Technology- Imovie

For post production we used i movie to edit our film. there where a few problems using this software to edit with, firstly there was only one film track so limited our ability to layer clips over each other, we needed to do this to key out a green screen and layer a dead body over the top, we also needed to accurately re-size the dead body, we encountered a problem that the film wouldn't accurately re-size we had to use shrink this was not accurate and ended cutting out part of the scene.  

The last scene we did was the titles the original shot was just a green screen but we put in lots of different images to make the titles we where able to make a still image from the clip and then used that, no one would notice that it was a still as their attention would be in the center of the moving images.

The soundtrack was easy to manipulate and change the volume and fade in and out point to allow for unnoticeable transition between sound.

BBFC research

The BBFC tend to only give 15 and 18 ratings for horror films.








The 15 rating for films says that "No one younger than 15 may see a ‘15’ film in a cinema. No one younger than 15 may rent or buy a ‘15’ rated video work" To classify a film as a 15 in terms of a horror film it say "Strong threat and menace are permitted unless sadistic or sexualized" this is because strong threats can be particularly scary and would not be suitable for a 12 or 12A. The BBFC also classify films on ways that it could be imitated, they state that "Dangerous behaviour (for example, hanging, suicide and self-harming) should not dwell on detail which could be copied. Easily accessible weapons should not be glamorized" This is showing that people aged 15 and above (in theory) have reached a level of maturity that 12 year old don't have. The BBFC also take into account the amount of violence in the film while classifying it, the classification states "Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable" The strong gory images wont be accepted as not everyone wants to see gore and still can frighten 15 year olds.


Our film was classed as a 15 as we  believed that if the film was allowed to  continue the threat would become very menacing and frightening, we didn't use any weapons and showed no gore, there is one scene where a girl screams, this is not in pain so we didn't dwell on the factor of pain. We used alcohol in one scene we found that this falls under the DRUGS section of the BBFC, The classification stated "Drug taking may be shown but the film as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse" our film didn't promote or encourage the use of alcohol but we used it to generate a stereotype of teenagers.
Overall our film fitted in to most of the 15 classification,  the Film was not meeting the 18 classification but too much for a 12 or 12A classification.








The 18 classification is the same as the 15 rating but mainly concentrates on Sex, criminal activity and actual harm to people or public health. A 18 film isn't clear on horror unless it is "sadistic or sexualized"as this is not allowed at  15 classification. Also gory images that are not allowed at 15 would be allowed at 18. An 18 classified film wouldn't allow for any illegal actions to be shown in the film if they where actually committed and not acted.




Our film was not an 18 as it involved no "gory" scenes but had slight bit of gore for our production logo, there was no sex in the film or any actual criminal activity  so our film was not classed as an 18.  

Audience and ratings

Silent hill -  silent hill has been given a 15 rating by the BBFC this is probably because of the horror shown and pain inflicted by burning alive, but the BBFC say "Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury" According to IMDB the average user rating of this film is 6.5 from 90,519 users.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5mT5LhbRJw




















The shining- The shining has a 15 rating from the BBFC this is due to the fact that there is no real gore apart from the two dead girls and blood running from the lift, there is also a scene where a mans suicide is described the BBFC say "Dangerous behaviour (for example, hanging, suicide and self-harming) should not dwell on detail which could be copied" According to IMDB the average user rating for this film is  8.5 from 261,750 users.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b726feAhdU












Dark water - Dark water  has been given a 15 rating this is because of the dark nature off the film and also the ending to the film has some confusion to wether or not the lead actress commits suicide the BBFC say "Dangerous behaviour (for example, hanging, suicide and self-harming) should not dwell on detail which could be copied" The average user rating from IMDB is 5.6 from 26,971 users

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t24DuU9TXRM


















The eye -  The eye was given a 15 rateing by the BBFC this is probably due to the fact that the film shows sceens of suicide and dwells on the infliction of pain and injury, there are also gorey sections that are not allowed by 12 or 12A certificetes. The eye go a  5.2  rateing from 24,482 users on IMDB.




 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOxzXVGaEY8


















The rite - The rite was given a 15 rating by the BBFC i belive this to be because of disturbing and gorey imagery that isnt shown in the trailor but i belive is shown in the film. the BBFC say "Strong threat and menace are permitted unless sadistic or sexualised" the  film shows a strong threat. On IMDB the rite got 5.9 from 37,801 users.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhHnP-9iekg

A clip designed to reach my target audience

Our target audience are males aged 18- 29, even though the film is a 15 our IMDB reaserch said that the audience that watched phycolgical horrors where males aged 18- 29. So we made the opening look attractive to this audience we did this firstly by useing teenage girls because men are pulled in with haveing women actors. Secondly we added in the drinking alcohol because a large amount of men aged 18- 29 are at univesity living the "student life" which involves lots of drinking, we belived showing them this would give it a sence of normality.

Filmed evaluation of STATIC

Advertisement campaign

The poster that i made i belive should be shown online on sites such as facebook to viraly market it, the poster cant be shown outside in public because of the blood as people or children may see this and feel sick or scared. I would like the trailer should be released before the big summer block busters for example The Avengers  or a horror like cabbin in the woods, the second of the two would be more aceptable because it is a horror. Because we are a small company i belive that we should have the trailer before films at film festivles or before a "indie" film at a cinima.

engageing my audience

We wanted to engage our target audience primeraly but we didnt want it to be exclusive to them as we didnt want to lose posible audience. We targeted males with the appel of having women actors as the only cast in the opening sequence, this was easy to do and easy to do if we wanted to target females by switching the women for men. We also wanted to attract a target audience aged 18- 24 as we know this age group are of university age and most of them want the "student life" so we involved alcohol in the begining of the sequence.

The music we used at the begining was made with no clear genre, because lots of people aged 18- 24 are passionate about music we didnt want to include music that they would hate because that may make them stop watching, we made it purely instrumental so that people didnt complain about lyrics or bad vocals, the music was very up beat so typical of what you could find at a party, this is the feel we where aiming for.

The title sequence was ment to engage the audience but it was hard to do this, we thought that people would see people of their own age group in the title sepuence and relate to them thats why there where 3 teenage dead bodys, one child and 2 adults, the veriety was so that it wasnt exclusively teenages, this would be un-belivable and also it gave us a chance to appel to the audience outside our target audience.

shot by shot analysis of existing films

 LOGO - This logo from the film silent hill follow horror covnetions by setting it on a dark gloomy background, this logo is metalic looking and has a 3D layer so it stands out, the metalic look may have been to make it look like a knife a popular horror prop.

TITLES - the titles for the fiilm silent hill occurs over the opening scene but the titles, are chilling to look at, even though they where origanaly like this in the video game they are still chilling, the ash that surrounds the title is a good use of mise-en-scene as it develops a sence of enviroment.

 SUB GENRE - This scene from the shining is a great example of phycological horror conventions, the two girls stand there but then the child danny sees them dead with an axe infront of them, this is noramlity meeting phycological horror as the audience cant tell what is real and what is not.











CHARACTER - The character danny is a young boy who's finger can talk to him in a evil voice, we see this in the first sceen of the film, this is a great phcological moment as we dont know if tony(the finger) is real or just something made up in his head.











MISE-EN-SCENE - The mise-en-scene in this scene is great as the child, danny, is holding a knife which is a common wepon in horror films but is also writing REDRUM (murder backwards)in red lipstick, the importace of the lipstic being red is because that is what coulor people associate with death and blood, the word REDRUM is also written very childishly with some letters written the wrong way round, i belive this is to show the inocense of the child, this makes his actions seam scaryer and darker.



KEY SHOT 1 - (Heres johnny!) This scene shows that Jack (the man in frame) has some form of cabbin fever, the audience knows this but the other characters belive that he is crazy. The way that Jack is casualy walking and sticking his head through the door gives the sceen some form of normality but he is breaking down a door with an axe is scary for the audience because of how crazy he is.





KEY SHOT 2 - (all work and no play) This scene uses mise-en-scene to create a scence of fear, the character Jack was writeing a book on a type writer, but when another character looks at his work he as written hundreds of sheats saying "all work and no play makes jack dull boy" this creates fear because we belive that he has gone crazy and are scared about what might happen next.

shot by shot analysis of static

LOGO -This sub gerne is not the best fit for blood smears and 666 but as it is a production company logo it needs to be appropriate for all of their films. usualy for pshycological horrors the slow and bold as other logos i have reaserched have shown.

TITLE'S - Our titles fitted well with the conventions of a phycological horror, existing conventions show that the titles are jummpy and not linnier to cause a un-nerveing feeling for the audience. We used a "scrach" type font so it looks eched into the static, we found this in the film se7en title sequence it felt like it would fit our film well.

SUB-GERNE - I belive this shot uses a great convention from phycological horrors that is a vunerable girl is a target to the threat, usualy the camera would be at a high angle but its at eye level because that is where the threat is and its a POV of the threat. The audience understand that she is in danger because she scream's another convention that is in phycological horrors, showing disstress or pain without showing the threat.

CHARACTER - this shot shows that both characters are young females, this is a common convention in phycological horrors as women are thought to be weaker than men so are easyer to kill.
As we see here they are drinking alcohol this as people know can make you more vunrable to attack as reaction times and perseption is affected by alcohol, we did this to show firstly that they where getting ready to party but also to add more vunrability to them.

MISE-EN-SCENE - The mise-en-scene did chalenge typical phycological horror conventions as there was no clear props such as bloody knives ect... but our main chalenge to typical phycological mise-en-scene was the static on the TV as it was a threat but also an in-animate object so became part of the setting in mise-en-scene but a character when it kill's the girls.

KEY IMAGE 1 - (lipstick) most phycological horrors have a sceen where there is a scence of normality before the threat attacks, this is very common in phycological horrors. This shot was only a few seconds long but it showed that they where getting ready to go out, the sound track in this sceen is very up beat this is a big contrast to the slow dark and morbid sounds that happen later.

KEY IMAGE 2 - (Investigate) we thought this would be a great shot after hearing her freiend in destress she turns around and shouts out for her, as we see in most movies, we shot this in mid shot to see her expessions and so we see her turn around, it is also at this point we gradualy raise the volume of the music to build tension.

       




KEY SHOT 3 - (realisation) this scene both the audience and the character realises that the girl is sucked into the TV and appears dead, this follows the typical convention of phycological horrors of a unexpected twist or event occurs, we shot the body in long shot and keyed it onto the screen shot in mid shot, we darkend the lighting in the dead shot and brightened it in the life shots so that there was a clear deffiniton between the two "worlds".

KEY SHOT 4 - (The dead girls) this sceen is again an unexpected twist, I hope for this scene to shock and scare the audience because they wasnt expecting it, i did the exact same lighting for this shot as i did for the realisation shot. we belived that this shot would be the one that would hook people in because of the mystery that surounds the girls deaths, we put this at the end of the titles so that after you saw others that had been killed you would be supprised to see both girls dead in the same place.

STATIC poster

This poster is going to be used to make people want to watch the film, i used a silhouette of a hand to show that something or someone was inside the TV, i added the title into the hand and fill static into the text and allowed it to run off the TV display into "real life" i also did this with the blood to make it obvious that there was a link from "real life" to "TV world". The word help is to show that someone is traped in the TV and has written this in their own blood. The date 28-08-12 is the release date of the film but i used the burn and sharpen tool on it to make certain pixles darker to make it look like it has been there longer than the word help, i did this to hopefuly make people wonder what would be happening and want to see the film.

Dark Castle Entertainment - production company research

The logo for Dark castle entertainment is shown in the intro for the 1999 film House on haunted hill

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGljx71ZWtg

the film tralior shows the logo but dosent appear in the actual film http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEcsi4Yo9Kk

The sepia overlay on top of the logo makes the logo seam older and slightly more creepy, our logo is a complete opposite to this, our logo is not a good fit for our film but a good fit for the horror genre, the Dark castle logo stays the same in every film but the style and colour changes between the films to fit the feel of the film. If i could re-make the logo i would have it fit the film STATIC but also be able to adjusted slightly to fit another film we make.

technoligies in our project

feedback of STATIC

The feedback said that it was tecnicaly good but people didnt understand the story for the film but we had no time to make somthing to clarify it, also people didnt understand the title sequences but this is because of the format reduceing the quality.

I decided that our victims should be female as they are seen as weak and vunrable, this is great for  phcological horror, we needed somone who could show that they where powerless, our storybords and scripts show the weakness of the characters as they are un-aware of the threat that is attacking them, also we show that they are drinking alcohol, they are clearly not drunk but people know that alcohol can make people more vunrable.

http://bilborough619.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/static-target-audience-reaserch.html
our target reaserch shows us that the people who tend to watch phycological horrors are males aged 18- 24, we descovered this from our IMDB reaserch, our target audience matched this as our film involvled wommen as our main characters as this would interest men, the age rateing for our film is a 15 but 18-24 year olds are our main target audience.

reprensation of social groups research (The shining)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDpipB4yehk
The victim is her mid 30's, female and white,  she follows the tipical sereotype of a women, she cowers in a corner while the threat is breaking into the room she is hiding in, but at the end of the clip she breaks the stereotype by attacking her threat, this is not common in films as most women are scared of threats and are usualy powerless. the Threat is male,white and in his 40's, he follows the stereotypes of a strong male charictor as he is preforming a very physical task, breaking down the door with an axe is a action that would seam odd for the audience to watch.

reprensation of social groups research (silent hill)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CV08jirirU
There are two female victims in this clip, the first is a white women in her 30's , she is fitting most stereotypes of women, she is affraid and is pushed to the side and is out if focus this makes her seam un-important. the other woman is a countertype as she is a strong powerfull women compared to the first women,she is younger than the first women  but other than that she is almost the same. she has the most power from technical aspects but also from profession as she is a police officer, alothough this is normal in reality but is not usualy shown in films and tv ,she is made more inportant because she is more in focus, although she seams scared she has more power than the first women. The threat does not have a defined age,gender or race but i belive that the audience would see it as a countertype as it opposes the victims.

Static (the final film)

This is our final Film that we created STATIC, we created everything; the film,the titles and the sound track. The filming brought up a few issues but we adapted and overcame it (this will be covered in the evaluation) the editing was hard as we were unfamiliar with the editing equipment and was hard to use the effects.

davis films - production company research

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


the production company Davis films always use the same bold font that is embossed so that it is able to stand out from the background. The colour of the logo is a metallic silver that is still very bright even for the titles of silent hill with the red and grey sky. the davis films titles for silent hill represent the film and the genre very well as it is very dark and moody, silent hill is a physiological horror so not the titles not showing monsters or gore links in with the film perfectly, also the the sky turning ash grey links in with the ash covered environments within silent hill. The title is centered so that it is the  main focus of the shot, the sky is an almost un-noticed background but it links the titles to the film.
davis films is currently working on silent hill 2 and have worked on Resident Evil: Extinction and Turn Left at the End of the World. 

Filming

Today we started filming our film static, it went well. We managed to get a good range of shots and we managed to work the equipment out fairly well. The only downside was that in the kitchen scene (scene 1) we couldnt use the dolly because the floor wasnt level and it was quite bumpy so we had to use the camere handheld which made it slightly shakey. Also the camera sometimes refocused on the subject/actor we were recording due to that we had to record more takes which took more time. We managed to get it all done and were going to edit it soon to see if the continuity is good and to see if we have missed anything out or done anything wrong in any way. Since we havnt edited it yet right now I believe that the scenes that we recorded were fairly good and followed the 180 degree rule and didnt break the continuity rules because we were quite careful when recording.

start of filming

today we did the first shoot for our film static, it went well but we ran into a few technicl hitches and where unable to resolve them