Main Task- BBFC Rating

According to BBFC rating schemes a film with a PG rating must match this criterion:

• Themes- Where more serious issues are featured (e.g. Racism) nothing in their treatment should condone the behaviour.
• Language- Mild bad language only.
• Nudity- Natural nudity only.
• Sex- Sexual activity may be implied but must be discrete.
• Violence- Moderate violence may be shown if justified by the setting.
• Horror- Freighting sequences must not be prolonged or intense.
• Drugs- Any references to drugs or drug misuse must be innocuous or carry a suitable anti-drug message.

According to BBFC rating schemes a film with a 12 rating must match this criterion:

• Themes- Mature themes are acceptable, but their treatment must be suitable for young teenagers.
• Language- The use of strong language must be infrequent. Racist abuse is also of particular concern.
• Nudity- Nudity is allowed but in sexual context, must be discrete and brief.
• Sex- Sexual activity may be implied. Sex references may reflect what is likely to be familiar to most adolescents but should not go beyond what is suitable for them.
• Violence- Violence must not dwell on detail. There should be no emphasis on injuries or blood. Sexual violence may only be implied or briefly and discreetly indicated.
• Horror- Sustained moderate threat and menace are permitted. Occasionally gory moments only.
• Drugs- Any misuse of drugs must be infrequent and should not be glamorized or instructional.

According to BBFC rating schemes a film with a 15 rating must match this criterion:

• Theme- No theme is prohibited, provided the treatment is appropriate to 15 year olds.
• Language- There may be frequent use of strong language (e.g. 'fuck'). But the strongest terms (e.g. 'c*nt') will be acceptable only where justified by the context. Continued aggressive use of the strongest language is unlikely to be acceptable.
• Nudity- Nudity may be allowed in a sexual context but without strong detail. There are no constraints on nudity in a non-sexual or educational context.
• Sex- Sexual activity may be portrayed but without strong detail. There may be strong verbal references to sexual behaviour.
• Violence- Violence may be strong but may not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. Scenes of sexual violence must be discreet and brief.
• Horror- Strong threat and menace are permitted. The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable.
• Drugs- Drug taking may be shown but the film as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse.

According to BBFC's rating schemes there is no real criteria '18' has to be matched up to as adults should be allowed to know for themselves what it funny, and what they find entertaining.

Main Task- Editing

My film went through a lot of editing and a lot of changes all that needed great IT kills to get the final product to look as good as possible. Because of our Feedback we found that our editing had to improve a lot and we had to really make use of all of the effects and other options available to us on iMovie HD.

Editing on iMovie

Our production was edited using iMovie and I am now going to talk through the edits we made, why we made them and the skills involved to produce the edits.

First thing I needed to (Alex Jowett, Editor) was to upload all of our clips onto iMovie, this meant connecting the camera to the computer with a firewire cable and opening the iMovie HD application. From this you then simply click upload, and all of the clips that we had shot where then added onto iMovie.

After this had completed I then had to pick out with clips we where going to use, as there where many that had mistakes on them, and many that we had decided on the day of filming not to use. After doing this I then needed to cut the scenes down because on most scenes we had filmed for too long, and there was shots that we did not need. This was also crucial to do as our film added up to 2 Minutes and 32 Seconds, so we defiantly needed to cut 32 seconds.

After doing this I then went through many stages of playing the film and making notes on sound and video FX that I could add into the production so that I was sure of exactly I needed to do.

I then imported the music from a copyright free website that I had found (www.freeplaymusic.com). I had to first download the song, upload it to iTunes and then from iMovie, it picked up the song in iTunes, from which I just had to import this into my production. I had to make sure that it was positioned so that the music would start when the CD Player turns on in the opening scene, to give the effect that the music was diegetic, but then became non-diegetic as he left his room, almost like the song was in his head.

After I had done this I then added more sound effects to help emphasize sounds that I needed the audience to hear. These sounds included footsteps as 'Matt' walks through the woods and heartbeat sounds in the background to help create tension for the audience.

I then added in the second song that was going to be in our production, this song was less up-beat and more depressing and low-beat. I positioned it to the point I wanted it to play, which was wile the character stared into the mirror and had a flashback from school.

I then made the flash back scene black and white. I did this by putting a black and white effect onto of it. The reason for this is so that the audience was aware that it was a flashback and had already happened. That is crucial for them to understand the ending.

Now that my films was fully constructed, all that was left for me to do was the smaller edits that sometimes can make a big difference. I started off by firstly changing all the sound levels so that I could remove unwanted sounds, and put more emphasis on sounds I needed the audience to hear. I also had to adjust the sounds when the music changes so that it was not an instant change but instead a gradual change. I did this by fading out one of the songs wile fading in the other at the same time.

Our establishing shot is our production logo, and this had to be added onto iMovie as an image, and despite looking through many different iMovie tutorial videos I could not find out how you can add an image on top of the moving picture so I assumed that this was not possible on iMovie and decided to add it on as a new clip with only the Production Logo showing.

I made this logo on Photoshop Elements by uploading a picture of a knife off the internet, importing it to Photoshop, then I used a paint tool to create the effect of blood from the knife, then simply added some text that read our production name 'MJ Productions'.

I then finally added on the Title Scenes. I created these in iMovie and set the font to look quite scary and weird, to fit in with the genre, and I also made it red so that it would signify blood. I had to make sure the title scenes where on screen long enough for the audience to read them, so I received Feedback from people who where in the same room as me.

Main Task- Feedback

Our media film went through 2 different filming and editing stages, because after the first stage we had to get an audience feedback, and their feedback indicated that our film was not up to the standards it could have been, and they where able to point out many floors that from a production perspective, we where not able to notice.

We showed the film to our Media Class, and after watching it through they gave us very constructive feedback which we where then able to use to completely re-film and re-edit our production to enable us to have a much better quality product.

Here is what they said about our first production:

1. The setting did not fit the genre, and did not work well with filming.
2. Having black and white effects made no sense, and did not fit in with the genre.
3. The actor looked at the camera in one of our scenes.
4. The ending shot with the knife was very vague way of showing our film was a slasher.
5. The mise-en-scene did not fit in with the genre, e.g. Football Posters.
6. The music fits in well with the film but is of a poor quality and does not improve the production.
7. Not enough use of steady cam, and too much shaky camera work.
8. You can not hear the voice-over.
9. Needs more reference to a film.
10. Poor acting.

With all of this feedback in mind, me and Matt met up to talk about how we could improve our production, and it was agreed that we defiantly needed to re-film and re-edit it all so me and Matt wrote up a new Synopsis and drew up a new Storyboard with all of the points above in mind we where able to improve on them all, and here is how we did it.

Our Improvements:

1. We completely re-filmed our production in a whole new setting, this setting was much improved, and had use of both interior and exterior shots. It also fitted in much better with our genre.
2. In our second version the only black and white shots are when 'Matt' has flashback's.
3. We made sure this time that the actors remained focused and did not look into the cameras.
4. We took out the ending shot with the knife, and instead brought the knife in, in the middle of the production in a much more understandable narrative.
5. Because of our new setting, we where able to create a much better mise-en-scene.
6. Instead of making out own music, we where able to find some copyright free music that fitted in much better with our production.
7. When we re-filmed we made sure that we used a tripod at all times, except for when we needed the camera work to be shaky, for example on POV shots.
8. We did not use voice-overs in our second production.
9. We made more inter-textual reference to both 'Trick or Treat' with our characters representing character from this film, and 'Halloween' because of the attacking in the woods.
10. We brought in new actors for our second production.

Main Task- Rough Cut

Main Task- Cast

As there are only two characters in the production we only needed two actors. We chose our actors based on how the looked, and if it would fit the part, and there acting abilties, here is our Cast:

Connor Potts:

Connor plays the main character 'Matt' in the production. The reason we chose Connor was that with his hair colour and style he fitted into the stereotype for a gothic character which is how we want Matt to look. 

Joe Bonham:

Joe plays the bully in the production. The reason we chose Joe is not only because he has good acting abilties, but because he is tall, he fits the stereotype of a bully. 

Main Task- The Pitch

'Trick or Treat meets Halloween in a modern day Slasher'

I chose this pitch because I believe that our film has both qualities from the films Trick or Treat and Halloween. The characters have been influenced by the film Trick or Treat, and the final scene was influenced by Halloween.

Main Task- Crew

Crew:

Matt Lowe:

Matt played a key part in the production as he was the Director and Cinematograher. This meant his main role was to make sure what was going onto screen looked correct and worked well, as well as checking the Mise en Scene. He also was a Camera Man along with Alex Jowett.

Alex Jowett:

Alex Jowett played a key part into the editing of the film and making sure that the final piece was to the best of its standards. He made sure that the sound was correct, and found the music to put into the film. He also did some of the Camera Man work along with Matt Lowe

Mian Task Software

I used iMovie HD to upload and edit the clips I had recorded. I found it to be very useful and a good choice of software for what I needed to create. However I was not able to use the up-to-date version which would of allowed me to edit my film much easier and probaly to a better quality.

I found that after looking through the tutorials that are on the Apple website, I was able to use all of the features to a better standard which meant that I was able to make the final cut of my film to be of a much higher standard.

With iMovie you start off by imprting all of the scenes that you have recorded from your camera, and after they are all on you drag down the scenes that you are going to use and from then on you can edit all of the scenes.

Editing the scenes is pretty straigh forward, you are given fuve different options to edit from; Clips, Themes, Media, Editing and Chapters.

I found it hard to add translations properly so this is the area that I had to look up on the tutorial, but after I had leant I was able to use translations.

I used quick time to view my final cut of the film, and I also used it to add it to this blog.

Main Task- Equiptment

In our recording's we will be using hardware that we have borrowed from school so that we can get the best quality equiptment avaliable to us. We wlll need to use a Video Camera, Tripod and a Camera. Here is what we used:

This is a 'Cannon Widescreen MV 920' and it is the camcorder we used to film all of our footage.

Features:

Camcorder Type: Digital
Recording Format: Mini DV
Recording System: PAL
Sensor Quantity: 1
Optical Zoom: 25x
Weight: 0.38 kg

It is a very user freidnly camera, and was perfect for what we needed. As well as having auto features, you can also edit the white balance, exposure and other features yourself, but we did not tend to do this too much because we did not want to loose quality in the image we where recording. The camera has zoom features which was perfect for our close-up shots. However the lighting setting on this camera is not great, there are presets which determin the lighting through settings (e.g. Night, Day, Snow) so if you want a paticular lighting then you would need to yse your own lighting e.g. lamps or torches. We had to make some scenes look darker but instead of doing this on the camera we edited it through iMovie.

All of your footage is recorded onto a mini DV tape, and transfering it onto your comptuer is very easy. We simply needed a firewire cable which would run from the camera to the comptuer and using a peice of software you upload the footage. However you can also play clips through the camera as well.

We also had to use a tripod, the one we used is called 'Fujifilm Finepix A900'

We needed to use this tri-pod in orfer to keep some of our shots still, and not have a hand held look. If we just held the camera by hand then the production would not look proffesional unless we could evaluate a proper reason for the camera work.

The tripod is very easy to use, the legs extend out in order to have the camera for a low angle or a high angle shot. The camera stand also extends higher in order to get extreme high angle shots. The tripod also allows the camera to pan pivort and tilt without having to move the tripod itself. We found this very useful on our panning shots.

So that we could take pictures of our settings, cast, crew and costume we also had to use a picture camera to take these to good quality. We used a 'Fujifilm Finepix A900'.

Features:

9.0 megapixels
Real Photo Technology (RPT)
Intelligent Flash
IrSimple™
Large 2.5" LCD screen
Sensitivity up to ISO 800
10Mb internal memory
Selectable scene positions

Although we had access to all the equipment that we needed to produce the production, in an ideal world we would of had a few extra's but because we had no budget, we simply could not afford them. The equipment we would of used, had we had the money, would have been the following:

• A much better quality HD camera with sound boom attached:

With a camera like this we would be able to pick up much better quality sound and picture, wile also having better uses of setting to adjust the way the picture looks, e.g. White Balance.

• A SteadiCam:

This is a camcorder that attaches to her person using it so that you can get a point of view shot much clearer and less shaky.

• A electric-controlled tripod:

With this piece of equipment, we would of been able to create much more precise and free-flowing panning shots.

Main Task- Setting

There will be lots of diffrent settings in my productions because in the introduction the main character moves around alot. The settings I have chosen each have to fit in with what is happening and I have to make sure that the miss en scene is signifying a slasher movie.

The first scene will be shot in the main characters bedroom. The bedroom is big and dark with just a little bit of lighting coming in through the slighty open blind. The bedroom will have a music player, school books, a computor and a TV. With all of these items in the room it will signify that the boy spends alot of time in his bedroom rather than out with friends.

The bedroom will have an en-suite attached to it, this will have a very big mirror so that the boy can stare at himself as his second personality talks to him. 

The kitchen where the boy will retrieve the knife will be small to signify isolation.

The woodland where the boy will walk to school will be coevered with trees which also signify isolation and with all the tall trees will make the characters look much smaller.

The school scenes where the boy has flashbakcs will be a typical school corridor where there will be lockers running down so that the main character can be pushed into them by the bully.

Main Task- Target Audiance

Age-

I would expect that the age group our film would attract is a youth audiance (aged 15-30), I would suspect this because most horror films as my research shows me do appeal to a youth audinace because of the violence and usualy young cast. My film does have a young cast (age 18) and would have alot of violence in the film. I would expect that a younger audiance would be appealed to this film, but because I think the BBFC rating would be a 15, my target audiance would have to match up to this.

Gender-

I would expect my film to appeal to a mainly male cast because although it will have female in it,  all of the main characters are male. Also the film has alot of violence which does usually appeal to a male audiance.  However in my film there would be a 'surving women' who would appeal to a female audiance, but mainly I would expect my target audiance to be male.

Sexuality-

Because my film shows no coutnertypes to as far as gender goes, this means that I would not expect my film to appeal to the gay community, otherwise known as 'the pink pound'. However if my film did contain countertypes of gender, this would appeal to a gay audiance.

Nationality-

I would expect for this film to appeal to a British audiance becuase the film has a Northen-English speaking cast, which would not be recognisable to the American audiance, the American audiance would represent this accent to be working class, and as my film does not show the character to be working class due to the setting of his house, it may confuse an American audiance. 

Social/Economic Group-

I would expect that my film would appeal to a C1C2DE audiance (upper-middle class, lower-middle class and working-class) because my cast contains of middle-class which would appeal to both the working class and middle class audiances. The horror genre, as my research shows me, also only appeals to these audainces so I can not expect to appeal to a Upper-Class audiance.

Fans-

I would expect that fans of the film Trick or Treat would be paticulary appealed to my movie becuase the opening has a massive intertectule refrence to this move. Although I would expect that any fans of horror films would be attracted to my film. However I could not attract fans of well-known actors becuase I have no stars in my production.

Ethnicity- 

Our film should appeal to an audiance of any ethinicty even though my cast is all corcasiain. If I had used any actors from another ethical group this may of expanded the target audiance further and mate it multi-ethnic audiance.