EmmaGBradshaw-AS Media Studies : February 2013

Thursday 21 February 2013

My Evaluation Prep

Whilst planning out my evaluation, I made some notes to help me process and cover everything to do with my evaluation. I planned and studied the questions making links, notes and my ideas I wanted to add in. I hope to cover a wide variety of these points with my final evaluation. I found this very useful as it was kind of a main reminder of everything I need to complete and add in to my final evaluation.

Wednesday 20 February 2013

Aura - Target Audience

TARGET AUDIENCE

We have decided as a group that we are going to keep our same target audience that we had for our preliminary task.

This is because the audience research carried out was accurate and correct and also very time consuming.

As we based our preliminary task on our audience research and created a clip form a horror movie as the task it was appropriate to keep the same audience research for our main as this would still be relevant for our main task. See previous post for all about Target audiences.

As a recap;

Target Gender; Male
Target Age; 16-22

Written By Zak Rodgers

Aura - Chosen Actors

Here is a photograph we have taken to show our character Stephen who is played by Callum Duffy, a 14 year old boy from Baldock, Hertfordshire. He will play our antagonist, Stephen. He has had make up on his face to dirty it to represent the fact he is a lost child as well as the messy look hair. He is wearing a dirtied white tee as previously stated and black school trousers. He is also wearing the walking boots as stated in the previous post.

Here is another photograph we have taken to show our character Sam who is played by Jo Mance a 17 year old girl from Baldock, Hertfordshire. In our film Aura she will play our protagonist and as previously stated she has minimal make up, wearing a vest top, cardigan and skinny jeans with slippers.

Aura - Characters Costumes

Aura - Character/ Actor research

Aura - Animatics

Aura - Audience Feedback

Aura - Story Board

9 Frames Of Film Institution Logo Research Mood Board

Here is a research mood board I created to show a wide variety of major Institutes and their logos which we were thinking of using. Creating this helped give us ideas for designing and building our logo for our own film institution 'pandemic pictures', making us realize the majority of these companies had chosen images that would link in with their name. This therefore helped us with choosing the correct film institution for our film.

Dreamworks, Universal and Paramount are the three most popular prime examples of companies having chosen images that link into there names.
Universal includes having an image of earth and stars and space in the background.
Dreamworks including clouds, a moon and a night sky reminiscent of dreamlike scenery.
Paramount includes mountains and clouds in their logo which also links into the their name.

I and my group also noticed with these three logos is the vast scale of these objects. We noticed that they all use large and vast things, this therefore having the connotation of endless possibilities.

Why Lionsgate?

AURA

The title of our film was thought of by my group member Zak Rodgers through a eureka moment. The official definition of Aura is;

The distinctive atmosphere of quality that seems to surround and be generated by a person, thing,, or place: the ceremony retains an aura of mystery

(in spiritualism and some form of alternative medicine) a supposed emanation surrounding the body of a living creature and regarded as an essential part of the individual: emotional, mental, and spiritual levels from an energy field around the body known as the aura muddy colors in in the aura indicate negative emotions

any invisible emanation, especially on odor: there was a faint of disinfectant

2. Medicine a warning sensation experienced before an attack of epilepsy or migraines some

Aura usually linked to paranormal activities and spiritual links, this was appropriate to our film as the child is dead and he has come back to find his family, to know how we died and find someone to help him finally be at peace.

We don't have a brain storm of our ideas for our final horror film as the title AURA was the first title our group member Zak Rodgers had thought of and all of my group agreed to it being the right title for our film.

Tuesday 19 February 2013

Behind The Scenes: Aura 2

Made By Emma Bradshaw (me)

Behind The Scenes: Aura

Made by Kelsey Duffy

Aura: Review

To help with my evaluation, I wanted to get other peoples feedback on my film so I could see what I can improve for next time or what the audience likes best in my film and why. Me and my group played our film to our class and told them to make notes on what we could improve, what worked well and what they enjoyed the most.
From getting feedback from other students who had took media helped me and my group think about improvements that could be made. Overall, I am very pleased with the feedback and I feel like that viewers will enjoy our opening although there a few improvements that could be made.

Final Film: Timeline

Final Film - Description

A 9 year old boy is believed to have gone missing one day after he ran off into the woods after his dog.After Many years of searching for the missing child the police close the case as and declared him dead, the family never gave up hope however after getting into financial difficulty the family are forced to move house much to their regret. A new family have now bought the property Sam and her family move in and Sam soon discovers that now everyone has moved out at first Stephen terrorizes her but as the film goes on Sam finds out more and more about Stephen and sets out to help him.

First idea of how the film will open is that the film will begin in a short dream with a quick succession of shots building up tension with a blurry vision to help make it disorientating for the viewers. The dream will end on the image of the boy and cut to a girl waking up from the dream, where the girl will then get up to look for her mother to realize she is out and then starts to hear noises she will go up to the loft to investigate where it will end on a shot of the missing boy.

Consent Form For Underage Actors And Actresses

Here is the permission letter my group member Zak made, to help show the public and viewers we are a very well and certified company.

Final Film: 9 Frames

Here are my main nine screen shots of the opening
to my groups film Aura. I chose these shots as I thought they resembled the film and gave a clear understanding for the viewers to get if they have not watched the film.

Final Film: Aura

Where Are We Know

I created this power point to help me and my group figure out what point we where at with our final film and what needed to be done or added.

Where are we know horror film opening from Emma Bradshaw

Setting Research and Ideas

As a group we discussed the possible locations we could use (towns or villages) where we could film our outside scenes. That is when I suggested that we film in my home village Langford in Bedfordshire. I also suggested that we film the house scenes at my house as we had just recently moved there so hadn't had extensive decoration done.

We all decided that we would go to Langford on Tuesday afternoon as this was when we all had a free study period to walk around the countryside to find the best possible place to film outside.
We spent 3 hours walking around through the village in winter, when we came across many obstacles such as flooded paths and extremely thick sinking mud. It probably wasn't a very good idea to wear our sixth from suits and smart clothing! However this seemed to be a very useful idea as we found our perfect setting to film the dream section of the movie, this was the wooded area which was very dense however not over-ally dense which would enable good visibility. We especially liked the location where there was circle of rocks and then a giant owl carved out of wood, we felt this would look like a ceremony ring and would fit in with our sub genre of psychological horror.

Music Ideas - Aura

When I went onto YouTube I found a wide variety of music me and my group where considering to use. Here are some of the possible choices YouTube clips.

However when it came down to choosing our music we wanted to keep the beginning of the lyrics to row row row your boat but change the rest as this is what helps signifies how the boy died.
- WE DID NOT USE ANY OF THIS CLIPS IN OUR FINAL FILM AS WE MAE OUR OWN MUSIC - These video clips are to just get an understanding of what style of music we wanted in our final film.

OUR LYRICS
Row row row your boat, gently down the stream,
Merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream.

Row row row your boat, gently down the stream,
Don't forget to watch your back, no one will hear you scream.

Singer- Emma Bradshaw (me)
Song Writer- Kelsey Duffy and Emma Bradshaw (me)

Shooting Schedule - Aura

My group member Kelsey Duffy made a shooting schedule and also separated different sequences from our film into different blocks to help ensure that our filming process was carried out quickly and smoothly. We wanted to make sure that we were completely happy with how all the shots came out and so we planned a 3 day shooting schedule. By planning a schedule, it meant we had a deadline to work towards therefore making us more focused. She created the blocks so that we had set ourselves goals to aim towards at the end of each day. It also enabled us to work out what props we needed to be ready and to tell our actors when they were needed.

Location Ideas

We came up with several different ideas and places for our location by collecting together places that each person in our team already knew of. The fact that all of us lived in different areas worked to our advantage as it gave us more to choose from. But the location that we decided to use was from where I lived in a little place called Langford, here are some of the selection sites that we chose.