Evaluation 7

Evaluation 6

Evaluation 5

Evaluation 4

Evaluation 3

Evaluation 2

Evaluation 1

Evaluation Planning

Before beginning my evaluations I planned everything I wanted to cover in each evaluation, by doing so this aided in having a clear focus as to what was relevant rather than speaking spontaneously and going on a tangent.
In addition to  this the planning will help me expand on particular elements i want to cover.

Below are images of the preparation for every evaluation on A3 sheets.

Mental health for entertainment

When looking over our responses from the showcase evening, their was one in particular that pointed out for a possible improvement we should not have used mental health for entertainment yet I felt that our final opening did not explicitly say whether it was the girl in the hospital who killed her friend, and this illustrates society's judgement to quickly assume that those suffering from mental issues cannot be innocent as we have kept our plot open to ambiguity and possibility.

Furthermore, the topic of mental health has to be spoken about in some ways rather than being censored and we chose to do it through this way as their is constant stigma surrounding those affected by mental health as it rejects society's norms and ideal of being 'normal'.

Evaluation Questions

The questions that must be addressed in the evaluation are:

1  In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 

2  How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

3  What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? 

4  Who would be the audience for your media product? 

5  How did you attract/address your audience? 

6  What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? 

7  Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Post-production Reflection

After having finished making the film opening, there could have been some alterations made when looking back which were pointed out to us after analysing all the feedback research.

In particular, looking back now we could have made the shots of the flashbacks all different rather than the same shots being repeated just to prevent repetitiveness and to keep the audience more interested with what is going to appear next.

In addition to this, we could have applied a glitch when the blood and flashback shots appear, to create more dramatic visuals and illustrate the state of mind of the central character.

Furthermore we had originally planned on putting a teddy and bracelet into the bag that our female protagonist received but we ended up altering this idea as we realised it was quite dull to watch yet we embedded the blood shots and her pacing as she tries to remove the stains.

Another element which wold have improved the final product, which looking back I wish we had done was including a voice over as it would have given a deeper insight into the main characters thoughts and opinion as well supply the audience with an explanation.

Questionare Data

After having sorted out the feedback questionnaires from the showcase we produced images to compile and express thoughts about our film opening.

1.What did you understand about the narrative (Quick synopsis)?

2. Did the chosen genre fit its convention?

3. How did the 'ending' make you feel?

4. Any suggestions for improvements, if we were to shoot the whole thing again?

Media Showcase Feedback

From the media showcase we were able to retrieve more feedback from a wide variety of viewers and their response to our opening. 




In terms of moving forward with they these comments they help us to pinpoint factors for improvement and elements that they enjoyed while watching our opening both from a younger audience and mature audience.

Media Showcase

On Wednesday the 20th March we had a media showcase to present all the AS and A2 final products to a large audience made up of teacher's,pupils(aged 15-18) and parents. In addition to this a questionnaire was made in order to use it as an opportunity to gain feedback.The questionnaire had the following questions;

1. What did you understand about the narrative?
2.Did the chosen genre fit it's conventions?
3.How did the ending make you feel?
4.Any suggestions for improvements, if we were to shoot the whole thing again?

In using this information to help us move forward, we can think about post-production decisions as well as constructive criticm and also get an understanding if we were to proudte the film as a real product, whether it would be a success with our intended audience. Moreover from this questionnaire I will be compiling the results to present them in different ways. 

Lastly, we had to introduce our film openings and we could talk about the genre, a short plot summary and if it would be made into a full film.Below is our plan for what we were going to say:

"Good afternoon, this is our opening Trapped. It is a psychological thriller about a girl that is in a mental institution. We chose the title 'Trapped' because it reflects her physical imprisonment within the asylum as well as her mental state as she suffers from flash backs. If it was to be made into a full length film it would follow how she mentally deteriorates after the death of her friend, this would also explain how she ended up in the asylum. Enjoy" 

Overall, the night proved very successful and beneficial for us and was also a good opportunity to improve our speaking skills and some useful responses.

Beauty and the Beast

Recently, I went  to see the newest adaptation of Disney's 'Beauty and the Beast' in the cinema,not having seen the animated version. 



I found the cinematography and computer generated imagery aided in improving the verisimilitude of the whole tale and didn't make me feel as though it was child's tale due to the Director's choice to really take advantage of the modern film technology  available in this age.

Specific shots that really intrigued me,were the shots of the snow and castle that the Beast inhabited in.

If one thing stands out over all this design and skill it is the Beast himself, a character who could not appear as he does without the advanced technology used in today’s filmmaking.

Moreover the casting was so ideal as Emma Watson made the character truly come to existence and she fitted the role perfectly in my opinion.

Audience Feedback

Before confirming our final finished film opening, we wanted to retrieve audience feedback as it helped us  improve smaller elements which may not have been identified after having watched the production multiple times, therefore the new eye would be able to spot more critically and accurately.




Below are some of the comments I gained from others around the 15+ age group.

• " I really like the time lapse at the beginning it made it different and not like many openings that I've seen " -Hannah (age 17)
• "I felt like the silence in certain shots created more tension and it made watching the opening uncomfortable  which is hard to make audience the audience feel.To improve manybe you could have had glitctches just to show how anxious the character feels. but overall I really liked it" - Naihel (age 15)
• " It kept me on edge and I wanted to know the backstory of the girl and did she kill her friend or does she blame herself. Something that I thought could have been better was maybe not include the shot where it is shaky, I don't think it flowed when watching it"-Ayesha (age 19) 

In addition to this I also gained some responses from a more mature audience as I thought it would be really important to have a wide variation of feedback to see whether it would appeal to them in the same way.



The older age group  praised the atmosphere and uneasy feeling created whilst watching the production and commented on the opening leaving them intrigued as to background of how the character has ended up in this surrounding.

Black and White Flashbacks

For our film opening we thought is was better to alter the saturation and brightness to give a faded look  and cold pallet to the shots  rather than completely strip our shots of any colour and have a black and white effect.

My reason for this is by having a black and white filter it would appear as though we are going back in time and would make our shots look very aged as though from periods ago, which wasn't our aim.

Also by having the colours a little washed out it places greater emphasis on how the female protagonist is drained of happiness and mentally her mind is unclear.

Being Limited

Whilst editing our opening I feel as though iMovie software is very limited for our group to succeed in getting the best possible outcome for our film opening, my justification for this is due to the number of transitions available to us as there is not a wide variety to apply to our project and especially considering the genre we have decided to do as it is a hybrid between horror and psycho-thriller.

We want our product to resemble real-life examples within this genre and having researched common conventions we weren't able to apply a large variation of transitions thus leading us to repeat many, because of them being more suited to projects like weddings and presentations for teaching.

The effect that we aimed for our transitions to have was to be as unnoticeable as possible and flow in sequence as having a a transition that was obvious would have altered the verisimilitude for the intended audience which is why we used the  fade transition or had straight cuts.

Yet having said this we found ways to manipulate our situation as we embedded a time-lapse which fitted into our project and it was a unique technique that we did not originally plan on doing when illustrating our storyboard.

Synopsis for our Film Opening

In terms of the plot of our final product we have decided that the plot would revolve around how the murder of her friend happened and the constant questioning as to did the female protagonist kill her friend or has she been friend.As all will be unravel in the plot.

To keep the viewers on edge and still interested in finding out the truth I would want there to be many plot-twists at certain points so the audience are left unsure and at certain points make the judgement as to whether she is guilty or innocent of killing her friend. 

In some elements the plot has similarities to the plot of the american TV series " Pretty Little Liars", as it follows the 4 females trying to find out who is 'A' and in the same way the audience want to find out the truth as to who the killer is.

Cliff hanger

We have decided to leave the film opening at a cliff hanger and keep it filled with ambiguity as to why the character is in the situation, whether she killed her friend or blames herself for her death. By doing so we feel the purpose of the film opening is to convince the audience in watching the whole movie and to achieve this you need it to leave viewers with unanswered questions, which is the main reason as to why leaving the opening at a cliff hanger would be suitable.

Likewise having done some research into films of our genre there are many cliff hangers and unexpected events that occur not only at the end of the film but in the middle too. By combining cliff hangers into the opening we leave our intended audience feeling uneasy and anxious.

127 hours

In class, we watched 127 hours, Based on a true story, 127 Hours concerns carefree adventurer Aron Ralston (James Franco), who falls into a crevasse whilst cycling alone through the Moab desert in Utah. As he falls to the bottom of the gap, his right arm is trapped beneath an immovable boulder. With only a bottle of water, an old penknife and a digital camera in his possession, Ralston documents what he believes will be the final precious hours of his life...until he realises there is one way he could escape.

I found the film built suspense throughout, specifically through editing as when he becomes stuck and finally decides he wants to escape the slow paced shots make you worry about the aftermath to his hand as he removes it also creates anticipation as you await the gory shots.

In addition the soundtrack played in the background when they shots occurred enhanced this effect further.

Overall the film was good and made you question the extremes you would go to in order to survive.

With demonic laughing or Without?

We had planned on having the same audio repeat through our opening yet after gaining some class feedback, a possible alteration that was suggested was to have either a faded crying audio playing or a demonic laughter in the background.

To aid in making a decision I carried out some research in the style of a tally chart to record the audience preference in having the the same sound play throughout or adding a demonic laughter when the blood shots begin.

votes for demonic laughter      

votes for without demonic laughter 

Total summary ;

votes for demonic laughter = 10 

votes for without demonic laughter = 3

The majority of the people I asked had preferred viewing the film opening with the sound of the laughter attached and using to to move forward we as a group have that this adds a greater impact for viewers and again heightens the uncomfortable feeling created .

Opening Title Roles Research

In order for our opening to resemble a real-life-media product we wanted to embed the opening credits  in the same style that they would appear in films already produced. Having searched some well-known movies within the same/similar genre as our opening I noticed that a common order that  many had used was:

Some films that I found followed this structure were 'Se7en', 'The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo' and 'Silent Retreat'.

For our film opening,we are going to use the same order in which the credits will appear as it will give a more professional look to the film and they are a significant convention used often within the horror and psycho-thriller genre.

Age Certificate

For our film product it is important to have an age certificate as all films shown in the UK need an age rating by law and therefore it is important that we replicate elements that real-life media products have to include.

when releasing our film we would have to make sure that our film has a BBFC age rating symbol from one of the following below ;

For our film opening "Trapped" we have chosen to use the 15 age certificate. My reason for this being the most suitable choice is due to the fact that our opening is centre around murder and has graphic content like blood which is quite gory and would require a more older audience rather than young children, which movies are typically labelled U, PG,12A and 12. On the other hand I would not rate it 18 age certificate as it does not contain any explicit sex,strong language supernatural horror or drug use therefore would not be an appropriate age certificate.

Moreover, the themes that our film opening is centered around is of interest to young teens and young adults and movies such as "Paranormal Activity" and "The Purge" have also been give the same age certificate by the BBFC, so having researched films within the same genre I think that this is the most suitable rating for our film.

As well as  considering a movie like "The woman In Black" it was given an age certificate of 12, which led to it receiving a lot of criticism from its audience.

Women in the Film Industry

Our film opening has 2 leading characters, however we are challenging societal constructs in our film opening as both characters are of Asian ethnicity and females which is uncommon and rare in the mainstream film industry.

From the diagram above it is clear that there is some sort of stigma on having the female gender being lead characters on the screen and in comparison towards men it is quite unlikely.
In recent years, statistics have shown in 2016, females comprised 29% of protagonists. This represents an increase of 7 percentage points from 2015 and a recent historical high.

In addition to this, females are used as 'props' or side characters as female characters continue to show dramatically more skin than their male counterparts, and feature extremely tiny waists and other exaggerated body characteristics. This hypersexualisation and objectification of female characters leads to unrealistic body ideals in very young children, cementing and often reinforcing negative body images and perceptions.Research shows that lookism still pervades cinematic content in very meaningful ways.

Sound in Psychological thrillers

A common aspect with psycho-thrillers is the involvement of sound/ music in order to emphasise the atmosphere and build tension. 

In addition to this audio is majorly significant in creating a  sense of foreboding and a sound motif such as danger. 

Another thing I noticed is the use of non-diegetic sound which is played at a low volume such as in the "Green Room" trailer, specifically between 0:19-0:22 seconds.The pinging sound slowly reduced in volume and faded which had the effect of signalling an even that will cause trouble.

Likewise screams and loud noises are also commonly a feature within this genre to make shots more disturbing and dramatic yet in opposition to this silence is also used in order to make the audience feel uncomfortable.

Sound

We are including non-diegetic sound in our film opening that will run throughout the whole duration of the shots, in addition we have decided to include hysterical laughing that is slowed down to aid the fact that the opening is central to the illusion of the mind, which I found on a site called 'Free sound' which includes a variety of non-copyrighted audio.




The specific audio that we used was called 'sfx girl laughing' and I felt that it fit in perfectly as it was very cryptic and added to the the audience feeling uneasy.

Mis-en-scene in Psycho -Thrillers

Typically the mis-en-scene is very realistic to the plot and is very detailed in all aspects.
Also many times there is use of different levels of lighting to help create a mysterious atmosphere and aid in reflecting the emotions of certain characters as it can create shadows showing fear or even duality of a character.

Costume and makeup can involve special effects makeup to show the fatigue a character may feel or that they have been crying e.g  by smudged eye makeup or redness or either an injury, which looks believable.

Psychological thrillers tend to be very particular with props as it can ruin the verisimilitude of the whole film also the objects helps determine the personality of characters e.g. guns show lack of morality.
To add to this locations can have very small space in order to illustrate a sense of entrapment or foreboding e.g haunted house 



Some films that come to mind when having sets that are intricate and realistic is 'The Woman In Black'(2012).

Another movie that had a really good mis-en-scene is 'The Conjuring' (2013)

Mental Health in Films

As our film opening has the central theme of mental heath, I wanted to do some research on this topic specifically in films.
Through the years the portrayal of Mental Health within films has tended to stay biased and conform to the stereotypes, the majority of the time.

False representations in the media feed off of prejudice and fear, which encourage damaging stereotypes. It’s estimated, that a quarter of the UK’s population is experiencing mental illness, yet it still remains a taboo subject.

Common attitudes to those experiencing mental health issues are:

• Dangerous and Unpredictable 
• Incompetent
• Crazy 
• Self-inflicted 
• Aloof
• Little hope for recovery
• "Need to get over it"
• "It'll pass"
• A joke

Whenever men are asked to share their opinions about the stigma attached to mental illness. With answers like ‘we’re men, we’re supposed to be tough’, it’s clear that the discrimination towards men and mental health must change. The 90s, an era of male-gone-mad characters, saw box office successes like ‘Goodfellas’, ‘Fight Club’ and ‘American Beauty’, which dealt with social anxiety, insomnia and depression.

Psycho killers, unhinged stalkers and crazy patients are Hollywood’s definition of the mentally ill –  but, it only invites cinemagoers to assume they should be feared.

Editing in psycho-thrillers

The editing within our chosen genre typically involves quick cuts creating a fast pace pace and emphasising the lack of control the character is feeling or either conveying a sense of urgency e.g victim being chased by killer,therefore unnerving the audience as they suspect the worst.

An alternate method of editing is slow motion which can be done by decreasing the pace of the shots, the effect this has is that it pro-longs what is to occur in the following scene.

In addition to this flashbacks are quite common as they allow the audience to have an insight into why the characters have ended up in a particular situation.

Teaching Mrs Tingle s Tingles

Over the weekend I watched 'Teaching Mrs Tingle',which is in the  dark comedy thriller genre starring Katie Holmes and Helen Mirren  released in 1999.

The film follows a trio of seniors who must prove their innocence to their vindictive history teacher, who accuses them of cheating their exams.

I found the film to be quite comedic in some elements with an unexpected ending and is definitely targeted for young teenagers as there is a sense of relatability with the characters in high school.
I also found the editing quite significant as well as the sound motif as when the group of friends seemed to be in situations with danger there was quick cuts and fast paced shots showing how they had a lack of control in the situation.Furthermore there was non-diegetic when the fear of getting caught in Mrs Tingle's House.

Establishing shot research

In the psychological thriller it is very common that establishing shorts are used,e.by adding this certain type of shot the audience are more aware of the surroundings of the movie and can help create a pre-set atmosphere to forebode.

Below are examples of films that have used establishing shots and I have researched the films that are within the same genre, just to establish our opening as other real life media products.

"Woman In Black"








"The Purge"



"The Blair Witch Project"

Editing Stage

Currently we are towards the end of editing as we are just making the changes that we received from the class feedback as it helps us produce the best final product possible. Also we are getting more audience feedback from a larger group of people e.g teachers, students who don't take media and adults.

A decision - Establishing shot

Following the feedback we received we have decided that it would be best to make the establishing shot that we currently have longer rather than add another establishing shot in. We have opted for this choice as we feel that adding a establishing shot will not fit in with our opening  as we could have easily added a shot of leaves or flowers but from a critical perspective it would have nothing to do with our opening,so this is our justification of this.

Update -Blood and Tears Concept

Following the feedback on our film opening, somebody had pointed out to our attention that when our actress was wiping away tears from her eyes that you could not really see clearly that tears were present and to clarify this we wanted to put greater emphasis of how her state of mine is slowly deteriorating and demonstrate the effects of this through the imaginary tears just in the same way the blood that has stained her hands.

Summary of Class Feedback

Below is an overview of the elements in our opening that we could improve on and add to the whole viewing experience that the class and Ms Foster suggested.

• add demonic/sinister laughter when the flashbacks occur
• pacing on the last shot at the end is too long
• adapt the titles and use real horror genre titles.
• longer establishing shot or add another establishing shot.
• longer black screen after production company to signal the start of the film opening.
• tears are non-existent

Class Feedback

After we had finished editing our opening we had a a final viewing from the class to get some criticism and feedback that could help us improve our opening even further.We gained quite a lot of feedback and recorded the whole process.

Lion

Over the weekend I watched Lion which stars Dev Patel,and follows the journey of Saroo,the male protagonist who is adopted by an Australian couple after he gets lost in Calcutta. Years later, he struggles with his memories of his birth family, and decides to begin a search for them.

Something I found useful when relating back to our opening was the use of lighting at the very beginning when young Saroo is away from his mother and brother. The lighting is evidently dark particularly when he is alone on the train and in complete desertion.Also it seems very shadow-like and places greater emphasis on his lack of knowledge of his location.

Even though the genre of the film is polar opposite for our opening it is an effective technique used and in terms of our opening the lighting is very dim, which is inspired by this film.

Our Production Company

We have decided to only have one main production company which is called ' Hatchi Production" and have it as a video featuring Rachel's dog Maisie,who will be howling. The inspiration came from the production company 'Metro Goldwyn Mayer' as they have the iconic lion roaring. 

Font for our Credits

For our opening we wanted to choose a font that fitted well with our whole opening and as it is centered around a young girl and because the concept of the opening is to be a little unsettling and to present the girl's anxiety, we therefore wanted a font that was untidy and messy, and resembled child-like writing.

The site that our font was from was;

• http://www.dafont.com/

and the name of the chose font was called 'My handwriting'.

The video below aided in customising the font panel on iMovie to the specific font that we wanted.