Filming

Our group had planned to film on Sunday. We set up in a garden by putting up a tent and placing all the props. Although we got a lot of the shots we need and used the script, we didn't stick to the planning. By filming we realised our opening wasn't the best suited for a horror film as it wasn't spooky enough. We will need to edit the storyboard and the script and add the shots we need to make the opening more suited to its genre. In order for things to go smoothly we will need to stick to the planning and maybe film in the correct order of our storyboard and script.
We will also need to check the equipment we use as the tripod we used needed some improvising as one of the legs wasn't there and the piece that attatches the camera had gone missing! Although this didn't affect the filming massively as we managed to find a way of fixing it all, it would have saved a lot of time. The camera had also not got much time left on it, but we have learnt from our mistakes and are ready to re-shoot.

Pitch

Xenia took it upon herself to write us out a script for our pitch. The pitch explains the narrative we chose; why we chose the narrative, what location we have chosen, why we chose that location, the different types of characters we have used, why we have used them, the editing we're using, why we've decided to use it, the sound effects we've chosen etc.

The pitch is what sells the film so in order to create a good pitch we needed to include everything we're doing and always state why we're doing it and what effects it will have on the audience and why they'll want to see the film.

Preliminary Task

From our preliminary task we have discovered the skills we need to work on to ensure our final piece is as good as we can make it. We now know that in order to create good footage we need to have planned thoroughly what we're going to do. The story board needs to be exact and reliable on every frame, this means we'll find it a lot easier and quicker to record our opening. There needs to be no unnecessary props in the frame as the audience will not understand why they are looking at the prop. We need to improve on the different shots we use, make sure equipment is prepared, get the script written and get an good idea of it before just filming and ,finally, we need to make sure we plan the camera movement.

Editing Preliminary Task

We have recorded a short clip where we have included different camera shots and angles and are currently editing our footage. This will give us an idea on how we can improve our current skills, our improvements should become obvious in our film opening.

In order to make improvement we will need to evaluate the footage and identify the negative aspects.

British Film Studio Presentation

After researching the different current british film studios/companies, we had to present our findings to the class in a powerpoint presentation. We focused on Pinewood studios, a current british film studio.

British Film Studios/Companies Research

We have researched different british film companies and what they consist of which not only gave us some awareness of what was out there, it gave us some insight of all the different roles we'll each have to take in order to create our film opening.

Instead of taking pacific roles, the group will most likely just be elected to do different things, like writing the script, evaluating, the pitch etc.

Individual Work

I analysed the openings of 5 horror films and 4 whole horror films. This analysis was very helpful as it gave me an idea of some of the key conventions that will be needed to create our opening. Most of the films had very similar conventions and have all helped me come up with some ideas for our narrative. All of my group will bring together their information from their analysis' and we will discuss what conventions have occurred the most.

Genre

After presenting our results our group moved on to the analysis of different horror/thriller films. We did this to find out if there were any noticeable similarities that occur often in this genre. We particularly looked at the openings of different films as we will be creating the opening of a horror film. In this process we also decided that we're going to focus on creating a more slasher/psychological type horror opening.

Preparation For Questionnaire Presentation

A couple of hours before the media lesson me, Sophie and Xenia met in the media room and carried on with our analysis of the questionnaire results, we will then present our results along with the analysis to the class in a powerpoint presentation. So far our results have shown us what to include in our opening. We have a rough idea of what people want to see in an opening and what they don't want to see.

This means that the target audience will get what they want out of the opening and feel the need to know what happens in the rest of the film.

Questionnaire Results

In our lesson we tallied our questionnaire results and put the results into graphs. We then began to analyse our results. Our results will give us more of an idea of what to include in our opening and how the audience will we react to some of the ideas we have so we know what to avoid including.

Beginning of Coursework

In todays media lesson we were given all the information for our AS media coursework and were told to start on it.

We formed our group of four which involves, Xenia Hawkey, Charlotte Maddocks and Sophie Powell. The coursework consists of creating a 2 minute film opening of any genre we decide.

We started by creating a mind map which included what we know about our chosen drama, horror/thriller. This meant looking at; the connotations, the types of props used, the typical convections of a horror/thriller movie, the types of characters that may appear within the genre, the types of settings that would be seen in a horror/thriller movie and what films we are aware of that belong to the genre.

After we did this we created a questionnaire to hand out that will help us find out what people liked about horror/thriller movies, their favorite horror film...etc.