Malevolent Phantom Feedback

                  

We got a variety of positive and constructive feedback. Our classmates enjoyed our setting and tension building as well as our point of view shots which created panic and finally the close up shots of our main characters face which showed her emotions. Although our main constructive feedback was the lighting and the font, which was said not to have reflected the horror genre which we have considered and made apart of our targets for next year.

Film Presentation

      

Film Presentation 

Malevolent Phantom

 

                       


Conor discussed the initial ideas and then our final idea and how we came to deciding it. I spoke about the location and reasons for this chosen location. Chloe told the group the strengths of our production and finally Rashmi informed us on problems we had encounter and then how we had over come them.

Meet the Cast

Meet The Cast

Malevolent Phantom

Evaluation Task 8

Task 8

Malevolent Phantom

What targets will you set yourself for G324 next year - when you will make a trailer?

Main Problems we encounted while producing Malevolent Phantom were:

• Planning
• Lighting
• Camera 
• Editing

Although we put a lot of thought and time into our planning, after reflecting we still feel it is an area which could be improved if we were to do it all again next year. As it turned out our storyboard didn't end up totally reflecting our opening. Also we ended up having limited time to complete our filming as we were not aware how many times we would have to redo shots causing some areas to be rushed and not to their highest potential. Therefore i feel next year we would start our filming earlier in our course. I also feel these mistakes were only learned through trial and error.

Due to our setting being in the woods the lighting was very key, but as the months went on the nights got darker and darker at a much early stage. originally we would walk from school at 3.15, getting to the woods at 4 ish leaving us only 40 minutes or so to do any filming. Also due to the poor quality on the provided camera the lighting had to be rather bright in order for any usable footage to be recorded. Taking all this into consideration our group started meeting on Sunday morning so we had a good couple hours to get everything done which we wanted. Therefore next year we would from the start meet on the weekends  if we chose horror genre again to optimize our time productively.

As mentioned above, the camera did lack in certain areas especially the microphone, we started off filming on the side of the road but our dialogue was so drowned out we altered our initial ideas and moved more into the woods getting away from noise, but still our dialogue was quiet and hard to hear which i felt let our film down as it lacked realism which other films excel in therefore next year i feel our group would benefit massively by either a more professional camera or an added microphone.

Finally, although i feel our editing was successful as a whole, there were certain areas which could have been improved such as timing, we would have liked to allow ourselves some more time to concentrate on more detail and specific shots making them the best they could be. Also making the titles of our film in the editing process could have been improved as from our teachers feedback we were told our titles font didn't reflect our genre as well as another style might have, therefore next year we would spent a longer period of time on decisions like this.

Evaluation Task 7

 Task 7

Malevolent Phantom

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

While doing our preliminary task we were instructed to focus solely on continuity, we feel this is a key area of making any film good because without it the audience don’t feel as if it reflects real life therefore they cant engage fully in the story, thus continuity was constantly thought upon during the entire course of making our horror opening. We have learnt so much from both analysing our preliminary task  as well as analysing other horror film openings, from doing this we were able to identify the areas where our preliminary lacked and we able to improve our knowledge and skills and then apply them to our opening. Areas we improved on were Shot reverse shot as the first time round it didn’t play smoothly, this also involves the editing process which has massively improved  during our film making journey. Also for match on action we used the same idea for both project as we felt it was easy and effective camera usage, we used a phone ringing, although it was the same we improved it second time round by adding non-diegetic ringing which made it clear to the audience that the phone was in fact ringing. Compared to our preliminary which included diegetic vibration noise which was hard to hear. 

Production titles during our preliminary were extremely basic this is due to our small knowledge of editing at the time therefore we used editing software Sony Vegas which is easy, but had limited features making the produced footage rudimentary. Also during our preliminary everyone did everything whereas in our opening each member of our group had a specific job meaning our titles looked more official more representative to real films. Finally during the production titles in the preliminary we just had a cloudy background which the audience lose interest in quickly, whereas during the opening of our film we had already started playing the movie as the titles blended in at the bottom for the audience to glance at as they focus mainly on the characters.

As the months past and we had done more and more editing we had gained enough knowledge to use Adobe Premier Elements editing software which allowed us to play around with it as much as we please,  from this we were also able to make a few production titles which in the end included ,”aspire productions” and “KSNH films”

Throughout our preliminary we had an extremely low  range of shots, majority of them were medium shots although we did include a brief high angle shot and shot reverse shot. We concentrated on 180 degree rule which we continued to follow into our opening. As the weeks progressed and we evaluated opening to films, our understanding of shots became greater which we then applied to our opening, including an extreme long shot and extreme close up shots.

After looking at our preliminary tasks shot reverse shot part we learnt from our mistake and improved it when filming our opening making it a smoother transition and more planning.

 In our preliminary we only briefly planned the dialog, we allowed our actors to make it up as they went, this is because we only had a short amount of time to plan and we didn’t feel what was said was the most important instead we concentrated on the camera skills. Although during the planning of our official film opening we had a lot longer period of time to plan every detail so a lot of thought went into the dialog and how each word and how its said will effect the audience. We also produced a script which we published on our blog page as it showed that we had thought about it in detail.

Evaluation Task 6

Task 6

Malevolent Phantom 

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

YouTube was very useful to us throughout our whole media studies journey, as it is not only the most popular video website worldwide but it is also very easy to both upload your videos, which allowed other members of our group to easily transfer the work onto their own blog-page. It also allowed us to in this evaluation period to annotate our film. Using YouTube on so many occasions has allowed the whole group to widen their knowledge, for example none of us had any idea how to annotate videos using YouTube but now we do.

Everyone used Blogger which is a very simple and easy blogging page which allowed us to post all our research and evaluation and videos onto with ease. What i like about Blogger is that you are able to design the layout to how you choose for example my Blogger background is a bookcase whereas a member of my groups is a purple galaxy, this feature allows your work to have that extra individuality. 

Our group chose to use a editing software that offered simple and easy features which still delivered high quality. So we used Adobe premier elements as is allowed us to manipulate our shots with all the different features such as: cuts, crop, effects and transitions. This software also allowed us to add titles which looked professional and piece our shots together to successfully make our opening scene. 

This was the camera the school provided us to use, overall is was a very good and basic little camera which in the end did deliver good enough quality to please our group, although a few drawbacks occurred such as the microphone was not as good as we hoped meaning our dialog often got drowned out, also the camera didn't preform very well in slight darkness which we would have hoped it did in order to stick to the generic expectations.

Evaluation Task 5

 Task 5

Malevolent Phantom

How did you attract/address your audience? 

   
                        



In this evaluation task we went through our opening and annotated areas of our film which attracts the audience as well as similarity's that it shares with other horror films.