Media Studies Coursework

Thursday 26 April For the main photo for our poster, we decided to use a heart - this means that themes of horror are clearly shown to the audience, whilst still giving a slight nod to the romantic aspects of the film (hearts are an international symbol for love.) Furthermore, it even incorporates part of our plot. We had to get a heart from the Biology department in school, however, as these are dried, we soon realised that we also needed blood so we got some from a butchers owned by one of the group's family members. Once we got the heart and blood sorted, we knew that we needed a white plate that would make the blood stand out, sharp cutlery (preferably a steak knife) and a dark table, to further the darkness of the poster. All these materials were accessible, so we could quickly shoot the poster in school using an iPhone 8 camera and another iPhone's torch. Here are some of the shots that we took experimenting with different lighting: We decided to go with the...

Thursday 19 April For the music during the first scene, it was pretty easy to put in - it wasn't necessary to fade it or edit the sound, all we had to do was cut it and place it so that the nice, upbeat ending went in time with the end of the titles. So, instead of cutting the end off, I cut the start off, making sure that I cut it at a place that seemed natural for the film to start off with. Luckily we had no problems with this and it worked out perfectly. Inserting the music for the end scene was more tedious and complicated - there were soundbites among the song of a man speaking over the audio, so I had to cut them out in 3 places. In order to make sure that the music didn't become jumpy and sound like it was skipping parts (although it was), I had to layer two bits of music over one another (the end of the clip before the soundbite and the beginning of the clip after the soundbite) and fade one out whilst fading the other in. In some cases it was easy and in other it ...

Monday 16 April For our titles, we knew we wanted two sets. One at the beginning, depicting the light-hearted theme, and one post credits (mainly so the ending wasn't abrupt) but also to highlight the change in theme and attitude towards the characters. Our opening title screen is accompanied by an animation and lighting effects, using white and pink to represent the love theme: It appears at the end of upbeat music and makes a clean finish to the opening scene. Our ending title screen is darker, with no animation. This emphasises the shift in the mood of the film from the start to the end:

Friday 13 April There are two pieces of music that we need to include in our film: 1. A light upbeat tune for the introductory scene (like in the Undateables) 2. A retro sounding theme to give a creepy vibe to the final scene and the credits. 1. Light, upbeat tune To find this song, we searched through some royalty free music sites. The best that we found was www.purple-planet.com This site allowed us to explore songs by theme: Naturally, we firstly looked at upbeat. Here, we found some really good songs however we felt as though we didn't like the guitar and bass on most of them as it would be too heavy for this particular part of our film. We then looked through several other categories such as active, funny and cool before finding our final decision, 'Winter Wonderland'. This is a Christmas theme song however the Christmas theme is not noticable in the context of our film. It is light and upbeat and comes to a nice, soft ending that is perfect for our ti...

Thursday April 5 It is important for all stakeholders that the film is given an appropriate certificate. For directors, writers and producers, it gives guidelines for what can and cannot be included in the film. For the audiences, it allows them to know how suitable a film will be for certain age groups whilst also giving an idea about the content for the film. For example, a film about vampires rated U will probably be quite comical and very kid friendly, whilst the same genre rated 18 will be edging more towards a horror or a thriller, unsuitable for younger viewers. Last Dates - 12 Whilst our film is a comedy, it has themes that will be upsetting to younger viewers. In normal cases, this would only make it a 12A, however our film also includes scenes with graphic violence, so this pushes it into the 12 category. However, due to the comical context, it would not be a 15. According to the BBFC, this is what constitutes a 12 rated film: Discrimination Disc...

Tuesday 3 April By using the lighting settings in final cut pro, we were able to edit certain shots in order to make them flow better within the film. For example, the following scene was shot as the sun was setting, so the previous shot appears much lighter in the film: Therefore, we had to edit it in order to make the shots look more natural next to one another: We also edited the brightness and colouring of these shots in order to make them appear more like we originally wanted: This image was also rotated to make it straighter after having been filmed on a slope. The brightness of this shot had to be turned up as the colours are all dark, making the scene unclear, and we also had to make sure that it didn't become too grainy.