Evaluation- Activity two

Social group comparison- Protagonist
Our protagonist is a young, innocent, blonde haired girl, which is being stalked and followed by a masked figure, which we assume is a murderous killer. We decided to have our character to be portrayed in this way as it makes the girl seem more vulnerable making the audience feel sympathetic as she may not be able to defend for herself; stereotypically this is viewed. Our protagonist represents the social group of the vulnerability of young girls, which conform to horror films as they are usually the first or one of many victims within a horror genre film. The picture below our protagonist in our opening two minutes, is the young lady from the well known serial horror films, 'Scream'. The protagonist in 'Scream', played by Drew Barrymore is very similar to ours, which we mainly based her on. Both antagonists are blonde haired, which makes them seem more vulnerable as stereotypically blonde haired girls are seen as less intelligent and weak so would be easy targets for the antagonists to hunt. Also, stereotypically blondes are seen as being attractive, which would appeal to more of the male audience, which would make them not wanting that girl to be harmed. Another similarities between these protagonists are the use of mise en scene of both of them wearing white tops within the films. The use of mise en scene, enables the characters to look defenseless and harmless, which increases the sympathy the audience would have for the characters. The white colour connotates many things such as purity, which makes them both seem more of a target for the antagonists desirable intentions. Also having the top long sleeved suggests that they are preserving themselves and covering themselves up, which attracts the antagonist even more. The ages of the protagonists are around the same as each other, which makes them more of an obvious victim for the antagonist as stereotypically, the antagonist go for young ladies rather than little girls and older woman. The similar ages also allows the audience to relate to the character as our target audience ranges from ages 15 and above, so these protagonists relates to the more mature audience, such as 18's and above. This is because they can compare themselves being in this situation, which would make them more scared and frightened, which horror films want to achieve from the audience. Stereotypically, the protagonists are usually white skinned rather than dark skinned, as stereotypically white skinned woman are seen as being more vulnerable and less able to defend for themselves; this stereotypical view is flawed as it can come across as being a racist stereotype.

The second comparison of social groups is with the protagonist from 'The Grudge' and the sequel 'The Grudge 2', who was played by 'Sarah Michelle Gellar'. The similarities between these two protagonists are the use of mise en scene, for example, the use of the white tops which connotates purity, innocence and youthfulness, which is reflected to the audience. Also another similarity would be them both being blonde haired, which I have already commented on above. However, 'Sarah Michelle Gellar' character subverts to the social group in horror films. Her character subverts as although she is the victim within the film she does not die or get hurt which subverts to a stereotypical protagonist. Furthermore both these characters are seen as the main characters of the film as they are in nearly all of the shots and the story is following their lives due to the point of view shots etc.
Social groups comparison- Antagonist 
The antagonist in our opening two minutes was revealed in the final shot of our film, as the whole opening was building up tension and suspense to this. However during our film we used different camera shots to make it seem as though the antagonist was following and stalking the protagonist, such as, the point of view shots behind the trees. Also we used diegetic music, such as the twig snapping, which again reinforced the idea of the antagonist following the young girl. Our antagonist was mainly based on the antagonist from the film 'The Strangers', as you can see in the picture to the right. There are many similarities between these two antagonists such as the role they have within the film. Both their roles are vital within the films as they make the audience scared and frightful as they jump out and appear unexpectedly, which scare the audience, which horror films like to achieve. Another similarities are the use of mise en scene, such as the use of clothes and costumes. Both antagonist are wearing everyday like clothes, for example, the jacket and trousers, which makes the audience feel as though this could happen to them and they would not know who it is due to the everyday clothing they are wearing. The major similarity is that both antagonists are masked evidently hiding the identity of the antagonists. This makes the audiences full of fear as the antagonist could be anyone, even the least expected. Having the prop of the mask creates many enigmas, such as, who is that, and why are they doing this?

Evaluation Targets

You've done so well this year Charlotte - so let's not fall behind at the final stage of the year for your coursework! Revisit your recent posts and see if there are any more opportunities to use specialist terminolgy to explore mise-en-scene, ediiting and camera composition and comment on the way you intended to appeal to your target audience even more - there's so much to comment on to show how reflective you can be. Get working with your group tro complete director's commentaries and comment more on what you have learnt from your audience feedback.

Audience feedback

Feedback of opening two minutes

As we put the finishing touches of editing and titles to our production, we had to gain feedback from our audience, so we would know what we have to improve on and how we will ensure this. This type of feedback is vital for film directors as it tells them if they met the audience demands, which our film hopefully does due to our target audience research we completed before establishing and finalising our film. It is also important as it gives the film makers an idea of how well the film will do, in terms of economics of profits and box offices hits. Our feedback for our film was very positive and encouraging as we had minor corrections and improvements to consider about. We found out that the audience liked the characters who were present in the opening minutes as they conformed to the stereotypical horror film of having an innocent girl as the antagonist. They also liked how the use of camerawork created the effect of someone following the young girl, as it creates enigmas and makes the audience scared as they don't what will happen. Another piece of feedback was that the background soundtrack of non diegetic and diegetic and the use of close up shots created suspense and tension. Using the underwater camera was said to be very effective, as it was a new unusual way of filming, which made them more intrigued. They thought it was very effective on the choice of location as having it set within a household, makes the film more relatable, as they feel as though this could happen to them. The only piece of criticism we gained from our target audience was that the use of the non diegetic sound of the bang, which was made by us slamming the keys of a piano. They said that the slam was ever so slightly out of sync, which may make the continuity of the film a little interrupted. This may be out of sync as we produced all the music by ourselves, which made it hard trying to organise and sync all the music up together. However to improve our film we would sync this non diegetic music so it gives our film the best potential it has against competing films.   

MJC Production presents 'The Woods'

Software research

Software Research

The type of software we use during the editing process is a vital part to achieve a high standard opening two minutes, as we need to understand the whole programme, from the cutting shots to the precise point to knowing how to arrange them. This is important so we can benefit from all the technology provided from the editing software.

 

Microsoft Movie Maker

This is an example of an editing software which we could use for producing our film. Movie maker is made by microsoft, which, as you know, a very well known company and is very user friendly as it should appeal to all ages interested within media and producing films. This software makes you be the editor, with no complicating buttons and techniques needed. Movie Maker also ensures that photos and videos are imported quickly and at the highest and clearest resolution, so the images are clear, avioding buffering and blurriness. It also enhances your movie by providing ready made themes and audios, which could be used for different genres of film and videos, which give us ideas of what kind of music we need and which would suit with the shots we take. Finally, once our movie is ready, we can share it online on Facebook, YouTube or other social networking and video sharing sites, and if neccessary we can send a link of our movie in an email so we can transfer our production to each other to do some editing and to make all our ideas come alive. There are many aspects of this software which may be ideal for producing our film such as the transitoin elements and havign ready made horror music if we needed it. However this software is fairly ammateur, meaning there isn't as much variety of transitions, sounds, cutting techniques etc, which could be a problem.

 

Adobe Premiere Elements 10

Another software which we could use for creating our film is a software called 'Adobe Premiere Elements 10', which from the title of it is made by 'Adobe'. Although this software is another editing software like Microsoft Movie Maker, this is software is aimed for making and creating videos and films, which is more of an advantage using this software. This software also gives you a more clearer timeline with audio and soundtracks below so you can line the shots and the music precisely together. It also has much more advance effects such as the stabilizer effect, which keeps shots still if they are shakey when they are not meant to be. This may benefit us as we want to make our opening two minutes as best as we can so a more advanced software would aid us for doing this, right? This may not be true as it makes the process a lot more complicated as there is more techniques you can use, meaning more complication. However this software includes a range of transitions, effects, cutting proceses etc, which would definitely benefit in producing our film.

 

Software used

 

In the end we used this software as it was the most suitable software we could use and excess. To edit our clips together and to make our movie run smoothly we used the editing software called Adobe Premiere Elements 10. We decided on using this as one of our editing softwares because it is what many professionals use when they edit movies, this gives us the experience of a real movie editor and what they have to do to achieve what they achieve.

 

The effects on this movie editor are acceptable for our genre of movie because they able you to control how the lighting and sounds are e.g. the volume; because our movie is a horror we like to experiment with these things to create tension and fear when you are watching it, making it beneficial for us as editors. Some of the clips had unwanted scenery in them so we tried to figure out a way to remove it; cropping the clip the same way you crop an image was the best way. We explored the editing software to enable us to find the right tool to crop our clip, we managed to find one which brought us to realise how advanced this editing software really is.

Overall this is an ideal application to use to edit our film as it makes the finished project look professional and neat, it is also easy to use which is necessary because we are unexperienced movie editiors. The range of transitions, effects and sounds makes it fun to use. The only bad thing about this software is that they lack a choice of titles and fonts to create the theme for your project, because of this we decided to look at different editing software to create our titles and fonts. We thought that IMovie had a lot of possibilities for our movie as it lets you decide on many fonts and use ones your have downloaded from the internet etc.

The Woods- Behind the scenes

Video diary #5

These behind the scene filming gives an insight of the amount of retakes we had to do, discussions and problems we had but most of all the fun times we conjured! Hoe you enjoy it and maybe 'The Woods' will be coming to a cinema near you...

Video diary #4

This is our video diary from the final day of filming, which invovles trying out the antagonist costume to see if suits and reflects what we are trying to portray. It also shows all the precures we had to do to get the right framework of them and how we made each our antagonist costume as scary as we could. Be careful you he may be in your house tonight...