Final Export Of Unknown

Official Radio Trailer for 'Unknown'

Official Poster for 'Unknown'

Evaluation Question Four

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

To begin with, we used blogger to create a blog for our group. Putting our work on a blog makes it easy to have both individual and collaborative work all In one place. Google Blogger's tagging system allows the people in the group to all work on one post together on one person's account, and yet still share credit for the collaborative post. The blog also allows us to embed photographs and videos, making our blog multi-media and making it easy for people to find links to other sites without having to leave the blog. This allowed us to put all our research and ideas together in one place that we can go back to and revisit whenever needed.

We also used google's search engine for our research as it is an easy search engine to use and has a very large amount of information for us to look through. Having such a large search engine to look through meant that as a group we could gather lots of information in our research and were well prepared when it came to putting our film together and creating a story. It allowed us to build up a large log or information and research that we can use to out into our film and make it the best we possible can. When we had an idea for our film we used Celtx to create a professional looking and easy to follow script.

Once the film was scripted to began filming. We used digital cameras to film as they are high quality and create professional looking shots for our film. They are simple to use and it is easy to look back on what you have shot. We also used them to take still photographs for our poster as the high quality made our pictures look professional and are a good at taking clear, crisp photographs. When filming with the cameras we found their light weight and small size incredibly useful for transporting it to and from our location and setting the equipment up in preparation to film. We also used a zoom recorder to record the knocking noise for our film as it meant that we could alter the volume to fit the tension levels and where about in the house the main character is at the time of the knocking.

To edit our film we used Premier. It is very user friendly and easy to understand, making it ideal for a student film like ours. Using the razor tool, it was very easy to cut shots down and put them together in an order that made sense. Being able to link and unlink sound was very helpful as it meant that we could cover and replace sound within our film to make it as professional as possible. We also used the available tools on premier to colour correct scenes that had a yellow hue to them in order to keep continuity throughout the film and to darken scenes with too much light, as our film is set at night.

Evaluation Question Three

Question three from RachelLucrezia

Evaluation Question Two

This is the script for the video i will film for my evaluation question two:

Evaluation Question One

(1) In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I believe that I observed the continuity and language of film and editing to a reasonable extent at a technical level as our film itself was well edited and put together in a way which avoided errors in continuity, giving the film a story that was not too hard to follow, yet still had an heir of mystique to it. We made our film look professional from a cinematic point of view by using a tripod to keep the camera steady and to make sure our framing remained straight throughout the shots. In order to do this we framed up a shot with the people in it before filming, ensuring they were fully in shot.

Our film fits its genre conventions quite well. As a horror film, it is quite a common theme to have a girl alone, making her look vulnerable which is how our film starts out. She picks up a weapon to show the audience that she doesn't have anybody there to defend her, and that she is all alone with whatever is causing the knocking noise. We also have music in our film which builds up the tension and makes the audience feel uncomfortable as it is often a sign that something bad is going to happen, however they are surprised when we subvert genre conventions by having something non threatening at the end of the constantly building music.

In our film, using the ukulele is a link to another horror comedy film. In Scary Movie, a female is alone in a house being hunted by a killer. She has a lot of weapons liked up and instead decides to use a banana to defend herself against the knife wheedling serial killer. We also have hand held shots that are sped up to create an almost inhuman look. These are a reference to Evil Dead, giving our film links to both horror and horror comedy. Further more, the knocking noise is used in many horror films as it makes the audience curious as to who is on the other side of the door.

Our main audience pleasure is entertainment as our film is not an educational one, and is purely for the audience's enjoyment. We believe that we have done this well due to feedback that we have gathered from our target audience who have all enjoyed watching the film and found it entertaining. Our film could also be a place to find role models as the main girl in the film is clearly an intendant and strong woman who is not afraid to face the dangers alone. She either lives alone or is home alone, either displaying that she is independent as she does not need someone else in the house to look after her. The pizza boy is also a good role model as he is clearly young but is out in the world earning money instead of relying on adults for it. Richard Dyer's theory says that there are certain pleasures that people can get from watching films. One of these is intensity. Our main character's facial expressions hsow extreme fear throughout the film as she doesn't know who's at the door. This mirror's the extreme fear in Drag Me To Hell when Christine has been cursed by the gypsy woman and does not know what will happen to her. We also have transparency in our film as the use of weapons, slow walking and jumping at every noise illustrates the fear that the main character feels. According to Dyer, having these things on our film will make it entertaining to our audience.

Richard Dyer's theory states that there are certain things that people lack in their lives and seeing them in films makes the film more entertaining for them. Our film has Energy due to it being a horror. The tension and excitement of not knowing wo is behind the door is something that an audience gets a thrill from, making the film more enjoyable and entertaining for them.

I have studied many real media texts in my research for “Unknown” one of which was “Psycho” for the harsh music used within it. It has very high pitched and loud music which we decided to use in our film too with the stressful tension music that builds up before cutting of quickly for the sound of the knocking or the pizza boy dialogue. Alfred Hitchcock had major influences in our film with close ups of female faces, harsh music and a constant mystery shrouding the film. We also looked at Shaun of the Dead, which is another film which uses makeshift weapons as a form of comedy. I also spent time researching “The Tea Chronicles” which is similar as it has long periods of time without dialogue to build up tension.

Feedback from our Second Audience Questionnaire

Audience Feedback Questionnaire for the Final Film

Radio Trailer Script

Here is the script for the voice over that will feature in our Radio Trailer. The Voice over will be done by Millie England

The Process of Making our Film Poster

To begin with, we started off with a black background and then we decided to insert an image of our main character with eerie (green/yellow) lighting. This looks effective as it looks as if the main character is surrounded by darkness and this gives off a sense of vulnerability and this is common for the horror genre. Also, after this image was placed, we changed the hue and the saturation of the image to give it more of an impact. This makes the colours a lot more eerie and helps submerge the character into the darkness of the black background. The saturation of her face also gives it a slightly vintage look which works well for the horror genre.

Next we decided to insert the film title. Originally the font we chose was black and obviously this wouldn't work with this poster as it wouldn't be visible so using Adobe Illustrator we image traced the font. This helped make the font a lot more solid and easier to work with as it was extremely difficult to get rid of the white background that came with the font. We then expanded the font and used the live paint bucket tool to change the colour of the font from black to red. This really compliments the dark colours used within the poster and this choice of colour makes it obvious to the audience what kind of film they are going to watch. We used red as it is a convention of horror films.

Then we began to incorporate general elements of a film poster. We decided to use the 'Steel Tongs' font to add generic information about the film including roles and who performed each role. We decided to use this font in grey as we felt that using white would contrast the black background and this would have taken the eerie feel away from the poster so we decided to go for grey font.

After that, we decided to add a tag line to our poster. The words "Knock Knock" link to our film as the main character can hear a knocking noise coming from somewhere in the house. The colour of the font here looks really effective as it is similar to the colour in the photograph of the protagonist and also looks slightly dis-coloured, connoting to the audience that there is something strange going on.

Finally, we added some final details to the poster and these included elements such as the age certificate of the film, the production logo and also reviews from film magazines and websites. This helped make the poster look a lot more professional and ultimately create a better composition, making it easier for the eyes of the audience.

 

Horror Film Soundtrack

Theme Songs by Bands and Singers

The remake of Fright Night made in 2011 has Hugo's cover of  Jay-Z's 99 Problems as it's theme song heard at the end of the film.

The Lost Boys film from 1987 has the theme song Cry Little Sister written by Gerard McMann and Michael Mainieri and was performed by McMann.

Stephen King's 1986 film Maximum Overdrive has the AC/DC song Who Made Who as it's theme song.

Horror Film Soundtrack

John Murphy 

John Murphy is an English film composer who first gained recognition from working on the Guy Richie film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. He als composed the scores for 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, Sunshine and the remake of The Last House On The Left. "In The House, In A Heartbeat" from 28 Days Later and "Adagio In D Minor" have since been used in many adverts, TV shows and film trailers. Murphy's music seems to be the in the eye of the storm as his music is a calming force in a chaotic situation. 


 

Horror Film Soundtrack

Joesph Bishara 

Joseph Bishara is an American composer and actor who has composed scores for horror films such as all three Insidious films, The Conjuring and Annabelle. Bishara's music tends to be slow quiet but builds tension throughout and finishes with a crescendo to scare you. 

 

Horror Film Soundtrack

Charlie Clouser

Charlie Clouser is a past member of the Industrial Metal band Nine Inch Nails. Clouser has helped produce and remix many films soundtracks, most notibly that of all 7 Saw films along with Dead Silence, The Collection, Resident Evil: Extinction and TV series American Horror Story. Clouser plays keyboard, synthesizer, theremin and drums which can all be heard within his soundstracks, all of which seem to hold a slight sound of the Industrial Metal he used to be asscoiated with when in NIN. His music is fairly fast paced with great influence from drums keeping the pace steady yet hectic throughout as to mirror the genre of films his music seems most associated with. The tension that builds along with the music keeps the audience on the edge of their seat as they watch along, especially with the brutal traps and gory deaths seen in the Saw francise.  

Poster Research

Horror Film Taglines

For our poster we needed a fitting tagline that would fit with our genre. Taglines tend to give you an idea about what will happen in the film a sentence or two, sometimes only in a few words. To help with the making of our poster we looked at some horror film posters that included the films taglines as to see what were suitable and what similarities and differences the taglines had. The taglines help build tension and expectations for the film before you get to see the film, and will usually link with something in the film. The builds anticipation for the seeing the film. Simple seems to be the main choice for posters as it seems more snappy and is easier remembered than a long tagline.

"It knows what scares you."



"The Night He Came Home!"



"Fearing is Believing"



"What you don't believe can kill you."



"Your journey terminates here"

Font for 'Unknown'

 

To start with, we decided to use the above font for our film title and this font would appear both in the film and on the film poster. However, when working with this font in Adobe Photoshop, it was very difficult to seperate the font from the white background and this was a problem we encountered when trying to intergrate this font onto our film poster. So we decided to take this font and modify it so that it is easier to work with in photoshop and also to try and improve it so that it stands out on our poster. To achieve this i took the font and placed it in Adobe Illustrator and here we decided to image trace the font and then expand it so that it gives a more defined edge top the text and also makes it a lot more solid so that we can easily change the colour of the font and give it a transparent background so that it can easily be transfered into Photoshop. 

The image above shows the font after it was modified in Illustrator and this will appear in both our film and our poster. Even thoough the final font is a little more defined and solid than the original, we still managed to maintain the horror-like 'scratchiness' of the original and this works well with our poster design. 

Changes To Plot

From Comedy Horror to Horror 

Because of timing issuses with our film we had to make changes as to make the film fit the 5 minutes needed. For this we had to add extra scenes to our film, by doing this we also had to change the genre of our film slightly. This change came when we decided that we wanted to include more knocking in our film as to give it more of a horror edge to it, this ended up making the film seem more like a horror even with it slight comedy twist of the pizza delivery guy being the one knocking. Instead of now ending the film with our protaginist getting a craving for pizza and ordering one we decided to end it with more knocking and ramping up the tention with one last knock as the credits end. 

Photos For Our Poster

On our last session of filming we decided to take some stills and photos that we could possibloy use for our film poster. These were made by having India having some form of coloured ilumination lighting her face from below her chin as the lighting would make the image seem eerie because connotations of flashlights being held under the chin when telling ghost stories as it makes a creepier atmosphere. We also used different coloured light such as white, yellow and red to show different effects and intensity.