us

Here are some logos of some of the sites that have been helpful to us in our research and planning. Without these websites we wouldnt of been able to find out important information such as who our target audience are and what age rating would be appropriate for our film. It is therefore the case, that these sites have had a large impact in providing us with the knowledge we have gained whilst creating our film.

Sorraya.

Here is another tutorial I looked at which allowed me to understand how to use Prezi and then embed it onto my blog. Overall, it was quite an easy process and this is another reason why Prezi was so useful for me.

Sorraya

Prezi tutorial

Here is a brief tutorial on how to use the Prezi presentation website, I found this quite useful as Prezi was something I had never come across before and in looking at this tutorial I was able to get a grasp of how it works. I found that Prezi was actually a very effective and creative form of presenting my work and because of this, I see the importance of creating this presentation to explain about the technologies that I have come across whilst creating my media project.

Sorraya.

Thursday 26th April 2012

Today is our evaluation deadline, this means that we have completely finished all that we had started for our filming project (both our film and blog). We as a group have worked together to create an informative blog which shows our progress from early September (our preliminary task) till now. This involves looking at our early camera exercises, to planning our film, creating our film, the feedback we received, our final film and our evaluation. We feel the information we have included within our blog shows how we as a group have progressed and shows the planning we made to get to where we are now.

Sorraya.

Evaluation Progress

I have now finished everything for my evaluation. On Tuesdays' lesson I was able to film and edit my recorded evaluation and on Wednesday I finished my Prezi presentation. All that remains for me to do is to go over my evaluation and to ensure that I have included everything that needs to be there. I am pleased that I have finished my evaluation in time as this means I havn't rushed my work and have taken the time to properly discuss all the questions that were set for the evaluation. Questions 6 and 7 of my evaluation are featured on seperate blogs whilst questions 1-5 are all on the same blog.

Sorraya

Question 6 Prezi Presentation - Sorraya Begdeli (EVALUATION)

Copy of Sorraya Begdeli Evaluation on Prezi

Sorraya Begdeli - Question 7 (EVALUATION)

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full project?

Evaluation progress

I have now currently achieved my target of finishing questions 1-5 of my evaluation today, this means I have 3 days left (including a 2 hour lesson) to finish questions 6 and 7. I am aiming to plan for my prezi presentation tonight and plan (hopefully film) my filmed evaluation tomorrow. This means that hopefully I am prepared enough for my evaluation deadline and that I can complete it to the best of my ability and in as much detail as possible.

Sorraya

Feedback

After reviewing all of our feedback, we feel quite happy with our film and feel that we created a piece which was liked by our peers. Of course, criticisms did occur, but we feel this was constructive rather than a major flaw within our footage. Because of this, we can see our feedback forms as something we can look at seriously and properly to consider how we could improve in the future. The overall feedback was reassuring to us as a group and suggested to us that we did reach out to our target audience and that we created a film appropriate to our genre.

Sorraya

Evaluation Update

So far I have now fully completed questions 1-4 to what I feel is the best of my ability, all I now have left is to finish off question 5 then start question 6. After this, my final part will be to record my evaluation based on the skills i've learnt and how i've progressed since the start of the media A level. 

Sorraya

Evaluation Work

Our final lesson to complete our evaluation is on Tuesday the 24th April, this will give us two hours to hopefully finish or nearly finish our evaluation.

Sorraya

Film Company LOGO

This is the logo for our film company, 'Shadows Films'. It was created to reflect our horror genre and through using blood splatters, a dark background and a unique font, we think we have achieved this. We think that the logo is recognisable and memorable for a viewer because it stands out as being different and the contrast of colours used help it to be easily recalled or remembered for the audience. We believe that because of how this logo has been created, if this was to appear before a film, an audience would instantly be able to tell that a horror film is about to be shown.

Deadlines

The deadline for our blog evaluation is in 3 days time. This means we have a lot of progress to make to finish. I need to finish off different parts of each question that could only be completed after filming and I am hoping to finish this by Monday (today), ensuring that all I have left to do is parts of question 6 and then finally question 7.

Sorraya

OUR FILM POSTER

This is the film poster that my group has created. We took inspiration from 'The Grudge' film poster and then from that created our own. We stuck to typical conventions of a film poster by including the billing, the release date, the title etc. The colours used stand out amongst the black background and this creates an effective, eye catching poster.