Evaluation 4

How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

I used Adobe Photoshop when making the intertitles, magazine cover and poster. I could have used another programme but I decided to use this one as I have more experience of using it and it's easier to make the final product look professional. Photoshop allowed me to put all the elements of my task onto different layers, letting me easily rearrange them and add filters to certain parts of the poster/magazine cover for a better effect. One of the tools I used was the blend tool, which allowed me to create the smoky effect around the edges of my poster without it looking unprofessional - as I could ensure that the colours fit and that there 'smoke' had no sharp edges. The only problem with using this programme is that I didn't know how to make circles and stars easily, so I made the shapes needed in PowerPoint and then put them onto my ancillary tasks.

To edit the footage, my group used Adobe Premier Pro as it was the only video editing software the school offered. In our previous school, we learnt how to use Final Cut Pro and were planning to use it again for this task but we were unable to. Even with a lesson on how to use this software, it still took us a while to get used to it and I feel as though we weren't able to use it to the best of our abilities due to our inexperience. This programme allowed us to reorganise the video clips and cut them down to the size we needed - which was very helpful when we were editing the fast-paced section of our trailer to the music. There was only a limited amount of video effects available and I found that quite annoying as the only way to make the lighting darker was to decrease the opacity and make the shot harder to see. It was also hard to add in text and I decided to just make the intertitles on Photoshop to save time and because then I could add on effects to make the text look better.

Blogger was used to record all of my work and progress easily. The teachers had a blog which they put work we needed to do on our own blogs on, which made it easier to catch up on work if one of us was absent and also ensured that everybody had the same quality of work. We used this site as it was easy to use (due to the fact that we had blogs last year) and we can access these at home.

I learnt from the making of my film last year that there should be a group chat from the moment the group is created, so we made a group on Facebook as it is easy to access due to all of us having the Messenger app on our phones. We could also access the group chat at home and this allowed us to organise filming times easier and find out who was available. This also allowed us to send photos easily amongst all of the group - which was very helpful when we needed pictures of Shauna for our ancillary tasks and didn't have time to email them to each other. I also used Messenger to send my work to friends and family who hadn't seen any of it before for feedback.

Google was my main search engine used as I'm more experienced with using it and it allowed me to quickly and easily find what I needed. I used Google for all of my research into theorists, poster and magazine covers. I found this very helpful when looking for my own examples of thriller magazines as it allowed me to narrow the search results down into ones I wanted and I could look at many posters to get inspiration and see what common themes are among them all.

I used YouTube in school and at home to research trailers in the thriller genre and get ideas for my own trailer. I learnt from last year that it's easier to put all my videos on there as it's easier to link it onto our blogs and share with people - which also allowed all of us to access the footage at home if we needed to. I found YouTube very useful for getting screenshots of previous work for my magazine cover as it saved time trying to find all of my work from last year on the school system.

Lucy used Direct Messaging on Twitter to contact Charlotte Campbell for permission to use her song in our trailer. She used Twitter to contact Charlotte as she didn't have any other contact details and needed a quick reply to ensure the trailer was finished in time.

We used Freeplay Music to find our music as it was important that we had a track without copyright. This site made it easier to find what we were looking for as it allowed us to filter the music available by tempo, feeling and mood it created. The music also gave our film a professional aspect as the tracks on this site are used for many professional projects, which made us pick this site over others. It was very easy to find what we wanted due to being able to easily preview every track we wanted and once we found the music we liked, it was very easy to download and came with other versions of the song. The music was also free, which helped the fact that we had no production budget.

Evaluation 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Trailer

As we wanted our trailer to be of the highest quality we could make, my group asked for a lot of feedback on what we were doing so that we could tell if our ideas were original and creative. Initially, we wanted our film to be based around a party but, after being told by our teacher that it wasn't enough for an entire film, we realised that our murderer would need a motive and this resulted in us changing our plot into something much better.

Most of our trailer feedback was about our two music tracks not fitting together very well and the common advice was to change one of the tracks to one that blended better with the other. We knew to begin with that the two tracks wouldn't go together, so we tried everything suggested in order to try and make them fit better - and we didn't want to use new tracks as we found it hard enough to find the two we were using. Initially, there was a long pause between the two tracks but it put more emphasis on the difference in tempos. We then tried putting a slower version of 'Pretty Parties' in this gap, but found that it was then harder to hear Lucy's voiceover and it still didn't help them flow better. Finally, we tried having a smaller pause between the two tracks and fading the first song out sooner, which we found made the blend sound better. As we had all listened to the same part of the trailer too many times to tell if there was a difference, we asked our teacher to listen too and she told us that it sounded better, so we used this in our final trailer.

Poster

The first piece of feedback I received was to blend the edges of the trees to put less emphasis on them rather than my main character. I decided to do this in a 'smoke' effect as I had just added a smoky looking background onto my magazine cover and wanted the ancillary tasks to have the same theme so that they're associated with each other. I also made Holly's jeans darker so that they didn't stand out as much, as they were a bright blue and the only colour on the poster. This drew the attention away from them and onto Holly and the title, which is what I wanted the viewer's eyesight to be on when they first look at it.

I sent an photo of my poster in progress to my best friend for feedback as I needed somebody that hadn't seen it before to take a look and give me an honest opinion. She suggested to add a website to the bottom and make the 'Coming Soon' text more central in the billing block, so I tried out these changes and kept them because I liked the way they made the institutional information look more professional.

Magazine

As I was in a rush to finish my poster in time for our first draft deadline, I neglected my poster a bit and ended up submitting a version that was very basic. I knew before receiving feedback from my class that I would need to add pictures of other films and already had the pictures ready for when I edited it again. People in my class also suggested that I used different fonts on my cover as they were all the same. I was going to change the title font to the same font as 'In The Shadows' but was unable to add the same shadow effect onto 'Time', so I changed the other fonts on the cover instead to one similar but slightly different. The new font allowed me to position the text better and made the magazine look more professional overall so I am glad that I received that feedback.

Evaluation 2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

Both of my ancillary tasks have the same greyscale colour scheme to fit with the typical use of dark colours in the horror genre. This also makes them stand out from the other brightly coloured magazines/posters around them - as I found in my research that most magazines/posters use bright colours to make themselves stand out, and decided that what would make my media different is to use no bright colours. The film itself also has a very dark colour scheme and hopefully this would make people associate it with the other promotional materials.

The title is the same on every text to promote synergy. This will make the audience remember the name better and hopefully reach a point where they know what the film title says without even reading it fully. The images used in all three texts focus on our main character, Holly, because she isn't played by a well-known actress and so we couldn't just mention her name and get people to watch the film. We also want the audience to see her and immediately think of the film.

The trailer is the only text that suggests what the plot of the film is as it uses non-diegetic clips and voiceovers to tell the audience what's happening. There is non-chronological editing used though as we don't want the audience to be able to predict how the plot goes before seeing the film and also to add a sense of mystery to it. The magazine cover and poster are vague on purpose but through the use of clichés (such as smoke and trees) they tell the audience that the film is in the horror genre. This is to emphasise the fact that the film has a major plot twist in it and we don't want to give that away to the viewer as we want the film to shock them.

Our target audience would spend a lot of time online so we made the trailer short on purpose to keep their interest and also so that we could make it an advert at the start of YouTube videos - which potentially could give us an international audience. The magazine would only be sold in the UK, which is where our main target audience would be, and we would also make sure that the poster would be seen by an UK audience.

We also added a hashtag and website to the end of our trailer to encourage people to talk about the film with their friends and do more research on it. The audience would want to be scared by the film, which is why I made the poster and magazine cover look mysterious but obviously from the horror genre. The trailer goes in a different direction and tries to fool the audience into thinking that the film is a teen angst initially, which is another genre that our target demographic would enjoy, but it's something I wouldn't be able to recreate for the ancillary tasks.

The institutional information is also repeated throughout the texts. The 'LEV Productions' logo is at the beginning of the trailer and at the bottom of the film poster so that the audience would begin to associate the film to the company. I also added a mention of the production company on the front of my magazine cover to further emphasise the relation of it to the film.

Overall, I think that it would be an effective promotional campaign as I've focused on the synergy between the three texts, with the combination of colours, images of the actress and production company. That will make the audience associate the film, production company and main actress to each other, while also letting them know effectively that the film is in the horror/thriller genre. I also made my texts around what my target audience would want to see, which would make them more likely to see my film.

Evaluation 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventions from real media products?



Editing - The editing of my tasks was made to fit the genre on purpose so that people would instantly recognise the film as from the horror/thriller genre. For the ancillary tasks, I darkened all of the photos included so that they fir with the monochrome theme I was trying to achieve. This theme was used as a way to keep the colours minimal and dark, while also having a professional effect overall - although most horror magazines use a lot of red, I found that including this would make the quality of the cover decrease. I added smoke effects in the background of the magazine cover to stop the background from just being a solid black and to emphasise the genre as candles/smoke are common in horror films. I made the trees on the poster monochrome so that they blended easier with the solid black used on the bottom half, and blended the edges to give an impression of smoke yet again - keeping the same mise-en-scene as the magazine cover so that the audience would relate them to each other. In the trailer, I used fast-paced editing and fades to black as I found that these were very typical when conducting my research and it automatically makes the audience associate the film with the thriller genre.

Age rating - The age rating of my film is very typical of the genre as most horror films are rated 15 to attract a teenage audience that would relate to the young main characters. The film is rated 15 because it portrays topics such as death and kidnapping in an almost realistic way - which means it can't be a 12 - but is not gorey/psychologically harming enough to be rated 18.

Poster format - The format of my poster is very typical of films in the genre, although I feel as though there's too much on it and it might have been more effective with just Holly and the title because most horror film posters are very minimal with their information. There is a focus on the background and a long-shot of our main character to put emphasis on them and to connote to the audience that they are important to the film. This could be considered typical due to many posters being formatted like this, but could also be seen as different because a lot of posters I saw in my research only focused on either the character or setting, not both. There is a large title as the focus of the bottom half of the poster, which is typical of posters as they are used to make sure the viewer knows what the film is. The title itself is typical of the genre as its vague and makes the audience wonder what the film is about, while also giving them an idea that the film will be a horror due to the use if the word "Shadows".

Settings - The setting of the film are very typical of the genre, as most horror films follow teenagers going about their 'normal' lives before something supernatural happens, but we tried our hardest to make sure we used nothing too clichéd such as a forest or a cemetery. Although we were trying to use setting that weren't too typical, we needed to use a couple of common settings to ensure that the film would be recognised as a thriller, which is why the trees and dark street were used. Holly's house and school were used to give a sense of verisimilitude to the film, as they are places that a typical teenage girl would spend a lot of time at. They are also used to get the audience to relate more to the film, as they would be around Holly's age and would recognise these settings better than an older audience. This is very typical of the genre as almost all horror films are set in a 'relatable' setting in which the audience relate to the characters and wonder what they would do if they were in that situation themselves.

Narrative - The plot of the film is very stereotypical of the genre, but we've tried to mix two common tropes in order to shock the audience. The majority of the film is set around some 'supernatural' being terrorising Holly, which is very typical of horror films and can lead to the film's ending being guessed very easily by the viewer. We are then going to reveal to the audience that the events were actually caused by a jealous friend that's gone too far with his plans. This is also used in a lot of films but we are hoping that the audience would be shocked by this shift in antagonist enough that it makes the plot a bit less typical.

Magazine format - Most magazine covers have the same layout and I've ensured that my magazine is similar to them so that people recognise it instantly as a film magazine. There is a large picture of my film's main character to draw focus to her, even though she isn't a well-known actress that is typically used to sell the magazine. Even though the colours are dulled, I've made sure that she's still the brightest part of the cover so that the viewer pays a lot of attention to her and hopefully recognises her from the trailer or poster. There's also a big title for the magazine - that's been coloured to match how 'In The Shadows' looks - and other new films mentioned, which is what every other film magazine has to grab attention. As mentioned before, the colours aren't bright like most magazines, which isn't typical but fits with the genre of the films featured.

Characters - The characters of our film are very typical of horror films, but could also be recognised as from the teen angst genre too due to their ages. All of the main characters are teenagers that we are portraying as 'average' and relatable, so that our target audience of teenagers would be more likely to see the film. Holly, especially, is aimed at being relatable for a female audience, which isn't typical of the genre as most films are aimed at young males. Although it isn't common in many films to have a female lead, it's more common in horror films but only to sexualise the main character - whereas we aren't using her for that purpose. The antagonist is also very typical as supernatural beings and murderous, jealous friends are used in quite a lot of horror films.

Hashtags/fonts used/colour scheme - All text I used was in a white or grey colour to go with the black backgrounds, so that the audience can read it easier and also so that everything to promote my film looked similar. The fonts used are basic sans-serif to make the film look professional and to also make people associate my three promotional materials with each other, as I used the same couple of fonts for everything. Hashtags are more common in modern films as they allow a younger audience to talk with their friends about it, which is who we are targeting the film at, and would also allow us to monitor the success of our film through how much it's mentioned on social media.

Trailer format - I based the format of my trailer on existing horror trailers, with the pace getting faster along with the music to build tension and ensure that the viewer wants to keep watching until the end. I challenged the typical format by making the trailer seem like a teen angst film to begin with and then changing the style quickly to reveal that the film is a horror instead. This is because our target audience are teenage girls, who typically like teen angst films, and this would make them interested in watching the film by making them curious about what the plot actually is. There are also fades to black used throughout to emphasise the change in pace. I kept the intertitles typical too, with the production company at the beginning and the institutional information/title at the end, but added in an extra shot of Holly when the audience would think the trailer's over to make it different.

In The Shadows - Trailer

https://youtu.be/JXA5azNXlTg

In The Shadows - Magazine Cover

In The Shadows - Poster

Research - Being Scared

Before creating our films, we had to list what made people scared to give us idea of what our films should be based around. From this research, we found that people tend to be more scared of things that are realistic and could occur in real life - for example, the dark or loneliness. This also applies to gore in films, as people would be more scared if the wounds were received realistically and looked like they could be real.

Some people also told us that they find films with ghosts and spirits in to be scarier than films with other 'monsters' in. This is because they feel as though ghosts could be real - as there's "not really any proof that they aren't" - and the events in the film could happen to them if they messed with the spirit world. On the other hand, there were people that said they found ghost films to be the least scary as they believe that ghosts aren't real and don't take the plot as seriously. When I asked one person what would make them scared of a ghost in a film, they replied that it would be "if the plot was something that could happen to me in real life, without any clichés such as Ouija boards or old, haunted houses".

We decided to use this research when planning our film by creating a relatable character that is in a 'realistic' storyline (although it is exaggerated for entertainment). We focused on scaring the audience by having the 'antagonist' as an unseen, supernatural being - as we have no budget for this film and wouldn't be able to create a realistic-looking, CGI ghost. The film intentionally starts with a clichéd pentagram or Ouija board to mislead the viewer into thinking that the plot is going to be like other films, and so that the real antagonist isn't suspected. Throughout the film, the main character will also experience some of the most common fears that people have - such as loneliness, the unknown and death.

In The Shadows - Draft Magazine Cover

The design of my magazine cover is based on the 'Total Film' cover I copied earlier in the year. Like with my poster draft, I showed this to people in my class for feedback on what I could add/change. I knew before showing people that I needed to add other film photos and titles to the cover, which is why I made placeholders for them to show that I was planning to add them.

Some people pointed out that, other than 'In The Shadows', everything else was in the same font. Because of this, I am considering changing 'Film Time' to something different, but I am not going to change the other fonts because then it would look unprofessional.

In The Shadows - Draft Film Poster

This is the first poster I was going to hand in as a draft but, when I thought I was finished, it was suggested that I remove some of the trees so that the picture of Holly stands out more.

I then created this poster but I wasn't sure about how it looked, so I saved it as a different file for if I wanted to use the original poster. I created the faded look around the edges of the poster by colouring in the space with an almost-transparent, light grey paintbrush, and then going over it with a darker grey on the same settings. This helped me to blend the colours more and also meant that it didn't matter if it didn't look perfect. I also made the glow around Holly larger to put more focus on her and to also make it fit in with the soft glow around the edges of the poster. If I have time, I might try to redo the glow around the edge to make the black space in the corners smaller. This is because I think there is a bit too much blank space in the poster and I also want more of the trees to be visible.

To get feedback, I showed the second poster to people in my class to see what they said. Generally, people thought that it was effective as a film poster and could be a real poster if they didn't known that I had made it. It was mentioned that there's no idea what the narrative of the story is from looking at the poster, so I am considering adding a pentagram in the background to connote that the film is supernatural. I was also told that I should add a website or hashtag somewhere so that potential viewers would have some way to research the film further or talk about it with their friends.

In The Shadows - Draft Trailer

We received some feedback from our class after showing them this trailer and used it when improving our work. The feedback was:

• Add the production company logo at the beginning.
• Find a way to blend the two songs or change them.
• Lower the volume of the first song.
• Change the first shot to something more effective.
• Edit the fast-paced section to the music.

Film Editing - Changes to Ideas

As mentioned in a previous post, we had an idea of what we wanted to do with the editing of our trailer before we started. Some of these were definite idea - such as editing to the music - and others were ideas of what to add in if we had the time, like adding in animation. Due to none of us having used the editing software before, we weren't sure what it offered and so our initial ideas were based upon other softwares we've used.

We originally wanted silence in the middle of the trailer to put emphasis on the voiceover but had to fade a song over this part to make the two main music tracks of the trailer blend. It sounded better this way because the fast-paced music didn't come in so suddenly and it allowed us to extend the end of the first song. We also decided that the silence wasn't necessary for emphasis as it's not Holly speaking and therefore it makes her voiceovers stand out more.

Initially, we didn't plan on adding the green screen at the beginning or the institutional information at the end but realised while watching other's trailers that it made it seem more professional. I kept the fonts and styles used as similar to what actual film trailers have to make our trailer seem more realistic.

I wanted to animate the title so that the circles moved on one at a time but couldn't find out how to - and couldn't find a way that wouldn't take up too much time - so I changed the transitions to a simple wipe and fade, which had a professional look to it. I also didn't know how to animate the title but when putting the candle being blown out before it, a fade looked more effective when showing the title so we decided to do that.

While figuring out how to make the two main songs blend, we tried adding in a scream at the start of the fast-paced section but it didn't have any effect other than making people jump and cringe (which they didn't like) so we took it out. This also stopped the shots being edited in time to the music and we decided that that would be more effective so we made it the bigger priority.

Film Editing - Music

As the start of the trailer is supposed to seem like a teen angst film, we used an upbeat song - called 'If she's an angel' - by Charlotte Campbell, who is a singer that Lucy knows and who allowed us to use her song. We slowed down the beginning of the song to 80% of its original tempo to give a slightly eerie vibe to the clips being shown. So that the last word wasn't lost in the fade to the next song, we added reverb to it to put emphasis on it. The lyrics of the section of song we used are, "If she's an angel, what am I? If she's an angel, what am I supposed to be?", which connote innocence and a sense of the girl mentioned being 'perfect'- reflecting Michael's views of Holly. The lyrics also emphasise the use of Strauss' theory of polar opposites being in our film.

The second song used in the trailer is called 'Pretty Parties' and was found on FreeplayMusic. We sped the song up to fit the fast pace and we  also reorganised the order of the shots so that the cuts were in time to the beat. I decided to edit the start of the song to the end of the trailer so that it fades into a slower pace when the title appears. There was also a version of it that was slowed down and had less drums so I edited that between the two songs as a transition to make them flow better - as we realised in our feedback that the songs didn't go together well.

As mentioned in an earlier blog post, we used silence at the beginning and end of the trailer to put emphasis on voiceover - with last part being diegetic.

Film Editing - Photoshop

As the most experienced in the group with Photoshop, I was in charge of producing the film title and institutional information for our film. We would have made them on the film editing programme but we didn't want to waste time finding out how to create text on a programme we know very little about. I also suggested using Photoshop because I wanted to put on the production company logo and effects - both of which could not be done without Photoshop.

Making the title was relatively easy as I already had an idea of what it wold look like. I kept to the original idea of 'in the' being a bold, white font and 'shadows' in a slanted font with a shadow behind it. I put a layer mask over 'shadows' so that the first half of the word looked like it was hidden in shadows, which I achieved by putting a gradient from black to white over it and adjusting the opacity until the word was only just visible. I then put a drop-shadow onto the word, which wasn't visible on the black background, and moved it until just the top of the shadow was visible on the 'in the'. I did this to emphasise the idea of darkness and making sure that the top half of the title didn't look out of place by being just plain white.

I used the same technique of a gradient overlay on the 'coming soon' screen shown after the title. this was to fit in with the title and to establish a theme that could be used on other promotional devises - such as posters. I found in my research that this screen usually has a website and/or a hashtag on it, so I added them onto the screen in a different font to make them stand out but not look out of place. I added a soft glow behind them to make them stand out more and to contrast with the idea of darkness. I decided to put in the bright version of our production company logo as it makes it stand out from the monochrome colour scheme and would catch the audience's attention.

For the institutional information, I searched for what other thriller films had used and based ours on what I found. Most of them had the job titles smaller than the names so I copied that format, along with the jobs that were featured on the screen. All of the jobs were done by the three people in my group, but I wanted the screen to look professional so I included others from our class in this screen.

While researching, I noticed that almost every trailer had a green screen at the start stating the age rating of the film. I based our one off of these by using the same font and format as the ones I found, but editing it to fit with our film.

The production logo had already been made so I didn't have to make one while editing. I darkened the colours to fit with the dark genre and to instantly connote to the audience that they are about to watch a horror trailer. There is also a wipe transition used when this screen is shown in the trailer to grab the viewer's attention and to add some movement to the logo - as we don't know how to animate it. This makes the company seem professional and also interests the audience as it's the only transition that isn't a fade or cut.

Film Production - Production Schedule

To organise our filming, we created a production schedule that summarised when everybody had free time and was able to film. We had to fit a lot of filming around when our main actor, Shauna, was available - but a lot of shots don't include her so it wasn't too hard.

Friday 11th December - First day of filming. We filmed in the lunch area when no children are present - during the media lesson. We also got some shots of Shauna walking around the school, which wasn't necessary footage but we wanted to film everything we could.

Monday 14th - Lucy and Shauna weren't here, so me and Eva went to take photos of our settings and ended up finding some better places to film than we originally intended.

Thursday 17th - Filmed Shauna walking through the trees we found on Friday. We had to cut the filming short, because she had to go to her lesson, and spent the remaining time finding music and fonts to use in our trailer. Lucy and Eva met up with Shauna after school and filmed her walking home at night.

Monday 21st - We met up outside of school and intended to film more outside shots but the weather turned bad and we had to cancel filming for the day.

We couldn't film anything over the Christmas holidays because we all had other things we had to do and were unable to meet up.

Monday 4th January - Lucy and Eva met up to film at Lucy's house They needed to redo all of the shots with Michael in because we changed the actor.

Wednesday 6th - This was the one day we could all meet up after school so our group - along with Matthew - went to the park to film some scenes as it was getting dark. Most of the time was spent rehearsing the scene in which Matthew pulls Lucy's hair because we wanted it to look realistic but didn't want Lucy to get hurt. We also filmed Lucy being 'dead' and decided to film a couple of shots at the nearby playground.

Thursday 7th - This was our final day of filming and we decided to do more shots at Lucy's house - mainly exterior ones such as the doorbell and alleyway nearby to her house.

Film Production - Changes to the Script

When filming, we changed the script slightly to make the conversation flow better and seem natural. We also changed the order of a few shots and made a few into just voiceovers because we decided they looked better when editing.

[film production logo fading to black]

[show scenes of Holly looking happy, with friends and family]

Holly (voiceover): Weird things keep happening to me.

[cut to black screen]

Amy (voiceover): What do you mean?

[fast cuts of bad things happening to Holly and her friends]

[cut to black]

[film title]

[institutional information]

[cut to Holly]

Holly (looking scared, talking to the camera): Help me.

[cut to black]

Film Editing - Initial Plans

When editing, we have some ideas for what we want our trailer to look like. As our film is very dark and also in the horror genre, we want to darken most of the shots so that they fit the typical conventions of the genre better. We wanted to film these scenes at night time but we were worried that the lighting wouldn't be good and the quality could decrease, which is why we decided to add effects post-production.

The trailer will consist of simple cuts that are fast-paced, along with a few fades to black. These are very simple to edit in so I'm confident that we can do this well. We won't be using any other transitions as they look unprofessional and won't make the audience take our film seriously - which would be ideal if our film was a comedy but it isn't. We will try to pace the shots with the music to emphasise the cuts and to build tension.

A voiceover will be the only sound in the trailer, but we are considering adding in the noise of twigs breaking or a scream to keep the audience's attention and to also further emphasise the genre.

Although nobody in our group is experienced with animation, I want to attempt to animate the production logo so that it stands out more and makes our company seem like it has a bigger budget. It will capture the audience's attention as they have not seen the company before and would want to see what their films are like. I also want to animate the film title so that the 'Shadows' part fades away and becomes elongated, like an actual shadow. I'm not sure how I would do this, though, so I have a backup plan of just italicising the font of the title instead - although this would not have as good an effect on impressing the audience.

Film Production - Risk Assessment

Before filming, we produced a risk assessment for all of the shots we wanted and decided whether they were safe enough to film. If we found there was any form of risk, we found a way to reduce this risk before we went ahead with it.

• Muddy hill - could slip and fall. We will go when it's less muddy or find a different route to the filming location.
• Working on rough terrain - could trip. Make the actress look for a safe route to walk on before we start filming and clear a path beforehand.
• Hair pulling scene. Make Matthew only pull her hair lightly and make them practice this plenty of times before filming. Lucy will have to over-exaggerate how badly her hair is being pulled for effect. We also need to make Lucy put her hair into a ponytail (partly for realism as muggers will target women with their hair up because it's easy to grab) so that her hair will be pulled less.
• Covering Eva's mouth. To avoid this we will make Matthew not actually put his hand over Eva's mouth and instead just put his hand in front of her face - which we will frame to make it look real.
• Twigs. We might need some noises of twigs snapping so we will have to break some to record the noise. Make sure nobody is too close because some of the twig might break off and potentially hit someone. There's also the risk of someone tripping over a twig as the area we are in has a lot of trees - like how we are going to avoid having Shauna fall over, we will walk to the filming locations slowly and look for safe routes to where we want.
• High angled shots. As the tripod only allows us to film at eye-level, we will have to place the camera on other surfaces to make the shots higher. We will need to ensure that the camera is safely on the surface and that it's stable. We also need to hold the camera ourselves - make sure everyone filming has the wrist strap on so that we don't drop the camera. Don't let anyone climb on anything to get a high-angled shot.
• Fire/candles. We will have to be careful when lighting the candles as somebody could get burnt. We also need to ensure that the camera doesn't get too near to the flame as it will get damaged. We will also put the candle on a stable table with nothing else on it so there's no risk of anything else being damaged or the candle being knocked off.
• Rain. Makes the floor slippy. Like when on muddy surfaces, we could slip while filming and injure ourselves, which could also damage the equipment.
• Filming in the dark. This would make us unable to see what's on the ground and we could trip on something. We will take torches with us so that we can light up the area beforehand to check for risks.
• Lucy being dead. The nettles could sting Lucy while she's lying in the bushes so we'll make sure most of her skin is covered to lower this risk. There also could be sharp things hidden in the leaves so we'll check the entire area before filming.
• Swings/park equipment. One of our shots will be very close to the swings and the camera could be knocked over. We will find out where is the furthest they can reach on the swings and then put the camera just out of reach.