Evaluation

Semiotic analysis and problems we encountered.

Our film starts with our production logo. We chose a knife to signify the genre we would be working in and red font colour to signify blood. The serif font connotes the horror genre because it is more Gothic and could relate to blood dripping.

 We used a fading transaction so the production logo would fade into the establishing shot, a low Dutch angle shot of two strips of light from a door frame. 

We used a low angle shot to make the character who comes to the door appear more domineering and powerful. We used a Dutch angle shot to signify that something isn't right, a technique used in Bride Of Chucky (Ronnie Yu 1998) 

The music is slow with long drawn out notes. We chose these to build tension and anchor the preferred reading that the film is of the horror genre. We recorded the sound of footsteps and edited them to make them gradually increase in volume, another tension building technique and signify someone is walking towards the door. One problem with this was that when we added the actual footsteps from the shot some background noise is audible however we could not rectify this. We got the idea for the font and colour for our titles from Saul Bass' work with Alfred Hitchcock, especially on the film Psycho (1960) in which the titles are a white sans serif font similar to the one we used. 

 

We used a differing sound in the music which cuts across the other notes when the footsteps are approaching the door to create more build up. Once the door is opened we had the male actor pause before walking down the stairs to build tension. This is a device we found though our genre research that is used in Halloween (John Carpenter 1979) and Friday The 13th (1980 Sean .S Cunningham) Where Jason and Micheal Myres do this. We dressed the character in dark clothes, similar to the boiler suit Micheal Myres wears in Halloween (John Carpenter 1979) and heavy boots to emphasis the noise of the footsteps to seem menacing. 

We kept the characters face covered to introduce narrative enigma to our production. We found from our research of common codes and conventions that in the opening scenes of horror films we need to provide enough exposition to introduce the audience to the narrative, but to include some narrative enigma to encourage them to carry on watching. We provided the exposition by showing the house and how the character was kidnapped however left to characters unnamed so as to introduce narrative enigma. The character then walks down the stairs, past the camera and the shot fades to a close up shot of a blonde teenage girl who has back tape round her mouth. This shot is blurry and unsteady.

 We found it hard to use the tripod to film this shot due to space restrictions however if we were to film it again I would have done more to ensure the shot wasn't blurry. The framing of this shot could also have been improved as the girls head isn't directly in centre of the frame. The shot zooms out to reveal the girl is tied up in a hole with candles around her. This was difficult to take as we couldn’t get the archway in the shot. 

We chose to have candles as they proved effective in achieving the effect we wanted, eerie with connotations of Gothic horror and rituals. We dressed the girl in tight revealing clothes and specifically chose a blonde actor with a curvy figure to reflect what we had picked up on in our genre research. We wanted to use the stereotypical "Scream Queen" image, comparable to Drew Barrymore's role in the first scene of Scream (Wes Craven 1996) 

We first considered using a brunette actress as a counter-type which could help draw in an audience from class groups ABC1 however we decided to concentrate on attracting out target audience (C2DE) and settled on the blonde actress. We added the sound of a heart beating to build tension by making the audiences heart beat become irregular therefore making them feel unconsciously tense, a technique used in the opening of Scream (Wes Craven 1996) The differing drawn out sound comes over the music again, which stops and the shot cuts to a long shot of a house in black and white. We stopped the music to make the heartbeat more prominent to increase tension and to connote that the girl is having a flashback. This is the reason we chose to have the house and the shot of the alleyway in black and white because it is believed that people dream in black and white. 

The shot zooms slightly with the heartbeat still playing then cuts back to a long shot of the girl tied up in the hole. The shot cuts back to the house zooming slightly more then back to the same shot of the girl, and then back to the house and to the girl again. The shot cuts to a long shot of the girl walking down an alleyway on her mobile phone. We chose the alleyway as our location because it had over hanging trees, creating a daunting effect used in the opening scene of Scream. 

We also used a black and white effect on this scene to give anchorage to the fact that the girl is having a flashback. The shot cuts back to the girl in the hole then back to her in the alleyway, then back to her in the hole. When the shot cuts back to the alleyway a man dressed in dark clothes with his hood covering his face comes from behind the wall and puts a plastic bag over the girls head. We got this idea from The Last Broadcast (Stefan Avlos 2000) the shot cuts back to the girl in the hole, then back to the alleyway where the girl is shown screaming and being dragged off screen. 

Whilst the girl is being dragged off the audio stops for a couple of seconds before the shot does which is a problem we were not able to rectify, but would if we had the chance to re shoot by having the actress scream louder for a few seconds longer to ensure she is out of shot before the screaming stops. Ideally we would have used a boom mike to pick up the sound that the camera didn't. We hadn't originally planned to inter cut the shot of the girl laid in the cellar and the flashback of her in the alley however the majority of our audience feedback criticized us for having long continuous takes and from our research we found shorter cuts are more likely to appeal to our target audience therefore we re edited our piece to create shorter takes. Looking back we should have also added a shot of possibly the girls eyes flickering or a slight movement to signify that she is dreaming. 

On the last cut back to the girl we added the sound of the footsteps coming towards over the heartbeat. We then cut to a point of view shot from the murderer. Ideally we would have liked to have used a steady-cam to do this as used in Halloween (John Carpenter 1979) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKLlcI0cWI0 it allows the camera to move slowly and smoothly however as we could find no suitable alternative the camera work here is quite shaky. We used a high angled shot looking down on the girl to increase her vulnerability. We used the hand held shot to signify social realism, creating a sense of verisimilitude with the audience. This could help draw in a higher social grouping (ABC1) because of the social realism genre being seen as higher culture rather than popular culture. This is also one of the reasons we decided to use stills of the house, we experimented with using a camera flashing sound to create some sense of a police investigation for example, similar to The Texas Chain-saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper 1974) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4i4EBZzHGM&feature=related). This would create a Docu-drama which is more likely to attract a higher culture audience however we found it did not fit with our text and interrupted the tension. 

We had the actor breathing heavily to appear menacing and at this point started the beeping noise of a heart monitor. We framed this shot carefully to show the knife silhouetted by the candles to emphasize the relevance of the knife being a symbolic phallic object, symbolizing the sexual slant to the genre.

 We then cut to a close up shot of the girl regaining consciousness. This shot is also badly framed and the girls head is not centred. 

We added more heavy breathing from the murderer over the top as the girl regains consciousness. As the girl starts to scream and the murderer moves towards her we increase the speed of the heart monitor sound and had the murderer breathing heavily and grunting. We used a shot reverse shot technique, firstly using a shot of the girl, then the murderer, then cutting back to the girl. This is an example of continuity editing which we picked up on in our preliminary task. We framed the shot of the murderer so you cannot see his face, leaving narrative enigma as to who this character is. We had the murderer moving towards the girl and the heart rate monitor quickening in pace. We cut some of the sound of the girl screaming from our other coverage shots and added it again as it didn't sound as realistic on our final take. We then cut to the title of the film with the sound of the girl screaming and the noise of a flat line to signify that she is dead. We decided to keep the violence off screen because it can be hard to make it look realistic, some of the most successful slasher films have used this strategy as it can be worse imagining what is happening for example Halloween (John Carpenter 1979) Friday The 13th (Sean. S Cunningham 1980) and My Bloody Valentine (George Mihalka 1981) 

Our title is similar to Saul Bass' work on Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock 1960) With the font being similar and the vertical stripes instead of horizontal. We chose these stripes and the colour to signify the genre, Slasher.

Target audience and Representation.
We decided on our target audience through research into our chosen genre. We found that horror films generally aim to pull in the young youth audience (15 to 35) and socio-economic groupings C2DE. When researching common codes and conventions we found they achieve this by centring plots on teenagers. Adults and figures of authority such as sheriffs are often portrayed as useless and it is often left to the "Final Girl" to fend for herself. The "Final Girl" is something else we came across in our common codes and conventions and something we had to consider when targeting gender. Often introduced to drawn in the female audience is the tough, resourceful "Final Girl" typically a virginal brunette such as Laurie Strode (Halloween) juxtaposed with "Scream Queens" typically blonde and sexually active (Drew Barrymore’s character in Scream) 

Therefore we decided to have teenagers in our production, we chose actors who were the actual age of our characters to create verisimilitude. We could have introduced older characters to relate to a higher age group and class grouping such as in Hannibal (Ridley Scott 2001) however we decided it would be more suitable to work with popular culture instead of higher culture. Our product doesn’t show a wide representation of ethnicity's or disabilities however it does not only target a narrow Caucasian audience. Films such as The Ring (Gore Verbinski 2002) do not show any disabilities or ethnic minorities and still succeeded.

Because of the lack of dialogue in our production we could not convey any nationalities well and sexuality’s were also a problem.
We decided to use the typical "Scream Queen" but if we had continued our piece past two minutes we would have used the idea of a "Final Girl" We dressed the girl in tight low cut clothing and specifically chose an actress with blonde hair to convey this stereotype.

Progression from preliminary task.

My preliminary task highlighted the importance of planning in my work. My group left various shots out in the task because of not planning thoroughly enough, which made me more conscious of planning carefully for our final cut so as not to repeat this mistake. I preferred working in a larger group instead of a pair because it was easier to decide on ideas. In a larger group you can decide by a majority vote whereas in pairs it is harder to come to a decision.
By researching our genre and codes and conventions we found this made it easier to come up with ideas, we didn’t find any audience feedback for our preliminary task which we found extremely useful in improving our final cut.
By using i movie 06 tutorials http://www.apple.com/support/ilife/tutorials/imovie/ we found we were far more experienced in using the software to improve our final cut. We over dubbed sounds of footsteps and screaming to make the final cut more realistic.
We were also more experience in using the camera for example every time we shot footage we made sure we had set the white balance, something we did not do in our preliminary task. We used tripods in our final cut as we found the footage in our preliminary task far too unsteady. Consideration of framing was also more important as we found from our preliminary task because it improves the look of the film overall.
Production companies and marketing strategies.
Our film would be distributed by a smaller independent production company who often work with films with similar budgets to ours (Around £1 million) such as Warp X or Working Title when they had first been established. We would be more likely to work with Warp X as they have worked with films from Yorkshire such as Donkey Punch (Oliver Blackburn 2008) and This Is England (Shane Medows)

If we were to release our film our most likely distributor would be a company such as lionsgate international. They have a strong link with horror and have worked with UK films such as The Decent (Neil Marshall 2005) We decided this by reseaching various distrobution companies at www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/relatedlinksexhibitionanddistributionfeatures

We produced a poster as advertisement for our film based on the opening credits of Psycho as this would draw in fans of Psycho.

Final Cut

Storyboard

Cinematography And Editing

Our production starts with the company logo fading onto screen and fading off onto our establishing shot.

In our establishing shot we used a dutch angle and a low shot to make the killer look powerful and domineering.

We used a dutch angle to signify that something isn't right as in our research we found this is a common device used in horror films such as Bride Of Chucky (Ronnie Yu 1998) (Above) The character pauses on the stairs to create tension, the killer walks down the stairs past the camera and the shot fades into a shot of the girl. It begins as a close up of her face and slowly zooms out, creating the effect the girl is being watched. It is a high angle shot to create vulnerability and we framed the shot to show the top of the alcove the girl had been placed in because from our other shots this wasn't obvious. This shot is slightly grainy and shaky (Below) however we didn't have time to rectify this.

We then sharply cut to a long shot of a house in black and white to signify this is a flashback, we then cut sharply back to a straight on shot of the girl and back to the house again and then back to the girl. We the cut to a black and white medium long shot in an alleyway of the girl walking towards the camera then the shot cuts back to the girl lying in the cellar. The shot of the girl walking is shown again to provide anchorage that she is having a flashback. Looking back, ideally we could have taken a close up shot of the girls face instead of her lying in the cellar again a show her eyes slightly flickering to connote she is having a flashback or dreaming. Cuts back to alley, shot of girl being kidnapped, cuts back to cellar again then back to alley, shot of girl being dragged round the corner. We originally had the a long shot of the girl lying in the cellar followed by the kidnap scene in the alleyway however after being criticized for having too long shots in our audience feedback and from our genre research we decided to cut the shots into each other to create shorter takes. We took this idea because from watching The Ring when the character goes to open the cupboard it is empty then she has a flashback of the girl dead in there and we thought this was effective.

 We used the black and white because you dream in black and white so this gives the audience anchorage that the girl is having a flashback. Cuts back to the shot of the girl lying in the cellar and fades out.

The next shot begins from around the corner and is a point of view from the killer. We filmed it free-hand however we would have ideally used a piece of equipment such as a steady cam used in Halloween when Michael is walking towards the house (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKLlcI0cWI0). We wanted to use this because it gives a smooth movement rather than a shaky one however due to our budget and being unable to find a suitable alternative we decided to film it free-hand, similar to the style of The Blair Witch Project. We chose an above shot to emphasize the victims vulnerability. Next is a short shot from behind the killer of the girl laying in the cellar and half of the killers leg in the frame and the blade pointing at the girls throat, indicating what is going to happen.

We cut to a close up of the girl beginning to regain consciousness. I feel this shot could have been improved by better framing as the camera is slightly too high so the girls head isn't directly in the middle of the screen(Above). Cuts back to the shot of the girl and killers leg, killer starts to move forward towards the victim we had to take this shot carefully as we wanted to keep the knife as a main focus of the framing. We used the shot reverse shot technique to give our filming continuity however I feel on the shot of the murderer we could have got a clearer framing of the murderer because on the final cut it isn't clear enough however this was difficult due to space restrictions (Below). We used a sharp cut to the title.

We took additional footage so we had choices for our final cut, as in our preliminary task this caused issues because one of the shots we had taken didn't look right in our final cut. In our audience feedback we had been criticized for having too longer takes and not enough shot variety. The extra footage we got proved helpful to adjusting our film to our target audience specifications because we were able to add extra shots to create shorter takes. We rejected our initial idea of having a point of view shot from the killer waking down the stairs however we found the camera too shaky and didn't create the right effect. We were able to overcome this problem with the coverage footage we had taken.

Sound And Music

We searched the Internet until we had a sufficient amount of copyright free sources as from our research we found sound and music are crucial features to building tension.

http://www.creativecommons.org.audio/
http://www.ccmixter.org/
http://www.copyleft-music.com/
http://www.audiojungle.net/
http://www.on-holdmusic.co.uk/

We thought about the music we wanted for our production and looked at the music in existing texts in our genre research. Sound was essential in our production as we wanted to keep the violence off screen as it is difficult to make it look realistic. We used the heart monitor and flat line sound to connote to the audience that she is dead, even though they only see the murderer moving towards the girl.
We also wanted to use a heartbeat sound through out to make the audiences heart beat become irregular therefore making them feel unconsciously tense, a technique we found used in the opening of Scream (Wes Craven 1996) and Halloween (John Carpenter 1978)
We experienced some problems with our audio. In the establishing shot we had some recorded footsteps and some from the actual take. When the ones from the actual take begin there was alot of noticeable ambient noise which we were not able to rectify. Also when the girl is dragged out of the alleyway the audio stops a couple of seconds before the shot does.
Our music is typical of our genre because of the use of the eerie long drawn out notes.

Screenplay

The Cellar2[1]

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Audience Feedback

We produced various rough cuts and some sample scenes to show to a samples of our target audience as we went along.  The response was mostly positive and our sample liked the choice of setting however there were various criticisms we took on board and tried to improve on.

"Setting is very good, acting could be better, cuts could be shorter" Alex Jowwet 25/03/09

"Could have used a greater variety of shots" Ben Garvey 27/03/09

"Lighting was effective, too long takes, Footsteps are not in time with heartbeat" Sophie Gannon 27/03/09

Final Cut Feedback

"Cutting of flashbacks were effective

"Black and white flashbacks are very effective and build tension" Lucy Heathcote 1/04/09

"Heat beat sound effective at building tension, follows common codes and conventions well" Laura Beck 01/04/09

"Found the flashbacks a great improvement and particularly effective" 1/04/09 Lucy Johnson (Fellow media student)

"Music works well at the beginning, sound effects are good" 2/04/09 Laura Beck

"Didn't understand the house, liked the music, liked the flashbacks" 2/04/09 Matt Lowe 

"Really good like the start, don't understand the house" 2/04/09 Alex Jowwet

Production Schedule And Production Notes

Production Plan2 1

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Looking back at my preliminary task which was done with a minimal amount of planning I feel my work has progressed alot and careful planning has made things simpler not only when filming but also when editing as we planned to get coverage shots in the event that our planned shots didn't look right whereas in the preliminary task we didn't take any coverage and forgot to take some shots due to too little detail in our planning.

Hardware

To film our production we used a Cannon wide screen MV920.
Camcorder Type: Digital
Recording Format: Mini DV
Recording System: PAL
Sensor Quantity: 1
Optical Zoom: 25weight: 0.38kg
Both members of the group had a small amount of experience with the camera from our preliminary task and our micro drama and found the cameras fairly simple to use. Before we shot each time we did the white balance test which involves holding a white piece of paper over the lens so the camera can adjust to the correct settings. We found transferring the footage from the camcorder to the computers simple and found it useful that you were able to watch the tape through as it imported.
We used a tripod to film the majority of the shots because we found free hand filming difficult and always ended up with a low quality result.
It would have been useful to have a steady cam, as used in Halloween, in the point of view shot however this is an expensive piece of equipment and we could not find a suitable alternative.
To take the pictures of the house and the location we used a Cannon 9016 10 mega pixel camera, this was effective because we used a colour accent effect on the camera to make the house look eerier however we found the pictures became blurry when we tried to zoom in further.

Common Codes And Conventions

The codes and conventions used in a film opening are particularly important as they inform the audience as to which genre the film is and encourage them to keep watching.

To gain a clear insight into the codes and conventions of film openings we watched and analysed the first two minutes of various films in a wide variety of genres.


Gladiator 2000

Directed by Ridley Scott $103000000 budget
Won 5 Oscars
Started with slow paced non diegetic music, creates tension and signifies something bad is about to happen. Music begins to get louder and faster, increases heartbeat and builds more tension.
Cuts to battle scene, volume continues to increase, sounds evil, drum beat signifies war, Strings and voices of women give eerie effect.
Opening titles and credits are in burnished gold this is also applied to the production logo, anchors genre and signifies film is set in the past.
Shot of battlefield creates narrative enigma, cut away shots, close up and extreme close ups used to highlight emotion.
Words "Germana" appear at the bottom, give exposition to setting.

Dark Blue World 2001

Directed by Jan Sversack $5000000 budget
Titles in white text on black background, money saving strategy. Non diegetic sound introduced, title shown on dark clouds, implies polysemic meaning possibly relates to expression "clouds of war" as is war film genre.
Font in style of world war 2 propaganda poster font, inter textual reference
Non diegetic sound big band, popular in 1940s
Grey tint shows aged setting, names of actors provide anchorage for Target audience, use of German actors.
Close up of object provides narrative enigma, as camera zooms out reveals piece of machinery, old plane sets time period. Red tint applied creates polysemic meaning, could connote romance or blood. Physical interaction between characters signifies relationship.



Wimbledon

Directed by Richard Volcrane $31000000 budget
Cross over appeal to sports fans due to name.
Sound of tennis ball, black on white titles, shot of tennis ball being hit backwards and forwards.
Watercolour effect used possibly signify Wimbledon always being rained off, pathetic fallacy, weather reflects mood. Name of main actors show in titles three times, being hit backwards and forwards like a tennis ball, diegetic sound of crowds reaction. Product placement used, Slazenger.

Monologue of central protagonist begins providing exposition.
Watercolour effect removed connotes back to reality, Slow motion effect used on a series of close ups of tennis ball. Fast Paced editing suggests youth audience.



Hot Fuzz 2007

Directed by Edgar Wright $14000000 budget
Police siren Applied over Universal logo, similar to bomb siren signifies police action genre.
Character with San Serif titles applied over the top, made to look like being typed on a type writer, connoting police files.
Monologue, heavy with dialogue gives full exposition to central protagonist. Extreme close ups used to show emotion and fast paced editing to attract youth audience and action genre. Non diegetic music is fast and upbeat with trumpets this signifies film is hybrid genre and also a comedy.

High School Musical 2
Directed by Kenny Ortega $2000000 budget
Fades into establishing shot, close up of clock, Amplified ticking noise creates suspense and connotes scene is building up to something, titles over shots signifies youth audience being impatient. The film is a sequel so already has large fan base so has to be already familiar to them for example the use of the basketball. Set in day time, commutation test, this would make sense if it was night time.
Pans through various locations in school, actors names appear in serif font along the bottom. Unobtrusive editing gives a sense of calmness. Shots of memorable scenes and locations from first film. No introduction of characters and little exposition.
Shot pans into classroom, accent provides anchorage for location, shot of stereotypical drama teacher. Skull on the desk is an inter textual referees to Hamlet, provides more anchorage for drama class. Over sized clock for emphasis, build of tension contrasts to calm opening.


Trainspotting

Targeted at mature youth (15-34) Stereotypical drug addicts, working class.
Women do not follow male gaze theory however follow motherly role.
Song "lust for life" by Iggy Pop, lyrics contrast with monologue about how people waste their lives away, gives exposition into fact central protagonist strays from society's norms and values.
Binary oppositions shown through two contrasting football teams, one neat and plays by the rules other shambolic, messy and cheat polysemic meaning possible metaphor for drug addicts lives.
Fast paced editing signifies younger target audience however have attempted to gain crossover appeal through use of song from the 70s and scene of football. Use of stereotype when presenting Scots as angry.
We also analysed various horror and slasher film openings to gain insight into codes and conventions we could use or challenge in our own product. We aimed to look at a variety of sub-genres inside the horror genre to get as much information as possible.

Halloween 1979

John Carpenter $300000 budget
Directors name before the title, Auteur theory. "Introducing Jamie Lee Curtis" has appeal to horror fans because she is the daughter of Janet Leigh who played Marion Crane in Psycho.
"Starring Donald Plesecnce" not one of the main characters, but a well established actor in a virtually unknown cast could have appeal.
Writing flickers colours of pumpkin in serif font, camera closes in on pumpkin, shaking slightly. Music speeds up, beat sounds like heartbeat.
Character names such as Nancy Loomis taken from Psycho (Sam Loomis) and used again in Scream (Billy Loomis)
Use of documentary style codes to imply realism such as name of town shown in white on black back ground to give exposition.
Non diegetic sounds of children singing.
Detached house, connotations of venerability and isolation, blue tinted lighting used to create supernatural effect.



Scream 1996

Wes Craven
Title word flashing on screen white to red like siren light, connoting danger, slashing sound signifies slasher. Scream title links to mask killer wears which is a reference to The Scream painting by Edvard Munch.
Establishing sound is phone, suggest phones play a big part in movie. Use of phone is slasher movies is common, first used in "When A Stranger Calls"
Sound of prison door slamming and long draw out eerie strings similar to music in Psycho.
Heartbeat sound creates own heartbeat to become irregular, makes audience feel unconsciously tense.
Establishing shot blonde, busty female, shallow depth of field, background out of focus creates lack of identity and narrative enigma. Tracking shot gives sense of being followed or stalked.
Deep sinister male stereotypical voice at other end of phone, basic stereotypes used.
Light from TV is blue, cold, blue tinted lighting.
No curtains on windows, anyone can see inside creates sense of being watched, amount of glass creates vulnerability, Dutch tilt on camera signifies something is not right.
Emphasis on porch gives false sense of security, means of escape.
Blue light and swing moving on its own signify supernatural, Middle class house, remote, detached, overhanging trees create entrapment.
As popcorn rises so does sexual tension. Girl picks up knife flirty, sexual link as knives represent phallic objects (Freud) and a symbolic form of rape. Girl flirts and denies having a boyfriend, sexually available.

A Touch Of Evil 1957
Orson Wells
Continuous tracking shot following bomb attached to car, signifies thriller genre.
Narrative enigma as to why bomb is there and who couple driving the car are, both attractive so appeal to men and women.
Crane shot focus shifts to different couple then first couple come back onscreen, unusual for tracking characters.
Non diegetic quick paced music to build tension, shifts to over exaggerated non diegetic jazz music suggests more mature target audience.
"Stop" sign on road narrows down possible locations.

Psycho 1960
Alfred Hitchcock
Cross cutting title sequence signifies slasher, key stars are shown in title sequence
2 shots dissolving on one another. Establishing shot is extreme long shot, we are given exposition to the location by words on screen in a documentary fashion.

28 days later
Danny Boyle
Social realism style, uses codes of documentary to create verisimilitude.
Contrast between fast paced and calm scenes creates tension.
Exposition given by modern technology, world presented in state on anarchy by television pictures. Dutch angle and blue tinted lighting used to signify something is not right.
Camera flashes and stills, anchoring social realist style.
Fast paced editing and theme suggests targeted at mature youth audience.

Bride Of Chucky 1998
Ronnie Yu
Long drawn out strings connote horror genre, blue lights and dutch angle give clear Anchorage for this. Sharp abrupt noises used, uneven letters in font suggest chaos.
Policeman enters, generally useless in horror films. Source of lighting comes from lightening.
Inter textual reference to Friday The 13th (Jason's mask) link into post modernism.
Use of false scare and male gaze used.

Jason X 2001
James Isacc
Hybrid genre to appeal to wider audience, slasher, sci-fi, comedy.
References to Laura Croft and WWF, post modernism.
Mocks typical horror film codes and conventions when girls act provocatively and drink to encourage Jason to try kill them.

Leprechaun 1993
Mark Jones
Titles on black background faded into opening shot, Celtic style writing in titles.
Glitter and sparking sounds misleadingly signify film is children's fantasy genre.
Stereotypical Irish drunk and name O Grady

Trick Or Treat 1985
Ned Morehead
Narrative over titles, low angle shot used to make actor look domineering, Heavy metal rocker wearing make up with long hair.
Dark deep voice stereotypically male. Sharp edged font used. Stars Ozzy Osbourn and Gene Simmonds, cross over appeal.
Large speakers, turntables, skulls, studded belts connote age and personality, school setting anchors age.

From our research we have taken various codes and conventions to apply to our own media product for example the films which involved shot cuts were aimed youth audience, which is the target audience for our product however after trying some short cuts we decided to challenge this convention and have longer takes as we felt, and found from our audience feedback that this created a better overall effect.
There is always narrative enigma in a film opening because the audience are unsure of the characters and their role in the film. Some openings deliberately mislead the viewer giving them polysemic encoding as to who the central protagonists are for example in A Touch Of Evil when the establishing tracking shot follows a couple and then shifts focus to another. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg8MqjoFvy4. Another example of polysemic encoding is in Leprechaun, the audience is lead to believe it is a children's fantasy film when in fact it is a slasher. The tracking shot used was also unusual because it was a continuous crane shot, these are rarely seen in the opening of a film. Narrative enigma is important to keep an audience engrossed and relates back to Thurlows theory of the active question to keep the viewer engaged in the text.
Non diegetic music is important in openings as it can help set the atmosphere and signify the target audience for example in Trick Or Treat heavy metal music is playing which connotes the audience is youth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqpSvOMykQU. The music in horror films generally has long draw out eerie notes and a beat similar to heartbeat is often used in the opening scenes off horror films as it sub consciously speeds up the viewers heart rate which causes them to feel tense. We are going to use this technique when we create our music.
Exposition can be given in various ways, we found some of the most common techniques are monologues as in Hot Fuzz, Wimbledon and Trainspotting however it is not commonly used in horror therefore we will not be using this technique in our production. A common technique used in horror is showing date or location in text on the screen, as seen in Psycho and Bride of Chucky. We have decided to use flashbacks to provide our exposition, similar to the TV clips shown in 28 days later.

Software

To edit our product we use imovie 06. We had the option of using imovie 08 however we decided to use 06 because it is more advanced than 08. Having had very little experience using imovie 06 except when editing our micro drama and preliminary task I went onto the Apple website and found tutorials for the program. The tutorials gave me useful insight on how to get the most out of the software. http://www.apple.com/support/ilife/tutorials/index.html
Some of the advantages of using this software were that it was simple and easy to use. I found the program was well laid out and everything was easy to find however the simplicity caused some complications for us for example you cant have two effects on one slide. We wanted to have a black and white photo for one of our flashbacks however we couldn't apply this to the photo and have a transition on it. To avoid this problem we changed the colour of the photo on a different program and then put it in imovie and added the transition. The transitions and effects were easy to apply and the layout of the program, with the slides to the right hand side and the timeline along the bottom made it easy to sort clips into the correct order.

Final Synopsis/The Pitch

Halloween meets Hostel.
A stalk and slash movie like Halloween with an element of Hostels brutal torture.

Rough Cut

We decided to alter the establishing shot from match on action to starting from inside the door. This was because we found the camera work was too shaky, ideally we would have liked to have used a steady-cam as used in Halloween (John Carpenter 1978) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKLlcI0cWI0) however we were unable to find a suitable alternative to this so we decided not to use the shot. We also thought the narrative enigma of the footsteps and not knowing who was walking towards the door was a useful technique in building tension. Some of our audience feedback suggested we should use a greater variety of shot techniques although we still decided to cut this shot and incorporate more varied shots later on in the production.
We used too many long continuous takes in our rough cut and from our research on target audience and our audience feedback we decided we would rectify this by inter cutting short flashbacks into the shot. This received a very positive response from our audience feedback.
Our rough cut proved that our plot wasn't developed enough because of the length of our production so we added a shot of the central protagonist being kidnapped, part of the flashbacks which were inter cut with the continuous take.
Something else we picked up on from our audience feedback was that it wasn't clear how the girl was gagged. This was because we initially used sellotape to cover her mouth which didn't show up on camera. We re shot all the scenes of the girl tied up and used black tape instead of sellotape to rectify this.

In our second rough cut we added the alleyway scene to give greater exposition and a greater shot variety because we were criticized for both of these in our initial audience feedback. We were able to inter-cut these into our edit later in the process.

Locations, Mise-en-scene, Costume and Props

Location
From our genre research we found that most slasher films are set in 3 general locations, Campus, The Wilderness, or Urban and that most of the action takes place in these confines. We decided on an urban setting for the flashbacks of the alleyway to give exposition of the girls class along with a stereotypical haunted house for the action to take part in, particularly favored by Hammer in the sixties. For the internal footage we used a coal cellar similar to the torture chambers used in Hostel.

Mise-en-scene
We used candles to set the atmosphere in the cellar and give the feel of possibly rituals, like the murderer has done this before. We decided to use candles as an inter-textual reference to Halloween(1978) and a House Of Wax. We first used sellotape on the victim to gag her then when watching the footage back we decided it would look better with black tape over her mouth so we decided to re-shoot because this didn't give the effect we were looking for. We got this ideal from other slashers such as The Signal and the thriller Lethal Weapon 2. We considered using a material gag but decided overall the black tape would give a better effect. In our re-shoot we also tied the victims feet together to give a more realistic effect when she was struggling. We uses flashbacks to create verisimilitude which we hoped would give the audience as sense of a docu-drama feel which may help attract some ABC1 viewers. We got this idea from the opening scenes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper 1974) which used this effect to signify a police investigation and create a sense of realism.

Costume
We dressed the victim in tight, quite revealing clothing and a dress to connote she is a feminine girl and provides anchorage for our view she is sexually active, as this is believed to be the theory behind why the sexually active girls always die first in horror films as pre-marital sex is seen as a sin.
We dressed the murderer in heavy navy trousers and a heavy navy coat which gave a similar effect to the boiler suit Michael Myers wears in the 1978 Halloween. He wore heavy walking boots to sound menacing and amplify the sound as he was walking down the stairs.

Props
We used the candles to create atmosphere and the feel of an occult ritual. We chose the knife the murderer carried because it is similar to the one used in psycho and looked effective when silhouetted against the candles, another reason why we used these. We decided on black tape instead of a gag to look menacing.

Casting

We decided to follow the codes and conventions we noticed in slasher film openings when undergoing our genre research. We considered using counter-types but then decided, taking into account the age of our target audience and the socio economic groups we aimed it at (C2DE) as our genre is more seen as "popular culture" whereas class groups ABC1 are generally associated with "high culture" such as period dramas. We could have possibly appealed to this class grouping by not having our product centrally based on teenagers and introduced authority figures or counter-types however we decided to try and target the majority of our target audience rather than attempting to bring in the higher class audience. We made our final decision on using the stereotypical "Scream Queen" We cast Sophie to play this part as she has blonde hair and a more curvy figure comparable to to characters such as Tammi from Donkey Punch or Drew Barrymore's character in Scream.

We cast Theo as the murderer as he is the specific age we were looking for and has acting experience. We were looking for a male who looked like a typical teenager, not dissimilar to Billy Loomis from Scream.

We wanted our character to be in their teens so it would appeal to our target audience and soci economic audience and from our research we decided Sophie and Theo fit these specifications best out of our other options.

We are aware that our cast shows a very narrow representation of the generally public as it does not involve any ethnic minorities or characters with disabilities however we found that some successful horror films do not contain any ethnic minorities or characters with disabilities such as The Ring so decided to overlook this fact.