Monday 28 April 2014

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

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

Chase Scene
 
The biggest horror convention we incorporated into our movie was the chase scene. Chase scenes are used in horror films because they create a sense of fear for the audience and the character. They also display the characters helplessness in the situation. An example of  a movie that uses chase scenes is Scream 2.

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This scene is taken from the opening of Scream 2. It is similar to our opening in the way that the character being chased is confused and unaware of why they are being chased, which also causes confusion for the audience. The scene, accompanied by fast paced music further excites the audience and keeps them intrigued. This is what we hoped to achieve within our opening. Also, the female being chased is a popular convention we have conformed to as females are stereotyped as weak and unable to defend themselves.

Todorov's Theory
A convention we subverted from in our movie opening was using Todorov's Theory as a structure. The theory can be found below.
Many films use this structure to create a balance between positives and negatives within a film. It gives the audience a sense of safety to know there is a restored equilibrium at the end. However I find this structure quite unrealistic and overused which is why we didn't use it in our opening. In our opening, it begins with a disruption instead of an equilibrium. This allows the action to take place straight away and keep the audience intrigued from the beginning. An example of a horror film which conforms to Torodov's Theory is Paranormal Activity 4, which can be seen below.
I find an opening like this quite boring and cliché as it is a structure used in many genres and I believe horrors should be more exciting. In this opening, the characters are at the equilibrium stage; they are happy and unaware of any problems that are going to occur. However, with our opening, Sarah is at the disruption stage as she is aware she is being followed right at the start.

Music/Sound Effects
The use of music/sound effects help set the mood for the movie and acts as a catalyst for the tension build up. Our movie opening includes a fast paced track that is used while Sarah is running away from Danny. This track is appropriate as it excites the audience and anticipates them for what is going to happen next. It isn't a scary track but it still builds up the tension. Saw slightly varies.

In Saw's opening, an slow and eerie track is used in the background, which intensifies at the end when the character is pulling the chain. This opening also includes loud and screechy sound effects when the dead body holding the gun is shown. The music and sound effects used in this opening varies to our opening as the music is  a lot slower and creepier but it still builds tension due to the storyline and location of the opening, as does ours.

Thursday 3 April 2014

Change of location

Here we are filming the opening scene of our movie.





As you can see in the pictures above, we are filming our movie opening in the park. We have done this as we wanted a wider variety of locations in our opening, we felt only filming in Kiera's house was limiting the variations of lighting and shot types we could use. This location was also convenient to us as it is less than a minute away from our school, so there wasn't trouble when it came to travelling with the camera and the tripod. Although, we did encounter some problems with the camera while filming. We also felt the park would add create more of a scary atmosphere for the audience as it is a place people go to as a leisure activity. This makes it more relatable to the audience. We are creating a discomforting scene which will put doubt in the audiences mind, as it is a location they go to to enjoy theirselves. It wasn't dark when we filmed this scene but we aim to edit the lighting once we begin to edit our opening.

Wednesday 2 April 2014

Possible Production Names

As a group, we brainstormed possible production names for our movie production company. We decided to make a chart consisting of three words associated with our film and list synonyms of the words, in hope of finding a production name we liked.




 
As you can see, this method wasn't suited to us. We couldn't think of many words asscoiated with the topics we had chosen. Also, we had to take into consideration that the name of our production company didn't have to have anything to do with the genre and storyline of our movie. Due to this, we also came up with these three names:
  • Flashlight Studios
  • Tunnel Vision Studios
  • Skyhigh Studios
We liked these ideas as we felt they were original and had significance to film production and editing, rather than our movie. We also had an idea of how we would edit these names into our movie. These production names seemed stronger and more memorable to us than the ones we had on our chart.

Overall, our favourite production name was Tunnel Vision, as it infers that our movie is the only thing we want our audience to focus on. Also, it infers that we are a fully focused production team.

tunnel vision
n
2. narrowness of viewpoint resulting from concentration on a single idea, opinion, etc, to the exclusion of others
 
Although we wasn't concentrated on a single idea at the beginning, we now are and are now giving it our full attention. Which is why I think Tunnel Vision Studios will be an appropriate and suited name for our prodution company.