Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 7

Evaluation Question 6

Evaluation Q7

Evaluation Question 7- Looking back at your Preliminary Task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

What brief were you working to?
Our Preliminary Task involved us having to create a video showing an individual opening a door and walking into a room, then sitting down opposite another person who they share a brief conversation with. This short scene had to include four essential filming techniques which were: the 180 degree rule, shot reverse shot, continuity and match on action. Using this skills helped us perform to the best of our ability when making our opening sequences because it enabled everyone to follow the simple rules to make our openings appear more effective and professional.

Filming our preliminary task:
When filming our preliminary task we had to ensure that we had no errors such as making sure the correct foot enters and leaves the room first when filmed from different angles to ensure that when the clips are edited together, the match on action will look more effective. Another factor we had to be careful of was when filming the clips to show the use of shot reverse shot. We had to ensure that filming was done over the correct opposite shoulder to their opponent to make sure that continuity wasn't broken.

Using the preliminary task to develop our film:
Practising following simple cinematography rules meant we were more confident in producing our own opening sequence and also during the editing stages. Our film includes a scene where two characters are present in the corridor but it was shown from two different camera angles, therefore we had to ensure that we followed the 180 degree rule which ensured the characters didn't look like they were running in both directions which would have broke continuity. However in certain points of our film we purposely broke continuity using jump cuts to help represent our post apocalyptic horror genres it created a sense of abnormality and curiosity for the audience. The use of match on action was continuous throughout the opening sequence of our film. An example of this is when Rudy awakens from his coma there is a close up shot of his face waking up which then follows onto a mid shot of him falling out of bed. We did this to show detail and to show the audience what their natural perspective would have focused on.

What improvements can you see?
The preliminary task played a huge role in boosting our confidence with filming by knowing how to use simple filming rules which we followed in our main task of creating a film opening. By following these rules we also gained basic knowledge and experience from using the camera and tripods which gave us the ability to be confident in using a wide variety of camera shots such as a birds eye view shot which we used in the corridor scene. The editing software we used when editing our preliminary task was Final Cut Pro which allowed us to gain skills due to the software being completely new to most of us. This therefore shows that there has been a huge improvement in the way we approach filming and editing as before the preliminary task we were scared of making a mistake or filming in the wrong way, where as when it came to filming and editing our opening sequence we were confident in the selection of shots used and the amount of effects were used without question.

Evaluation Q6

Evaluation Q5

Evaluation Question 5- How did you attract and address your target audience?

Do you think you have reached your target audience?
I think that our film managed to connect with our target audience of the age range 15 years old to 50 years old ideally, or beyond. Our audience questionnaire clearly shows from results that the majority of individuals who watched the film opening and gave feedback are between the ages 15 to 54. The gender aspect of our target audience, being for both male and female, has been addressed because there is an equal amount of each gender of contributors within our group which means its easily attracting everyone due to there being evidently no gender divide.

What did you include when planning your production that you thought would appeal to your audience?
Lots of research and planning went into ensuring our film opening looked as realistic and effective as possible. The main stereotype of a post apocalyptic horror is the aspect of zombies, therefore this meant we had to make sure our zombie was as professional as possible. The research into zombies including watching YouTube videos to see how make up was applied, which we then practised before we filmed the actual zombie scenes to ensure it looked appropriate. The movement of zombies had to be taken into consideration when we were planning our film. We noticed from existing films and series such as The Walking Dead that zombies have a slow floppy motion and so we practised different ways of moving to help find the most suited and effective zombie walk. Outfits were another aspect which we had to take into consideration such as the nurses outfit. We wanted our film to appear as realistic as possible to make the film be taken more seriously, therefore we had to find a nurses dress and hospital beds plus props such as drips that were as realistic as possible in order to make it easier for the audience to quickly identify the hospital room setting.

What has been successful in your production?
Our group wanted to ensure that our film clearly represented a post apocalyptic horror genre and therefore this gave us an aim to work towards and has been a clear success. From research we found that the type of shots and cinematography used was important for making a film a certain genre therefore we used a series of jump cuts in our film to create discontinuity which represent horror genres because of there lack of normality. Setting also played a role in ensuring our film was successful in fitting the intended genre type because we used hospital rooms which are often associated with horror genre because audiences find them to be uncomfortable places. The props present throughout the hospital scenes also created realism such as the use of fake blood to make the audience feel discomfort which is what an audience usually feels when watching a horror film. Finally our audience questionnaire feedback clearly showed that 100% of individuals asked agreed to the question 'Do you think we clearly represented the post apocalyptic horror genre?'. This therefore suggests that our main aim was a success with our target audience.

What was less successful in your production?
The lack of knowledge into why Rudy was in a coma in the opening sequence was clearly a problem noted by our audience. However our intentions were to not give too much away about our main character in the opening sequence because this then would allow the audience to be more intrigued by the sense of mystery which they would later find out further on in the film. So this less successful factor clearly attracted our audience because of their curiosity about how and why all the drama happened during the start of the film.

Evaluation Q4

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Question 5

Evaluation Q7

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

(1) What brief were you working to? The Preliminary Task involved filming and editing a brief video covering the four essential filming 

rules/techniques: match‐on‐action, the 180 degree rule, shot-reverses-shot and  continuity. These new skills were demonstrated in a short video clip of a conversation  between two people. This conversation involved the person opening the door and walking  into the room, walking into the room and sitting in the chair across from his partner and has  a brief conversation. This helped us perform our main task of filming and editing our final  opening two minutes of the film as we applied all the rules and techniques in this task. 

(2) Our Preliminary Task 

Before we started planning our own preliminary task, we watched examples of how the 4  essential techniques were edited into videos and films to help us understand the use of  them. We had to take caution when filming shots such as opening the door and walking into  the room, as we had to keep continuity and match on action accurate. To keep match on  action we had to ensure that the person walking into the room entered with the correct foot  first in each shot we used so it follows on to the next clip smoothly. We ensured our over the  shoulder shots were over the correct shoulders so it would not break continuity when  showing shot‐reverse‐shot, for example, we made sure to film our clips over the opposite  shoulders for both people. 

(3)  Using our preliminary exercise to develop our film After we had filmed our preliminary exercise i felt like i was more confident with using the  rules, so i felt confident in applying them in our final production when filming and editing,  such as the 180 degree rule which is important as breaking that breaks continuity of the film,  leading to confusion. One example in our film where we used this was the shot of our main  character exiting the room to be stopped by a zombie, then chased down the corridor by it.  If broken the rule at this point, then it would have looked like our character was running in  two different directions. 

In our film, we purposely broke continuity a couple of times as we believed it would have a  large impact on the audience in this specific genre. We believed it would put the audience  on edge and make them feel uneasy as it is not often used in films. to do this we used jump  cuts. 

However, we did make sure match on action was continuous throughout our film because it  gives it  more natural feeling for the audience as it is fluent, so it could give them a sense as  they are involved in the film. one example of this is when Rudy is waking up from the bed,  where we matched a close up shot and a mid shot.

(4)  What improvements can you see? I believe the preliminary exercise enabled us to practise and gain knowledge which we could  contribute to the filming of our final product. Whilst experimenting with these rules, we  could identify which rules we should pay most attention to whilst filming to ensure  continuity was not broken. It also gave us experience with Final Cut Pro and the camera. We  were able to learn the basics so when we put our film together, we could spend most of our  ime with effects and sounds, as we weren’t confused with the basics. We could also  experiment with a variety of shots, such as the worm eye view.  In the beginning, all of our group felt nervous about making mistakes whilst editing and  filming, and due to our main characters (Rudy and the zombie) wearing make up, we felt  pressured because if we had to re film due to mistakes, the makeup would have to be re  done to perfection. However, due to preliminary exercise giving us early knowledge, we  were successful in not doing so. In the end, i felt extremely confident with editing our film.

Evaluation Q3

Evaluation Q3

Evaluation Question 5

Evaluation Question 5

I believe that we have reached our target audience well in our film, we are aiming to the people ageing from 15 right through to 50. However does not mean that the people over 50 cannot watch our film. The fact that we had 2 boys and 2 girls in our group also contributed to getting a well rounded film as we could add the things we thought boys and also girls would like. Things we included to make our production appeal to our audience were things such as making our zombie look as real as possible, this meant that the film would look more realistic and not leave the audience to watch and think that none of what is happening could be real. To get the zombie makeup as good as we possibly could we watched many YouTube tutorials on how to do the makeup. We also had our zombie practice movements of zombies so that they didn’t look out of place in the film when in the makeup. We also used correct outfits to appeal to the audience and our target audience, due to the target audience being mature we could not simply try to get away with the nurse not being in a nurse outfit, so we had her in an actually nurses outfit. Things that have been successful in the making of our film were the edits we used to manipulate the movie, things such as using the jump cuts that we felt were needed, as these break the continuity and add to the feeling of abnormality. This allowed us to clearly hit our aim of showing the post-apocalyptic genre well. Another thing we used well was the props that we had, we used an actual hospital room which yet again made the film more realistic, and created a sense of realism to the audience.

A few things were not so successful in our film, the things such as our film jumping straight into Rudy being in a coma, which people who have seen our film commented on. However we felt that this would be best shown as a flashback once a little further into the movie. We also did not want to give to much away of our film in our opening sequence, it meant people would want to watch on.

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation - Q3

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Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation question 1 from CameronBakerr

Evaluation - Question 7

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

(1) What brief were you working to?

Our Preliminary Task consisted of filming and editing a brief video establishing the four essential filming rules/techniques; the 180 degree rule, match-on-action, shot-reverse-shot and continuity. We demonstrated these new skills by applying them to the video which contains a person opening a door and walking into the room, then sits down across someone else and has a brief conversation. This was useful in helping us perform our main task of filming and editing a two minute opening to our film as we had to apply all these rules to it and this task helped us thoroughly understand the rules.

(2) Our Preliminary Task

Before filming our preliminary task, we watched examples of how the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot-reverse-shot were used in edited videos and films to help us understand the use of them. When it came to filming our clips we took caution when filming shots such as opening the door and walking into the room. We made sure we filmed the door opening and ensured the person walking into the room walked in with the correct foot first, so that match on action would be shown into the next clip of him walking and he would be using the same foot for two steps. When showing shot reverse shot, we ensured our over the shoulder shots were over the correct shoulders which would not break continuity, e.g. we made sure to film our clips over the opposite shoulders for both people. 

(3) Using our Preliminary Task to develop our film

Once we had filmed our preliminary exercise, I felt more confident with using the rules and felt like I was able to apply them whilst filming and editing our film such as the 180 degree rule which is important not to cross as it breaks continuity and may confuse the audience. For example in our film, two of our characters are running down the hall way in two shots, it was important for us not to cross the 180 degree line as it would look like they are running in two different shots which follow each other. 

In our film, we purposely broke continuity multiple times as our genre is post-apocalyptic horror and we believe it would create anticipation for the audience due to the discontinuity. I believe that this has a large impact as discontinuity is something that is not often used in films as it gives a sense of abnormality. To break continuity we used jump cuts. 

We made sure match on action stayed continuous throughout our film. For example when Rudy is waking up from his bed we matched two shots (a close up and a mid shot) to make it continuous when he is climbing out of bed. We did this as it gives a more natural feel for the audience from their perspective. 

(4) What improvements can you see?

I believe that the preliminary task itself set out the framework we needed to complete our film. It enabled us to apply our new knowledge of the basic filming rules when filming shots which also contributed when filming for our film. Whilst experimenting with these rules, we were able to establish which needed the most attention and caution when filming to ensure continuity was not broken such as match on action. It also gave us more experience with the camera, which is why we all now are highly confident in using a camera and tripod. This also gave us confidence in using a large variety of shots in our film which we are not normally used to, such as a worm eye view shot and a birds eye view shot. As we also had to edit our preliminary exercise on Final Cut Pro, this enabled us to gain new skills in this area as none of us had used this software before. At first we were all nervous about making a huge mistake whilst editing, but as we gained sufficient knowledge and experience whilst using the software this built the framework of our skills when it came to editing our actual film. I felt confident when editing the film that I was able to add any effect we wanted into our film, whereas when we first edited our preliminary exercise we were all confused about the

software. 

Birds eye view shot

Worm eye view shot

Evaluation - Question 6

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Pandemic - Audience Feedback Questionnaire Results

We set up a survey for our audience to take in response to the two minute opening of our film, here are the results that we have obtained from this questionnaire.

From this question result, you can see that gender is split equally between male and female, which was our initial aim to target both genders.

This question shows us that our audience age is ranged from around 15 to 54, our original target age was 15 to around 50 so we have reached, and even exceeded our target audience with our opening sequence. The most of our audience were around the age of 15 to 24, we expected this to be the weight of our audience as our characters are around this age, therefore the audience can empathise more and relate to them.

All of our audience seemed to enjoy our opening sequence, which shows that people of different ages and gender can appeal to our film.

We were very pleased to see that our audience thought the setting for our film was suitable as we conducted a large amount of research individually, and as a group, on setting of the post-apocalyptic genre. This has clearly benefited us largely as our audience do not see a problem with a hospital being a setting within our film.

This was an open question that we set up to see what people believed could be changed about our opening sequence. The majority of people believed we should have given more details into the plot revolving around Rudy, the main character, and why he was in a coma. However, we did not give the audience much insight into this as we believed this would intrigue them and they would want to watch the full film. Others believed there was nothing that needed to be improved on. Another person said that there should be more dialogue, but we believed as there was a large amount of action in this scene, and the audience needed to understand what was happening which was important therefore we decided to have little dialogue in the opening sequence. Also, another person believed their should be more zombies, more zombies would appear throughout the full film but we did not want to overpower the main character, Rudy, as we wanted to immediately portray him as a domineering and powerful character.

Pandemic Audience Questionnaire

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Pandemic Final Film

Preliminary Exercise

Our Production Logo

We decided to create a production logo that represented both us as a group, the film industry and also our chosen genre of horror. Our logo visually looks like a close up of an eye which represents the horror genre as usually close ups on eyes are to show fear. However, the eye is made up of text which says 'A C.A.M.E Thriller Series', where 'C.A.M.E.' is the name of our production company as the letters stand for our groups names; Cameron, Alana, Mollie and Ellis. We also stated that our company produces thriller series as we believe horror is a genre we would like to specialize in, therefore creating more  thrilling films in the future. The iris of our eye is supposed to represent an old film projector as it is shaped like that. This represents the whole film industry and the history of it and how times have advanced.

Film Title Logo

This is the logo we have made for our film in which we wanted to keep simple, but with meaning behind it. Our design shows the audience that something is abstract about our film and something is not right - hence the zombies. This is why the 'A' in our logo is upside down, it connotes abnormality which is clearly represented in our film.

Analysis of the first 15 minutes of '28 Days Later'

The opening scene of '28 Days Later' consists of several hand-held camera shots of severe chaos which seems to be around the world due to the different cultures shown. The shots cutaway and are extremely shaky, the audience are unable to see clearly what is happening, there is also lots of panic-stricken civilians around. This connotes that the footage was filmed quickly and almost like a global disruption. The editing of the clip is fast paced to suggest the fear people feel and how they are all rushing to a safe place. Also, the diegetic sound used throughout this scene is muffled and fuzzy along with the quality of  the footage. The camera then zooms out to reveal the source of these clips, a dark room is shown with several televisions all playing the chaotic videos.

In the next scene, a pan is used to show a gorilla strapped to a desk, this suggests to the audience that he is there for some type of experiment in a lab. Parallel sound it used within this scene as a mysterious non-diegetic sound effect is used, this parallels with the mystery for the audience so far in the movie and all the unanswered questions they have. In the lab room, a pan from right to left is used to connote that something is not right as the human eye is accustomed to seeing things from left to right. The audience then discover that the lab is being broken into. Following on from this pan, the shot turns into a high angle shot through CCTV footage. Through the security camera screen the audience can see 2 people wearing balaclavas and dark clothing, this gives connotations and implies to the audience that they are going to break into the facility. This intrigues the audience and they want to find out why they are breaking in. Once these unknown characters have broken into the facility, the audience immediately get the impression they are feeling unease; possibly because of the monkey that is strapped to a table with no freedom. The audience get insight into the emotions the characters are feeling towards the monkey due to their facial expressions and body language, it is then clear to the audience they are a group of animal right's activists who are trying to free the monkeys.

There is a scientist in the lab room whom tries to phone help due to the intruders, a high angle shot is used to show his vulnerability. The scientist tries to explain to the intruders that the gorillas have a infection known as ''rage'' that makes them violent, however the animal activists are unfazed by the scientists words and shot reverse shots show the characters in conversation. Once the activists release the monkey, a point of view shot is used showing the gorilla quickly running out of its cage, eventually it attacks the women activist. Close up shots are used of the women's face to show her fear and panic whilst trying to fight the gorilla. Diegetic sound is used of the screams heard by the women. The whole scene has turned to chaos and tension has been created by fast paced editing.

Typography is used of the words '28 Days Later' connoting to the audience that this time has passed since the previous incident. A high angle shot is used establishing a man and his surroundings, he is in a hospital bed, with no clothes on indicating to the audience he has been left there. The man walks out of the hospital room and around the hospital, unknown to why there is such silence. Elliptical editing is used when he is walking around the hospital to show a passage of time. The hospital is empty and extremely messy which implies to the audience there has been chaos. Furthermore, high key lighting is used within this scene to indicate that something has gone wrong in and that possibly the character is not in a right mind state, possibly dreaming.

Treatment

Title: Pandemic

Duration: 120 seconds. 

Audience: 15 years and over. 

Distributor: Hammer Films.

Synopsis: 

Suggested Elements: Things such as the zombie thriller in our film differentiate ours from others and make it stand out due to the fact there is a lack of zombie films at the moment. Also the use of good effects and soundsshould make ours stand out if we can pull them off to the level we expect to.

RESEARCH INTO SAME GENRE

The Walking Dead (TV Series)
Plot: Sherrif's deputy Rick Grimes is shot and wounded in an altercation with criminals. He awakens weeks later from a coma in an abandoned and badly-damaged hospital. Upon leaving, Rick discovers a post-apocalyptic world overrun with zombies, colloquially called "walkers" and "biters". He also discovers his wife and son are missing, and meets survivors Morgan and his son Duane, who take him in and explain the situation. Rick arms himself and travels to Atlanta, where the CDC is said to have set up a quarantined safe zone in the city. He discovers that the city has been overrun by walkers and soon finds himself surrounded. After being rescued by Glenn, Rick meets part of Glenn's group in a nearby department store where they were taking cover. Walkers attack forcing them to leave behind a member of the group, Merle, who was handcuffed on the roof by Rick due to his unstable and violent behavior.

A few miles outside the city, Rick's wife Lori and son Carl have been hiding with Shane – Rick's partner and best friend – along with the rest of Glenn's group. Reunited at the camp with Lori and Carl, Rick shares command of the group with Shane, who in Rick's absence has fallen in love with Lori. Several go back to town to rescue Merle and collect a cache of guns Rick left behind, but they discover that Merle fled after sawing off his hand. They arrive back at the camp to find that it has been nearly overrun by walkers. In hopes of finding answers and a safer location, the group decides to travel to the CDC headquarters in Atlanta.

Similarities: The similarities between our film and The Walking Dead is our main character is injured severely and falls into a coma. When he wakes up it is post-apocolyptic and everything has gone. He finds his family (brother) is missing which sets up his quest to find him. Also, like The Walking Dead, our main character will be a very dominant character and seen is the leader of the group. The last similarity is our characters will not call them zombies but by a nickname.