We started by analysing adverts, films and posters looking particularly at mise en scene, connotation and denotation and semiotics. This analysis prepared us for analysing our chosen horror film opening. Hannah, Ellie and I chose the psychological horror film, Hide and Seek. This analysis gave us some good ideas for our own opening. For example, the scene where the mother is washing her glass and we see a family photo out of focus, this photo appears to have reflections on it which looks like bars (maybe meaning they are trapped, the family is trapped with the Dad who we later find out is quite dangerous). Such connotations are embedded within our own work when the little girl is swinging in the park and we have a shot behind barriers showing she is trapped (ours was more noticeable). We also watched and analysed Psycho where we imitated a Hitchcock technique, we got Lucy’s Mother (Hannah Moore) to walk towards the camera and then walking out of the frame. I really liked this camera technique because it makes the audience feel almost excluded in what is happening and also makes them feel uncomfortable because there is a few seconds of mystery as to where the character has gone.
In Psycho Marion gets murdered in the shower which is a very private space in which someone has invaded and I liked this idea and wanted to put it in our opening however did not feel it would go well with the storyline.
In Hide and Seek a home is the main setting for the strange occurrences that happen and I also liked this idea that that is the place where you are supposed to feel safe and protected but if something bad is happening there then the victim feels more violated because if they do not feel safe at home then how can they feel safe anywhere else?
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
We have one primary social group which we use in our opening and that is family. A little girl is lost and her mother is trying to find her and when she does there is a distance between them however the mother seems to be very caring towards her and concerned as to where she went. The audience have not yet seen them together before this, so they might think it is normal however from Lucy’s blank reactions towards her, some might think that something strange has happened.
Our storyline links to current affairs happening in the media at the moment. Although it is not a positive thing or a very nice thing to talk about, there are missing children in the news which maximises the anxiety of our viewers because many of them might be mothers or fathers or people with a close relationship with children. For this type of audience they will feel sympathy and panic for the mother of the child who is lost, therefore relating with the characters more and thus frightening them which is a typical desired reaction that a director of the horror film aims to achieve.
Our horror film includes a young girl who I played. I wore a red dress and a red raincoat for throughout the opening; the cross reference of red is associated with danger and how the girl is in danger and also everyone close to her are too. The dress represents her innocence, as young girls are stereotyped as being angelic by nature. This is enhanced by the ponytails and how we are introduced to her in the park. We use some high angles and aerial shots to highlight her vulnerability.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
If I was to choose a production company to distribute our horror film I would choose Warner Bros. as they have distributed many different horror films that are based upon possession, like our film. The Shining (1980), The Exorcist (1973) and also Fallen (1998) are all examples of films that use the idea of possession to scare viewers, making it a horror, that were distributed by Warner Bros. These films are fairly old therefore I think that this production company would be happy to distribute our film as it is set in the present and it is a recent film.
Using The Shining as an example, the budget for this film was £22,000,000 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081505/business) and the total domestic gross for this film is £44,017,374 (http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=shining.htm). The budget is usually helped raised by the production company and seeing as our film would be a fairly low-budget film it is a good thing to think that Warner Bros. could, depending on how they find -the film, help fundraise a high-budget horror so that we could think about increasing the technology used or the rating of the actors to make the film more intriguing and so that it could compete with the high technological movies that are currently popular.
I chose the mainstream film industry because that way, providing they like our film, Warner Bros. could support our financial needs and therefore we could spend a lot of money on marketing (e.g. advertising campaigns etc) as I think this is the most important part of the post-production process.
Also, we would have a lot of advice offered to us seeing as they are a very successful company they know what people want, what we could do to increase sales etc. I think that this advice would be extremely helpful because we have had very little film experience.
If we chose to have an art-house film or independent film we would not have much financial support therefore we could not afford celebrity actors/actresses. In a way this is an advantage because people have not seen these actors/actresses before, they get even more frightened because to them, this cast is ordinary just like them and makes the audience think if it happened to the cast, it could happen to them. However, I think using celebrity actors/actresses would be a good way to entice potential consumers into watching our film.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
I feel that our most popular audience would be the younger generation, older teenagers or young adults because news travels the faster with this age of people because of social networking sites etc.
I think that a female teenager of about the age of 15-17 would be a typical audience for this film. I believe that a female would be more interested as the main characters are female so they would relate to it better. I think the age would be about this because this is the age where you want to scare yourself more than maybe a mature adult.
However, this age group would find it hard to relate to the costumes, characters and settings in our film as Lucy is wearing child-like clothes and is very innocent and 15-17 year olds do not tend to go to the park or graveyard much, which is where most of the film would be set.
Using this assumption I think that our film certificate would be a 15. This is because I think that, being a horror and one about a young girl, audiences of 12 would get very frightened or just not be interested in a horror. However, I believe having a film certificate of 18 would be too high as it is not gory or has sexually references. Our horror film would be a psychological horror thus is not a gory film but it plays with your mind, therefore a 15 certificate would be adequate for this subgenre.
Character Profile
Age: 16
Gender: Female
Interests: Swimming, partying, cinema, any excuse to meet friends! Listening to music, going to concerts.
School/ Work: AS Levels, part time job, lifeguarding course.
Favourite Film Genre: Romantic/ Comedy because it is so realistic and they often have well-known actors/actresses.
Do you like Horror Films?: “Depends on the type of horror, I hate gore because it makes me feel ill but I love a good psychological horror film!
Why do you like psychological horror?: It seems more realistic and therefore it scares me more which is the main aim for a horror.
What is your favourite horror film?: Paranormal Activity because I can relate to it more than a gory film and it also played with and stuck in my mind.
Would you rather watch a horror film with famous actors/actresses or people who you’ve never seen before?: A famous cast is more appealing and persuades me to watch the film. If I’ve seen the actor/actresses before and I know about them, I can feel sympathy towards them and therefore relate to their character and be more frightened when they are in danger rather than a stranger that I have never seen before.
This is a typical teenager that would watch my film, providing I advertise correctly to draw her attention. She likes psychological horrors which I would categorise my film as and she loves going to the cinema with friends. This age group typically goes to the cinema with a multiple number of friends meaning my film would get more sales.
To attract this age range I would advertise via TV commercials on channels such as E4, ITV 1 and ITV 2, because these are the channels that my typical target audience would watch as E4 is aimed and watched by many teenagers. If I could choose the time I would say 6pm-10pm because this is the time that I would assume the average 16 year-old watches television.
I would also advertise on YouTube before official videos, such as VEVO. Also perhaps social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter. Facebook allows businesses to advertise on the toolbar at the side and, given the correct presentation I feel that our advertisement could possibly stand out to our target audience. Twitter allows businesses to promote tweets so we could get our film known by promoting it and hopefully therefore trending so it would be noticeable to all twitter users.
All these different types of advertising are a great way to make our target audience aware of our media product. Social networking sites and online advertising on well-known websites would capture teenagers more than advertising through bus stop posters etc.
We can also rely on social networking sites to advertise our film for free, providing it is a success. For example if somebody watched it and thought it was great they might post it on Facebook or Twitter and then people notice this and might be persuaded to go and watch as well.
5. How did you attract/address the audience?
() This is a link to my video of interviews. I asked a range of people aged 15 and above ‘Do you like watching Horror Films?’ I had a variety of answers from yes and no however I learnt that…
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I have used Final Cut Express to edit the film which is software only available on Apple’s Macs. This is a very useful software as it allows you to change the transitions and how the picture and quality of the film looks in many different ways.
A great thing about it is you can cut clips easily, change the transitions to many different types to dissolves, iris or choose not to have one. I used a cross dissolve when Lucy’s mother is walking through the graveyard trying to find Lucy, this showed time had gone passed without the audience being bored of seeing someone walking.
You can also import sounds and videos and titles very quickly and have multiple sounds playing at one time. This became very helpful when Lucy is found but she walks away from her mother. We wanted Lucy’s sound motif of ‘twinkle twinkle little star’ but I also wanted a creepy quiet sound in the background to show that something bad is going to happen, something is not right and also emphasise the contrapuntal sound of the nursery rhyme, Final Cut Express allowed us to do this.
The way it is set out is simple so you know all the different aspects of the film that are playing at the same time and it is easy to move one sound, for example, further by a second.
The disadvantages to this editing software is that it can get complicated if you have a lot going on at the same time, plus every time you import a video or sound you have to render it which can take a very long time. Also, if you are looking for a specific technique such as a complicated blur or trying to slow down the tempo of a scene, it can get difficult to find that unless you have a helper who knows a lot about it. We wanted to slow the nursery rhyme down when Lucy walks away to make it creepier and thus again, emphasise the fact that it is contrapuntal sound.
Another technology we used was the HD Flip Video Camera which was very easy to use and get used to, it is quality was good and the battery lasted for a while however if we chose to film for a whole day it would not of lasted that long which meant we had to film different scenes on different days which meant getting the continuity correct.
7. Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?
I have learnt a lot about Final Cut Express since the Preliminary Task, for instance, how to edit and how the editing takes just as long, if not longer than filming and planning the film and also how important the editing is in the process of the production.
I have learnt that in media studies the small details in the background are just as important as the foreground focus. Also, as a director you have got to think about what everything in the frame means and perhaps give hints of the story away, or the characters personality by the small details in the background and what they mean.
In the preliminary task we did not prepare our props or costumes so we made sure we did in the final piece, because otherwise it would have taken us a lot longer to film if we were not prepared.
We also thought a lot more about the location and costumes of the characters and how these met the codes and conventions of the horror genre.