1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Using
My media product is the opening 2 minutes to a horror film, the first steps once the genre had been chosen was to get a definition of the forms and conventions that are in a horror film the definition I found was:

'Horror Films are unsettling films designed to frighten and panic, cause dread and alarm, and to invoke our hidden worst fears, often in a terrifying, shocking finale, while captivating and entertaining us at the same time in a cathartic experience. Horror films effectively center on the dark side of life, the forbidden, and strange and alarming events. They deal with our most primal nature and its fears: our nightmares, our vulnerability, our alienation, our revulsions, our terror of the unknown, our fear of death and dismemberment, loss of identity, or fear of sexuality'

I then used this definition to base the foundations of my film on to achieve a true horror film by following the conventions of all stereotypical horror genre films. The first convention that I was drawn to by this definition was to ‘invoke our hidden worst fears’ the thought our children being taken away - although through our research and questionnaires we found that our target audience would be older teenagers to young adults and that this image of your children going missing may not be an initial worst fear but one that we can all empathise towards hence why we carried on with the narrative of the children going missing.

This theme of children going missing contains those conventions of a horror ‘terrifying’ especially later on in the narrative when the mother has to chose which child would survive. It also contains the ‘dark side of life’ that something or someone has the ability to take those most innocent – children. At first we concerned that the narrative of our film may not be seen as a horror film but through research many films have also used this theme and have also show these conventions of the ‘dark side of life’ and ‘terrifying’ scenes, showing our film used these conventions of a horror film.

Developing

We then had to put our research into film making and had to use it to develop our film, how we used this definition to adapt our own film to fit in with the horror genre.

Here are screen shots from horror genre films showing a similar theme and conventions to my own film:

Taken – although not fully a horror film but a mixture of suspense and action as well uses the same theme as my film.

This shot here makes the audience aware that someone is there to hurt the two girls.

We then used this foreshadowing technique to make the audience aware that someone is there to hurt the children, by this close up of the gate swinging even though you haven’t seen anyone walk through it showing that someone is there that shouldn’t be.

Another convention that we used of horror films is the ‘vulnerability’ but also


Through the questionnaire the audience likes to see reality, something that could happen to anyone.

We used this to develop our film by having the little girl sing

 To highlight her innocence and how the scenorica is ‘normal’ and could happen to anyone– a common convention of a horror film.

Challenge

I believe that in our film we don’t challenge generic conventions of a horror film because they are set conventions. You need them to make it a horror genre and if you stray away from these it could stop being a horror film, therefore we decided to not challenge these conventions and to make our film the correct genre.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

At a superficial level our film represents middle class, we can tell from the clothing that the children are wearing for example the little girl has a coat on showing wealth to be able to afford such clothing. We followed the stereotypical image that you expect of a middle class school girl; both our actor and stereotypical image are similar.

Stereotypical Middle class children:

Our representation of a middle class child:

Throughout our film the stereotypical image of middle class family is portrayed. It is shown through the house itself, the kitchen in particular has all the gadgets and accessories that one would aspire to have without to many to show excessive wealth.

We kept to what most horror films do, use middle class average citizens so it can easily relate to their audience. This is the reason why we have used this stereotypical middle class family is because of the view that the middle class are ‘normal’ everyday people and by using this status family adds a sense of ‘normal’ and reality to the situation – what audiences like to see realism how the scenario could happen to them too.

We also have represented mothers. We have shown mothers also in the stereotypical image that they look after the children, care and love for them. We chose to do this not because of what we believe women’s roles are but to emphasise the fact that somebody is waiting and worried about where they are.

This is an image of a stereotypical mother, showing the care they have for their children:

This our actor resembling the mother role too and also showing the gadgets and wealth in the kitchen too:

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

After producing my own film if it were to be sold on and distributed to the public and an institution would distribute my film, my film is a horror genre and follows all the generic conventions. By looking at horror films (see below) they are distributed by main stream institutions therefore making my own film a main stream film. I looked at current contemporary films that also attract to the same audience that I am trying to attract to watch my film.


The first film I will look at is The Resident (2011)

This was distributed by Hammer Film Productions which is a British film production that is subsided by Exclusive Media Group. The budget for Resident was $20,000,000 (an estimated value). This shows that most horror films are mainstream films as they can afford to spend a lot of money on films as they know they will attract a lot of people to watch it.

The second film I will look at it What lies beneath

This is distributed by Dream Works SKG and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation which are both huge mainstream institutions they both distribute many of the films that we watch. In 2008 Twentieth century fox won ‘Best Film Marketing (Blockbuster)’ for The Simpsons Movie. It has been around since 1910. Dream Works also is a huge company, it is an American company began in 1994 by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen (forming the SKG present on the bottom of the DreamWorks logo). What Lies Beneath has a budget of $90,000,000 again showing that its horror film will be targeting the main stream audience.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

We decided on our target audience by several measures. The main way was the response we received from our questionnaires the people who we asked were mainly older teenagers to young adults.

 Therefore this was our main target audience. We looked at gender differences and how would both genders respond to out narrative and actual opening, I believe that women will want to watch our film as it is a more psychological horror playing on their darkest fears and their maternal role without huge amounts of blood and gore. However I still do believe that men also will enjoy the film as the narrative later on will become more of an action and possibly a different horror to what they would normally watch but one that buts them on edge and terrified as it plays on the psychological horror not blood and gore.

 

However I believe that after producing our horror film and re watching it that our horror film has flexibility on its target audience because older adults mainly women also may be interested in watching my film as it is on children missing and stereotypically they may have children and could relate to how the mother would be feeling and therefore I think would be interested in watching our film.

Here is a response from an older woman on our film and her opinion on it and if she would watch it:  

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

In order to attract our audience we had to keep to the generic conventions of a horror, as if were to be released to a mainstream film industry. We had to keep to this because they are a mainstream audience and will have expectations of horror films and horror genre is a very constricted genre you cant stray away generic conventions because it will stop being a horror film.

They also know  what should be in them such as playing on false sense of security in the opening it starting off innocently and the scenario very every day and realistic relating how it could happen to them and then things go wrong putting the audience in a state of vulnerability.

These are interviews with my target audience and what they thought of my film and if they would go and watch the rest of the film:

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Through the process of constructing my film I have learnt about many areas in media and know have a great appreciation of films and cinema and the editing.

Firstly I have learnt about lighting and how such planning has to go into it and how you need to make sure that if any re shooting occurs that the camera must be in the same place and that the scene is exactly the same. I learnt that lighting is greatly important on achieving the mood and atmosphere that you want, and how it can change a piece of filming instantly. For example at the end of our film when there the knock on the door it straight away connoted that something sinister was to occur as the lighting was dark apart from the blue flashing light. I also have learnt about how achieving such lights to imply things is extremely hard, we had create difficulty trying to make a blue flashing light that would connote a police officers light.

I have also learnt a lot about sounds and how they are achieved to add to a film not mask mistakes. We wanted to achieve this and I do believe that our music adds to our film not masking it. I have learnt about how editing sounds into a film is extremely difficult to make sure they make the sound is heard when you wish, while the image is moving. For example when the watch ticks we added the sound over the top and the typewriter effect.

But mostly throughout making my media product I have learnt how editing is so important and can change a films meaning and atmosphere by where you cut a scene. I have such an appreciation for the holly wood editing that is invisible that I admire and we tried to replicate by thing not changing what they were doing or the direction they were in. For example the shot of the girl on the swing and then the close up the swing is in the correct position. An amateur replication of holly wood editing.

Also throughout this process I have learnt how to use editing equipment, for example Final Cut Pro. We learnt how to cut scenes without it looking jumpy, we also learnt how to overlap two shots and how to fade in and out also.

This is a picture of Chloe and I editing our film:

Also throughtout making my film and commenting throughout I have learnt how to blog and use Blogger. Through blogger I have learnt how to get clips from Youtube and use them on my blog, also I have learnt how to upload picutres - and overcome issues such as not having enough space. Blogger has helped me to show my work in the most interactive creative way.

7. Look back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt on the progression from it to the full product?

I believe that my main progression from the preliminary task to my main task was the improvement in continuity and editing. At first in my preliminary task the actors seemed to move slightly or the camera would jolt slightly, all though not massively , it is enough to put of the audience. This was my main aim for my film, that there would be solid continuity between scenes so its invisble you almost don't even know that it has occured - like there is in Holly wood films.
Editing also has been a great progression from the preliminary to the main task, at first in the preliminary it was my first time at using the Final Cut Pro software, I was hesitant to cut too much of scenes and the effect of this was the scenes were slightly jolty and continuity was affected. However in the main task the editing was far better, I had knowledge of how to use the software and to cut scenes to make the editing untraceable like the 'hollywood editing'.

Here is a shot from my preliminary that shows how the continuity is not quite accurate:

Where as you can see the improvement into my main task, here is the continuity of the girl swinging, she is in the correct place that she should be.  The swing is in the correct place, she hasn't somehow jolted to another place showing that my editing and continuity has improved from my preliminary task to main task -  almost 'hollywood editing' style:

I have learnt from my preliminary task to my main task the importance of planning before filming. When we did our preliminary we planned minimally naively not understanding how vital is to plan. When we went to film we found that weren't sure what to film first and the order that we were going in, it ended up taking a great deal longer than it should have. So, when we made our opening of the film, we took a long time detailing what would be happening in each shot and how long for so when went out and filmed we were far more efficient and got everything that we had planned too.


These our are story boards for our main task:

First impressions of my film

Chloe and I have now completed our opening of our film, my first impressions on what I have achieved is that we used the mark scheme to achieve a good mark using different camera angles and we really tried to use titles effectively and tried to make these interesting! I do feel that we should have thought more about acting choice as it was hard for the children to understand what we wanted. However I am pleased with how our film turned out.

Name Of Film

We had many ideas for names, but mnay had been over used or just unorginal, so the one that we are using is Captured. We feel it best sums up what happens and foreshadows what could happen in the furture of our film.

This is an image of title:

Achieving a 2 minute opening.

Even after the new shots being added in, our opening was still not 2 minutes. So, to achieve this we slowed the first opening section our film down so that the meaning was clearer to the audience and we also made a freeze frame shot of the table, and had the titles fade out to convey that the children have disapperead. Not only did this add to our film but it also meant we could achieve a 2 minute opening.
This is an image of the freeze frame shot:

Adding Extra Shots

Chloe and I were well into our editing of our film when we saw that our film was only 1.30 and in the criteria  it states it must be a 2 minute opening of our film. We decided we were going to add in 2 more shots, to show different angles and also add another oppurtinity to use titles orginally and effectively.

Shot 1
Was a high angle shot of the roundabout spinning.
This is an image of the shot:

Shot 2
Is the roundabout spinning and the camera is at the same level. We also chose to add flickering titles when the roundabout is moving.
This is an image of the shot:

Sound Effects

We have created many of the sounds ourselves such as:

We need a sound for when the camera cuts out and plays a fuzzy screen, I recored the sound by a car radio when it is in between two stations and has no signal, it created the perfect sound and we are using that in our film.

I also recored Twinkle Twinkle Little Star by recording Jess Moulsher playing it on the piano for the last shot of film, we decided that this would create the eery childlike atmosphere something that makes us all feel uncomfortable - exactly what a horror film should do.

We also downloaded a sound of a clock tiking for when there is a close up shot of the clock, we chose to add this sound effect to create a more professional feel to our film.

Music

For our scene when the camera pans around and the children are gone, Chloe and I chose that we wanted some music in the background. 

Though we had to make sure that the music is copy right free and also fits in with our genre, we found the website http://music4yourvids.co.uk/pages/mymusicpag.html  and have finalised a song to play, this song is:
childhood memories

We also decided that it would be ideal for music to playing through the kitchen scene where the mum is preparing the dinner, we are yet to finalise a song. We need to make sure that the music doesnt over power the video and that it fits in with our theme of horror.

Title Research

From previous research on http://www.artofthetitle.com/ ,I decided to reasearch the opening titles from two horror films Seven and Halloween, I can  see from this research that the titles used in films are clear easy to read fonts, that are a suitable colour that contrast to the background.
At this present time I am editing my own film, and have used this reasearch to make sure that my titles are in a clear and white font that contrasts heavily aganist the backgrounds.

I have chosen the font American Typewriter, the typewriter effect also fits in with my narrative of the opening sequence being a police report to what happened that day, and the font is a sterotypical image of a police document.

This is an image of the font we are using:

Posters

I have researched posters of films from the horror genre, theses films are Silence of the lambs and Saw, I have used this as part of my research and planning to see what fonts and colours mainstream horror films use so i can use this information when creating my own titles so that the titles,font and colour have connatations of a horror genre. As i want my film to appear proffessional and to scare my target audience, also I would class my film under mainstream so I am researching those films which also are mainstream so that i stay in the right genre and my film connates horror.

From doing this I can see that horrors use the colour red alot, a colour that connate blood, anger, but they also use more subtle colours such as blue which is supposed to connate relaxtion, almost luring the audience into a false sense of security, and more pale colours such as nude and white connating innocene which i believe would be a good colour for me to use i am using children which conveys innocence. I can now use this information to create titles that in themselves will scare the audience.

Reviewing previous work

Today in class we had the chance to watch what other people in previous years had done for the opening of their films, many had done the horror genre so I was able to easily compare my work with theirs and how I could improve mine. We also saw what level and marks they achieved and how they could have achieved a better mark. Many of the films lacked titles and those that did use them didnt use them creatively, from watching the work I now realise the importance of titles and the use of them creatively, so i can apply this knowledge to my film when adding titles.

After Filming

After filming we have began editing our film, in our specification we have to use titles originally and artistically, so i have decided to research Horror films, and how they use titles in their opening sequences.

I used The Art Of The Title Sequence website to research films, the films i have decided to use are:

Se7en 


Halloween 

From these screen shots I can see those mainstream Horror films, use the titles in a moving sequence to add interest to the audience and not just a black screen with names on.

I can now use this research and apply to my own film, use titles in a moving image for example, the actors names showing when there plates are placed on the table.

Filming Shots

This the location of where we filmed, after looking at the responses from our questionnaires our target audience ( older teenagers) prefer horrors in a normal situation where they feel at unease due to its regularity of the place where the film it taking place at. 

These are the pictures of us in action filming the opening of our film we began filming on the 20th January and were able to do all of filming, we had a few problems such as our camera was on a low battery so limited the amount of shots that we could repeat filming, however we managed to film a sufficient amount of shots.
After filming everything we re watched our clips of filming and found that a few scenes needed re shooting such as the match being lit at the start, so we re-booked the camera and re-shot them over the weekend.

Filming

On 20th January we got all our actors together and shot the beginning of our film. We encountered a few problems such as our camera was not fully charged we tried to carry on through this problems and act professionally in front of actors so in turn they would take our film seriously.

Completed Questionnaires

After looking at this questionnaires they fit with the definition of the horror genre that i found. People enjoy  not knowing what is happening in normal circumstances, this is what scares people most and what directors who make horrors intend to happen. I hope to follow the conventions of the unknown and normal circumstances to please my target audience, so that they would enjoy watching my film.

Questionnaires Completed