Evaluation of 'The White Room' re-make

We re-made a 30 second clip of 'The White Room' which was a horror film made by previous media students. We analysed the video and noted the shots, angles and effects used on the video.
When re-creating the video we found a location similar to the one used in the original film with white walls to ensure that we had a similar effect, we also used a tripod to make sure that all our shots and camera movements were steady.
We opened with a long shot to establish the scene, this shows the character involved and the setting for the clip. This was then followed by a Tilt upwards as the character moves to stand up, this is to ensure that she stays in shot and that there is a sufficient amount of head room. We then switched to a medium shot of the girls arms to show the writing on them - we had made sure that the make up and costumes where similar to those used in the original film - and then used a close up on her hands. We decided against using a zoom because they had not used this in the original film and it can make the film look very unprofessional and badly edited. We used an extreme close up on her eyes as they did in the original film this shows the characters emotions well and adds to the tension and fear of the clip. In the original film a clip of blood being splattered on a wall was shown, we used tomato ketchup to give the effect of blood however after filming we realised this was not very effective and didn't look very realistic so if using blood in our film we would have to try and make some of our own.
we put an effect on the clip to make the shots seem a lot brighter and it also made them slightly out of focus, we also added a letterbox effect to the extreme close up of the eyes, looking back on this  i think i would not use it because it ruins the continuity of the film and doesn't fit with the 'horror' genre of the film.
Looking back on our clip i can see it includes a few continuity errors such as at some points in the film our actor is in a different position than she was in the shot before and at one point she looks into the camera.
In my final film i will make sure that the film has continuity throughout and that the editing and music all fit in with the genre of the film.

PITCH

Feedback for our Pitch of horror film - Sarah and Daryll

The images in this screen grab portray cannibalism, danger in the wild and terror, this is portrayed by the images of a young child eating what looks like flesh and with blood surrounding his mouth. The images of snakes, dangerous plants and a car foraging its way though trees imply danger and this location is deserted and hazardous. The fonts

Daryll Howard evaluation for preliminary assessment

AS Foundation Portfolio: Audience and Certificate Research

According to BBFC an 18 cannot include material that is in breach of the law or has been created through commission of a breach of the law or if the material could risk harm to individuals in their behaviour towards society. They can include explicit images of sexual activity which can be justified by context, it must apply to R18 sexual guidelines (sexual information seeks to inform and educate in matters of human sexual health.)

AS Foundation Portfolio: Audience and Certificate Research

According to BBFC, a '15' film is only suitable for those of the age 15 and over and must not include certain things such as the use or encouragement of drugs and a strong threat is allowed as-long as it is not sexualised. Dangerous behaviour should not be shown if the actions could be easily copied. Strong language can only be used if it can be justified.  Sexual activity may be shown without a large amount of detail. And, violence may be used but should not dwell on injury and pain.

Foundation Portfolio Research, textual analysis - Daryll Howard

Foundation Portfolio Research, textual analysis - Daryll Howard

Foundation Portfolio Research, textual analysis - Sarah Greenhaff

Foundation Portfolio Research, textual analysis - Sarah Greenhaff

Gail has left.

Unfortunately due to upsetting circumstances, Gayle has chosen to drop media as a subject, therefore, Daryll and Sarah are attempting to produce the film by themselves.

Feedback for our Pitch of horror film - Sarah and Daryll

Sarah Greenhaff- Title Research

The opening credits are made up of small clips of young children and someone constructing some kind of glove. All the shots are very dark and have a very sinister feel to them, it also makes you wonder what is the link between the children and this man. There is a mix of fonts used, some names are written in a style as though someone has written them by hand and others are in an older more gothic style of lettering. You see someone working with machinery and knives then later attaching these to some kind of glove, this continues to add to the sinister feel as it makes you wonder what this may be for and draws you in to watching the rest of this film, this also hints towards the 'Slasher' sub-genre of the film. This shows that in our title sequence we need to include references to the sub genre of the film and also some intriguing scene or object that will make the viewer want to keep watching.

Daryll Howard Title research.

The images in this screen grab portray cannibalism, danger in the wild and terror, this is portrayed by the images of a young child eating what looks like flesh and with blood surrounding his mouth. The images of snakes, dangerous plants and a car foraging its way though trees imply danger and this location is deserted and hazardous. The fonts are very bold, implying that the word true blood is very important in the film and that it relates to alot. The use of colours and fonts makes me realise that they make a big impact upon the genre and effectiveness, such as the connotation of red are danger and blood.

The opening screen grab doesn't give much away about the film, other than it is set in the cold, natural environment, the colours give the connotations of naturalness and purity. This is presented by the blues and greens and natural settings such as mountains and trees in the background. The font is also a very basic font, once again this is giving nothing away about the film. The lonesome car however indicates that something dangerous is going to happen and no body is around to help and rescue the injured. From this screen grab, I can learn that the titles don't need to be fancy for them to be effective and question the audience.

Daryll Howard- evaluation

AS Media Studies Homework Assignment- Evaluation of the finished preliminary assessment.

For our preliminary assessment of re-making an exciting year’s horror film we chose to re-make ‘White Room’, 1:10-1:30. In order to hold a steady and stable shot we used a tripod, this also made it possible for us to create an equal panning shot across the wall when needed at 0.16-0.20, this helped to create a feel of isolation. To make sure we framed each shot exact we studied the film and used the story board and shot list to certify that we got the lengths and position of the frame exact to the original film. To portray that we could use a variety of different shot types we displayed the following shots; extreme close up, close up, mid shot, long shot and a panning shot along with the shot types to ensure that we completed the clip to the best of our ability we kept to the composition rules such as the rule of thirds, the 180° rule as well as the 30° rule which certified that non of our frames jumped or didn’t follow continuity.

     In the final stages of editing we followed the rules of continuity editing, and this is shown in a way in which the clip doesn’t jump or look influent, we did this by cutting and combining unneeded and extra frames of each shot together to create a flowing clip. We used a number of different editing techniques to complete our clip, we changed the contrast in the colours to make the clip much brighter and look more like the original film. We also added ‘fade in’ where the blood is flashed up, this created the quick snapshots of black in-between the flashes of blood and made the frames much creepier and dramatic. At the very end of the clip we used ‘fade out’ to dim the lighting and bring the filming to an end. We added appropriate music and sound effects which matched the original clip however the sound effects heard at the point where the blood is flashed up we could not find a similar alternative so we resorted to recording the original sound effect and placing it in our clip.

     To match up the original to the re-make we had to chose appropriate costume, make up and props for the genre which we filmed, no props were needed however we needed to match up the costume and make up, we used face paints and eyeliner to create the dark eyes and drawings up the arm of out actress, for the costume, due to the t-shirt being too short, the actress had to wear tights under the t-shirt, also, the actress in the original filming had white contacts in, due to the cost of the contacts we were not able to afford these and therefore did not use them in our filming. The location of the film was the exact same location which the original was filmed, so we knew that lighting, power sockets and interruption would not be a problem. The actress which we used was a drama student who fit the criteria of long dark hair, due to the fact of her taking part in a drama club outside of college this meant that she has taken part in such activities and tasks before, meaning that the exercise was completed in an suitable length of time.

     Personally I contributed well to the planning, filming and editing. For the planning, me and my partner Gayle both completed each exercise and task meaning that we could chose the best to upload on the blog and for example the Recee sheet we could choose the best location in which to film. During filming, Gayle instructed our actress on how to sit and what actions to do, I did all the filming and made sure that the 180° and the 30° rule we obtained all the way through the filming. During editing, we shared out the tasks, whilst I cut the frames down to a suitable size, Gayle did all the special effect editing such as adding the fading and the contrast. Improvements which could be made would be the blood shots (0:12-0:14). The tomato sauce which we hoped would look like blood didn’t succeed as it did look like tomato sauce rather than blood and if we were to re-film that section of our clip I would suggest to buy blood capsules rather than make-doing with ketchup. Also some of the shots are not exact, such as the extreme close up at 0:01 in the original less of the face is visible whereas on our re-make part of the nose is shown and the focus is not on the eyes. A final improvement would be to include some canted angled or low shots, rather than all the shots being taken from up high or at eye level and this makes the audience more interested and it creates more of a professional look to the film.. During taking part in this exercise I have realised many things which will need to be done for the real coursework, one of these things is a lot of planning will be needed, and much more time at home spent on organizing and meeting up with other participants in the group and lesson time is not enough to plan 30 seconds of filming never mind 3 minutes. Also I will take a lot of care in choosing the right actor or actress to act in the film as a drama student or someone who has a lot of interest in drama and acting cares a lot more about the final piece.

Gayle Gillibrand Recce

Daryll Howard Recce

Our final re-make of "white room'

For our Practice Horror film we had to re-make a horror film which was produced last year, we chose 'white room'. This is our final edited film which we created by copying the clip shot by shot.

Composition exercise

Strengths
We followed all the shots on the story board and finished the filming how we predicted.
We made it easy for the viewer to follow what was going on by making the shots simple but effective.

Weaknesses 
The continuity of the film has a few shots that jump, where maybe the tripod jilted.
The panning shot at the beginning moves at a different pace in which the rest of the shot does.

Our Practical Continuity and Coverage Preliminary Exercise

A few problems occurred whilst viewing our imported video. We noticed that whilst filming, we forgot to focus the camera which made certain shots of the film fuzzy. We also noticed that during 0.10 the camera moves slightly due to the actors being cut of the film, this would be avoided for the real filming as we would select location of the camera more sufficiently. Another problem was that during 0.20- 0.22 we aimed the camera into daylight through a window, causing the shot to be extremely bright to the viewers.

However, we stuck to the 180 degree and the 30 degree rules, which made the shots look slightly more professional than if we used any degree to capture the shots. We stuck to all the shots on the lego sheet, so we followed the task properly. 

Assessment Questions

Have you framed your shots properly? Look at lego sheet.
We followed all the shots on the lego sheet, however shot seven was supposed to be pushing the door however on our clip we pulled the door open.

Have you included the number of shots you planned?
Yes we did include the number of shots that we planned to do.

Does your piece have pace/atmosphere?
Yes, the first two shots create an atmosphere due to the surroundings being silent and the only sound heard is the footsteps coming up the stairs. Also the pace is fluent as there are no skips which ruin the atmosphere.

Practical Continuity and coverage exercise.

SATANIC POSSESSION- our chosen video to remake