Evaluation Activity 4: Who are your audience and what have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Our intended outcome of our production was to create a vampire spoof comedy that did what every comedy is meant to do; make people laugh, to entertain and to leave consumers wanting more.

When researching for our demographic for our film, we looked at the main target audiences for films such as "Twilight", as well the audiences of the various Scary Movie films. We also conducted research into friends and colleagues on their views of films in the parody genre. When looking at the audience of the Twilight films, we learned that the audience was mainly teenage girls and young women mainly, raging from the the ages of 13/14 up to 30.

We found that by making a vampire spoof we already had an audience the fan base generated around the likes of the Twilight phenomenon around the time when vampire films were at their peak we knew that this was going to be a hit. Last year we saw many twilight fans flock to see ‘Vampire’s suck’ a spoof comedy based around the Twilight saga.

Due to the recent surge in vampire film and television productions, we decided to a parody to make light relief of the subjects of these pieces of media, providing our own comedic take on the genre. When gaining feedback for our film trailer we used numerous social networking sites to post our trailer on and to gain feedback and guidance on what we could do to improve our productions. Due to our school's safety policy, we were unable to have access to sites such as ‘YouTube’ and ‘Facebook’ in college hours, so whilst in college we made use of ‘Vimeo’, a video sharing website that allowed us to post our production and other videos online to use both in school and at home. We found that as our target audience for our vampire spoof was late teens we decided to post our production on Facebook as with us ourselves being around that age we were able to reach out to our target audience easily in order to gain constructive criticism. We have learnt from this feedback what has worked within our production and what needed to be changed. From the feedback we recieved from our class members, we learnt that our piece worked well, although the second piece of music did not fit the production as much as the opening piece of music does, and we also learned that the slide which stated "Coming soon" did not fit fully into the section of our production it was in, meaning that we instead moved the slide round to fit more into the finished production.
 
I feel that through this A2 production work, I have developed my editing skills through editing our groups trailer. Although I went into this work fairly confident with using the Pinnacle software, I believe that I have furthered my ability to succesfully edit footage to produce a much better finished product, as well as having a much better technical knowledge over the software. I now feel much more at ease using Pinnacle to edit with. I also feel I have developed my ability in devising a successful piece of media, from the planning to the actual construction of the piece. I have learnt from mistakes made in previous media work, including my AS production work, and with this experience I believe I have created a much better production. From this piece of work, I have also learnt more on voice-overs, having had to perform one myself for our production.

Evaluation Activity 3: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Media powerpoint

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Evaluation Activity 2: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? What particular camerawork techniques & editing tools were used and to what effect?

When performing research into various conventions and themes which we wanted to use in our A2 media trailer production, we made particularly strong use of various internet sites such as YouTube and the Internet Movie Database. We watched a variety of film trailers on both sites, particularly YouTube (www.youtube.com), due its easy accessibility and use, as well as it being used by major film companies, such as Miramax to advertise their upcoming films and generate hype for them. We found good use of Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) as well, due to the amount of institutional information available on the site, and links to related works, such as to trailers and pages featuring similar actors or directors.

When planning our production, we primarily used software such as Microsoft Word to write up our planning documents and files such as our scripts, shot lists etc. as well as using the photo editing software Adobe Photoshop to design our production company logo, as well as our ancillary tasks of a magazine cover and a film poster.

When filming our production, we used a variety of equipment to achieve our visions of what our trailer was going to be like. We used a Sony handheld camera for filming our footage on, due to its easy availability as well as being portable and very easy to carry around due to its small size. The camera also provides clear images and videos to use in our production. As well as our camera, we used a tripod to steady our shots, which we found was of very important use when filming the bedroom scenes at Antonia’s house, due to the odd angle of the floor, which meant that without the tripod, the footage we had would have been unusable. However, with the use of the tripod, we ensured that all of our shots were at the correct angle and could be used.

Although the equipment we used was helpful in a variety of uses, we also had some problems using them. For instance, although the tripod was useful in correcting the angles of our shots, we found it to be hard to set up the tripod up to precisely counter the floor angle, and were a very long and arduous task. Likewise, when using the handheld camera, we found that the built-in microphone of the camera did not pick up the sound and voice of our scenes, meaning that often in times of editing we found that the music often was louder than the dialogue and drowned it out.  We also used a microphone in our production, for recording the voice over for our trailer. When using the microphone, we at first had trouble getting a clear and useable piece of sound from the microphone, due to the microphone muffling the dialogue from the voiceover, as well as picking various pieces of background noise. If we were to re-record the voice over, then I would use a different microphone, due to the difficulties we faced when recording for this trailer production.

When editing our film trailer, we used the video editing software Pinnacle Studio Pro HD V.15.

We had experience with the previous version of Pinnacle Studio prior to using it to edit, as well as first using the current version it to edit our AS production, meaning that we felt comfortable with editing and capturing our footage into a trailer format. When using Pinnacle, we found that the new version captured all of our footage and separated the different takes and shots we had taken in one action, resulting in a much easier process of transferring our footage onto the computer to edit, instead of capturing individual shots and scenes ourselves over a prolonged period of time, a problem we faced with the previous version of Pinnacle. Pinnacle also allowed us to easily transfer our created images such as our production company straight in to use in our production. When using Pinnacle, we cut specific shots from our footage down to smaller sections, fitting them together with other pieces of footage in an almost montage style, allowing us to connote across certain ideas and themes, bringing out the comedy of our piece by connecting a variety of our footage with comedy elements in. 
Pinnacle was also used in making our animatic, where we scanned the images of our storyboards onto the computer, before transferring them into Pinnacle and placing alongside each other.
Overall, we found Pinnacle a very useful piece of software when creating our production, due to its easy to use interface, and our previous experience with the software meant that we felt more at ease going into the editing process than we would have with prior experience using the Pinnacle Studio software.

When adding the finishing touches to our production, we used the websites http://www.freesound.org/ and http://www.freeplaymusic.com/ to get copyright-free music to use in our production. We found these sites were very helpful and easy to use, and had a vast amount of sounds to be used, meaning that we could become more specific with the sounds and music we wanted, narrowing down the genre of music we wished to use.

After finishing our piece, we decuded upon placing our finished productions upon both our own Facebook accounts as well as on video sharing sites such as Vimeo, to share with our friends and others, asking for Feedback.

These sites proved particulary useful for us when sharing our video, due to Facebook being instantly linked to our friends so that they could instantly view our video, as well as Vimeo having the ability to share and embed our video upon our blogs and other sites, as well as being viewed driectly from Vimeo. We also posted our animatic onto our Vimeo sites, to embed onto our blog afterwards as evidence of producing storyboards and an animatic.

To post our research, planning and evaluations online, we made use of the website Blogger. Blogger was of great help in easily posting our information online in a structured manner, and we could easily send each other information posted upon our blogs to other group members. Blogger was also good for keeping to schedules for filming etc, and meant that we could work both in school and at home to share our information to be viewed by group members, allowing us to post freely and quickly. The website allowed the ability to easily transfer and embed images and videos to use in correlation with our work and as evidence, and to use to show our characters used in our production and the costumes we had used for the characters.

Evaluation Activity 1: Directors Commentary

Glampire - Finished Trailer

Technical Decisions & Problems faced

When filming scenes for our film trailer, we faced numerous difficulties in securing locations to film in. For instance, we had trouble trying to secure Gawthorpe Hall as a filming location, and because we could not gain the rights to film there, we decided to film elsewhere. We also trouble with the lighting in certain environments we were filming in. For instance, we had trouble with the dark when filming the bedroom scene at Antonia's house, due to the room we were filming in being quite dark even with the lights on.

When it came to editing our trailer, due to the bad lighting in some of the settings we used, we had to ensure that our scenes were clearly visible. For this, we used lighting editing, increasing the contrast and brightness marginally, so that our scenes still looked natural and clear, but were not too bright and detracted from the scene.

We also had difficulty shooting the bedroom scene due to slant of the floor at the house we were filming at. Due to us not being able to fix this problem, we had to ensure that the tripod was securely set at a correct angle and fix the length of the leg stands so that the footage we were shooting came out correctly and was not at an angle when captured onto the computer for editing.

Ancillary Task 2: Film Poster

Ancillary Task 1: Magazine Cover

Our magazine cover

For our magazine cover, we decided to make our primary focus on the main character of our film trailer, Steve the Glampire. For our magazine cover, we created our own film magazine instead of using an established magazine such as "Empire", although we used a similar design principle to how the Empire front cover is designed, crammed in by lots of text advertising other films and television programmes which feature inside the magazine, such as the example here:

We chose to make our main actor and character the focus of our magazine cover, used as a draw to bring in both readers of the magazine and fans of the actor. We took inspiration from Empire due to their covers normally making the main character of a film the primary focus of their cover. 

Animatic for our trailer

Untitled from Gabrielle Tomlinson on Vimeo.

Characters in our Trailer

Steve the Vampire: played by Mitchell Terry

• A very un-cool vampire who thinks he's really popular and a total ladies man. He's clumsy and dum and most fo the time a complete scaredy cat. He always wears a cape and has a hair comb on him at all times.

Nora the Geek: played by Gabrielle Tomlinson

• Nora is a typical geek, she wears geeky glasses and plain clothing. She likes Steve but he doesn't relalise until the end of the film. Nora and Steve are good friends for the duration of the film.

Risk Assessment

When filming our scenes, we ensured that all trip hazards were removed from the floor before moving around and performing. We also made sure that all equipment used for filming was completely safe to use beforehand, and did not have any broken or stray wires or was damaged. We also made sure that when filming our piece, we always had a mobile phone to use in case of an emergency, and always filmed in groups to ensure we had someone to get help if their was an emergency.

Music used in our production

For our production, we decided to use copyright free music in our piece, with the idea for the music to give the film the comedy edge and match the parody theme of our trailer.
For the opening section of our trailer, we used an orchestral piece we found on the website http://www.freeplaymusic.com/ called "Intrepid Traveler". Featuring a building string section, we felt that the piece would work well with the opening of our trailer, lulling the audience into a false sense of security and playing up to the parody side of our film, presenting it as an almost Epic movie.
http://www.freeplaymusic.com/search/preview_file.php?id=92&dur=0&type=mp3 - Shortcut  to "Intrepid Traveler".

We immediately used a sound effect of a record player's needle being pulled off of a record quickly, to give the impression of the track being stopped short of it's climax. This effect is used in various pieces of media, like in a variety of songs, films and television shows, often to switch from one idea of connoting to the audience a switch from a serious situation to a more comedic one. We took the sound effect from the website http://www.freesound.org/.
http://www.freesound.org/people/Halleck/sounds/29938/ - Link to Record Scratch sound effect.

For our final piece of music in our trailer, we used a short piece of hip hop music entitled "Beat 1", also taken from http://www.freesound.org/. We chose this piece of music due to Hip-hop's worldwide appeal, as well as due to the fact that the music contrasts with the "camp" character of Steve the vampire, hip-hop music associated with  "urban" themes and rap music.
http://www.freesound.org/people/zyberbird/sounds/15495/ - link to "Beat 1"

Film Titles

Glampire - This is the name that we like the best and the one we wanted to do originally. It go the most votes in our survey with 15 votes out of 62. We fused together the word 'Glam' and 'Vampire' to make the comical name 'Glampire'. It's catchy and easy to remember as it's just one word. It also expresses the genre well as the audience we be able to tell a lot from this title. Clearly its about a vampire who's 'glam' and is obviously not going to be a horror or action film. It's most likely going to be a spoof and this will be apparent to the audience just by the title and then backed up by the trailer.



Fangtasy - This is a play on the word 'Fantasy'. As the story is completely fiction, the word fantasy is appropriate. This was the second most popular with 13 votes. Again it's one word and memorable. The word 'Fang' is also well associated with vampires as they have fangs for teeth. This would again let the audience know that this is most likely going to be a film about vampires.


Don't Fang About- We really liked this one as it's a play on words for the phrase: 'Don't hang about'. This got 8 votes. We thought about using this as a slogan for the trailer: "Dont fang about, here's something you can really sink your teeth into!" We are therefore going to explore suitable slogans for the film with a vampire twist incorporated into them, we may therefore use some of the names we considered as titles as inspiration for our slogans.


The Only Vampire in the Village - The Only Vampire in the Village got 7.  This is a take on the 'Little Britain' catchphrase "The Only Gay in the Village". This is well known and for our young audience, is quite amusing. It is also in keeping with our theme of the vampire in our trailer being not gay but quite feminine and the fact that in our film, steve is the only vampire rather than being in what is known as a 'coven' in Twilight or a 'Brood' or 'Clan' in most vampire films.


Suck it to 'em - This is a play on the catchphrase 'Sock it to 'em' . It got 5 votes and again we are thinking of using this a slogan rather than an actually title. We changed the word 'Sock' for 'Suck' to make it relevent to our film genre as vampires are known for 'sucking' blood out of humans.


NosferTuTu - NosferaTuTu also got 5 votes. Nosferatu is the name of  a silent german film from 1922 which is based on the story of dracula but with the names and places changed. For example, the name vampire is changed to Nosferatu. A TuTu is a skirt made of netting that is stereotypically quite girly, this makes the name 'NosferaTuTu' quite funny.


Van Helsing-song - Abraham Van helsing was a Vampire Slayer in Bram Stoker's Dracula novel. We thought that this would be a nice idea if we had our movie as a musical because it has the words sing-song in it.


The Vampire Gayer - This is a parody of the phrase 'The Vampire Slayer' which was also a popular TV show in 1997 to 2003 named 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'. We changed the word slay to gay to make it comical for the audience however we felt that perhaps it was a little to 'in-your-face'.


Cup-a-Blood - This is a twist of the warm drink 'Cup-a-Soup' but we replaced soup for blood to make it vampire related. We liked this one but not as much as some of the others, it wasn't quite as memorable.


Vampiracy - Vampire is obviously made up of the two words 'Vampire' and 'Piracy'. Piracy is copying other forms of media, like films and music. This would be appropriate as because our film is a spoof, we will be taking bits from other vampire films. It is also a short word, making it quite catchy.

Film Fonts

This font is quite bold and stands out. However it's quite squished together and a little difficult to read. We liked the idea of having a loveheart over the 'I' to make it more feminine. We could perhaps change the colour

This font is a lot like the fint for the Disney company, it therefore has a childish feel to it. The writing looks handwritten but still clear enough to read it. There is also a love heart above the 'I' which makes it girly and cute.

I like this film title, the curled, rickety edges remind me of a late ‘Nosferatu’, the original vampire film. Although this font style is apparent it’s some kind of theatrical thriller film, it’s not however getting across the essence of our genre. The small heart inside the letter ‘A’ subtly emphasises the twist within our film however doesn’t give too much away.

This font reminds me of the film 'Bewitched as it has the sparkles over it. However I think the sparkles would be more appropriate for a film with magic in it rather than a supernatural film. The letters are clear although strangely formed and curled a little.

I really liked this one, the letters are bold and clear and easy to read and there are numerous heart shapes over the top. This is girly however because it's written in bold capitals and not hadwriting its not quite as feminine. This is the one we've decided to pick for our font.

This one is quite spooky looking so would go with our genre of the supernatural. There is no hearts or stars over the letters though which is what we were looking for. However we still wanetd to include this font as we could quite easily put a heart over the dot of the 'I'.

This font is always quite nice but the 'G' doesn't stand out as much. Although I think it's quite effective that the 'G' is inside the heart with a smaller heart next to it. The letters are also bold and in capitals so they do stand out quite well.

Although this one is quite nice and girly, its not particularly easy to read and doesn't stand out straight away because the hearts are inside the letters. The only bit I really like about this font is that the letters are bold and black.

Script for Narration

Voice-over: This Summer... A film like no other...will hit your screen...He's got true blood…

CUT TO:                                         

Scene where he's walking through the school

Voice-over:...with his own vampire diary.

Voice-over:..He's a smooth operator...

CUT TO:

Burger scene

Voice-over: ... with the courage of a Lion.

Hanging upside down from tree scene, scene with cat

Music changes

Voice-over: He’s the average man’s R-Patz. From the makers of Scary Movie and Spy Hard, Sink your teeth into this! Glampire, coming soon

CUT TO:

Script for characters in Trailer

Steve pushes open doors, crowd moves apart.

Steve is walking through the corridor towards camera, stops  in front of camera.

Crowd Member: gasp

CUT TO:

Steve opens door and looks across the room at girl

Girl with ketchup on face looks confused at Steve

Steve displays look of affection, then brushes back hair smoothly

Girl shrugs, eats burger

Steve leaves, looking sad

CUT TO:

Steve Brushes hair back, sat on tree, almost falls

CUT TO:

Steve hanging upside down from tree

Steve:  it’s so high!

CUT TO:

Steve is sat in office chair, holding cat stroking it

Steve: (in camp voice) Hello Mr Kitty! Hello!

Steve realises he is talking camply, coughs loudly

Steve: (in deep voice) hello…

CUT TO:

Steve appears at a window of a house, and climbs in, getting stuck on the curtain on the way in.

Steve climbs onto the bed of the “Female” and crawls along towards them.

He pulls back their hair from their neck, before they turn to him, revealed it is a man.

Steve: (shocked) you’re a man?!

Man: I can be anything you want me to be…

CUT TO:

Steve eats a slice of garlic bread

Realises it is garlic, begins to choke and collapses

CUT TO:

Steve stood in front of houses on a pathway, pouts and looks into camera, before looking away into the distance

Titles overlaid.

END

Make Up process

As our production is a vampire parody film, we needed to have our lead Vampire character to have the all the looks and features of the stereotypical vampire. With this in mind, due to my position as playing the lead vampire, I had to undergo a fairly lengthy procedure of applying make up to my face.

To get the look of the vampire, we used white face paint as a base all over the face, with black eyeshadow used to create distinctive cheekbones, creating a gaunt and somewhat animated look. We again used black eyeshadow over and under the lids of the eyes, the by lining the eyes with a black liquid eyeliner this gave out more definition in the eyes giving them a more intense look.

We then used the liquid eyeliner to line both the eyebrows and the hairline using angled edges to create a Dracula esque symmetrical facial shape. Furthermore, we added some red lipstick to the lips, and then coated with a gloss to give a dripping effect simular to blood. Finally, by adding wet look gel to the hair we were able to create the combed back, quiffed style made synonymous with the Count Dracula image.

Institutional Information for our Film Trailer

Due to the genre of our film, we have decided that our film would be produced by the company "Dimension Films".  The studio, famous for producing many major horror films and franchises, such as the "Scream" franchise, "Scary Movie" franchise, and various films in the "Halloween" franchise.

Dimension Films is owned by The Weinstein Company. After the Weinstein Brothers left Miramax, they took with them Dimension films, to continue releasing specific genre films.The company, previously a subsidiary of Miramax, which in itself is a subsidiary of Walt Disney, has built up a solid reputation as a comedy and Horror film company.

For the release of our film, we have decided that the film would be released in multiplexes during summer time, released possibly early summer. Our reasoning for this is that at this our target audience, teenagers and young adults, would not be in education at the time, due to schools, colleges and universities finishing for the summer holidays, meaning that we would have more people coming to see our film. When looking at previous Dimension film's releases, most of their films have been released over the summer period and into the winter season, due to those being the peak times of the year that moviegoers will go to the cinema. This time of year is also when most blockbuster films are released.

For the release of the trailer for our film, we feel that our trailer would be shown before similar films, aimed at a similar audience. This would increase both knowledge and interest in the film, and bring in more people from our target audience to see our film. Our trailer would be shown internationally, due to the themes of the trailer and the film being international .

Shot list

Done	#	Shot	Action	Notes
Done	1	Medium-close up	Steve sat in tree pouting	Fade after shot
Done	2	Long shot	Steve walking down school corridor through crowd, stops in front of camera
Done	3	Close up	Steve opens door
Done	4	Close up	Nora turns to face Steve
Done	5	Close up	Steve pulls out brush and brushes hair, moves closer to Nora
Done	6	Close up	Nora gives Steve an unenthusiastic look
Done	7	Medium shot	Steve sat in a tree brushing hair back pouting
Done	8	Medium-close up	Steve hanging upside down from tree	Dialogue
Done	9	Medium	Steve and cat	Dialogue
Done	10	Medium	Steve climbing through window
Done	11	Mid-close up	Steve climbing across bed towards “girl”
Done	12	Close up	Steve pulling hair away from “girls neck”
Done	13	Close up	“Girl” turns to Steve, reveals it is a man
Done	14	Close up	Steve shocked at man	Dialogue
Done	15	Mid-close up	Steve eating garlic bread, collapses
Done	16	Long shot	Steve stood posing, pouting	Zoom in, fade
Done	17		Logo, credits