- During the editing process of creating our opening sequence we chose to edit it into black and white and give it a blurred framing. This is because our opening sequence is a memory, our antagonist is recalling and creating in his mind. This effect adds emphasis to our sequence because it entriges our audience into wanting to find out why the antagonists did it, giving the story from our antagonists point of view allows our audience to create a relationship with the character. We chose to have our credit sequence before our story sequence because we felt it added more of an impact on our audience, it sets them up for the story line and reminds them they are watching a horror film.
Typically in horror films you see a lot of close ups, we tried to include a lot of these in our opening sequence. Close ups are used to focus the viewers attention on the characters face as well as what is going on in the background directly behind them. They allow the audience to engage with the character. This is the shot where Bobby, our antagonist, sneaks up from behind Lauren with his signature weapon, a chainsaw. In this shot, we made the chainsaw purposefully visible but the character or reason behind it not, making our audience crave for more of the story, it unnerves our audience and make them create a relationship with Lauren because they don't want her to get killed.
In this extreme close up, the audience can clearly see the characters eye-line and emotions as she turns to see what frightened Emma so much. The restricted view of the antagonists mask leaves the audience on edge, they want to find out his story, so continue to watch. The intimacy this shot provides makes the audience feel uncomfortably close to the characters, making it feel like there are in the scene, not just watching.
This long shot paired with a left to right pan following the character allows the audience to become fully aware of the surroundings/setting, which is a graveyard, and makes them feel uneasy about the location our character is in. As she searches for her friend Emma who was supposed to meet her at the gate, he hands are in her pockets, showing she cold and possibly vulnerable, and also presents the feelings that is isn't that frightened yet. This shot also allows us to view her outfit completely, head to foot, showing us her approximate age and gender.
Camera height was used in this shot to emphasize that the character is walking through a graveyard alone. To make the shot more effective we also slowed the pace down, and enhanced the sound of her footsteps.
This shot was taken using a shaky, hand held camera and is a long shot from our antagonists point of view. The character then becomes more anxious to meet up with her friend because she is worried she is being followed or watched after hearing a twig snap and the rustle of leaves coming from behind the tree. In this shot we also included diegetic deep breathing to disturb and worry our audience.
This is a quick long shot followed by a fade-to-white. The audience can see from this shot that they are a young female, and automatically presume it is Emma, Lauren's friend she has been looking for. This shot was intended to provide a false scare, however, it may do so, but it rather presents a feeling of relief for our audience as we know our characters have finally found each other.
This is a reaction shot that we have used after her friend jumps out at her, the audience see how this made Lauren jump, and become slightly frustrated with her friend, but become more relaxed because she knows Emma is with her again.
This is a close up/reaction shot of Emma, her facial expression changes extremely quickly from laughter to shock and terror. Her eye line shifts to behind Emma, disturbing the character and the audience, it confuses the audience on how to feel and makes them crave the reason behind her reaction and wonder in suspense what will happen next.
We had to make a few changes, after the storyboard was completed, so we had to get rid of
the idea of children running past the gate due to the time we had to film our
opening sequence. Also, we decided to move
the credits to the beginning of the opening sequence because that is where we decided it would look best, and the music would look best.
The editing of our sequence involves, fading, lighting, special effects, and music/sound effects. ______________________________________________________
MUSIC Firstly we started on our music choice for our credits section of our final product. We eventually narrowed our choices down to two:
Our first choice is called 'Awkward Meeting': http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100574 - This was an option because it have an eerie and awkward reality to it. It has a sense of mystery and entices the audience in wanting to know the true reality behind the story line. It has an intense piano sound but is not so distracting that our audience will be overwhelmed by it, but it still gives us the 'horror vibe'.
Our second choice was 'Darkest Child': http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100783 - This was suggested because it is creepy, and will give our audience shivers and make them question as to the nature of the music and what it is intending to tell us as an audience. The frequent changing in notes from low to high, gives the listeners an unnerving and unsettling feeling, and possesses in some ways, a childish and potent vibe.
We found both music clips on a free music download copyright free website called 'incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html'. We finally, in our group, decided that 'Awkward Meeting' suited our opening horror sequence better, and perfectly matched our story line.
- This was used as a background sound and was used through nearly all of our sequence. Our natural background noise had to be edited out, and we replaced it with this. It creates a sound bridge for our shots and subtly lets the audience know of the eerie conditions of the setting. It is found typically in a lot of horror films, especially outdoor chase scenes and 'stalking' scenes.
As our scene when Emma jumps out at Lauren providing a 'false scare' for our character didn't turn out as well, or as scary as we had previously hoped, we added this sound in to make the shot more 'jumpy'. A sudden suspense noise is found in nearly every horror film, it emphasizes the reaction produced and scares the audience more, because the noise is sudden and unexpected.
The "REAL HEARTBEAT" sound we edited in lets the audience know that something is wrong and intensifies the feelings of the character. Connotations such as death, running(or being chased), injury and stress are often associated with a heartbeat sound, so our horror product uses and develops the horror connotations.
We used the sound effect "SCARY" over the reaction shot of Lauren when she thinks she hears a sound coming from nearby. Lauren has no idea she is being followed and watched by our antagonist, making the audience sympathize with her, and this sound emphasizes her feelings of terror.
"CHAINSAW" was used at the end of our opening sequence over our main title 'PEEK A BOO'. We choose this one because it was more scary and realistic compared to the other chainsaw noises we had previously found. This sound is alarming and distressing and immediately lets our audience aware of the nature of the rest of the film.
We filmed our sequence in the daylight despite the fact our scene is set at night due to the fact we had no sufficient artificial light to use and after trail and error we discovered that our shots did not show up well in the dark on our camera. Because of this we had to edit our sequence quite a lot.
This is a shot taken from our opening sequence with no editing(original):
We then edited our sequence and decided we liked our film in 'Black and White', this also fits in with our story line of it being a flashback or blurred memory of our antagonist. We did this by also giving it a blurred framing:
This is our groups font research for our opening sequence's credits. We chose the fourth one, 'I still know' from Dafont.com because it is easy and clear to read, but still possesses and eerie and spooky horror quality, which is perfect for our credits.
However, later at the editing stage we came across a complication of not being able to use this font as it was not compatible with our editing software. We eventually decided on the font 'Bank Gothic':
(Screen shot taken from our opening sequences - font - Bank Gothic)
We achieved inspiration for our credits in some of the following opening sequences:
Halloween:
The constant eerie orange, Halloween themed writing is effective because it immediately makes us aware of the genre and basis of the story line, it is simple to read and when joined with the music, works effectively in building tension for its audience.
Nightmare on Elm Street:
These are effective because of the imagery that accompanies the credits set the audience up for the genre specific feeling, the credits are simple text and are made clear to read.
The Ward:
This opening credit sequence is my favourite because it immediately strikes fear into the audience before it has even begun. The mirror quality framing that is underlying the text gives the text a potent quality and is effective in its design. The music is extremely well chosen and suits the genre and the font perfectly.
The Cemetery:
Incredibly scary to watch, but the opening credit fonts are simple to read, but immediately possess a scary quality. Making this film truly horrifying.
Here is mindmap we produced that we created to brainstorm possible locations:
Our group decided that our location for our opening sequence would be a graveyard. Our first shot would be children dressed up running past the gate of our final chosen graveyard, a few of our shots with include; our antagonist watching our victim from behind a tree/ leaves, our victim walking down the path of the graveyard and the victims friend coming out and false scaring our victim from behind a grave. Here is a presentation of the shots we took:
In our group we finally concluded that the title of our film would be: PEEK A BOO This is the title of our film because it ties to our whole story line, and is our Antagonist's only line in the film.
We used DaFont.com to find title fonts that liked -
After debating which we preferred, we picked font 'Crimes Times Six'. We choose this because we thought it suited the style/genre of our film and looked extremely effective. However, we decided we didn't like the title with dashes (-) in, so we removed them and was finally left with our end result. We choose white text over a black background to make it stand out and give it a creepy effect, the black provokes the idea of the unknown and darkness, to theme with the horror genre, and the white suggests hope, but it our case, false hope and the taking of purity.
Noun: - The action of sharing something out among a number of recipients. - The way in which something is shared out among a group or spread over an area.
In our case, it is the sharing and advertising of our film.
This is our film pitch in which we had to present to our class, who are acting as part of a large prestigious production company. Our job was to persuade the company to fund our film.
How would distribute and fund our film?
In the real world we would promote our film to Working Title in the hope they would fund and help produce our film. Working Title Films is a British film production company, based in London. The company was founded by Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe in 1983. It produces feature films and several television productions.Although contractually allowed to produce any film with a budget of up to $35 million, on a practical basis, Bevan and Fellner consult with studio executive at Working Title's parent company (NBC)Universal. Working Title funded simular films to ours such as Daun of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead, The Interpreter, A Kiss Before Dying, Long Time Dead, and My Little Eye.
For our AS Media course, we had to make a short video including the 180 degree rule, match-on-match action shot, shot/reverse shot and a few lines of dialogue.
Our Completed Preliminary Task:
Evaluation:
Our preliminary task I thought was good in the way we displayed the 180 rule, match-on-action, and a conversational shot. However, Improvements could have been made on our camera height ability as it is made a little too obvious that it is only done from one, robotic height. We could have added more speech or made the story line better, but overall i think it was good attempt.
This mood board simply explains the lifestyle of our target audience which is 15-24. We chose this age group because we think that is who will take more interest in our film because of the age of the actors and the story line.
We would give our film a certificate rating of 15. This is because there is a lot of violence and gore/blood ect, and has adult-themes within the story line.
1 - Film a short scene including continuity and dialogue, whilst demonstrating a range of different camera shots, editing skills and a few lines of dialogue. This is the preliminary exercise and we have to demonstrate three specific camera skills; match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule.
2 - Create the titles and opening scene of a new horror film to last two minutes. This is the main task and what my blog will mainly be focused on.
3 - Create a blog(this in which i am writing) to accompany these two tasks, explaining in detail the thought process and reasoning behind each decision, whilst showing my knowledge of theory, audience, film techniques and there uses (camera shots, mise en scene, lighting, special effects, sound and editing), as well as horror films in general. I am working as part of a group of 4 with - Sonia: http://soniatyrnasasmedia.blogspot.co.uk/ Yoyo: http://yoyosasmedia.blogspot.co.uk/ Annie: http://anniesasmedia.blogspot.co.uk/
- The Devil Inside is a horror film about demonic possession; In Italy, a woman becomes involved in a series of unauthorized exorcisms during her mission to discover what happened to her mother, who allegedly murdered three people during her own exorcism.
- The director and writer of the film was William Brent Bell. It stars Fernanda Andrade, Simon Quarterman, Evan Helmuth and Suzan Crowley. Matthew Peterman and William Brent Bell first came up with the idea for the movie when they read an article about the Vatican starting a school for exorcism.
- The ingredients for a horror film that serves up its fair share of scares are all inside this effort. There's Rome, there're demonic possessions, there's creepy sound effects and shadow and light play, jump scares, quick cuts, although given that it's of the found footage genre no complains can be made about the jerky and shaky camera-work that could get a little bit nauseating.
- It slowly releases the actual story line which is brilliant because it keeps the audience interested. However, it was slated by critics because of its awful ending. no real explanation is given nor a decent closure to the film, it just, ends.
- There are a couple of open, unresolved subplots that have opened the doors for prequels and sequels to happen. For instance, the back-story of Ben(Simon Quarterman) was kept very ambiguous, as is Isabella's(Fernando Andrade), both having done something that could either be revealed to be more than meets the eye, or expanded for a little bit more depth.
- The build up towards the final act was great in some ways, although it got a reaction opposite of what it expected to be rewarded for having the guts to be different, pulling the plug and denying everyone a climatic battle to the finish.
This theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media. It suggests that audiences passively receive the information transmitted via a media text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data. Horror films are usuallly discriminated for letting their audience receive certain topics and images passively, causing them to react or adopt the trates of horror characters, giving the horror genre a bad image. However, a horror film is made to entertain, and some would argue that purpose is fullfilled, and not abused or distorted.
The Hypodermic Needle Theory - Youtube clip
Uses & Gratifications Theory:
Far from being a passive mass, audiences were made up of individuals who actively consumed texts for different reasons and in different ways. In 1948 Lasswell suggested that media texts had the following functions for individuals and society:
- Surveillance
- Correlation
- Entertainment
- Cultural transmission
Researchers Blulmer and Katz expanded this theory and published their own in 1974, stating that individuals might choose and use a text for the following purposes (uses and gratifications):
- Diversion/Escapism - escape from everyday problems and routine.
- Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and other interaction, for example; substituting soap operas for family life.
- Personal Identity - finding yourself reflected in texts, learning behaviour, morals and values from texts.
- Surveillance - Information which could be useful for living such as; weather reports, financial news, adverts ect.
Target Audience:
What is a target audience?
In marketing and advertising, a target audience, is a specific group of people within the target market at which a product or the marketing message of a product is aimed at.
This is relevant to our task because we have to choose an
audience type and age to target our media at.
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