EVALUATION

We bagan our first ever pelimainary excersise at the beginning of the year where we did a very simple short film clip,this just involeved a short conversation and someone walking out of a door and back in which helped us gain abit of practice of not only how to use the camera and set up the tripod etc but to try certain shots such as shot reverce shot, close ups and in our case even a pan shot. Our main task was then set to create the opening of a new fiction film with the maximum of just two minutes, we chose our genre carefully and in the end decided ours would be psycological horror. The tittle of our film is Tormented, this is because a young girl was kiddnapped whilst skipping down her lane so close to home, shes then taken and abused which later takes over her life. In the opening sequence a little girl is sat in the kitchen with her mum when she asks to play outside, her mum says yes but to stay in the garden, the little girl goes against her mothers wishes and wonders off where things take a turn for the worse. We named the film tormented as firstly the girls kidnap was enough to torment anyone, especialy the way she was mis treated however the main reason we named it this was because of what happens later on in the film, where the memory of the kidnap torments the girl to the extent where she goes and seeks revenge. The films sub genre is psycological as the film shows how the effects of a kiddnapping and abuse could have psycologically on a person.

The target audience for our film was generally both male and female at the age of 12-25. Mainly people who are interested in horror films such as saw and hide and seek as these are simular psycological films. We decided based on the BBFC rating that 12 would be the best as a moderate physical and psychological threat has been permitted, however the disturbing sequences are not frequent or sustained. We did a fair share of pre-production research such as a questionaires, I made a list of questions which I went round college and asked people to answe such as whats your favoriout genre? And what do you think of the storyline I have chosen? The answers I got helped me make any changes that would make my film more succesful and liked by the audience.



There are many low budget film distrobutors that could work really well with my psycological horror film such as working title or warp but the one that I thought would be past to represent my film would be breaking glass productions. This is because it distrobutes nearly all genres one being horror which again would be prefect for my film as they are well aware with this field, also the sub genre being psycological again a good connection to breaking glass productions. Its aso has a fair few films that have a simular storyline to ours that they have succesfully distrobuted such as films that have conotations to murder and revenge. They've been around since 2009 and continue to release some hardcore horror films such as the sick house.




The media film is based on horror which tend to always have a lot of generic conventions. Conversions have often influenced our work such key lighting. We used day light in the beginning to create a suspense as the audience aren’t aware of what’s to come, in the last scene where the girl has grown up the whole scene is in the dark which represents in a sense the darkness that has come over this girl, the lighting also leaves the audience feeling more scared and anxious. We also used close ups such as when the little girl is tied up in the chair which show how scared she is and helps the audience to empathize with here, created emotions. The costume was again used to show the psycological effects that the kidnapping had on the girl, the flashing images of the girl going form black clothing to white highlighted her split personality. The end scene is mainly where our genre was shown as the flashing images of the girl and the back ground music was used to create a scary film. The close up to the girl when she was tied up in the chair show the innocence and the fear in her eyes, this close up was agin used later on in the film where the girl had gainer her split personality, the close up of her face this time showed the evil within her eyes. The teddy bear used at the end showed her split personality again as even though she looks evil shes still that innocent girl at heart. When editing we paced thingts up at the end where the shots of the older girl are shown, this is to slick between the girls two sided and to create a split personality effect. The sound is very important towards the end of the film, the deap and gloomey music at the end gives off the typical horror effect.


There aren’t very many social groups in our film, there is firstly a young girl who is yes represented in a very stereotypical way, she is the average little girl with nice very ‘girly’ clothes, long neat hair and very sweet. The little girl does the average things that are expected such as playing in the garden, with her dog and skipping around. Later on in the film her crying is again stereo typical as every little girl in that situation would react the same. This helps create sympathy from the audience and seeing a ‘cute’ young girl in that situation would. There are also a few shots of the little girl when she grows up and becomes in a sense possessed, she’s wearing black then white, her hairs covering her face etc., this again is the stereo typical look for a horror type feel. Lastly there is the mother, she is well dressed and does every day motherly jobs like feeding the dog, and this makes the film feel more real to life as she is doing things that happen in everyday life, the background and the cloths that she is wearing show they are just a average middle class family.

Our film is based on a young girl who gets kidnapped whilst wondering away from her home and mother, she then grows up and comes back to home as a more evil character, and she has in a sense been possessed. She starts off as a very young girl and comes back to be a teenager. This would create many emotions for mothers with young children as it shows how easy it is for you to not notice your child has wondered off or been kidnapped, again this film is also a fifteen due to the violence as a young child could be frightened at not only the more ghostly images at the end but the kidnapping of the little girl. A lot of suspense has been created in this film as it makes the audience, firstly what’s going to happen to her when she’s wondering away from the house and secondly who has her and what’s going to happen to her in the scene where she is tied to a chair. This creates a big impact as it emotionally catches the audience and puts them in a position where they are very anxious to watch more.this sort of story line we thought would appeal to our audience as its not a prediactble every day horror film, this was party because of the sub genre we chose. When choosing our audience we tried to focus on who would watch this film and relate to it. Overall we got some good audience feedback, some said ‘the film reminded them a little of the grudge because of the way the hair covered the girls face and that alone scared them and gave them the horror kind of feel’ and another said ‘ the story line was very good, matched its genre and wasn’t predicatble like many horror films tend to be nowadays.’ Overall we felt our film was a success with technaically and baring our audencie in mind. We had a few problems throughout the project which made our film limited, but we were happy with the end turn out. We could have improved our film in a few ways for example using a bigger variet of shots.



Before this project I had never used any of the equipment we had used nor had I ever used, seen or hear of Final Cut Express so throughout the whole project I gained a lot, I can now use everything very easily and am confident however there are still many areas that I struggle with such as often getting confused on Final Cut Express. We used a range of effects to try making our film more interesting for the audience such as flashbacks, sepia effect etc. Flashbacks are a very clever element to use in your film and have different effects on the audience; they are very helpful in situations such as setting a transition through the past and future which is exactly why we used this effect in our film we chose to use this element in our film as we wanted to create the effect of a time passage, from the past to present where the little girl is shown and the ways she was taken etc. then what the little girl later grows up to become. Sepia was used to create a scarier mysterious feel. As a group we faced a few problems hence why we began a new film but overall managed to pull together a film as one of the member of the group was highly committed and finished the film. We didn’t use much equipment except the HD1000 camera and tripod. We didn’t really have many problems the camera was really easy to use and was very clear and made the whole project easier however the tripod was often unbalanced which made it difficult for us to film precisely.



We progressed our project throughout. We spent a lot of time on preparation of things like storyboards and scripts, this was generally to make filming easier, because we knew what we wanted and how we wanted it. Designing a shooting script gave us an idea of how we wanted our overall film to look like, and researching into other psychological horror films we had an understanding of how we needed to edit it. For example, finding different ideas for presenting our flash backs helped us to chose how we wanted ours to look like. Spending a lot of time on filming i have been able to understand my rules such as the 180 degree line shot reverse shot and match on action more, because throughout every scene we had to think about these things all the time. Therefore it got more natural throughout. I have progressed in my editing by being able to use and understand the software. Before i came across final cut express i was using adobe premiere elements. But i now prefer final cut, as i find it easier and that it has more potential to it. I feel that the film 'tormented' has reached the criteria’s that we set for it well. It produces a change from disequilibrium to equilibrium and fits under the targeted genre well. I am satisfied with the final outcome, however i feel we still could have experimented more, creating more establishing shots at the beginning maybe to set the scenes better, and having more conversation to create a greater vulnerability factor towards the young girl.