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

To help me answer this evaluation question, I am going to be comparing my film opening sequence to real film openings of horror films. The film opening I will be using is from the film 'Se7en' as I think the style and layout of the opening is quite similiar to my own. I will be using this film opening to compare the characteristics and features which should be included in a horror film, and talk about which of these aspect also appear in my opening sequence in a similar way.

Film Title

Although both film titles are different fronts, the way that both main title's are used and layed out is done a similar way. Se7en's film title is big, very bold and almost takes up the whole of the screen, which is similar to the way I have presented my film title in my opening. They both have dark backgrounds with white font which I think looks good as the main focus is on the title as it is made to stand out well. The creators of 'Se7en' chose to have the main titles in the middle of the opening sequence, there is nothing wrong with this and I think it is effective, however I wanted mine to be at ending as I wanted to build tension throughout the opening sequence then have the title very big and bold at the end.

Setting/Location

What I think is similar with both of these opening sequence is that they are both very dark, which makes it slightly unclear where they are set. Eventhough there are obvious features such as you know in Se7en that the character is working in an office or some type of basement because of all the documents he is dealing with, and in my opening sequence you can see they are running through the woods, these locations could be set anywhere in the world and at any time period. I like the fact that the setting and location isnt totally given away to the audience because it sets up some sort of mystery for the viewers. The dark lighting is a typical feature for a horror film and can be related, which makes the genre of the films is obvious from the very start.

The difference between my opening sequence and 'Se7en' is that in mine you get to see the characters straight away and see what type of people they are, whereas in 'Se7en' you do not get to see the characters at all, so you do not meet them until later on in the film.

Costumes and Props

The use of the costumes and props in very limited in 'Se7en' as you do not see what the character is wearing, you only see their hands and the documents and images they are dealing with, however in my opening sequence, even though we didn't use many props you can see the whole of the characters costumes. Just by looking at a characters costume, you can tell what type of people they are and which time of year the film is set in such as Winter or Summer depending on if they are wearing warm clothes or not. In my opening, you can see that the characters are two girls because of their long hair and that they are teenagers by the style of clothes they are wearing (jeans, converse trainers,basic tops).

In 'Se7en' all the viewer gets to see is peices of paper, documents and the character writing things, this does not give much away about what is happening or what the character is doing. It may suggest that the character is doing an in investigation and is on a mission, it could also suggest that they are quite a smart and intelligent character.

Camerawork and Editing 

Both opening sequence use a variety of different shots, including lots of close up's and medium shots. 'Se7en' uses a lot of close up shots more than any others, this is to show lots of detail of what is happening. The editing of 'Se7en' opening sequence is very quick and chopping, showing lots of different close up shots, some get repeated but they are mostly all different. The choppy style of the shots is a good way of showing lots of happening and to show the quick movement in time. In my opening sequence, I used a wider variety if shots including long shots, close ups and high angle. These shots were mainly used to show vunrability of the characters as they are running away, and to show different points of view. The different points of view were from the characters as they were running, the villan chasing them and other long shots which suggest that maybe someone is watching them. When i was editing my opening, I tried to make some of the shots  quick and chopping, similar to how 'Se7en' has been editied together, as it think that it makes it more exciting to watch.

Title and Font Style 

'Se7en' and my opening sequence 'The Following' both have similar titles through their openings. They are both quite a 'scruffy' looking font, as if they have all been handwritten, which I think looks good and effective for a horror film because it sends questions to the audience such as 'Who wrote them?'. They are also the same colour, white on a dark background. The font isnt as big as the main title in both sequences which is good as the main title is the one which is supposed to stant out the most, but they have to be big enough size for everyone to be able to read. The way that the titles are positioned in 'Se7en' is similar to 'The Following' because all the titles in both sequences are randomly placed throughout the whole sequence and in 'Se7en' the titles are postioned near the middle of the screen, which is very similar to how I have posistioned my titles in my opening sequence. Both of these sequences contain the correct amount of titles and are in the correct order.

Genre 

If they didnt already know, features such as characters, costumes, lighting, music and setting usually suggest to the audience what type of film they are about to watch. I think that the film opening to 'Se7en' doesn't give away much or give many clues to what genre it is apart from the dark lighting,font and music because you do not get to see many things such as characters and their surroundings. In comparison with my opening sequence to 'The Following' the audience gets to see the setting straight away and the low pitched, dark music starts to play. I think that straight away the audience can guess what type of genre 'The Following' is because the woods is a typical setting for a horror film and the music starts to build up tension almost from the beggining. However, because you do not get to see any characters or setting in 'Se7en' this builds up curiosity as the audience do not know what is happening and will want to carry on watching to find out, so either way I think both are just as effective.

Construction - Final Cut

The day has come where our final cut has to be handed in! We exported in from Final Cut and exported it again for the web, the makes it a smaller file and this means that it would be uploaded quicker and played better when it is on my blog. A few things that we had to do before we exported it was add the voice overs into the correct placed and add in our extra bit of filming that we had filmed earlier today. We also had to change colouring of the extra clip so that it matched with the rest of the sequence and flowed well.

We are now going to show our opening sequence to people in our target audience and recieve feedback from them about what they think about it, what they like and what they think we would have improved on or done differently.

Preliminary Task

Final Cut Feedback

After we had shown our opening sequence, we wanted honest feedback from the audience. We were prepared for some negative feedback and these will be taken into consideration, but overall we were quite excited to see how our target audience would react to our film opening.  I had taken record of what was said about it so I could post it on my blog!

Positive Feedback:

• Was very good, built an atmosphere.
• Continuity was well done.
• Effective- but not a lot too it.
• Appropriate music.
• The feet shots were really good.
• Captures the eerieness well.
• Well filmed with smooth continuity.

Negative Feedback:

• Running could be a little more convincing, looks a bit like jogging.
• Was like a trailer.
• Not enough storyline
• A bit repetitive. 

Re-filming Again!

After watching our opening sequence through, we decided that we needed a shot at the end of the sequence between where the characters are running and where they fall to the floor and get dragged away. We thought it would be a good idea to have a shot which shows someone actually pulling them to floor and then they get dragged along, this will help it make a bit more sense.

By having this shot at the end, it improves the story line of the sequence as the audience now knows that someone as pulled them to the floor, and they are the ones that are dragging them away along the floor, where before it wasn't as obvious.  It also adds a wider variety of shots as this is a close up and we do not have many of these through out the sequence.

As we were at college when we discovered this problem and decided we wanted to add more filming, we were not able to get to our original location. However, we were lucky as there was like a little area with lots of trees and bushes, which we made to look like the woods we filmed in before by filming very close up to the trees and trying to cut out anything we didn't want to be in the frame.

When we added the extra shot into our filming opening, we cut it right down so that when the film opening was played it was like a quick snap shot of someone reaching out and putting their hand on the girls shoulder. We thought that this looked better because when the clip was longer, it seemed to go on for too long and didn't look as good and wasn't as effective.

Re-Filming

Today we did the extra filming that we needed to add continuity to our opening sequence and add in a wider variety of shots. We returned to Weston Woods and went to our original location where we filmed before, luckily it wasn't as cold this time!

We filmed a few more long shots of the characters running in different angles, for example we put the camera on a tripod and filmed from high up in the trees, looking down on girls to show vulnerability and to give the effect that someone may be watching them and another with the camera filming face on. We also did a few shots on the girls running towards the camera and then away from the camera to improve continuity and also a few shots with the camera of the floor so we could get shots of just their feet as they run past. We filmed a few of each of these shots, just incase some were better than others and so that we could use them for extra footage to make the sequence a little more quick and choppy.

There were a few things we had to be careful about such as the characters wearing the same costumes and making sure that we were filming in exactly the same place as we did the first the first time. If these things weren't the same, it would look strange because the costumes would suddenly change and the same for the location. We also had to make sure that there were no public people in the camera as this would ruin the effect if the girls be scared and alone.

Rough Cut Feedback

Today was our deadline to have our rough cut finished so that it was ready to be shown to an audience and receive feedback from them. The feedback that we wanted to receive from them was what they thought we had done well and what they think that we need to improve on. We would then take this feedback and think about what we could do to improve our opening sequence.

OUR FEEDBACK:

- Titles are good - accurate and well timed.

- Music works really well.

- Interesting hook - Who's chasing them, etc?

- Need a greater variety of shots in the chase sequence - to create continuity/make it more interesting and create more drama.

- Hand held camera shits were effective

- Go Pro creates 'creepy trees' - good!

Fortunately, the majority of the feedback we received was positive and I am very pleased with what was said. The only real negative that was said was that we needed to add a wider variety of shots in the chase scene and add continuity, which both me and my partner recognised ourselves and were planning on fixing after we had finished our rough cut. We are going to be returning to our location to film different shots and we are hoping that this will add continuity to our opening sequence and that it will flow better and look more professional.

Rough Cut

Today we continued to edit our film opening together and we managed to get all of the titles onto the clips and in the right places, we added the ident to the beginning and a sound effect at the end of the sequence to give the effect that something bad is happening to the characters. We also had a look around for some background music, it had to suit the genre of our film and we wanted it to create tension. We found some music called 'Forest Silence' and we both agreed this is music was the most appropriate for our opening sequence.

                                                            ROUGH CUT: