Question 9: What was your contribution to the process during the planning, production and post production stages? - Alex Rowbottom

During the planning stages, our main goal was producing a plan that outlined our initial idea. My area in which I mainly covered was the recee location sheets. I went to various locations that had a spooky look to them and photographed them, in order to a final location for the film. I also contributed ideas that could help the mise en scene in the film like designing symbols that we could hang up in our film. Research was also very important, and watched various horror films parallel to the genre of our film to get an idea of what we should have been including in our film.

In my point of view, the most challenging part of the coursework was the production. I concentrated on getting the mise en scene right in the shots and also filmed as well. We all filmed, and of the scene I filmed, I tried to keep the camera steady and put it in the best position for the best shot. I filmed the end scene where our actress is attacked. My other big focus during the production stage was the soundtrack. I used GarageBand in order to create the soundtrack for the film. I enjoyed using the software and experimenting with different sounds to produce a final track.  I am quite pleased that I was able to create a soundtrack for a film and that it is parallel to the actual film.

In the final post production stages, we all updated the blog and I added some final print screens to it to show our progress. Then I evaluated our progress over the course and put my opinions down about what I thought we had achieved. To conclude I thoroughly enjoyed working with Katie and Natalie and thought the course was a great experience.

Question 9 - What was your contribution to the process during the planning, production and post production stages? - Natalie Thorpe

During the planning we all decided to distribute the work equally so everyone had an equal role in our group. My main contribution was the makeup design sheet, test shots, finding an actor and contributing my ideas towards to the film and storyboard. Due to everyone in our group contributing we became organised and finished all of the work on time. 

I believe my contribution through the production stage was filming and editing. The days we filmed I got my opinion across to the other members in my group, so I think I had quite an important role in directing what was going on in the filming. Me, Katie and Alex all contributed towards the filming, we took it in turns to film scenes so we all experienced using the camera. I filmed the part where our actress Ellie Walker was walking along the path towards the opening of the gate and then the close ups of her imaging the symbols on the tree. I also contributed to the editing along side Katie, we both split the shots to cut down the footage to produce our film. We also quickened a few shots to increase the tension and keep the audience guessing. We did this whilst Alex made to soundtrack on Garage Band. Towards the end of the sound track I helped put in some sounds such as the noise when the actress blinked this was a main focusing point as it tied in with our film name "Don't Blink". 

My contribution on the post production stages was posting some of the updates on the blog, including what we did in the lesson and what we did outside the lesson. I also uploaded some of the sheets for our planning stages onto the blog by scanning them onto the macs. We all contributed towards updating the blog to add our own opinions of the work we had done and the progress for our film. We also completed the evaluation questions I did questions 1,5,6 and 9. 

Question 6 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Through the imdb research I fount a film called Triangle, which is a 2009 British-Australian psychological horror film, directed by Christopher Smith. I also fount out that The UK Film Council awarded public money from the National Lottery fund towards the development, production and distribution of the film. Although both our production and the film Triangle are set in completely different locations there are  some distinctive similarities for example at the start of the trailer you will see one of the main female characters blinks you can see this in the trailer below, only 00.08 seconds into it. This is one of the main focusing points in our films as it relates to the title "Dont Blink". 

Trailer for Triangle:

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2981299481/

The image below is taken from the film Triangle, the shot is an extreme close-up showing the characters emotions through her eyes. It is literally the same as the image taken from our production. 

Another similarity is the same character believes she sees a double of herself, you can see this at 01.07 minutes into the Triangle trailer. this shows everything is playing on her mind, its a psychological twist, we also tried to interpret this aspect into our film. 

The other horror film that had an influence on our production was "Drag Me To Hell" however this was an American horror film, there are mysterious happenings throughout which really keeps the audience guessing, the main influence we tried to interpret was the slamming of the gate (01.27 minutes into the trailer) We achieved this in our film, I believe it had a great impact on the psychological aspect. 
Trailer for Drag Me To Hell: 
http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi3899917081/


As our horror film is a low budget production it makes sense that the suitable ways to advertise it would be on the internet through popular websites such as YouTube and social network sites like Facebook. 
I think the companies would make great improvements to our film, as they have a substantial amount money to spend on the making of it, considering as was a low budget production i believe we did our best to produce a good opening. 


By Natalie Thorpe

Question 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

We decided that our target audience would be suitable to be 15+ because the content of the film wasn't graphic enough to be an 18. We all agreed on this age due to our genre being psychological/satanic horror, so the idea was to make the film play on the audiences mind. I believe we targeted the audience well as you can see from the results in the questionnaire. There was a varied response from the audience the majority said 15+ however some people said 12+ and others said 17-30. This shows we could of developed the audience’s knowledge of our target audience in a more explicit way. Throughout the film our aim was to maintain a good standard, keep the audience interested and show awareness of the target audience.  Our actor was 16 so this fitted well with the age of our target audience so they could relate back to the actor. The music we used worked well with the transitions in our editing, as our film was called don’t blink we added a series of shots where the actor was blinking accompanying this shot was a distinctive sound used to emphasize the significance of the shot. We aimed to keep the mise-en-scene simple yet affective this was to keep our target audience interested in what was having. The location was Wollaton Park; from the feedback given back everyone thought the location was extremely effective and fitted well with the genre of our horror film. So overall i think we adapted the filming extremely well to fit our intended target audience. 

By Natalie Thorpe

Question 9 - What was your contribution of the process during the planning, production and post production stages? - Katie Mckeag

9. Final Question (Answered by all group members) - What was your contribution of the process during the planning, production and post production stages? (Give specific examples of what you did)

During planning my main contribution was the storyboarding. We all had decided on the story and what shots we'd have liked during the sequence but then I went away and drew most of it up, sorted a few times and they showed Natalie and Alex and asked for their thoughts and then all three of us again altered parts to work better. 

I think my contribution through production was the organizing. Again, we had to figure out when each member was free as a group but I then thought about what was needed on the days of filming and made sure everything was there, like storyboards if we wanted to check over what was needed as well as bringing the symbols. I also contributed during editing with Natalie. With the first main parts like cutting everything out what wasn't needed and putting them in the right order, me and Natalie sorted that while Alex focused on Garageband. 

On the post-production stages I contributed with the blog. I decided to keep that in order and make sure we updated in weekly and write as much as we could, like print-screens of film and then a paragraph saying what it showed and our progress.

Question 8: looking back to your preliminary task. what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

From the first ever preliminary task to the final film we did, there are lots of differences. However these differences do show how far we have come. Differences include film length, camera use, soundtrack and the mise en scene. The biggest difference we noticed was the camera use as from then on, we started thinking about how we could make a shot better. Especially during the production of our film, we constantly thought about places and positions of the camera that could make a shot seem better.

Secondly one of the most important changes of all was that we felt that during the preliminary task we didn’t plan it as well as we could have. From the task we then learnt that planning is very important and sticking to a plan can shape a film and get things done a lot quicker. Also, another thing we learned was the fact that sound is just as important as the camera shots. Without a correct parallel soundtrack the film is dull, and so garage band was very important when creating our film.  

Finally, if we were to create our film again, we would start film as soon as we can and allow more time for editing. Also, when we have filmed, we should start to put together the scene in order to get an idea of what the film will look like and if there are any shots or scene that need editing. However I do think our overall performance of making a film was good, and we have come along way since the preliminary task.

Alex Rowbottom

Audience Evaluation Forms

In today's lesson we went around looking other's films as well as them looking at ours. We filled in Evaluation Forms with a main question of: "In what ways does the film develop of challenge forms and conventions of real media products?" There were then sub-titles focusing on separate points, like camera work, editing, etc. It then asked about its representation towards social groups and what audience we thought it was aimed at. The final questions asked what attracted us to this film; our criticisms and what mark out of 60 we thought it deserved. 

On average we got a Level 3. What was favored most was the location and sound effects. All forms also said they’d watch the rest of the film when asked. This means are film, to us, was successful; clearly having kept the audience interested enough to want to watch more. The criticisms were either the film was too bright for a horror, the one continuity error with a man in the background or the fact they didn’t quite understand the end. We knew ourselves we were to have a figure that the audience couldn’t see attack her but what she thought was there, meeting a slightly psychological and satanic genre. However we unfortunately didn’t make this clear enough. Overall we’re pleased with what we got and our film itself.

Final Film

Sound Printscreens

These are the printscreens of our final film. We added the sound after using both computers to make it perfectly timed and fit with our shots. We decided to have more intense parts when she blinks, keeping each the same piece of music, for an audience to see the connection and keep them knowing it's important. We also put different parts for the gate slam and other important parts. We exported in from one computer, put it on a memory stick and imported in onto the other. It did fit as well as we'd hoped. The purple area under the frames is the music. The sequence is meant to be, or as close as possible, two minutes, and we also got that.

Transition Printscreens

These two printscreens show that we included titles and transitions other than cuts. The little squares that attach to the frames are the transitions added. We knew we wanted fades as we have different shots after the character blinks, it changes as if she's gone to another area and time's passed. The fades would show this a little clearer if it wasn't obvious enough. We then had to decide whether we wanted fade-ins or outs.  Originally we had fades out after she blinked. Looking over it a few times though one blink seemed to fade out before she finished open her eyes, we tried sorting it with altering the time but we then put fade-ins to see if it'd be easier and look better, we then ended up keeping the fade-ins on the frames after the blinks. We then finished the sequence with a fade out as we wanted to show it was finished, although it did fit as the character is attacked and just as it reaches her, it finishes, like suspense.

Printscreens

These are printscreens to show our title sequence. We were going to have them all on the first few shots of the hall but when we tried these it didn't work as well as we'd hope due to different timings. What we came up with was putting the product name on the very first, letting the next shots then carry on and then include our names when we have the increasing shots of our actress. This, we think, ended up working better. The shots weren't two far part so having the production name at the very beginning didn't look too far anyway, it still flowed. We then included a drifting title transition as it drifts to the right just in time for when she opens her eyes; it fits quite perfectly.

Our only problem we found was when putting on these titles, the shots blurred slightly. When we took them off again, they unblurred and went back into focus. We don't understand why it did this so left it but we hope it doesn't effect the overall sequence too much.