For this course, we were put into groups. My group consisted of Me, Enshell and Leslie. We were asked to produce an opening sequence to our own film. Then we had to choose what Genre our film would be; we opted for a Horror/Comedy, a common Genre in film today, especially in British Cinema, with films like Shaun of the Dead. After we chose our genre, we had to plan out what was going to happen in the film, using Storyboards. This helped us get a general idea of our expectations and audience. As we were doing a horror/comedy, we were asked to analyse two films of the same genre, these were: Scary Movie 2 and Shaun of the Dead.
Looking at these films, we tried to make our film similar to them, but also different. Similarities to our film and those, is that they are parodies, meaning they take other films and mock and imitate them, but with a sense of humour. More commonly known as spoofs. But because our audience is a younger audience, we wanted to add something the youth of today would be interested in, so we added dance in our film, with a growth of interest in dance, with films like Step-Up and High School Musical. Though our audience liked this, they also recommended the use of song and characters possibly singing. But we met our expectations.
We aimed to represent just the common student, but obviously with a twist, as he ends up having a ‘dance-off’ with a zombie. And this is something our audience commented on a lot, saying there wasn’t a great deal of social representation. So this is something I will take into mind and work on it, in future projects.
The audience of our product was aimed at, teenagers and young adults, as this is the main target audience for parodies and comedies. So we thought about what we had to add in our project to achieve this. So we considered what youth of today enjoy and we came up with dance, comedy and horror.
We had some positive feedback about our product, people found it funny, interesting and few people said they want to see the rest. But a lot of people said, we needed more of a gripping ending, to want to make more people watch on and this is something I have taken into consideration and will work on in future projects.
While making our project, we have used a lot of technology for example, the cameras, Final Cut Pro and eBlogger. Using them, I have learned a lot about them, especially use of cameras, as I was the main Cameraman. I used a few camera shots I learned from previous lessons. I wasn’t really involved in the editing, but when our main editor was away, I took over for the lessons, using Final Cut Pro, for example, I learnt how to put a picture onto a green screen and cut. I learned these are all a major parts of media and making a video. We used blogger.com throughout making our product. In our blog, we had to post things off the task sheet that was handed to us, things like the synopsis of the two films we analysed. This in my personal opinion was the most difficult thing about the whole project, as we had a lot to publish and to type up.
When we done our preliminary task, it was to help us get an idea of what we needed in terms on continuity. The task was to create a short clip of continuity. We did our preliminary task going from one room to another, with a pair of keys, being thrown from one person to another, to the news reporter at the end. This worked well with continuity, as we had to get the timing of the keys being thrown correctly. Which we had to edit, using final cut pro, to get the continuity perfect. This helped us with the quality of our main product a lot, as we had to use continuity when walking through doors. So the preliminary task helped my group a lot. From the preliminary task to our finished product, I learned a lot. I learned how to use Final Cut Pro better. It was the first time; I used the ‘Green Screen’.
Overall making this product has helped me a lot and given me a better understanding, of what specific target audience expect from film and certain genres. Hopefully it will help me with future projects I may do and remember all the things I learned.
