Strengths, Weaknesses and Improvements

Strengths

One of the strengths in our opening sequence is the first 30 seconds of the whole piece, i believe that the product would not be very good at all without it. It is personally my favourite and what i believe to be the best part of the media product. It is a mix of many different shots which are very short and put together using the technique of jump cuts. This looks very effective and helps to create the tension I was planning on building up the the action of the eye opening. It is fast and with all the different shots and angles it shows of the main character you get to see a lot in a very short period of time. The sound over these shots are, the heavy breathing which is created through both the character when we were filming and through a voice over. The other sound which is previewed is my most favourite bit, is the voice over of the curse being whispered out loud. It adds a sense of spookiness as we do not know if we can only hear the sound or whether the character can too and she is hearing things? This is not made clear to us, so yet again our imagination is put into place, as mystery arises. I really like the shot in the girls bedroom when she is reading the curse out loud and the camera follows behind her head. This gives the effect as if someone is watching her and she does not know, but we are in the point of view of the 'watcher'. It is different to just any other ordinary standard shot and i think this a reason to why i like it so much. I also think that the shots where the close up of the Ipod is shown is effective as it shows how well the clips were edited as they are all shown from different angles but they all however flow automatically with no awkwardness. 

Weaknesses

I  would say that one of the initial weaknesses of our product would be that the beginning bit may of been a bit too heavy, although it built tension and looked good, I do not know whether the opening should have gone straight into the rush of all of the clips together. This may have given the impression that the first cut had more of a trailer-feel than an opening, however when the second scene starts this changes, but I still had doubts on the first part being mistaken for a trailer. But no one did pick up on it in my audience feedback. Due to having to cut the whole piece down to two minutes some major cuts were made and not a lot of the narrative that originally I wanted to be included could be. So therefore to make sure that the piece fit within the two minute time frame the second scene had to have a basic storyline to make it all fit within the time i had left to show the narrative to the audience. So one of the weaknesses may be that the there was a lack of story behind the curse because of the time frame.

Improvements 

If I were to do this project again, I think that I would introduce the story in a much more calmer way and then get into the jump cuts and build the tension up from there. As well as this i would want to have more time to put more narrative in about the curse so the audience could see what the effect of the curse would do to the main character.Also i would of improved our institution introduction, as i think it did not look as professional as ones that are successful today look, as well as it did not have a theme tune to start off with. It was more like a moving image with a title. 

Overall

I think that overall, I have created a successful product. I like the end product that we have worked on, and even though there are some improvements that I would make if I were to do it again, I think that our product looks really and we have some very positive feedback to back this up with. 

Feedback : Final Product

1) Could you identify that the genre was horror?

All of our feedback suggested that the audience knew the opening sequence was based on a horror/thriller genre.

2) Do you understand what is going on in the opening of 'The Worst Is Yet To Come'?

Again, our audience felt that there was a 'very clear storyline to follow' and that they all suggested they understood what was happening throughout.

3) What did you think about the sound effects and voice overs? Do you think they are used well?

The feedback for this was very positive, with the audience commenting on how it 'creates spookiness and terror', 'it sends a shiver up your spine' and 'it creates tension well to the build up of what is going to happen'.

4) Do our transitions work well, going from scene to scene?

Our audience believed that they were effective and added tension to our opening, 'the jumpy bit with all of the fast, short clips at the beginning is choppy but still flows really well together and you can follow what is happening with no confusion, its scary!' is one comment about the transitions.

5) After seeing 2 minutes of the opening would you stay and watch the rest of the film?

The feedback that we received suggested that our opening sequence was interesting enough to watch more of, as every person from our audience said that they would of like to have seen the rest of the film and how it continued. One response said 'i would like to know whether the girl lives or dies', this is one of the questions we hoped would go through the audience mind as the eye never opened when she fell to the ground. 

6) Do you think that we have used the right camera shots/angles to show what is going on?

It was shown by our audience that our 'editing and shots show a clear focus on the main character' and 'in the first shots the different angles the character is shown by lets us see everything without having the camera focusing on her for a long period of time.'

7) Do you think that we have contained the necessary information to make the opening interesting?

The responses to this were yet again positive, with people commenting on the 'detail of the story line shown' and how the 'props were included in an interesting way'.

8) Do you think that the cut from the two very different scenes, work well together?

The feedback to this question were mixed as some commented on how 'the screen jumped too quickly from an eye to a girl in a bedroom, the tension was built up and stopped at nothing, to then carry on a storyline' while others commented saying that 'it worked well as when the eye was opened and it faded into the girls bedroom it was almost like she was having a flashback  or a dream, which gets the audience imagining'.

9) Do you think that the locations fit well with the story line?

The response to this question was again positive as they said 'in the first scene the location was scary, dark, rainy, stormy, spooky which with the quick shots made you even more scared whereas the second scene was bright colours and set in the daytime which makes you think of a positive environment, a big contrast to the first location, but works well!'

10) Additional Comments?

Lots of comments seemed to say that our product was 'very well done' or 'very good' or people telling us that they would 'watch that film in the cinema'. This was really good news to hear as it made us feel positive about our product and that we did well.

Overall, the feedback that we received was highly positive which suggests that the audeince did enjoy our product that we have created.

Codes and Conventions

I am going to identify all of the codes and conventions that we have used in our opening sequence.

The institutional logo at the beginning - this is a convention as the majority of all films have the institution information at the very beginning of any film, including horrors and thrillers. This helped our product look more professional and realistic, and also if using a good institution it would draw attention because of the good reputation. However because we created our own institution called S&M Productions it may not be well known but it still helped to make my product more professional.

Red Typography - This is a typical convention in horror films and has the connotations of blood, death, murder, danger etc. We used this in our institutional logo which was shown at the beginning of our product.

Mysterious Location - The first location that you get to see is a dark, outside area that is not to obviously labelled or shown to what it is, or where it is. It is exactly like a typical convention of a location in a horror film as a dark, shadowy place which scares the audience as they cannot see everything clearly, and makes them believe that something may be around that they do not know about. 

Characters - The types of characters, even though I only included one character in my opening sequence it was still on that is in a typical horror film. The vulnerable girl who panics at the first sign of strange things and gets into trouble even though she is shown to be a positive friendly person.

Mystery Phone Calls - Two times in the whole opening sequence, the character receives missed calls from unknown numbers as well as a text repeating the curse which is also from an unknown number. This scares the audience because, not only does the character not know why she is getting this phone calls and who they are from, neither does the audience. It also gives them a sense of reality as this could happen to anyone, as I'm sure humans get prank calls and calls from unknown umbers all the time, but however this is something far beyond just a "joke" or a phone call for "fun".

Progression from the Preliminary Task

We have progressed a lot since the preliminary task. The preliminary helped us as we learnt some thing on what looks better and what not to do. It helped us to see how long a piece of film would take to shoot and plan as well as edit and finalise all in time to meet a deadline. 

When looking at the final piece in detail I realised how important the voice over of the curse is to the media product. It helps to build up tension through the short, fast jump cuts at the beginning to the action that we do not get to see towards the end. I tried different ways of saying the curse to find out what would be more affective and then came to a conclusion that whispering it would give more of a spooky feeling to all of the clips as what you could see matched the terror of what you could also hear. 

We never actually included shoulder shots in our final final piece, but in our first idea that we did film they were used in that. It was a conversation between two school girls between a skeleton talking about the same curse. The 180 degree rule was used and worked successfully as well as making sure that the shots from over the shoulder were edited well and flowed to show the conversation was happening naturally. This actually worked out very well and looked better than the conversation that was taken place in the preliminary task. 

During the preliminary task, one thing that i learnt was to check what could be seen in the shot before shooting and not filming enough. So that when you came to editing, if a shot was of bad quality or not exactly how you wanted it, if you had not filmed it a numerous amount of times you would have to just go with that one shot and it brought down the rest of the film. So therefore when filming for the opening sequence we made sure that we filmed every little piece of shot from every angle at least 3 times or more so we had a choice of clips to choose from when it came to editing. 

Audience?

Who will our audience be?

Age: The age I am aiming to are people between the ages of 15 and 25. This will be the most appropriate age because the age of the character would be between this age so therefore they will have more to relate to and therefore this may lead to more enjoyment of the film. Also, as most horror films are given a 15 or 18 certificate because of the BBFC guidlines relating to the content, I believe that 'The Worst Is Yet To Come' could be classed as a 15, as it is scary enough, hence the minimum target age.

Gender: The film is aimed more at females because of the main character being a female, they will have more to relate to and interact with the feelings and emotions of the character. 

9 Frame Analysis

The Worst Is Yet To Come- Final Cut

Improvements That Were Made

BEFORE IMPROVEMENTS The Worst Is Yet To Come