Targets the correct audience- through use of young actors. Fast pace editing etc.
Story line targets a slightly wider audience as it is more complex than most horrors.
Too female orientated, and if had the chance would need to add in male actor(s) as it may appear to be a chick flick which wouldn't appeal to men.
The narrative is slightly confusing and hard to follow.
Bits of filming are too dark-(which we did realise, and if had the chance would refilm bits with better lighting)
The end is unexpected, creates a narrative enigma.
Liked Point of View shot creates tension, effective.
Good framing in point of view shot behind tree.
Slow motion effect, good conventional connotation, makes it seem like being watched.
The silence outside made it more effective, more creepy and isolated, and can hear the footsteps clearly.
The background noise outside of wind gets annoying, makes less effective.
Monday, 27 April 2009
Tuesday, 7 April 2009
Sound and Music (Planning work from March)
Some of the Copywrite free music sites we found were:
-www.akmmusic.co.uk
-www.freeplaymusic.com
-www.trackline.com
-www.derekaudette.ottawaarts.com/music
-audio.lgfl.org.uk
Most of these sites specialised in sound effects, which was mainly what we were looking for anyway.
For our final cut we needed a heartbeat sound effect for the blackout to build up tension and dramatic effect. We had many heartbeats to choose from but we chose the loudest most dramatic, at quiet a fast pace, to suit the genre.
We also contemplated using a heavy breathing sound effect through parts but then decided against last minute, as we tried doing it ourselves but the sound wasn't very effective or as loud as we wanted.
The other sound we used was the bit to the opening scene of the house- the eery music, we felt it created the dream like state we were looking for, aswell as connoting the genre of the film. None of the music was aimed at a target audience, although we felt it would appeal to both male and females.
We also felt we didn't need any music throughout the outside bit of the opening, and were told in audience feedback that the silence was very effective and created tension as you could hear the footsteps of the girl clearly, and it made it seem more creepy and isolated.
Also we were criticised in feedback that the clips outside were catching sound from the wind, which got annoying to watch and didn't make build up the dramatic effect as wanted.
We created the eery music at the beginning on garageband, which was easy to transfer onto Imovie. The heartbeat we got off a copywrite free site.
-www.akmmusic.co.uk
-www.freeplaymusic.com
-www.trackline.com
-www.derekaudette.ottawaarts.com/music
-audio.lgfl.org.uk
Most of these sites specialised in sound effects, which was mainly what we were looking for anyway.
For our final cut we needed a heartbeat sound effect for the blackout to build up tension and dramatic effect. We had many heartbeats to choose from but we chose the loudest most dramatic, at quiet a fast pace, to suit the genre.
We also contemplated using a heavy breathing sound effect through parts but then decided against last minute, as we tried doing it ourselves but the sound wasn't very effective or as loud as we wanted.
The other sound we used was the bit to the opening scene of the house- the eery music, we felt it created the dream like state we were looking for, aswell as connoting the genre of the film. None of the music was aimed at a target audience, although we felt it would appeal to both male and females.
We also felt we didn't need any music throughout the outside bit of the opening, and were told in audience feedback that the silence was very effective and created tension as you could hear the footsteps of the girl clearly, and it made it seem more creepy and isolated.
Also we were criticised in feedback that the clips outside were catching sound from the wind, which got annoying to watch and didn't make build up the dramatic effect as wanted.
We created the eery music at the beginning on garageband, which was easy to transfer onto Imovie. The heartbeat we got off a copywrite free site.
Friday, 3 April 2009
Evalation
Our media product mostly uses common forms and conventions of real media products as the music shortens intake of breath, because of the very high notes, and creates an irregular heartbeat.
Then one very common convention of horror/slashers is a canted, dutch angle to signify that something bad is going to happen, also the shot of the front of the house is very common. Mostly to create a claustraphobic effect, which i feel ours does because of the trees around the house etc.
This example is from Bride of Chucky (Ronnie Yu 1998) Which is a film which heavily uses a dutch angle throughout.
Most horror films start with a slow opening shot, which ours does, the pace of the shots slowly get faster towards the end of our 2 minutes, to create a build up of tension.
The heavy use of P.O.V shot from the killer is also a common convention we decided to use in ours, we thought that worked really well and thought would create a narrative enigma.
Using the knife was also a popular thing to do in horror films, as using a household object as a killing weapon was heavily used in the friday 13th sequels as they got the idea from Argentino's flair. A kitchen knife is also seen in the opening two minutes of Scream, and again in the still below.
We did challenge the codes and conventions by using both brown haired girls, the main protagonist though is the final girl, which means it is common and not unusual for her to be a brunette, although the other protagonist girl who is overly girly would stereotypically be a blonde, but we decided to make her into a countertype, so our film was abit different. We made her girly and wear revealing clothes and alot of make up so the audience would feel like she 'deserved' to die as she is made out to be sexually available, which is thought of as a sin so they should die for it.
We also challenge common conventions as you only really find out there is someone there, the 'killer' at 1 min 15 sec. so we have created a dramatic build up, waiting for the killers presence.
My media product represents particular social groups such as a 'youth' audience, which is reflected in the cast, as they are all teenagers, which is also very common in horrors. It also appeals to teenagers because of the costume choices of the characters, and the fact they are wearing make up etc.
And from our audience feedback we were told the young actors, fast pace editing and storyline attracts the young audience we wanted it to.
The psychographic profile target audience would be mostly people who watch slightly supernatural things on TV such as star trek...or other films like nightmare on elm st.
The type of media institution that would distribute our film would be quite an unknown distributor as this is our first production, so they wouldn't invest too much money into it, and also it would have to be a company that has previously worked with horror films and knows how to advertise them etc. WT2 or WarpX would be the perfect advertisers, especially WarpX as it has done
films like Donkey punch before, which was a popular hit in the UK.
The audience for our media product would be- middle class, lower middle class and working class -C2DE. Mainly because it has no famous names in it to attract a wider target audience, but this is common in horror films as they are usually low budget in comparison to other genres of film. I feel it could highly appeal to girls because of the main protagonist being a strong independant woman, which is an inspiration for them, and would also be a huge hit for teenagers as it is mainly that age group reflected in the film, and they also tend to enjoy fast pace films such as horrors.
The age range we have targetted is from 15-25.
As the storyline as said through feedback is complex and would also attract a slightly maturer age group.
I also feel we have targetted a very northern audience mainly. As it has a yorkshire feel to it as a film, because of the accents, and the rural landscape outside.
Although as we found out from our audience feedback, there are no men in the opening scenes which means one will probably not end up being a key character, mainly female orientated. Which may not mean it would appeal as much to males as they may mistake it for a 'chick flick'.
We would attract/address our audience by advertising on the internet perhaps, and through text and posters like how Donkey Punch was advertised. Film festivals in the local areas would also attract attention. Perhaps comparing it to other well known, popular horrors would attract the audience- for example saying it is like a mix of Scream and Nightmare on Elm Street would get peoples attention. I feel we would highly rely on word of mouth for the distribution of advertisment as we would not have the money to invest into it incase it wasn't popular.
The things which i have learnt about the new technologies from the process of constructing my product would be mostly Imovie 06 which was very easy to pick up on what to do for beginners and to put transitions in etc. I learnt how to change the pitch of sound effects added, for example when we added a heartbeat sound effect we lowered the pitch at the start and heightened it at the end to make it more dramatic, which i thought was a good aspect to the software. Although we did find it difficult to find good visual effects and audio on the Imovie programme, which is why we also used garageband. I learnt alot from that also as i had never used it before and it was extremely easy to create your own music on it, elongate notes for a shortness of breath, fast pace to create an irregular heartbeat, etc. I found it fun to experiment with the different types of music we could have used to make our product most effective.
The actual camera was very easy to use, we liked the nightvision as it created the perfect effect we needed for the dream effect, slightly blurry like in a state of unconcious. Although if we were to want a better lighting effect outside in the dark it would have been very difficult on a small budget to create good quality clips with nightvision- which we would have needed later on in the film when it is reality.
The things i have learnt from our preliminary task were, that planning is totally essential, and without it everything goes wrong, in our prelim we rushed everything and didnt really plan, we just filmed as we went along. This caused alot of problems when trying to put it all together in the end, as the clips didn't seem to flow and lacked continuity. Which meant when we came to our real product we spent alot of time planning and took all the shots more than once to make sure we had choice. Continuity was also no problem in the final product as we thought through what would have to come after and we thought it ended up realistic.
Apart from the part in the hallway where it goes from the girl talking to then her by the door putting her coat on, this lacked continuity but simply because we had shot a clip to go inbetween of the mother speaking but it was too long and confusing, and we couldn't cut it down effectively without making it look stupid so we left it out.
The prelim task also helped us think about how to make lighting effective, as we came across some shots in it where the lighting made the shots look bad quality or shadowed the character when it shouldn't have.
We also learnt that the stereotypical aspects to the characters worked well, we tried to add that into our final piece but give it abit of a twist with brown hair.
Doing the prelim made using the camera, and software like Imovie 06 much simpler and meant we could do the editing and filming alot quicker than if we hadn't had any practice.
I also felt that the prelim made us realise that each shot had to have meaning, and we couldn't simply add a shot in for the sake of it, which was an aspect we took into great consideration and thought through each shot for a long time as a group and went through the strengths and weaknesses of it.
The match on action in our prelim we also found very difficult to grasp, and however long we tried we couldn't get it right, so we all discussed how to make the match on action look effective and in the end it looked very effective and continuous.
We also learnt how to signify the genre of the film through shots. Generally i feel that in the long run we have come a long way as a group and learnt alot, and found it all a very enjoyable experience.
Then one very common convention of horror/slashers is a canted, dutch angle to signify that something bad is going to happen, also the shot of the front of the house is very common. Mostly to create a claustraphobic effect, which i feel ours does because of the trees around the house etc.
This example is from Bride of Chucky (Ronnie Yu 1998) Which is a film which heavily uses a dutch angle throughout.
Most horror films start with a slow opening shot, which ours does, the pace of the shots slowly get faster towards the end of our 2 minutes, to create a build up of tension.
The heavy use of P.O.V shot from the killer is also a common convention we decided to use in ours, we thought that worked really well and thought would create a narrative enigma.
Using the knife was also a popular thing to do in horror films, as using a household object as a killing weapon was heavily used in the friday 13th sequels as they got the idea from Argentino's flair. A kitchen knife is also seen in the opening two minutes of Scream, and again in the still below.
We did challenge the codes and conventions by using both brown haired girls, the main protagonist though is the final girl, which means it is common and not unusual for her to be a brunette, although the other protagonist girl who is overly girly would stereotypically be a blonde, but we decided to make her into a countertype, so our film was abit different. We made her girly and wear revealing clothes and alot of make up so the audience would feel like she 'deserved' to die as she is made out to be sexually available, which is thought of as a sin so they should die for it.
We also challenge common conventions as you only really find out there is someone there, the 'killer' at 1 min 15 sec. so we have created a dramatic build up, waiting for the killers presence.
My media product represents particular social groups such as a 'youth' audience, which is reflected in the cast, as they are all teenagers, which is also very common in horrors. It also appeals to teenagers because of the costume choices of the characters, and the fact they are wearing make up etc.
And from our audience feedback we were told the young actors, fast pace editing and storyline attracts the young audience we wanted it to.
The psychographic profile target audience would be mostly people who watch slightly supernatural things on TV such as star trek...or other films like nightmare on elm st.
The type of media institution that would distribute our film would be quite an unknown distributor as this is our first production, so they wouldn't invest too much money into it, and also it would have to be a company that has previously worked with horror films and knows how to advertise them etc. WT2 or WarpX would be the perfect advertisers, especially WarpX as it has done
films like Donkey punch before, which was a popular hit in the UK.
The audience for our media product would be- middle class, lower middle class and working class -C2DE. Mainly because it has no famous names in it to attract a wider target audience, but this is common in horror films as they are usually low budget in comparison to other genres of film. I feel it could highly appeal to girls because of the main protagonist being a strong independant woman, which is an inspiration for them, and would also be a huge hit for teenagers as it is mainly that age group reflected in the film, and they also tend to enjoy fast pace films such as horrors.
The age range we have targetted is from 15-25.
As the storyline as said through feedback is complex and would also attract a slightly maturer age group.I also feel we have targetted a very northern audience mainly. As it has a yorkshire feel to it as a film, because of the accents, and the rural landscape outside.
Although as we found out from our audience feedback, there are no men in the opening scenes which means one will probably not end up being a key character, mainly female orientated. Which may not mean it would appeal as much to males as they may mistake it for a 'chick flick'.
We would attract/address our audience by advertising on the internet perhaps, and through text and posters like how Donkey Punch was advertised. Film festivals in the local areas would also attract attention. Perhaps comparing it to other well known, popular horrors would attract the audience- for example saying it is like a mix of Scream and Nightmare on Elm Street would get peoples attention. I feel we would highly rely on word of mouth for the distribution of advertisment as we would not have the money to invest into it incase it wasn't popular.
The things which i have learnt about the new technologies from the process of constructing my product would be mostly Imovie 06 which was very easy to pick up on what to do for beginners and to put transitions in etc. I learnt how to change the pitch of sound effects added, for example when we added a heartbeat sound effect we lowered the pitch at the start and heightened it at the end to make it more dramatic, which i thought was a good aspect to the software. Although we did find it difficult to find good visual effects and audio on the Imovie programme, which is why we also used garageband. I learnt alot from that also as i had never used it before and it was extremely easy to create your own music on it, elongate notes for a shortness of breath, fast pace to create an irregular heartbeat, etc. I found it fun to experiment with the different types of music we could have used to make our product most effective.
The actual camera was very easy to use, we liked the nightvision as it created the perfect effect we needed for the dream effect, slightly blurry like in a state of unconcious. Although if we were to want a better lighting effect outside in the dark it would have been very difficult on a small budget to create good quality clips with nightvision- which we would have needed later on in the film when it is reality.
The things i have learnt from our preliminary task were, that planning is totally essential, and without it everything goes wrong, in our prelim we rushed everything and didnt really plan, we just filmed as we went along. This caused alot of problems when trying to put it all together in the end, as the clips didn't seem to flow and lacked continuity. Which meant when we came to our real product we spent alot of time planning and took all the shots more than once to make sure we had choice. Continuity was also no problem in the final product as we thought through what would have to come after and we thought it ended up realistic.
Apart from the part in the hallway where it goes from the girl talking to then her by the door putting her coat on, this lacked continuity but simply because we had shot a clip to go inbetween of the mother speaking but it was too long and confusing, and we couldn't cut it down effectively without making it look stupid so we left it out.
The prelim task also helped us think about how to make lighting effective, as we came across some shots in it where the lighting made the shots look bad quality or shadowed the character when it shouldn't have.
We also learnt that the stereotypical aspects to the characters worked well, we tried to add that into our final piece but give it abit of a twist with brown hair.
Doing the prelim made using the camera, and software like Imovie 06 much simpler and meant we could do the editing and filming alot quicker than if we hadn't had any practice.
I also felt that the prelim made us realise that each shot had to have meaning, and we couldn't simply add a shot in for the sake of it, which was an aspect we took into great consideration and thought through each shot for a long time as a group and went through the strengths and weaknesses of it.
The match on action in our prelim we also found very difficult to grasp, and however long we tried we couldn't get it right, so we all discussed how to make the match on action look effective and in the end it looked very effective and continuous.
We also learnt how to signify the genre of the film through shots. Generally i feel that in the long run we have come a long way as a group and learnt alot, and found it all a very enjoyable experience.
Thursday, 2 April 2009
Genre research and Intertextual Links (Planning work from March)
There are many things i found from book research to try and link in with our own film opening.
-first person point of view shot featured heavily in halloween- something we decided to add to ours, to give the impression someone in being watched, and to create tension.
-the presentation of images of sex and death remain the primary function of slasher movies, which we also tried to show in the first 2 minutes, to signify the genre.
-Prom night use the hand-and-glove shots that indicate the killers presence in the opening scenes of several gialli. We decided to feature this shot in our own opening, linking to other well known horror films.
-Halloween has many references to Argentino's films- the continuous point of view shot, and the contrast between moonlit blue and the yellow glow from the artifical outside light- another aspect which we added to our own opening, creating a postmodern effect, and appealing to a wider audience.
-Friday 13th sequels appropriated Argentino's flair for using everday household objects as murder weapons- this is something else we link to with the mother walking into the room holding a kitchen knife offering cake.
-Black christmas is another film which relies heavily on point of view shots, which helped us out with how to make it look effective.
-In slasher movies the killer always ( or at least appears to be ) alone to create good suspense. Which is what we tried to do.
-Traditional haunted house/ demonic posession affairs such as poltergeist used, often to bring the heroine against antagonists from another dimension, in our case the world of dreams.
-Horror films are mostly focused on groups of teens for the victims.
-Nightmare on elm street- significant horror decade, the origin of this film lies in newspaper articles that caught the director Cravens eye. It was about a series of bizarre deaths. Victims had claimed to be suffering from intensly terrifying dreams, fearing their lives refused to go back to sleep. And when they did, they died in their sleep.
This links in heavily with the ideas of our film, which again creates a post modern effect of our film.
-Modern horror has come to rely so heavily upon the idea of a teenage heroine, hence the reason we used a young teenage girl as our heroine. Carol Clover in her book 'men, women and chainsaws' calls it a 'final girl' - a hero in the masculine mode, despite being female. All final girls share some basic characteristics - intelligent, smart and resourceful. We tried to show this with our final girl.
-The aspects of the films that stick in the audiences mind are invariably the weapons and equipment used by the relevant psychopath- which is one of the reasons we brought the household knife weapon into show so early, a signifier it will be the first weapon used to kill the first victim.
-Killers are mostly always male, and can be divided into 2 categories.
The first being...Evolutionary throwbacks-
somehow 'incomplete' human beings who lack necessary qualities that seperate man from animal. They rarely speak and their movements tend to be uncivilised. For example - Freddy Kruger in Nightmare on Elm Street
The second is 'normal' human murderers-
articulate and agile, and tend to bare no physical disfugurement that could prevent them from mixing with civilised society, which is usually to their greatest advantage as it allows them to avoid detection until last minute. For example - Michael Myres from the film Halloween.
- It is also typical that the killers are 'silent' killers, such as Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers or Freddy Kruger, creating more suspense.-It is usually only in the last 15 minutes of each film that a human face is given to the evil deeds. Keeping the suspense going until the very end.
-The killers are almost exclusively male, Pamela Voorhees from friday 13th is the most famous example of a female killer.
-Killers tend to carry out their murderous designs in urban settings. Which we also used in ours, as it shows a sense of claustraphobia.
-The murderers are often given a background rooted in sex or gender related trauma, making them less normal, and so creates much more tension when you know the person isn't quite normal.
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
Logo
We decided to make this logo as it appeals to a young audience with the use of slag - 'omg'.the black and red colours make it bold and dramatic, and perhaps depending on the genre parts of the logo could change colour.
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