Evaluation Part Four (Post-Production)

Evaluation Part Four
Our film is conventional of horrors, and therefore we expect it to be popular with a mainstream audience. Although our films would essentially be categorized as a British Film, it follows many more conventions of those of an American one. British Horror Films are never as successful with audiences, and tend to exaggerate the British Culture within them. I have looked at two successful British Horror/Thriller Films: The Awakening and The Woman In Black. The Awakening is  2011 films, produced and distributed by BBC Films, Studio Canal UK  and Creative Scotland.With a budget of around £3 million and The Woman In Black was the more successful film, with a bigger budget of £15 million, distributed by Momentum Pictures. Both play on the stereotypical wealthy culture of Britain and that is why I do not think any of these distributors would be supportive of our film, neither suited.
 
It would be more suited if our film was distributed by a company such a Lionsgate, which has produced many major films such as A Cabin in The Woods, The Hunger Games and American Psycho.
We wanted our film to have a big cinematic release, as that appeals more to our mainstream audience. With a bigger budget we would be able to advertise the film more, making the audience more aware of it. Our target audience are a more passive audience, and therefore would potentially watch a lot of television already, and this is why we would advertise it on mainstream channels.

Overall I think it would be best suited for our distributors to be American, or Co with american production companies. This would really help to address our targeted audience, as we know they have successfully distributed our competitors. However, Momentum Pictures co distributed with the american company CBS films, which could have led to the $127,730,736 box office success of the film. Even though our film does not have much British Culture in it, a company such as Momnemtum Pictures could still be suited to out film. It has also distributed films such as Insidious Chapter 2 and Sinister which are both competiton to our film. The difference between these types of vompetition is the supernatural beings which they have in their films. This could mean our intended s=target audience are less interested because the 'killer' is a deluded human being, or it could possibly intrigue them more, as it makes it moire realistic and frightening.

Evaluation Part Three (Post-Production)

 Once we started editing we realised that we actually needed more shots than we had expected. Although we felt that we had done a lot of filming, and had plenty of footage, once we started trimming, matching on action and putting the shots together we realised that our title sequence was nowhere near as long as we had expected or planned. Throughout the construction of our media product we had to keep filming more and more footage and not one shot was completed in one go.
When using AVID to put and piece together our final product we had to figure out new things and try and find new tools to develop it. I have learnt a lot about the programme AVID and the different things it can do. Although we had lessons on the basics of it, we started exploring the programme and found different uses for ourselves. We filmed the shots of different days at different times therefore many of the shots were different lighting, to make it flow we needed to change all the tones to make them look as if they were all filmed on the same day at the same time. We managed to find a tool which adjusted them to be the same ourselves.

In our preliminary task we filmed a simple conversation between two people; the two different shots we used were over the shoulder and match on action. The final product we made (the title sequence- Horreum) was a massive progression from the preliminary task as we had to do a lot more editing and try and use different camera angles and shots. I have learnt many things in this process as I got to do a lot of filming as well as editing. Some of the shots I found more difficult to do than others as we decided to do many shots handheld as we wanted to make it through the killers eyes and similar to that of a homemade film. I found panning shots quite difficult although we tried to include quite a few because when someone looks around an area it is similar to that of a panning shot. We used a wide pan shot of our victim, which was tricky to get the right speed as it wouldn’t be too slow because it wouldn’t be realistic through the killers perspective, however not to fast because the shot would become blurry. Many of the situations we overcame were trial and error as we had to try and figure out what was best for ourselves. I have learnt how to use AVID, although I am not fully confident with using it, I have a much greater understanding of it. Also in comparison to our preliminary production we used many different tools on the editing programme. Within the preliminary task we didn’t have to consider lighting as we were in a well lit room. When we started filming, as it was in autumn, we didn’t have much time during the day where the lighting was just how we wanted it. It couldn’t be too light as we wanted to create an eerie, creepy atmosphere, nevertheless it couldn’t be too dark otherwise the camera wouldn’t pick anything up and the audience wouldn’t be able to see what would be happening. On AVID however, we managed to find tools to change the lighting of a shot and make it darker or lighter to make all the shots match.
Another factor that had to have a lot of thought put into it was the setting. In our preliminary production we didn’t have to do any recking or find a set location as we just did it within the college, but when we were filming our final production this is something we had to carefully consider. We filmed in three separate locations, a house, a barn and the woods/park. The woods especially have a horror conventional feel about it and it instantly connected with the horror genre.
Another factor to consider is the title. We put a lot of thinking into our title and eventually decided upon ‘Horreum’ as we originally wanted to film the whole title sequence within the barn and ‘Horreum’ is ‘barn’ in Latin.
Overall the process has been successful and I am pleased with our final media product, I have learnt many things thought out the process and have developed different skills since filming and creating our preliminary product.

Evaluation Part Two - (Post-Production)

Our target audience is 15-30 year olds. We aim to have our certificate as a 15, similar to many other horrors. Paranormal activity is a horror/thriller which is a certificated 15 film; it is based on true events and situated in a house which makes the audience feel vulnerable as they think it could happen to them as the characters are nothing but ordinary. We tried to make our film have a similar feel as then the audience are affected more by what’s happening, and that’s why are audience are possibly younger than some horrors which are an 18 such as ‘saw’.

 We used young and ideally the same age characters as our target audience to attract them. This attracts them as they believe that it could happen to them and also they are able to relate better. We followed the codes and conventions of horror as the young female victim/ heroine and the male murderer/villain. We know audiences enjoy watching these conventions as horror films are still extremely popular among audiences and the uses and gratification theory suggests that audiences are only gratified when their expectations are met but also exceeded. Also we aim that our main male character appeals to the female audience by his appearance.                                                                                                      

We aim to have our media product produced in the cinema for audiences across the UK to watch. Cinema is aimed at all ages; however the youthful generation have more free leisure time so appear to be able to go there more frequently than adults. Therefore we will be showing and presenting it directly to our target audience. After Horror films have been released for a few months, popular Television channels have showings of them. Sky is a media institution which might distribute our media product on channels such as ‘channel four’ and ‘E4’ as we know our target audience watch shows on these channels. It would have to be broadcasted after 9pm as that’s when other shows that are addressed to our target audience are shown, also because it is a certificated 15.

Audience Review

This questionaire was given out to eleven people who watched out horror trailer. I have counted all the feedback and calculated the percentages of answers. 

We got really good feedback, but can also use this to see where other people think we need areas of improvement. 

Only 27% percent thought that we fully successfully followed the codes and conventions of our chosen genre or effectively challenge them, although we did get a high 45% of very well this could obviously be improved on. 

Question number 7 asks how effectively has diegetic and non-diegetic sound been used to create meaning, and 72% of our audience said very well, which shows we were successful in that area.