AS media final cut - Alone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x2qoCOKQvg

Dear Examiner

Dear Examiner,
We hope very much  that you enjoy reading our blog as much as we enjoyed making it.
There are categories on the top left you can use to navigate or by date in the panel directly to the left.
We have tried to make it as interesting as possible by using interactive media, visual representations of our ideas, and even sometimes some humour!
We have completed our coursework and are very proud of it and all of the skills we have learnt throughout the project
all that's left to say is thank you for reading this,
and enjoy!

Evaluation

Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
 
Question 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?
 
Question 3 - What kind of media intitution might distribute your product and why?
 
Question 4 and 5 - Who would be the audience for your media product? How did you attract/address your audience?

Question 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of contructing this product?

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

Evaluation question 7

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



Evaluation Question 3

What kind of media intitution might distribute your product and why?


        

Evaluation Question 1

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

Conventions used
A typical convention of Horror films for all audiences is turning normally secure and safe places or people into a threat, such as in the film the Woman in Black (click here for full post) for full and  The Children (click here for full post)

We used this convention in order to make the audience feel uncomfortable and shocked, which is why we had the main villian (according to Propps characters) as a seemly innocent female child, as this stark contrast between the normal perception of children and the shock of her makeup and threatening actiosn withing teh opening help to vastly build the audiences tension and fear.

Another very stereotypical convention we use was the 'haunted house' as seen not only in films such as the Woman in Black (click here), but also gothic novels such as Frankenstein (click here), which also helped portray our Gothic theme

(click here for full post on final location)

We wanted to use this convention in order to obviously signify the genre to the audience and also because there are no other houses around it it gives the audience the impressions she is isolated and alone, linking to our title. The fact that is derelict and abandoned, as well as signifying danger also gives the impression that she has been abandoned to the audience and the broken gates and glass create a feeling of foreboding, as it foreshadows violence.

Another convention we used was that horror usually contains pathetic fallacy, which normally means storms and violent weather. such as Wind Chill.

Although we could not control the weather, as it was windy during production we added strong wind sound effects to convey the tension and danger in the opening, and also the loud noise makes the audience feel uncomfortable so they are tense for when the girl appears.

Another convention which we used is the female protagonist, as in films such as I Spit on your Grave the 'hero' (according to Propp's character theory) is always a young female, as they are considered as vulnerable and allow the audience to sympathise more and therefore become more involved with the story.

We thought this would help the audience to distinguish our genre and also help them become more gripped by the story and encourage them to keep watching.

A particularly specific convention of the gothic sub-genre which we wanted to include was candlelight, and more specifically, antique (or old fashioned looking, Victorian) candelabras. We noticed this used in Gothic films such as Sweeney Todd in which most scenes are lit by candles or lamps. (click here for props research)

We used only candlelight apart from a spotlight on the main actress's face to create a feeling fo the unknown and also used a candlebra on the mantelpiece of the fireplace to emphasise the victorian influence and the gothic sub-genre

One convention which we challenged is that most modern films aimed at young audience are in colour. We were inspired by some of the first horror films such as Nosferatu (click here for full post on gothic films) which although at the time they were filmed had no choice between colur and black and white created a convention in their own right which has been lost over the years as younger audiences become more impatient and more keen on visual spectacle than on the storyline

 

We chose to challenge the modern convention of full colour always being used for films aimed at young audiences, as we wanted ot have a unique selling point and also felt it would help create a gothic atmosphere and enable us to intertextual reference within the rest of the film (had we made it) to the original horror's to create a sense of a time gone by, with connotations of things that are gone or dead, adding to the spiritual aspects of the little girl.

For the titles we decided to use a convention of gothic, and as it is often linked with Victorian times, the Gothic genre is often represented using serif fonts, as they look more traditional and old fashioned, which we also noticed in our research into other Gothic media

We chose to use a simple serif font to highlight the gothic theme and also to make a link with Victorian times (click here for post on the Victorian era) which is when the little girl is from.

Overall, we conformed to most of the conventions of Horror as we wanted to make the genre immediately clear to the audience, and we felt challenging too many conventions would confuse the audience, and make the opening less dramatic.

Pitch to Alan Sugar

This is a pitch to Lord Sugar made by Team Resolution to gain investment for there Horror Film, Alone. 

Questionnaire Response

15 people, male and female between the ages of 16 and 19 took part in our survey at our screening.
Below is an example of the responses we recieved, then after that are the full results for each question, and how this affected our final changes.

Did you enjoy our film opening?

14/15 people answered yes

What genre do you think this film opening is? (open question)
horror- 12
psychological horror - 2
psychological thriller - 1

This proves that our piece clearly communicated its genre which confirms that we accurately used all of the codes and conventions of horror that we researched.

 

Do you think the font for our credits fits with the genre of the opening?

 

Yes - 13

Didn't like the colour/the red was too bright - 2

Although 2 people said they thought the red was too bright in comparison to the black and white footage, we decided that because this was such a minority we would keep our stylistic choice as it is shocking to the audience and provides a strong contrast and makes the audience feel slighly uncomfortable.

What would you change to improve it? (open question)
Although this was an open question we did recieve many similar answers

Many of the suggestions for improvements were differences of opinion such as the red font and the black and white and because these are so key to the style of our piece we decided to keep them how they are.
Quite a few of the responses were in relation to the actual footage, meaning to change them we would have to re-film, which would be impossible within our timescale. However we have decided to make some final adjustments to the part with the mirror as although we can't change the footage we will try to add some sort of sound effect when she sees her to add more shock to that moment.
We are also going to adjust the sound at the end as although we initially wanted silence we have now decided to have sudden loud noise to shock teh audience and make them feel uncomfortable.

What was your favourite part? (open question)
This also recieved many similar answers.

The most popular part of our opening was the end, which we have decided to slightly adjust to make the most of the climatic moment in order to maximise the impact on the audience, making them want to watch the film.

The mirror part and the music were also popular so we have kept the music exactly how it was and added more sound effect to the mirror part to make the most of the shock to the audience

 

What was your least favourite part? (open question)

We have again grouped similar answers to provide quantitative data which we can the represent and analyse

 We are going to re-adjust the end section which includes the title. We are going to reorder the footage and the title so that it has a more shocking impact on the audience.

We are nto going to change the black and white as we have researched this stylistic choice, and although it does not appeal to all of our target audience, it provides a unique selling point for our film and the rest of the film would not all be in black and white.

Narrative Theory

Aristotle
Aristotle proposed that all narratives should have a 'unity' of time and place, suggesting that they should be told in chronoligcal order and in real time

However, from our own experience we know that consuming narratives has changed vastly since then, so we will not be applying aristotles theory to our work as we have decided it will be more interesting if we tell the story in a non-chronological order.



Freitag
Proposed there were 5 parts:

• Exposition
• rising action
• Climax
• Falling action
• Resolution/Catastrophe

Although we are making a film opening, so will include exposition by showing the young woman first who is clearly the protaganist, and the setting which is an abandoned school, we will also include the rising action, as we feel by beginning around the middle of the narrative it would create mystery for the audience and heighten the tension so we will use shots of broken glass and blood to foreshadow conflisct, and of the little girl advancing towards the young woman to create the rising action, building up to the climax, which is where our opening will end.

Levi-Strauss
He proposed that in every narrative there should be binary opposition, e.g good vs evil or light vs dark.
We will create this opposition in our opening by using dark and bruised makeup and low key lighting to demonstrate to the audience that the little girl is the evil force, and the opposite for the main character, keeping her fairly well lit, but with some shadows to make sure there is an undertone of fear in the opening.

Vladimir Propp
Came up with the theory that every character is part of one 'sphere of action' which included heros, villains, helpers, dispachers (who send the hero on their quest)

In our opening we will include only two spheres, as there are only two characters, neither of which are speaking roles, the main character will be a victim hero (the centre of the villians attanetions) while the little girl will be the villian.

We think this will be particularly effective as young children have connotations of innocence, and to make the villian a young girl will shock the audience.

FIRST CUT - Alone

This is our first cut of our Media AS project 'Alone'.

 

New Storyboard for second location

Score

In our early brainstorms, we discussed the idea of using a nursery rhyme as a component of our score for our opening, as it would fit well with themes of children and innocence, and if we could warp and distort the nursery rhyme, it would support the fact that the little girl is also warped and twisted.
One of the props suggested was also a small, old music box, so I have also tried to incorperate this into the score.
I experimented using garage band, and began by recording the melody of the nusery rhyme ring a ring o roses using the onscreen keyboard, with the instrument set to grand piano (Default)

 Ten I experimented by turning up the echo and reverb levels and the track below is with the reverb as high as it would go.

I also made the track more slick by correcting my timing mistakes by using the edit tool, which allows you to change the time, pitch and velocity of notes individually (see below)

 

I then tried adding another layer of a very low continious note, as a drone, as this is often used in the scores of horror films. I tried all of the piano types, and decided out of all them, retro bass was the best. So I added a long continious note on the bottom, however I discovered it is not possible to do a very long fade which is one of the things I wanted to try as I wanted to fade up so gradually the audience didn't notice when it began, as this would build the tension and sense of unease.

 

 

 

I then used the built in sampler tool, and recorded a note from a music box so I could play it using the keyboard and recorded the melody of ring a ring o roses using the music box instrument.

 

 

 I also then used the small arrows above the keyboard to transpose it downward, so it wasn't as high pitched.

 

After showing these to the rest of the group we decided to begin with just the low music box for one verse, then repeat with the drone, then repeat with a child singing over the top, as this will link with our young girl character and make the score more relevant to the storyline, and will also help to slowly build up the tension throughout the opening, as because of our non-linear stucture we begin the story just before the climax in the narrative so there needs to be high tension.

Film Schedule

To obtain the best continuity possible, we decided we wanted to film all the footage we needed in one day of filming if possible. We are going to film on Sunday 3rd February and below is our schedule containing all of the timings and equipment we need.

Fake Blood

We were keen to use fake blood in our film opening, we thought we could use it to creep and scare our audience, we thought we could also use it as a colour element as we wanted to experiment with having the blood as the only colourful item.

So we made different batches of fake blood and tested them. We thought the less we made the more blood like it looked, as it was darker and thicker, however didn't spread on paper well so we experimented with different thickness and came to the conclusion to use a thinker substance made it look more blood like.

Props research

I collected possible props from different sources: a relative who has many antique items, an antiques shop and the props store of my amateur dramatic society.

A victorian advertising doll

A silver plated 5 candled candelabra

a 1950's china doll

a 40 year old 'well loved' small teddy bear

3 oil powered late victorian lamps

A wooden grandfather clock

A small wooden rocking horse

 

A wall mounted candle bracket

We have decided to use the rocking horse, the oil lamps and the dolls and in our target audience research we found that these were considered to be the most 'creepy' however we decided against using the doll at the top as we felt it wasn't childish enought to create the contrast between innocence and fear. We also decided it would be impractical to use the wall mounted candle holders as we would not be able to attach them safely to the wall of our location, so we will use the candelabra and lamps instead.

Location Video

We visited the location today to explore the different rooms, buildings and the natural lighting available.  We took pans of all of the rooms we thought would fit in to our film opening, as some contained graffiti and wouldn't fit in to our victorian aspect.

This video has helped us see the different aspects of the location we can use for our film opening, it also shows different aspects of rooms that we can use and by also using the lighting, camera angles and shots we can manipulate the location to enhance and captivate the audience as well as hopefully scaring them.

Target Audience Research

We have considered our target audience and have come up with a few questions ot ask them about what scares them most about horror, and what horror films they like, as well as a few specific questions relating to our own ideas such as balck and white and children. Below is an interview with two 16-17 year olds and afterwards there is a short paragraph of what we have concluded from the research and how it will impact our film opening.

From this research we have decided that:

• The film will be at least partly in black and white (but probably not all in B&W)
• Our location will be one of the abandoned buildings we have investigated, as the target audience find these the most creepy
• We will try to include a doll/dolls in one of our shots
• We should have a long build up to increase tension and fear

Target Audience Research

After we interviewed two of our target audience, we also decided to create an online survey to obtain more quantitative data from a larger sample. Only females answered our survey and they were all either 16 or 17 which is our target audience (see below)

 Because of the mostly negative response to Black and white film, combined with the comments in the interview that young adults find it 'boring' we have decided to make only small parts of our piece black and white, as a visula effect to show the child is from the past to create more tension and as it demonstarted to the audience that she is long since dead.

Rocking horses and dolls were the most scary according to the target audience, so we have managed to source a small rocking horse and at least 4 china dolls which we will use in our piece as props for close ups. We could not find a music box, but we are basing the sound on a music box type instrument which should have a similar impact.

Abandoned building was by far the most popular place to set a horror film, and we have investigated a few different possible locations (see Location research) and found an abandoned school, formerly Lillesden school for girls, in which we are going to set our horror opening.

The fact that over 50% of our target audience said they find children scary 'a lot' in horror films stongly supports our decision to focus on a young child from the past, as from our reserach into other films (see Analysis of 'the children'  and 'Uninvited') we discovered that one of the most primal fears is innocence being ruined and this is an idea we want to explore in our piece. 

This supports our own personal views that we should have a girl actress in our piece, as visually they can be made to look more innocent which makes it all the more twisted when they become monsters.

Japanese Puppetry Experimenting

We were interested in using Japanese Puppetry so we experimented using it and edited it together.

From the experiments we concluded we didn't want to include Japanese puppetry in our film opening as to make a successful and effective piece of puppetry we would need more resources and the skills to produce an effective piece. We also concluded that it would take away from the action we wish to include in our film opening and does not fit in to our early decision of Victorian, so we thought it would be better to exclude this from our film opening.

Uninvited

I looked at the trailer for the film uninvited, and found a young girl character who is meant to be dead, which is similar to some of the ideas we discussed for our own project. 

 This picture is of one fo the recurring themes which is ink, however I thought this is useful because we could use similar ideas but instead with blood.

 This image links with two ideas we discussed which were bathrooms and relections so we could combine these in our own opening.

In the last picture you can see the blur of the children moving and also it's in black and white which was something we're thinking about.