Finalised Questionnaire

When I re-wrote my questionnaire I made the questions in bold and highlighted the most important parts of the introduction in red because it makes certain parts stand out and the entire thing isn't all blended together. The ghost pictures are for aesthetic purposes because they're more likely to answer a questionnaire that looks more exciting. I also took out the more personal questions about peoples beliefs about demonic beings and spirits as I can use them in my focus group. So I swapped them for questions about urban legends since most people will be able to relate to them. I feel like the new questions and the ones I have about the posters will allow me to get research that's very close to my sub-genre of supernatural genre.

Finished Questionnaire

I re-wrote some of my questionnaire to get more of an understanding of what people would want to see in a supernatural horror film, to know what I should include in my poster. After looking over this questionnaire I realised that some of these questions were too deep and personal for someone to answer in a couple of minutes. I still want some of the answers to still be personally, e.g. the question about their fears and own experiences, because it means I can use this research to create a film that plays on people's personal fears and real life experiences.

 

Questionnaire

My first attempt at creating a questionnaire about supernatural horror films is very basic and there were too many personal questions. Although I think I managed to get some decent questions that just need to be developed and worded more professionally. I think asking slightly personal questions means that my results will be much more helpful and I'll be able to get a very clear idea on what I should base my film poster about. I chosen a variety of open and closed questions which allow me to get more specific results for certain questions, while the open questions will give me broader answers that I can use to build my ideas.

Personal plan

Supernatural sub-genre poster analysis

From my primary research into supernatural horror films, I've learnt that a lot of these films are based of true events, which evokes fear into the audience because it makes it more believable. Also the films are more like ghost stories when they're based of true events. I've also noticed that these films like to include religion and use good and evil. The binary opposites are very common in supernatural horror films.

Religion is a big part of these demon based supernatural horror films and I think this is because religion is something people rely on to feel safe and protected from demons and spirits. Using religion and it failing to help the protagonists can be fearful and it brakes that barrier of safety. Although I do think it's also to cross over into the audiences lives because religion is a personal thing that a lot of people can relate to.   

Supernatural horror films are usual about possession, spirits, or demons, even though werewolves, vampires, shapeshifters are all supernatural creatures and fall into the same sub-genre. I think the sub-genre of supernatural horror then brakes down into two, supernatural creatures and then spirits and demons. When i create my own poster campaign, I'll go towards the spirit side of supernatural horror, I think you can be more creative and can base the film of peoples personal fears. 

By reading the synopsis of these films, I've learnt the the spirit is someone who had a troubled past and that's why the haunt. In reality, people who have told their own ghost stories, there is normally a much deeper meaning to it and why that spirit haunts. 

Short film workshop evaluation

When creating our storyboard we didn’t encounter many problems to begin with, as a group we instantly put down ideas and very shortly we had half a story. We found dotting down notes underneath the images was easier than writing out full sentences. I realised that when creating a storyboard its more note taking so when you film you don’t get lost or make a mess when it comes to editing. Our idea was very simple and straight forward; we wanted to create a parallel of two going to a meeting point and then sitting down to have a conversation. The only issue we had was deciding on the conversation the characters would have.  With this idea we were able to use various shot types to create a narrative, which worked quite well since for half of it there is not speaking and when watching it back you can see it clearly tells a story. We followed the 180^o rule when filming the dialogue so when it came to editing the actors would be facing each other. Although the problem we had with the conversation scene was that we didn’t plan out much of a script because we thought that it wouldn’t sound fluent enough, so during the 3 different shots of the conversation what we say is slightly different than each other, which caused some issues when it came to editing.  

It was time to edit and we quickly realised that our short film was longer than we expected. While planning we thought the meeting scene wouldn’t take that long but we realised that wasn’t the case.  When editing the meeting scene they were very easier to cut up and put in order and I think we did a good job at mixing up the shot types to create some anticipation to what the characters are meeting for. But when it came to the conversation it didn’t go so well since we had to mix sentences together that originally didn’t follow. Swapping from the various shots and trying to line up what the actors were saying was rather difficult and in the end when you watch it through some of it is very choppy. Despite that little hiccup with the conversation part, as a group we worked really well together considering we had a few issues with the tripod being slightly broken and using the elevator for a scene when other people in the college were trying to use it.  

Evaluation on Pixlr workshop

To recreate the Guinness advert we used a program called Pixlr. I found it easy to use and most of it was very straight forward to pieces the various images together. I’m happy with my finished product because I feel that I have replicated the advert well. I used the blur tool to make it seem like the horses and surfers were coming out of the water, the horse furthest away looks the best in my opinion; although I could have made it a little smaller to give it more perspective. When cutting out the horse from the background I used the magic want tool to erase unwanted areas and then the eraser and select tool to get rid of the closer unwanted background. I found this way easier and more precise than cutting around the horse and then cutting it out from the background; only because if I was to make a mistake while using the select tool and then press undo it goes all the way back to when you started selecting.  I think the surfer crouching down looks the best out of the two since I used the blur tool more and I found an image that looked better than the other one. I’ve learnt that when using images various images it’s best to pick ones that are simple and not covered in detail, since the surfer in the original image was covered in water and now in my one he has all these white speckles over him.

When creating the advert I found it difficult to pick out images that would fit with each other, so when it’s time for me to take my images for my course work I’ll make sure they’re in similar conditions to make the editing much easier. I did try using the sharpen tool to make the horses face less blurry but it made it too grainy and it just didn’t look right. I could have used different horse pictures to make it look a little more genuine since all of them are identical. I didn’t encounter many problems from using the software, but some of the images like the surfer did make it a little more difficult. Removing the unwanted background was tricky when it was very close to the subject since I’d accidentally rub out part of the surfers hand or the horses face, but by using the eraser with the blurred effect it becomes a lot easier and if I did end up erasing more than what I wanted it won’t look as bad; that and I was able to use the blurred eraser to blend the horses into the water.