Evaluation Audience Feedback

In order to help gauge how successful our finished project had been we designed a short audience questionnaire to be answered by a group of 30 other students. The five questions were:
1. Gender M/F? (19 male 11 female)

2. Did you enjoy the sequence? Y/N (21 said yes of which 18 were male and 3 female)

3. What aspects of the sequence made it more like a real film opening? (12 referenced to music opening and credits 4 said thriller opening getting you interested in watching rest of film *narrative hook* other comments were to do with character introduction and relative ease in following the sequence *editing*

4. Would you pay to see a similar film at your local cinema? Y/N (15 said yes all of whom were male)

5. If you replied yes to the above what aspects would attract you to watch similar films? (all made comment about action thrillers being entertaining and 10 referencing interesting plot twists, a couple also mentioned they are likely films with famous actors they enjoy seeing)

Overall these answers gave us a good indication towards the success of targetting a male audience identified back at the beginning of our project with expected results of little interest from female audiences. The results show our concept worked relatively well in using conventional thriller techniques (narrative hook/suspense) to entertain and engage the specified audience.

Just after we had finished the filming of our sequence, Wesley (a member of our group) dropped out from the sixth form and therefore we had to spread his roles out between the rest of the group to ensure everything got completed.

Filming

Looking back, the filming procedure was a success even though we had a few problems. The first problem we faced was with our equipment. The tape we were given to use was damaged and so we had to return to school to change it before we could begin filming, also the tripod we used was quite unsteady and therefore made the shots untidy. Our first day of filming was hugely successful however on the second day our actor failed to turn up and so we had to cancel any filming on that day and reschedule. We started filming again the following week and managed to get all the shots we needed ready to be edited.

Once edited, we watched the film back with the soundtrack over it and discovered a few problems. Firstly we needed to re-film any shots that we’re unsteady due to the tripod and secondly some of the props we used weren’t correct e.g. the alarm clock had no display on when it was meant to be going off. We also had to re-film parts where the actor’s clothing can be seen as they changed and broke continuity of the film.

On the day we decided to re-film, we ended up filming the entire sequence again for continuity purposes. We also cut down the sequence quite a bit in places and added a range of different shots.

Animatic

Locations

Due to the “intimacy” of the film e.g. waking up in a bed and raiding the cupboards for a bowl of cereal it was hard to find a location where the residents of the house were willing to let us film. The ideal location for our film was a big house in a nice looking estate, preferably a cul de sac. The place I had in mind was my gran and grandad’s house. They live in a nice area and have a nice, big, tidy house, the kind of house a scientist would live in. However, our actor said he would find it hard to act in a total strangers house so we collectively decided the best option was to film at my house however I would have to make some changes to the house before the filming began. One change was to move all my mums clothes out of the way. My mum and dads room is relatively untidy and my mum leaves her clothes around the house so I needed to clear them out of the way as a scientist wouldn’t have womens clothes in the house. Also, I had to lock my dogs in the spare bedroom and clear away all the stuff lying around on the floor where we were shooting so we had room for the tripod etc. Also, by my house there is a set of derelict flats which was a really good place for the “sniper” point of view shot. All in all, although my house wasn’t the place I originally had in mind but it still worked out fine.

Creating Fake Blood

Preliminary Exercise