Analysis of Titles.

The titles that are in the film 'Halloween' have influenced me to some extent due to the effects that they have used.
In these titles they have used a black background which made me decide to use a black background for my titles as I thought this would represent a horror the best. Using a black background will also make the writing that I have stand out very clearly and creates and creepy, dark effect which fits in with horror conventions.

Halloween film titles also made me decide to have my titles on different shots instead of over the top of shots as from looking at other film titles, over the top of the shots seems to occur more in social realism films. I have decided to have my film called 'The Follower' and from seeing various horror film titles I have decided to put all my titles on a black background on different shots.

Improved Animatic.

Here is my improved animatic.



To improve my animatic I re-did some parts of my blog to adjust to the feedback that I received. The adjustments that I have made are:
-I have removed the speech bubbles were I have speech as it looked more like a comic strip with the speech bubbles on.
-I removed the zooms in and outs.
-I also added sound effects of a phone ringing and a door slamming to make it more obvious what is going on.

Filming.

My filming process was pretty successful. I managed to follow my animatic apart from a couple of shots. These shots are ones that Luke was meant to be in but unfortunately he doesn't have the time to fit in with when I need to film these shots, so I have decided to take him out of it. There are also a couple of shots that I need to re-do due to silly mistakes like leaving things in the background that shouldn't be there and just general shots that I do not like. For example, the shot of Emily on her mobile phone isn't how I would like it to be so I am going to re-film that shot.

Animatic Process.

Animatic
As I have done quite a few animatics before I found this process pretty easy.

After putting all the pictures on the computer I then uploaded them on to iMovie to add transitions to the shots and add my music to it.
When all the pictures were on, I had to make sure I had turned off Ken Burns and add certain transitions that I wanted on to my shots, for example, where I had a zoom in on one shot so I turned Ken Burns on for that. I had to edit the timings to what I had chosen from my storyboard.
For the shots that I had someone speaking in it, I recorded voiceovers to show when the character would be speaking.
For the music that I used for my animatic will be the music that I use in my final piece. To get this I went on a site called MP3Unsigned.com and found a piece on there. I thought the music that I have chosen fits in really well with my genre: horror.

Audience Feedback on Final Animatic.

Here is my final animatic for my opening sequence.





From my audience feedback, who were media students themselves, I have decided to make a few changes to my animatic. Most of the targets from my audience were to:

• add more sound effects, for example, having the sound of the phone ringing.
• have some diegetic sound

The changes I am going to make are to add a door slamming sound effect to one of my shots. Hopefully this will make it more clear what is going on.

My audience feedback was marked out of 70 which consisted of different types of categories, these were:

• range of shots types & editing transitions
• appropriate pace & content for genre
• position and order of titles
• introduction of characters
• introduction of storyline
• clearly an opening sequence

The highest marks that my audience gave me were for my range of shot types & editing transitions and my introduction of my storyline. I am pleased that they understood what my storyline was. The highest mark that I received from my audience feedback was 58/70. 

Questionnaire Analysis.

I completed my 12 questionnaires on 15-30 years olds of a random sample of men and women but most of the were male (8 male and 4 female), the reason why I have done more males is because I want my target audience to be mostly males.

My second question - 'What type of music would you expect in the opening sequence of a horror film?'

As you can see from my graph none of my participants chose upbeat. This is clear and obvious to the audience that in a horror film you would not get upbeat music. Most of my participants chose eerie. This is good because my music fits into the eerie sound so it fits into how I would want my target audience to view the music.

For question three - 'What mood do you think should be portrayed in the opening sequence?' eight of my participants answered tense/suspense and the rest of them answered scary. This shows me what mood I should try and create to make sure that it fits in with my target audience views. I think my be a little difficult as trying to make the mood like this could make it seem more like a trailer which I am going to have to try and avoid. 

This graph shows where people would expect to see the film titles.

From this graph you can see that the majority of people said that they thought the titles would go in between different shots (appearing on a black background). This is good, as I thought this would fit in better with horror conventions rather then over the top of shots which is a more social realism convention and I also don't have to change my ideas as my target audience had the same views as me.

Question six and seven - 'What age would you expect the main character in the horror to be?' and 'For a horror, would you expect the main character to be male or female?'.  For these questions 9 participants all answered that they thought it would be a young female character. The rest of the 3 participants answered that they thought it would be a middle age man. I think that this question might have confused that 3 participants as they could have thought I meant the main character was the killer, in that case it is more likely to me a middle aged man but for what I meant it doesn't fit in with what I am going to do. However, the majority of my participants answered what I hoped.

This graph shows where people think the opening sequence should be set.

As you can see, this question gave a variety of mixed views but most of the participants answered in a house. As I have decided to use this location it may be seen as slightly typical but as it fits in with what my target audience would expect I am going to keep it the same. 

This graph shows what people find most interesting about horror films.

As you can see from this graph most of my participants thought that not knowing what will happen most interesting about horrors. This shows that in my opening sequence I shouldn't give too much away and also make it something that they don't expect as that was the second highest. As it is only the opening sequence to much shouldn't be given away anyway so hopefully that will fit in with their views but for the 'something you don't expect' may be quite difficult as a lot of horror films can be seen as typical and it can be quite hard to make a horror film unique.

The Follower - The Script.