VESA'S EVALUATION

Evaluation

INTRO:

This is my evaluation regarding my group’s horror trailer. Our trailer is about a girl called Lisa (me), who died of The Plague, many years ago, and students have to learn about this particular subject and this particular girl. It is hinted at the beginning that this certain topic caused trouble before because it was ‘previously banned from the syllabus'. Kim (Sule) is the first to suddenly see Lisa and later on we see that anyone who sees Lisa starts to experience the symptoms of The Plague. The trailer doesn’t exactly say why she’s come back to haunt them but this adds to the suspense as the audience would want to go watch the film to get more answers. However the reason she has come back to haunt everyone is because she isn’t able to ‘Rest in Peace’ and she is constantly being disturbed. Through-out the trailer we see Kim going crazy and we see Sonia (Farjana) dead. Helena (Halana) falls to the floor at the end so it’s unclear what has happened to her which adds to the tension as it’s the fear of the unknown.

BACKGROUND WORK:

Before we started working on out story line we done a lot of background re-search. We watched many trailers to give us ideas and we made notes on them. They can be seen on our blog. We also observed how they used certain techniques such as fading, to swiftly move through the scenes. We then re-searched all the camera techniques we needed to include in our trailer and I made a check-list for my group and researched what each camera technique was. My check-list is posted on this blog. We had many ideas and we listed them all and thought of different plots so we could have a variety of choices. I also explored different themes and conventions of horror films and listed them.

MY ROLE:

I believe that my group worked very well together and we were able to take on many different roles. I was an actress in the production as I was the killer. I was also a make-up artist. In order to fulfil this role, I watched YouTube video’s to inspire my make-up and give me ideas on what make-up I could use to create ‘Lisa’. Halana was mainly the costume designer as she found a suitable dress and because she used her knowledge of textiles, she could alter the dress to fit me, I helped I adding blood to the dress. Also I filmed many scenes for example the bathroom scene with Sule and scenes which I wasn’t included. I also took on the role in directing some scenes as I was already familiar with certain aspects of acting as I do drama and have had some experience. I was involved in the editing a lot as I already had some knowledge from editing on Movie Maker on a computer and iMovie was quite similar. I stayed after school for hours, many times in order to edit our trailer so we would finish on time and I wanted to have it completed to the best of my ability. As I also study music and I previously done music technology. I knew that there would be background noise when we recorded the audio for Ms Debortoli’s voice over. I decided to take the audio home and used software in order to remove any background noise/hiss.

HORROR GENRE & CONVENTIONS:

The horror genre usually is a genre that plays on people’s fears and emotions. There are often scenes which scare the audience because they involve the audience coming to face to face with their fears or nightmares. The horror genre can have many sub genres and it can be linked with different genres, for example, thriller, supernatural, fantasy and physiological. The typical conventions of these subgenres are listed below however there are also others such as: disruption of normality, presence of evil, dark/shadowy lighting and isolation. In our production we decided to use the use of dark lighting when Halana was in the theatre and this caused a lot of suspense because darkness is often associated with evil and because it’s dark you can’t see what’s going on properly and this plays on the fear of the unknown. We also had the killer who was supernatural.

CHARACTERS: Killer, victims, hero(protagonist), family, friends, priest, doctor, infected people, crazy people, possessed people, problem solver, ghost, supernatural being.

PROPS: Knives, phones, cross, holy water, toys, ropes, chairs, gloves, blood.

INFLUENCES:

We were influenced greatly from Women in Black and the costume ideas came from The Ring. We really liked the two shots from Woman in Black because the audience can see the killer but the victim can’t and we have more knowledge and this creates dramatic irony.

Apart from being influenced on camera shots and costumes, I was also influenced by the philosopher Todorov, he believed in structuralism. I liked the fact that the situation is first presented and we used this when Sule first starts to see the dots on her hand. And as the trailer progresses the tension rises until it reaches the climax of Halana falling to the floor. This would interest an audience because they would be keen to know how the tension falls or how the problem gets sorted out. Below is a diagram I created.

PRE-PRODUCTION:

I helped my group design a questionnaire to ask our peers,(which were our target audience) what  they preferred  in a horror film. Our trailer would be rated 15 and above. I also helped create a target audience profile (which can be seen on the blog). After we gathered our results, we brainstormed ideas and came up with a plot. Psychological and supernatural genres were the most favoured, so we decided to mix the two together. We decided to set it in a school because that was the most popular choice. This was also convenient because it meant that we could film during our lessons and our time wouldn't be compromised. Also, there are not many horror films that are based in school and we thought this would also be effective because our audience could relate to it because they go to school everyday. After we decided our setting, we went around our school taking photos of areas that we wanted to film and include in our trailer. We then organised who was going to get the make-up and costume. We decided we wanted to have a white dress, similarly to the dress that Samara wears from ‘The Ring’. We found this particularly effective because it would give a ghostly touch and the white dress this connotes innocence, which is seen in children. The innocence makes it interesting because someone wouldn’t expect something innocent to harm anyone so the audience is constantly in fear as they don’t know what to expect. We then started to plan the trailer, at first we just listed what we wanted to definitely include in our trailer and then we structured it. This helped a lot because we knew what we were doing and instead of filming straight away and filming random scenes we spent our time in the classroom planning it to the last detail, this benefited us greatly as the filming was mostly completed after school in one day.

PRODUCTION (FILMING,EDITING&MUSIC):

The production went very smoothly due to all the planning. One day after school, I put all my make-up on and my costume and we filmed all the scenes that involved me as Lisa so that meant I wouldn't have to put make-up on again. Once we got that out the way we focused on our other scenes. We had my check-list whilst we were filming at all times and that inspired us to try different angles while filming certain scenes. We then recorded classroom scenes at the beginning of our normal class when we had everyone there and we used advantage of this. Me and Halana also left class a bit earlier so we could catch everyone leaving school for our opening scene. Also, sometimes when we felt that we needed an extra scene, we would film and add it afterwards.

I stayed after school on all the days that we allocated to stay after school to edit because I really enjoyed the process. I always had another group member giving advice and opinion and also helping to edit. This was very helpful as we got more work done and at a faster rate. We experimented on using different effects, for example when Farjana was squinting in a scene, we got a shot of a view from her eyes and we added an effect which made the corners of the shot black. This was effective because it looks like the shape of an eye squinting. We also included a lot of fading for transitions to make the change of scenes smoother. At the end we added a special effect when Halana falls down which makes it dramatic as it’s in slow motion and there’s more time for the audience to think and ask questions and this makes them more curious. An example of techniques I used whilst editing included:

·         Cut

·         Transition

·         Trimming

·         Adding audio

·         Adjusting /Layering sound

·         Adding special effects

Adding music and sound effects was very tricky as we had to find the perfect sound to fit our trailer. We all believed that sound and music made a massive impact. For example in “Jaws” there is a certain theme tune when the shark is coming and it’s very recognisable. This certain theme tune made a huge impact because the audience weren’t aware of anything but the music suggested something was there, or something bad was going to happen. We all took turns searching for music and then listening to what certain times we needed. We then cut the sound/music at these points to fit our trailer. We always asked each other whether we thought the music was effective and we didn’t put anything in our trailer that someone was unhappy with. Our sound was mostly non-diegetic (soundtrack based). For example most of the scenes have music layered on top of it. However there were diegetic aspects for example when Halana hears the music and also when fudge is walking you can hear the background noise of her walking and her footsteps. Our music has a lot of crescendo which builds up the anxiety.

MY GROUP& POSTPRODUCTION:

I think my group was amazing because we all worked well together in order to successfully and efficiently complete the trailer. We were so organised and all the planning we done before hand paid off as we didn’t run into any trouble during the filming process.  We already sorted out what we needed and got permission to film in certain places beforehand. For example we asked we asked for permission to film in the theatre a couple days before we filmed. We were praised on this by the drama teachers because we were so organised that we didn’t just turn up on the day and trouble the staff. Also, I believe that we were very committed because we stayed after school to film and edit on numerous occasions and we gave up our time  just so we didn’t run out of time in class or feel rushed. Because of all this extra time and effort put into our trailer,it felt extra special  because of the cared put into our work.

One problem that we overcame was the equipment. We didn’t have a tripod and this made it a bit difficult because it didn’t look professional. However we tried holding the camera as still as possible and to take the focus away from the camera not being perfectly still, we carefully edited our trailer and used many different shots. Another problem we faced was when we transferred the video’s of all my scenes onto the laptop. Some of the videos didn’t come out the right way round and we couldn’t re-film the scenes with me in them because that meant I would have to put on  make-up on again and that was not possible. However we overcame this and decided to just flip the video around and it didn’t look that bad and we  re-done any other scenes that didn’t have me in it. However this was beneficial because when we filmed after this incident, we made sure that we didn’t repeat our mistakes.

CONCLUSION

I think our trailer ended up being really good because we incorporated many different shots and we thought about the effects it had in detail.We as a group worked really well together as there was never a person who refused to do work, instead, everyone was always willing to help and participate. I liked the scene in which Sule sees me in the toilet because the music fits perfectly with her movements. I like this part because it’s the part where the tension starts to rise and that makes me feel excited. Also, I really like the scene where Halana starts hearing the music and when she opens the theatre door and the music is loud because it’s coming from the theatre.  I like this part because it looks like she’s the only one hearing things and everyone else can’t hear it. You can hear other people in the background talking as if everything is fine and they don’t notice anything but only she does and she has that intense look on her face. I also like the scenes in which Farjana edited together to make it look like I’m in every corner of the theatre while Halana is spinning around as it looks very professional and creepy as it show there’s no escape.

We broke a couple conventions by showing that girls are capable of figuring things out because usually in horror movies the girls shown as useless people who always need to be saved because the men are the people who are strong and protect the vulnerable girls. This can be seen when Farjana has the flashback. However with our trailer, we showed that a group of girls could figure things out and even though they end up dying they don’t die by running away or not fighting, they tried to find out what was happening and tried to help each other.

However we did show the stereotypical teenage group which consists of being naive and a sterotypcial girl who cant control her emotions. For example Farjana returns to school after seeing something even though it might be dangerous and Sule ends up going crazy.

The killer is represented in a very mysterious way as throughout the trailer the killer doesn’t say anything or make a sound. The viewer may be scared of this character however they might also feel sorry for them because they learn that she did suffer and she is still technically young. She didn’t get to experience life and died unjustly.

We all worked on a Target audience profile that has been published on our blog however I will repeat that we listened to our target audience re-search and built on it. This proved to be successful because we ended making a unique storyline which still incorporated our peer’s views on what they would like and the feedback we got from them was great and they really enjoyed it and actually felt scared. And this was an achievement because our trailer wasn’t professional however it was able to grasp the main emotions felt during a horror movie.

I have definitely finished this project with knowledge of how to use a Mac Laptop properly and software such as iMovie- which will come in very useful for me as I want to study media in sixth form and university and having prior knowledge of how to use these types of equipment will help me greatly. I also plan to edit a short music video during my holiday and this has definitely inspired me to be more creative in the shots I use. Also, I really value the importance of planning more as it has helped me a great deal in keeping track of what I was doing and overall I felt as if I ( along with my group) was in control of my project and it wasn't the project taking over me and stressing me out. I also learnt about the many different  horror conventions and I can’t help but think about them when I’m watching a movie, which is new for me as I learn to understand why the movie is a certain way as well as the movie still entertaining me.