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 2

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

Our target audience is 15-25 year olds (click here for target audience research) therefore we decided to make our main character fit into this age group this is so the character becomes more realatable. We made our main protagonist a female because the viewer subconsciously thinks that a woman is more innocent and corruptible than if it was a man. Women are considered more vulnerable. If a man was being threatened, particularly a muscular male, the audience just wonder why he doesn't defeat the said murderer.

Example of another film where a vulnerable

woman is used

The fact that our protagonist is female in the opening also leads to open more doors in her storyline such as a love interest. Our target audience being 15-25 year olds this would appeal to them.

Our main character could be both the hero and the victim in the end

Also the fact our Villain is a child makes our female protagonist more vulnerable because women are seen as the most nurturing and do not wish to harm children. So as soon as you see the child you know the protagonist will face a mental dilemma along with the audience. The other reason we chose a little girl as our villain is that adults are so used to being in control of situations, it's unnerving to think that a child is capable of doing things such as murdering people. It makes audiences feel uncomfortable which adds to the horror.

Child from the horror film 'mama'

The protagonist is white middle class. We chose this because from our interviews and research it went with the most popular social group. This also fitted the positioning of our opening and location of our character who lives in the country and enjoys things such as jogging.

Interview with social group

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.

Harriett's Costume

Harriett’s costume

We took a long time deciding what Harriett was going to wear but in the end we went for a casual look, but each item of clothing holds significance.

·         The dark trainer shoes show that her character is quite grungy and later in the film you would see that which is why her character isn’t afraid to enter a scary looking house because she enjoys dark things

·         The tight running trousers are to show the fact that she is on a jog and that’s why she’s running past

·         Her hoodie symbolises the coldness in the weather and the fact that it’s a cold/windy morning which helps 'chill' the audience without having to be there

·         Her superman top has the most significance firstly its shows her youth and secondly it signifies that her character will play a hero role later in the film

FIRST CUT - Alone

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

 

New Storyboard for second location

Film poster

Using a picture of our actress Lily we each made a film poster as a piece of homework. The task was to design a poster to promote our film opening and indicate to our audience the genre of film.

*Note: Tim Burton is not our co-director unfortunately

Original Storyboard

Original storyboard for first location

 

Props

I wanted to show the props we thought to include in out film opening, we wanted them with the intent to scare the audience but also give the impression of victorian toys.

Complex film techniques

Match in action
A cut between two angles on the same action

Graphic match
A cut emphasising something similar in the first or second image (usually a shape). This is know as an ellipsis (cutting time) eg. notting hill

 

Eyeline match
Where a character looks in a particular direction. We then see what they are looking at through point of view shot. cuts back to a reaction shot.

Shot-reverse-shot
Used in conversation. the point of view alternates between the two opposite positions

Jump cut
An elliptical shot which seems to interrupt the continuity of a scene.

Classifiction

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/what-classification/15

After reading the British Board of Film Classification we decided to rate our film a certificate 15. It could be a 12 but the main reason for choosing 15 is this statement on the site

'What about horror works? - Many horror films are rated 15. At 15 there can be strong threat and menace (as long as it is not sadistic or sexualised), although the strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable.'

Japanese Puppets Cut Out

We have been interested in incorporating puppets in to our film opening so we wanted to experiment with Japanese Shadow Pupperty so I made a few puppets in the style we intend to use.

Japanese shadow puppetry

Shadow puppetry is an ancient form of storytelling and entertainment which uses flat cut-out figures to create the impression of moving humans and other three-dimensional objects. Shadow puppets are cut-out figures which are held between a source of light and a translucent screen. A talented puppeteer can make the figures appear to walk, dance, fight, nod and laugh. They normally tell a folk tale that may have a moral message too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_puppet

Used in Tim Burtons, “Lemony Snicket’s a series of unfortunate events” title sequence.
http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/lemony-snickets-a-series-of-unfortunate-events/ 

Horror Makeup

We looked alot at special effects and creating our own inguries. We decided not to use any in the end as we thought the child had a scarier effect looking more innocent, rather than obviously asphetically scary.

Phobias and fears

You wont make a good horror film if it doesn't scare anyone or a big enough audience which is why its important to pick a subject that scares allot of people. We chose the idea of haunting, death, children and possession by looking at common phobias.

'A phobia is more than a simple fear. It develops when a person begins to organise their life around avoiding the thing they are afraid of, whether it’s an animal, object, place or situation.' - from the NHS website http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Phobias/Pages/Introduction.aspx  

We looked at peoples top 10 phobias and coming in a number 10 was Necrophobia (fear of death or dead things) http://www.hypnotherapykettering.co.uk/page/10mostcommonphobias.htm

'Necrophobia is fear of death in general and things associated with it, e.g., of corpses, mummies, etc.' The child in our horror is a tormented soul that died in the late 1800's Victorian era. shes a dead spirit that haunts the house she was abused and killed in. she lures unsuspecting passers by in and kills them as her revenge on people.