Feedback From the Opening

 We presented our film opening in front of the target audience and then created a questionnaire for everyone to fill out, this was so that we could get feedback on various areas and amend these or justify them.

These are the headings of the questions and the tally charts that we created with all the filled out questionnaires and also quoting some of the most useful answers.

Examples of the questionnaire we gave for the audience to answer.

The Final Narrative and Storyboard

The Final Narrative and Storyboard

The final narrative included Kieran walking the dog, we thought it was more realistic and made Kieran look more vulnerable to be alone.
The teenage boy, is walking his dog, on a cold winters day. He chooses to be spontaneous and goes on a completely new walk. His dog seems to sense something and runs off. Kieran runs after him, and stumbles onto a deserted house, only to find that the house and dog is possessed.
We chose to use minimal dialogue to not over power the music and kept to create the suspense.

Titles

Titles

Freytags Dramatic Structure
Eposition
Rising action
Climax
Falling action
Catastrophe/resolution

Levi Strauss
Narrative tension is based on opposition or conflict. Simple as two characters fighting more oftena at an ideological level for example Westerns or Starwars

SYD fields three act plot structure
The first- set up (ours contains this, which is setting up for the second act)
The second- confrontation
Act three-Resolution

Todorovs theory
Euilibrium- nice-bad-nice
We have challenged this by starting off with a diseuilibrium

Vladimir propp

The villain (there is a hint of this in house, who is drawing the dog into the house)
Victim being male- against the stereotype
Victim-dog

Comprehending time
Linear

Social Networking

Social Networking Site

We decided to create a Twitter account for our production company so that we could promote our film opening through the internet to appeal to a bigger audience.

We've posted the link to our opening through a tweet so that all our followers can watch it and like it through our youtube account.

Rain Mark

 During our opening we decided to try and get rain droplets to fall onto the lense of the camera, this was because we looked at images with rain on them and thought it made it look obscure and could add to the tension and uneasy feel to it.

The rain droplets create a mask or cover across the screen which blurrs out the background and its hard to make out what is behind it, which is a mysterious element.

These four pictures are areas during our opening that we managed to get a rain droplet onto the lense and as you can see the view behind is hard to make out. And because the droplet occurs from the beginning of the outside scene through to the house it shows a reoccurance of it, this adds to the cliff hanger ending and maybe why the dog is drawn towards the house.

Our Final Media Product

Justification

Negatives/questions:
Why a guy actor?- A dog is a mans best friend therefore when the dog runs off the man is concerned which is why he goes looking for him. A women may not necessarily go into the house (call somone)

Why was there smoke at the end?- The smoke has a tint of green and the dogs eyes at the end are green- effect that its coming from the dog

Did he mean to trip?- He did not mean to trip, its acting and it makes the scene seem more real life.

Why cant you hear the calling of the dog?- We are going to amend this so the calling of the dog can be faintly heard

Could you include more titles?- We will be editing our film again and including more relevant titles that are needed

The camera is a bit jolty- We are going to stabilise the camera shot next editing session

Watermarks on the camera- We did this on purpose because, not knowing whats behind the marks makes the audience seem uneasy and unsure of what is going on behind it

Feedback

We showed our first draft of the film opening to the target audience today on a piece of paper they fed back to us what they liked about our opening and also some questions about areas they werent sure on.

We wrote down all the positives from the feedback, and then wrote down what things we need to work on or justify.

Positives:
Production Title
Music
Dog-Whining
Lighting
Good ending
Graffiti
POV camera shot
Camera shots in general
Location
Raindrop on the camera-good effect
Eyes at the end

Negatives/questions:
Why a guy actor?
Why was there smoke at the end?
Did he mean to trip?
Why cant you hear the calling of the dog?
Could you include more titles?
The camera is a bit jolty
Watermarks on the camera

Filming

Filming

TAKE 1:

3rd February- First day of filming we had two male actors and got a bareing of the kind of shots and costume we wanted for our opening. We decided not to use this footage because the costume didnt fit the scene and the lighting inside the house was too dark and lastly two actors didnt show vulnerability which is what we wanted.



TAKE 2:
10th February- We now knew that having one actor instead iof two was a better idea. It was raining therefore enough footage would have to be filmed outside to allow for editing. Watching it back there was a major improvement from the first set and this was the footage we were happy with using.


TAKE 3:

18th February- Although we had a good base for the opening because of an issue with the rain we wanted to film it again to see if we could amend it. The rain gave a good effect throughout the whole of the opening in comparison to this set; We decided that because the weather was vastly different the decision was made to not use this and stay with the previous set.


Overall filming more than one time helped with getting a good understanding of the way we wanted our opening and also having a range of shots and lighting it also gave us an oportuinity to choose which looked the best.

Blog Responses

We presented the first few posts on the blog to our class and this was some of the feedback they gave:

I think we have successfully amended and added their constructive criticism given to the blog. And now the blog contains what was asked and more.

We chose a black background because black suited with the horror genre.  

Adapting the Narrative

Narrative:

We adapted our narrative to include a dog walk as we thought this was a more realistic way to come across the haunted house.
The scene starts with Kieran walking his dog, which then proceeds to run into the deserted house…  Keiran follows and finds himself outside the house, conscious of entering, the dog doesn’t appear so Kieran is forced into the house where he find his dog…

Coincidentally there was graffiti already at the house which involved a dog, seen below.
We thought this fitted our media product perfectly as we wanted the audience to get the feeling that someone/something is in the house watching the dog walker.
The graffiti helped foreshadowed that something was going to happen to the dog.

Graffiti Found in the Abandoned House

This is a poster advertising the film 'Sinister.'
I thought the face on the wall was really effective
which is why we included the footage of a similar threatening
graffiti face found on a wall in the abandoned house


We also discovered some graffiti in the house which included

a dog and the writing refering to animals which coincidentally fitted our narrative well so we included it in our openning. It helps foreshadow that something will
happen involving the dog in the openning.