ACTIVITY 1.) In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)
We have chosen 9 still frame images from our opening sequence. Our opening sequence is quite like a typical opening sequence that you would see in films as we went straight into the film putting up titles and building a mood with the audience.
Frame 1.) As our film was in the horror genre, we had to make sure we had a suitable title. After researching other horror films we came to the conclusion that most of them had short and to the point titles to create snappiness and add a menacing blunt tone to it that conveys something to do with the plot e.g Se7en, Saw and Quarantine.
Frame 2.) We set our opening sequence in two very contrasting places, we set the first scenes in the school common room to make it look like more of a bedroom whilst we got ready to go out. The second part of filming we did was in a warehouse behind Halfords in Guildford, we wanted it to contrast greatly with the brightness and upbeat music of us getting ready in the common room. The warehouse was perfect for the scene as it was dirty, had painted windows and was virtually empty. We used the warehouse because it suited the genre and was remote and isolated like in most horror films. The warehouse was grey and gloomy and had chains hanging off the walls and isolated random objects on the floor too.
Frame 3.) We used costume and props to help show more about our characters in the opening sequence. We included Bart and Roman rolling and smoking cigarettes and me applying lots of make up to show off our character traits and give the audience and idea of our personalities. We used quite plain clothes when getting ready and then had a change of outfit when we came to filming in the warehouse to look like we had been out all night. We also used the props to write our names/titles on for our opening e.g Bart’s name on a rolling paper. We tried to make our characters seem as normal as possible and the attack on them to be completely unexpected as characters in horror films usually have a side of innocence to them.
Frame 4.) This frame shows off the camera work that we did, we tried to be creative and use different ways of bringing up titles etc. In this frame we decided to write the title on some clear plastic and have Roman in the background behind his name. We did this to show our camera work skills instead of just using Imovie titles. We used close up shot types to catch the reaction of our characters which is seen a lot in horror films to chill the audience. We tried to use as many unusual angles as we could to make it seem more scary and to disorientate the audience to make them feel part of the film and scared. The Camera was always from the victims point of view through the opening sequence to make the audience feel as if they were with them in the same situation. We used fast cutting and snappiness along with the scary sound effects to build tension and scare the audience.
Frame 5.) We kept our titles plain and put them on a plain black background with red writing to connote blood and horror. This gives people the impression that it is a scary film and the titles really stand out from the background. They drift in and out to give intervals between the scenes which make it more upbeat.
Frame 6.) The brief outline of our film is about a cool group at school that bully another child into killing himself, the father of the dead boy then goes crazy trying to torture and kill the teenagers. We set this up in the opening sequence as the teenagers were getting ready for a party, we tried to show this by applying makeup, doing hair, rolling cigarettes and using loud party music to also get the audience in the mood. This frame shows me applying makeup to go out and set the scene.
Frame 7.) Our genre is horror, we showed this through our blood red and black titles and the big contrast between getting ready for the party with loud music and then suddenly turning quiet and almost making the audience get a chill down their backs. The reason that we included so much in our opening sequence was so that the audience would then want to continue watching to find out what had happened and why they were suddenly being tortured and kept as prisoners. The opening definitely suggests that it is a horror film as the characters are in an isolated warehouse trapped and it is obvious that they have already been beaten/killed and there is going to be more to come.
Frame 8.) Our characters are introduced through 2 or 3 frames each as they get ready for the party; in the frames for each person our aim was to show their characteristics and a brief outline of what type of character they were. I think we did well to achieve this as we also included titles but also had them as name tags. In Frame 8 we used the frame of me doing my make up in the mirror showing that I was quite vein and had my name written on my back as a title to introduce the character.
Frame 9.) In frame 9 we show our use of special effects, we used slow motion effects in a lot of our opening sequence including when Bart flicked his cigarette onto the floor and the smoke and sparks came out. We thought this was very effective and used slow motion on quite a few of our frames.
ACTIVITY 2.) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
My character is portrayed as a party girl with a lot of insecurities covered by make-up. I thought that she related well to Regina George in Mean Girls, played by Amy McAdams, she plays a stuck up school girl who is top of the food chain at college but slowly loses her social status when people realise what she is really like. I thought my character was similar to this as she is also portrayed as the stuck up one in the group who looks down on everyone and is obsessed with appearance and status. The appearance is similar as the role for both characters involves fuss over appearance. Both characters have large amounts of make up applied and perfectly straightened hair. The costumes are again similar as they involve showing a lot of skin or having short dresses as if having been on a night out to portray the characters as quite provocative.
ACTIVITY 3.) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Our genre was horror; it is a very competitive genre as it can be difficult to actually scare your audience. Research shows that horror films that are more realistic and don’t have fake monsters etc are more scary than those that are animated etc. ‘Attack the block’ was voted the best horror film of 2011 on numerous film rating websites such as www.horror-movies.ca, ‘Insidious’ was also very popular in 2011 so far and got high ratings at the UK British film festival. Genre is a particularly hard genre to do as it can always come across wrong and not be as scary as planned.
Currently in my local cinema, The Guildford Odeon, there are very few horror films on at this time of year (Christmas) people are not looking to be scared but entertained and are looking for more of a family suitable genre. There is one horror film in the cinema at the moment, which is ‘The Thing’.
What´s the plot? An Antarctic research project becomes a mission of survival in ‘The Thing’, the edge-of-the-seat prelude to John Carpenter’s 1982 classic. The international team of scientists working at the isolated base discovers an organism imprisoned in ice. When they accidently release it, they unwittingly become prey to a cunning parasite with the ability to transform itself into an exact replica of anything it touches. As their paranoia grows and their numbers dwindle, they must stop the ‘The Thing’ before it destroys them and moves on to the rest of the world.
Most of the horror films nowadays are set in isolated areas and involve something chasing after the main characters for something they have done wrong or they could be completely innocent, there is a great contrast in their usual surroundings compared to where they end up. We used this stereotypical horror film type to set our film. We set our opening in the characters normal environment and ending up in a completely different environment isolated, trapped and alone.
ACTIVITY 4.) Who would be the audience for your media product?
The target audience ^
Our target audience would be teenagers 16 and above. We chose this group of people because they were the most likely to have a taste for the horror genre. The kind of audience we were mainly looking for was teenagers who were into mainstream music and shopped mainly in the high street, these are usually the type of people who enjoy a thrill and adrenalin rushes if it’s from a film or a roller coaster. We would rate our film as a 15 certificate as the language would not be too bad and our target audience would be able to see it. However there is a lot of gore and as it is horror it may not be appropriate for under 16’s.
ACTIVITY 5.) How did you attract/address the audience?
ACTIVITY 6.) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
We used an array of technology to film our opening sequence. Tripods, cameras, tapes, Mac Computers and lots of different websites. We used different websites online and computer programs such as; Blogger, Glogster, Youtube, Imovie and Garageband.
ACTIVITY 7.) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?
Filming our preliminary task we mainly focussed on using as many shot types as we could, we did not spend much time on editing and only really cut our scenes and added titles. In our full product we spent most of our time editing and playing around with different looks and titles as we realised this was one of the most important elements of the sequence. When filming we made sure that all our camera work was not wobbly but straight and tried to use an array of angles as well as shot types to put the horror genre across. We used all three shot types that we learnt about from our preliminary task in our final sequence, the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot/reverse shot, we developed them all from our preliminary task and I feel that we used them well.
