Evaluation - In What Way Does Your Product Use, Challenge Or Develop Forms And Conventions?

In our horror opening we use and challenge the forms and conventions of typical horror openings in a number of different ways. We have a conventional victim being a young, white, vulnerable girl. This is a very common victim archetype in many horror and slasher films (Scream , Halloween, etc.)This is because you instantly question what is going to

 happen to her: ‘She’s a weak girl she can’t defend herself!’

In our opening scene we have a main character who you assume is going to be the victim, getting ready for a Halloween party and getting restless waiting for her roommate to arrive. Her anxiousness puts the audience on edge as well as her being alone, another classic horror convention.

We encourage this even more by having a shot of the girl getting dressed (in night vision) into her party outfit. The night vision effect and angles of the camera looking down on her emphasize that she’s a potential victim and that something’s about to happen.  Voyeurism...also this night vision is meant to be from the murders point of view and we see this more when there are long distance shots of the girl smoking on the balcony. This gives more of a scenes that the girls is being stalked by someone.    

                                       

 She is also drinking, therefore sinning, and in most horror/slasher films the person sinning normally dies. I think this helps interest the audience. As you see her drink you want to tell her to stop (this makes you connect with the character) so she doesn't get too drunk as she won’t be able to defend herself in a survival situation. 

Editing effects, camera movement and the song Tainted Love by Marilyn Manson all emphasise her intoxication via conventional cinema methods.

Red herrings are also used for example when the buzzer goes off, she looks in the intercom and sees a scary face, however it is only a mask being worn by her friend.

The way we have challenged the forms of a normal horror film is the fact that she is not in fact the victim - it is her best friend who gets killed in the lift. We only see her via a screen saver on the laptop. This is quite rare for a horror film, and we have created suspense for the audience yet surprise as they are misled as to who the victim is going to be.

The kill in this horror however is quiet conventional as we use a knife , the main weapon from most slashers. Also there is a close up of a girl screaming. lastly a mirror with words spelt in blood all aspects you could find in a stereotypical horror.

Evaluation - What Kind Of Media Institution Might Distribute Our Media Product And Why?

I think the media institution that might distribute our production would be Revolver Entertainment.

revolver group is a British multi-award-winning film distributer and producer which works internationally with different digital media companies such as Apple itunes, NetFlix, Amazon, Nintendo Wii, Sony Playstation, Vudu, and etc...

Now after all the works and efforts that we have put in making our production, We need a reliable company to market and circulate our film, not only for home viewing (DVDs,Blue-rayS,..) but also in theatres. Film distributers promote the films by putting them on Tv ads, Posters, Websites, Trailers, or using any creative way to interest the target audience to pay for watching the film. And that is how how a film becomes a success. And because our film does not feature any movie star, it is important to get distributed in the best way possible.

Revolver Entertainment is one of the leading film distributers in the Uk that has released some good british horror films similar to our production, such as: The chatroom, The woman, Atrocious, Sick Nurses And The Cellar Door.

Having offices in London and Los Angles, The company provides a world wide distribution of many films every year.

Evaluation - Who Was Your Target Audience And How And Why Did You Attract Them?

Our target audience was the usual demographic you would expect from the slasher sub-genre. The main target group were middle-working class, white males aged between 16-24. 

They are for the most part, students either in college or university, or they are at least seeking some form of education from an institution. Basically the typical American 'college aged' person.

They are the type of people that generally enjoy having fun in their youth because "you can only live once" and go around partying or throwing parties, disobeying their elders and behaving promiscuously. This is because most horrors appeal to this demographic in general, but our production should appeal even more to this demographic seeing as one of the characters in our opening sequence gets killed at a party.

The plot largely involves 2 female characters setting up a party in the early evening which again follows the conventions our target audience would expect from a horror film. And because the character that gets killed off is an attractive female, this would satisfy the predominantly male audience who prefer watching females for obvious reasons! And because the female characters are young teens this brings about their vulnerability because society deems young people and the female gender as weak and submissive.

Our opening sequence didn’t even show a glimpse of who or what the killer was, (which is typical of the slasher sub-genre) it only showed the stalker sequences, i.e. the point of view, over the shoulder and long shots all from the killers perspective. I would say this is sticking to the convention of keeping the killers identity a secret for as long as possible. 

Also one massive convention our opening stuck to was having the promiscuous, practical joke pulling character getting killed off. In nearly every slasher film, the character that does this normally ends up suffering a disastrous fate. In the intercom system she pretended to be a killer in a mask scaring the main character half to death! Needless to say she was killed soon after. 

Evaluation - What Have We Learned About New Technologies

During our project we used a variety of new technologies that most of us hadn't used before. For instance, I hadn't ever used Blogger before and had to learn how to make a blog, create posts, insert images, upload videos, etc. which was quite easy once I got to grips with it. However there were many harder things we had to learn about and use such as the camera for filming and iMovie software for editing. We had quite a lot of trouble with our filming and the camera in general as our first shoot would not upload to the iMac's we were using. This required us to re-shoot the entire sequence which turned out to be a blessing as we improved on a lot of our mistakes.

Also during the filming we had multiple problems with lighting. We found it quite difficult during some shots as most of our production was filmed indoors. With normal domestic lighting it became too bright and didn't particularly have the right sort of feel for the horror genre. However, we remedied this by filming at night and having dull lighting so that you could see the action clear enough but still in a suitably creepy environment.

We then had more trouble with the iMac's and iMovie software when uploading due to various hard drives on the computers and network complexities. We saved our work to the wrong drive at first so our first lot of editing was completely lost which again required us to re-import the footage which was quite time consuming and by this stage extremely frustrating. Once the footage was re-imported and saved on the correct drive we then had trouble editing it effectively. Not knowing how to use all of the tools before an introductory session we had which helped us quite a bit to understand and enable us to edit at a higher quality. In the end we did manage to successfully shoot, edit, evaluate and plan our production to a high quality and we are all satisfied with the final product.

Evaluation - How Have We Progressed Since The Preliminary Task?

Since we started our AS Media coursework we have done a lot of work with the camera and practiced an awful lot with how we were going to film our opening sequence. Infact we actually shot an entire practice run of our opening sequence and looked it over to see what shots looked good and what ones didn't. Admittidely it took a lot of time to find the correct shot angles, distance and movement. But in the end it seems to have paid off as our final production has a wide variety of shot types and quite clean movement. For example theres a range of shots such as establishing shots, long shots, low angle, high angle, worms eye, point of view, over the shoulder etc. All of which we've learnt since the preliminary task and aimed to perfect to provide a clear understanding of the characters position within the opening sequence. For instance the vulnerable characters were both mainly filmed from a high angle connoting that they are being looked down upon, made smaller and overall make them seem helpless and alone. Using the techniques we've picked up and learnt we've been able to create an effective opening sequence that fits the specified genre.

Storyboards For Our Production

Page 1:-

These are the beginning scenes of our opening sequence up till the part where the body of her best friend is found in the lift.

Pages 2 & 3:-
These parts of our opening sequence are where the other friend is murdered however we have 2 alternate endings in which the final murder of the opening sequence differentiates.     
                                              

Reconnaissance For Filming Location

We need a building with 4 floors and a lift for our opening sequence as well as an intercom system. I think the location I've photographed fits the criteria for our filming.

"The 4th Floor"

Lift Interior

Landing That Leads From The Lift To The Flat

Intercom System

Target Audience

We handed out a questionnaire to 20 people who we knew liked horror movies and just asked them a few questions to determine the features and plot of our opening sequence. Because our film has a ehite cast and they are the majoeiity population in the UK we've chosen white, English people. Horror movies are particularly popular among young men so we have targeted males aged 15-18 who would likely be studying at school or college.

Questionnaire

This is just a short questionnaire to determine the target audience for our upcoming horror movie we'll be filming. We would greatly appreciate if you could spare 5 minutes of your time to fill it in for us! Thanks!

           Please circle one answer for each question:

       1. What is your age?

           16-18    |   19-21    |   22-24    |   25-27     |   28-30    |    30+

       2. What is your gender?

            Male    |   Female

       3. What race are you?

           British    |   African    |   Asian    |   Eastern European    |   North American    |   South -                        American    |   Other (Please state) ….......

       4. What do you do in life?

           Working     |    Student     |    Un-employed

       5.  What sort of locations do you go to when you go out with friends?

            Bars    |     Cinemas    |    Parks    |    Restaurants    |    Other (Please State) ….......



These were our results: 

As you can see from our results that most of our target audience
 is 16-18year olds so this is who our horror movie will be aimed at

A majority of the people we questioned were also males.
This gives us another demographic for our target audience.

Also a majority of the people questioned were British.

They were also mainly students so we'll have to make sure
that students can relate to our movie so that it'll interest them.

As the majority go to the cinema the most when out with friends
this would be an ideal spot to advertise our movie if we were
distributing it.

From the majority of our results we've decided that our specified target audience is:

• 16-18 Year Old
• Males
• British/White
• Students

Further Research Into Similar Texts

I've now researched the 2010 film "Devil" seems as me and my group have a final idea. A great amount of the film itself is set in a lift which will be one of the main locations for our opening sequence so therefore I thought this would be a suitable text to research. In the movie a group of people become trapped in a lift with no one other than the devil him or herself! The film directed by John Erick Dowdle continuously keeps the audience in the dark (literally) throughout the whole movie with the clever use of blackouts within the lift. Each time the lift blacks out another member of the group dies and with the clever use of sound effects during the blackouts the audience understands exactly what happens to the victim. This would be quite a clever aspect to take on as in our opening sequence we want the killers identity to remain a mystery. So with the clever use of sound effects we can still get the full effect of the murder.

Movie advertisement for "Devil"

Final Idea & Synopsis

After me and my group discussed our ideas we finally came up with a final plan for our production.
Our introductory title for our opening sequence is "The 4th Floor". Our opening sequence will consist of two girls and one killer. One girl arrives home with some shopping and buzzes up to the other girl through the intercom system in their block of flats asking for her to help her however when she gets to the top with the bags of shopping her friend discovers her blood smothered dead body in the lift. At this point her friend runs back inside to call the police but when she crosses the threshold of the door, the door closes behind her and at this point we realise the killers in the flat with her.

Research Into Similar Texts

As you've previously read. I have had ideas on both a slasher opening sequence as well as a zombie opening sequence. So I have decided to look into and research texts similar to that of which I'll be producing.
I firstly looked into slashers and one film in particular which was "Halloween". Made in 1978 and directed by John Carpenter. It is easily one of the most iconic and recognised horror films of all times. Also where its one of the first ever slashers, I thought it would be an ideal text to get some background information on the slasher sub genre. It uses quite simple sound effects as well as a simple yet iconic soundtrack to gain the viewers attention instantaneously. The second you hear the "Halloween" theme, you know automatically that something bad is about to happen and to achieve that simply through a soundtrack is quite impressive in itself. Theres also plenty of point of view shots from the killers perspective where we get a clear and horrifying view of how exactly he's killing his victims. Just those two little aspects of the entire movie make it quite an entertaining and effective slasher.
I then looked into some of the first ever zombie movies by George Romero. I particularly looked into "Night Of The Living Dead" which was the first in a popular zombie trilogy and even though the movie I looked into was in black and white and didn't have all the special effects, props and make up that many modern zombie movies have. Romero's work is still considered to stand out above the rest and is probably one of the best zombie movies of all time. This is because Romero was capable of creating such fear and tension within the film that the audience could acctually relate to and by doing this through his filmwork he was able to create an effective piece that earned over $18 million internationally.

Movie poster for George Romero's "Night Of The Living Dead"

My Initial Ideas For The Opening Sequence To A Horror Movie

There are 2 possible ideas I have at the moment for the opening sequence to my horror movie...

1. I was firstly thinking of a slasher opening based upon "Jack The Ripper". So the opening sequence would involve a mysterious individual stalking his prey through a secluded location to show his or her vulnerability, followed by the murder taking place and then the opening titles etc. Which sounds quite basic but with the right effects added as well as costume, make up and props. I think it could be quite an effective opening piece.
2. My second idea is a zombie based one. Basically, it would be based upon the Nazi's experiments during WW2. Where a group of Nazi scientists would discover how to bring the dead back to life. So the opening sequence would consist of their success in this experiment but with the twist of the resurrected human turning into a flesh eating, crazed maniac.

A Nazi Zombie

The History Of The Horror Genre

The horror genre was first recognised in the early 1930's when movies such as "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" were released. This was the beginning of a whole new world for the film industry as over 80 years later the horror genre still exists and is going stronger than ever with many new horror movies being released regularly.
From the 1930's to around the 50's horror consisted of a mainly "gothic" theme as most of the settings would either be darkly lit castles or dungeons etc. However by the 50's it was totally revamped as many sequels to the orignal horror films from the 30's were being re-made in colour aswell as new ideas being explored. For example Don Siegel's "Invasion of the body snatchers" (1956) which depicted a terrifying alien invasion.Or George Romero's "Night of the living dead" (1968) where the dead rose from their graves.
By the time of the 90's the horror genre had become more popular than ever with many movies such as "Scream" and "Final Destination" being produced. Even now the sequels to those very movies are being made and throughout all the years of horror, all of the ideas explored are still being re-invented and put forward as chilling, nail biting movies which almost everyone still enjoys.

Horror And Its Sub Genres

Just like any other genre, the horror genre targets a particular audience. However the horror genre intends to startle/terrify the viewer by bringing their deepest fears to life through film. How it does this depends on what sort of sub-genre the horror falls into. For example there are slasher horrors such as "Scream" and "Halloween" which normally depend on a surreal scenario of a serial killer running around a suburb with basic props such as a knife and a mask. Which becomes quite frightening as its very capable of actually happening. Theres also Sci-fi horrors such as "Alien" as well as comedy horrors like "Scary Movie". Theres a wide range of sub genres that horror falls into which all ages and audiences can enjoy. So all in all the horror genre appeals to pretty much anybody who doesn't mind being entertained by blood, guts and gore. Whether it makes us laugh or cry, most people definitely enjoy some sort of horror movie.

The killer from the movie "Scream" (1996)