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.

Evaluation Task 4

Task 4
Malevolent Phantom

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our genre for malevolent phantom is horror therefore our audience would  be horror enthusiasts who enjoy being scared so most likely would watch programmes such as supernatural and post-apocalyptic TV dramas this is because they fuel them with excitement and offer thrill throughout the exaggerated and tension filled story lines. Also people interested in this specific genre enjoy listening to music of the same theme, from research we have carried out we found the majority of them will listen to different types of rock, we believe this is because of the loud vocals. Although not every horror fan would be interested in the same things we are going on the stereotypes, which also include our target audience having dark clothing which connotes danger as well as merchandise from their favourite horror. 

 

Evaluation Task 3

Task 3

Malevolent Phantom

Directors Commentary

                

 

AMY: What does the production company do?  

A production company basically helps create the film by assisting with the budgeting, scripting, casting the characters and scheduling. They’re responsible for finding the right director and the characters with the talent required for the film however they’re also accountable if there are problems that affects the film e.g. the injuring of the main character. The production is involved with the film from the start until it’s fully completed.

CHLOE: The idea of a distribution and who that might be and why? 

A film distributor is responsible for marketing our film, they usually set the release date and where the film will be exhibited and viewed. They can make it public by releasing the film in the cinema or it can be viewed at home by releasing DVD. We decided that we wanted Warner Bros as the distributor for our film as it distributes worldwide and had financial success. They have had partnerships with independent horror film companies e.g. Hammer Films Production.  We chose Warner Bro Distribution Company because we believe that it would fit our film requirements than other institution and it has handled a lot of low budget films in the past.

CONOR: Where the money might have come from for a film such as yours

The UK Film Council will invest £20.2 million of public funds from the United Kingdom lottery into our film.

CONOR: Why the various people are named in the titles - which jobs appear in the titles and in what order and how have you reflected this? (CONOR)

The first name that appears is the main character “Chloe Hicks” then “Conor Nelson” as the supporting lead character.  Then the extra characters are introduced “Amy Knight & Rashmi Sen” The directors and producers names appears as they’ve filmed it. We researched some titles and found that the important roles of the films e.g. main characters are introduced first and the least important roles appears later on.

RASHMI: What is your film similar to institutionally (name some films which would be released in a similar way)

Institutionally our film is similar to Hammer Films Production because they are a British Film Company and specialised in the horror genre. This institution has a distribution partnership with successful studio such as the Warner Bro. Their success was due to the partnership which different   distribution company which lead to the Film Production with the financial success.

Woman in Black is similarly released as Hammer Films produced it then the film was distributed by Momentum Pictures which is an independent distribution company in the UK and Ireland.

Evaluation Task 2

                                                  Task 2                                                                                                Malevolent Phantom 

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

    2015 Malevolent Phantom:                                           1996 Scream:

Both pictures above are similar, as they both share a naive and unintelligent young girl with an oblivious look on their face, the effectiveness of this absent gaze into mid air creates vulnerability as it suggests the aren't paying attention to the danger they could potentially be in, which definitely conforms to stereotypes of horror films. The reason both pictures share similar characteristics is because they are both horror genre.

Although facial expression share similarities, not every aspect of these pictures are the same, for example the clothing is very different as Scream is set inside a big lonely house therefore it would look silly and unrealistic to be wearing a big coat, but this isn't the case for Malevolent Phantom which shows the main character in a coat due to the setting being outside. 

Our films concept was "the fear of the unknown" which is simply giving the audience little information of the characters by using dark lighting and casting shadows so the audiences imagination starts to try and identify what could be happening, which usually results in the worst case scenario. This concept is obviously very popular and effective in the horror genre as it was present in 1996's "Scream" as well as "To Kill A Mockingbird" which dates back 55 years ago and is still present to this very day appearing in not only our opening, but famous films such as "Cabin In The Woods".

This opening of Scream is an example of how the camera would be used and how non diegetic sound would be used to create fear of the unknown,

Evaluation Task 1

Task 1 

Malevolent Phantom

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

 Out film starts off with a simple establishing shot to inform the audience as to where the location is. The effect of this shot shows the audience how isolated and lonesome the area is creating a tension straight away as secluded areas connote danger.

 This long shot suggests that the characters are insignificant compared to their surrounding  although as the characters walked closer to the camera it created a low angle shot giving these characters power, suggesting they have protection while in a group. During this shot we encounter a problem which was the shot seemed to be too lengthy creating a dreariness feel for the audience therefore we cut it down.

A lot of consideration went into the costumes for our main characters for example Chloe who played our main character wore a bright coat. We made this decision as we felt with a bright pink coat it would draw the audiences attention away from the other 2 actors (who are not important) and onto her. Our intentions were for the coat to be red to also connote danger, but we could not find a red coat therefore we settled for a bright pink one. Our group also did some research on horror genre opening titles as we didn't want them to appear as a different genre, therefore we decided on "ORATOR STD" as it is was similar to other horrors titles.The characters and location is this opening all conform to the stereotype of genre due to their being helpless and innocent teenage girls in the  middle of open space area vulnerable to danger.

This  close up shot of the our main characters face conforms to the genre as we discovered form our research and planning that close ups and extreme close ups are often used in horror films, this method of camera usage is effective as it draws the audience closer to the character. The shots before this cut between Lucy (all alone) and her friends leaving (together) and highlights clearly to the audience that she is on her own now, conforming  to the genre of having the main character alone in a secluded area. When certain scenes built up in suspense we would cut sharply by using diegetic sound to cut the tension - e.g. of a phone ringing. This keeps the audience on the edge wondering what's going to happen.

The picture above shows a long shot from 1993's classic 'Schindler's List', we considered this shot while filming our opening as we felt it looked very effective with the use of the little girls red coat as it attracts all the attention on her which was our aim for 'Lucy' and her vibrant pink coat. Both pictures symbolise innocence but still vulnerability as both these girl end up dying. This scene conforms to the genre conventions as it shows an innocent, young girl in the isolated settings of the woodlands. 

This is one of the small range of shots we have of the Malevolent Phantom as we planned to keep his identity hidden so the audience doesn't  know anything about him, therefore using their imagination and creating the fear of the unknown. The majority of shots are used to focus on Lucy as she is the main character that the audience know the most about. But in this shot attention is more directed on our Malevolent Phantom watching Lucy, in order to make it fear that our Malevolent Phantom is watching and stalking on Lucy we used an over the shoulder shot. We chose this shot over a point of view shot as its give the audience a taste of what the monster looks like, rewarding the audience for keeping their attention for so long. This creates more suspense by symbolizing how big and powerful the Malevolent Phantom is.

This medium shot blocks majority of the background therefore the audience feel on edge and there could potentially be someone or something hiding behind Lucy. This medium shot also offers a quick incite of how Lucy is feeling which through her use of facial expression is clear she is feeling scared and panicked. While this shot is happening diegetic rustling of the leaves are present this used so we could have an excuse for Lucy to pause which could have resulted in the Malevolent Phantom catching up to her. Giving the audience the uncertainty of is he going to be there? is he going to get her?

This shot demanded a lot of attention as different shots were good but then lacked effectiveness in other areas, for example using a close up would have shown Lucy's facial expressions, but cut out the Malevolent Phantom which would not be successful, also a long shot would have revealed too much setting taking attention away form the characters therefore we decided on a  medium shot as is offers a close enough shot of Lucy and her first encounter with the Malevolent Phantom. But still far enough away so the audience can clearly see the Malevolent Phantom and identify that he is close to Lucy. As soon as Lucy noticed the Malevolent Phantom non-diegetic music with a fast pace and loud volume starts as it mirrors how Lucy feels, as well as building up suspense for the audience. This build up is effective as from our audience research  we found most people enjoy and crave a chase scene. After all the suspense and quick tension the audience have experienced they are rewarded with mass excitement as a fast paced chase scene occurs, which is most likely what they anticipated from the beginning as is conforms to horror genre stereotypes.

During our editing process we changed a few things but us as a group felt this shot was the most importantly and well judged shot that we changed. This shot was originally longer, so we shortened it as it ended on mass suspense leaving the audience to decide what could have happened next making it look very dramatic. Also a problem with having the original longer shot it was hard to make the dragging back look very forceful as we didn't want to actually hurt our characters. For me and i'm sure rest of my group would strongly agree, this is my favourite shot of the whole opening as i feel it pieces together very well .

Malevolent Phantom - Bloopers

                         

Malevolent Phantom Opening

                




                

Editing Discussion

Editing Discussion

Malevolent Phantom

                       

Starring: Chloe Hicks and Rashmi Sen
Filmed by: Amy Knight 

During our editing process we came across a few miner problems but through group discussion and ideas we have happily come to the final version of our opening.

The problems included:

Shots being too long for example the walk through the woods and most importantly the ending shot of "Lucy" getting dragged away, We shortened that too build suspense.

We encountered a problem with music also due to copyright issues but we were also able to overcome that and add extra sound effects on top i.e. Phone ringing.

                         

On Location - Film Diary

Practice Production Title

Practice Production Title

                  

Practice Production Titles

                    

Opening titles Analysed

Malevolent Phantom

Opening Titles Analysis

To help us in designing our own opening titles we analysed some horror films opening titles to get an idea of what works and what will look good for our production. The first film we looked at was cabin in the woods, they used red titles that connotes blood and danger, this is an interesting look for a film as most of the time the titles are in white or black. The red contrasts the plain, simple colours usually used in films and leads the audience to believe the film will have a lot of blood and death in it. They are placed off center which  is more aesthetically pleasing than them just being placed in the middle, this coincides with the rule of thirds which suggests that each image should be divided up into nine equal sections (two evenly spaced horizontal lines, two evenly spaced vertical lines) and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines on their intersections. This technique is useful as its claimed that placing an object with these points creates more tension and interest in whats on screen that simply placing the subject in the centre of the screen. Therefore I would probably copy this design pattern and also have my titles placed on these 'lines' or their intersections to make my titles more interesting and appealing. 

Another set of opening titles this time uses white text which I think looks more professional and still holds an aspect of horror about it. Red text can look cheap and unprofessional so I think we will use white text instead, therefore we can have a black or red background and the colours wont be contradicting and the white will stand out. This set of opening titles also uses the rule of thirds with the titles being placed in the low corners of shots and off centre, this reinforces how much better titles look if placed off centre and so I think it would be a good idea to copy this. The titles are quite small so not to drag too much attention away from the shot which I think is key but they are large enough and of a bright enough colour and clear enough font that they stand out and can be noticed by the audience. They are aesthetically pleasing to look at too as they glide over one another with a subtle enough movement that it doesn't steal the scene away from the focus of the shot but stands out enough to be noticed, also the font is clear to read so not to confuse the audience.

Out of all these features I think it is a good idea to have white text as red looks unprofessional and black would be too dark to work on any shots, especially horror as the scenes are likely to have low key lighting so the text wont stand out. Also coinciding with the rule of thirds and placing the titles off center is a good idea as it makes them look better and have a more interesting look for our film, as well as that having a large enough font is key so the titles can be read but not too small as you don't want them to overshadow whats going on in the scene. Another important factor is a clear font, nothing too swirly or jagged - simple but unique font to coincide with the appropriate colour, size and placement.

Media Checklist - Megan Young

	Done?	Comment?
RESEARCH
Genre Research and mind-maps (3 posts)	Done	Good depth
Uploaded YouTube videos of openings – analysed (10 openings)	Done	A lot of good key terminology and depth in your analysis
Opening titles analysed in detail – font researched		Had good detail try to include more key terminology
Uploaded YouTube videos of similar genre openings analysed in detail (3 posts)	Done	Good detail and explanation on how it’s similar to your film.
Costume and location research – google earth and pictures you’ve taken. (At least 2 posts)	Done	Good detail
Actors and props photos and interviews	Done	This was clear and well done
Soundtrack research (non-copyright music)	Done
Audience Research and Profiling (typical audience member and similar films)	Done
Institution research (Paramount etc)	Done
Certificate research	Done
PLANNING	Done
Own film idea brainstorm	Done
Own film treatment	Done
Relevant Online Tutorials (on filming and editing) and Comments (At least 2 posts)	Done
Documenting of influences on production	Done
Shot lists	Done	Good key terminology
Consideration of representation in your film and stereotyping – use theory from G325.	Done
Questionnaire (and feedback) Get some feedback on your initial ideas!	Done	This had good detail and clear questions and analysis of them
Diary of filming/editing etc with photos and screen grabs (At least 3 posts)	Done
Mood board	Done	You had good analysis to your mood board including a lot of depth in explanation to why each picture is on your mood board.
Script	Yes	You showed a clear script however to improve your script you could make the characters who are talking more clear instead of the first letter of their name or put a key so a reader has a clear understanding of all the content to your script.
Practice titles created and uploaded
Storyboard – animatic.
Time Management Schedule – what you did& when, problems you encountered& solved
Codes and Conventions featured in your Opening Two Minutes
Ensure that all posts have a title, detailed comments and relevant pictures which are commented on.