Prezi Evaluation.

Payback time Prezi on Prezi

Software.

We used different types of software to create our video's rough and final cut. First of all we used iMovie to cut and create our film, we also used GarageBand to create our music for the film.

All editing was done in IMovie --

All music was produced in Garageband --

Final Cut of Payback Time // 7 Question Evaluation.

1. My group and I have now completed our horror opening sequence, and we believe we have included a range of conventions that are typically used within similar media products.

We believe the conventions we have used indicate our opening sequence best fits the psychological horror sub-genre as the stalker is mentally torturing the victim, stalking her and playing mind games which is usually shown in other psychological horrors.

Usually there is a female victim within horror films that is known to get stalked, frightened and even killed, the murderer is generally a male as they are known as the more dominant, aggressive sex whereas females are more vulnerable and emotional.

We have demonstrated this in our opening sequence as we show a young female being stalked by her best friends boyfriend, who is out to get revenge for the death of his loved one. It is clear she feels threatened as when walking home she is constantly looking over her shoulder.

Another convention we have noticed in typical horror movies is the use of gore which usually includes body parts, blood and horrific footage.

in the making of our opening sequence we have taken inspiration from the God father part 1 as although this isn't a horror film, there is a horrific part which shows a man waking up in bed with a horse's head covered in blood that was put there by someone seeking revenge, this relates to our opening sequence as a heart from the victims pet dog had been placed in a box by the stalker as one way of getting his own back for his unfortunate loss.

            

2. Our opening sequence represents social groups in a number of ways, as there are two young girls who have a close friendship but one girl is much more intimidating than the other, she is then over powered by the male character who is out to get revenge.

It is stereotypical for the male characters to be much more dominant and powerful than the female in most horror films.

We believe our horror opening sequence best fits around the ages of 18 to 20 as the characters playing the murderer and victim are around that age therefore the audience could relate to the ‘young love’ storyline.

We also believe our film will appeal more to the female gender as we have shown two young girls wanting to party and then showing how vulnerable teenagers can be.

Due to the conventions we have used such as drink driving, partying, young love and vulnerability we have came to the decision that out horror opening sequence best fits a teenage audience that are familiar with these things that happen in everyday life and can relate to them in their own way.

3. When looking at distributing our full film I would say that it would fit in being a saturation/ wide release Hollywood film that gets released in all cinemas and then about 3 months later will be released on DVD and blu-ray disk.

If this were to happen distributors to look at working with would be Universal, Lionsgate Films, or New Line Cinema. When looking at these companies they have many of the newly released horror films under their belt that have been huge hits. These films include; The Wolfman (Gross to date $137,332,000), Nightmare on Elm Street Remake, Cabin Fever, Hostel, Friday the 13^th Remake (Gross to date $91,379,051), Saw, Land of the Dead (gross to date $46,770,602), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Remake (Goss to date $107,071,655), House of 1000 Corpses, and The Devils Rejects.

Thinking about directors a name that always seems to come to mind, for me, is Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino has done many different things, such as; directing, screenwriting, producing, cinematography, and acting in many films. Hit films directed by Tarantino include; Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill Vol. 1, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Sin City, and his most recent movie being Inglorious Bastards.

Another person to look for is Eli Roth. Roth, like Tarantino directs, produces, writes and acts in many films. His movie career includes; Cabin Fever, Hostel, and Hostel pt. 2. The fact also that Tarantino and Roth have worked together before with small budgets to make a movie and they turn into great successes seems to be a way forward. This is apparent especially with the movie hostel as the budget was $4.8 million, but the movie, worldwide, has earned to date $80,578,934.

I believe with a mix of one of the three distributors, Tarantino, and Roth the movie could be a great success.

Looking at Merchandise and franchise opportunities I do not think that the film would be to the level of creating a franchise such as Saw or have merchandise to back up the film. The movie would be a smaller Hollywood release but with great potential to have maybe a prequel that would be able to explain the hostility of Jonathan and the volatile relationship between Kristie and Jonathan.

4. The film we have created is a psychological horror and the audience we intended our film for would be 18 and older as we gave a certificate of an 18 rating for the film. Even though there is an 18 rating, I think Payback Time would appeal to many teenagers and young adults. The cast when making the full film would mainly be all teens and I believe the audience can relate to the film more that way. When looking at the death of Chloe especially, I think some teens will understand what Jonathan was going through because a lot of teens unfortunately die so friends, relatives, and boyfriends/girlfriends of anyone that has died will understand the pain that Jonathan goes through with Chloe drink driving.

When looking at similarities with other films I would say our film is a one of a kind but would take inspiration from things like Hostel and The Devils Rejects. I would say that from The Devils Rejects that we would take the power of manipulation that the Firefly family had in the movie. Jonathan could even work on gaining his family, or if a prequel were made it would show his bad family life and maybe just put him with a bunch of people like the Firefly family. In this picture that I have included from Hostel we could change the beginning to exclude Kristie finding her dog or add more flashbacks to Jonathan dismembering the dog like this man is doing with bodies. Over all I think that any young adult and teen could love the movie.

5. What we believe will attract our audience is that we have a full teen cast, which is our audience target of 18. We believe that they will relate to our cast and the situations they may get them selves into, such as peer pressure and drunk driving, leading to fatal accidents. I believe that our audience will relate to our drinking scene very well, as it is a common activity for our target audience to pursue. The gender of our audience is male and female, as our mixed sex cast will attract this. We have used one specific point of view shot in our opening, which is a P.O.V of the stalker following his victim, we have used this because we believe that it makes the audience wonder what will happen to the victim and make them wonder why the stalker is following. I believe that our audiences are being put in the position of both our victim and stalker, so that they can see both sides of the story. This leads the audience to choose who is right and who is wrong in the opening sequence. This creates the impact of confusion on our audience, they are being given two sides of the story, this confuses them because they try to decide who is right and who is wrong and which side they will support. It also shows the reason behind any killings and torturing to come. The way in which we create suspense is by not showing the identity of the killer at first, but we do show it quite soon, this is because of the genre of psychological horror. The audience needs to see and feel both side’s pain and misery and what has happened on both sides to cause this.

6. We have learnt several things from the use of the camera equipment that we did not know before this project. For example, cameras have advantages and disadvantages; a disadvantage would be that camera's do not work well in the different weather conditions, e.g. rain or darkness. We found out that the tripod and other essentials were hard for a group of three to lug around. Advantages of the equipment would be the ability to get steady shots e.g. steady pans, close ups and more. One of the main problems for constructing our project were the dates, times for the cast and settings. Some times it was not possible to get everyone together on the same day, so we had to sit down and work out a timetable on available days. We had new equipment to be used to our advantage for our film. However we did not believe that we needed most of the equipment due to our story line and different scenes. Using iMovie for our editing was quite simple, it was not that hard to figure out and use. What I learnt about editing is that it needs time and a lot of work put into it, this is because if you rush your editing you can tell in your video, this lowers the quality of your film. I found that the effects in iMovie were really useful for the mise en scene of our film, this is because we could film during the day and turn it to night for the scenes that require darkness. Garage band was another software we used to improve our film, because in the silent parts we could add music to make it more attracting to the viewer, I found it a useful software to use for our film and easy to make good tracks.

7. I believe that we have progressed in the full product stage compared to our Preliminary task; this is because of several reasons. First of all in the planning stages we did not really get to plan as long or as much for our preliminary compared to our full product, we did not get to research genre, similar movies or conventions of genre's in our preliminary whilst we could in our full product. We did not get as much time to storyboard to prelim so intern it was not as well thought out as the full product. The animatic really made our storyboard come alive and make it a lot more interesting and easier to understand. We knew a lot of the shots we needed to use from this and how to edit it correctly, this gave us a huge advantage compared to our prelim. I believe that our specific shot types have improved because we used more shot reverse shots in conversations and point of view shots to show peoples views. With the equipment we felt a lot more confident because we knew how to use it professionally, which made it easier to film and create our movie opening. I believe that our product fully fulfills the brief that was set to us, with our variety of shots, smooth editing and use of garage band to create our set tracks for our scenes.

Questions 1 and 2 were done by Kristie Wilson.

Qustions 3 and 4 were done by myself.

Questions 5, 6, and 7 were done by Jonathan Wigham.

Rough Cut // Evaluation.

Evaluation; This is the rough cut for our horror based film, Payback Time.

So far the shots in our movie sequence are very varied. There are close-ups, long shots, point of view, tracking, medium shots, and high angle shots. These contribute to the storyline in a lot of ways because when Kristie is being followed, the viewer is actually following her, and the shot in the car can make you feel like you are in the car crash with Kristie and Chloe.
There are a lot of different locations also; the park, Chloe's house, a dark place where Jonathan sits to reflect about Chloe, Kristie's house, and Chloe's car. All this definitely helps build a story-line and keeps a viewer interested instead of having one long shot throughout the sequence in the same location.

With the sequence there is an awful lot of editing done. So far there are many transitions, text for actors and people that worked on the film, the scenes at the park were darkened to give a more moody feel, the speed-ups when the girls are having shots, extracted audio for playback over shots, and a few sound effects. Having these have helped us speed up our movie, and made it make more sense to the viewer.


Still to do: Unfortunately we weren't able to include all of the shots we have filmed. The other shots we have to add is Kristie's dog being delivered to her and her opening a box to find gizmo's heart with a note and some car scenes; we would like to show Chloe turning the key of her car and putting her foot on the gas pedal.
As far as editing we would like to add dates to the corner of a few shots, we feel this will add to the story and it will make more sense to the viewer. Also to be added is a soundtrack. For the dog walking scenes at the beginning I think soft music will work, when going into the scenes at Chloe's house we might speed up the music for a more fast paced build up. When getting to the scenes of Jonathan more sad music will come in to play very softly behind the audio of "his thoughts" and then following the scene of Kristie putting the posters of her dog you will build up to the tension to then cut the music before she opens the box and then end with a scream.


What I like// dislike about our sequence: From where our sequence has started I feel that it is doing better and better. To the viewer I feel it will actually make sense and not be a huge mess of shots like I thought it would be. My favorite part right now is the part with Jonathan and you can hear his thoughts, I think it gives a real sense of anger, especially as you don't see him saying it is payback time. The fact his identity is also concealed, even though he looks right at the camera, gives an eyrie-ness to the viewer which I think works very well for a horror film, as you are trying to scare the audience.

Company Logo.

made by me.

Risk Assessment

Camera Safety.

// Don't shoot in the rain.

// If it starts to rain, cover the camera and/or pack up.

// When not in use always put the camera in the bag.

// Unless for a hand-held shot, always use a tripod.

// Watch out for other people in public locations, especially when other animals are around, make sure the tripod doesn't get knocked over.

Our Safety.

// When shooting in public look what is around to make sure nothing is broken and no one is hurt.

Assessment 8: Shooting Schedual.

Shot	Type	Duration	Location	Mise en scene
1	Over the shoulder	2-4 sec	Bedroom	Low-key lighting
2	Med-long shot	3-6 sec	Living room	Natural lighting
3	Med-close up	2-4 sec	Living room	Natural lighting
4	Med-long shot	2-5 sec	Living room	Natural lighting
5	Long-shot, tracking shot	4-8 sec	Street	Natural lighting
6	Med-long shot	2-5 sec	Street	High-key lighting
7	Med-shot	2-5 sec	Building	Natural lighting
8	Med-long shot	2-4 sec	Bedroom	Low-key lighting
9	Extreme close up	2-4 sec	Bedroom	Low-key lighting
10	Long shot	1-3 sec	Park	Natural lighting
11	Close up	1-3 sec	Park	Natural lighting
12	Med long shot	2-3 sec	House	Natural lighting
13	Med long shot	2-3 sec	House	Natural lighting
14	Close up	1-3 sec	House	Natural lighting

Assessment 7: Anamatic

Assessment 6: Organization of actors, locations, costumes, and props.

Actor’s	Locations	Prop’s	Costume
Jonathan (b f)	House/Bedroom	Car	Casual-clothing
Kristie (victim)	Street	Wine glasses and bottles	Mask
Chloe	College		Hoody

Assessment 5: Pitch Idea.

Idea's.

Girl

House Party

Drunk Driving

Sad Family

Recording of friend convincing her to drive

Photographs in the mail

Texts

Phone calls

Stalker

Therapist

Flashbacks

Cops interviewing

Plot Synopsis

The storyline of our horror will be based on two young girls who are best friends but each of them are very different characters, Kristie is a manipulative person who pressures her vulnerable friend Chloe into doing things she would rather not, a lot of the time Chloe does things to please Kristie as she is scared of loosing their friendship.

One night both girls are sat talking, Kristie decides she wants to go out partying and persuades Chloe to go along, although Chloe is not fond of the idea she begins to start drinking alcohol anyway, as the night carries on Kristie believes it would be a good idea for Chloe, who has recently passed her test to drive them both into town rather than them having to pay for a taxi, Chloe refuses to go along with Kristie’s plan and strongly believes it’s a bad idea, but Kristie being the dominate character she is wont take no for an answer.

Little do they know, during Kristie pressuring Chloe to do these things Chloe’s boyfriend rings and she accidently answers it in her pocket enabling her boyfriend to hear the full conversation and what they where planning to do.

Before her boyfriend has the chance to do anything, both girls get into the car and with them being under the influence of alcohol find themselves having a huge car accident.

Unfortunately Chloe does no survive but Kristie pulls through, Chloe’s boyfriend who is heart broken cannot believe he has lost everything due to her controlling friend and wants revenge, as time passes Chloe’s boyfriend spends most of his time planning revenge by following Kristie and making her fear for her life.

Kristie knows she is being followed but doesn’t know who it is, moths go by and things are being posted through her door and she is being constantly threatened Kristie thinks she is going mad, and no one seems to care as the police and her family think it’s all in her head and she is just grieving for her friend.

Chloe’s boyfriend thinks it’s to easy to just take her life and starts making her life hell by destroying anything and anyone she cares about.

After Kristie has spent years of her life looking over her shoulder and being constantly stalked she ends up in a mental home where she is beyond help, Chloe’s boyfriend believes her has created the perfect punishment and she got what she deserved.

Opening Sequence

Our opening sequence will be up to the part where Kristie is being constantly followed and fears for her life, we believe this will be an interesting sequence as it pulls the viewer in and builds up tension about what is going to happen to her.

Also with Kristie not knowing who is following her it creates a sense of mystery to the sequence. We hope to make our opening sequence as interesting as possible, making it easy to follow and leave our audience on a cliff -hanger and wanting to watch more.

Target audience appeal

Our film will be targeted at people aged 15 and over, although our horror does not involve a lot of blood and gore which you would expect to see within a typical horror film, we are focusing on people who enjoy being built up for an interesting plot which the tension alone scares them. With our film, the audience are made to believe that in the end Kristie will get killed whereas we’ve added a twist to our film by letting her survive but her ending up in a mental home, therefore we are targeting people who like a twist within horror films.

Creative Techniques

As our sequence is mainly linked in with horror due to the amount of tension we wish to create we are thinking of using sounds such as:

Incidental music- to create an atmosphere

Strings/ Drum beats

Also we believe low key lighting would be a good source to use to create an atmosphere.

We are also thinking of using some interesting camera shots such as high angle\low angle shots, point of view shot, extreme close ups and over the shoulder shot, we are also thinking about how we could create some interesting angles within the car all of these shots we hope to achieve and build up a lot of tension and atmosphere.

Assessment 4: Word Cloud

Made by Jonathan.





Made by Me.

Assessment 3: bbfc// Genre Research.

 HISTORY OF HORROR – early history.

The first’s films of supernatural events appear in several of the silent shorts created by directors such as Georges Méliès in the late 1890s, the most noticed being his 1896 "The House of the Devil" which is sometimes credited as being the first horror film. Another of his horror projects was 1898's La Caverne maudite (aka "The Cave of the Demons", literally "the accursed cave"). Japan made early forays into the horror genre with Bake Jizo and Shinin no Sosei, both made in 1898. In 1910, Edison Studios produced the first film version of Frankenstein; thought lost for many years, film collector Alois Felix Dettlaff Sr. found a copy and had a 1993 rerelease.

The early 20th century brought more films for the horror genre including the first monster to appear in a full-length horror film, Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre-Dame who had appeared in Victor Hugo's novel, "Notre-Dame de Paris" (published in 1831). Films featuring Quasimodo included Alice Guy's Esmeralda (1906), The Hunchback (1909), The Love of a Hunchback (1910) and Notre-Dame de Paris (1911).

Many of the earliest feature length 'horror films' were created by German film makers in 1910s and 1920s, during the era of German Expressionist films. Many of these films would significantly influence later Hollywood films. Paul Wegener's The Golem (1915) with its Expressionist style. The era also produced the first vampire-themed feature, F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922), an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Early Hollywood dramas dabbled in horror themes, including versions of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Monster (1925) both starring Lon Chaney, S., the first horror movie star. Most famous role, however, was in The Phantom of the Opera (1925).

TARGET AUDIANCE

I would personally think that the target audience for horror film’s would stereotypically be teenage and older men, however due to modern times I would think our target audiance for horror would be teenagers and adults to their thirties, both men and women. This is due to the desensitization of the modern day and age; this means people have become desensitized to horror (not shocked anymore).

In the past horrors was the up and coming genre in the film industry because of its thrill’s. However nowadays due to desensitization the horror genre is still popular but not as big.

An eighteen certificate is you can show violence, sexual scenes.  Only suitable for adults because it may be harmful to anyone under the specific age ie drug use, sexual assault things that may harm the minds of the young. Not many limits with a eighteen.  We have chosen to make a eighteen certificate movie opening.

A fifteen certificate is you can show mild violence, there could be some use of strong language, nudity but not strong, with the horror genre strong violence is permitted unless it is sadistic or sexualized. You are more limited with a fifteen.

INSPIRING MOVIES-

The movie 'Scream' gave us the idea of the stalker from the first scene when the killer makes his first kill of the movie on the non-expecting girl.


The movie 'Sorority Row' also gave us the idea of a stalker - however this film gave us the idea of the drunk accident that happens, that haunts the spectators for ever.

This was done by Jonathan.

Assessment 2 Part 2: Analysis of Opening Sequence.

Analysis of My Bloody Valentine (0:08 – 4:48)


Editing - Establishing Shot: Animated newspapers.
Sound - Establishing Sound: Men talking, most likely a police press conference’s about murders. Slow Music, which speeds up, heavy drums. Makes the heart race. – Music abruptly stops when you see the hospital.
Mise - Hospital. Ambulance outside.
Camera – Crane shot that moves upwards.
Editing – Fade to Black.
Camera – Camera moves upwards and slowly moves to a tilt downwards on a man in a hospital bed.

Sound - Mans heavy breathing.
Abrupt cut to 2 men in a dark, grubby place.
Mise – The men are wearing One piece Blue work suits.

Sound - Synchronous Pic Axe smashing on metal gate sort of thing and dialog. 

Camera - Zoom, frames worker behind the metal gate. Cuts to another worker talking, underneath (low angle shot) that may show he is evil. Cuts back to other worker.

Editing - Shot reverse shot between the workers.

Sound - Underlying music. - Non diagetic.

Camera - Cut to an extreme close up of the man in the hospitals eye, also famed is his breathing tube. Cut again to a high angle of the man.

Sound  - Voices are playing through out  the sequence.

Camera - Cut back to the miners. Med- Long shot used but zoomed in on a specific guy.

Mise - Underground mine, Gas masks.

Sound - Music plays throughout the sequence building up tension to a very loud firey explosion. 

Camera - Long shot used to show the explosion building up and looks as if it is coming towards the miners. Fire engulfs the camera in a way and you cut to the same extreme close up of the man in hospitals eye, this time he wakes up.

Sound - Nothing bar slight breathing til the high angle shot where slight music starts in the background.

Mise - Very dark room, low key lighting.

Camera - Cut to an open door, nurse with a chart walks in. Camera tracks with the woman more like a point of view shot watching her.

Mise - Nurses outfit, Chart as prop. Light blue walls, very medical. Drip bag, ect.

Camera - Cut to long shot of a now empty bed. Camera starts to track woman again.

Sound - Music starts to become a little more prominent makes it build up.

Camera - Deep focus when woman stops and you see the man behind her. Camera then moves around to show him. It seems like a dolly was used to help zoom in.

Editing - Cut to animated title of the movie, My Bloody Valentine.

Sound - Screams in the background of sound effects, possibly the nurse from before which turns into sirens.

Camera - Cuts to the outside of the hospital again with police cars pulling up. This is a move high angle shot. As a few seconds go by the crane moves downward and closer to the action.

Sound - Music is very heavy. A sound perspective lets you hear maybe even insignificant things like the car door opening and closing. 

Camera- When the cops gets out of his car you have a long shot of him walking that zooms very slowly.

Mise - Typical cops outfit with black coat. Beard. Seems like he might like his donuts.

Camera - Pan as cops are walking into the hospital room.

Mise - Bloody hospital room, bodies in half. See hospital gown draped over the bed. A nurse is in a chair in her uniform with her heart ripped out. Sheriff already at scene with his blue gloves on to give a brief. 

Sound - Throught this there has been tension building music. Little ambient sounds such as walking and paper are also there. 

Camera - Very shallow focus to show a hand dripping a ton of blood. You can sort of make out that the cop is putting on gloves.

Sound - You hear the blood dripping quiet loudly, so another sound perspective. 

Camera // Mise - Cut to a angled shot of the bed the man was in earlier, this time there is a lot of blood and a heart on the wall. The curtain is torn and the bed also has a lot of blood soaked in.

Sound - Dialog of the cop as he reveals the girl with her heart ripped out of her in the bed.

Camera - Long shot that changes from a shallow focus to a deep with another sheriff behind the cop. The cop walks over, to the sheriff and then it cuts to a heart in a box of chocolates but cuts back to a long shot of the 2 men.

Sound - You still hear music and dialog.

Editing - The cut to the heart I believe was a cut-away.

Camera - Zoom in as the men are talking about retirement. The camera keeps focusing on the hearts, suggesting something about a hate of valentines day.

Mise - Heart is painted in blood on the mirror.

Camera - Point of view shot of the cop looking in the mirror, his face is framed in the heart.