AS Media Preliminary Task

                                                         Ruler of the Mask

For the beginning of the course we were split up into groups of no larger than 4 and given a task sheet. The aim the task was to complete the set of orders and incorporate them into our short film successfully, these tasks included: Having dialogue, range of camera angles, walking through a door and following the 180° rule. We decided to make a short film which conforms to the horror genre, using many common conventions such as suspenseful music, jump-scares and the use of a masked "killer". The use of a mask in horror films can be seen in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and is an effective way to portray a villain in a negative, scary light. Alongside the villain we had a helpless victim and a chase scene to effectively conform towards all conventions of horror.

Research and Planning
As we started our research and planning we already knew that we had limited props and locations available to us and so we worked around that. Taking inspiration from previous videos done by other students we began to see a recurring theme, chase scenes. Taking this idea and working around it we decided a goofy, horror based short film would compliment the chase scene best.

The storyboard is completed with what dialogue we intended to use, camera angles and the scenes we wanted frame by frame we didn't want to stray away from our original concept and so we finalised everything at this moment.

Filming
During the filming of the short film we decided that we could expand and improve the quality by adding a wider range of camera angles that weren't specified in the storyboard. The tilt of the masked "villain" was achieved by having the camera on the tripod angled down while steadily and at a set pace tilted upwards. The view of the masked "villain" through this camera angle makes the villain appear larger and more dominant, we wanted that first impression from the audience. However, as you can see from in the still of the video it is slightly to the side, not centred, this is something that we did not have time to correct due to timing and so we had to improvise by adding text to the big space next to the masked figure; we added the title of the film.

Whilst filming we gradually brainstormed extra ideas which we did not initially have on the story board, one we added to our film was the fumbling of the keys which is not only effective however also a common convention in horror films, the struggle to never find the right key in time. The shot used for this was by using 2 different camera angles, one of the helpless victim running towards the door and fumbling the keys followed by an extreme close up of the victims hand and keys.

For the match on action, we had two different shots to show walking through a door, we had one of the victim outside the door opening, and then changing the shot to inside the room and her walking in. This was tightly edited during post-production so it looked realistic and as smooth as possible. We did all the other scenes following the storyboard but altered the room panning scene slightly. We decided that we wanted it to pan twice, one while looking around the room and again while the masked person suddenly appears there. However due to the nature of our pan, it being bad and shaky we knew that we had to change it post-production. Our locations were very limited, we only used three different locations to tie our piece together, these were the hallway, staircase and the stairs outside. Originally we wanted to dim one side of the hallway darker than another side however we found out this was not possible. The use of our POV shot is effective in making the audience feel as if they are included within the film and allows it to feel more realistic which helps to build suspense.

Post Production
The editing programme used was Final Cut Pro. Post production was the most important part of our film, since the horror genre heavily relies on the use of sound and edits we had to properly get it right, we decided we needed to add both effective diegetic and non-diegetic sound to out film.

We had a lot of footage to work with and so we had to watch them over and sort them over chronologically to make sure they flow.

As we began to edit the film we decided that we needed a suspenseful start to enhance the tilt of the masked person, after some research we extracted music from YouTube and proceeded to cut and add the music to our film. The title was added nearing the end of editing, when we decided that the big space to the left of the masked person looked unnatural because of our mistake and we were trying to make the film look as professional as possible. For the chase scene we still wanted to conform to the conventions of the horror genre and so the use of heartbeat and screen blinking was what we wanted to achieve, this was further made effective by having them synced with each other, when the heartbeat noise played, the screen blacked out.

As we progressed on editing we had to make sure we used "continuity editing"(this is where you edit long lengths of footage into smaller sequences, however it still feels realistic and flows well) this was to ensure that the door scene was as perfect as it could've been, we didn't want to ruin the rest of our film through a simple mistake so we carefully edited the two scenes together to make it transition as smooth as possible, using the cut and blade tools. It is also notable that we were given more time to finish our editing as opposed to our filming and so we had the time to watch over the video over and over to make sure it was done properly.

We added diegetic sound to the film, we had gasping, or loud breathing sounds after the door scene to show that the victim was exhausted after the chase scene. For the room scene we decided to use the blinking effect once more, this was mostly due to the inability to use the rest of the footage in that scene as it was shaky and overall bad quality. We also reintroduced the music used at the start of the film. The use of blinking or flickering is a very common convention used horror movies, as the flickering becomes more consistent and faster we had a long drawn out black scene followed by the masked villain appearing in the seat on the table.

Audience Feedback
After completing the editing of the video we published it to our group YouTube account to be peer assessed. Some of the feedback we got included: having the breathing effects match to the breathing of the actor, this was not done effectively by us and looked very unnatural or not realistic. At the begging of the film the camera is a bit shaky, this could've been avoided by cutting the footage earlier. During the dialogue scene, there is actual diegetic sound in the footage that we did not extract and delete, this meant that unwanted sound seeped into the finished product, although it was very minimal it was still picked up. The font for the title used in the beginning was not the correct font to use, it didn't seem to be correct for the type of film that we made, it was a very plain type of font which doesn't do the film justice. All the feedback will be taken and used to ensure that we do not replicate it in further productions.

Evaluation
As we watched the film together with the group I felt a sense of pride, I thought what we came out with was good for a first attempt, although it was not perfect there were many aspects which we could've changed or improved to really refine the film, the editing and camera skills that I received from the experience however will be of good use when it comes to doing the real thing. Thank you for taking the time to read this and below will be our video.