Red Run FINAL CUT

Red Run Rough Cut 4 Feedback

The feedback we received from this rough cut are as follows:

• The lighting was bad on a few shots where- to fix this we plan to re shoot this and try change the lighting to how we want it.
• Background noise on a few shots- this is simple to change as it just means editing the sound of our red run project file.
• Shake in the corner- to fix this just trim the shake out on sony vegas.
• Bad acting after the false scare- We can try make this better by filming it again so we know what were doing a lot more and also less nervous.
• False scare- This was terrible and we plan to fix this by re filming it and possibly change the false scare idea all together from the one we have now.
• Soundtrack was too bassy- Plan to fix this by either making a new soundtrack for this part all together or lowering the sound levels of the sound track.
• Needs a fade out at the end- Very easy to do, just add a fade out in the editing software.
• Sound effects needed- We're going to add a scream at the end when the girl opens the door.

Red Run Rough Cut 4

Heres our rough cut 4. As you can see we have changed a lot, we have introduced a female character, dialogue, a method of the doll coming into the house. As well as a false scare. We also created and added background soundtracks and credits.

Treatment & Influences

Treatment for Red Run

Filming Our New Idea - Vlog

Vlog talking about how we put our new idea into picture.

Mise-En-Scene / Boys Bedroom Vlog

A Vlog going round the main setting of our production "Red Run", describing how this room matches the representations of a typical teenage boy.

Our POV shot, that will be used in the opening of "Red Run" - Open for Feedback

Just uploading this so that we will hopefully gain some feedback on this, this was filmed using a GoPro hero 2, These are small high quality video camera's usually used for extreme sports strapped on a helmet or something.
This is the raw file, so do bare in mind we will edit the sound especially on me creeping in as my foot steps were quite loud and we may also re-shoot this scene all together, this is just for feedback only.
The feedback we are looking for is that, would this be a good way to introduce the characters? is the quality alright? or lighting? and anymore you can think off. Thankyou

Re-Filming (DOC)

LS29 are filming again tonight (19/03/12) and we aim to get a lot done and to use the feedback we received from our last rough cut to improve our 4th rough cut majorly. We have a new idea which we are going to try out tonight; to see this idea please refer to a previous blog post. The idea shouldn't take a long time to film but we will film it several times to make sure that we get the shot to be as good as it possibly can be. The feedback that Sam and I received from our 3rd rough cut was that there are some good ideas in there and the media product could be good but it needs a lot of work doing to ensure so, one of the aspects being framing.

Sam and I when filming for our 3rd rough cut, didn't take the framing as seriously as we should have done and we didn't think about it as much as we should have done. For example, there's a shot of the main character on his phone and it's a close up of his hand; however, in the background there's a poster with a close up of the hand and this ruins the shot and it looks terrible. It's such a simple mistake but it effects the final product drastically.

This is an example of poor framing in Red Run.

After filming tonight, I'll post some preview clips of the rough cut, asking for opinions and feedback so that Sam and I can work to improve it once again in the short time that we have. Please click here to see the new idea that LS29 have and aim to film and post tonight.

Location & Mise-en-scene (SD)

The main or only location in our film at the moment is outside and inside of Dillons house. This location is perfect of what we're trying to accomplish as it suits most Slasher film characteristics as the house is in a  

urban location it isn't detached, but it's of a average size and a average household that you wouldn't think twice about, therefore it will hopefully relate to most of our audience.

The Mise-en-scene were using is also already perfect, as the boy's room or Dillons bedroom already shows all the characteristics of a normal average teenage boy, such as a messy room, posters of girls, artists like "Bob Marley" and sport role models, and the rest of the house just gives off signifiers that it is just a normal middle class household where you wouldn't expect supernatural occurrences to take place.

Characters In 'Red Run' (SD)

We are planning on having 2 main characters although this could increase after filming more and structuring our idea's fully. These 2 characters are going to be a boy and a girl both teenage. The boy / Dillon shares some the characteristics of a possible characteristics of an American 'Jocky', the common scream kings in the slasher genre, he is of average height, brown hair and as a character in this film, plays the part of someone whom is relatively sexually active and 'impure'. The other role/character in the film is the girlfriend of this boy, we haven't decided yet whether or not we'll have her as a scream queen or final girl, most likely scream queen as she is portrayed in this film as a sexually active young teenage girl and will most likely will have blonde hair although we still have not decided on who to use as the actor for this role.

Gender In 'Red Run' (DOC)

The story line of Sam and I's film opening is mostly male orientated. Stereotypically, men enjoy tension, violence, killing and action in a film where as women may prefer comedy, love, romance and happiness. However, this is being extremely stereotypical and it's possible that females may also enjoy LS29's film opening as they could like the idea of the killer doll.

To relate back to the target audience for our slasher opening, it may be too broad to state that it's unlikely that females wouldn't enjoy the film opening as much because males would like it too, it may depend on the age of the people as to whether they enjoy the film opening or not. The main character in the film it a typical teenage boy, please click here to read a blog post about the characters in the film opening. Anyway, with the main character being the stereotypical 'Jockey' character from the slasher genre, it edges the film opening to be more male orientated. However, LS29 have decided to introduce a new character to make Red Run more interesting and to encourage a more female audience.

We believe that a female character could encourage a more female audience as the females may think that with only a male character, Red Run is only male orientated and that with a female character, it will be more balanced and even, encouraging both genders to watch the film opening. The mise-en-scene in the film opening however, is male orientated and this is because the majority of the setting is in a teenage boy's bedroom. Click here to read a previous blog post about the mise-en-scene in the film opening, Red Run.

A typical teenage room where a big part of Red Run is filmed.

The relationship between the two characters is mutual and it's not as if the male is dominant over the female as this patriarchal view would most likely put females off watching the film opening. Overall, Sam and I have tried to keep the film opening as unisex and mutual as possible. Only one person is killed in the film opening and this is the male but the female still plays a big part in the opening.

Pitch & Ideas (SD)

Our short film "Red Run" is about a thrilling story about a night that will stay with you for the rest of your life, The resurrection of a past evil will send a young couple fighting for their lives in a emotional whirl wind where only one will survive.

The concept for our film has been taken from the films Childs Play, Friday the 13th & Halloween. The killer in our film is a doll like in Childs Play and the idea from it coming to life is also from Childs Play but the idea of how it is resurrected is from Friday the 13th as the doll is resurrected/brought to life by electrocution.

The Doll used in Childs play

The Doll we are using in our production "Red Run"

At the start of our film we have come up with the idea of someone walking towards the house in a POV shot, using a GoPro Headcam, this idea is based around the start of the film Halloween, but instead of having the person in POV as the killer, we are planning to place a false scare into this somehow.

The basic idea of the storyline is that, the girlfriend is going to bring the doll into the house of her boyfriends when she goes round there, she could of found it outside on her way there or something like that. She then gives it to the boyfriend as a joke or present if we plan on making the boy a slasher film enthusiast, the two then go upstairs to have sexual intercourse implying there both impure and that they deserve it in the slasher genre world, we are then going to have a time lapse on the window showing it going from night to morning, the girl then wakes up and says she must go home as she didn't intend to stay over and her mum will be angry, she then leaves the house, but as the boy is running and telling her to wait up, just after she leaves the house and closes the door, he trips up at the top of the stairs, falling down them. This is where the doll comes into play, somehow between the time of it coming into the house and this it is going to be electrocuted, this could happen as the boys running after her girlfriend before he falls down the stairs, as he's running out of the bedroom he could knock over a glass of something maybe alcohol which will emphasise their impurities. When the boy falls down the stairs the doll then goes to get a knife, when this is all happening the girlfriend has realised she has forgotten something and has to go back, will she get to the house on time?

"LS29 Production's" Ident

Untitled from Sam Daffern on Vimeo.

This is LS29's first ident. We are happy with this and feel as though it looks professional and will certainly look good when it's used at the beginning of our film opening. However, it's not the final product and to improve it, Sam and I need to add some sound to it which shouldn't be hard, we can just use a simple sound that we will create ourselves in a program called Garage Band. Another thing that we can improve with this ident as we gathered from our feedback on it is that it isn't long enough and should fade in, fade out and show the LS29 Productions text for longer. Please take a look at our ident and help us by providing some feedback

Next Scheduled Filming of Red Run

Sam and I have organised to film this Saturday (17/03/12) and Monday (19/03/12). We will then edit that night and possibly Tuesday if we don't get finished so that we can hand in our 4th rough cut on the Wednesday and gain feedback. With the feedback we receive, we will film again on Wednesday (21/03/12) taking the feedback into consideration and creating a final cut to hand in on Friday (23/03/12) so that it can be marked and given back with more feedback.

Sam and I don't want to be handing in a rough cut which we know isn't as good as we know our potential can achieve and this is why we're going to hand in a 4th rough cut, simply to gain feedback before our final cut so that it can be as good as it possibly could be.

"Flow Productions" Ident (SD)

Untitled from Sam Daffern on Vimeo.
Here is my ident, this was created using both Cinema 4D, a 3D animation programme & Sony Vegas, a professional editing programme. I thought of this idea of the ball of liquid kind of thing after watching something similar to it on youtube, i then went on and made this, it was originally intended for a mountain biking edit i was working on before this media coursework came into play, but i thought that this animation could be used to make my solo Media ident. After thinking of this idea for my ident i came to the name "Flow" as my Coursework productions name, as the ball of liquid, has obvious flow, is peaceful \ calming and just remind's me and has the properties of something flowing.

Here's a wonky screenshot of the C4D file of my ident taken with my camera, just gives a idea on how it was made and the kind of programme cinema 4d is.

This is a screenshot of Sony Vegas and the project file i used to add the added effects onto the animation, as well as music and the end title.
To make this ident though, i also had to render the same animation 3 times in cinema 4d but at 3 different angles to give the look it has now. this was a strenuous task as the render time for each of them is around 10-12 hours.

Roughcut 3, Feedback

The feedback we got for this after it was screened for the class is that:

• The camera work is still shaky, this is hard to prevent but it makes such a great difference when its a still frame. - We could possibly solve this problem by maybe using a different tripod, my dad has one that he uses in his office so i could ask him if we could borrow that for when we next film.
• The start, the feedback we got for this is that we should have kept the ident sounds and not have a opening song over the top, and the obvious copyright issue on the "Arctic Monkeys" song used. Our cutting speed on the computer/phone scene was also criticised being too fast and having one too many shots - To fix this issue i think we are going to change the starting scene entirely and also to bypass the copyright issues me and Dillon are going to create a soundtrack using my Bass Guitar and his Guitar and if not that try make something on garage band.
• We were also given constructive criticism on the killing scene, we were told that this was a lot better compared to the previous rough cut as the shots are a lot faster and less noticeable, but i think we're now binning the idea that this scene was a flashback of some sort or a previous event in the past. This scene was also way too short in my eyes and there is still a lot of improvement needed on the soundtrack.
• The colour correction made in magic bullet looks, we were told that in some clips this cc used was too blurry- we are going to change this by looking at more or removing the blur around the edges although this blur effect is very effective as it focuses on the centre film well.

Creating A Soundtrack

With the deadline looming, Sam and I need to create a soundtrack. In our 3rd rough cut we used the song 'Red light indicates doors are secured' By the Arctic Monkeys. We feel like this song fitted in well with the teenage image that we're trying to portray as the main character is supposed to give the impression to the audience that he's a male scream queen as he has two posters included in the mise en scene in the bedroom, one being Bob Marley which symbolises drug use and one of naked women which symbolises him being sexual active.

Anyway, because Sam and I know that we can't use the Arctic Monkeys song because of copyright reasons, we included it in our 3rd rough cut simply to see whether people enjoyed it and think that it worked well. The feedback we received was positive and most of the audience agree that if it wasn't breaching copyright laws, it would have been a great song to use.

With this feedback, Sam and I have decided to record our own version of the song which should hopefully work just as well and won't breach any copyright terms. Sam plays the bass guitar and I play the electric guitar, so between us we think that we'll be able to create a good soundtrack. Our other alternative is to make the soundtrack using Garage Band but we believe that we can learn and record the Arctic Monkeys song in the same amount of time as it would take for us to create a soundtrack in Garage Band. Once we have recorded the soundtrack we will upload it for feedback and comments.

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'Tell William Productions' Ident

Untitled from Sam Daffern on Vimeo.

Here his Dillon's Personal ident, this was filmed using my Nikon 5100 camera, The idea for this ident was constructed by the thought of the man William Tell 200 odd years ago, William Tell was famous for shooting apples of peoples heads with a crossbow as a entertaining act. Here is some information about him. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tell
Mr Burrow's mentioned this idea to Dillon who then went onto making this ident and having the name "Tell William Productions", William Tell, but backwards, and also the apple is shot of a old probably victorian era doll using a air rifle instead of a crossbow.
After filming the 2 shots needed to make the ident, we then imported them into sony vegas put them together, added a sniper gun shot synced with the shooting of the apple, and then followed by a title.

A New Idea

After gaining feedback on our 3rd rough cut, Sam and I have concluded that to improve our media product we need to do several things; add another character, preferably a scream queen stereotype (blonde hair and sexually active) because this fits in with the slasher genre, take more time to cut into the action of the killer doll as we introduce the main character too quickly as we need to build tension and suspense and also show the killer doll being brought to life through electrocution which we did for our first 2 rough cuts but decided to leave out for the 3rd. Also, it would be a good idea to create a false scare are the beginning of the slasher film opening because this also links in well with the slasher genre. A false scare is a good way of getting the audience's attention and introducing the characters to them.

To create the false scare, LS29 will film the girlfriend character (scream queen) from a point of view shot as she walks up to the house of her boyfriend; this has been used in slasher films before such as Black Christmas and Halloween although they weren't false scares, they were the real killer. Also, we will add some intertextuality with the media products from other students in my media class and providing the audience with anchorage that the doll, which will be a joke present from the girlfriend to the boyfriend as the main character and killer doll from one of our fellow student's slasher film opening. The girl will be walking up to the house whilst the boy is in the kitchen making a cup of tea with his back facing the doors that the girl will be sneaking into and creeping up on him, scaring him and creating a false scare.

By creating this false scare, Sam and I will be hopefully improving our media products in several ways; for example, we will be increasing the length of it to the preferred length of time for the slasher opening as it's too short as it is now. Also, we will be able to introduce the characters more slowly and build tension and suspense and when we do introduce them during the false scare, we will be introducing them in a more effective way and we will hopefully have gained the audiences attention and interest more. Once LS29 have filmed this, we will post it as a blog and ask for feedback. We plan to film this on Saturday (17/03/12)

Target Audience

The target audience for LS29's film opening is younger people rather than old, roughly 16-25. We have gone for this target audience because the storyline of the film opening is similar to that of Child's Play; a series of films based on a killer doll, that's brought to life also through electrocution but through other methods too such as voodoo. Some differences with LS29's film opening and the Child's Play series is that the doll is the spirit of a person; a serial killer called Charles Lee Ray where as Sam and I's film opening hasn't got that included, it could be the case but there simply isn't enough time to expose that.

Our film opening, we believe, also fits in with the Child's Play film's target audience (16-25) and this is because the younger the person, stereotypically the more imaginative they are when it comes to films, either imaginative or simply easier to please. This means that the younger the person, the more they are supposedly going to enjoy the idea of a doll being alive and not only alive, but a killer too. Sam and I believe that the older the person, the less likely they are to embrace the killer doll concept and they may see it as being childish, especially with the story line being similar to that of Child's Play. It's not so much that Sam and I think that the older age group won't enjoy our film opening, it's simply that we believe they may not enjoy the storyline; however, we may be wrong and they could possibly enjoy the film opening as long as they find the killer doll's role in the film believable and effective.

The young audience that Sam and I are targeting could be easily accessed through social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. The older age group may be harder to promote our film to because there is a lot less older people on Facebook and Twitter. Our film opening, like the Child's Play series may be seen as inappropriate by some people due to the killer in the slasher genre being a Child's toy, in this case a doll. If this was to happen, it would most likely be older people thinking like this and this is another reason why they're less likely to targeted as an audience. The young people however may feel even more encouraged to watch the film if older people are contesting it like they did with the Child's Play films.

'Red Run' Rough Cut 3

Untitled from Sam Daffern on Vimeo.

Our rough cut 3, we still need to work on the start and the concept of something bringing the doll into the house. we listened to the previous rough cut's feedbacks and went on to having a lot more shot variations on each scene. we also improved the killing with much short takes making it more realistic.
We also tried using sound tracks and improved sound effects such as the arctic monkeys song at the start which is meant to be implying digetic sound coming from his computer and the sound's at the killing scene. we also included the indents on this rough cut to have a feel of what the final cut will be like, and i also added a colour correction using magic bullet looks to improve the picture quality and make it look cleaner.

Rough Cut 2, Feedback

The audience/Class's feedback was that the takes were too long which made the clips look less believable or real compared to the fast paced cuts you see nowadays.
The killing was also too long on both the doll and the body being stabbed, so we plan to make these cuts fast and sharp and also probably change the fake blood as the mixture we used for this was too orange.
Another bit of criticism was lack of soon or a sound track, so were are going to try make on ourselves either on garage band or simply with guitars and bass.

'Red Run' Rough Cut 2

Untitled from Sam Daffern on Vimeo.

This is our second rough cut, editing was rushed, this was simply to test out how to do the killing scene as well as blood and sound effects. We are also going to change this so that at the start the doll can be introduced by a dog bringing it inside the house or something like that. and also improve on the ending.

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