Evaluation Questions 1.

1. At a micro, technical level, how well did you observe the conventions of continuity, the language of film and the grammar of the edit?

Before filming our major task, we started with a preliminary task to practice using cameras for the first time and to help us understand the importance of continuity in a short film. Bringing this knowledge to our major task we were able to make it look as if everything was set according to our storyboard and was on the same day.
Using many different angles and camera shots we explored many aspects of the different areas of film. We used props, effective accompaniment and were able to create our characters through dialogue and costume.
We were able to experiment with different editing skills which we used in our film. Effects such as ‘Fast Blur’, ‘Black and White’ and ‘Ghosting’ were shown in our editing.

2. How many mistakes did you make, and did you improve in the main task having made errors in the preliminary exercise?

In our preliminary task we didn’t have enough footage which resulted in us re-shooting on different days which was bad for our continuity element as it was obviously not shot on the same day. We had used zoom-ins on some of our shots which made it look bad and also a lot of free-hand camera which resulted in shaky shots.
Lack of lighting ruined some of our preliminary shots and the fade in and out of music was very bad.
In our main task, music and sound effects fading in and out was much more effective and our continuity was a lot better. We still needed to re-shoot some of our shots but they don’t look as if they were shot on different days as we kept all aspects of the original shots the same as in the re-shoots (e.g. props, costumes, location).
To reduce shaky shots, we used a tripod so that the camera was still whilst filming. Our lighting was much more effective in our main task as you could always see the character clearly.

3. At a more symbolic, macro level, how does your fiction film reflect or challenge the conventions of the genre or type you are working in? Will it fulfil the ‘contractual’ nature of film genre or will it subvert expectations deliberately?

Our chosen genre is horror, and we tried to find as many ways to represent this by using props and the way we filmed our shots.
We researched other scary movies and saw what was recurrent in each one, and we used this to help the planning of our own horror movie opening. We saw that lots of people in horror movies die, so we created our storyline reflect this aspect or horror.
Something twisted happens with our storyline, like in most horror films. They want to intrigue the audience. This is typically horror genre; we set our film in flashbacks, as in a bad event happened in the past but karma is catching up with the present.


4. Are there any elements of deliberate pastiche or parody, where you ‘play’ with the genre’s codes and history? Are there any intertextual moments where you hint at a reference to another film?

A pastiche is something borrowed for one or more other sources, and a parody is a humorous imitation of a literature piece e.g. black adder.
Our film has neither a pastiche nor parody. We decided not to play around with the genre’s codes and history and stuck to the basics of typical horror genre.
We thought that the storyline we had decided on would be a lot more effective if it was done seriously without humour or something borrowed from different sources.
We kept ours original and made up our own ideas for everything, including sound effects, captions, shots and storyboard.

5. What kinds of audience pleasure are you trying to provide, and how confident are you that you have delivered on this promise?

Mine and Annabells’ film was set as a horror. Our plan was to create something chilling and I think that this was quite successful for our first film. After taking things from typical horror movies into consideration, we were able to construct our own murder scene, build a climax with our running scene and build up tension throughout the two minutes with rock music as the accompaniment and a scream to add to our sound effects.
We tried to keep our shots as interesting as possible and also gripping to watch. We want it to be aesthetically pleasing to all audiences.