Our film opening is called Reminiscence, the conventions of our film follow a typical narrative of a horror film. The main story is a girl who is chased by a killer in the woods, this follows a stereotypical theme of a horror, the girl is helpless and defenseless whilst the killer is more powerful.
Setting: The setting for our film opening is woods, we chose this as it creates a sense of vulnerability and isolation for the victim. We also filmed in the streets for the opening to create realism for the audience. This created realism by displaying a recognisable scene in modern life.
Another film that uses the woods for a setting is 'Shrooms', this proved very effective because the theme of being lost in the woods with a killer on loose makes the audience feel edgy and uneasy. We decided to use this setting to in the hope that we could create this effect as well.
Propp's Theory: Our media product follows a traditional narrative of a classic horror film, mainly, the killer being male and the victim being female.
Propp's theory consists of film characters such as, hero, villain, princess, donor etc.
In Propp's theory, our film follows the conventions of the villain chasing a princess and eventually catching and over powering her. If we were to carry the film there would eventually be a hero also.
Todorov's Theory: The main narrative of our film is a girl going for a walk whilst being followed by a hooded figure, eventually, the chase begins and she is eventually killed by him.
This follows the Todorov's equilibrium, disequilibrium, reinstated equilibrium. The equilibrium being the victim walking through the streets and listening to her MP4, the disequilibrium being the chase and the penultimate murder. If we were to carry the film on then the equilibrium may be reinstated, however because we are creating a horror to follow typical conventions the ending may either be a twist or a final disequilibrium.
Props: In terms of weaponry, rather than using the traditional gun/knife etc, we decided to use a shovel instead, this (as far as we know) has not been used in a murder film so we decided to use it, showing some originality to our film.
Costume: The killer in our film is dressed in black clothing, typically used to represent a villain. His hood is up to conceal his face and add a sense of mystery as used in many masked killer films.
The victim on the other hand is dressed to represent a generic teenage girl, this helps the film reflect modern society.
Editing : The clips in our film opening all have a filter and low contrast on them. This is because the constant change in weather whilst we were filming gave different light on the clips, one some clips its dark and miserable whilst on the other clips its sunny and bright.
We also used a blue filter because it's a very typical technique used in horror films for example, Shrooms, Pulse etc, it tends to give a detached and emotionless scene.
Though we didn’t use any effects to switch to different scenes, we used quite a few effects during the scenes. The scene where you can just see the killer and victims feet is slowed down, also, at the end of our trailer, we have reversed the whole thing to play backwards. At the moment where the victim is ‘killed’, a fade to black into the name of the film is used, the audience don’t need to see what has happened, simply by the action of the killer and the sound of the shovel hitting something allows them to figure out that the killer has caught the victim.
On the clip where the chase begins, it shows the killer and victim walking down a path, this shot starts off as them walking but then goes to them running, however, this shot was too long so we added a ‘jump’ edit to subtly cut down the clip but still keep the theme that the chase has begun.
Sound: Our soundtrack, we decided on the piano because it connotes a sense of innocence yet juxtaposes the theme of the film opening. The low key beat connotes a heart beat whilst the chase scenes are playing and the synthesizes are to simply add an edge to the film and make the audience feel uneasy and tense throughout the chase scene.
However, at the end of the film when the victim is banging against the fence, we cut the music and focused on the sound of killer striking the victim.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The Mise-en-scene used in our film opening represents our social group, teenagers. The clothes (i.e. 'hoodies') that the killer and victim are wearing are popular with our target audience. An MP4 is also used for our props at the start of our trailer.
This also connotes modern day, the victim is shown listening to music while she walks. The audience can relate this as this often seen with teenagers or
young adults.
In terms of race, our film shows no evidence of other nationalities. Different countries use stereotypical villains in films with typical qualities depending on where they are from. For example, Americans tend to use British villains and Britain use Russian villains. An example of this is used in the James Bond films and this stereotype is also used in comedy films as well.
Inspiration
Some elements of our film opening were inspired by the film Shrooms. The idea to film in the woods came from this as the atmosphere it created was very tense and on edge throughout the film. Though the idea of a hooded villain has been used before, we used this to stick to the traditions of killers in some films that are set in isolated locations. The hooded figure also connotes the image of the grim reaper, naturally, seeing someone dressed in black with a hood is something to naturally associate with death in films.
Who would be the audience for you media product?
I feel that our horror/thriller film is aimed at teenagers. We’ve rated it as a 15 for the violence and (possibly) strong language.
Gender wise, I think that the male audience would be drawn to see this because of the violent and bloody scenes, however, some female audiences may also want to see this, either by who will be in the film or simple because they enjoy a good hack-slash film.
Adults may be drawn into seeing our film but I still stand by this being more appealing to teenagers or someone in their early 20’s to see this rather an older audience.
What have you learnt about technologies from the processing of constructing the product?
Our means of filming and uploading were different from GCSE level.
Last year, all our footage was stored on a cassette, this was quite the disadvantage because if we lost the tape, we’d have to film all over again. Uploading the footage to the computers was complicated so the teacher did it for us.
This year on the other hand, our filming was stored within the camera itself on an SD card, uploading the footage was a lot simpler compared to last year.
In terms of editing our footage, the program we used last year was Video studio 8, this was easy to use but with everyone using it at the same, it would not load, freeze or shut itself down before we had a chance to save our work.
This year we have used I-movie on the Mac computers, this was more convenient and just as straight forward to use. We also had more variety in terms of editing and effects.
This year we had to make our own soundtrack on 'Garageband', where as last year, we used an mp3 file. We used Non-Diegetic sound of a piano, a low key beat and synthesizes. We decided to cut the diegetic sound from the trailer but we kept the sound of the shovel ‘hitting’ the victim in the head. One problem with keeping the sound was that we could hear birds singing on the clips, this ruined the horror theme for the film, however we muted the clips anyway so this was not much of a problem.
Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Whilst filming our preliminary task, we faced quite a few problems. One of them being that we would run out of time whilst filming but the most inconvenient of our problems was that most of our original footage was lost due to a camera default. Luckily, we were able to film the lost footage again and still keep the continuity in tact.
Though our preliminary task was helpful, we did not use a shot reverse shot in our final product because we felt that it was not needed. If the film were continued then these shots from our preliminary may be included, but because we have no conversation in our opening the shot reverse shot was excluded.
Genre
The genre of our film is a Horror/Thriller. We created this by following the typical theme of someone committing a murder in a secluded area.
The chase throughout the film makes the viewer wonder if the victim will escape but they inevitably predict that this wont end well for the girl. Though a shovel isn’t the most obvious choice of weapon for a classic killer such as in Scream, Shrooms, Sorority Row etc, the sight of someone being chased by a hooded figure with a shovel will still make them want to run.
A horror/thriller film was easy enough to create ourselves as we didn’t need the use of professional filming or ‘amazing ‘props. Little filming can be used as some physiological thrillers need little shots of what’s going, they are still able to make the viewer feel nervous and jumpy at what may happen next.
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