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.
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