6.2 Evaluation - Overall Evaluation

After our presentations not being as successful as everyone had hoped, a written essay was neccassary for our group to gain highest possible marks.
So as a group for our A2 media coursework we decided to produce a teaser trailer, we wanted to create something completly different to last years coursework as we could push our own boundaries and try to create a wider knowledge of genres for ourselves, therefore we decided on a horror genre. After deciding the genre we started researching various horror films to find as many different conventions as we could which would then allow us variety when coming to pick which ones we wanted to include in our teaser trailer.
After researching the genre we had to research teaser trailers as we thought they were the same thing as a trailer, but after researching them we learnt otherwise, we learnt that they were only very short clips going into very little detail of the actual film, instead it shows you the characters and locations rather than allowing you to get a feel for the film itself and any storylines. One of the trailers I looked at for both the horror genre and teaser trailer was "Shutter Island."




After researching a various amount of horror related trailers and films there were certain conventions that kept popping up, filming in dark locations, scary creatures, the unknown, various locations, creepy music, close-ups, panning of locations and many more. Many of these we tried to re-create in our own piece some worked however others didn't. We did not intentionally challenge one of the biggest conventions within the horror genre, we filmed our final piece during the day, although at first we though this was going to be a big problem we then realised if we cut it the right way and included many horror conventions then we can still class our final production as a horror piece.

After researching everything we needed to research we started our planning stage, similarly to our research our planning was very straight forward and very easy to produce, we wanted to keep a straightforward approach to our piece to try and create an effective and proffesional final piece. We decided to brainstorm ideas initially until we thought of an idea we all agreed on, we wanted something uncomplicated, that we knew we would be able to do with the tools and knowledge we had but also something that wouldn't give to much away to our audience as we were filming a teaser trailer, after deciding our idea we started to storyboard each frame we would be filming, storyboarding was the best way we could even attempt to plan something as it's simple but also very effective, it allowed us to know exactly what was going to happen and when. We also then had to produce a photo storyboard, however this was left as we thought we had our storyboard so we were going to start filming.

This was when the majority of our problems occured, one of the biggest problems we found was trying to get all three of us together at the same time, someone was always absent from filming due to other commitments. This then meant that there wasn't the input from all three of us about what was good and what wasn't, another big problem we found when we first started filming was that our storyboard was useless, it had no real structure to it, and in the end wasn't even used. This then lead to further problems down the line which we hadn't really thought about. As well as commitment issues, the weather was also another big problem that we encountered, during the holidays it snowed which made it extremely difficult for us to film in as half would have been in snow and the other half wouldn't, this then meant we had to wait for the snow to clear until we could film, this meant it was right at the last minute, which I beleive stopped us from producing something brilliant.

After our initial filming we had our editing stage, we used "iMovie" to edit our filming, this was the final stage yet created even more problems, after uploading our footage and the initial cut we realised we didn't have half as much footage as what we would need and that it had no structure to it, this then meant we was going to go and have to re-film everything. However we stuck with it and after filming, we added the correct inter-titles and added some music we thought fitted with our genre that we had made on "Garage Band." This piece was then shown to the class which would allow us to collect as much feedback as possible to hopefully help us correct some of the issues we had. The majority of the feedback we received was that it had no real structure and just seemed like a load of clips thrown together, we also needed to go back and research the inter-titles on a teaser trailer again to ensure we got the right, along with correcting our music.

So after our initial feedback session it seemed that nothing we had actually produced was right, we were then allowed to re-film and re-edit to try and improve our final piece, this I believe we have done, although it isn't as great as we hoped, it has ended up better than what we thought it was going to be, one of our biggest problems I believe was our genre, we picked the completly wrong genre for our group. However after re-filming and re-editing we took the advice from our class and improved our work, cutting out the bits they found humorous, and taking away the un-neccassary inter-titles and replacing them with the correct ones, as well as trying to include a larger range of shots.

As well as our final piece we had to create two ancillary tasks to finalise our production package, we decided as a group that producing a poster and magazine cover would be the two that would be most successful for us as a group as we had no experience in creating and producing a website. The ancillary tasks were the two things we found the easiest and enjoyed the most, we created both our pieces in " " as this is what we knew how to use the most and were familiar with. Together along with our final piece I think that our production package was very successful and effective, our ancillary tasks advertise our final piece perfectly, both products include the title of our piece, and a photo of some form that links it to our final piece. Therefore I believe the ancillary tasks served a good purpose.

After finishing our ancillary tasks the first time with our first cut of our final piece, we were given the opportunity to show our work to the class, this then allowed us to gain some audience feedback on both the ancillary tasks and our production piece, whilst the class watched our teaser trailer, we handed then a questionnaire with various questions on with ways in which they believed we could improve our work, we also wanted the class to give as an overall mark out of 10. From the feedback we received we were able to collate the positive and negative points that were given to us, the majority being negative at first as there were many changes that needed adjusting, however we did receive some positive points, people liked the way we included various shots throughout the trailer along with a variety of locations. I believe had we not of been allowed to show our class our initial production and ancillary tasks then we would never of achieved what our final piece is now, the feedback allowed us to realise what needed improving, they also gave us tips on how to do little things which helped immensly. After finalising everything and showing it to the class right at the end, we received a lot more positive feedback because of the changes we had made. We then asked the question again for a rating out of 10. This time our rating went from a 5 to a 7 so we were very happy.

Overall I believe our coursework has been successful,because we have produced what we needed to, however I do believe that we did it the hard way, if i were to do this again, I would stay in a group of 2 rather than go into a 3 because thats when commitment issues arise because you know it will get done because there is 2 people doing it. I think as a group we created problems that didn't need to be created which just made our job even harder, however I am happy that we have produced a final piece, even if we did find it hard because the genre we used was out of our comfort zone, maybe next time I would stick to a genre that I enjoyed and knew a lot about.

Below is our final piece.

6.1 Evaluation - Initial Evaluation

After finalising all the last little bits to our final production, we were told our evaluation was going to be different, it was our task to present our evaluation to our class rather than just a written essay on here.

This task seemed a little daunting at first but after various disscussions we started the preparation, we decided we didn't want to just talk, we wanted to use visual aids, so we decided on using a powerpoint display, this allowed us to display brief information on the board whilst we went into more detail discussing our final piece. We decided to have flashcards with what each of us was going to say as we thought this would help us present a polished performance but looking back I think they may have gained more attention rather than the audience we were presenting to.

Within the presentation we were given a few guidelines on what to include, this gave us some guidance on what we had to include, but as a group we decided to add a few of our own ideas in the presentation too. Apart for the things we had to include, we decided to all give our own opinion on how we felt the process went, many of our views being similar, we also wanted people to see all the convetions we tried to include and how we came across many difficulties along the way.

Although this seemed a good way of evaluation our final production, our teacher decided it wasn't enough, our presentation didn't quite fulfil the criteria therefore, a written evaluation was going to have to be written. We were given some feedback on our presentation as to where we needed to improve and our biggest improvement was detail, we were told we needed to go into much more detail in order for our evaluation to reach greatest possible marks.

Below is our presentation that we gave to the class

5.1 Ancillary Task

To go along side our final piece, it was our task to design annd creat two ancillary tasks, we chose to create the magazine cover and poster, this was because as a group designing these two were going to be the easiest for us as none of us had any experience with creating a website, therefore we wanted to use the skills and knowledge we had to create the higest possible standard of poster and magazine cover. Also, we knew because both were advertising methods, they could be rather similar.

Above is a picture of our poster, as you can see we have included our main protagonist as well as one of the locations we had filmed in, this was so people could look at the poster and maybe get a feel for what our trailer was going to be about, we also obvioulsy included the title within our poster as well as when it was going to be in cinemas and the rating our film had been given, along the top is a slogan that we thought up between ourselves that we thought went well with the feel of our film ,that people would maybe associate with our film. We believe that all the relevant and neccassary information has been included within the poster.

• insert other ancillary task

Above is our second ancillary task, the magazine cover, this we found a little more difficult than the poster, however with guidance from looking at various film magazines we decided to start planning, we wanted to go for a more darker feel than the poster hense the black background. The top half of the magazine cover was easier to do than the bottom half, we found it difficult to position things on the bottom as our photo of the main character took up a lot of room, but we didn't want to make it small so that it wasn't noticed. We felt that our magazine differed from other film magazines because there wasn't much information about other films on the front cover. However we still believe we acheived a good magazine cover.

Out of the two, I prefer the poster as I believe it is the better of the two ancillary tasks and shows our final piece in more detail than the magazine cover.

Similarly to our final piece, both ancillary tasks were shown to the class, which we then received feedback on to make a few adjustments. We were told to take a few things out of the poster that didn't need to be there. After taking them out we see that it was definately for the better as our final poster isn't as cluttered but still has the relevant information. Our magazine cover wasn't given that much criticism, however we were told we needed to re-position things at the bottom end of the page as there was to much going on and you didn't know what to look at but apart from that it was a good final piece. All the changes were made and the final ancillary tasks are what you can see above.

4.5 Planning - Preparation

After finishing all our storyboards both animatic and photo animatic we had to plan even more before we could start filming.
Our first decision we had to make was who would be our protagonist.

Actors/Actresses

Above is the selection of girls we had to become our main character in our final piece, after looking at all 4 girls we decided to use Catherine, we decided on Catherine because she was fair skinned and fair haired and thats exactly what we wanted as we thought it would allow us more to work with. We wanted to be able to make our protagonist to look washed out and tired and thought dark make-up would look more effective on paler skin.

Location

Due to our film being a horror movie we decided we should have a few different locations rather than just sticking to one. By doing this shows variety which matches our protagonists mental state. The locations we chose to film at

1.The Beach

2.Conaught Park

3.Kearsney Abbey

4.A bedroom

All the locations we have chosen to film at all give an eary feel, but not only is the location important but the time in which we film at. Time for our filming is crucial, we needed to film at certain times to create the feel we wanted, because we're in Winter we knew we would have to film around 3 and 4pm, this is as the dark is setting but it isn't too dark so that we can't see anything when filming. We wanted to film in locations that had trees so that we could try and create an atmosphere ourselves with the natural light and the surroundings we were already in.

Although there were a few other locations we thought about using we decided on our final 4. The other possible locations we looked at included a grave yard. We thought about using the grave yard because it added a bit of worry to the trailer along with the typical atmosphere found in a grave yard, however we decided against it because we thought it was a typical horror movie location and we wanted to avoid that.

Clothing/Make-up

In order for our protagonist to meet the criteria of a horror movie character, clothing and make-up was vital. We wanted our character to look as if they had just got out of bed, therefore Pyjamas was obvious, but the type of Pyjamas was what we had to decide on. Although the clothing was decided the characters hair and make-up had to be agreed on, hair was expected to be natural but also a bit messy because they had just woken up, along with very little make up because they had been sleeping however we wanted to try and make our character look a little scary and stressed so we decided on some dark make-up below the eyes to make her look a little deranged.

4.4 Planning - Script

Key
* SD = Stage Directions
* VO = Voice Over
*S = Speech

'The Forgotten' - Script

SD - Girl laying on bed, with eyes wide open, laying still.
VO - It's been happening since she was young, she just doesn't remember.
(Change clip to girl @ beach)
SD- Girl walking along beach, wearing same outfit, looks lost.
VO - Where she is.
(Change clip to girl at park)
SD - Girl walking through park, looking lost
(Blank screen with the words '*****', 'The Sun'
VO - Who she is, nobody can ever figure out,
(Clip changes to close up of girl)
VO - what happened to her.
(Montage of series of clips of girl in different locations)
SD - Clip of girl running
SD - Clip of girl crying
VO - To the world she is one person
SD - Clip of girl sitting on bench
SD - Clip of girl screaming
(Blank screen with the words 'AMAZING', 'The Daily Express' written on it)
VO - But to one person she means the world.
SD - Clip of girl walking down a road
VO - But the rest of the world have forgotten about her.
SD - Clip of lit up road, girl walks down it away from audience.
VO - But she's also forgotten about them.
(Blank screen with the title 'The Forgotten' on it)
(Blank screen with the company logo)
(Blank screen with the words 'Coming to a cinema near you in March 2010')
S - Loud cry/scream

Above is the outline script of our teaser trailer, we decided to write up a script to help us focus on the task we had, along with the script and our storyboard we believe we can get all the shots necessary for our trailer to be complete. You can clearly see from looking at our script there is very little speech in our teaser trailer, however what we do have is a voice over, along with the voice over we are using inserts to help portray our idea.

The majority of the shots we are going to be using are long shots, we decided on long shots because it would allow us to see our protagonist along with the surroundings and in a horror movie surrounding are vital, we want our audience to see the settings so it can set the scene. However in the bedroom we have decided to use a lot of close ups, focusing on the face. By focusing on the face the audience will see the make-up used but also our characters facial expressions.

Although we have written a script as well as drawing our storyboard we are almost certain a few changes will be made before everything is complete.

4.3 Planning - Photo Animatic

The photo animatic is an animatic of all the photos that should be taken using our storyboard, this allows us to see exactly how our final piece will look, without the movement. The photo animatic allows us to see our locations, see how well our character fits in to our genre and to see the movement of our storyboard. This is one of the final processes we take before we start our initial filming.
The animatic also allows us to put our credits and inserts into the process so we can see what we like and what we don't like before we started the editing process.

However because we started filming far to early we didn't take any photos, our plan was to do it at the end using our storyboard, however because we didn't even use our storyboard when we started filming because of the problems we encountered, creating a photo animatic was impossible. Therefore we haven't created one as it wouldn't of fitted with our final piece.

4.2 Planning - Animatic

After drawing our storyboard we had to make it into an animatic, by doing this it allowed us to see the sequence of shots our storyboard had led to. There were very little changes from our drawn storyboard to our animatic, however we are sure there will be many other changes further along the process.

The animatic is another process that helps us to plan our work before we even start filming it, it allows us to make our mistakes before it's important.