Evaluation

Overall I think that our film opening was successful in meeting the generic conventions of a slasher horror and including a variety of camera angles, shots and editing skills.

What went well?
I think that our group had very good teamwork and communication skills as we all worked well together and shared the workload equally, remembering to bring our required props and equipment to the filming day and each taking turns to film shots. Our film opening included a wide variety of camera angles and shots which made it look more professional and successful. It also conformed to the genre we originally set out to make because of the isolated location, vulnerable female victim, and the use of a dagger and gore.  We worked hard on achieving a more successful second film opening as the first was not good or long enough, this meant we worked on our improvements and made the second attempt much better. For example, we had a lot of footage to use and edit, a variety of camera angles and editing skills, and improved acting skills.

I also think that the production companies was a success and looks professional within our film opening. Furthermore, the title 'The Woods' was successful as it was made effectively on photoshop. It also appears at the end of our opening with a loud 'boom' sound to make it more effective.

What could be improved?
Obviously the first the attempt did not go well at all because there was not enough footage which meant it did not reach the time requirements, did not include enough shots or angles, and was not a high enough quality of filming. This therefore led to inconveniences as we had to go out and re-film the whole thing again,

Another area of our final film opening that could be improved is the editing of it. I think that we could have made the titles more effective by adding transitions and effects on them so that they bring more to the film. I also think that we should have added in a more dramatic soundtrack towards the end of the opening where the chase scene begins, in order to build suspension and create a more tense atmosphere.

Feedback

These are some examples of the sheets which our peers gave us feedback on after watching our film opening.

Sound Editing - Improvements

The sound on our film opening was one aspect which needed a lot of improvement. It was too quiet in certain areas which really needed more dramatic music, and certain sounds such as the twig snapping and girl screaming needed to be louder. As well as this there was some background noise which our peers picked up on and needed editing out.

This is the editing of cutting the background noise in the dog scene:

To improve the non-diegetic soundtrack we added in more of the same soundtrack but only a certain section. This made the ending more dramatic and build up more suspension which improved the quality and ensured there were no more silent sections.

This is the added in sound effects and soundtrack:

We also added in another soundtrack to build tension as the killer catches up with the girl to make it more effective. The sound comes to a sudden stop, and then quickly builds up again as the girl nears her death and is killed.

This is the added sound creating a more dramatic and effective ending to the opening:

Opening Credits - Improvements

We received a lot of feedback on our opening credits stating that they needed to be longer and given more interesting effects. To begin with we only had our three names as opening credits which appeared at equal intervals in the first minute of our film opening. They flashed in at different positions around the screen, for example:

After inserting these titles we then added in more opening credits so that there were more appearing throughout the film opening. These included another actors name who was not in our group, the Director of Photography, Producer, Co-Executive Producer and the editor. These were inserted between shots on a black background equally spread throughout and the named titles were placed at different locations around the screen.

To finalise we ensured these were all equally spread out throughout the film opening, also making sure they did not interfere with any match-on-action shots.

Feedback - FIlm opening first draft

Here is the feedback we received from 3 viewers of our initial draft for our film opening:

Film Opening Improvements

The main thing that we as a group decided to improve was the sound throughout our film opening as we needed to change the amount of screaming that we had In it and we needed to add in sounds to places where it was completely silent.

The things that we improved on where:

• making sure that the sound got more dramatic towards the end to create tension and build it up for the viewers of our film opening
• we also needed to add in dark suspense music towards the end where there was no sound and it was completely silent for a while which sounded odd in comparison to the rest of the film opening where sound was used.
• another thing that we improved on was changing the pitch, tone, and volume in places where it was appropriate, for example in places where there was a tense clip the music needed to be a low tone and of a loud volume for the viewer.

Here are the screenshots to show what we changed:

Film Opening - Evaluation

I feel that towards the end after improving our film opening the film opening became a lot better when we took into consideration the advice and feedback that we received from other people who had viewed our film opening.

The things that went well in our film opening was the cooperation between our group and ensuring that everyone carried out their required roles within the planning stage and also within the filming and editing stages. First of all within the planning it was required that everyone had deconstructed certain things and was aware of what ideas we needed to put forward in order to plan and decide what our film opening would be. The second thing that went well was the filming part when all 3 members of the group equally participated within the filming and all remembered to bring the required props and equipment that was required for the filming.

The things that we could have improved on for our film opening was something that occurred early on within the editing procedure. Once we had all of our footage filmed and we put it onto the computer and cropped it and put it into order we realised that our footage was not long enough and didn't have a variety of camera angles and shots therefore this lead to us having to re film. This caused another issue because we needed to use  the exact same actors as we were going to just add in an extra part to the beginning and we also needed to use the same location. This lead to multiple problems as we had to find time when everyone in our group was available to get to the location as it was quite difficult to get to and this wasn't able to happen so we had to change our location and the actor who played the dead girls friend as the other girl couldn't attend on the day. So this lead to use having to refilm our whole footage and put it all onto the computer again crop and put it into order.