Yr 13 Preliminary Task

Here is our Yr 13 preliminary task. In this we wanted to achieve an eerie haunting of a school, although we filmed in the daytime I still think we achieved this. Also, filming in the daytime is not following the stereotypes of other horror films, such as in The Nightmare on Elm Street everything bad happens at night, and this wasn't the case in our film. Although you didn't see anything bad happening to anyone you just saw things being written on boards and doors closing.
I am now going to go through our film and analyse why we used each shot in our preliminary task.
The beginning shot of the whiteboard and the overhead projector mysteriously closing was a good idea because the audience get the feeling that maybe there is someone out there if things are happening mysteriously and without any explanation. However, as the film came out in bad quality you can't see what it says on the board (it says It's Time, which could connote that something is going to happen very soon) which then gives the shot no point at all, although, when we were editing our preliminary task we could see what it said on the board, I think that this is something we need to work on to make sure that our Final Task is not blurry. Another shot we could've done t maybe make the shot roll into another would be to move things around so it seems like a ghost or a spirit has a grudge on the people in the school and is moving things around to know that they are making their presence.
The next shot is one where the title of the film comes up. We chose a white type writer font as we thought it would look good, such as in The Shining, Jack Nicholson type on his typewriter in a font similar to the one that we chose for our preliminary task and he is possessed by some kind of demon, we also used this font as it is similar also to the one used in Paranormal Activity.
The shot after this is one in which we used the only person in our preliminary task, Suzi, she had a white contact in her eye and we thought this gave her a possessed look as she does not follow the conventions of a normal teenager. When we were editing this part we played around with the effects we could put on the clip and we chose one which was called 'Ghost', this is why the clip is distorted in a way in which it doesn't keep up with itself, but I think that was mainly to do with the quality of the clip when it was finished.
After this, we chose to add in a shot of white static noise, which is what you get when you turn your TV on and it hasn't gone to a channel, I thought that by adding this in it'd lengthen our clip and ti would also add to the mysteriousness of the clip aswell. We media converted a slip of static noise from Youtube and then added it onto our film, we did this a few times during our preliminary task.
Next, is a quick flash of Suzi's creepy eye, which I thought gave a good effect as you see the flash but you don't see it, if you understand what I mean, you subconsciously take the flash in but you might need to watch it more than once to see it properly.
After this again we have some more static noise, which again makes the task seem more mysterious and strange.
After a shot of Suzi's eye again we a get a text shot of 'The Lessons Begun' in the same font in which we did the title in, we decided to have this because like, in Saw for example it has a motto 'I want to play a game' so in ours the slogan for this would be that the lessons have begun, as this is set in a school and we thought that it would fit with the theme of our task.
After this shot the release date is shown on the screen, we thought this would be a good idea because it follows the conventions of a teaser trailer, as it doesn't give too much of the film away yet it shows what we briefly be going on in the film. I thought our use of the canted angle shot of 'Mathematics at Therfield School' was a good idea because that then finalised that something was going to happen at the school, be it in the morning or at night. After this there is more static noise which fades out at the end.

We decided again to use Working Title to produce our film because we felt that it is short and doesn't take too much up time into our clip, this is what we used last year so this also contributes to the continuity of our tasks throughout the years.

At the beginning over the shot of the working title opening sequence we had a high pitched screeching noise, we chose this because we thought that it would add mroe of an eerie edge to the clip and we could then say that it could be the 'ghost or possessed' person trying to talk to the audience. After the opening sequence has ended we have a heartbeat which continues to get faster as the clip goes on, this could either demonstrate the heart rate of the audience watching the film as a media studient I find that the music is what makes my heart rate go up and the tension of the shot makers you anticipate what is going to happen next.

Some of the things that I would change about this task if I were to do it again would be to make sure that what was written on the board could be seen so perhaps write it in a darker pen and make it stand out more by making it bolder on the board and I would also play around a bit more with the quality of our final product to make sure that to the audience it is clear as you wouldn't go to the cinema to see a bad quality film.