Evaluation Question 1

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

To establish what we what conventions we wanted to use/develop/challenge in our sequence we first had to be aware of what the original conventions were. The genre we decided to put our sequence in was horror, we researched the typical conventions of horror and found that they are violent, bloody, involve death, have chase sequences, some kind of iconic killer/monster such as ‘Predator’ from ‘Predator’ (1987, McTiernan) or ‘Michael Myers’ from ‘Halloween’ (1978, Carpenter), numerous victims and are usually set in very dark places. We were inspired by the ‘Saw’ (2004, Wan - above) films with the use of a green tint. We opted for blue rather than green as it seemed more appropriate and made the room look darker, colder and overall scarier. We decided that we wanted out sequence to be specifically horror rather than a thriller so we decided to use some blood in our scene as with the hand against the window at the end. This made it seem like a taste of what was to come in the rest of the film. More blood, guts and gore. Our narrative also follows a fairly typical narrative. I saw this scene as being one that comes later in the film and the rest of the film shows how our victim got there and then how he escapes. This is reflected in Todorov’s narrative theory. There is a status quo, the victim is happy where he is and nothing seems to be wrong. The killer then disrupts the status quo by kidnapping him, this then triggers a series of events that have problems which are solved to restore the original status quo where the victim attempts to escape his captor which triggers more obstacles. This can be applied in a large number of films. Such as in ‘House of Wax’ (2005, Collet-Serra) where the group are happily camping in the forest when the killer cuts the fan belt of one of the cars. This then sets into motion the sequence of events that leads the rest of the group to being killed with only 2 of them surviving and both the killers dying, thus restoring the status quo. What made our sequence different was that in most horror films, the killer/villain is not often shown in full until the end, maintaining some enigma. We decided that we would alter this and made the killer apparent in the first scene. This way, later in the film, there’s the possibility of using this to create tension between characters with situations like the killer luring potential victims into a false sense of security where the audience knows what is going to happen but can't prevent it. Because of this, we also decided to change how the killer acted towards his victims. At first, he seems really friendly and treats them well, then suddenly changes and acts very aggressive, this makes him more sinister overall and makes him seem more like a psychopath. More enigma codes are used when the hand hits the door at the end of the sequence. It makes the audience wonder who it is, why they’re there and what has happened to them which they will find our later in the film. A lot of the feedback we received from our audience screenings showed that the audience reacted exactly how we wanted them to.

Evaluation - Introduction

Our opening sequence was called ‘Reservation’. It is based around a tall, kidnapper that treats his victims somewhat like guests in a torture chamber. The main victim you see is quite young looking and looks quite frightened. He is the ‘final’ character and is the one that lasts until the end of the film. For the shoot, we used The Latymer School’s basement on the 2^nd of December 2008 and the 11^th December 2008. The equipment we used on the shoot were:

• Canon HD MiniDV Camcorder
• Tripod
• Camera Microphone
• Small studio lighting kit with blue gel filters

After the shoot, back in the edit suite, the software we used included:

• Adobe Premiere Pro
• Adobe After Effects
• Final Cut Pro

Finished!

We've had another test screening and had only a few slight problems which didn't take long at all to fix!

We've finished!

Test Screening Responses

The feedback we've been given was good and we made a few changes.

To fix the problem with the title, I put some effects on the text using Adobe After Effects and put a glow around each letter and made them fade up in a random order so it's unclear as to what the title is until it fully appears.

We also added more titles and spread them out across the sequence to make it more of a title sequence and less of a random part of a film.

We fixed the sound with Matt being quiet and the music being too loud.

Test Screening Results

The audience screening went fairly well but we had a few problems to iron out.

Sound

With some of the shots of Matt (Scary Guy) there was a slight buzz in the background of the shots that we should have removed beforehand. We got some advice on this and edited it out. The main problem with sound though was that the levels between Matt's shots and the music was wrong. The music was much too loud and Matt being fairly distant from the camera, he was fairly hard to hear and having a quiet voice anyway, we needed to adjust the sound. There is also a part where he shouts at Rob (tied up guy). This was a problem as he went from being very loud to very quiet so getting the balance was quite difficult.

Credits

After Ms Blackborow watched the sequence, she said that we needed more credits as we only have a few at the beginning so we created some more and placed them at regular intervals along the timeline to make it seem much more like a title sequence and less like a random part of the film. We got some feedback on the main title, most people said that they found it really difficult to read and it was too small and similar to the rest of the titles.

Other

One of our last clips is of Matt leaving and closing the door. It was suggested that there should be a locking sound to the door so it would seem much more like he is locking them in and it being much more dungeon-like rather than just pulling it to so they could easily get out if they managed to get free of the chains. It also makes it so its more difficult for anyone else to get in. Also, we put a sound of someone whispering 'help' behind the shot of the hand banging against the window but most people said this really spoilt the atmosphere and didn't really have much significance.

Overall, most people really liked it and there's just a few changes we need to make!

Back

We're back after Christmas and all's well except Shaun's voice!

We're really close to finishing the project so we've arranged a screening with the other group that Shaun is going to stay and record all they say.