Evaluation Questions

Question 1:

Question 2:

Question 3:

Question 4+5:

Question 6:

Question 7:

Killer age in slasher horror films

In The Texas chainsaw massacre the killer is middle aged and is called 'leather face'. This is because he wears a leather mask on his face to disguise his identity. This is a common convention of a slasher film for the killer to be of this age.



Another slasher film that has a middle aged killer is 'My bloody Valentine'. As shown below, again this conforms to common conventions of a slasher genre by having a middle age killer.



Throughout of the film the killer wears a gas mask over his face so that you can't see his identity till the end of the film when it is revealed.

Finally, in the film 'Hatchet' the killer is also middle aged as shown in the picture below, therefore conforms to common conventions of a slasher genre.

Comparing the difference between a 15 certificate rating and a 15

15 certificate rating

Discrimination

The work as a whole must not endorse discriminatory language or behaviour, although there may be racist, homophobic or other discriminatory themes and language.
 

Drugs

Drug taking may be shown but the work as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse (for example, through instructional detail). The misuse of easily accessible and highly dangerous substances (for example, aerosols or solvents) is unlikely to be acceptable.

Imitable behaviour

Dangerous behaviour (for example, hanging, suicide and self-harming) should not dwell on detail which could be copied. Whether the depiction of easily accessible weapons is acceptable will depend on factors such as realism, context and setting.
 

Language

There may be strong language. Very strong language may be permitted, depending on the manner in which it is used, who is using the language, its frequency within the work as a whole and any special contextual justification.

Nudity

There are no constraints on nudity in a non-sexual or educational context. There may be nudity in a sexual context but usually without strong detail.
 

Sex

Sexual activity may be portrayed, but usually without strong detail. There may be strong verbal references to sexual behaviour, but the strongest references are unlikely to be acceptable unless justified by context. Works whose primary purpose is sexual arousal or stimulation are unlikely to be acceptable.

Threat

There may be strong threat and horror. A sustained focus on sadistic or sexual threat is unlikely to be acceptable.

Violence

Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable. Strong sadistic violence is also unlikely to be acceptable. There may be detailed verbal references to sexual violence but the depiction of sexual violence must be discreet and justified by context.

18 certificate rating

Exceptions are most likely in the following areas:

• where the material is in breach of the criminal law, or has been created through the commission of a criminal offence
• where material or treatment appears to us to risk harm to individuals or, through their behaviour, to society. For example, the detailed portrayal of violent or dangerous acts, or of illegal drug use, which may cause harm to public health or morals. This may include portrayals of sadistic or sexual violence which make this violence look appealing; reinforce the suggestion that victims enjoy sexual violence; or which invite viewer complicity in sexual violence or other harmful violent activities
• where there are more explicit images of sexual activity in the context of a sex work (see below) or where the primary purpose of the images in question is sexual arousal In the case of video works, which may be more accessible to younger viewers, intervention may be more frequent than for cinema films.

Sex education at 18

Where sex material genuinely seeks to inform and educate in matters such as human sexuality or safer sex and health, explicit images of sexual activity may be permitted.

Sex works at 18

Sex works are works whose primary purpose is sexual arousal or stimulation. Sex works containing only material which may be simulated are generally passed 18. Sex works containing clear images of real sex, strong fetish material, sexually explicit animated images, or other very strong sexual images will be confined to the R18 category. Material which is unacceptable in a sex work at R18 is also unacceptable in a sex work at 18.
 

Audience Feedback

What went well:

• One of the things that went well in our audience feedback is that most people really liked the blood in our clips. They thought that it was really realistic and looked really effective.
• People also liked our use of sound manipulation
• They also liked that you could still hear the sound of the music playing through the headphones really quietly, when the phone was dropped onto the floor. 

Improvements:

• Make the title screen longer 
• Another improvement that our group needs to make based on our feedback is that we need to cut out some of the waterfalls at the beginning of our opening scene as they are not needed. However, we are going to keep the ones that build up tension before the victim is stabbed.
• Some of the feedback that we were given is that our professional production company logo, Blumhouse, is used more for psychological horrors rather than slasher horror films. 
• People also said that the Professional production company logo was the out of date version, therefore our group decided that we would change it to Lionsgate's horror version of their professional production company logo.
• Another thing that our group needs to improve is the brightness. In the feedback that we got they think our film opening will look more effective if it was darker and it will also make it creepier.
• Some of the blood colouring in some of our shots is quite bright red therefore we are going to adjust the lighting and saturation to try and make it look more realistic. 
• As the killer walks up the steps following the victim, he scrapes a knife against a chai link fence. In the feedback that we got the audience think that it would sound more effective if we added a scarping sound of a knife to the clip.
• There was also some background noise of wind in our clip, which we need to cut out.

We divided up these improvements within our group so that we all could improve our film opening. I changed the production company logo to the Lionsgate horror professional company logo. I also deleted the wind background sound in one of our shots of the victim in the alley. Below our screenshots of me completing these improvements. 

Editing Sound- Practical

In this task I added the twig snap sound effect that I created with celery. I downloaded my sound effect off of YouTube and dragged the sound effect into the appropriate place in our film opening. We decided to add it just before the extreme close up of Lucy's eyes looking around, and at the end of the clip where the killer is scrapping his knife against the chain link fence as he walks up the stairs. I then cut the beginning of the clip where there was no sound, and the end of the clip so that you could just hear the twig snap sound. As shown in the screenshot below.


In the screenshot below it shows that I moved the twig snap sound to the appropriate place in our film opening. The sound effect has also been cut.
















I then turned down the sound slightly so that it sounded more realistic. We decided to add the twig snap at the end of the clip where the killer is walking up the stairs, as it would sound and look as though he had made that sound as he was walking up the stairs. This therefore meant that Lucy turned around.

Editing Task- Practical

In this task I added and edited our newly filmed clips into our film opening. I used dropbox to add the clips from my phone as we decided to use my Iphone 7 as it was better quality than our camera that we alternatively used. I transferred the clips onto dropbox and downloaded them onto the desktop so that I could simply drag the clips into the right places in our film opening.



The screenshot below shows the new clips, saved into our coursework folder in our desktop.


In the screenshot below it shows that I have added in our new clip of blood dripping down Lucy's hand. I cut the beginning and ending of the clip as at the beginning it showed Eve pouring the food colouring onto Lucy's hand. I also cut the ending as the blood slowed down and began to stop dripping. I made sure that I overlapped this with the stream sound effect as the blood was dripping into the stream so would therefore sound more effective and realistic.


I then added in the clip where Lucy is lying dead by the side of the stream. We changed this clip from our other one by including a tilt upwards to show 'The killer' walking away from the body. I decided to film it in this way as I thought it would look more effective and creepy. I cut the beginning of this clip as it showed a pause before Josh started walking away from Lucy's dead body.


Next, I cut the clip where the animal blood drips onto the wet autumn leaves. I cut the end of this clip so that the clip only showed to points where the blood was dripping the fastest onto the leaves, to show that the stab had caused a lot of blood.


In the screenshot below it shows that I added the stabbing clip where Josh removed the bloody knife from Lucy's body. We didn't have to cut this clip because it was perfectly timed. However, we did decide to speed up the clip slightly to make the scene more intense.


I then added in the clip where it shows a extreme close up of Lucy's hand and hair being dragged away, down to the stream. This was a new clip that we decided to film so that our film opening would flow better.

Adding in Production Company logo

I added in Josh's production company logo into our film opening. I cut end of this clip as it showed the picture in burnt ashes for 2 seconds with nothing really happening in the clip,  therefore I decided to cut it.


In this screenshot it shows that I also cut the beginning of Josh's production company logo as it had a long pause at the beginning and it showed Josh lighting the picture. The camera also went very shaky at this point so I thought it would be best to cut the beginning.


I also decided that to make the production company logo look more professional and appealing to our audience, I waned to add sound effects to it. I decided to add diegetic sound of a crackling fire in the background so that you can hear the polaroid picture being burnt. I found a clip on YouTube which I thought fitted best with our clip and inserted the sound into our film opening. I then cut the sound so that it fit with the length of clip and so that the sound matched alongside with the production company logo.


I added a fade into the music so that there was an increase in volume when the fire was it its biggest, and as it started to go out I added a fade so that it sounded more realistic.


We later decided to play around with the lighting of the clip and adjusted it so that it was really dark in black and white other than the flame which was a strong orange red colour. This looks more effective and eye catching for the audience to watch. I also added a transformation so that it cut the brick out of shot to look more effective.

Choosing a Production Company Logo

In this blog I'm going to compare all of the production company logo's that everyone in our group have made, and decide which one would look the most professional and realistic to add into our 'slasher' film opening.

This is Lucy's production company logo that she made. I think the dropping leaves at the beginning of this looks really effective and would go well with our film opening, however if they were put in slow motion it would have looked a lot more effective as it would have portrayed the production company logo as sinister. I also think that the fire spoils the typography as it is white so it is therefore difficult to see the writing. I think that the typography itself though is really cleverly used as it is missing pieces which looks really effective. However, the ending after the text has come off the screen drags out for quite a while where the leaves are burning on its own. If we used this production company logo in our opening scene I would either cut this shorter, or make it fade to black before our film opening starts.

The next production company logo is the one that I created. Again, I have decided to burn a piece of paper to show destruction and loss. The camera in this however is very jolty at the beginning though which makes it look less professional. The typography is also very boring and plain, it would have looked more effective for our film opening if it was in hand writing in a blue ink colour. However, despite this the sped up reverse of time is quite original.

This production company logo was made by Josh. He has made a print out of a polaroid picture and added burn marks onto it which looks really effective. The picture then goes up in flames and burns into ashes. I also think the plain slab of concrete in the background looks quite realistic and effective for our film opening. However, the camera is a bit jolty throughout and the hand at the beginning looks quite un-professional. I think the unique way he has put it in fast motion looks really effective though.

Overall, I have decided that we are going to use Josh's, Silent productions, for our film opening as it looks really effective and the most professional.

Editing- Practical

This is the third time our group edited together. I took charge of the mouse and made the final decisions of where to cut/ add in clips and refine our film opening to make it look more professional. First of all I cut off the end of the clip where Lucy is brushing her hand across the bush. I cut this so that it was more of a clean transition into the next clip where Lucy gets stabbed by Josh.



I cut the end of the extreme close up of Josh running the knife along the bush so that he stops in the same place as where the next clip begins. This is called continuity editing. We want to make sure we get this as close to perfect as we can.



I also cut the beginning of the clip where Lucy brushes her hand along a bush as she doesn't start moving her hand until a few seconds into the clip.




We also decided to add in repeated clips of the waterfall to build up tension and break up the clips to create suspense. We wanted to add these throughout our film opening with them getting closer together. However we fear that these repeated clips throughout our film opening will make it appear like a trailer.



We added another waterfall between the clip of Lucy walking up the stairs and the pan of the stream.

In the picture below it shows that I cut the end of the clip where Lucy walks off. We decided to do this as we have a lot of shots that are just walking and we didn't want to drag them on for too long as it may get boring and repetitive.

 

In the picture below it shows the extreme close up of Lucy's eyes looking around. We wanted to test out having a narrow angle shot, therefore I cropped out some of the nose and forehead so that you could only see the eyes.

However, when we watched back our film opening with cropped extreme close up, it looked out of place as all of the other shots were landscape and covered the whole screen. Therefore, it looked out of place so we changed it back to fit the screen as normal.

In the picture below it shows that I cut off more of the walking at the end so that there is less of it and so that it fits better with the next shot.

The picture below shows that we cut the water tricking down the stream shot as there was a pause at the beginning before any blood poured down the stream.

In this we decided to cut the ending of Josh walking away from Lucy, however we are going to re film this scene so we may not actually need to use this clip in our film opening.

I decided to cut off the ending of the walking up the stairs shot as you could see Josh walking back behind the wall. It also meant that the continuity editing looked better as it fitted better with next shot of Josh walking up the metal fence with the knife in his hand.

I decided to remove the audio from the clip where Lucy gets stabbed as we wanted to cut the clip but keep the sound going so that it overlapped into the next clip.

Second Filming Evaluation

We all met at Lucy's house again, and walked down to our first filming location at around 9:15. We started by re filming the stabbing scenes. We decided it would be easiest to cut the jumper first so there was already a slit in it and then slide the knife in gently and remove it slowly showing the blood. We also decided to film a reaction shot of Lucy grabbing the stabbing wound and getting blood on her hand. We also decided to include a shot of Lucy being dragged through the leaves back to the stream, with an extreme close up. The picture below shows Lucy cutting through the jumper carefully, so that it is easier for Josh to slide the knife out.

 

We covered the slit in the jumper with red food gel. This is thicker than food colouring so looks more effective as blood and doesn't soak into the jumper as much. This makes the blood look more fresh and gorey, making our stabbing scene look more effective.



The picture below shows me filming the reaction shot of Lucy being stabbed. We decided that it would be best to film the new clips on my phone as the camera wasn't focusing properly and my phone has the best quality camera.



After filming these shots we then when back down to the stream where we re filmed the final ones of Lucy laying by the stream dead and the blood dripping down her hand. In the picture below it shows us preparing to film this next shot.




In the picture below it shows us trying to film an extreme close up of blood dripping down Lucy's hand, but again the camera wouldn't focus so we used my phone.



Overall this was a really successful morning of filming and we did it quickly and efficiently.

Professional production company logo- Practical editing

During this editing practical I added in our chosen production company logo. We decided that we would use Blumhouse's production company logo as it fits our genre of thriller the best and portray the genre of our film opening before it has started.

To add in the Blumhouse production company logo, I found the most recent production company logo on YouTube and converted it to video to add into final cut. I added it to the beginning of our film opening as we want the professional company logo to be the first thing that the audience sees in our Film opening.              





















However, the YouTube video was too long and has another professional company logo attached to the add. I cut this out from the end of the production company logo as we don't want to use both.



I also cut out the beginning part of the YouTube video as there was a long pause of just black screen before the actual production company logo played.



Because I edited the second production company logo out from the video, there is no fade between the professional company logo and the beginning of our film opening. We will add a fade from black to begin our film opening. I am going to add our production company logo that we made, chosen by Josh, in after the professional company logo before our film opening starts. Therefore, we are going to add the fade from black after our production company logo.

Practical- Decorating Knife

I decided to do a practical task of covering a knife in red food colouring to see how effective it will look when we come to do our filming.

I used a classic kitchen style knife to cover in blood to conform to common conventions of a slasher film.

 

I used food colouring gel to put onto the knife as it is a thicker consistency than food colouring and has the same consistency as blood. When 'decorating' the knife with blood, I added more onto the tip of the knife as that is where there would be more blood from the stab. I also added fingerprints onto the handle to show the killers identity and to make it look more gorey.





Overall, I think this looked really effective. However, when we film the real thing I would want to use some of the liquid food colouring along the top of the knife to show splashes and spots of blood as its was really difficult to do with the gel food colouring.

Evaluation of using Animal blood

We decided to use real animal blood for our stabbing shots in our opening scene. This was a really good idea, Josh did tests to make sure this looked effective however during our filming it was difficult to use. Filming the actual stab through the hoodie was really difficult as the hoodie was a really thick material so use couldn't get a shot of the knife going into the hoodie and making the blood pack explode in one shot. We then filmed Josh stabbing the blood pack further to show blood coming out of the incision. However it looked more like it was dripping out of the incision rather than pouring so we may need to re-film that shot if it doesn't look effective after we have edited the shots. After we filmed these shots Lucy then put on the jumper so that we could film her dead by the stream. However, by the time we got down to the stream the blood had slightly oxidised with the air and made it go a brown colour, making it look a bit like muddy water. However, this may still look effective when we edit it together because there is supposed to be a jump in time whilst the killer drags the victims body to the stream.

Overall, I think it was really difficult to work with the animal blood and it will hopefully look realistic once we have edited our scenes together. Another reason why the blood may not have shown through as much as we would have wanted is because the material of the hoodie was quite thick therefore not as much of the animal blood would have shown through.

Filming Evaluation

We began filming our media coursework on Wednesday 21st December around 9 am at Loose Valley. Our first shots that we decided to film were of Lucy walking down the pathway besides the river. We filmed these shots fairly quickly and worked well as a group. Eve took charge of the camera as it was hers and had previously tested out different camera shots, therefore knew the camera the best. I helped to direct both Lucy and Eve to try and get the best possible shots that we could get to make them look beautiful, Whilst Josh prepared his killers costume. As evidence for this we took some pictures through our filming process to record our progress. This picture shows Eve filming Lucy walking down the pathway.



We then filmed shots of Josh walking down the pathway following the victim, whilst holding a knife to show that he had intentions of killing her. We also decided to film some extra shots of the scenery as it was a really beautiful location and we thought they would be really beneficial to our film opening if we added them in. The next picture shows us filming some of these shots.



The next shots use decided to film were the blood trickling down the stream shots. These shots were extremely hard to film because of the lighting reflection from the water so it was really difficult to capture the blood flowing down the stream. In the end we decided it would be best for Josh to put a tripod in the water of the stream where it was shallow with little reflection. Theses pictures show us filming the blood trickling down the stream.

However during our filming process of filming at Loose Valley it started raining which was effecting our shots so use had to take a break until the rain stopped. We then came back later to film shots of Lucy crossing the road to ensure that the mise-en-scene would still work and look effective.

After this we changed location to film up some stairs in Loose and along a footpath. We filmed the rest of our shots in this location. We filmed shots of Lucy walking up the stairs with Josh watching her as she did. Unfortunately after this point our camera ran out of battery, however we decided to use my phone to record the rest of our shots as use wanted to aim to get all of our shots filmed on that day to ensure the weather and lighting was consistent throughout our film opening. I then took over with filming, and swapped places with Eve.





Afterwards, we decided to film shots of Lucy dropping the phone and showing that the music had broken. We also filmed close ups of Lucy's eyes peering around. The next shots were of Josh scrapping the knife along a metal fence with Lucy in front singing. Afterwards we decided to film the stabbing shots these were fairly successful although it was difficult to pierce the knifed through the hoodie so we didn't get a big stream of blood so use may have to re-film some of these shots if they don't look good enough when use edit the shots together. This picture shows Josh stabbing the pillow with the blood pack in, with hoodie over the top.



After this we then needed to go back to Loose Valley to film the shots of Lucy lying down dead by the stream and Josh walking away with a bloody knife. We also added an extra shot of blood dripping down Lucy's hand and into the stream.

Overall, I thought that I filming was really successful and we all worked really well as a group to get the shots done. We also filmed a lot of extra shots that weren't on our storyboard to make our film opening better.