Reviewing out Shoot Day

Our Shooting day was on the 21st of January. We shot our Thriller Production called "MIND". We met with our group(Storm-Director, Amy-Producer, Tom-Editor) and our actors (Berika + Alabama) in front of the Studio. Berika, our main male protagonist was already there, but we were missing Alabama Jackson who was supposed to play our little girl. We chose Berika because he looked really scary and is a good actor and we used Alabama becuase she is an innocent blonde little girl-excactly the way we wnated her to be. We were aware of the fact that it is difficult to work with little children because they are difficutl to focus, but Alabama did a really great job. With her we weren’t sure if she’d be able to come and we had to wait for a call from her father Ted Jackson. After 10 minutes of waiting, and us already trying to organise who else we could use (we were thinking of Hermione Cameron) Ted finally called us and we were happy that Alabama was able to come. Another problem was that even though we brought all the tools we needed, like knifes, bed linen and candles we forgot to create the mask and didn’t have a needle. However Storm and me quickly went up into my room and took whatever we needed and Storm started to make a mask that fit to Alabama’s face. When we were in the Studio Amy and Storm went off to put make-up on Alabama’s face, while Tom and me started designing the studio. At the beginning there was only a table, a chair and nothing else so we wanted to create a better feeling and asked Simon and Luke to help us with some changes. We put broken Carpet in the Studio, put holes into the window to let moonlight shine through, put the tools onto the table and designed them with blood and mud. We took the bed linen outside and put leaves on it and then we started to burn off candles which we got to stand on the table with the help of a lot of wax. One candle was given to Berika.For the lighting we used blue moonlight coming through the broken window, a light bulb hanging from the top of the room and the candle light. In some sequences we used extra light, for example to put Alabama into the foreground or to put the focus on different points in the room.Alabama was supposed to be sitting in the corner and a circle of candles should be around her which wasn’t really possible because of the carpet. Therefore we took a wood, put 5 nails in it that stock out and then put this under the carpet with only the nails looking through and then we put the candles on them. When this was finished I started telling Berika what he was supposed to do and our group practised with him how to rip the bed linen and how to stitch the mask.
One problem with the candles we had was that they burned off quickly and we needed to make sure that they still have the same length on the tape, because we shot for a whole day but the clip is only going to be about 2 minutes, however we managed to get around this by using new candles and blowing them out again quickly after each shot. After all this we explained our storyboard to Luke and Simon and did the last changes to it. Some of these changes were for example differences is lighting Alabama at the end because we wanted a candle to go up to her face, but she was sitting on the floor, therefore we had the idea with the candles around her that were lit. And instead of her wearing the mask right from the beginning, we made Berika get it and then put it over her face. Then we finally started shooting. Tom was doing the camera, a PD170 (same task we used in our Preliminary) which was standing on a Tripod and when we had to do a tracking shot it was standing on rubber tracks. The problem in using rubber tracks in our case was that they are created to go round, but we needed them to shoot a straight line and we had difficulties getting them straight. However - it worked ;). Storm was helping Tom and giving advises to the actors as the Director. Amy was doing the lighting, looked for the health of the actors and checked the extra monitor where what we were shooting was shown. I wrote down all the shots we got and the ones we still needed and helped the actors. At Lunch Time we were basically good in time and only had a few more shots left to do, however we could only take a break of 45 minutes. After this we came back together and finished shooting in the Studio. According to technical devices and lighting we had no problem in the studio because we had enough energy supply and the 180 degree rule didn’t make any problems to us. The only difficulty was with the candles because even if Amy and me could see on the monitor what was going on, it was pitch dark on the camera so Tom sometimes could see where he was focusing to. However we then just switched on the lights, helped Tom to focus and switched them back off. Shortly before finishing in the Studio something really bad happened. Before tidying up Luke decided to take out the candles from the wood so the nails came still out and Alabama Jackson jumped into them by mistake and hurt her. However, Ben Hurley was around and helped carrying her into the hospital area and she felt better soon.
After finishing in the Studio we packed our stuff together and went off to Hurtwood. We took the lights with us and the camera as well as the Tripod. Arrived in Hurtwood we figured out that the cable of the light wasn’t long enough because it had to be carried all the way down the trap door and the stairs, so I quickly run back to the Studio to get a longer cable.
One issue that was really worrying was that in the cellar we could use the candle for too long because there was gas in the air that could easily burn, therefore we had to be very careful. Another problem was that this is a corridor that is used a lot by students and we had to make sure that not too many crossed this corridor while we were shooting, to prevent noises.
We finished in Hurtwood at about quarter to five which was already really late, but we decided that we still wanted to go to Leith Hill to get our Exterior shot. We found a driver, Fiona, who drove us, the whole crew and the equipment to Leith Hill. When we arrived there the door was looked, but Luke and I used the backdoor to get in because outside it was way too dark to see anything and therefore we needed to get energy from inside the house to light the front door. We found an energy supply and a huge window where we could put the light out to the grass and quickly took some Exterior shots before we needed to go back to Hurtwood House.
When we arrived back there at about ten to six we took the equipment and brought it back to the studio. At six we could go to dinner.
I feel it was successful in achieving its goals because the candles and the little girl Alabama was really effective and I feel we have achieved our goal because we wanted to have a supernatural and scary Thriller.
This task differed a lot from our Preliminary task because it was much more advanced and we had to make sure that everybody knew what was going on as well as organising the set and everything else. I learned that there is much more to do with doing a movie that just setting up a camera and filming some sequences but it was very exiting and I really enjoyed working with the whole crew.

Media Institutions and Audiences

1. What kind of Media Institution might distribute your Media Product and why?

2. What are Media Institutions? Give appropriate examples!

3. Who would be the audience for your Media Product and why?

Stephanie Mareen Kufferath-Kassner

I think if i was to promote and distribute my product i would do it the same way it was done with the new Horror movie Paranormal Activity. Paranormal Activity was done by a newly formed independent company and then they presented the movie on the Slamdance Film Festival. It was so successful that Dreamworks saw it and decided to do a remake. So Paranormal Activity is an example of an independent film made without any studio funding. Another example of this would have been the movie “Colin” which is a zombie movie that was made for about 5 pounds, but people talked about it and therefore it made a huge profit in the end.

However it is very difficult to be lucky enough to get accepted at a film festival so that your film will actually be seen, but still I think it is a great idea because you do the movie the way you like it and then the Media Institutions can think of whether they believe it’s worth to do a remake. Personally I like the „platform release“ because if it develops all over the world you know the movie is great. I think if I would show my film at a film festival an American Institution which would appeal to it „New Line Cinema“ because they do movies like „Final Destination“ and our movie also deals with the „supernatural“. However I would also try to target my film at „Hammer Film Productions“ which are also known as „Hammer Horror“. It is a film production company based in the United Kingdom that used to dominate the horror film market and used to do great successes like “Frankenstein” and “Dracula”. Now they are restarting and therefore they would maybe use my horror film. I think they would be good because they also have the long-time experience from the past because they were founded in 1934.

2. A media institution is an established, often profit-based organization, which deals with the creation and distribution of advertising, entertainment and information services. Normally it is split into many different institutions where each one of them deals with another area and they all just “live” under the same name. Media Institutions largely exist internationally, which means that they work all over the world, like Warner Bros.. This is called „horizontal integration“. Warner Bros. Is a Media Institution that works, of course vertically which means that the do the production, the distribution and sometimes even the exhibition. But they also work horizontally which means that they do not only own other little productions like New Line Cinema in this case, but they have an own TV Chanel, Warner Bros. Used to own AOL as an internet server as well as a Radio Station and the publishing „Time“. This is very useful because if they have a new movie coming up they can advert for it in their own magazine. All in all this means that they own a wide range of Media and not only the film industry. Warner Bros. is a high-budget Institution that produces movies with A-List celebrities. There are a huge company so they have their own existence and have the opportunity to get the best actors, great equipment, an experienced crew as well as better locations. They also have the money to produce lots of advert which makes the people go and see the movie. Their costs are immense, but they do big productions such as “Harry Potter” or “Matrix” and therefore they are still making profits because they also do blanket releases which means that there are lots of copies of the movie which are then shown all over the world because they expect that many people want to see the movie.

However they can also exist in a smaller and national form, like the BBC. One hugely known medium-budget Media Institution is New line cinema which is part of Warner Bros.. This means that they do productions without i-max-cameras and use lesser known actors to save money. Their advertising is very small and their movies are platform released. This means that there are only a few copies of the movie which are only shown in few cinemas and when they are good people talk about them and so the movie is copied again and sent into more cinemas. That’s called word of mouth. Therefore only little money is spent but you mostly get a profit still.

3. I think the audience for my Media Production would be female and male but mostly males because I think when the movie is completed it will not only be scary but also bloody and males prefer such movies. I think my age group will be teens at the age of 15 to adults at the age of 25 because they are the age group that spend money for movies that are entertaining, so called „fun-Films“. But still for the 15 year olds it could get problematic because I feel that the age limit is going to be 18. As the main audience is 15-25 males I think the secondary audience would be 25 to 34 year old who enjoy watching horror movies and are maybe even huge fans. Another secondary audience would be 16 to 25 year old females, who are taken to the cinema by their boyfriends. And then maybe people that have seen and liked movies like “The Orphanage” and “Final Destination” or any other horror movie that deals with the supernatural and is bloody because then they would like to go and see our movie as well.

Account of Shooting day

Our Shooting day began at 9:00 am and we met our actors and our teachers in the Studio of Hurtwood House. Berika was playing the man and Alabama Jackson, who we got in the end, played our little girl. When they arrived Amy and Storm took Alabama and got her a white dress and put white make up in her face to make her look as if she had been in the room for at least one day. Tom and me started design the room further - we put mud and linen on the floor, candles on the table as well as all the tools we wanted to use. Storm took some of the bed linen and stitched the mask we wanted to use. While Tom continued designing the room further and checking with the lighting-Tom how it is going to be like, i took Berika and showed him what he had to do and did a little practise. Then we started our shoot. Everything went very well the only difficulty we had were the candles because they burned down a lot so we had to be careful that in the end it still looked as if it was shot in 2 minutes. I took notes and wrote down which shots we already did and which were left as well as checking on the display if the camera positions looked good. Amy helped me and also did the light, while Tom was doing the camera and Storm directed. But Storm, Amy and me basically did everything together and i think it worked very well. However when we almost shot everything in the studio a horrible mistake happened. Before we had taken a piece of wood where we put nails in and then sticked candles on it. When we were almost done we took the candles out but the wood with the nails remained. We put the lights back on and started to tidy up a little when suddenly our actress jumped around and into the nails with her feet. Luckily Ben Hurley came around and carried her into the "hospital-station" and Alabama got better quickly after. We continued our shoot under the trap door in hurtwood house which worked extremely well because the location was very effective. Even though by then it was already 5 o'clock, we still wanted to have our shot of Leithhill and so Fiona took us and the equipment in a bus and we went to shoot two shots there. We got into the house and got the energy-supply for our lights and then we shot Berika walking towards the house and made it look as if he was entering. At 6 o'clock our shooting day ended.
I personally liked it because on the day of shoot we still changed some ideas and got better ones and i think it had been a good and effective shooting day.

Effectiveness of pre-production

During the time of planning our Thriller Production we changed our idea plenty of times and people came in to help us evaluate what is good and what isn’t. At the beginning we had the idea of somebody walking out of the car, going to a house where nobody is in, getting back in the car, having flashbacks of children with masks and then leaving the house by car until the child stands in the middle of the road. This idea was changed to our final story which I have uploaded onto my blog. From this I learned that there is more to do with making a movie than simply having an idea. I learned that making a movie is kind of doing a puzzle because to make it look good everything has to fit together somehow. For example we wanted to use “potato-sack-masks”, but our film wasn’t set in the country-side so that would have been pointless. Therefore we used sheets of bedlinen because this fits to the rest of our production.

Media Folder - Cast List

This is our Cast List. We chose Alabama, a young girl aged 12 for the character of our victim because her appearance is very innocent.
We chose Berika as our male actor, because he has a natural scary look and also looks older than he actually is.

Media Folder - Shooting Schedule

The Shooting Schedule is one of the most important things in the Folder because it shows when whe are going to shoot what where and when there are breaks etc.
The Shooting Schedule is fixed and helps the group, us, to organise the shoot day better and we guarantee that we stay in time to take all the shots we wanted to get.

Media Folder - Floor Plan = Lighting Plan

The Floor and Lighting Plans show the location where the sequence is shot and briefly shows where the lights are going to be standing and where the table for example is going to be.

Because of this we could plan our shoot position better and give the team soomething tom imagine how we want the studio to look like. Also the measures helped us to organiye props, and organise the lighting effectively.

Media Folder - Props List

The Props List shows which props are used in the Thriller and where we get them from.
We used a needle to stitch the mask, the knife and other various tools to make the studio look more like an actual scary scene. The chains we used to keep Alabama in the corner because in the actual shoot her hands are chained. We used a lot of candles because we wanted to create a special light and we needed the flickering. Also we wanted the candles to be blown out at one point except the one, to show something supernatural. The sheets are used to rip them and make the mask in the end.

Media Folder - Group Roles

The Group Roles are very important because they show which member of the group did which job and what their main part is. My part is the one of the assistant director, but i also did the painting of the storyboards, wrote the three act treatment, the introduction and the props,costume and equipment list.

We chose each group role according to the talent each person has. For example Amy is very organized, but doesn't like giving commands on the day of shoot and therefore she became the producer and i became the director and worked on the media folder.

Media Folder - Costume List

The Costume List shows what costumes are used for whom and where we get them from and if we need to buy them, where to buy.

For the male protagonist we used dark and heavy material clothes as a contrast to the white dress and barefeet girl - Alabama.
The dark clothes are stereotypical for attack, and something bad and the white clothes stand for virginity and innocence and therefore they contrast each other.

Media Folder - Equipment List

The Equipment list shows what equipment is used and reminds every group member what we need to have on the day of shoot.
It is also useful to make sure, that we don't forget any important equipment.

Media Folder - Introduction

The Introduction contains a brief Synopsis of the whole film and introduced the main protagonistst who are doing the movie.