Evaluation

1. As research we had looked at many horror movies to ensure we knew all the codes and conventions of the horror movie industry. We looked at different film companies and saw what type of movies they made. For example Twisted Pictures are most famous for the making of the Saw sequels. They also only make horror and thrillers, so they stick to one or two genres. Their main audience would be 15 year olds and older.
We also watched out for the different identities of the villains in the movies we watched and analysed. In some movies you never even see the villain which leaves a huge suspense to the audience and a definite dark feel to what you are watching. Most Villains  have two identities, they will be a normal working person in the day but when they are going to commit murders they are most likely to have some type of make to hide their true identity, but as soon as you see the mask you can tell that they will be the villain. Also the way they kill their victims is very important and shows their character and what goes through their head.
In our movie our murderer is a classic masked killer that always wore a hood as well, he also stalks his victim before he murders them which is very twisted, he stalks them like a predator would stalk their prey. Before he kills the victim he is always hiding in the shadows making sure he is undetectable to the people around him. The first thing you notice on him is his mask.

2. In our film we have the social group of a teenage/youth who like to party and get drunk and mainly have a good time with everyone they know. In the start the victim is hosting a party for her whole year, also the character is an attractive teenage girl with blonde hair, which is quite stereotypical.
The party is going well until she finds out her boyfriend has cheated on her at her own party because of the alcohol that he had previously consumed. This then leads to the victim being upset and in a vulnerable position she had enough of him misbehaving and leaves her party and walks through town and through some dark alleyways which is very open and then starts to get thinner down the other end which makes you feel nervous for her and makes you feel like something is going to happen but you don't know when and what. The victim gets very nervous as she gets into darker places and she gets paranoid and looks behind her continuously. She stay very close to the walls which gives her a clingy feel. In front of her friends she is confident, she is so confident to throw a big party for everyone but then when she is by herself she shows to be vulnerable in some situations.

3. For our movie i think it would be more of a thriller company that would invest in our movie, even though it does have a horror feel to it i still think it is more of a thriller, it is a mix of the two genres though.
I have found a production company that will probably be the best one to help with the movie, they are called 'Hammer Film Productions' it produces some of the most famous horror/thriller movies of all time, like Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy. It has also done the recent movie, The Woman in Black which is rated one of the scariest movies of the year. I think Hammer Productions will be perfect our movie, and as it has produced some of the most famous movies, maybe ours would be next.

4. For our movie i think that our audience will be an audience of around 18 year olds and over. But with horror movies you always get a younger audience wanting to see the latest scary movie, for example a lot of younger people will watch the saw movies even when they are 13 to 17 this is to show that they want to be older and the media has affected many things like this. hey can easily get hold of a copy of the DVD from their parents or older friends or siblings. Im not saying that we will aim for that particular audience but we will get younger people watching our movie. I think the gender of our audience we are attracting is males, this is the focus but females will also want to watch this. Maybe young couples could be a target too.

5. We will attract our audience by having a well edited trailer of the movie, and have parts that will make the viewer want to come and see the full movie. It will have to have happy and upbeat parts at the start, like the part at the party to suggest the people involved in the movie, then have flashes of the victim walking and getting faster, and then a scream, then a close up of the killer in his mask. This will defiantly make people want to watch the movie.
Advertising is very important, having a spot on the TV will boost the viewers so much. Also it will stand out a lot more rather than on the radio or posters. We will go down the viral route to advertise our movie. Ideally having it on YouTube will be the best site to get on, but this will cost a lot of money.

6. I think that software we used was not very good compared to other editing software out there. The fact that it looked so complicated all over it could have been so much more simple. But we had to use what we could, after getting a bit more used to it, it got slightly easier to use. But there was a limit to somethings you could do, also when you had to render the clips it took quite a long time which was frustrating. Using 'Final Cut' was hard but we made the most of what we had and it got the job done.
The Camera we used where very good. They were simple to use because of the layout. Connecting them to the computer is also very easy, as was getting the videos from the Flip camera to the Mac. They filmed in full HD and had up to 2 hours of film time on them which is enough time for each day we filmed.

7. Seeing as my prelim is nothing to do with my final piece, because I filmed it by myself using my own ideas. The main progress i feel I've made is my camera work and how I film things, in my prelim i didn't use a tripod or any other equipment apart from just the camera. And in my final piece we used more equipment like a tripod and we used a couple of them which were different so we got to know which was better or worse.

Sound and Music

In our movie we had many different types of sound in it. At the party we had the song by Kanye West and Jay-Z 'Who gon stop me?' this would suggest the song that was playing at the party before everything kicks off. The song doesn't have any reference to the movie either which isn't a bad thing, but we could have maybe used a more suggestive song. When you saw at the party in the big tent the music was very clear, but there was a scene where you saw the inside of the house and the music was muffled which is very effective.
Another piece of music we used was by a student from our school called Chris Martin, we used it when Harri was walking back from the party when she thought she was being followed, the piece was very effective in the way that it helped the tension build so much more.

Filming 3

This was the final day of filming we hoped because we only needed to do the last scene which was the killing scene. We were worried that we might have had to do it on two different days if it took to long to film. As we did it after school it was dark which made it very effective. When we have the shot of Harri walking up the stairs the tension builds so much more, this is due to the music we had playing in the background stopped as she went inside up the stairs, and all you can hear are her footsteps and her breathing, this builds the tension a lot. The killing proved to be quite hard but we had some ideas to make it look very effective. We didn't actually show it full on we filmed it from behind so you can hear a scream and you can see the murders arm move slowly across her neck to suggest that he has cut her throat. It then its to a shot of Harri on the floor dead with the fake blood over her neck which looked so effective and realistic.

Filming 2

The second day of filming was the 8th of december 2011. This day was basically filming the scenes from when harri walks out of the party to go back home. We filmed all the places from the graveyard to dark alleyways to make everything look scary and make the audience feel on edge about where she is walking and worrying when something bad is going to happen to her. There is one of the scenes where she is walking down an alleyway and she walks past a danger sign and when she does the camera slowly zooms in on the sign which tells the audience that she is almost clueless that something is going to happen to her. During her walk home there are many different shot types to make the audience a bit nervous, there are some high and low canted angle shots which where very effective when we used them. With the transitions between scenes they are very important, the shots are long and the transitions are very quick which is very effective in this part of the movie.

Filming

Our first day of filming was on the 5th of December 2011. We were starting off filming scenes 1 to 9 on the first day, we where at harris house because that is where the main place we are going to be filming at. We wanted to have a party scene right at the start of the movie so it is quite happy to start with but, at the same time you knew something bad will happen eventually, because parties don't always go to plan. But to start with we didn't know how we could have a full on party in the middle of the week. But we had all been told there is a party on new years eve, then we thought we could film parts of the party and add it to the start of our movie, in the end we got about half an hours worth of footage to pick out and choose the best bits.

Props

All of the props really hold the meaning to the opening of our movie. It is mysterious, dark and bloody.

This is the mask we used for the murderer, it contrasts with his black clothing which and stand out on his black dark clothing. All of the main props are just for the murderer. 

This is the knife the killer used in the movie opening to kill Harri (Victim) along with the fake blood this created the final scene of the opening. This was a real knife so we had to be cautious with it.

This is the fake blood we used for the killing of the victim, the blood was really good and easy to work with and didn't stick to the skin of Harri, we used this and the knife to complete the last scene of our opening.

This is the coat that the murderer wore in the film, it is long and black which is mysterious and will make people feel on edge when they see the murderer hiding. As it is dark it will be easy to blend in with the dark which helps the murderer get around without getting noticed.

Editing

In our editing we use Final Cut Express, with our group I think that we used the editing material well and used it to almost its full potential, we used a lot of cuts and fades, and music overlapping. We used a Flip Camera to film our movie. We thought it was very good because of how much film it could save on the memory it had.

Firstly we had to insert all of the footage we had on the camera on to the Mac so we could edit the footage into our film.

The editing is by far the most important thing we had to do on our film. Because we couldn't just have all of the footage just bunged all together, so with inserting some transitions and cutting down the clips to make the movie shorter and look a lot better. Once you first start using Final Cut, it is quite hard to understand to start with, but once you keep using the editing software it gets much easier and you seem to have a flow to the work that you are doing. And then you will know where everything is and be able to be much more efficient in the editing process. We had a technician come in to our lesson and tell us the basics of Final Cut so he could get us started, it helped us to go and star and do the basics. But we where also given a booklet that was produced by a student from our school, this booklet went into much more detail, and helped us through the editing process, the whole booklet benefited us in the long run, because we all learnt something useful from it.

Filming.

We finished the filiming of our film on Wednesday the 4th of January. Previously with all the other things that we had filmed we had edited all the footage.

The parts we have filmed is the parts from where Harri wakes up from having a dream that she died/murdered by a crazed muderer with a knife on the way home from a party. She then realises it was a dream and goes back to sleep. But little does she know that the murderer is real and that hes in her house down the hall.

We had a New Year party at the end of the year and we filmed some of the party for a part in our film opening, this was for the part where it cuts from Harri walking out of her house to the party in the house that is going on.