Risk assessment form

Call sheet

Storyboard

Evaluation: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

1. FORMAT: Design choices that span every issue. These define a products overall look and feel. These include things that look the same each issue - included in my products because there are small aspects in all of my products that are similar but they also have aspects that a different because I did not want them all to look the same to attract a larger audience.
2. FORMULA: This is known as editorial content (i.e. what's in the product). The types of article, the product itself,  they all contribute to the formula.
3. FRAME: The frame is the standard size for outer page margins and gutters. Some magazines use the same margin width through the magazines; others vary the width. The rule for using margins establishes consistency from issue to issue. - My magazine and poster don't have the same frame and use completely different images and layout
4. FUNCTION: The function is, quite simply, what a magazine is trying to achieve and the message it's trying to send. - My products hopefully get across that the film is about someone who suffers from a mental illness and I think it is portrayed quite well.

Consistency - Magazine and poster should have a familiar look - Stlightly consistent yes but also no as they do not look the same but they have some familiar features
Unity - United feel to the products

 

Synergy is the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects. I have used synergy as I have created more than one text to increase the effect of them and the products look different to attract a wider audience as some people may like the look of the poster better or the look of the magazine better. The fact that the magazine article says in cinemas now and the poster says April 21 creates a good effect because people can look at both and see that it's released April 21 and also that it is now in cinemas so they know when they are able to go.
 My products do match my main product because they all hopefully portray mental illness and what the film is about and its style.

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

The conventions of a psychological horror are that it reflects a character's fear, guilt and beliefs. Also eerie sound effects and relevant music. There is emotional instability to build tension and further the plot.
Of these conventions, we have used character's fear as she is constantly seeing things and hearing things and is constantly paranoid. The fear that she goes through is seen by the audience as they watch how it effects her and they wish that it never happens to them. We also used eerie sound effects of quiet chatter and whispers to represent the voices in her head. The emotional instabilty of her mental illness is portrayed in the film fitting with one of the conventions and we hoped it would build tension but the story of our film makes it hard to build the tension. Psychological horrors such as Saw builds tension a lot and therfors makes our film very different to conventional psychological horrors.
After my audience feedback, we could see that our target audience worked quite well because the ages that we aimed for quite liked the film and understood what the film was about. Using a vulnerable woman in a horror film is a very popular convention as woman mostly play victims in films and stereotypically woman are seen as being more vulnerable than men and more likely to suffer. Horrors that use women as their victims are very popular, e.g. The Shining, The Others, Insidious, The Babadook.
Our film is not a typical cliche horror film with gore and this reflects what Cynthia Freeland said in her representation theory that 'graphic violence and gore are so over the top and exaggerated that they create a 'perverse sublime'. They are so far-fetched that we can enjoy the film on an aesthetic, entertaining level. This explains why a lot of people don’t like horror ‘too real!’. This is because our film does not use violence and gore but more of an aesthetic weird film that is not like a conventional horror that you see all the time.
Our film goes against the primitive style as the primitive style say that:
Techniques include frontal staging or a tableau style, exaggerated gestures, hardly any camera movement and no Point-of-view shots.
Our film goes against this styles as we have a lot of camera movement and also Point-of-view shots which is exactly what the style is not.

Evaluation: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The feedback I got from my film was both critical and not critical with them including what they thought was good about the film and what they found not so good about the film. The main criticism about the film was the length and that there was not that much of a story to the film. Most of my audience understood what was going on in the film but it was the older audience who did and not the younger audience as they would be too young to know what schizophrenia is and therefore what the film means. This is why our target audience was 18-28 because at this age they are more likely to know what schizophrenia is and understand that the clips between the woman are the delusions that she has to experience. We did not change the length or add more of a story due to the fact that expanding the story would mean changing most of the film. We could have made the film slightly longer but we did not do this because we did not have time to film more. If people know the story behind what our film is about then they are more likely to like the film which is clearly reflected in the audience feedback. Another criticism we got was about the sounds in the film and that they can be improved by adding more sounds and more effective sounds which we did not add extra to our film but we understand how it would have improved the film to be more effective. We had some good responses about our editing and how we showed the audience the effect of good editing.


Uses and Gratifications claims that the audience do have a say in how the media influnces them and in this case, I think that this is true as if people read well into the film they will hopefully sympathise with the woman about her mental illness. This depends on how the audience understand the film and whether or not they'd sympathise with them if it was real life.


I should have got more feedback from a larger audience to get a lot more criticism to reflect on and there should have been more ages who gave feedback to see where the target audience could be changed.
We also could have reflected on all aspects of the criticism given so that we could improve our film and give the audience the best that we can do.

Evaluation: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Many different technologies were used in the making of my media products. Everything I used I had used before so nothing was knew to me and I knew that they would work for me too.
To edit our film, we used Final Cut Pro on the Apple Mac. Final Cut Pro is a video editing software that’s allows you to cut and edit all your video clips, add sound, add effects, etc. Having used this software before, I understood what I was doing when I went onto it and I could navigate around the software very easily. However, we did have a bit of trouble at the start of making our film as we couldn’t upload our videos from the phone to he Mac. After a while we managed to do it and that was the only struggle we had. Final Cut Pro also has many sound effects to use so we had some fun looking through them all and seeing what would fit with our film and we managed to find some. Final Cut Pro helped a lot because it was so simple to use therefore there was no fussing about it not working or not being able to do what we wanted on our film.
To make my poster, I used an app on my phone called PicsArt to make the silhouette hands. I have used PicsArt many times in the past to edit pictures so this was not new to me either but it is still very easy to use on your first time using it. After making the silhouette hands, I then switched over to my laptop to actually make my poster and I did this on a free photo editing website called Pixlr and I used Pixlr express. This allows you to add texts, effects, images, edit how your photos look, etc. It is a very easy to use site and gives you lots of options on what to do. Here, I added a black and white effect to my main image because I thought it looked more effective like that and it made the colour of the film title stand out a lot more. I then added the text which was very easy to do and you could also change the opacity of the text (and also images). The text I added was the film title and the letters on the main image to represent the voices in the characters head. After I added the text, I then looked on google for a billing block with no background to add to the bottom of my film poster which I added with ease.
To make my double page spread, I used the app Canva as this is a familiar site to me and it’s easy to use. I used a template from here for my double page spread and it worked out quite nicely.


These three stages all were very different because I used different apps for them all and therefore had to use different skills for each stage. The film differed the most from the other two as it was using videos whereas the other two were just images and words. I was most dependent on the film making because that was our main task and required the most editing. I was least dependent on the magazine article because I used a template and just added pictures and wrote an article.

From using these I did not learn much but that is because I had used them all before and were very familiar with them all.

Double page spread

My movie poster analysis

The random letters are supposed to resemble the voices in the characters head as I could not think of another way of doing this so I used the letters and each one resembles a voice that the woman hears. The woman is holding her head in the image because it’s all getting too much for her and she’s trying to block out the sound of the voices but they’re in her head so the voices are still there. The hand reaching up over the wall resemble what the woman sees and that they’re not actually there, she’s just imagining it. The woman would also be squeezing her eyes shut in her image but this is not visible on the poster because I did not want to include a face on my poster because there is no face in the film so it reflects the film.

I think my film poster worked really well and it clearly resembles what I wanted it to. The title is very bold and stands out against the dark background. The hands intrigue the audience more because it gives a sense that the film is quite creepy. The letters also work quite well I think because even though people won’t know what they resemble straight away, they look quite weird and gives the film a sense of quirkiness. To improve my poster, I would use a much clearer main image because it is very very dark and you cannot make out what the character is doing as much as I would have wanted it to. The fonts work okay I think, however the film title I would probably look at other options of font. Overall, I am really happy with it 

Audience feedback on my film

I showed our film to my family. The feedback I got was very mixed and I used different age groups including ages that weren’t in my target audience.

Age range - 8-38

Safiya - 8: “I didn’t really understand the film, it was a bit weird but it looked quite cool”
Was this because of your age? Probably, because I don’t know what schizophrenia is but older people might so they will get it
What was good about it? I liked the quick flashes
What was bad about it? It was a bit short

Lexine - 12: “I don’t know what schizophrenia is except that they see things so it kind of made sense to me but not fully. I like that you didn’t show the face of the character because that left some mystery”
Was this because of your age? Maybe as I think older people might understand it more and know what is happening but if I understood it all then I think it would be quite good”
What was good about it? The sounds over the top because I was told it is to reflect that the hear things so it makes it more about a person with schizophrenia

Abigail - 14: “Well the film was weird and was a bit short so you couldn’t really get much of a story into it and maybe filming in a better location at the start would be better. The name of the film does fit with the film as it contradicts the person as she is not in control and I think it means that the schizophrenia is in control of what is happening”
Was this because of your age? I got what the film was about and I think that’s because I know about schizophrenia and I am able to read further into things than someone younger than me
What was good about it? The story was put across quite well but could have been a little bit clearer
What was bad about it? Location at the start and not much really happened


Caitlin - 19: “As a media student I can tell that you were trying not to be cliche with the story idea and putting it together. You also have some good shots in the film and the sounds work really well. The type of horror you did also works quite well as not everyone likes slashers or gore. The film makes you think about what is going on and how it would feel to be in the characters position.”
Was this because of your age? Yes and I loves films so I’m always picking things apart to understand the story so even though it could have been put together better the story that you wanted was put across well
What was good about it? As said before you can understand the story well and the editing idea was good
What was bad about it? Maybe add more sound to make it more effective and maybe some different shots in there


Debi - 38: “The film had quite a quirky side to it and I love that in films so to me I quite liked it and considering it’s only an a level film I think you’ve done well to get your story across and shown some good editing skills. The film itself could do with a bit of improving to make it a bit better, like the locations, the lighting and the sounds”
Was this because of your age? I think anyone could say this and it really depends on your opinion on the film but I think maybe teens and older would most be targeted for this film because it’s quite a quirky and psychological film so you need to think further about the story
What was good about the film? Overall it was a good film, a good story was used, the editing skills are clear and also the title of the film fits with the film so it was a good choice of name

Target audience

Age: Young adults and older 18-28
Gender: Both genders but females probably more due to it being about a young woman and maybe some could relate to it and it’s not gory which is what stereotypically look for in a horror
Occupation: Not really a specific occupation but maybe they’ll need to be intelligent to understand the concept and story of our film because it’s not so clear in the actual film.
Horror fanatic or not? Yes and no because our film isn’t the typical horror film or slasher film and as it’s more psychological it’s more of an artsy horror

Psychological Horror Short film reviews

I was given the task to research psychological horror. I had to watch two short films of this sub-genre. The two short films that I decided to watch from YouTube were 'LAST CALL Award Winning Psychological Thriller 2012' and 'Live Alone - Psychological Horror Short Film'


'Last call' review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqXTZzhMHgI
Last call is a very effective short psychological horror movie. The story is that two people live next door to each other at 3C and 3D. The man in 3D calls the woman in 3C and the woman has no idea who this man is but he asks her for help to stop him from killing himself even though he says it’s inevitable. The woman has no idea where this man is or who he is. He says there is a way to stop him which is by solving a riddle and the riddle is ‘3D’. The woman has no idea what this means and does not work it out until it’s too late. The woman did not click that he lived next door to her.

This film was very suspenseful and would leave the audience on the edge of their seat desperately hoping she is able to stop him. The audience may also guess what 3D means before the woman does which gives the film more suspense and makes the audience very anxious. Conventions of psychological horror that this film includes is that it has a sense of reality within as it could happen to anybody and it uses mind games. The audience also fear that it could happen to them and makes them think what they would do if they were in that situation. Another convention is that it builds a lot of tension for the audience and leaves then biting their nails in suspense.
I would highly recommend this short film and it greatly reflects a psychological horror.


'Live Alone' review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbbT-mzsJg

Live alone is a short psychological horror movie that is about a young girl who moves out to live alone and she starts to feel like she’s being followed and someone leaves notes for her but she goes to her doctor because she thinks she might be going crazy and he gives her pills to make her feel better. She starts to feel okay but then the figure comes back and then we see them walk into the room she’s in and then the film finishes.

This film was also very suspenseful and effective as a horror movie. The whole story of it is something a lot of people can probably relate to of moving out to live on your own and being more paranoid because you’re alone and seeing things that aren’t there. So the audience are more intrigued because it’s something that could happen to them and they feel more anxious which is what makes a good horror film. The film could have been more effective if it showed the mysterious figure actually doing things to mess with her such as maybe moving things around and randomly closes doors in her house. The audience may think that it is her neighbour following her because her conversation with him portrayed him to be quite strange and weird around her then we never see him for the rest of it so the audience start to think about what he might do to her but that is left uncovered which is effective because it leaves the audience with a sense of the unknown. 

Overall this was a very good short horror film and really portrays the psychological horror sub genre

My Movie poster

Horror movie poster analysis

‘The Exorcist’ film poster. The Exorcist is a very popular film and this poster could be the reason why, I think it is very effective and portrays the film very well. First of all, the colour scheme is unusual but the bright writing shows up a lot against the dark background image. The dark image shows a sense of mystery because you can’t make out any faces just a silhouette of a man who looks to be a detective maybe with the way he is dressed and carrying a briefcase. The mysterious side of this poster intrigues the audience because it does not look like a typical horror film poster and could be more of a sinister horror than a slasher horror. The yellow lighting of the image gives it some colour and lights up the main parts of the image - the man and the house. We see the light is coming from inside the house and suggests the evil is inside the house which he is heading to which could make the audience think he is going to be confronted by this mysterious ‘light’. The light from the window also outshines the outside lamp and which is not normal and leaves the audience wanting to know what this light is. Overall, it is a very effective film poster and the colour scheme works well, however it looks more like a mystery film than a horror film.

‘The Shining’ film poster:

The Shining poster clearly portrays the film and clearly shows the villain and the victim. Having someone look quite psycho on a poster intrigues an audience because they want to see what he does and why he’s going after this woman who looks so terrified even when holding a weapon to defend herself. If some of the audience have watched the film, they would look at this poster and can ‘hear’ the image as this part of the film the man says “Here’s Johnny” and is a very well known part of the film. This makes the poster very effective as the audience can link the image to the film of a funny and memorable part of the film. The line at the top ‘The tide of terror that swept America IS HERE’ also intrigues an audience because saying that it ‘swept America’ suggests that it is a very good film and America loved it so people will want to watch it and see what it’s all about. They also say it’s a ‘tide of terror’ portraying that the film is terrifying and that’s what people think horror movies are all about and they want to be scared. 

Psychological horror - Our choice of sub genre

Google definition: Psychologival horror is a sub genre of horror and psychological fiction that relies on mental, emotional and psychological states to frighten, disturb, or unsettle readers, viewers, or players.

Examples of psychological horror

Also: Rosemary’s baby, Jacobs ladder, Saw, Identity, Donnie Darko


Psychological horror is sometimes seen as being scarier than other sub-genres of horror due to the fact it is based on everyday lives, meaning it is much closer to reality which makes the audience cautious because they fear it could happen to them. This is especially seen on psychological horrors which are ‘Based on true events’ which creates an illusion for the audience that there’s a possibility it could happen to them but also intrigues the audience more because it’s based on true events. Makers of true event horrors rely on the audiences mind to create a horror effect.
Psychological horrors reveal the evil behind normality - a convention of this horror is that they usually involve ordinary people who end up exerting the horror onto other characters.

Sound/music in psychological horror: Mostly use contrapuntal sound which is sound that does not match the action on the screen which is effective because the action and sound contradict.

Narrative of film

1. Whats the plot? (Themes and feelings of characters) - Schzophrenic woman in her daily life and includes delusions and sounds that she has to deal with on a daily basis. The woman gets so sick of it all. The film is not a scary horror and is more psychological
2. What narrative structure will you use? Linear as it films a woman’s day however it’s only bits of her day but it is still in a linear structure
3. Will you withhold aspects of the story from the audience or not? The audience won’t know that the woman suffers from schizophrenia unless they read the film description but they may be able to work it out for themselves if they read the film right, this is why the film is aimed more towards young adults and older because it requires reading into the film
4. What else will help the story? (Signifiers, music editing) There is no music in our film due to wanting to get what it is like in a schizophrenic mind so there is whispers and sounds to signify the sound delusions

Auteur Theory

'Auteur' is the French word for Author, which means that a Director's film reflects their creative vision. This theory was introduced by French directors such as Francois Truffaut who favoured a focus on the contribution directors made on the style and form of film.
An Auteur is a film maker who's style and practise is distinctive which creates a signature status for themselves.
Francois Truffaut quoted "A true film auteur is someone who brings something genuinely personal to his subject instead of producing a tasteful, accurate but lifeless rendering of the original 1material"

First draft of storyline

Filmed over someone’s day as a schizophrenic

Young woman who struggles to deal with her illness
Shots of woman doing everyday things such as shopping, making tea, walking, working etc.

In between these shots - flashes of delusions/sounds over the clips to represent what the woman sees and hears