Last day

This is my last day of filming before i leave. The rest of my group will be doing the editing and all the good shit. whil

Filming

We have just returned from walking around the school, finding intresting things to film. For the posetive peice we have some shots of students cooking and working on computers. WE used a wide angled lense to get some good shots of the new science block, and combined with pan we used the lense to good effect.

For the second peice we used the wide angle lense again. This time we took a shot of the back of the school, with damaged buildings, scaffolding, and a pylon in the back ground. This combined with our shots of derylict areas and broken windows resulted in aome shots that really shout the need for help.

We are about to begin filming in a science lesson. The pupils there are doing a hands on activity with molecular models and this wil translate well to film, with the possibility of an explosion or two from the chemistry department being an added bonus. All these things will add to the 1st video.

Representing Your School

We have recently started our latest project in our A level media course. In this project we plan on making two videos, each with separate aims for our school.


The first is a short piece designed to advertise our school to prospective students and there parents. For this clip we need to portray the school in a positive way, aiming to draw in the viewers and make them wish to come to the school.
We have already started to prepare for this video with some pre-production in the form of a storyboard of possible angles and to find a general layout of the clip we plan to make. We have also done a couple of test scenes, filming a student in the music block from many angles, trying to find the perfect angle.

In the second piece the school will be portrayed slightly differently. The footage is supposed to be used to appeal for more funding for our school. For this the school must be showed in more of a negative light, showing how it desperately needs more money to keep the school up too date and the kids interested in the work. However the piece should also portray the pupils as eager and willing to work. Extra money would not be given to a school were the pupils were not devoted. You can not help someone if they are not willing to be improve themselves. The piece must hold a delicate balance between portraying the school in a negative and a positive light. Either extreme could lead to problems.

Other zombie movie introductions

Day of the Dead (2008):
The film opens with titles, very basic, with a black background and red digital style credits. The use of titles has been used in film less and less. Although a good title could become famous (such as in reservoir dogs) and can help to build the tension surrounding the film, it also breaks up the action, slowing the pace. The typical audience of a zombie movie mainly has a need for action. Although tension does build the viewers enjoyment level, it is action they really crave. This is why a prominent opening title screen was not used in my production.

House of the Dead:
House of the Dead is a popular video game, and in this conversion of the games into a feature length film, the main element is pure cheesiness. The characters are introduced via freeze fame with a voiceover giving a basic explanation of each character and their backgrounds. This removes the mystery and disposes of the need of storytelling. This method can be seen as skipping all of the hard parts of a narrative so I decided not to include this in Biotoxic either. The cheesiness of the film comes to a climax when the island they go to is called the island of the dead by an old fisherman. This method succeeds in making the film laughable and amateurish. It does not draw you in. I decided that a cheesy movie was not the best way to create my film.

Dawn of the Dead:
The last of the classic title “…of the dead” zombie movies. This title has been overused so I did not use this for my piece. Dawn of the dead begins with a long introduction, giving a bit of back-story to the characters. As with other films the main character is introduced very early on. Despite a slow beginning the action soon begins. The young couple are asleep in bed when a girl appears at the door. This is the first use of a child as the outbreak of the virus. What this film does really well is show the juxtaposition between ideal the suburb shown at first to the destruction and chaos of the outside wild after the outbreak. I attempted to make this one of the prominent features of my film as I believe this is the reason that Dawn of the Dead has become of the most popular zombie movies ever.

Night of the living dead (remake):
The film opening is set in the traditional setting of a graveyard, enveloped in mist in an attempt to increase the tension. Naturalistic lighting effects are used to portray realism to the viewer, helping to drag the audience in. Dramatic irony is also used to help build the tension. The man is trying to scare the woman with tales of monsters in the graveyard. This Ironic as the audience know they have come to see a zombie film and they understand that the very thing he is joking about will very soon become real. The thing I liked the most about this film is the natural feel that you get from it. I attempted to recreate this by using no unnatural lights, except during the news report, seeing as this is meant to take place inside a studio.

28 weeks later:
The introduction of 28 weeks later is a very good example of building tension quickly and putting action early on in the film. The lighting is low, dark and unnatural, from candles. This creates a spooky atmosphere. The characters are then rapidly introduced. It is hard to tell which, if any, we be the main character. When a child appears at the door they have an argument over weather to let him. The use of a child as the cause is a common tool used in this style of movie. The innocence and fragility of the child clearly contrasts the brutality of a zombie. If I had correct resources Biotoxic’s first zombie would also be a child. However, due to the fact I could not get a child, or willing parent, to take his place, Raff was forced to take the role of lead zombie. This clearly introduces the fact that there is indeed something wrong. When they do let the child in the zombies appear. The characters know what is going on and seem at least partially prepared. As the characters die off it soon becomes clear who is the main as it is he that is the only survivor. My cast was not large enough to allow for a group of survivors with which I could show some grisly deaths without having to cut down on my zombie horde, so instead I settled on a lone survivor.

Resident evil apocalypse:
The main factor that is used to good effect in Resident evil is the use of camera work. Where appropriate shots are faced paced, with close ups of extreme violence being quickly cut to another scene happening close by. However, over use in quick shots simply confuse the viewer (a common problem in the Bourne series) and so the director brakes up the action with some tracking shots of the main character. This acts as an establishing shot for the audience as well as giving a good overview of whatever carnage is happening on screen. I attempted to use many of these camera styles, and am particularly happy with a p.o.v/tracking shot from the point of view of a zombie.

Responses

The video has been on the internet for a while now and I have received a few comments from my audience via YouTube, Facebook, and word of mouth. If Biotoxic was an actual feature length film, the internet and word of mouth would be the main method used in gaining hype around the film.

These are a few of the responses:

“Good range of shots, with the o.t.s. shot with Jen meeting the zombie, and now the soundtrack really sets the pace for the film.
The idea was very good, original and liked the contrast between Hish at the beginning and with Jen.
stuck to the 180 rule very well too, and good use of long/establishing shots
one thing would be didn’t really understand why Jen was lying down in tree's part and maybe making the bit with Jen asking 'Hello?' louder?
Excellent though.”


“Excellent!”

“Oh well I thought the music was perfect. Lovely.”

The sound track was one of the obvious highlights, as expressed in my evaluation of the piece, and this opinion is clearly supported by the first and last comments. The first also comments greatly on the camera angles and techniques. The use of establishing shots, such as the shot of Jen (the lone female in the film) walking across the field, was particularly useful in setting the location of the filming. I would also, to some extent, agree on her statement about the 180 degree rule. The rule is designed so that the characters are not confused by making sure each character stays to a certain side of the screen. During the scene with the gate, and while Jen runs to her hiding spot, Jen remains on the left hand side of the screen. However, during the first over the shoulder shot of Jen observing Raff, the lead zombie, she is on the right hand side of the shot. But due to the action between the O.T.S shot and the scene with the gate and the number of shots, a gradual change can be seen as Jen moves across the screen.

I would also agree with the criticism of the first comment. The scene with Jen waking in the woodland is not fully explained, and although it was attempted to create an air of mystery, it simply succeeds in confusing the viewer. The comment upon the sound is also a valid criticism. When the video was uploaded, as previously stated, the sound track became slightly unsynchronised. This led to the part originally quietened to make the dialogue much easier to hear being moved. As a result the speech is covered with a loud section of the sound track.

Biotoxic evaluation

I have recently completed the filming, and editing, of my two minute introduction to my film, Bio Toxic. The first thing that had to be done on the lead up to the filming was the pre production. This involved deciding on a genre, a plot line, a script and finally a story board. I quickly decided that my film would have to be a horror/action flick, with a B-movie style too it, in the form of a classic zombie movie.

I watched a great deal of zombie movie introduction to research and understand the codes and conventions of this genre. Many of these films fitted certain conventions, which I decided would be best if I excluded them from my film, to make it separate from other codes. In both Dawn of the Dead and 28 days later, there is a long intro, showing a perfect society, such as the suburbs in Dawn of Dead, this is used to contrast the harsh and violent zombie outbreak. I believed this was no longer necessary, as people understand what the world is like now, they want to see what it would be like if the un-dead did invade, as a form as escapism. This is why I decided to cut straight to the action, with only a little back-story and very little information about the characters.

After deciding on a basic plotline, similar to 28 days later, with a virus that turns people into savage zombies, I begun to write the first script, under the title Z-Day. Once I was happy with the script I drew up a storyboard and begun to plan the filming. Unfortunately, our script required to be filmed in abandoned buildings, a classic location for zombie horrors used in many films, such as the abandoned mansion in Resident Evil. The buildings we planned upon using had been demolished before the filming was due to commence.

This led to us having to re write the script and storyboard. The second day of attempted filming was cut short due to a quickly depleting camera battery due to the cold weather conditions. When we returned to do the very last section of filming, rain had flooded the area that our last scene was meant to be taking place. We quickly found a new location, an industrial estate, bordering the fields that we were filming in. This led to some minor adjustment to the script and storyboard resulting on our 3rd and final script. This was not a problem for the filming as an industrial estate is perfect for a zombie movie, giving a lot of opportunities for surprise attacks and grisly deaths. The industrial setting is excellent for horror and many action horrors, such as Aliens and Doom, use it to great affect at making you feel claustrophobic and add to the tension and fear.

Editing was the last step in perfecting our new film, named Bio Toxic in the second script after discovering a book named z-day, also with a zombie theme. Firstly we had to fit all the shots together, yet upon closer inspection into the shots we discovered that in some parts of shots you can see characters that where not yet supposed to be in shot yet that where standing by idly. These scenes where cut short, or split into 2 sections, to prevent these unwanted people invading the shots.

Once I had got the shots in the correct order, sound and music my next top priority. Firstly I put in a soundtrack, non-diagetic music that complements that theme and mood of the film. For Bio Toxic we used ‘With a Heavy Heart (I regretfully inform you)’ by ‘Does It Offend You, Yeah?’ This music greatly suits the film as there is a great tension building section which leads into a high tempo, loud and distorted melody. Other films use the same style of music, such as Resident Evil 3: Extinction, to exaggerate the action. This is similar to the confused and afraid theme I was attempting to capture in the filming, shown by using the shaky hand camera shots and the use of a lot of moving shots. However, the tension building section starts in the middle of the song, and the melody itself was too short to fit into the chase section of the 2 minute section. To help solve this problem we used a sound editing program to cut the song and fade it into the beginning of the tension building section, while cutting the melody and forming a loop that doubled the length the music lasted, increasing the time we could allocate to the chase scene. However, the loop did not did not quite match up, with a small skip in tempo. This was not noticeable, yet we thought it would be best to cover this up. To do this we re recorded some growls and moans from the zombies. We turned this up to an audible level but it didn’t seem to quite work with the film, sounding clearly like it was recorded after the film. We turned it down far enough so it is not noticeable, yet load enough to cover up the loop as background sound.

When we uploaded the video onto youtube, a popular video sharing site, we noticed a problem with the soundtrack. When the video was uploaded the sound track had moved slightly backwards, the reason for this is unsure. However, this slight problem led to large repercussions. The crescendo, intended to underline the building tension appears too late and does not fit with the climatic first appearance of the zombies. The sound track moving back had a second effect as well. The loop in the track, previously covered by a zombie howl, has changed, leaving it undisguised and easily audible if you know what to look for. However if you are not listening out for it, you can not really tell that the track skips.

Biotoxic has a mainly teenage cast, meaning that there is very little or no representation of other age groups to compare it with. However, the fact that there is a lone survivor, being chased by this group of monsters can be a metaphor for a common occurrence in our society. The lone girl represents the minority in society, discriminated by the majority, as shown by the horde of zombies.

The final outcome of Bio Toxic was, in my opinion, quite good. We made the best of what was capable on such a small budget. I am particularly proud of the make up of the zombies. The blood was cut price due to it being out of date, and the pale skin helped to create the dead look. Considering our limited timeframe; budget; access to acting talent; and experience, the filming came together well. It shows clearly the confusion and fear I was attempting to show and works well at creating an entertaining story. The introduction is quick into the action and draws the audience in, making them want more. I believe this is the most important use of the first 2 minutes of a film. Bio Toxic is in many ways a typical zombie film. Story is not an important section; instead the action is the main focus. However, Bio Toxic is a lot rougher than other films, shown using the static and white noise. This separated the film slightly, yet it is still easily identifiable.

It would be best marketed via a viral advertising campaign on the internet, such as the campaigns for ‘Cloverfield’ or the ‘Blair Witch Project’. This underground style of advertising is best for drawing in the myspace generations, teens and young adults, who consume much of their media via the internet. These campaigns are proven to give the film a cult following, which is what many zombie movies, such as the Evil Dead series, rely upon.

Comparing Biotoxic to the preliminary piece showed a clear progression of talents. The editing was obvious and uninspired in the preliminary, with the same shots used repeatedly and the use of a dissolve particularly made the film loose its naturalistic look. This piece was not taken particularly seriously and the sound track contradicts the mise en scene. The sad music does not match with the strangely comical dialogue and although this was designed to be a parody of the traditional dramas, the music just ends up looking quite childish. However the sound track for Biotoxic fits the happening of the film perfectly. A wide variety of shots are used and many original shots were used, such as the point of view, or P.E.Z, shot from one of the zombies (which came to be known as Z.E.V.) This shows how it has become easier for me to match a shot to the emotions I was attempting to portray to the audience.

The finished Product: BIOTOXIC