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Feedback

Today we showed our films to year 11s and 12s and they all gave positive feedback. One comment I thought was a really rewarding comment: Choice of location excellent- it can't be easy trying to film 19th century in a 21st century town and make it convincing. I thought this was good because we did found it hard to film without any cars going by, and there were lots of people walking down the alley the night we filmed.

Another comment I liked was: Liked the music a lot- set the scene. I think this was another positive comment because we too love the music and it really worked with the film because without it, the film would not be that scary. I think the music was also timed well with some of the shots which was effective, particularly the part with the knife when it dings.

Name of the film

We decided to call our film Ripper because we liked the way it sounded and because our film is based on Jack the Ripper we decided to use his surname. We thought this made the film sound more scary and mysterious because the audience will want to know why the film is called Ripper and what Ripper is. We chose to do the credits in red because they had connotations of blood, death and violence. We also chose the font so it looked similar to handwriting as if Jack the Ripper had written it himself. Our credits for our name are different to the film title but we think it looks effective because it makes the title stand out from the rest of the names.

Epilepsy Warning

We decided to begin our film with a warning for photosensitive epilepsy because it will be featuring flashing lights. At the beginning when our production company names appear there is flashing lights and Dom's sister told her that we should include it.

This information below is taken from Microsoft game website:

Photosensitive Seizure Warning A very small percentage of people may experience a seizure when exposed to certain visual images, including flashing lights or patterns that may appear in video games. Even people who have no history of seizures or epilepsy may have an undiagnosed condition that can cause these "photosensitive epileptic seizures" while watching video games. These seizures may have a variety of symptoms, including light headedness, altered vision, eye or face twitching, jerking or shaking of arms or legs, disorientation, confusion, or momentary loss of awareness. Seizures may also cause loss of consciousness or convulsions that can lead to injury from falling down or striking nearby objects.

Having read this I think our film does need the warning because the slightest flash could start a seizure in people with photosensitive epilepsy. Below is an image taken from our film of our warning:

Music

Below are the different instruments used to create our music:

The Ripper Score[1]

Music Software

This is the software we used for our music instead of Garage Band called Cubase Essential 5.

Changed credits

On Friday we realised that we had to change our credits to our film. This is because when we added words like produced and directed by, the credits separated so the name was at the bottom of the screen and the produced by was at the top. All of our group did not like this and so we all decided to change the credits. I think the credits now look better even though we did decide to keep our film title the same because we thought it still looked effective.

Evaluation power point

Media Evaluation

Storyboard for film

Script for film

[The first shot we see is an establishing shot of a lamp post and a pub.]
- (Wide shot) Woman coming out of a rich looking building/house.
- (Pan shot) She then begins walking down into the alley.
- (Mid shot) Newspaper articles about Jack the Ripper and pictures of women.-
- (Close up/Extreme close up) Jack the Ripper hiding eye following woman.
- (Mid Shot) Woman still wallking through the alley unaware of being followed.
- (Close up) J the R feet coming out as going to follow.
- (Extreme close up) 1st victim being crossed out in blood.-
- (Pan shot follow) Woman turing around thinking someones following her.
- (Wide Shot) Empty street no-one there.
- (Extreme close up) Of the womans picture on the wall
- (Extreme close up) 2nd Victim crossed out in blood.-
- (Long shot) J the R standing by a lamp post with knife in hand.
-(Over the shoulder) J the R circles the woman in blood on the newspaper board
- (Mid Shot) Woman turns back around and carries on walking.
- (Wide shot) J the R walks past the camera following woman.
- (Two shot/Wide shot) Woman walking towards the camera with J the R seen over the shoulder.
- (Close up) J the R's hand over womans mouth.
- (Wide shot Of J the R dragging woman into the alley with the woman struggling.
- (Long Shot) J the R climbs on top of woman.
- (Close up) Of J the R hand up her womans skirt.
- (High angle shot) Womans hands being pushed to the ground.
- (Close up) Woman screaming
- (Mid Shot) J the R slaps the woman
- (Close up) J the R picks up the knife.
- (Point of view) Knife slashes womans neck.
- (Extreme clsoe up) The knife with blood on it.
- (Over the shoulder shot) Womans picture being crossed out in blood
- (Wide shot) J the R gets up and walks away into the light.
- (Over the shoulder shot) J the R circles the next victim.
- Credits

Knowing

I watched the film Knowing starring Nicolas Cage and I thought that the opening credits were really effective. This is because they started as numbers and formed into peoples names and the title. The title also faded away with the clouds which was really good. The significance of the numbers is that there are dates of major events and this is why they have done the credits like this. There were certain sounds that were emphasised to make the audience jump which was effective because I wasn't expecting it.

The Life of David Gale

Jess and I watched The Life of David Gale yesterday and we thought it was really sad. However it had a very gripping storyline and contained a lot of dramatic tension throughout the film. We did not really like the music because we wouldn't have picked it for that particular genre because it is not really scary. However there were some parts to the film where there was scary music used to create suspense, but I did not really like the main music.

When David Gale was telling the journalist Bitsey Bloom about his life and his side to the story there was a use of flashbacks. This was shown through the camera spinning around and then back in time to his life. There was also a quick shot like a flash of words to emphasise his feelings at the time which I thought was effective. I also thought that the fact that the film began with the ending was really good and made the audience want to carry on watching to find out what the woman was running for. At first I thought she was running from someone but it all became clear at the end that she was running for someone.

Shutter Island

Last night Jess, Dom and I went to see Shutter Island and we all thought it was fantastic. I must admit I was scared to go and see it and there were some parts that had me jumping out of my seat, but the storyline was really good. Some parts really confused me to do with continuity and I didn't know if I was imagining it or not which scared me, but I think this was on purpose to make the audience think about the storyline because there was obviously something weird happening but the storyline did take me by surprise. It is by far one of the best psychological films I have seen. The credits were on a black background and slightly zoomed out which makes me want to do our credits on a black background because I think it looks better and more professional. The music was even scary because it would be quiet and then suddenly screech and it made me jump, it was really creepy music. The ending was really sad as well. I would definitely watch this film again and I have recommended it to my parents.

The Strangers

This film begins with the ending and this really works because it introduces the genre. As for the credits, again they are quite simple, they are yellow on a black background, but there is a white flash like lightning which makes it more scary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnLRdAuzeP0

Vacancy

I really like the opening credits to this film I think they are really effective and the way the line of some of the letters move down, it looks like blood is dripping which introduces the genre. We wanted to do our credits similar to this but we could not find the right font. The music also begins straight away when the production name appears so we could do our film like this or we could just leave the production name silent.

Gothika

This opening is quite simple because the credits are on a black background and they zoom away. The name of the actor just appears on its own so we could still do ours like that but the majority of films do say something before the name. Then the opening begins with an interview and after a minute or so, more names appear of directors and editors and so on.

Departed

Last night I watched part of a film called Departed even though I thought it was quite boring. However the film title appeared two minutes into the film which I thought was good research for our film seeing as our title appears at the end of the opening. This is the first 4 minutes or so of the film and as you can see the title of the film has still not appeared and doesn't appear until the first 10-20 minutes of the film. So this shows that some films do not introduce the title until halfway through so we could do the same if we wanted to. I like our film title where it is because it fits in well with the music and it also builds suspense to the point where the title is introduced.


By watching this film I had forgotten that the title had not come up yet and I was surprised that it was a good few minutes into the film before the title appeared. However I do think it worked well with this film because it sort of introduced what the genre was and then the title appeared suddenly and it took me by surprise. So I think we could leave our title in the same place but I think we should only put the title once because it is unnecessary to have it there twice.

Film title

This is our film with our production name included in it. It does still have a silent bit but it is not as long and it works well with the film because it adds tension. It also has a bit of added background sound which was not intended so we still need to edit that. This is still a rough copy because we still don't know whether we are using the picture in the background. We are also unsure of where to put the title. This is because in most films the title appears at the beginning of the film whereas ours appears at the end of the opening. So we now have to decide where we actually want to put it. The other problem is whether or not to add the part at the end where 'Jack the Ripper' is circling his next victim. We think it does not fit because it weakens the dramatic tension because it has a lot of suspense until that part. But then again the circling at the end shows that the opening carries on otherwise it looks like the film is finished and it does not seem like an opening then.

Test email

I am rubbish

Film with added music

This is our film which we have now added music too. We have not muted some of the background sounds so this still needs to be done and there is a bit where the music goes silent and we are yet to decide whether to change this or not. We have made the credits bigger and longer but we forgot to add my name with all the excitement. I am proud of what we have done with this and the music added has now made the film much scarier. I think there are still come changes to be made but we are almost there and I can't wait for the finished product.

The Crazies

Last night I went to see The Crazies and I thought it was really good, especially how the credits appeared. The sound really made the film scary, because it would build the tension by being silent, then all of the sudden a loud screech noise would suddenly sound, and I lost count of how many times I jumped. The camera angles were also quite quick which made me jump also.

Transitions

When we were editing on Friday, we decided to add some fading transitions because we had watched another media film that looked good when they used it. Jess was just practising with the transitions, and then she showed it to us and we thought it looked really good and now we are going to use it in our film. It is a part where we have a close up of eyes and newspapers and we have put them together and it is really effective because it looks like he is looking at the newspaper clippings but also at the woman (Michaela) as well. Here is our film with added transitions:

Examples of credits to use

On Friday we were concentrating on our credits because we thought they needed a bit more work doing to them. We downloaded some other fonts because we were limited to the ones on imovie because of the time era of our film. Most of the fonts are too contemporary for our film because ours is set in 1888 so we needed to find some old looking writing. We came across a variety of different fonts that looked handwritten but like I said before most of them were too contemporary...here are some examples:

This font is good, but when we applied it to our credits it didn't look so good and it was quite hard to read but other than that it worked well with the story of our film because we wanted our credits to look as if 'Jack the Ripper' wrote them.

This was our original font and now looking at it, it looks too modern and there are other fonts that were better. This also doesn't look like it could be his handwriting either.

We did like this font at one point because the dots around it we thought could look like blood when we changed the colour. But then, again when we tried it with our credits, it didn't look very good at all.

We thought this was a good font also because it looked as though he might have gotten a knife and written the credits but when we tried it again it looked like graffiti and just didn't work.

This font that we came across was quite good and it even looked good when we added it to our credits because it looked like handwriting. It also looked really good when it was red so at the moment this font looks quite promising but we are still deciding.

Church bell sound

I think our music could have the sound of church bells in the background because they are quite haunting and add an eerie effect to the film. It could start of loud and then fade as she walks down the alley way to show she is walking away from it. It could also be the 'white chapel church' because this was the church at the time and the women would also wait outside to get some work.

The lovely bones

I have read the book to this, and I thought it was really good and the film is even better, I thought it was brilliant, it had me crying at some parts. It is definitely a sad film, but it is worth seeing, and it was acted brilliantly. The film has lots of really good camera shots and it is really gripping. At some parts I was really scared because the suspense was built very well, with music in some parts, and then other parts it was completely silent, so the slightest noise made me jump. There is one part when the sister is looking for something in the man's house, and I was completely on edge, it made me really nervous for her, I was so scared, probably because I could guess what was going to happen next, but I am not going to ruin it for anyone who wants to see it. The film is very creative, and I imagined it to be like that in some ways from reading the book, but it was even more imaginative. A very gripping storyline and definitely one to watch.

This film is a thriller and is a 12a bur it was not really explicit so it wasn't given anything higher. I still think that our film should be a 15 because it implies a lot of horror and shows the bloody knife and the girl being dead on the floor. I think what makes lovely bones less scary is the heaven that the girl is in where everything she imagines comes true.

Creepy Music

I found this music on youtube and I played it with our film, and I thought it went quite well with it so I think our music should sound a bit like this because it is quite dramatic sounding.

Prom Night

This is the trailer to the film, Prom Night, the quick flashes of scary clips from the film really make you jump and when there is a shot of a knife flicking out there is a sound of it and this adds to the scary effect of the film. There was also a lot of point of view shots in this film and it was the point of view of the killer. This really worked well because it had me shouting at the TV for the girl to run, because the music added to the shot to bulid suspense, as the audience can guess what is going to happen next. There is also a shot when she is looking in a mirror, which is a door of a cabinet and as she opens it there is no one behind her, and then when she closes it the killer is behind her. This shot was really effective because it was really scary and I now hate mirrors that are cupboard doors.

Daybreakers trailer

This is the trailer for the Daybreakers trailer and the credits that come up are really good because they appear and they are shaky to show fear and then they shake and disappear. The shots are obviously quick because it is a trailer but I think this also adds to the tension of the trailer because it is a thriller and it makes you want to watch it because it looks scary and makes you almost jump. From watching this trailer alone I really want to watch the film and I think it will be interesting to see how they do their credits and if it is similar to how they appear in the trailer because I think these credits are dramatic and intense.

Silent Hill

I think these credits for Silent Hill are really creepy along with the slow pace editing and then the jump cut editing of the pictures appearing. The writing is quite creepy as well because it is quite small and it looks handwritten. The camera is quite shaky as well so it looks like a hand held camera has been used which makes it more creepy because it is as if someone is shaking because they are scared. I have never watched this film but already by watching the credits it looks really good and quite scary.

Information on end credits

I found this information on wikapedia about the different ways of how end credits may appear in a film:

Closing credits or end credits are added at the end of a motion picture, television program, or video game to list the cast and crew involved in the production. They usually appear as a list of names in small type, which either flip very quickly from page to page, or move smoothly across the background or a black screen. Credits may crawl either right-to-left (common in U.K. television programs) or bottom-to-top (common in films and U.S. television). The term credit roll comes from the early production days when the names were literally printed on a roll of paper and wound past the camera lens. Sometimes, post-credits scenes or bloopers are added to the end of films along with the closing credits.

Classification Guidelines

Classification Guidelines

Student Guide to Bbfc

Student Guide to Bbfc

These are the scenes that we have cut out of our film because we thought they were too explicit and we thought it was better to have everything implied because it makes the film scarier.

Certificates

From hell has a certificate of 18 and I think because this is more gory than our film, our film should be a 15. Our film is more implied than From Hell so it is not as scary which is why I think it is suitable for a 15 year old to watch. It also doesn't show too much gore and the only thing it shows that is the most gory is the knife with the blood.

From Hell

Last night I watched the film From Hell starring Johnny Depp as Inspector Frederick Abberline. I thought this film was absolutely fantastic because it portrayed Jack the Ripper as I imagined him to be. Although most of the horror in the film was implied there were some parts that had me covering my eyes and left me feeling a bit squeamish. I thought the editing was really effective with some flash images when the Inspector was having his "visions." They also used lighting to portray how evil this man really was, such as red lighting to show blood and death. There is a fantastic shot which is fast edited but has just the right speed in my opinion and this is when there is an image of a knife covered in blood which drops into a pool of blood and it is really effective. They even added in the sound of the blood dripping just to emphasise the fact that there was yet another killing. Watching this film had me on the edge of my seat because I knew the story I was wondering how they would show it and they did it so well that I was still scared of what was going to happen next.

The credits at the end of the film were really good as well because they had the characters names in handwriting like what was seen on the Jack the Ripper letter and then they had the actors names in capital letters so that the audience can see what was what. The credits were also in red which was also effective again portraying blood and death. It could also represent Mary Kelly's and Inspector Frederick's love for one another. The writing at the beginning of the film had a good effect because it stuck in my mind throughout the film and it was then said by Sir William Gull. I would definitely watch this film again and I think it has really helped me with my groups own film because some of the shots are similar to what we have done.

Film classifications

I think our film would need to have a certificate of 15 because although it is implied it still implies violence and we also show a knife that had blood on it and a man taking a woman who he is about to kill. Below is the film classifications:

U-Universal – Suitable for all

PG-Parental Guidance – General viewing, but some scenes may be unsuitable for young children

12-Suitable for 12 years and over. No-one younger than 12 may see a ‘12A’ film in a cinema unless accompanied by an adult. Responsibility for allowing under-12s to view lies with the accompanying or supervising adult.

15-Suitable only for 15 years and over. No-one younger than 15 may see a ‘15’ film in a cinema.

18-Suitable only for adults. No-one younger than 18 may see an ‘18’ film in a cinema.

Film Practice

This was a film we did when we were practising with using the camera equipment. Some of these shots we were planning on putting into our films such as the shot of the eye at the beginning where you see the pupil dilate. The shot of walking down the alley way was stabilized and the colour of the shot was changed to make it look creepy and I thought it looked quite good.

Wikapedia

I found this information on wikapedia about opening credits:
In a television programme, motion picture, or videogame, the opening credits are shown at the very beginning and list the most important members of the production. They are now usually shown as text superimposed on a blank screen or static pictures, or sometimes on top of action in the show. There may or may not be accompanying music. Where opening credits are built into a separate sequence of their own, the correct term is title sequence (such as the familiar James Bond and Pink Panther title sequences).

Silent Witness

This short clip shows how silent witness on BBC 1 uses lower case letters.

Film Draft

This is another draft of our film and we have made the credits bigger and they are on the screen a bit longer. Some credits had to be put in a different place because they didn't fit very well but I think it looks better now. However we now do not know whether to have the credits in lower case or upper case letters because now most films and dramas have their credits in lower case letters. An example of this is Silent Witness.

Ripper edit

This is our almost finished film that needs to be shown to an audience to get some feedback and it also needs the music. We thought the credits worked well with genre as they are written in red to represent blood and death. We decided to have the credits show throughout the opening rather than all at the beginning because it looked better. We have changed the speed of some parts to make it flow better and to make it less boring, because before the shots were too long and could be a bit boring to watch. It now needs a bit of a tidy up and we are hoping to screen it to an audience to see what else we can do to improve it and then all it needs is the music.

Avatar

I went to see Avatar yesterday with my brother because everyone had recommended it to me and I thought it was absolutely fantastic. Usually I am not keen to see 3D movies, but I could bare this film because it was just brilliant, the 3D effect actually made the film as good as it was and I would definitely watch it again, although it is quite a long film. Although it was obviously a fictional film the effects were so good it actually looked real, because it had a mixture of real people in it and then the avatar people. I would definitely recommend this film because of how good the effects are and the storyline is really creative as well.

Garage Band session

Yesterday we went to the city learning centre for a session on how to use Garage Band, I found this quite useful because, before I didn't have a clue about how to use it. My group decided to practice making music to go with our film. We found some useful sounds that were already on there and we had all picked similar sounds, which was good because we all agree on how we want our music to sound like. We each tried to mix the clips to see how they sounded and then we all listened to each others. Michaela made some really good music and it did sound quite scary, so she saved it and we might adapt to it and use some of it in our film. I am now really looking forward to making the music to our film because I think, hopefully once it is all put together the film will turn out good and will look scary.

Credits

Today and last night we decided to do our credits for our film because we have not done them yet. Last night we decided that we would use the colour read to symbolise danger and death. The style writing we have used looks as though it has been handwritten to add to the effect as if 'Jack the Ripper' has written the credits. Today we decided where to put the credits and they are all in significant parts of the film which makes them stand out. Some fade in and out and others just appear. All we have left to do now is the music and to tidy it up a bit.

Firefly Credits

Firefly opening credits: I think these credits are really effective because the title is Firefly and the credits fade in through what looks like fire which is relevant to the title.

The Ripperologists

I found this book review about Jack the Ripper called "The Ripperologists" and I thought it was quite interesting research and they try to rein act the murders of Jack the Ripper:

"The Ripperologists" is a contemporary thriller about two competing experts who are forced to work together to beat the clock when a copycat serial killer begins recreating Jack the Ripper's 1888 murder spree.

"I really enjoyed it. Most entertaining and showed a great insight into 'Ripperworld' - a strange and unique place." Stewart P. Evans (author, "Jack the Ripper: Letters From Hell" and "The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Companion")
Famous mystery novelist Barbara Thomas -- who has once again topped the best-seller lists, this time with a new, nonfiction book she claims reveals, once and for all, the true identity of Jack the Ripper -- is paired with legendary Ripperologist Henry McHugh, a renowned and beloved expert in the field.

Brought together by an eager police detective, the two rivals must put aside their differences long enough to piece together the identity of a killer who has ingeniously recreated Jack the Ripper's first murder -- and looks to be well on his way to re-committing the next four.

With wit and suspense -- and set against the backdrop of the fascinating subculture of Ripperologists -- the story takes equal stabs at the disparate worlds of publishing, Ripper studies, fan conventions, and Internet chatrooms, as our two unlikely heroes employ their (often contrary) knowledge of a 120-year-old phantom to hunt down a modern killer.