Friday 23 October 2009

Friday 3 April 2009

Final Cut

Evaluation

Our group had aims from the beginning of producing the movie. Overall we thought we worked well as a group, if we were to do it again we would of organised our schedule much better. We had alot of re shooting to do which wasted precious time.

If we were to distribute our media product we would probably think warp X would be the institution that would represent us in the right way. We are a low budget, British company. Producing slasher movies. Obviously the movie would have to be to high standard and we would need some money to be able to invest in using these companies, so to get publicity we would put the movie on youtube and myspace for example.

We used codes and conventions from other movies to help our ideas to expand, for instance our protagonist in our movie is a counter type and showed a strong, powerful, independent woman. We were inspired my movies such as Scream, Halloween and The unborn and used inter-textual links from these movies, for example using a dutch angle which we thought worked well in scream, its a signifier of death or something bad about to happen.

Our target audience would be 15 to 24 female and males. After finishing our coursework, i would still stick with this target audience due to the nature of the movie. Our film also represents the middle class this is shown through characters accents and materials, although the accents are northern accents we still think the movie would appeal to a large british audience because of the standard of movie. All characters are heterosexual which is most likely going to appeal to a heterosexual audience. Because our audience is both male and female we believe that our movie has the 'male gaze theory' which means the female cast would attract men to watching the movie, espicaially the final girl as she is strong yet still attractive.

The movie is a fast passed slasher, with screaming girls and great gory material. These factors are what are going to catch the audiences eye and grab them to watch this terrifying movie. The social groups in which we have represented are teenage groups, this is due to our young cast.

I have learnt many different things during the process of making this movie. The two technical aspects of making the movie which i have heightened my level of knowledge on, are garageband, where i found sounds adjusted them and made them fit to my movie and Imovie, this was very easy and fun to use. I would say the thing i have got the most knowledge and help from is the group i am in, we worked well together and when someone was stuck we helped each other which is a great quality to have.

The main thing i struggled with in the preliminary task was transitions and making the movie flow. I thinking our transitions in our movie work well and if we hadn't of done a preliminary task then we would have struggled. The preliminary task helped us show what sources we had to use, when we did the real thing we used the basic things but then we also found new things such as sound levels on our heartbeat. Another problem we had in the preliminary task was our shots and what they conveyed, by planning better for our clip each shot had a meaning behind it.

Overall myself and the group have enjoyed making our media product and have learnt a lot from it for the future media experinces we have.

Thursday 2 April 2009

Genre Research and Intertextual Links

One of the greatest slasher films was psycho (1960, Alfred Hitchcock). This straightforward film has developed over many years to from a new form of slasher genre with the use of intertexaulity, pastiche, parody and hybrid genres. Richard Malby stated that “genres are flexible”. This reflects the genres theory as genres are not static but dynamic allowing the combination of other genes called hybrid films, which are becoming more popularly used with texts.


Some elements get passed along to the next slasher films from psycho such as:
- suspense and shock narrative enigma
- Phallic object being the knife(Mulvey's theory)- further used in slasher genres
- The scream by the victim
- Isolated area

Scream 1996. 13 seconds of a long note, non digetic music creates tension for audience and connects with there heart.
Text on screen including company fits with genre. Red letters dripping like blood.
Blue tint in shot, horror theme, coldness and supernatural.
Popcorn is used metaphorically to show the tension in the scene and when it pops something is going to happen. At the same time the audience will also have a representation of popcorn of watching a movie.
Stereotypical blonde most likely going to die.
Watches a scary movie, we used this in our piece, its inter textual, we thought it would be good o the character seemed worked up and conscious of things around her.
Knives are a signifier. We used this as an inter textual link also in our piece.

Halloween 1978.
Sharp serif font, red connects with genre. Blood violence danger and threat,
Screaming girl, shows shes vunrable. Stereotypical blonde most likely going to die.
Not expensive because mosh horrors are low budget.
A slow dutch angle shot is used to show that something is not right and there is going to action soon.
Blue tint is also used in this.

Wednesday 1 April 2009

Sound and Music.

We chose to compose some music on garageband, we wanted it to fit with the genre and make the audiences heartbeat speed up with anxiety. We thought it worked well with its repetitive beat.
We also wanted a sound effect of someone breathing, however when the cameraman tried to make the noise it was too quiet (a boom mike would be appropriate here) we did use any we found because they didn't fit correctly to the peice
We got a heartbeat sound effect of a copyright free website.
A problem we did have with sound was the wind in the background which people commented on in feedback time

Here are some websites were very helpful.

www.akmmusic.co.uk
www.numdigital.com
www.freeplaymusic.com
www.audiojungle.net

Tuesday 31 March 2009

Microdrama and Narrative Theory



The Task:
To create a microdrama which included Todorov's narrative theory.

The Theory:
Todorov's narrative theory include-
1. A state of equilibrium at the outset
2. A disruption of the equilibrium by some action
3. An recognition that there has been a disruption
4. An attempt to repair the disruption
5. A reinstatement of the equilibrium

Tuesday 17 March 2009

Target Audience & BBFC

The British Board of Film Classification is an independent, non-governmental body, which has classified cinema films since it was set up in 1912, and videos since the passing of the Video Recordings Act in 1984. The BBFC helped us to classify our production. We chose to classify it as a 15 for several reasons, Including inappropriate language for a younger audience. There is also a strong level of violence, imitable techniques and a large amount or horror.

Overall our main target audience would be aged from 15 to 24 because of the teenage cast, the nature of the film and also children would find it too scary to watch and language may be inappropriate.
Its mainly aimed at woman although males might enjoy it too.
C1, C2 and DE is our target audience. This is due to the casting, most the characters are middle class.

The actors have northern accents so it would mainly appeal to the north of England but the south would also enjoy i because there not stereotypical northern people. Theres is evidence of movies doing extremly well even when filmed in the north of England. For example This is England and Fully Monty. It wouldn't appeal to people abroad because they cant relate to it. Although all our characters are Caucasian it doesn't mean it wont appeal to a non-Caucasian as other movies have reached a wide audience when used one ethnicity aswel as this the narrative and young cast will appeal to multi-ethnic audiences.

The audience we would appeal to would most likely enjoy films such as Scream, The ring and Halloween, The unborn.

The psychographic profile of a person who would watch my movie would enjoy reading the tabloids and would enjoy a jumpy slasher and having a good time. For example students.

The two teenage girls appeal to audience because they can relate the young female audience in which we are trying to target. Our final girl would make it more appealing for women because its showing the modern woman, being powerful and standing up against frightening events. There mostly likely going to be afraid of the genre. They two characters watch a movie which is a stereotypical thing for teenagers to do on a Friday night. There would narrative enigma so the audience need to be able to look deeper into the movie and try and work our the plot. The male gaze theory was founded by Laura Mulvey, she had an objection of women being seen as objects it changed women's perceptions of themselves and makes them think of themselves as objects The film we made did include the male gaze because all the characters are heterosexual. Males tend to look at the body or girls and not at talent, also men enjoy action too and our movie has scary events that occur. We also did this to reach wider audience. Be we have a binary opostion, as our final girl, which feminists would like so there is mix of stereotpyes.