Evaluation - Audio Commentary of the Final Project

Untitled from Craig Mullen on Vimeo.

Final Task - Group Presentation

Craig, James and Lauren's Presentation - Animus Messor from Chris Earl on Vimeo.

Evaluation - Interview

Craig and James - Animus Messor Evaluation from Chris Earl on Vimeo.

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

Our preliminary task, the continuity project, was something that was indeed not the worst thing in the world, but it was consistently flawed. Despite its subject as a continuity project we still had multiple continuity errors in our project, this due in part to bad planning, we filmed practically the minimal amount, and not fully understanding the technology filmed quite late at night which created a very saturated and reddish glow to our work. Regarding this when we filmed our final project we took every experience we had into respect, we planned massively, and filmed massively. for every couple of seconds or minutes of footage we needed we filmed it at least three or four times. In the end this played to our advantage, at one point when we found a prop had somehow changed hands it almost seemed impossible to correct, until out of sheer chance we checked the footage and found that we had indeed filmed with the prop in the correct hand, this shows that truly over filming is one of the most important things you can do and it is vital that you do it as it can easily correct any errors. We also managed our time better being that we filmed outside during the day forgetting about trying to use darkness after we found out what it does to the camera quality, doing this we got a really good clear image outside in comparison to what we ended up with last time which was a saturated and awful quality to watch. Overall i would say over the course of the subject we have picked up many tips and strategies that we utilised in our final project which not only saved us from a few situations but also improved the overall general quality of the final piece.

Evaluation - What have you learned about the technologies from the process of constructing this product?

The best option we had to choose from was premier pro, something after which we experienced we wished we had gone for a different piece of software. However despite this premier pro does allow for precise frame to frame editing, not only this but it provides a range of effects. Effects of which played a primary part in the construction of our piece, and so the problems with premier aside, it is good piece of technology that did indeed provide with much of what we needed in order to makes and put together out piece to the highest quality. While it may have been able to outfit our project with all of these fancy effects and able to allow us to edit with upmost precision, premier did not come without its drawbacks. We were made to suffer through countless errors and debug, which each time shut down the program deleting any work we had not previously saved, in many cases this resulted in us having to redo many things over and over, prolonging to period of editing almost exceeding out given deadlines. The problem was that the camera we used which shot HD, obviously giving us a great shot quality and good polished looks to our footage. Premier on the other was something that was not suited to this higher quality of format, and so when the files were put on it resulted in elongated periods of rendering and immense loading times, which over time just meant more and more time had to be poured into editing something which for  time worried us that we would not be able to hit the final deadline. Thanks however to Mr Earl, who converted out files to a DV format and re-uploaded them onto the server, when these lower quality files were put onto premier we found almost instantly that premier functioned and ran so much quicker. It was thanks to this that we finally began to make real progress with our project, managing to render in about half an hour rather than six hours which it was before. However it was not just the editing software that we had to deal with, the camera we used as mentioned filmed in HD and was set default to film in 60 frames per second, however this 60 frames per second was too high quality and so we had to reduce it to 30. The only problem was when the camera was closed it would reset itself to default back to the sixty setting meaning that the camera had to be left on throughout the whole process of filming which when moving about from location to location was something difficult to do and did result in some footage filmed in 60 frames and so making it more difficult to edit being that it was of a higher quality and making loading times increased and paining us again with the loading times and rendering times. However overall we learned that it is beast to convert the footage to DV format before editing something on a larger scale being that it loads quicker and runs quicker making the editing process alot quicker and less arduous experience.

Evaluation - How did you attract/adress the audience?

In terms of attracting our particular audience, the type of person who would see this film would be immediately attracted anyway, simply by the element of horror entwined with that of mystery and suspicion. But in our piece we have incorporated the ability for the audience to make their own judgement as to what is going on in the scene, through use of different camera angles we never give away what the true motives are or even what the killer is actually doing, if he is a killer at all. this is the sort of thing that attracts our audience this element of mystery this guise which allows them to become part of the film, them seeing what is going on but not being told even at the end. It is this sort of mystery and gut wrenching horror which not only attracts our audience but addresses them as well, making them eager to see the film, and eager to become immersed in its shroud of mystery and enigma.

Evaluation - Who would be the audience for your media product?

Generally the audience of our piece will be male, they will be between 18-26 years old. This makes it so that they can watch a horror film and be frightened by it but with their attitude towards life it will not terrify them into never wanting to see it again. The type of film they will have seen and enjoyed would be films like Seven, Silence of the Lambs, Saw, Omen and Paranormal Activity. All of these films have definite elements of horror but jointly they do not show a over exaggerated amount of blood or gore. These film tend to focus of frightening the viewer in a very different way, they play on human fear utilising elements of the human psyche that frighten people or that have been repressed or hidden. The audience enjoys a certain amount of mystery and the idea of being kept in the unknown, while watching a film they love to kept at the end of their seat and enjoy the feeling of being kept in the dark and waiting for the worst to happen. The audience will predominantly be male with the horror genre being stereotypically aimed at more of a male audience, there will have be a nique in the female market whereby for women who do enjoy the horror genre. Also we are choosing to target a much smaller audience that perhaps normal horror films would, with the sub-genre we have focused on it often can make the plot line very deep and often difficult to follow, and so people who are interested in this genre are not people who wish to be able to watch a film and just be able to relax and watch it. They will be watching every single detail in the film, looking and paying attention to what is going on in every scene to try and find some connection between the plot line and the characters. This means that the audience must be highly interested in this type of genre and extremely eager to be kept on their seat and shrouded in the mystery of the film and the uncertainty that it carries with it. 

Evaluation - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product?

The most appropriate choice of distributer we felt had to be Lionsgate. Lions gate are known for their distribution of perhaps the lower budget film productions and even more relevant the distribution of higher certificate horror films such as ours would be. Lions gate famously have distributed the Saw films widely acclaimed psychological films linked to Twisted Pictures brand also distributed by Lionsgate. To us this seemed like an obvious choice to keep to a company that would really be interested in the genre of film that we were producing, it having produced ones of the same genre and classification.

Evaluation - How does your media project represent particular social groups?

Relating to the way our project was shot we were not intended upon representing a particular group of people as a whole, being that we included a limited amount of characters and furthermore did not even reveal the true identity of the main character. However in focussing solely upon the main character we did indeed provide a representation of a group of people even linked in with the genre of our film. The idea of the human psyche having a darker nature, the sort of nature that expresses such desires to commit atrocities such as cannibalism and murder, this is the representation that we have presented in out project. Primarily the idea that every person has this repressed darker side that they are scared of and that they choose to keep hidden from society, but it is always present. For the people who actually embrace this we show them to be manipulative and cunning and seriously twisted in many ways and the way that they go about their lives leading them to fulfil these heinous aspirations. Another social group represented on perhaps a much wider scale is that of gender the idea that women are weaker than men, the idea that they are victims this idea shown in the motif we have created in our film of the female victim. It suggests that they do not have to power to defend themselves and as it makes itself obvious toward the end on the film that the main character is about to go and kill another female this representation is further amplified.

Evaluation - How does your media project use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our production was heavily based upon films we ourselves as a group watched, we did this in order to make sure we adhered to the codes and conventions of the genre we had chosen to film, that being the psychological horror a sub genre of horror.  Myself I focussed heavily on the opening of seven hence alot of similarities between our final piece and that of the opening to seven. However another piece I looked at which we found useful was the opening scene to the TV series Dexter, while this was a TV series it adhered greatly to the codes and conventions we wished to abide by and was extremely useful in aiding us with our selection of shots and camera angles to use. In terms of how our product develops the common codes and conventions of the genre is the eerie atmosphere created by our shot choice and general style of filming. Heavily influenced by Seven we used a lot of close ups in order to prevent the viewer from being able to witness the whole scene in front of them, it allowed us to hide certain aspects of the scene and so in turn create an aura of mystery to the opening making the audience unsure as to what is happening and perusing a sense of enigma in the way they must keep watching to see what is actually going on in the scene. Another convention of the genre we used was the hiding of the characters face; in doing this we further amplify the feeling of mystery and horror in our piece. The audience in consequently not able to in the opening scene able to witness the true identity of the cannibal and so they are left out in the unknown left to second guess what is going to happen. By filming in an ambiguous nature we further adhered to codes and conventions of our chosen genre, the actual evidence of what is happening is so hidden from the viewer and they are unsure as to what is going on further forcing the insuring sense of horror and foreboding as to the persona’s actions in the scene. The general focus of a cannibal in our film furthermore continues to apply to the genre in that commonly psychological horrors focus primarily on the scariest part of the human psyche. Often this is the part most heavily repressed by people the urge to be crazy and let out a more insane side to a personality is something that we intended to portray in order to truly to create something that did scare out intended target audience. More over the use of effects which furthermore fragmented our shoot breaking up making it seem jarred and uncertain also boosted this enigma of horror, being a representation of the killer himself whereby he is also fragmented and broken in a psychological way which has furthermore led him the lifestyle of a serial killer and cannibalism. The music we used was mainly to create tension in the shoot, and primarily a sensation of foreboding, as if the structure of the shoot is leading up to something bigger, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats in true fear of what this something actually is.