our film challenges the conventions of a horror movie as it does not entirely adhere to the mainstream conventions of a film, for example there is no dialogue or an entirely conclusive new equilibrium at the end of the film that would adhere to Todorov`s theory. however our product does fit the basic conventions of a horror movie as it has references to death, pain, fear and the dark side that exists within most people’s sub-conscience. there also appears to be a villain or supernatural force involved within the film, however we never actually witness the force we just see the after effects of its actions.
an example of a film that adheres to the horror conventions, is wolf creek, there is an equilibrium to begin with, there is an evil presence that disrupts the equilibrium, at the end of the film there is a renewed equilibrium.
an example of a film that does not fit the conventions of a horror movie is paranormal activity, this mirrors the process of events within our film alot more than other horror movies, there is no renewed equilibrium at the end, the last shot of our film, is a shot of Nicolle and Siobhan emerging from the forest screaming, we are left with uncertainty on somewhat of a cliffhanger. paranormal activity also uses the similar POV style of filming as used in ours.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
our film represents teenage culture and the vulnerability and naivety of young people in today's society. an innocent camping trip turns into something alot more sinister. whilst making the film we decided to start the film with alot of characters and by the end have it reduced to only a couple, this mirrored the unknown cause of the disappearance of the other characters, representing youth culture and their "we are indestructible" mentality. to further represent this we used an unrecognisable outdoor setting to set it on wider scale rather than confining the film to a small indoor space and to also as the story was set around a camping trip. although the actors are credited we decided not to give them a script or to show their faces too much this is because we wanted to show them as a generalisation of young people rather then personalising it and making them recognisable individuals.
our film was based around the sort of film making style used in the Blair witch, we recreated the same sort of scene and characters as used within the film. in the blair witch the characters and film makers are young students, here is a trailer for the blair witch project the main inspiration for our film.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
our movie does not fit the usual conventions of a horror movie that would usually be distributed by a more mainstream film company such as universal studios. therefore during production and filming we decided our film would be more suited to a more arty style of film making, so we decided to steer it even further into the arty style of film, that we felt would be suited to a distributor such as artisan films or focus features, we removed any dialogue to make the action and body language tell the story, using unusual music to create an eerie atmosphere and using a POV style of filming.
the Blair witch project was distributed by artisan films an independent film company which was then purchased by Lionsgate, it was a film company that concentrated mostly on distributing independent homemade style films.
a film company that i feel would be a likely, suitable distributor for our media product would be focus features, an independent film company which is the art house division of NBC.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
our media product is aimed at, and would draw in an audience of 16-24 year old female students as this is the demographic that is represented within the film. also the activities and character traits of each of the characters reflect those of people within this age band. a number of students aged 15-24 have been surveyed on which sorts of film styles they preferred and over 50% said they preferred arthouse style films this is due to the fact that young people between these age groups are just starting out in their adult lives and are more creative and innovative in their style therefore they prefer films that push the boundaries of modern film conventions, the fact that our film is made in an arthouse style certainly aids in drawing in our target audience successfully.
i researched the statistics for cinema attendance of different ages, its turned out that 15-24 year olds attend the cinema alot more frequently than any other age group, therefore on the production of our film , we decided to direct it towards this age group.
(HORIZONTAL = age groups)
(DIAGONAL = percentage of cinema visits per month)
what have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
from the making of my product i have learnt that less is more when making a horror film, the very first pieces of footage we uploaded were very obvious and in your face they took over from the atmosphere of the film and made everything apparent to the audience straight away rather than leaving anything to the imagination. one of the main ideas we had within our first storyboard was having an anonymous figure running at a high speed across the background of one of the scenes, with one of the characters in the forefront this looked like a Good idea on paper, however when it came to actually incorporating it into our film it just didn`t work. we also experimented with what camera angles we would use, we decided that using the most obscure angles such as feet running and wide shots of characters running round a corner would adhere to our arthouse style choice. i also learnt that using very simple subtle editing but still incorporating everything that we need is very effective. using a variety of different create certain effects and emotions such as intrigue, shock, fear etc, delicate camera work and shots can often replace dialogue.
we started to challenge ourselves with the technology we had by encorporating alot of it into our film for example we used livetype over shots within our film, rather than an creating individual title sequence.
in learning that less is more we decided to use less ideas within the film but make them more sophisticated and incorporate more shots.
our establishing shot was a wide shot of the characters being "watched" from behind a bush, this was how we incorporated our idea of POV, our initial plan was to use it all the way through however we felt this would pull us down on our technological skills, therefore we used steady camera shots for the most part of the film, every so often incorporating POV handy cam shots, another example of one of these shots is during the contrasting dream sequence where the camera is following Nicolle and Siobhan running.
looking back at the preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in progression from it to the full product?
through out the making of my main task i learnt alot about the mistakes i made during the production of my preliminary task. simply adhering to the brief you are given is not good enough you should use your own ideas, be creative and innovative to create a more interesting and diverse project. always try out different ideas that you have no matter how difficult they seem to be, by attempting to challenge yourself you will not loose anything but you may gain something. always watch your films a multitude of times in order to check for mistakes or lack of continuity within the film.
we also progressed in our knowledge of the technology as we leanrt how to properly integrate certain effects, whereas our preliminary task was alot more straightforward
we used an ariel shot in both our prelim and our main task
- prelim ariel shot (simple straight shot, filmed from an ariel perspective)
- main task ariel shot, more sophisticated, starts with close up zooms out into wide ariel shot.
- prelim task wide shot, with two characters, simplistic, sticks to brief doesn't really break the boundaries, static with dialogue.
- main task, wide shot two characters, more movement involved, no dialogue just screams, running, more movement.
our main task is evidently far more sophisticated than our prelim, i think this is because of a number of factors, we were able to be alot more creative on the main task, the brief wasn't as strict, the location and amount of actors allowed for us to be more extravagant with our production and editing of the task.
