Question 1
After viewing a range of different movies in the Horror sub- genre of Supernatural (see few deconstructions) we created a list of Pros and Cons for creating a supernatural horror ( See Pro's and Cons Page). Our media product conforms and subverts the conventions of a Supernatural horror in many ways:
- In horror movies alone: there is usually a death in the first scene, which we have conformed to in our media product, to immerse the audience into the opening, and clearly state the genre.
- The death is not shown in full, which is common in Supernatural movies, as we didn't want to include a gore element, which is present in other sub genres.
- The costume and make up conformed to that of a supernatural film, due to the alienation of the antagonist, which allowed the audience to pick up on the genre.
- The location of our media product was chosen (see blog post about location) due to it conforming to the location of a horror, as it was empty and deserted, with a idea of the protagonist feeling trapped within the location, with no way of escape, helped by the parallel lines within the tunnel, that will never meet, indicating he will never meet his way of escape.
- In supernatural films that I have seen, the victims are mostly picked at random, and have no connection to the supernatural entity, which I thought was a propitious decision, to conform to the conventions of a supernatural horror, but also to show that the threat is imminent and could happen to anyone.
- Although as it was in modern reality and in a place where people could ordinarily walk through, this showed our subversion, as it was not in a deserted location and was in the center of a city, making the threat seem more realistic.
- Our main subversion was the characters, and the way that they are presented, as usually in supernatural horror's the antagonist is a young child who has been tortured, and has returned for revenge, but within ours we used a clown, which is usually shown as a joyous character, with a female actress, to subvert the expectations that the antagonist is always a strong male, or a young child, as we thought it would be more effective to our targeted audience.
- The protagonist was also subverted as we had one protagonist, who was a male, who was killed by the supernatural entity, which subverts the expectation of the male protagonist who is strong and always saves the females, as this appeared to be the same in quite a lot of supernatural horror movies that I had watched.
Question 2
- Gender was the main focus in terms of area of representation within our piece as we chose to have a female antagonist and a male victim to subvert audience expectations of victim and killer.(MALE PROTAG BLOG POST)
- To emphasize this gender division, we chose in terms of costume that although the clown should be heavily made up and in costume, she would wear her hair down and long to feminize the threat. (COSTUME POST)
- We also chose to have our costume entirely covering our antagonist's body as not to sexualize her and confuse any specific stereotypical gender identity.
- However, we also chose to select our victim as a teenager, partly due to the availability and ease to find an actor but mainly due the fact that the age relates to our target audience increasing the fear factor.
- In terms of the CCTV filming, the clown is shot during the murder facing the audience allowing a more fearsome reaction due to the clown challenging the camera as it comes closer between shots, again subverting female expectations as it shows her strength and confidence as opposed to the expected weakness and vulnerability.
- The power of the female in comparison to male is also again emphasized within the shots and editing used for the montage sequence as whenever shot together after the killing, the victim is on the floor whereas the clown is upstanding, structuring the power balance with her in control as an unexpected threat. This diminishes any barrier as a weaker female expected to be seen as a possibly caring and nurturing gender as no emotion is displayed apart from the sinister smile on her face throughout.
Question 3:
- When choosing our production company, I researched a number of various companies and finally chose to produce ours as a Ghost House Pictures project. (FILM PRODO BLOG POST)
- Ghost House Pictures have produced widely popular horror films targeted at teenagers and young adult horror fans such as the Possession and The Grudge.
- Originally, I had difficulty making a decision between using Ghost House or another company largely dealing in Horror, Twisted pictures.
- Although their main focus is primarily of our sub-genre, their plots often include possession which although I researched into it as a possibility, we chose not to use. (POSSESSION BLOG POST) Not including this feature within our plot therefore makes the Ghost House Company not entirely suitable.
- Other companies researched have previously deal with high successful supernatural projects, such as Hammer (Woman in Black) and Twisted Pictures (Dead Silence) but do not have a distinctive direction towards the sub-genre
- . I resulted in making my decision due to Ghost House's suitability as an experienced producer of the supernatural horror genre and their superiority in comparison to the other options researched.
Question 4+5
After we finished editing the film opening, we decided that the appropriate age rating would be a 12 because the violence is there but not dwelled upon. This means that our audience would be teenagers from 13+
The ways in which we attracted and addressed the audience are as follows;
Firstly, when we were deciding upon important decisions, for example the name of the film, we created surveys on survey monkey that other’s could fill out. (Show survey blog post) We promoted the links ourselves, asking friends and younger family members to complete them for us. This would have helped to attract the right audience because all of the people that we asked to complete the survey were within the age for our target audience. We received a lot of feedback, which we took into consideration. This would have helped to attract the audience because the people that filled out the survey would have been eager to see what the finished product looked like and whether their suggestions had been taken into consideration.
We decided that the protagonist should be around the age of 16 so that the audience feels that they are more able to connect with the actor, attracting the audience because they would feel as if the film is of a level that they will be able to understand and relate to.
Part of the film opening was set in a college so the audience would be able to relate to the surroundings and all of the events that come with it.
This links to the location that we chose. (show location blog post) By using the tunnel in Greenwich, we are bringing the storyline into an area that many people would be familiar with. This would attract the audience because the area around the tunnel is where a lot of teenagers spend their weekends. So they would be attracted to the film by wanting to see what we have done in terms of the storyline.
Finally, we decided to use a clown as the antagonist. (Show clown blog post) When researching, I found that clowns are a phobia that is mostly found in children aged 4-16. This, obviously, fits into our age group. By playing on a fear that the target audience have would attract them because they would be anxious to find out how scary our film opening is. This can also be linked to the extreme close up shot of the clown after the death of the protagonist.
Question 6
In terms of how we have developed in our use of technology, we have learnt a lot about different aspects not only of filming but also of the editing process, plus music creation. When filming we came across a few problems and therefore before fully setting into filming we decided to practice a few times before we set about doing it properly. We decided to make filming equipment such as using a household broom in order to get the camera into the top of the tunnel and therefore get the right angle into filming. (CCTV Footage Blog Post) We wanted to use a high angle in filming in the tunnel in order to conform with the conventions of CCTV cameras which usually films at higher angles in order to capture a wide area. We attached the camera to the broom through using the gorilla pod, which proved extremely useful in keeping the camera steady also when we were filming outside as well. In terms of filming in the dark we had to research the camera because it wasn’t picking up on any detail for example when we where filming the skyline of London.(Blog Post 3rd Location Visit) Therefore through researching the technology of the camera we discovered that there was an IA button which dealt with the problem as it would manually set the camera to the correct setting of filming in the dark. We wanted to film at a POV shot for the outside scenes as we wanted to see the journey from the protagonists point of view before it jump cuts to static. The point of using the POV shot is to put the audience in his shoes before taking them out of them and removing them from the death scene. Finally for the montage scene we used a series of different shots from close ups, to high angles, to extreme close ups, panning and wide angles. We have learnt a lot about using iMovie in the editing process from when we first used it in our Prelim.(Lily's Editing Blog Post) We have used a lot more of the transitional devices and also the editing techniques which you can use on the clip itself such as speeding the clip up or down, the effects, removing sound and adjusting the stabilization. This is most prominent in the montage scene where we cut the shots extremely short (mainly under a second) and then integrated short parts of the neck breaking throughout to show it as a death scene. We added the SCI-FI effect to each shot apart from the last as the colour green connotes the ideas of consumption and illness. The last shot has the clowns face half dark indicating that the protagonists eyes are closing and therefore death has struck.(Montage Scene Editing) The montage scene has a lot of the iMovie effects added to it through each having the sound removed and sped up along with a suitable effect attached in order to conform with the genre we have. Through the editing process we where able to put in our terminology and therefore include a lot of jump cuts and cross cutting in order to make it flow but with a twist. Linear narrative and continuity editing run throughout as all events are carried out in the correct time and order.(Editing Sound to Film Post) Through editing we wanted to bring the element of fear and therefore paired it with the sound which was collected from different sources such as YouTube, own made and Sound Cloud which was then edited on a piece of software called Audacity. We spread the job of music out amongst each other in order to get more mixed views on what each part should sound like.(Final Music Choices Post) For example at the beginning we wanted more fast, paced and bass like music and therefore went for the drums however at the end we opted for a more silent atmosphere in order to emphasize on the death scene rather than have musical distractions. All Diegetic sound has been eradicated from the scenes because of the location sound being inadequate and therefore we decided that Non diegetic sound would have more of a effect. Each piece of editing which we did was consulted among all of us and therefore this meant that we all had a say in what we where doing in the entire process. Our knowledge of the technology has definitely improved by miles and therefore this means that by the end we felt much more confident in what we were doing and what parts of the editing software we wanted to use in order to create the correct effect.
Question 7
Chloe: Looking back at our prelim we have improved a lot in terms of planning, filming and consideration into our editing. One example of how we moved forward was through the initial design of the Storyboard. We have put in a lot more detail and terminology so that for each shot, which we filmed, it meant we knew what we were doing and how we were going to achieve it. By including more detail this meant that we went into filming feeling much more confidant when approaching the filming dates. We including shot by shot action of what was going to happen and therefore this meant that the planning was much more intricate and helpful.
Lily: Again another element which we really improved on was the planning of what location we where going to use and what we where going to use in terms of props and costumes. For the location we decided to look a many different diverse areas such as Tunnel. Basement and a derelict area but finally settled on the tunnel due to the practicality. This shows that we have improved because for the Prelim we only had the use of the school facilities and therefore had to act quickly in order to find somewhere appropriate. This is also shown again in props and costume because for the Prelim we only had the choice of school uniform and any bags or props in which we could find in the short period of time. Whereas for the Film opening we could research different costumes and find the right one which was much more elaborate. We also had the balloons, which conformed appropriately to what we were doing due to the colour connotations and plot context.
Becky: Music also has been extremely improved on since our Prelim. For the Prelim we used the simple sounds, which come with the package of iMovie, and therefore we were not that creative in what we where doing because of the short time space we had; however the music still conformed and the heartbeat has been used in our film opening as well. For our film opening on the other hand I made original music and also of us took turns in order to edits and manipulate music showing that we stepped out of the box in order to create more along with the help of iMovie sounds as well.
Lauren: Lastly we improved in the area of planning who would be suitable for our film opening in looking at who would be more appropriate in terms of age and gender. For our prelim we had to choose from who was available within the school at really short notice and it did work. However when planning for our film opening we wanted to have a female antagonist and a male protagonist to therefore subvert conventions and therefore this meant that again with the others a lot more planning and consideration was taken into the planning due to the amount of time which we had in order to bring the entire film opening together.
