Question 6- Kimberleyrose Osbiston

Our girl zombies are kids/teenagers

6- What kind of media institution might distribute your media company and why?

                I found an institution called the UK Film Council. I think that they would be perfect to distribute or films as they are in the UK and they have made many low budget films that have been released in the cinemas and around the world. 

This shows us that they would be able to make our film be seen by more than just a couple of people. They could fund us with more money to make our film better than it is at the moment, I think that they would use us as they have already distributed "28 Weeks Later" which is also a zombie film which they released in 2007. They have already made a zombie film which shows us that they would have experience in that genre of horror film. I think we could bring new ideas to them like characters, we have little kids as zombies whereas in "28 Weeks Later" it is mostly adults. 


They have distributed over 250 UK films which shows that they would be a good company to go to as many others have gone to them. Many of their films have done well in the box office like, "Slumdog Millionaire", "Bride and Prejudice" and "28 Weeks Later" which means that if we went with their company we would have a better chance of doing well in the box office then going to any other british company at the moment.

We gave a questionnaire to someone in our class so he could evaluate our film and tell us what he thought, the questionnaire is shown below. He thought that we had a good use of close-ups and different shots. He thought that it was a good place to film because it was in a normal environment, it was a place where you would normally see people walking through on any day, it wasn't in the middle of nowhere. With our mise-en-scene he thought that we used a good amount of blood on the zombies and when the characters got attacked, he thought that it was good that the zombies were in normal clothes because in other zombie films like "28 Weeks Later" the zombies wear normal clothes in it. He thought our film fitted the genre as there was lots of blood and the zombies were of all ages.

Final Film

This is the final version of our horror film opening.

the final question/question 9- Daniel smith

what was your contribution to the process during the planning, production and post-production stages?

The planning stage: the ideas I put forward was of the mum gardening as a little girl, presumably her daughter, watches her out the window as she gets attacked by a zombie. i then suggested little girl being a zombie for impact. I then suggested from someone else’s idea that the zombie girl could write the titles on the window in blood. the planning stage took allot of thought and allot of ideas were suggested like i said we could have a zombie hand coming out the ground with the titles on, this and another idea of time speeding up showing different stages of the infection spreading were disregarded for the ideas mentioned previously.

 Production: I was part of the film whilst also directing and producing, I then had a few good ideas. Like the flumps ,my favourite, I suggested that if we soak flumps in red food dye and that they could act as intestines and guts on the first victim, which happened to be myself. I then suggested that before the main character gets attacked they should meet the man being eaten before he is eaten. This way it doesn’t look like they just ignored the zombie on the floor. The shot types i suggested were a shot half way down the stairs of zombies running towards it, this wasn’t used, also the one where it  was above the stairs on the wall this got a high angel of the zombies running. i also offered for them to use my wallet as it would look better than if he was just picking up some loose change.

post production: i matched most almost all of the music with the film with help from tom, i also created half the music for example the music that runs all the way through the film 'Sandoway Ricochet' and then at the end of the film there is some more of that instrument and a really high pitched screechy noise after the scream. Tom and I recorded some sounds like the bang on the window was me and then the breathing and growling. The nursery rhyme is also both of us and it was edited by both of us too.
i helped do the final edit for the film with help from sarah ellis we both came behind at lunch times.

question 8 preliminary exercise comparrison- daniel smith!!

looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to your full product?

In the preliminary task we were cautious to the amount and variety of shots we used, which is because we were copying another groups work. whereas with our final production we were able to try various shot types and angles as it was our own creation for example low and high angels, running shots and canted angles. so from that we have learned what shots work well to gether and that with out the 'laws of camera angles' like 180 degree rule the film and production wouldnt flow or look correct like our preliminary task which didnt really look good.

this shot in our preliminary doesn't work because it didn't flow with the film as the cut was just like a jump instead of a fast cut unlike in our production where this shot especially flows perfectly as there are no obvious jumps and it follows all the rules of shooting.

Another progression we have made was choosing the location and how import location is to the film. unlike in the preliminary task our location for our production was thought about alot as there were two locations in the house and the school grounds, where as our first task was limited as we filmed it in college and although it looked ok it wasnt a very thought about location.

Things we learnt from our first task that we inclueded in our production was the use of suspense, shock, how to use the imovie affects, how to mute recorded noise and only have the noise we want in the film. But we also learnt whilst making our production how to create our own music and add it to the film on garage band.

Near complete shoot

This is the latest cut of our horror film opening. This is our third attempt. We have decided to re-shoot again as we are not happy with some of the shots such as the money shot and also we would like to incorporate Dan into it more as he just appears. To solve this we are going to have him walking past the two main characters to show that he hasn't just come from no where and also have Cathy running towards him.

Question 2- Daniel smith

in what ways does your media product use, develop or challege forms and conventions of real media productions?
The main conventions of of a zombie horror film are as follows:

• Guesome and copious amounts of blood.
• Use of various wepons and items as wepons.
• Typical use of gravyards and the dead rising.
• Use of close ups.
• Jumpy and high intense atmosphere.

For example in the films '28 days later' and '28 weeks later' its seems like the blood thirsty enemy(zombies) will stop at nothing to kill. we used this aspects as it was a very important part of all zombie films that the threat will stop at nothing. also there is scenes which make you jump and scared which is the whole part of a horror film. We also looked at the TV series 'Dead set' which gace use a lot of inspiration for example when there is an extream close up of the zombies eyes, we adapted that and changed the colour to red and had one of our zombies with red eyes. the fact that only one of our zombies had red eyes was to unnearve the audience and also make them think why is this one special? We then had the idea of a zombie tackleing our victim to the ground befor eating him to show the need to kill every living thing.

All this research gave us alot of our initial ideas like the idea we had of the passing of time like in '28 weeks later'. we also thought of filming it at night but then thought that that wasnt chalenging enough of the conventions of a typical zombie film where then can only come out at night so we thought why not have them out during the day to show nowhere is safe like in dead set. The use of blood frothing and dribbling from the zombies mouth was an idea we had from the first plan that we would have a close up of a zombie producing blood from their mouth. I then had the idea of having a dead bodies guts being eaten as the 'head zombie' looks up to tackle the main victim. this was developing the idea of zombies not only killing but full on eating like in dead set when there are multiple shots of zombies eating the insides of humans.

The conventions that we challenged were the fact zombies could run unlike in the original zombie films when they just staggered around. We also challenged that the zombies wern't the 'living dead' but were as the tittle suggests a result of some biological wepon or new disease. these were the only conventions we changed so that it was different to other zombie films but still have some of the same ideologies.

Film Shoot Second Attempt

For our second attempt we felt that it was much better because than our first because we have re-shot a lot of angles and types of shots. This was because we needed more close-ups and angles to make the horror film more intense and scarier than before, but unfortunately by us doing this and deleting previous scenes our film has gone down to 1 minute 15 seconds, our film is meant to be 2 minutes overall, this means that we have to re-shoot again to do more shots for our film.

Question three - Tom Nunn

Question 3 evaluation part one- Tom Nunn

We are making a zombie horror movie, which is aimed at mainly males ages 18-29. This is because males at this age want excitement and blood and gore, i can see this from the ratings from dead set which is what e are hoping to achieve with our finished product.

Votes	Average
Males	4,449	8.1
Females	580	8.2
Aged under 18	54	8.8
Males under 18	41	9.0
Females under 18	13	8.0
Aged 18-29	3,000	8.3
Males Aged 18-29	2,599	8.3
Females Aged 18-29	389	8.4
Aged 30-44	1,781	7.9
Males Aged 30-44	1,619	7.9
Females Aged 30-44	148	7.9
Aged 45+	191	7.6
Males Aged 45+	165	7.6
Females Aged 45+	24	8.0
Top 1000 voters	87	7.1
US users	558	8.1
Non-US users	3,997	8.1
IMDb users	5,532	8.1

men found this good as they rated it above 8 which is very high and shows that that is our target audience. we will use lots of blood, for example...
 

this group is associated as loving gore as they are thought of as male youths- the hooligans a an age where violence is associated with it therefore zombies are perfect.  i can see from loking at the reviews of the film Dead Set and Dawn of the Dead that the blood and gore excites them and they like something that makes you jump. our film tries to meet those needs so that the audience is scared from start to finish. we intend on making the film scary through the use of lots of close ups and blood.

one person who watched Dead Set said: 

"Dawn of The Dead Set, 1 November 2008

Author: Stevie G from United Kingdom

Considering this is a low budget TV film Charlie Brooker has pulled off a fantastic little gem, based on the premise of a Zombie Outbreak in England and the tale of a eclectic band of survivors (most of whom already hate each others guts) stuck in the Big Brother House, a satirical comment on the vacuousness of Reality TV to rival Romero's commentary of consumerism in the original Dawn of the Dead.

Taken as a gore fest with a huge dollop of black humour it works a treat and even the nihilistic ending fits so well into the message. Some great references throughout for Zombie Film Fans and Big Brother Fans alike. I like fast Zombies, much scarier and more threatening than traditional shufflers and considering the limited time this mini-series had they really were a necessity. Having some of the real ex-house mates and Davina as Zombies was a great touch.

If you enjoyed Dawn of the Dead (2004), 28 Days and Weeks Later, REC and Shaun of the Dead, Dead Set is definitely worth a viewing."

found off http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285482/usercomments

This supports that men like these films and will enjoy watching one.

thanks for reading

Foundation Portfolio Evaluation- Kimberleyrose Osbiston

Prom Night

Scream

our horror film

4) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

-How does the Horror genre traditionally represent social groups and Why? (age, gender etc/stereotypes?)

       The horror genre traditionally represents teenagers as there are many horror films like scream, prom night, haunting in conneticut and an exorcism of emily rose that all involve people in the age range of 13-20, this shows that the horror genre supports this age as, as they have people of this age in their films they attract people of the same age to watch the film. This is because it relates more to them and it makes them more scared as it could actually happen to them.

They have many sterotypes in them like in "Prom Night" there is the typically "bonde" damsel in distress that is being hunted by her killer throughout the film, as well as this "The Exorcism Of Emily-Rose" also has a girl that is being tormented by a supernatural unknown threat throughout the film. This shows us that it attracts teenagers as girls go to see it as they are the same age as the characters in the horror film, and the males go to see it as there are "pretty" girls that are in the horror films. Therefore, the horror genre traditionally relates more to the younger teenage generation as they are of a simular age range and can relate to what some characters are going through in the film.

Zombie from our horror film

Zombie from Dawn of the Dead

-What did you do to accomodate these representations practically on your production? (casting, mise-en-scene etc)
    We accomdated these representations by casting our main characters as teenagers (the boy and the girl at the beginning) this represents the social group as many people that go to see see horror films are teenagers and by casting people of a simular age it will appeal more to that social group. As it is a zombie horror film we have also casted older people from about the age of 39-45 this is so we can get a range of ages to show that the "Outbreak" has affected everyone not just one age range, I think that this makes it more scary as it could happen to everyone, so this shows that people of all ages might go to watch our film.

cast are wearing normal clothes, which is usual in a up to date zombie horror film

    We dressed our actors in normal clothes like, skinny jeans, jumpers, trainers, tracksuit bottoms, to show that they are normal people like you and me and that if it could happen to them it could happen to you. This makes the film more scary as you can see that the characters are just going about their normal routine, walking down the same path as they do everyday but for obvious reasons that day was very different.