CRItical evaluation

1. CRItical evaluation By Conner Tregilgas

2. Introduction For my A2 media task, we have chosen to create a 5 minute long short film. Alongside it we have created a movie poster to advertise the film and a magazine article reviewing our film. We decided that the target audience of our film would be the 18-25 year old range as this was closer to our teams age range and has been known to be the most active film watchers. The group that I am in consists of four people. Luke Collins, Tom Smith, Chloe Cotton and myself. By utilising the skill sets of our individual team members, we have created a film of the highest quality we could make. The aim of the project was to create a psychological stalker horror that is built on suspense. My main task associated with the production of our short film was editing. I edited a majority of the film using Final cut express, cutting together all the clips into chronological sense as well as adding edits such as the title sequence and filters to brighten up the darker scenes so that it is visible. I edited the film with the idea in mind that I wanted the viewer to finish watching the movie feeling slightly paranoid themselves. My vision of success is someone watching the film and double checking their door is locked before going to sleep.My own imagination spawned the ideas of the paranoia of the main character. Many walks I'd find myself looking over my shoulder to ensure no one was following me or seeing things out of the corner of my eye. Its this temporary spike of anxiety that was the basis for how I wanted the stalking scene. One of the things I prefer in short films compared to feature films are the suspense scenes. Short films have a limited amount of time to work with and this means that they have to work a lot harder to achieve the same level of thrill that feature films can. I find feature films stretch out the silence too long to where you become adjusted to the fact that a scare will happen at some point.

3. Introduction (Cont.) The name of our groups film is paranoia, It follows the story of Chloe (Played by Chloe Cotton). Chloe is nervous about the upcoming night out with her friend Jess (Played by Jessica Hunt) due to a previous incident. The film then follows her along her night as she attempts to confront her fear of being watched, yet it seems that she may not just be imagining things after all. My favourite part of the film by far has to be the build up of suspense and anxiety during the stalking scene through the park area. It really feeds on the same emotion everyone has when walking down a dark street that maybe someone is watching or following them.

4. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? The conventions of a horror film are very strict guidelines, most films rarely deviate from them. However, by deviating from the conventions you can catch the watcher off guard and set them up for a bigger scare. The particular conventions we were looking at were the psychological ones. Rather than showing the danger we wanted to imply it and allow the viewer to fill in the gaps with their own image which is usually their biggest fear. This meant we can cater to everyone's biggest fear rather than a select groups. This is shown during the park scene in which you only ever see the stalker once right near the end. The rest of the shots are of the main character walking. Another convention in our film was the use of a CCTV shot. Many films use purposely raw footage such as CCTV or camcorder footage to give the film a gritty realistic film as if it could happen. The stalker is seen near the end watching CCTV footage of inside the main characters house. This is scary to viewers as it is a common thing on today's streets to have CCTV cameras on every corner and many people may feel that these cameras are specifically watching them, another type of paranoia. One of our biggest conventions that is used in almost every horror is darkness. Darkness is terrifying to anyone because its a mystery as to what lays inside the darkness, its a psychological trap that forces you to think “What if” to any corner of the dark that could hold the viewers deepest fears.

5. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?(Cont.) One convention that we challenged was the idea that there was to be only one bad guy. I felt that the whole idea of the feeling of paranoia was that you feel as if there are people watching you everywhere and that you are being followed at every turn. While most main victims are only looking for one enemy, the murderer, they never think that there may be a second enemy ready to pounce after they manage to escape the first. By making the first stalker seem innocent, we made the film calm down just before hitting the viewer with the twist ending. The final convention that we stuck to was the use of soft string instruments to accentuate the anxiety displayed by certain scenes. Most horror films uses the sounds of a violin or the plucking of a harp as the shrill noises instinctively make the hairs of your body stand on end. That coupled with the film quickly tense the viewer as they wait for the climax of the scene.

6. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks? I believe that our group wove our main task along with our ancillary tasks together very tightly with specific themes popping up throughout the products.Our group agreed before starting their individual posters that we should have a set theme like most art studios do as they could be displayed side by side and have some similarity to them so they could associate that style with our movie. The first theme was that the limit to our colours had to be only black and red. This ensured that our posters kept to very stark colours that are familiar to horror films. The red was the more important colour as it also linked to our main character who wears a red jacket for almost the entire film. The red makes the character a beacon amongst the darkness in the poster which draws all focus to the red of the posters. My magazine review is very different to that of the film and poster as it is aqua blue. I chose to do this as most magazines do not change the layout and colour scheme that they use to review a magazine. The main colours are still shown in the poster that is on the page. I still believe that the magazine review works, even if its not following the colour scheme of the movie and poster.

7. Products (The poster) The main character is in the centre of the poster while walking towards that camera. She is completely alone amongst the dark background this is using the convention of darknesss to imply that even if she looks alone, she may not be. As the rest of my group chose to create portrait posters, I created a landscape one as most movie releases have landscape posters to show outside the theatre and place on billboards. The landscape also gave me more space which meant I could show even further the complete isolation of the main character. The ratings were added onto the poster to convince the viewer to go and watch the film. This is because most people will go to see a film if someone recommends it to them. Showing that three profile magazines and newspapers shows that it is a good film The tag-line “Are you ever alone?” is a rhetorical question. It tries to imply that you could be followed at all times and not know it. The lettering of the actresses name and the tag-line are completely white which helps it to stand out among the darkness of the night background. The spaced letters also add a creepiness to the poster as it looks very mysterious. All of the common conventions of a movie poster are in place, this includes studio logos, age rating and credits at the bottom of the screen.

8. Products (Magazine Review) I added a competition as I feel that it would entice the reader to look at the competition, then the article to find the answer for the competition. Its a commonly used convention within magazines. A basic convention from reviews that I used was a scoring system. This is a quick method of gauging how the magazine liked the film and can be the thing that makes the reader decide to watch the movie. One of the big differences with my magazine review is that it does not follow the colour scheme of the poster. I chose to do this as I felt that a large name magazine company would not change their style that is associated with them just to review a movie.

9. Products(film) This is the opening shot of the film. This shot was created with the idea of giving the impression that the main character is alone. It also uses the opening door to instantly introduce you to the scene. This shot is a mid point of the stalked scene. There is very little light during this scene, as it works to make the background look spooky and add intensity to the film. The only light available is the streetlight, that helps illuminate the main character whilst representing safety to her. She turns occasionally, showing slivers of her previous paranoia

10. The shot reverse shot between these two clips swaps the viewers perspective between the first person violent struggle inside the room, and the third person perspective of the first stalker who watches with interest. While the third person view shows a muted version of the violent kidnapping, there are the occasional glances of the first person view to punctuate the violence.

11. Audience Feedback After we had finished our main and ancillary tasks, We created questionnaires and handed them out to ten people that fit the criteria for our target audience. The questions for the film include...

12. Paranoia Film Survey What genre would you place our film in? Depending on your previous choice, what elements of the film would you say aided your decision? So if you said horror, what parts of the film make it a horror film? What effects did the soundtrack have on you? Did you think the music was appropriate throughout the piece? Did you think any parts of the film were too long, or could be cut slightly? Did you feel the suspense building throughout the piece? What caused this? How did you feel after the film had finished? What parts of the film did you think were scary? Any ways we could improve this effect? Any slight imperfections you picked up on in the film? What would you change about the film if you were an editor?

13. Audience Feedback (Cont.) What genre would you place our film in? Everyone answered that they thought it was a horror. This means we achieved in creating a horror film and the viewers identified that it was. Depending on your previous choice, what elements of the film would you say aided your decision? So if you said horror, what parts of the film make it a horror film? Most of the viewers identified that the music was the main factor in making the film a horror. Two of the ten asked said that the characters actions that helped identify that the film was a horror. One said that the main actresses “mood” set the film as a horror within the first few seconds of the film. What effects did the soundtrack have on you? A majority of the group said that the background music fit with the movie very well, one saying that it “set the mood for the duration of the film” only one disagreed with the soundtrack, claiming that it seemed “Clichéd” and that it had the opposite effect on them. Based on the results we will not be changing the soundtrack. Did you think any parts of the film were too long, or could be cut slightly? This answer proved inconclusive, around 6 of the viewers answered with no changes and the 4 that remained were mixed. Therefore I could not draw a point from the answer of this question.

14. Audience Feedback (Cont.) Did you feel the suspense building throughout the piece? What caused this? Of the ten who answered, seven of them identified the park scene as where the tension began to rise. They said that the darkness and unclearness of the surroundings made them actively look for the person following the main actress. One of the seven thought they had seen the stalker when in fact the stalker wasn’t. The other three viewers said that they thought that the suspense only started later as she approached her home. One claimed that the park scene was “too long winded”. However, going with the majority I chose not to edit the suspense scenes. How did you feel after the film had finished? The result of this question was mixed, Four of the viewers claimed that the ending was a good way to link back to the start as the stalker targets Jess who was in the beginning of the film. Three others commented that they were shocked by the quick contrast of the screaming near the end as a majority of the film had held no dialogue. The remaining three felt that the revelation near the end that there is two stalkers was a good way to end the film. What parts of the film did you think were scary? Any ways we could improve this effect? The answers on this part unanimously focused on the kidnapping of the main actress. One claimed that “The scream really made me jump” and another said “It’s a good contrast to the quiet of the rest of the film. However they were vague on how to improve it. A few said that making the actress struggle more would increase the blind panic of the scene and the others could not come up with a way of making it scarier.

15. Audience Feedback (Cont.) Any slight imperfections you picked up on in the film? Our group was shocked when the viewers pointed it out, but we had neglected to add credits to the end of our film, a convention of any film made. The viewers all agreed that credits needed to be added so we added them to the end of our film. This shows that the feedback worked as without someone pointing it out to our group, we would have missed the credits all together. What would you change about the film if you were an editor? Again, this question gave inconclusive results, a majority of the viewers said nothing and the two that answered referred to adding the credits. Therefore we only added the credits and made no more changes.

16. How did you use media Technologies in the construction and research, Planning and evaluation stages? Research and planning To begin to create our movie, we had to research past made short films. To do this we used the internet and went www.vimeo.com which is known to host many professionally made short films. Using this website allowed us to look at very polished films and take tricks that we could then emulate. We also used (MOVIE POSTER WEBSITE) to look at movie posters. Using this website, we could look at the known conventions of movie posters that we would have to use to make ours look authentic. All of this data was noted and then sorted using Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, using this program allowed us to set our data out in a little flip book, making it easier to look at whilst doing our planning. The planning of our film was done mostly using Microsoft word 2007. this program was used for the creation of our filming timetable as well as script. The program is useful in writing speech and creating word tables so it worked well for us.The storyboard was done by hand and was transferred onto the computers using a (SCANNER NAME HERE). This helped a lot as drawing the storyboard on a computer using a mouse would have been extremely difficult to do.

17. Digital technologies (Cont.) Construction A lot of different tools were used for the construction of my main and ancillary tasks. For the filming of my short film, We used a (CAMERA NAME) to film the production. The camera was simple to use, but was low quality so unfortunately it became difficult to film in the dark. Once the footage had been filmed we used an apple Mac computer to edit the footage. Before the footage could be edited we had to convert the files using Mpeg stream clip into a usable format, otherwise the editing software would not accept the footage. The footage was edited in Final cut express. I had previous experience with FCE and found it simple to edit the clips together, However I struggled with the new concept of adding post production filters to brighten a shot as I had never used them before and it took a while to get a hang of them. The post production sound effects were done using Garage band. Garage band is fairly new to me so I required assistance from my group members to make the sound the best it could be, without their help it would not have been as good as it turned out. The creation of the Poster began using the (CAMERA NAME) to take the stills of the main actress to use for the poster. This camera was fairly easy to use as it auto-focused for me meaning I could take professional looking shots without too much effort. The remainder of the poster was done in Adobe photoshop CS?. I have had plenty of experiance using photoshop from previous perswonal experience as well as past media courseworks. This meant it was fairly easy for me to layout the picture how I wanted and manipulate the photo how I wanted to. The symbols for the age rating came from secondary sources (BBFC).

18. Digital Technologies (cont.) The creation of my magazine review was fairly similar to my movie poster. I used our groups poster for the image in the review while everything else was done within Photoshop. I was able to use the pen tool to create a flourish inside the logo that I have used many times before so I knew I could do it well. Evaluation The evaluation of my products was done mainly in paper based. The questionnaires were typed out using Microsoft word and printed out for the viewers to answer that way. The final evaluation has been done in Microsoft PowerPoint as it makes it easier to show points using imagery as well as making the information interesting using transitions.