Critical Evaluation Final Major Project By Michael C. Bungay 

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I started working on my Final Major Project March 14th 2016 onwards. I began my Primary Research by gathering information on Fright Fest, East End Film Festival and Channel 4 Online Shorts. I looked at when these festivals are taking place, what they involve, what the requirements and entry fees are and who their target audiences were. Using this information helped me to decide to enter Fright Fest as I already had an idea for a short Horror Film called Screwed, a Slasher/Revenge Thriller in which a facially disfigured young man seeks revenge for the death of his best friend at the hands of yobs by terrorising them and killing them with a screwdriver as I quite fancied the idea of a screwdriver being used as a murder weapon which as far as I know does not very often and I wanted to take a different approach to what other film-makers usually do. Given that my short Horror Film had to be suitable for a 12A Certificate, I decided to abandon this idea.

I then had to research the target audience for Horror Films. For this, I created an online survey on Survey Monkey and collated the results. This would help me with my storyline, making sure it was suitable for the target audience. I had 5 responses from my online survey. I also conducted a focus group within Oaklands College in which I showed a group of 5 volunteers two short Horror Films on YouTube and asked for their views on them and an online Questionnaire to gather as much of an idea as possible of what people expect to see in a Short Horror Film. I did not manage to get as many volunteers in my focus group as my tutor recommended and none from any other age group higher than 16-26 however so that had room for improvement.  

These three pieces of Primary Research led me to understand that my target audience for my Short horror Film were mostly male aged 16-50 with a taste for danger and thrill-seeking. They expected Tense, Scary, suspenseful and supernatural themes with a shocking climax. They mostly liked the genre of Fantasy Horror. They didn’t want the film to be clichéd or too gory or violent. Some of their favourites Horror Films included 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead, The 6th Sense, The Shining and Carrie and they mostly watched Horror Films with their families. They also liked a Horror Film that is spooky, tense and has a good narrative that does not confuse the audience or drag along and takes place in suitable location such as the woods. There is less need for a Comedy element as it seems to lessen the scariness of a Horror Film. Over Easter, I wrote a 1000-1500 word essay on the British board of Film Classification and Ethics such as Copyright, Royalties, Consent and how the different film certificates work and why they are used and what the requirements are for them to be given to particular films which also helped me to decide what to include in my Short Horror Film.

I also conducted some Secondary Research by looking at some comments of existing Short Horror Films on YouTube. For this task, I focused mainly on the short Horror Films I had already looked at up to and including all my Primary and Secondary research I had conducted at the time. I think in hindsight I could have looked at different Short Horror Films. I did try looking at clips from the film Paranormal Activity which inspired me to set the film in a dark room once I decided to help James Acraman with his project called Cyber-Stalker as no one else wanted to work with him or me. I had intended to make my Individual Edit a silent film with subtitles but I decided it would be better with dialogue.

This was the extent of my individual research but I also did some research with James. Together we discussed the script and elements of the films we would like to emulate, we did not need to assemble a cast together and we checked the content to make sure our film was suitable for a 12A Classification which is what we were aiming for. 

James had already started working on Cyber-Stalker at home with his family which would later prove to be a significant influence on him during Pre-Production and Production. This caused problems for me during editing such as having to initially use a still image of me as the Cyber-Stalker to cover up the blank screen on James’ laptop as his parents would not allow him to operate the laptop during filming to save battery power and avoid knocking it of the bedside cabinet. I can understand why but laptops do have chargers and James and I know better than to knock expensive laptops over.

The plot was simple, Cyber-Stalker is an entity that appears on the screen of a laptop owned by a young man named Frankie and taunts him continuously, so he knows how Cyber-Bullying feels as James and I had intended. The difficulty was the ending which we had to rewrite many a time as a result of constant criticism and influence from our tutors and James’ family. James wanted to have Frankie pulled into the laptop by Cyber-Stalker at the end of the film and I wanted Cyber-Stalker to come out of the laptop and stab Frankie. However, this would have meant spending too much time filming the scene and then trying to master Adobe After-Effects which was notoriously unreliable when Ollie Samuel tried to teach us how to use it. This was highly frustrating but this kind of helped in a way as I came up with an ending in which Cyber-Stalker taunts Frankie so much that Frankie goes mad and hangs himself. James and his family approved of, barring a few changes such as Frankie remaining in his bedroom for the full duration and being pushed around by an invisible force as well as hearing his own voice taunting him. I would have liked to have had a running scene in which Frankie tries to escape from the taunting by running through the house just to raise more tension. I know James’ family were only trying to help but I could not help feeling they were becoming more of a hindrance than help with all the restrictions they were placing on James and I which prompted us to change our plans many a time.       

We recorded the voices for Cyber-Stalker on May 16th as I provided the voice of the Cyber-Stalker and we recorded James providing a paranormal voice as well as play Frankie. We tried to attract interest from the Performing Arts students but we were unsuccessful. We did our filming on May 17th at an unoccupied home in Hollycopse, Bedwell that James’ family are renovating. We did all of our filming in of the upstairs bedrooms. I would have preferred to shoot in a room with reduced light as the Main light in the room had a dimmer switch but James turned the light up to its brightest as he claimed that a dimmer setting would reduce visibility required for filming. I could understand that but I felt this detracted from the typical setting for a Horror Film. Not surprisingly, we received a lot of criticism as a result of having the light on at its brightest but by that time, this could not be helped as we only had use of the premises for the day we did our filming. We wrapped up by the end of the day and spent the rest of the week editing our footage. James preferred to do his editing on Adobe Elements which he could only get on his own laptop so he did his editing at home. He had planned to let me take over when he was finished but it would have meant having to bring his laptop to Oaklands which his parents did not approve of so I did my editing on Premier Pro as usual. We showed off our Rough Cuts on May 23rd after which we were advised to do one last bit of filming of me as the Cyber-Stalker so that I looked like I was moving as well as talking. This we did on May 26th. I had the whole of May half-term in which to finish my Final Cut but I finished it on May 27th and uploaded it to YouTube along with my 3 attempts at a Rough Cut on June 6th. The changes I made for my Final Edit were mostly replacing the still image of the Cyber-Stalker with the live footage and changing the saturation to Grayscale and the font colour of the Stalker part of the title from white to red.   

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Target Description

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1. To get more information on what my options for the future are

2. To get more information on how to continue filming and on drones

3. To write up my CV to send to potential employers

4. To continue editing my book and find courses relating to Creative Writing and English

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What will you do to achieve it?

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1. To speak to student advice

2. To research filming with drones with help from family

3. Look up CV templates online and download one

4. Edit my book on my laptop and research Creative Writing/English Courses

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When will you achieve it by?

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1. June 16th 2016

2. July 2016

3. July 2016

4. September 2016