Evaluation

As media studies evaluation

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Our finished production

Today we watched our production and decided that it is now complete. We will now go on to write our evaluation.

Adding a voiceover

Today we watched our production and whilst we were very pleased we felt that some people may struggle to understand the story line. We therefore decided that we should add a voice over to our production which will then tell part of the story. We decided that the main character would be the voice over so we wrote a script telling part of the story from her perspective.
We then got a volunteer to come into the media room to read the script for us. We created the voiceover by getting our volunteer to read the script quite close to the computer. Whist they were doing this we made sure we were recording their voice using garage band. Once they had finished speaking we added an effect to her voice to make it sound slightly more spooky.
We then chose to add our voiceover to the opening scenes of the religious iconography. We then thought it would be good to break down our voice over to individual sentences which we then added throughout our production.

Editing part 4

Today we watched our production and whilst we are very pleased with it we still feel like it's missing something. After having a play around with some of the effects we found that we liked the 'blink effect' on final cut. We decided to put this effect all over our first opening scenes of the religious iconography. We thought that the 'blink effect' would be suitable for our production as it brings forward a sense of instability which could then be representative of our main character.

Editing part 3

Today we decided to watch our production from start to finish to see how it was looking. We were really pleased with how the soundtrack went with the footage but we thought we needed to make it look just a bit more special. After many discussions on what we could do, we decided to make the blood drip off the rosary beads in slow motion to make it seem just that more sinister. Once we had done this we were much happier with how our footage was looking.

Adding More Sounds

Previous to today the only sound we had on our production was the gospel style music which we found on garageband. Whilst this music works well with our production we thought we should add some other sound effects.
The first sound effect we added was a creepy style music track. We added this to our production at the beginning when the production company titles appear as we felt it would unnerve our audience straight away which is typical for a teen horror film.
The next sound effect we added was a deep bell sound. This sound was added to the production titles, the distribution titles and the title of the film. We chose to add a bell sound as we thought that this would once again reinforce the religious theme of our production.
Finally we added a piano track to the final scenes of our production. We felt like we should add enough soundtrack to our end scenes as we wanted the last scenes to make an impact.

Garageband

Today we added some eerie music to our production which we downloaded from freesound.org. However, we didn't feel like this fitted our production as well as we were hoping it would. So we then decided to see if we could make anything more suitable on garage band. After a little play around we found some music which sounded sinister and also had a gospel feel to it which fits very well with the religious theme of our production. After we had added a few more instruments to the gospel music we had the perfect soundtrack to our production.

Titles for our production

Today we decided to make our titles for our production. Before we even began we decided to watch a teenage horror film to see what titles usually go at the beginning of one. We decided to watch 'I still know what you did last summer'. We liked how in the film the first titles which appeared were simple white font on a simple black background. We decided to incorporate this idea into our production. So now our production begins with the production company and the distribution company names wrote in a simple white font on a simple black background. We made the titles on Livetype as this is the most effective way of making good titles.
We then made the name of the film titles. We chose the font 'cracked' as we thought this would portray the cracks in the murderer's character and would show her instability. We chose a smoky background as we though this would give a mysterious eerie feel to our production. We then chose to make the letter 'L' in religious, red as we thought this would bring forward the sense of danger and blood. We then added a sideways 'l' to come in at the end of the title as then it looks like a religious cross which is sticking to the religious theme of our production. This title comes in after our production and distribution company titles.
We then added various other titles throughout our production such as the executive producer and names of the actors. We stuck to the cracked font and smoky background in all of them. We didn't put any capital letters in the names of the people as we thought this would make it look young which would then appeal to a teenage audience.

Editing part 2

Today we downloaded our religious iconography footage and then edited it in to our previous footage. We have now reached the expected time. Our production is quite different to our original storyboard due to adding new footage and changing some of the order however we are pleased with the end result. Now we have the basic sequence we can add titles and effects.

Filming Religious Iconography

Today Chelsea and I filmed our religious iconography. We filmed pages of the bible and some religious pictures we had found. We then took our camera and tripod to a local church and filmed the church and surrounding gravestones.

Additional Ideas

Today Chelsea and I watched what we have filmed and edited so far. We realised that we did not have enough footage to last two minutes. This means we now have to film some more footage to make it last the needed time. After many discussions we decided that we could film some religious iconography. This would then give us enough footage to last two minutes whilst reinforcing the religious theme of our production.

Editing

Today we started editing our footage together. We found that our end product will not follow our storyboard too closely as we found a our footage looked better if it followed a different sequence. We have managed to edit roughly half of our footage and plan to do the rest very soon.

Downloading our footage

Today we bought the camera back into school so we could download our footage onto the macs. Once we downloaded the footage onto the macs we imported it into finalcut. It is now ready for us to edit in the near future.

Filming Part Two

Today we continued our filming. As Chelsea featured in the scenes we filmed today I was in charge of the filming. I filmed an extreme close up of Chelsea's eyes and also a high angle shot of Chelsea. I filmed these shots numerous times so that we had plenty to edit from.
I then filmed the rosary beads in Chelsea's hand. We had to make sure when filming the rosary beads that we managed to capture the fake blood dripping off it as this was a scene which we really wanted to include in our final piece.

Filming Part One

Today we managed to hire out a camera so we began the filming process. As Chelsea is starring in the production and I am not we decided that I'd be in charge of filming the scenes Chelsea were in and then we would share the filming of the shrine.
Today we decided to focus on the filming of the shrine. We filmed the shrine up close and from a distance. We also panned across it in several directions. We made sure that we did shots multiple times and from different angles so we have plenty of footage to edit from. It took us about an hour to film all we needed of the shrine.

Making Our Shrine

We had originally planned to film today but unfortunately there was no cameras available. Despite this we still set up our shrine so when we did get a camera we could start shooting straight away.
First of all we put our fire guard in an area in the room where there was good lighting. We then sellotaped pictures onto the fire guard. We sellotaped them on in a rough fashion as we thought this would be fitting of our main character. We then put some religious items infront of the shrine to bring in the religious theme. Finally we placed some candles near the shrine so when we film there is a sinister flickering.

Our New Idea

After many discussions we have come up with the idea of having a shrine filled with the pictures of Christie rather than a wall. This new idea now means we have more than enough pictures which is a positive as we didn't really have enough time to take more. We shall make a shrine by sticking our pictures on a fire guard like the one pictured below. We have also decided against using the religious quote on the a3 paper as it is simply too big to fit on our shrine.

Making the photo wall.

Today we printed all our pictures and took them to our location. We then stuck our religious quote in the middle of our wall and started to stick all the pictures around the quote. However, it didn't take us long to realise that we would need many more pictures than we had to fill our whole wall. We therefore need to think about a way of either adding more pictures or a new idea for where to put our pictures, as an incomplete wall doesn't have the impact we were hoping for.

Fake blood

Today we bought our fake blood. Now we have all our props we can focus on creating our wall.

Rosary Beads

Today our rosary beads arrived. We now have all our props apart from the fake blood which we will buy from town some point this week.

Sounds For Our Production

Today we went on freesound.org to look for potential backing music to our production. We have decided that our production does not need any dialect in it so all noises will be non-diegetic. For the majority of our production we want to have sinister music playing. When looking through the sound clips on freesound.org we discovered many different samples we could use. We took note of which ones we liked and will go back to them once we have finished all videoing.

Rosary Beads Update

Today we searched Ebay for rosary beads and found a wide variety. There were several which would have suited the job and in the end we chose some wooden rosary beads as we liked these ones the best. We then placed our bid and eventually won. Our rosary beads should be with us some point this week.

Rescheduling Our Filming

Today we had to give the camera we had booked out to another group.

Due to not being able to locate all our props we were unable to do much of our filming. Therefore we plan to start all our filming from scratch the week we go back to school, as that is the soonest we can get another camera.

Rosary Beads Update

Today we went to Rothwell and Corby to try and find the rosary beads needed. Despite going in many shops we were still unsuccessful.

We have now decided to look for them on the internet and will search Ebay first.

Rosary Beads Update

Today we looked around the local shops and charity shops trying to find the rosary beads needed for our production. Unfortunately we could not find them anywhere. We now plan to look around shops further afield in the next couple of days.

Designing The Wall For Our Production

Following several discussions we decided that our picture wall needed a focus point in the middle, preferably one with religious connotations. After further discussions we came up with the idea of finding a religious quote that relates to our production.

We then searched on the internet and went through many quotes until we found this one which relates to killing non-believers.


"They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and soul; and everyone who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, was to be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman."

This quote fits in perfectly with our production as the main character believes it is her mission to bring people to God through murder.

Once we found the quote we scrawled it across a large piece of paper in a black marker pen and will now stick it on the wall amongst the other pictures.

Booking Out The Camera

Today we booked out a video camera as we plan to film our production over the Easter holidays. We only have the camera for the first week as we need to give it to another group in the second week due to there being a limited number of cameras.

Props

The props needed in our opening two minutes are:
A bible
Rosary beads
Fake blood
Pictures of victims to go on the wall.

We have already took the pictures to go on the wall and we can borrow a bible from school. We also plan to get the fake blood from a local fancy dress shop.

The only problem we have is where to find the rosary beads. Over the forthcoming week we plan to look around local shops and charity shops looking for the beads.

Filming The Production

We plan to start filming our production over the easter holidays. Whether we can or not depends on the availability of the cameras as there is a limited number.

Photos of the Victim

The other day due to good weather we decided to use this opportunity to take still images of our victim. The person we have chosen to cast as our victim is Christie McAlwane. The reason for this casting is because she is a close friend of ours which is benefit as it means we have a good working relationship.
The settings we chose for our still images included a normal everyday street, a playing field and the woods. The reason for these settings was that they portray a normal everyday life so it gives the impression that it is from a stalkers perspective, which makes our production more believable. The setting of the woods also gives the pictures a sinister feel.
When taking the still images we made sure we took them from behind various objects such as the corner of buildings or plants. If there were no objects near by we took them from a far distance. We did this because it gives the impression that McAlwane is being stalked.
When we had took a suitable number of pictures we returned to school and downloaded them onto the Macs. We opened them up in iphotos and deleted any which we found unsuitable. We will print them out in the near future.

Pictures For Our Wall

Today we searched the internet looking for suitable pictures for the wall in the opening of our film. We found appropriate images such as sinister angels and crucifixes. These pictures have religious connotations and are also slightly disturbing which is appropriate as they subtly reflect the main character of our production.

New Title For Foundation Production

Previously, our working title for our production has been 'Revenge'. After many discussions and various ideas we have come up with the title :

'Religious'

Changing Our Idea

We have decided to change our idea for our foundation production. Previously, our idea was based on a tormented school girl seeking revenge on her bullies. However, recent discussions have led us to change our idea. Now our foundation portfolio will be about a fanatically religious school girl who believes it is her mission to bring people to God through murder. The opening will still involve a wall filled with sinister pictures and pictures of her victims.

Livetype

Today Chelsea and I decided to have a play around on Livetype. We decided to do this as livetype is the software we will be using to create our titles for our foundation production so we felt like we should gain some experience with the software. We learnt how to make font bigger and smaller, how to move font around, the different effects you can put on the font and the different backgrounds you can have.

Preliminary Task

Premilinary Task

Our premilinary task was to film a short conversation between two people which included match on action, the 180 degree rule and other camera angles.

When filming our task we shot the same conversation from five different angles and made sure the camera was steady so the footage was not shaky. We then loaded the footage onto a Mac. We then dragged the footage into Final Cut and edited it until we had our finished piece.

Location Decision

We have decided to film in location number one. This is because location two has many cons which we cannot control such as the noise from the busy roads and the dark lighting in the bedroom. The cons in location one such as bright decor and items in the garden are ones which we can improve.

Casting

Pen Portrait

Name We will decide on the name for the character once we've casted him/her.
Age15/16
Personality The main character is quite timid and withdrawn due to him/her being bullied for most of their school life. They are also very intelligent. However once the bullies push him/her too far she becomes cruel, manipulative and obsessive.

To find someone suitable for this role we will be holding open audtions. We will generally only audition people who are 15-17 year olds but if someone younger or older looks like they could play the part we will audtion them too.

Location Planning

Location Number One - The Back Of A House

Option Number One




Pros - The house is located in quite a quiet area so there would be no noise from traffic.
There are decking steps leading up to the back of the house which means it would be easy to film it from different angles.

Cons - The back of the house isn't flat so it would be quite tricky to get it all in on camera.
There is a quite a lot of items in the garden which would take time moving to get the shot we need.

Option Number Two



Pros
There is less things in the garden to obstruct the camera than there is in the former picture.
The back of this house is flat which means it will be easier to get it all on camera.

Cons
The house is situated near quite a busy road which means there will be some noise disturbances when it comes to filming.




Location Number Two - The Bedroom

Option Number One




Pros The room is quite a large room so there would be plenty of room for filming.
There is two windows in this room which means we will be able to get good light whilst filming.

ConsAs the room is a loft room there is not many straight walls and really we need a straight wall for part of our filming.
The decor is quite cheerful which isn't really suitable for the mood we want to create.


Option Number Two



Pros
The walls in this room are more suitable as they are all straight which means our photo wall can be easily constructed.
The decor is much more subtle which is more fitting of our main character.

Cons
The room is quite small which means filming space could be restricted.
The room is also quite dark.

Storyboard Opening