The Final Editing Process..

OK!
Today. Today is the last day we were going to edit because we were then going to start our evaluation questions and our film was still too short and we had run out of clips to use to make it longer and so half of our group went to film some more while I and Chelsea stayed to do some finishing touches.

We couldn't really add anything extra to it because of the lack of footage but then the others came back and attempted to add the clips from the camera which failed because the fire wire port had blown and so unable to include it.

After the lesson had finished I stayed behind and tried other cameras which didn't work but it then worked on another Mac which wasn't helpful because the hard-drive wouldn't connect and so i had to work with what I had and by using some effects and perfecting transitions I had managed to make it long enough and make it look good as well. Although unfortunately there is no way to save it to the hard-drive.

Overall think the film is very effective and should be enough to get a good mark.

Horror Conventions

Below is a list of horror conventions used to make the horror genre what it is:
Killing,
Villain,
Victims,
Haunted houses and isolated settings,
Monsters,
Evil,
Darkness,
Chase Sequences,
Gore,
Violence,
Screams,
Ghosts,
Music,
Camera Techniques.

Openings of Genre Films Analysation

Below is and exercise which we had done that shows the different details that these films had breaking them up into their own genres and what conventions they had for each.

More Editing.

OK!

So today we all came together again and got on with our editing. So far we have finished editing the starting sequence of the film which depicts Adrienne our actor (Zoe) having a party and going towards a log where a sinister character is hiding and ends up dying. This was quite arduous because we had a lot of footage which we had to include but we had to choose the most effective and relevant parts. This meant we had to cut many clips out because of the time limit we have and so there was a lot of footage lost but for the greater good.

From our past editing sessions we had worked on looking for music and so we looked on youtube for appropriate themes. At first we started to search for 'creepy music' but this was quite a wide range and we didn't come to any conclusion there. We then looked at various soundtracks from horror films and we had found some that seemed appropriate but what we had chosen eventually was from the film Dead Silence which we thought was effective, eerie,subtle and powerful enough to be used in our film. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfp2KkDioi8

Yesterday evening 2 members of our group gathered the actors (two of us were unable to make it) and so they started to film the final seconds of our film, which included the teenagers going out to a forest/park to camp out in the dark and do what teenagers do but then becomes horribly wrong. Unfortunately the light was quite absent while filming this scene and so when put onto the Mac it was quite dark and obscure but with more editing we made it work as we think it is more effective when you cannot see what is happening but there is something wrong. There was a lot of footage of this and so we had to trim those clips down a lot to include all of the important and most effective parts. Because of the length we had to also cut down our beginning scene to fit in more of the night scene, but we made it work and if anything more effective than what it was.

SO!

These are some of the shots we used in our filming and above you can see the 3 angles we used for our match on action shot.

Our continuity film used three cameras; one as a cctv camera which we made black and white using the movie editor on the macs. We also added a time and date in the corner which we changed in some shots to show the time passing between scenes. A lot of the shots were taken from slightly awkward angles which i like because they show the suspects insecurity when being interrogated by the inspector. We also added a ticking clock noise in the background, which we felt fit in with james' tapping on the table with the lighter at the beginning of the scene.

Some of the lessons we had learned from the continuity exercise are as follows:

We learnt to have a variety of angles in our shots so that it gives a different and wider perspective of what is going on rather than just one angle. We want the viewer to fully understand what is going on. We also learnt that practice is perfect! We had to edit our clips time and time again to try and get it to work fluidly which took a lot of patience and time. Lastly we learnt that not everything works the first time and it takes perseverance to want to carry on which our group had even though it was difficult at some times.

Questionnaire Results

As a group we came up with some questions to ask our target audience about the horror genre and their preferences. Anastasia wrote up some questionnaires that had this format:

Media Questionnaire
1. What are some of your favourite horror films?

The three most popular answers from the group of 11 people questionned were:

• paranormal activity
• hostel
• saw

2. What things contribute to making a goo horror film? e.g lighting etc :)

The two most popular answers were tension and gore.

3. Which is better? please circle

EXPLICIT VIOLENCE

GORE

SUBTLE TENSION

FEAR

3 votes 9 votes

4. Best horror villain?

The most popular answers were Jigsaw from Saw and the girl from The Grudge.

5 - why are they a good horror villain?

The most popular answer was that they are sinister and have an unknown identity.

6. Do you like to know the identity of the villain from the outset of the film?

Most popular answer was no because they liked the suspense but also mentioned a lot was that it depends on the plot line.

7. What is the scariest part of a horror film?

Tension, lighting, the villain, sound/music, the victim being trapped, blood

4 votes 0 votes 3 votes 5 votes 1 vote 2 votes

8. D you prefer conventional/mainstream/ hollywood horror films such as Saw or do you like less well known films like Let The Right One In?

Most people questionned said they prefered less well known films, and one person pointed out that mainstream films are more gore fixated whereas unknown films tend to be scarier.

9. Which setting is scariest?

Abandoned building, forest, small room

5 votes 1 vote 2 votes


I feel that our film will appeal to our audience well as even though only one person voted for the forest setting I think that we can safely say this will be an unconventional horror film, which our target audience did say they preferred to a predictable slasher hollywood blockbuster film.
We also have a smaller budget so this is a good way to use our resources and include settings that we are able to get to.

Editing Sound

OK!
Today we looked for some music for our title sequence on youtube to try and make it more threatening. We found many pieces of music but none of them were what we wanted unfortunately and so we will look again and hopefully find a suitable piece of musiv for the sequence.