Thursday, 20 May 2010

hello moderator

hello moderator, welcome to our blog, this is our a2 coursework. the reason the tab links are out of order is because the creator of the blog was a member of the group that left. thankyou.

Thursday, 28 January 2010

final poster



This is our final draft ofour film poster. We have based our idea and concept on that of the "saw" film posters. We have done this by using photoshop to create a dull off white background,but then placing graphic imagery on top to create a focal point aimed to shock an audience. We will hopefully get feedback from peers to see how we could improve our work.

FINAL FINAL magazine cover!


This is our actually final copy of the magazine cover. We changed to background colour and text which we believe looks alot better. We also had feedback from the class and they also said that this copy is alot better.

All we need to do now is upload our music onto the macs and find a institution picture to put on the trailer.

Wednesday, 27 January 2010

EVALUATION QUESTION 1

IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE , DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

We did alot of research into existing media products that where similar to the ones we wished to create. This included looking at the type of "horror porn" films that already existed, the main ones being the series of "Saw" films and also "Hostel" parts 1 and 2. We did this to pick out the generic conventions of this type of horror film that we wished to create, as our audience would be able to recodnise the type of film that we had created and by the use of correct marketing for our product (e.g suitable trailer and movie poster and movie magazine cover) that we appealed to the right audience.
The generic conventions we found and used ourselves where;
-Themes
- torture, horror,murder and obsession.
-Gender
- Male killer/villain and female victims.
-Mise-en-scene
-Murder and planning space, the main charachter of the villain plans his murders in an organised office showing that everything he does is carefully planned. Adding to the eerie-ness of his charachter.
-Cellar (many horrors are set in places such as cellars or other out of reach places as it sets itself away from the "norm" which makes the victims but also the audience feel trapped, uneasy and uncomfortable.
-Establishment of the killer/villain
We used a shot of the villain (with rubber gloves on and using tweezers) to show that he was the villain and didnt want to be found, but also giving the audience insight into who is going to be his next victim by using a closeup of him circling his next victim. We also saw this in the trailer of "Hostel Part " in which we felt it worked very well, giving a clear image to the audience.
-Use of music
We found in other trailers that they used slow, eerie tension building music to really create atmosphere and tension very well. In many of the trailers the music could be described as distorted sounds rather than actual music. The music also starts quite slow but then as the tension gets stronger the music climaxes and usually ends on a bang. This makes the music memorable as trailers are meant to sell the film, so the music is very important in the production of the trailer.

Here are some still shots from our trailer;
This is an establishing shot of the villain preparing himself to make a death letter and decide on who his next victim is going to be.We decided to start our trailer with this shot to establish the main charachter and to try to portray his charchter and intentions so the plot is immidiatley coveyed to the audience. We used a office below a resturaunt as we believed the mise en scene was typical office and we where able to easily create an 'organised space' which we had found from our research that serial killers where usually very organised. The majority of the office 'colour' is white, giving a very 'surgical' feeling, giving the impression that the killer may also be a doctor. The man is wearing a labcoat and putting on latex gloves, again giving a doctor-ish feel. We saturated the colour using effects on the mac to make the footage dim and giving a more sinister feel. The music used in this 'slow part' of our trailer could be described as a montage of sounds which build tension.










This is an over the shoulder shot of the villain. This is to emphesize the fact that he is planning a death letter, but also the fact he is wearing gloves and using tweezers makes it obvious that the murder is planned and the murderer is using all precautions not to get found out. The lighting again is still quite dim, as we used an effect that we found on the mac to make the footage darker. The mise en scene shows pictures of young attractive girls that could be his victims. There is also floor plans, proving the charahcter to be organised. There is also a knife, which symbolises murder. The death letter states "youre next" proving that he is to murder again.















This is a still from the 'second' part of our trailer which we classed as the fast part as it consisted of short fast clips made up to montage together. This clip shows a birds eye view of a selection of grotty looking tools, the mans hand then sweeps across these weapons and selects the knife, this lets the audience know that that is the weapon the killer has selected. The work surface that the tools are set out on also looks really grim, adding the the uncomfortableness. Again we used an effect on the mac to make the colours seem duller. We found that there was a very similar shot in the hostel trailer, which also worked very well.








(This is a still taken from the Hostel Trailer)



This is a close up shot of a injured hand with blood on it scraping down a wall. This closeup is successful in showing the pain and torture, as the nails are scraping down the wall it is meant to create a really uneasy painful atmosphere and is meant to make the audience 'cringe'. Again we desaturated the colour on our clips to give the skin a kind of greensish mouldy unreal feel, this is also seen in the saw films and gives the feel of unrealistic people. We also did this as the effect of blood seemed alot more dramatic. We challenged forms of real media products by the angle we shot this at. We did it 90% to the left to give a feel of being trapped with a wall above her, not verticle as it could be done in other films. The lighting in this shot was quite bright as when we tried to make the lighting of the room duller the effect on camera did not work aswell. However we where happy with the way this shot turned out as the colour contrast between the brick wall and the hand and the blood made it stand out very well. This closeup of a traumatised body part is similar to a shot from a "Saw" trailer



(This is from a "Saw" trailer and is similar to a shot in our trailer as it is portreying violent injury on a body part to make an uncomfortable audience)






This is a high angle shot of one of the 'victims'. Initially we filmed this by just asking the actress to shake her head, but then we used an effect on the macs to speed it up a rediculous amount to give the effect that she was infact possessed or going crazy.
The mise en scene shows the cellar as being dirty and uncomfortable, and the high angle shot gives the connotations of the victim seem low and therefore helpless and worthless with lack of power. The colours again have been saturated to make her seem almost un human and ill. Also as she has blood and cuts on her face it all murges together to give a really gruesome effect. Also her mouth is fully open and looks really effective as it blends together. For this we took inspiration from a music video for Rhianna's 'Disturbia'. The video is the theme of horror and parts of the video is quickened up.













This mid-shot shows a weapon being sharpened. We mainly did this because it shows the bright sparks coming off the blade and it is very quick moving which gives a vicious image, that looks like pain is going to uccur. We also made the colour of the shot really dull so the bright sparks coming off of the blade.


This is an extreme closeup of an eye, again which we quickened to make it look out of control and although the victim was possesed. We again used effects on this to make it look darker and a little bit fuzzy, asthough maybe even the killer had filmed it. We tried to use a varied amount of shots in our trailer and wanted to mainly focus on body parts to make the audience feel unease.

EVALUATION QUESTION 2

EVALUATION QUESTION 3

"What have you learned from your audience feedback?"



After showing teachers and peers our final draft of the trailer the feedback we recieved was very useful. People found that some of the clips wernt fast enough and some were too long. So we shortened the clips and made the sequence more fast paced.

We also had feedback on our magazine and poster. For the poster the feedback was that we needed to have the text more central. Which was a minor detail but we still changed that on the poster.

The magazine was the most feedback we had on as people thought that the colours and text didnt look right on the cover. People suggested that we needed a darker background and chnage the colour and font of the text. We changed all the colours of the magazine and moved the photo around. We asked for mor feedback on the magazine and poeple said that it looked alot better than it did.

After finalising our trailer and tweeking fine details we asked people to view the trailer one more time. We recored their opinions of it to see what they thought.
feedback! by onetrickponyyy

EVALUATION QUESTION 4

Wednesday, 13 January 2010

omg, we have nearly finished! :)

We have finished our magazine cover and we are now just working on the music for our trailer, which has been the biggest problem for us overall. We have had to move our audio about as it was on the computer and we had to find some kind of way t put it onto the mac's, in the end we converted the audio with 'zamzar' which we then put onto a blank disk and then we uploaded it onto the mac's, we just need to use garageband now to play around with the audio and change it to how we want it to be!

MUSIC ON SOUNDCLOUD.

We found some appropriate music on soundcloud, but we faced a problem with saving it and exporting it as an mp3 file. We used a programme called audacity to record the track from soundcloud, but when we tried to export it from here we had problems, and when we saved it and tried to play it on windows media player it would not work. So we used a website called Zamzar (a file converting site) to put the URL into a box and then it sends the track to you in whatever format you select, (we chose MP3) Hopefully this will work.

Thursday, 7 January 2010

MORE MUSIC


Royal Brown - The Soul Eaters (KFSFK murder mix) by KFSFK

This one is really good as it has a good buildup, although it had lyrics, however the lyrics are quite appropriate, somthing about "eating the sould right out of you". its also quite slow and distorted which gives it an eerie feel. Maybe more appropraite for the beggining part of our trailer?



THIS ONE OK!!!!! by marilynmansonrocks

This is extremely effective as it encorporates a veriety of sounds that are closely linked to our trailer. E.g drill sounds, clattering and other "horror" sounds.

and again

Tension Scene (PepperSpray) by JonathanMiller

I really like this one as I feel, like it says in the title, it is definatley tension building and fits with the theme and our genre. This one is definatley worth consideration, however I feel it isnt fast enough for the second half of our trailer. It is also a good length :)

more musique for the trailer :)

09 FCKN CREW CARNAGE DEADBOTS REMIX by deadbots

This music would need to be edited as it wouldnt fit properly and the begining part with the screaming isnt suitable. However this may work for the second part of our trailer (fast paced montage of shots).

feedback/sorry for my absence recently carnage blog <3

I was not present for when we go the feedback on our work because I had to work on panto, but the girls informed me that we needed to change our trailer slightly to have more of a climax at the end and also we needed to change our music. We also found that we needed to change our film magazine slightly, but we have already started work on this changing the background colour and also the size of the main image as the group said it was too large. I think our main priority at the minute is to find some suitable music for our trailer as it plays a really big part in making the trailer a success.

Wednesday, 6 January 2010

music :)

Over the christmas holidays we were still trying to find a piece of music to fit in with our film trailer as we had a copyright issue with the other music. This is proving to be a very difficult task as we cannot find a piece of music that fits the intensity of our trailer. We are still looking for music however.

Cinematic magazine cover changes


Here are two other drafts we have done in attempt to improve our magazine. The feedback we were given was that the darker magazine is more effective. We are still looking at improveing the magazine but need more feedback from peers and teachers so we know what to change.