LULU-Evaluations

Evaluations

1.Who would be the audience for your media product?

Statistics say that the usual age for someone watching horror movies is between fifteen and twenty-five. This is because mostly young people feel the need to experiment different emotions and feelings and this is way they look for a thrill. Since our product it’s supposed to create suspense and anxiety we would exclude an audience of people younger than sixteen and people with heart problems or that get easily impressed. 

Stereotypes also portray males as more likely to go watch an horror movie than girls, this is one of the reasons why we chose an attractive female as the main character as most horror movie have at least one attractive girl in the cast (ex. the girls from Friday the 13th) 

 

On the other hand our film might also attract female’s as they would reflect themselves in the protagonist.

The reason why we chose to use a boarding school as the setting is because school is such a familiar ambient for teenagers that would make the movie seem more realistic to them.

Aiming to a young audience our movie will be likely to be watched by groups of people as it is very rare to go watch an horror movie by yourself, this would just help Fear Online at the box office.

Talking about an adult audience the movie will attract a majority of middle class people compared to a romantic or comedy movie that would attract more of an high class audience.

Ex Midnight in Paris directed by Woody Allen 

Domestic Total Gross: $56,817,045

The Woman in Black directed by James Watkins

Domestic Total Gross: $54,333,290

 While doing some research for my product I found that a psychologist (Dr. Glenn D. Walters) identified three main factors that attract people to the horror genre:

Tension

Relevance

Unrealism

 2. How does your media product represent different social groups? 

Our movie mainly represents the social group of teenagers as our cast is mainly young adults. Teenagers are also the people in society that are more experienced with technology as they were born in the middle of it’s evolution. In Fear Online I wanted to show two different sides of this social group. The first side is their smart actions and matureness as in some ways the use of the internet  speeds the learning of things. However, at the same time I wanted to represent them as fragile and easily influenced.

The story also wants to describe a lonely category of people that try and use the internet in order to change the situation even though most of the time people tend to create alter egos that might be more attractive, smarter or hide their disorders. In some way we tend to represent a more the social group of the middle class as the protagonist can afford to go to a boarding school and an iPhone. 

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? 

In every part of the world Hammer is synonymous with horror. This British company was founded in 1934 and it owes it’s fame to goth horror. Here after when when the fashion changed and goth horrors were not fashionable anymore Hammer had various ups and downs trying to get back on the market. After forty years Hammer ended in bankruptcy in 1979.

Even though Hammer is not as active as before it still is known globally for their products that include

- Quatermass and the Pit

-Dracula

-Twins of Evil

-Paranoiac

-The Mummy

 -The Hound of the Baskervilles

-Yesterday’s Enemy

-The Abominable Snowman

-Captain Clegg

-The Damned 

In 2007 Hammer (after twenty years of inactivity) decided to get back on track first with a TV series and later in 2009 in the cinema industry.

   Since Luli Lilu Productions is a new company according to our movie’s profit Hammer could gain back it’s fame.

Hammer in the past as also tried to change the kind of horror they produced as they were looking for something more modern and fashionable. Our movie would be the perfect product as it is directed to young people and technology as a theme for an horror movie is still not so used even though I predict it will be in a couple of years as people are becoming slaves of their devices. By producing our movie Hammer Productions would probably attract a different and maybe larger audience (since it also about modern days issues) and it would also intrigue people as it is a different type of horror compared to what Hammer usually produces. 

 In 2010 Hammer produced  various films in the last few  years such as: Let me in (2010), The Woman in Black (2012) and The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death (2014). 

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

As most horror movies do we decided to associated a motif to the antagonist so that every time the audience would hear it they would connect it to him and would know that something is going to happen. Using a motif usually helps to create tension as it keeps the audience focused on the movie as they want to know what is going to happen next. Another characteristic of horror movies we were inspired from was the atmosphere created by the use  of dark colour and low lighting during the entire movie (ex. The Woman in Black 1 and 2) or just during the most tensed scenes (ex. Halloween)

Also the use of heavy breathing is very popular in horror movies as it makes the audience nervous a nd most of the time when it is used the antagonist’s face is not visible, this makes the audience uncomfortable but curious at the same time. Some examples of films were heavy breathing is used would be “The Ring” and “The Grudge”.

As the theme of our movie is technology (new types of communications) we decided to make the titling green and almost giving off light.

  We decided for green at it is stereotypically used to represent energy in general (ex. Pulse)

Compared to for example to “The Woman in Black” were from the beginning of the movie the black woman is already introduced we wanted to keep the level of tension high by not showing the antagonist face ( in fact at the beginning of the clip we show the set by his point of view) so that the audience could use their imagination. 

I challenged the convention about straight shots by filming the beginning from the antagonist point of view as I decided to have some wobbly shots as the antagonist moves.

5. How did you attract/address your audience? 

The film begins with movie titles, then accompanying the title Fear Online is the sound of a heartbeat. This I feel not only increases the suspense of the film beginning to start but also attracts the viewer to continue to watch due to the intriguing title and sound effect. In fact people that watched the intro told me that the heartbeat sound had some kind of effect on their heartbeat, some of them even asked me to mute it as they were feeling inexplicably nervous and uncomfortable.

The obscurity and black and white effect of the filmography maintains the viewers attention on a high, and the heavy breathing I feel adds a sense of being trapped. The audience is watching Hannah Southam through the eyes of the stalker, this is very unsettling to the viewer as Hannah is oblivious to anyone watching her.

 As I was editing our secondary task I decided to add some background sound also behind the “Hammer Productions” logo in order to highlight the collaboration and to keep the viewers attention high on the movie’s  title, our production company logo and the director’s names. I feel like maintaining the stalker’s identity anonymous both challenges the viewers to use their imagination and at the same time captures their attention as they want to find out who he is.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this  product?

The main programme I had to learn how to use for my secondary task was probably “Final Cut Pro” even though I also had to learn some basics in order to use “Garage Band” for the stalker’s motif. I already had to use “Final Cut Pro” for my preliminary task but I know that now I am way more confident using it. I learnt that even though technology seems hard to use now days we have so many sources that the learning is easier and faster. Personally I found very useful to go watch Youtube tutorials when I did not know how to do something on “Photoshop” or “Final Cut”.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full products?

During this last few months my skills have really improved in the use of  “Final Cut Pro” compared to my preliminary task I improved in making a continuous editing and I also improved the quality of my shots also by discovering the tripod that really helped me.  

I also learned how to put music over images and how to delete the diegetic sound in the background of my filming. For my secondary task as it is an opening and we put a couple of film production company  logos I learned how to download them from Youtube and then import them into “Final Cut Pro”.

One of the most interesting things to learn was how to create a logo by using Photoshop as at the beginning of my work I didn’t know where to start from.

 

LILY AND LULU: Main Task

After all the planning and preparation for the main task, we have finally finished it, 

So here is our film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbvV9i07ZpA

LILY- Filming Our Main Task- Problems and Rough Edits

Part of the filming for our main task involved a scene when Hannah was running outside.
As our genre was horror we wanted to set this scene as it was getting dark, to add to the scariness and tension of the situation.

• However one problem with this was the timing of the filming. 
• It got dark very quickly, to we had to film before it was too dark to see. 
• It was also have been very difficult to film on two different days as it may have been slightly lighter/darker on one day compared to the other. 
• Therefore we had to be very quick and time efficient in getting all our shots.
• We had approximately 20 minutes to get all the running shots we needed.

For example the first time I tried to shoot the scene, I used another friend Hannah R, but it was much too light, so the shots did not have the scary atmosphere intended:

Our other major problem was the shots being shakey or wonky.

• Some of our shots were intended to look like this, as they where meant to be from the handheld perspective of a stalker. 
• However after thinking we had almost coming to what we thought was our final draft, we where given the feedback we needed to have some better, more professional looking shot.
• So we filmed the classroom scene, using a tripod. 

LILY: Making the Titles for Our Film

Here is the process of making the titles for our film.

My aim was to make titles which fitted in with the theme of our movie. This is commonly done in the horror genre, for example the film Halloween has orange opening titles to suit the theme and plot. There for I decided, to relate with the technology theme of our film, I wanted to have a bright blue-green colour.

I wanted our titles to resemble, something like this.

After discussing it with Lulu I decided on using the font OCR A STD as it fitted with the technology theme. 

COLOUR TRIAL 1

COLOUR TRIAL 2

COLOUR TRIAL 3

After testing out various colours I decided on this one.

Even though we wanted to use a blue colour, I decided on having the text black with a blue outer-glow. This way the text would still show if we decided put the titles on a video background-instead of black and it also made the titles more interesting than just being one colour.

Making a title- 1

LILY- Our Film Production Logo, Research and Design

As Lulu is working on the final edit of our film, I decided to make our titles and logo.

Here is all the research, planning and design into our production companies (LULI AND LULI) logo that I did.

Firstly I researched other production company logos, such as the ones below....

What I learn't from doing this research is that:

• Many companies use film/cinema imagery in their logos, such as Rocky Mountain, using a film strip, or Reel Farm, uses a film reel.

• All the small film production logos use simple block colours, instead of using complicated details, this makes the logos stand out more, catching viewers eyes. The majority use black and white, or white or black with one other colour such as Orange Reel.

• Many of them use something natural in the name of their production company, such as an animal, Zebra Films,  Little Bird, or fruit like in Lime Films, Orange Reel. 

Initial Ideas For Our Production Company Logo

• Initially my idea was to use a globe in our logo, this was because it is something associated with nature, like many logos have, and because Lulu and I are from different countries, it seemed appropriate.

• Later I decided this was not a good idea, because I think having a globe would be too similar to major films production company, Universal's logo, and because of this I didn't want it to look tacky, or like I direct copy.

So instead I decided to go into photoshop and start experimenting, firstly writing the name of our company. 

I wanted to use a font that, was bold, simple and stood out, as all the logos researched had this feature. This is in the font 'Impact' 

And here in 'Silom.' I preferred it in the other font, so we decided to use that one.

I knew a feature I defiantly wanted to use was the idea of having a film strip in the logo, so after searching for a photo, of this to edit on the internet, I came across this one:

From this, I could see, the idea of making it personal, by placing our faces in it.

Lily 

Lulu 

We had these photos taken of each other to use for this.

Here is what I did to make the final product:

(screenshots taken from Lulu's photograph)

1) Using the magic wand tool to delete the background, leaving only her profile remaining. After making the back-drop red, to see easier what needed to be deleted.

LULU- Motif

What is a motif and why is it important?

A motif is a recurring short music idea that has an importance in the context in which it is used.

It is important as by repeating itself the motif can create a theme or/and mood.

Particularly famous are horror movies motifs. 

You can hear 10 of the most famous motifs by opening the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YoEjzF7iYE

LILY: Sound In Horror Films

This is some research I did into just general sound in horror films. However Lulu is currently learning how to use garage band, and making a motif for our film.

Sound is one of the most important aspects of horror films. A film can become scary using the sound alone, for example this iconic scene from Jaws, is infamously scary due to the musical motif, but when replaced with other music, the entire scene changes meaning entirely.
ORIGINAL SCENE:

EDITED SCENE:

-Common conventions used in horror films include using isolated beats amongst long suspenseful beats.
-Musical motifs, such at the one in Jaws, which are used specifically to symbolise one element of horror, to build tension for the viewers so they know when it is coming.
- Diegetic sounds are often exaggerated, for example, creaking doors or the wind/ bad weather.
-Sound gets louder and faster as something comes nearer.