Thursday, 27 April 2017
EVALUATION Q1
EVALUATION 1
Conventions of our media product
Our product in some ways replicates any other
typical horror movie opening sequence if you fail to acknowledge the subtleties
in which we have utilised to create our unique idea. Despite this, the majority
of our research into psychological-horror films was into the typical and famous
films such as Insidious and Blair Witch Project. We gathered inspiration from
these films' conventions such as the music and the lighting, as well as costume
and setting. All factors were considered and acknowledged throughout our
research. Once completing all of our research and re-evaluating our initial
opening sequence idea we set out to ask ourselves how we could make our film
different from the films we have gathered inspiration from, such as Insidious
and The Blair Witch Project. We knew we had to challenge the conventions to
create a never-been-done-before idea that would be credible to our research
also.
Within our research towards the Final Girl Theory, our opening sequence challenges this as the main character, who reflects the 'final girl', isn't at all the hero or the strong independent female who saves everyone, but she is in fact the twisted evil one who kills nurses at every hospital she goes to, due to a grudge she holds from her childhood. despite this, the audience will feel conflicted as we learn a lot about her abusive childhood which makes them like her as well as fear her; this is why our opening sequence challenges typical horror movies.
The conventions of a Horror film typically
consist of the generic creepy soundtrack as well as a female character who
appears to be insane of deceased. Despite other factors of our opening sequence
being unique, these two famous conventions are utilised in our final product.
We use the soundtrack from ‘Candy man’ in our opening sequence as well as our
main character being a female whose appearance is frightening and also is
mentally insane. The lighting inspiration was not really from a specific film,
as when you think of the lighting in a typical horror film you do immediately
think of darkness and low-key lighting, which is why we predominantly use a
darkly saturated filter for the majority of our final product. We also use a
60’s inspired filter for the scenes shot in the ‘hospital’ which we took
inspiration from ‘Girl, Interrupted’.
The costume was actually again our
way of sticking to the traditions of a typical ‘dead girl’ outfit, with dark
eye make-up, messy hair, a long hospital gown. We used this ‘typical look’ as
our main character wore a white hospital gown which we dishevelled for the
outdoor scenes to make look more realistic and over-worn. She also had messy
hair and pale skin to appear as if she was ill and malnourished. Many of the
close up shots showed her with dark and ‘hollow’ looking eyes which is also a
convention of a horror film. We knew
that we could maintain the most common conventions of horror films whilst also
twisting the features of the opening sequence subtly to make the audience
confused further. We have challenged the fact that in most opening sequences in
horror films they wouldn’t reveal that much in the opening sequence, however we
have chosen to reveal a lot about the main character’s life: the audience will
believe that all has been revealed however I know that if our film was to
continue they would be confused and find the plot difficult to understand due
to its complexity in order to reflect the main character’s psychological
trauma.
Additionally, most horror films
wouldn’t reveal its actually a horror film until the title sequence is over and
the film has actually begun. We challenge this as in our opening sequence, from
its onset we make it clear to the audience that it is a horror. Also, the
structure of our opening sequence also challenges typical horrors. Usually we
see horror films with flowing plots which just pan out and lead to a final
climax, however ours never really has a beginning, middle or end, yet a
complete mixture of past and present throughout, so the audience will struggle
to know what is happening and when.
Sunday, 9 April 2017
EDITING 7
Editing 7: Finishing touches...
When it came to adding in the finishing touches of our final product we knew that we would have to perfect it as much as we could. We had gotten some feedback from our peers and they advised us on what we could alter in order to make it look professional and fitted to the genre.
I spent a lot of time on the sound, listening closely for when to use the blade tool and crop the audio and end the background music, ect. This was extremely time consuming and I can say that I found this bit particularly challenging as it was so difficult to get wrong as well as very noticeable when watching it back, so it had to be fixed...
As a group we decided that the use of the song we were initially using was too commonly known and associated with Horror genre and deleted it completely. We kept the Candy Man theme song as well as the Blumhouse production theme tune, but added in a heartbeat sound to reflect and build up the anxiety from the main character and reflect her own heart beat.
I had an idea to change the fonts of the credits to a type writer font to reflect the use of type writers in hospitals in the 60's and also added in a rather quiet typewriter sound which I layered over the credits to make it sound as if the credits were being typed as they appeared.
I felt that this was a clever touch to the opening sequence as it was subtle but also had a very 60's vibe to it.
We finally felt happy with our final product.
Friday, 7 April 2017
EDITING 6
Editing 6: Almost there...
Myself and Kate went after school had finished and spent a few hours re-watching and altering parts of our opening sequence which we felt could be improved.
We spent a lot of time on the colour match tools as we continued to edit the shots and add filters to them so each filter matched and flowed, otherwise it just looked extremely unprofessional.
We decided on altering the brightness, saturation and exposure of each shot to make it slightly darker, as well as adding on the 'Old Film' filter twice to create the 60's film vibe of our opening sequence.
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