What i have learnt in the progression from the preliminary tasks to the full product.

Film feedback

Representation in vampire films?

The representation of social groups in the vampire sub-genre.



This is a clip from the vampire film "Blade". This scene is the final confrontation of the film that has been built up to over its course and it does a good job of conforming to and breaking the stereotypes of different sects of people. This clip starts with Blade who is the main protagonist fighting and easily defeating a vast amount of plain enemies who are both human and vampire. The fact that the main character is able to defeat these enemies while being outnumbered shows his prowess and strength, where as the weak and defeated enemies are not given names and wear the same plain black outfit.During this fight he is shouting the name of the main antagonist, this re-enforces the stereotype of the manly vampire who is very powerful.
The female characters also fight and this breaks the idea of females not getting involved in fights and leaving them to the males. However the human female uses a shotgun and eventually triumphs over the female vampire not because she was physically stronger but because she outsmarted the enemy. this conforms with the idea of men brute forcing their way through and females being more logical a bought problems.


 This is a scene from the film "Let the right one in". This scene does a good job at showing the normal age and size difference that usually affects bullys and their victims, it then goes to reverse that idea as the vampire kills the bullys. The representation of the older bullys and the younger victim that is initially set up at the start of the scent is that of the larger and older male torturing this smaller and weaker child. These ideas are then drastically changed and challenged as the vampire dispatches the bullys, it is done well as we never see the carnage and only the body parts and blood streaks along with this small smiling girl dotted in blood. This shows the power and ferocity of vampires and the fact that one young girl could easily do this to the characters that no one else stood up to.

This was the actor and the outfit we decided on for our victim. We wanted to have a victim who would easily fit within our target audience and also had a plain outfit that could be owned by any of the viewers.
By deciding to make the victim a large male who are stereotypically seen as strong characters and then thrusting them into the role of the victim, we wanted to show that even tall young males were nothing to the vampires who posses superhuman traits.

Film Poster.

I have created a film poster for our film Thirst.

Here are some posters that inspired me:

These posters all show a clear Idea of having one central image with a film slogan and the film name in large font. it should not be cluttered.
The simple image of a protagonist along with a tagline that draws the reader in should make the viewer want to know more about the film.

Representation in vampire films - Jake

Here is a good example of the representation I wanted in the film. The two male leads, the original victim and assailant, fighting. Not only for revenge but also for their masculinity and honour. This paints males as warring, honour-bound fighters. This goes conforms to the stereotype that men are destroyers.

Here is an example of age, the old vampire who is supposedly more powerful is being beaten by the younger less experienced vampire. It also shows the woman vampire to be powerless at the beginning, this conforms with the ideology that woman are weaker than men, but at the end of the clip the female vampire slices the bad vampires face in two, this goes against most ideas that woman can't slice a mans face in two and also goes against the ideology is set up earlier that woman shouldn't fight.

Here is the actor who played the protagonist, I decided having him goes against stereotypes now that women were always the victims, I decided to go with someone a bit different, hence the long hair on a male. I think I should have gone for a more innocent, smaller victim who conforms with the usual stereotypes of horror films.

However, I think it's quite an interesting idea having him actually slightly taller than the vampire and appearing to overpower him but being scared of the vampire, this shows the true power there. This is most noticeable in the chase scene when he sees the man and runs, showing the terrifying aura the vampires are able to put out if they want. The feedback agrees however that a more innocent victim would've made the movie more effective.

Media institution - Jake

Here is the movie poster I created, I think it's a bit too cluttered but the vital points of a poster are there, the tag line, the title, the date, the technical information at the bottom and the age of the film. My aim for the poster was to be quite gritty, like the desire for the film, this way people won't get confused looking at the poster, expecting to see hollywood budgets. The tag line needed to describe the film, which I think it does quite well: "The prey must become the predator." It's imperative, the prey isn't going to maybe become the prey, they know he will. They know at some point in the film, there will be a role reversal, the anticipation for this will hopefully help add to the tension.

The date for release will be June 13th, I feel this is a good date as it will be in the cinemas for the summer holidays so the target audience will have more time to go and watch it. Alternatively, I might have the release date as the 25th of November, this way we can try and release it for christmas, going against the usual four month period, and we can showcase it at Bang! A local short film festival that is over 23rd to 25th of November, this film festival gains a large following each year and reviewers review the latest short films, this will hopefully get assistance from film reviewers and gain something of a following.

The advertising we do will probably be done via posters and social networking sites, such as facebook as this is quite easily done and low cost. If we were to go with a larger distributor we would probably have TV adverts, internet adverts and billboards but I like the feeling of being a small film and so the advertising will probably be quite minimalist at first. We would hope to gain more of a word of mouth advertising, hopefully with the help of a cult following.

If we were to go with a major distributor I would have Warner Bros as they have a good track record with successful advertising, for instance the Sherlock Holmes: A game of shadows advertising in the baker street tube station, this is good advertising as not only did the many people who travel on the tube daily, it also gained news coverage which is good national advertising that creates itself. Another thing is, the larger the distributor, then the more cinemas the film can get into, so we can have a more saturated release.



An independent company I would choose would be Fantastic Films, using Fantastic Films to distribute the film would allow for a much more cinema screen releases than we would be able to do without a distributor.

The media institutions and distribution.

For small independent film producers there would be many ways to distribute our film on various scales and ways. The smallest way would be to use an independent theater to screen our film, our local cinema that takes part in this is called the Broadway and it also holds a film festival called the Bang! short film festival. Many theaters across the country hold small film festivals for independent film makers and this is a good way to broadcast your product.

A way to get a larger release but still maintain a smaller scale and not go to a major distributor, is to go to a smaller distributor. An example of a company like this is Fantastic Films International, these distributors help getting the films they accept in to a theatrical release at many theaters as well as helping the making of trailers and posters. By using smaller independent companys like this it allows for the film to have a much wider release than it otherwise would have, it also helps in generating interest and exposure to the film.

The largest scale possibility would be to present your film to a larger distributor like Lionsgate or Warner Brothers Entertainment Inc. these larger scale distributors as well as distributing their own products also distribute the products of other smaller companys and teams. This rout would have the largest theatrical release and have the largest advertising push behind it, however larger companys do not like taking risks so more adventurous films may be rejected.

For a Full scale film release the standard rout would be a standard release this would include:

1. Theatrical release, this is where the film is release in theaters and is the first release.]
2. DVD release, roughly 4 months after the theatrical release it is made available on DVD.
3. TV release. roughly 2 years after its initial release it is made available for TV institutions.

Other release methods are available however release strategys like simultaneous release are controversial and typically do not receive the same level of funding and promotion as standard releases.

Advertising.
Advertising takes many forms and depending on the level of release and the amount of money available many techniques can be used.

• TV commercials while being expensive are an effective method of creating interest for a film to mass audience. however it is expensive and so typically reserved for the largest distributors and their largest films.
• Online adds depending on the popularity of the site can vary in cost, they often have links that lead to a trailer or movie website for more information.
• Billboards are a classic advertisement method and are usually placed in places with busy traffic. they usually display large images that are iconic to the film and large important information like the name. 
• Social networking has also been used to create viral video's that advertise some films. even using sites like twitter to raise awareness for films.

What I have learnt about technologies? - Jake

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? on Prezi

Technologies we used during film production.

The use of technologies over the production. 

We have used many technologies in to construct this product. Some like the sites Google and Facebook, witch helped in organization and finding much of the information we used, were not new to me. However many technologies like the physical cameras and the software like Garageband, Photoshop and I movie i had little experience with and so my skills with these programs have expanded and improved vastly.

By having software like I movie and Garage band available to people with no industry experience or contacts is a good thing as it means that people who are not part of a major production company can make smaller movies with cheap and easily available technology.

Addressing our audience.

In order to properly address the likes and dislikes of our selected target audience we decided to research into multiple films as well as their ratings and user thoughts using the IMBD website. you can see this research as part of our planning, we did the 5 films:
Blade(18)
Underworld (15)
Dracula(1992) (18)
Twilight (12A)
30 days of night (18)
As we can see over half of these films were an 18 rating however we felt that our audience was more of a mix between that of Underworld (15) and Twilight (12A), this is due to them being more restrained in the violence and gore, even though Underworld includes a lot of this it does not go over the top like some other films.
We also saw that Twilight had a vastly different gender mix than the other films. Underworld was the second film we targeted and we also saw that that had a much better ratio of female to male viewers even though it was still heavily in the favor of the male audiences.

We planned to Immediately engage our audience by starting with the initial event that caused our protagonist to become a vampire, this involves a tension building sequence followed by a short chase as the vampire catches the main character. we wanted it to appear that the character was in danger but not reveal too much about the vampires at the start so we only had short shots of the vampire in an outfit that was deliberately stopping the audience from seeing any identifying features. By starting with initial action we hoped to engage the audience in the film and grab their attention, this then goes on to wondering who the victim is and starting to get involved with their story and characters.
We decided for our main character to be a quite normal boy of the targeted age group, this was because having a character similar to the target audience made them easier to be understood by the audience and makes it easier for the audience to quickly engage them, this is also the reasoning behind the fairly plain costume for this character. Because throughout the entire sub-genre there is a clear male viewership trend having the main character as a male makes it much more relatable to the majority of the audience.

Our title sequence was designed to bring up questions as to who these missing people were and to who the killers are. By also having pictures of churches along with shots of blood this introduces the idea that nowhere is safe as churches are meant to be safe, it is also helped that old churches are often found to be creepy by many people. Unfortunately the screen with the institutional information was not polished enough and so ended up looking unprofessional and the font seemed to obvious for our film, if i was to redo the project i would allocate more time to polishing this aspect of our film.
The idea behind our music was to compliment our piece. the fast and slow parts along with moments of relative quiet and noise was meant to mimic and increase the effect of the film. I do not fee that this was achieved throughout the piece and in places it becomes more like an action piece not a horror as well as being too dominant.

We handed out surveys to people within our target audience and then showed them our film. From their feed back we can tell what they liked about our piece and what we need to target for improvement.
We got some positive and negative feedback. People liked the suspention created and the fast pace however they thought more camera angles could have been used and that it could have been more intense.

Looking back at our preliminary tasks - Jake

Shot by shot.

Shot by shot analysis.

Opening Logo
We investigated multiple company logos and we found that depending on the film and that film style and sub-genre the opening logo changes. In this case both our logo and the lions gate logo have changed colour to a more red colour. This is because the colour red is a sign of danger but also affects the vampire sub-genre more as it is also the colour of blood witch plays a vital role in the mythology and core conventions of vampires and vampire films. In both cases the logo makes it clear what the company's name is as well as fitting in with the films style as to not detract from the production.

 Title

Both the opening titles to the film "The lost boys" and our film use images from everyday life that at first glance appear to be normal(church or fair) but then mix them in with missing posters to suggest that everything is not right yet not make it clear who is behind it and ruin the suspense.
by involving places like churches that are normally seen as holy and safe and then mixing them with images of missing people we attempted to make there be a sense of no where being safe, we then carry this on as the protagonist has nightmare in his own home and the suggestion of a vampire entering his house appears.

Sub genre convention
Both the image of our vampire and that of Christopher Lee as Dracula involve two vital components of the vampire film sub-genre. These are the use of fang, the elongated and sharpened teeth used by vampires to feed is the most important and most recognizable part of vampires. Blood is the second instantly recognizable part and instantly connected to vampires as they drink it for sustenance. It is important to see the difference in our vampire types, while Dracula has only a little blood and is quite refined our vampire is designed to be much more messy and not a gentle man instead feeding by messily ripping and tearing at his meal thus becoming covered in blood in a frenzy.

 Character
In the film underworld and our film the two human protagonists are set up in similar ways, each is depicted as being alone in a place otherwise filled with people, a train station and a street. Each is also shown to be being followed by vampires. by putting them in bland cloths and then into everyday situations it helps the audience to identify with that character, and then by putting them alone by use of camera angles it depicts them as vulnerable and weak. this fits with the idea of vampires being much more powerful than humans.

Mise-en-scene 
In vampire films the vampires and antagonists are often put in large coats and jackets that are mostly leather, this is to create a sense of danger about that character but also to help shroud that characters identity as often vampires do not wish to be seen. this helps the horror aspects of the film and not fully seeing the antagonists helps them to retain their sense of danger. both the images from our film and the film "Blade 2" use this on the main threat.

Reaction to light
One key aspect to vampires is the idea that they are burnt and hurt by sun light, this is shown in our as having hurt our protagonist who is becoming a vampire but unlike blade it does not instantly kill them.

Thoughts on the film.

Thoughts on the film.
Personally i fell that our film could have been greatly improved and was a little too rough with inadequate amounts of polish. I fell that we did not correctly manage our time and took too long organizing a re shoot after we could not use our initial footage due to the weather, this time management problem lead to the editing and opening credits being quite rushed. I feel that for the most part our editing and cuts were good with a few but not many 30 degree rule breaks and we did not run into the exposure problem we have encountered previously. However i was not happy with the state of the titles and if we had managed our time better i would liked to have made a background for the titles so it was not only over black.
 I also felt like our soundtrack became too dominant at points and stopped being part of the ambiance and the main piece not the film, it was also rough in places and would have benefited our film to have been changed, this could have been done if we had fit in an earlier shooting time.

Idea of background i would liked to have designed for our film openings.

Who would be the audience for your media project?

Who would be the audience for your media project?

It is important to know who the audience for your film will be. this is because to make a successful product, before beginning production the correct audience for your product must be targeted. by knowing the demographic of your film it will make casting the characters and planning shots much easier as different genders or age groups will be more attracted towards different characters and styles.

Foe our film we desired to target teenagers and people in their early 20s, however we did not want to only target one gender. because we felt that the teenage audience would be the audience that our film caters to we looked at the demographics and feedback for other films in our genre specifically the film "Twilight".
As we saw when we researched other films in our sub-genre it appeared that although males trend towards the vampire film sub-genre females are not far behind, the exception to this was twilight and so we decided to find out what causes this difference.
We assessed the film Twilight as it targeted the same age group as us while still being in the same genre of film(vampire). However while we wished to remain neutral on the point of gender the response for Twilight gave a serious female trend. We attempted to asses Twilight to find what it did correctly for our age group and what we should avoid to keep our film appealing to both genders.

The Film "Twilight" was a film made for a similar age group to the film that we made it also was met with huge success with an opening day of $35.7 million on its opening day. Twilight is different from the majority of the other films in the vampire sub-genre as instead of the action and horror that are common it instead spends a lot of that time developing and building its characters and romance. This focus on story and characters have gained it a huge fan base who are invested in the characters and not only there to see the special effects and action, witch take a much smaller role in the film. Gender roles in twilight follow a very old path of males protecting vulnerable females, this is odd as the vampire sub-genre has often used both the typical stereotype of weak females (usually human) but also mixed in incredibly strong female roles.

Film certificates.

There are two main certificates that apply to horror films and these are 15 and 18. each has its own restrictions and guidelines however this is of set by the advantages of public perception and amount of viewers eligible to see the film.

15. A film that has the 15 rating is very open in terms of horror, language and gore with the only restrictions being of any sadistic or sexual violence.  Along with very open restrictions giving the producers lots of freedom it also allows a much younger audience to view the film.

18. A film with the 18 rating has almost no restrictions as long as it does not break the law and does not endanger the community. although an 18 rating limits a films audience it has almost no restrictions, 18 rated films are also perceived as not childish.

For our film the 15 rating was the most appropriate as an 18 would not allow our target audience to view the film while a rating lower that a 15 would not allow us to contain the required elements to attract the higher range of our male target audience.

Previous film ratings.

Twilight. This was rated a 12. this rating let them target younger audiences and involve less action of most other films in this sub genre and more character building. this rating is too low for our film ideas and target demographic.

Blade. This was rated a 18 it involved much more gore and less character building than what we aim for however shows a trend of male audiences liking films with more action. we tried to cater for this.

Underworld. This was rated a 15 this is much more like what we aimed for and still contained large amounts of action and character building to please our wide target audience.

30 days of night. This was rated a 18 and involved huge amounts of gore. we did not plan to follow this style.

Let the right one in. This was rated a 15 and also showed younger people as vampires.

The audience for our film - Jake

It's important for films to have a target audience for a film, because that way there will be a definite audience for the film. Not only this but it also gives the film some direction and helps it to define itself as a certain type of film. For example, a film that is targeted at fans of lots of blood and large production values might not be drawn want to watch a low budget, subtle film.

We were aiming our film to be at young horror/supernatural fans. I have looked at five films that influenced us in the imagining and creating of the film. The films Fright Night, Let Me In, Lost Boys and the TV program Being Human are all fifteen certificates, whilst the fifth film we looked at, Underworld, was an eighteen. Looking at the BBFC guidelines on certification, our film fits quite neatly in the fifteen classification.

The BBFC demands that the film doesn't endorse discrimination, which our film doesn't. The film mustn't encourage or promote drug use, our film has the vampires crave the blood like drugs but it shows the problems of being a vampire so will likely discourage vampirisim. The film is allowed to have horror as long as it's not sadistic or sexualised, which our film isn't. The film is allowed to show dangerous behaviour as long as it doesn't dwell on anything that could be copied, so that's okay. In terms of language, there can be use of strong language as long as it suits the context, and it won't be used in aggression or repeated. Their won't be any nudity or sex. Violence is acceptable but can't be sexualised or sadistic, it also can't dwell on the pain of the victim. So, the film suits a fifteen category quite neatly.

I think that our target audience would be british teens who enjoy vampire films.

The target audience was targeted by using teenagers as the actors, this increases the connection between audience and actor, making the audience be able to relate more. We chose an alleyway, this conforms to the conventions because it's tight, confined and claustrophobic, it feels scary as there are only two ways you can go, this adds to the fear of the scene.

We did some surveys and found that 17 year old males were more likely to watch the film. We got feedback that said the shots built tension well but could have used a better variety of angles. They said they enjoyed the quick pace and the continuity was good for most of the film. The mise-en-scene was okay but could've been better. The feedback pointed out that the film doesn't really represent any social groups. The survey said that the film would be best suited for males who were 16-25. 50% of the surveyed said they would continue watching the film as they want to see what happens next. Some of the main criticism was because the film isn't obviously a vampire film. Also, the chase scene could've been tenser as it seemed like an action film. Overall we got an average of 40 out 60 from the surveys.

Shot by shot analysis - Jake

 Opening logos

The Lionsgate opening logo and our opening logo are similar in that they have differing colours depending on the genre. In this case the red connotes blood, which basically represents the vampire genre in it's entirety, it's all about blood. So, straight away the audience knows this is a horror film and they have suggestions it's a vampire film. "Lionsgate" is quite a nondescript word, it hasn't got many connotations and is why it's a good production company name. Lunar connotes the moon and makes the film sound like a werewolf film, one of the problems with the name. But, the use of the moon represents night, and vampires can only come out at night so it sort of works.

 Titles

In the titles we have a series of missing persons posters. This is similar to Lost Boys' opening titles in which various missing posters are surrounded by people having a fun time and enjoying themselves, this makes the missing people seem like an everyday thing and people just live with it. We didn't want to do this, we wanted to show the missing poster and have some evidence of what happened to them. This goes along with the conventions of people being taken or being killed by vampires.

 Sub-genre Conventions

We wanted more of a subtle vampire so we didn't go with the black eyes or incredibly pale, but we did want the animalistic appearance of a blood smeared face. We tried not to have a completely crazy, blood covered vampire. I think we did quite well with the blood, making it look like he's tried to wipe it off. As well as blood we have the sharpened teeth of a vampire.





Establishing character

By having the character alone, it shows he something of a maverick. He is able to run from a vampire showing he's agile. By having the vampire smaller than the protagonist it shows the power that the vampire has, creating fear in the larger person.






Mise-en-scene




By dressing the main character in white it connotes their innocence and naivety. By adding blood to the shirt, it gives a contrast between the innocence and the seriousness of a situation. White shows the purity of the character, adding the blood taints the character. It is also good as it seems cold and distant, like we wanted the vampire to seem, until finally being brought back to life when he sees the wound.

Key point 1 - The domestication of blood

In the film, Daybreakers, vampires are able to buy blood and it's very domesticated. In our film we wanted to replicate the same idea. Not as grandeur or marketed but more an underground thing. Vampire black markets and what not. Of course, being as this is only the start of the film we couldn't explain this or show this so we had a throwback in the opening credits. A simple thing from a look but it's importance would become known as the film progressed. Having the vampires selling and buying blood challenges the usual belief that vampires are all out killing for the blood.

Key point 2 - Not burning in sun

We decided to go against the usual idea of having vampires burning in the sun. Instead we had the sun hurt initially, but not kill. This way we could have the vampire go outside and interact with the world. This way we could have only the most powerful vampires killed by the light, this would be integral to the plot later on. We wanted to get the shot to be blindingly bright to represent the vampire having to adjust to his new found senses. The saturation of the light as the blinds were raised was a nice touch, showing the sunlight enter the room.

Reflections on the film - Jake

At the time of finishing the film, we thought it was okay. We didn't plan out our time successfully and we didn't use it to its full potential. I think the editing was good, but it could have been neater. The soundtrack is a bit too much, it should have been more subtle and eerie, another problem is that the credits ran on too long so we had to repeat the start of the soundtrack, not a big problem but noticeable all the same. Maybe end after the opening credits and have brief moments for when he gets bit. I think most of the film was rushed, not because we didn't have enough time but because we didn't use it well. We spent a lot of time nit picking the credits and the timings when we should have worried about the film itself. I think the ending should have gone on a few more seconds and having the actor inspect the wound but we cut the right amount from the bathroom shots as they broke a lot of rules and jump cutted around.