Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

When looking back at the preliminary task, one aspect I feel I have improved on is the editing. When it was the preliminary task, I was very unsure about what different tools were on Adobe Premier Pro and what I would need to do on this software in order to create an effective film. However having high hopes for the outcome of our opening sequence made us more adventurous in terms of editing; we now aimed to use special effects and manipulate aspects of the music in order to make our film perfect, therefore we had no choice but to get alot of practice in using this programme.

 

Something else that we learned from the preliminary task was to back up our footage. When we were doing the preliminary task, having to re shoot alot of our footage due to continuity issues set us back in time by a great deal. Therefore when filming for the main task, we thought that doing at least two takes for each shot would assure that one would be appropriate for the film. In this case, we were not set back in time because we had no footage to re shoot. Our organisation became more adament and we were more aware in spotting faults in our footage.

Lastly, I acheived a personal development throughout the main task. The preliminary task made me realise that alot of time and detail needs to go into my blog, to assure that I can get the best grade that I can. Therefore, unlike within the preliminary task I dedicated time to blogging; which made me more organised and in my personal opinion reflects a higher quality blog. This is one aspect I am pleased that I improved on.

Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Below I have created a moodboard of the key technologies that we have used as a group throughout the project. I have learned alot when it comes to filming aspects of technology, however with other technologies that I have perhaps used before, this project gave me the opportunity to learn new things about them.

Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

Through watching our final opening sequence, I have picked up upon some unique selling points that attract the audience to our film. The first thing I thought of was by the screen grab to the right. Seeing the two main characters as young girls deviates from the conventional horror film, where stereotypically the main character of a horror film is a female, alone in a setting. By looking at the two young girls and also seeing that they are linking arms hence hinting at a relationship; this attracts our younger target audience because they somewhat relate to the film. This could be considered a unique selling point.  

Something else that I picked up on that could be considered a unique selling point is the mysterious element. When looking at this screen grab you can see a smear behind a tree, which when watching the film a mysterious person runs past our lead character. Throughout the opening sequence the audience are unaware of what, who or why this person is in this forest; something that not only confuses the audience but attracts them as to see what it is. This fast paced and mysterious element could be considered a unique selling point to the film.

To gain the audiences' feedback, firstly I issued some questionnaires to some students at school of whom I consider to be our target audience. Doing this gave me confidential information of which I used to help rectify any issues that the audience had; although most of it came back positive. The group of students also allowed our group to record their feedback upon watching our rough cut; of which again mostly came back positive. They had no ideas for improvements for our piece, except giving us ideas for music to add intensity. They all enjoyed the plot and commented that they would watch the remainder of the film out of choice. This gave us the impression that we have acheived our target audience.

Upon looking on the BBFC website, I believe that our film would be certified a rating of 15. In terms of showing horror, of which is most applicable to our film, BBFC states that "strong threat and menace are permitted unless sadistic or sexualised". Being a film revolved around the basis of children, actions would not be sexualised because that was not the style of film we wanted to acheive. We wanted a more fast paced and mysterious film, to which we regulate to the certificate 15. In attempt to make our audience feel fear, we may require strong language to portray this. BBFC states that "there may be frequent use of strong language (for example, ‘fuck’). The strongest  terms (for example, ‘cunt’) may be acceptable if justified by the context". It also states that "violence may be strong". To assure that I was gaining a reliable estimate of rating, I researched into other horror films to see what they were certified. "Paranormal Activity" is the route we aimed to go down, of which is a 15. Also, after looking at the regulation for an 18 certification, I think our concept is not gorey and visually violent enough to reach these regulations.

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our target audience would be teenagers and young adults, perhaps between the ages of 17- 25. I think this age group would be appropriate because the fear is evoked in very mysterious things throughout the film, aspects that perhaps an adult wouldn't find as scary. I think to find a film like ours frightening you have to have a sense of naivety to your character. However any younger than 16 would find it too frightening, therefore the distribution aspects should be aimed at the older teenager. The idea of watching a film with the intention to evoke fear and get scared appeals to this age group; whereas the older age groups do not appeal to the idea of watching a film to get scared. We want to attract an audience who are aware of the typical conventions of horror.

This is Tony. He is 19 years old and studying physical education at university. Tony has always been someone who is on track with his grades and popular with other students and teachers. When he isn't studying, Tony enjoys renting films from blockbuster and going to the cinema with his friends and on the rare occasion, his girlfriend. People call Tony lazy, he is forever sitting infront of the television and always the first to tell people about a new trailer. Tony is a person who loves to impress- he is forever the class clown and grabbing the attention of all. Although he can be quite loud and disruptive, Tony also likes going to the pub for a quiet drink with the boys. After watching a film, Tony will be the first to tell all of his opinion.

Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Looking back at the films that influenced our production of the opening sequence, films such as "Paranormal Activity", "Blair Witch Project", "Wrong Turn" and "Se7en", most of them successfull or not were low budget independant films. None of these were produced by a well known production company, however all deemed successful. It is a risk producing a low budget film.

The role of the production company is to not only raise the funding of the film, yet to physically produce the film. Film production is everything from the initial idea of the film, shooting and then editing the film. With this in mind, we are aware that our film would not be produced by a production company such as Working Title; primarily because it is to large and the genre of our piece, horror, does not attract a wide scale audience. A production company such as Working Title also has an expectation to uphold, something that a film like ours is a risk in creating. Majority of their films are family orientated and comedies.With this all in mind, I think a smaller production company would be more applicable to our film. Although our film was a success in terms of creating the horror genre and our focus groups seemed very pleased with the outcome; as previously mentioned there is limited audiences for this style of horror. A small production company would still allow the film to be a success, alongside avoiding being a huge risk for more multinational instutions such as Working Title.

Distribution concentrates on the marketing and promotion aspects of a film. "The Blair Witch Project", a film we took close reference to when producing our film, was distributed by Artisan Entertainment. Artisan Entertainment spent a reported amount of $1.5 million on web promotion as part of its marketing strategies, something which caused an eruption of excitement towards the film hence gaining an immediate audience on the day of release. Where the production side of things I believe should be left to a smaller company, in contrast, the distribution should be dramatic and impactful. With the genre of film that we have produced marketing could be very clever globally, and overall gaining a profitable outcome.

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

To compare to the characters in our opening sequence, I have chosen two characters from horror film "The Orphan".

 I chose "The Orphan" as a comparable film to our opening sequence not only because it is a clear horror genre, but because the main characters are children. This posted a link between the two films. The screen grabs I have selected were from school scenes in the two films, therefore it gave me a good opportunity to compare the two.

When looking at screen grabs from "The Orphan" one can see that the children are of a younger age than the two characters in our opening sequence. The mise-en-scene, in particular the costume is representative of a childlike nature, particularly through the hearts on the girls jumper. In the below photograph of the other character, the child's social group is represented through seeing her frilly dress, and also that she is clutching a book. It is clear that these images are attempting to show a child's and perhaps naive social group. I took these elements as inspiration when trying to represent the adolescent social group in our opening sequence.

In a similar context, our opening sequence is representative of an adolescent social group. It wasn't that difficult in representing this age group when filming because the actors, one being myself, are part of that age group. However in order to represent this social group through filming, we purposely added elements, particularly within the mise-en-scene that would make the audience aware that they are teenagers. One of these was through the use of costume. One can see through the screen grab that the girls were dressed in school uniform; this not only adds to the narrative that they were on their way home from school, yet shows how young and perhaps innocent they are through seeing their scruffy presentation. Another element is the body language. The girls, through alot of the opening sequence were linking arms and in some cases holding hands. When putting it into perspective, adult friendships dont do this, therefore it could be somewhat representative of a childs social group.

Our opening sequence also shows a teenagers social group through knowing the context of the actual plot; knowing that it was all a matter of 'dares' that the girls ran in there. When looking at the teenage stereotypes, they are known to gain a thrill and excitement from daring and intimidating things. It adds an element of immaturity knowing that they find it 'cool' to go into an intimidating woods; it is all very naive and childlike. When contrasting it to adults, they do not gain any thrill from doing intimidating things such as running into the woods. This creates a clear representation of the teenage social group.



Above is a screen grab from our opening sequence, showing two characters in full costume.





Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

1. Structure of sequence: I believe the structure of our opening sequence is that of a conventional horror film. It firstly establishes the scene through establishing shots, before introducing key characters and showing relevant credits. The short amount of narrative in the opening sequence is conventional in a horror film, making the audience establish what is happening.We did manipulate the structure of the sequence ever so slightly, as initially the title of the piece was at the end of the film; however we thought this made it look like a trailer. In this case we put it at the beginning to make the structure more logical.

2. Style/colour of font: As a group we chose an almost harsh looking font; one that is in capitals where the straight structure and line through the lettering adds a serious element to the film. We chose for the font to be in white, one reason for this was because it made the credits stand out over the top of the clip; where the clip was either in dark colouring or black and white. This font was applicable to creating the horror genre, mainly because if it were a more curvy and comedic font, the serious and eerie tone we aimed to acheive would be distracted from.

3. Genre: The genre chosen was horror, a challenging genre to create yet one that after researching with our target audience was needed more in the film industry. Horror is created through simplistic elements; one being that the actresses are the same age as the target audience. This evokes fear in the audience and creates a sense of realism within the piece, alongside challenging the conventions within a typical horror film. The setting, a forest, evokes the horror genre and is that of a conventional horror film. We thought that to make the most of this genre, we could not deviate from the conventional horror films in such a drastic way. Horror genre is limited with it's audience, therefore we needed to place a fine line between 'different' and 'conventional'.

4. Narrative enigma: The main element of enigma is created through the mystery of what is in the forest with the girls. Where we used the setting and the camera to make the audience feel that there is someone with them, we reveal nothing about this person. There is also a sense of mystery as to what happens to the missing girl; and in a similar context, we reveal very little about this element. Mystery is very conventional in horror genre in the sense that it almost plays mind games with the audience.

5. Introduction to characters: We introduced two characters in the opening sequence of our film. Seeing them walk with linked arms immediately sets a relationship between the two, something which is furthermore explored as the opening sequence continues. The dialogue that we have included initially sets a conversational tone to the piece, giving the aspect of teenage years, but as the film continues you can notice that the dialogue changes to a sense of worry. This sets the image of a strong relationship between these characters. The characters being young girls deviates from the conventional horror film; where stereotypically it would be a female victim alone in a mysterious setting. However deviating from this and making it clear that the actresses are of the same age as our target audience gives a stronger sense of horror.

6. Camera: We used a series of different camera angles in the attempt to not only present a relationship between the characters, but to evoke horror in the film. When both girls were in the shot we used medium shots and in some cases close up's to gain a relationship with the two girls. However when the camera concentrates on one of the girls, close up's are more appropriate because the reaction and worry in her face is what we want the audience to concentrate on. Something which we took inspiration from the film "Paranormal Activity" is the idea of a handheld shot. The handheld shot that we did in the final scene of our opening sequence creates a sense of menace and even mystery; it is the peak of our horror simply because it seems so real. By using these shots, horror is evoked within the audience and it gives us a more stable chance of acheiving our genre.

Sound: As previously mentioned, one aspect of sound in our opening sequence is dialogue. Dialogue sets a conversational tone between the two girls and adds a young, adolescent tone to it. Dialogue and narrative in general is conventional in the horror genre. Also, through watching the opening sequences to films such as "Paranormal Activity" and "Blair Witch Project" we became aware that music was a huge element of horror. We wanted to find a piece that wasn't too distracting from the dialogue, but evokes fear in the audience. Therefore once we found an appropriate, copyright free track we put it over the top of the whole film. By making it quieter in the moments of dialogue hence making the peaked moments of the film; the opening and ending reflect the dramatic moments of the music an overall tense atmosphere was created. We also edited the music in a fast paced and almost blunt ending, because we thought any lengthly cut wouldn't be appropriate on the film that would continue.

7. Editing and special effects: The only special effect we used was at the beginning of the piece. We transformed the establishing shot of the forest into black and white, alongside adding a blurred effect which made the forest look more mysterious. Other than this, we only added different transformation tools to make the camera work look jittery and eerie. Most of the special effects and editing that we came across in producing this opening sequence is seen in conventional horror films.

8. Mise-en-scene: We had our characters wearing school uniform so that a childlike essence was shown hence adding to aspects of horror. The only propping we had was that of the girls' school bags, which we only used in order to make the audience aware that they were coming home from school. Without the mise-en-scene making this clear, the storyline wouldnt have been as effective.