Question 3

When it comes down to distributing our film we will need a distribution company who have been successful in our genre of film. This is so we can be confident that our film will get the sales and views we want. When deciding the company we need to take into account the genre, films similar to ours and whether the company produces mainly low budget films of the British region. Some of the main distribution companies that we came across were Brain damage films, lion gate films and hammer films.

Instead of choosing just one distribution we are going to choose these two because we feel that this will increase our chances of our film being successful.

The reason i have mainly looked at companies that distribute low budget films was due to our film also being very low budget. As this is a school task we haven't had any money to create these film opening with. The setting was not paid for and we only used a school camera therefore our film opening is not of the quality of a high budget film would be. We also didn't have any big actors in our film, therefore they are unknown actors who would be included in high budget films.

Our first film company would be 'hammer films'. Hammer films are a company based in the United Kingdom. They were founded in 1934 and are best known for a series of Gothic "Hammer Horror" films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. During the most successful years of the company they dominated the horror market and produced both well known high budget films, but mainly many successful low budget films. As they are a British company will benefit us because they will be able to relate to our film and give us any help that we may need. It will also be local therefore we wont have to travel far which could cost us a lot of money. Some of the films they have produced are; The woman in black, let me in, hands of the ripper, wake wood and many more. Some of these are higher budget than others but due to the vast majority of their films being low budget we can be sure that our film will be successful because of the films they have distributed through the years.

The second film company that we will choose is 'lionsgate'. Lionsgate is a Canadian-American film production/distribution studio and a division of Lions Gate Entertainment. The company was founded in 1962 by John Dunning and Andre Link and was based in Montreal. Although they may not be based in the United Kingdom lions-gate are a very well established company who have produced many successful films both high budget and low budget. Therefore we believe it will be good to get our film known in other countries and lions-gate will allow us to do that. Lionsgate have produced films such as; saw, alive or dead, the evil woods, the slaughter and many more. They have such a wide variety of films therefore we really think that this company will help get our film very well known, due to their success. 

We could also distribute our film through many different ways, without the help of distribution companies. One of these ways could be through a film festival. A film festival is an organised, extended presentation of films in one or more cinemas or screening venues. Film festivals allow a film company promote their film to a large number of people and get the film more well known without the need of getting it distributed by a company. As our film is a British film we would promote it at the British Film Institute in London as we feel this would be the most successful place for our type of film.

We would also do many different types of advertising, this is because as our film is a very low budget with actors no one will really will know, we will have to advertise to the public so they can find out about our film. We would do this through posters, leaflets, social networking and many other ways.

For our film company we made up the name 'Hanging Hill Productions'. The reason for this is because we believe it relates a lot to our film and the name is interesting and people will want to find out more about our company and the films we produce.

Question 7

After completing the final preliminary task there has been many things that i have learnt from this.

When i first started the task i had very little knowledge of filming techniques and how to edit. Therefore i knew there was going to be lots of things that i would have to learn. Some of these were easier to grasp than others but as a group we managed to help each other out and get the task complete. The group i was in was with people i didn't know until i started sixth form. Therefore this was another task we had to overcome, which was finding out about each other and working with people we have never worked with before. Over time we all got to know each other and managed to help someone if they had a problem with a specific task so we could get back on track and continue with our work.

Our preliminary task gave us an understanding of all the different aspects of production: planning, filming, editing and evaluating.

One of the main things that i have learnt from completing this task is new editing skills, and how you can turn a normal clip into something so different with a few clicks of a button. The editing software that we used was called Adobe Premier Pro.

When it came to the first time using this software i did not have a clue on how to use it. This is because it is such an advanced piece of editing software that has so many different functions. Due to the whole class feeling the same we had a university student who specializes in this editing software come in. He gave the whole class a basic tutorial on how to use the software so we could all start with something. He also came round to the groups individually and answered any questions we have about the software.

This really helped our group because it saved us a lot of time, because we didn't have to search for tutorials on how to do certain things as we were able to ask the university student.

I have improved my camera skills over this preliminary task as we obviously had to do a lot of filming to do. When i first started filming i only knew very basic shots and angles you can use with a camera. However over lessons i learnt how many different camera angles and shots there are to make a film look more interesting. I also learnt that there are lots of different functions that cameras have on them which can also make a clip look more interesting.

The cameras that we used were Panasonic Hd video cameras.

Making our film opening also included a lot of research about films of our specific genre. Therefore i have learnt a lot about how you can use editing techniques to make a film suit the particular genre. For instance changing the lighting to dark to promote fear ad terror which would be used in a horror film.

I have learnt lots of things about what needs to go into film opening to make it interesting and successful so the audience can identify the genre of the film, but also be intrigued and want to watch the whole film.

Our preliminary task gave us a taster of using storyboards, shot logs, time schedules and choosing locations etc. which are all essential. Although it was more simple than planning our main task, we still made some mistakes that we learnt from and made sure we didn't do again.

I have learnt how a story board for your film can help keep you on track and know exactly what shots you need to film, where and for how long. All this planning is key to making a successful film opening.

Overall after completing this task i feel i have such a wider knowledge of media and what is included and have a confident feeling when it comes to editing and filming. We have been able to make many mistakes in the other tasks building up to our final task, so when we finally came to creating our final film opening we were confident as a group that we would make minimal mistakes to assure a good film opening was created. 

Evaluation question 1

 

Evaluation question 2

Evaluation question 6

evaluation question 6

Question 5

advertisement

In order to get your film well known there has to be advertisement, which will allow the film company to target their specif audience and allow them to give them more information about the new film being released.

As our target audience is from age 15 to early 20s we done some research on what would be the best method of advertisement. Because social networking is such a popular thing now we felt that this would be the best option for advertisement. This is because their is such a large number of people using these sites and we could easily get the message out about our film. This can then be passed to their other friends and over time the audience for our film would have grown massively in size.

From research we found that twitter has around 645,750,000 million users world wide.



Research also shows that Facebook has around 1,310,000,000 billion users worldwide.



Therefore we concluded that these two social networking sites would be the best options of advertising our film, as we will be able to advertise to such a wide population of the world.

Question 4

Evaluation question 4

Who Would Be The Audience For Your Media Product?

Our film opening was a horror based on a abandoned mental asylum. Our main characters were teenagers of the age 16-17. Therefore our film would be aimed at teenagers from the age of 16 up to early 20s. The reason for this is because this audience range will be able to connect with the feelings the actors experience, because they are of a similar age.

When it came to planning our film, we had a rough idea of the age we would mainly like to produce this film for. This mainly students (13-18). It then came to choosing our genre of film. After our research we chose a horror as we felt most confident in filming this, and we had lots of ideas. Due to our research into horrors, they mainly varied form age limits of 15 and 18. We then had to rethink our age options for our audience. This is when we then chose 16- early 20s because we thought this was a suitable age for a horror film.

We chose to use actors who were teenagers because of our audience. By having teenagers act allows us to show to the audience directly how the characters are feeling in this situation, and they would be experiencing a very similar effect due to the similar age. This also makes our film have more a sense of realism because teenagers are more likely to go exploring in places like this than a adult would. So this also allows us to connect with the audience and make them more intrigued whilst watching our film opening.

However we did also have a older generation in mind when we were researching our film. This is because from a lot of the films we watched, they included the older generation as either parents or the scary characters thereselves. However due to the lack of time we have left ourselves with, we decided to simply use our generation of characters.

Although we have aimed this at our chosen audience, this does not mean that adults cannot still watch our film. Not only due to being a horror but also because this may show to them the thoughts and feeling that go through teenagers heads, which they can then relate to their children. This could also give a flash back for the adults because they probably once would of gone exploring with their mates, and possibly come across things like this. Which may bring back memory's and show how they have grown up over the years.