Film Opening - The Rumour

Question 1

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

We started by looking at the typical conventions of a film opening and we found that an opening will contain the production and distribution companies, the title of the film along with the stars that are in the film. Other aspects of an opening that we found was conventional is that it starts by introducing the stock characters, stock settings and an insight in to the plot of the film - however we wouldn't expect too much to be given away. 

Once we had established what to expect from an opening, we decided to do a closer look at the conventions of the genre 'supernatural horror'. The typical conventions of a supernatural horror is that it contains either a family (where the child is usually seen as an evil character) or a group of friends. An example from our research for both of these are Blair Witch Project and Insidious.

The Blair Witch Project contains a group of friends who are around the same age who are investigating a rumour about a 'witch' whilst documenting their findings. We got a lot of our inspiration from this films as we found it to be a scary film and also the opening was very interesting and instantly told us what genre of horror it was which made it easy for us to understand it and to get ideas from what techniques they have used to make it clear.

We looked at insidious and found that the colours, sounds and editing that was used was conventional of the supernatural horror genre, this gave us an example to look at.

We found that a lot of the stock settings that were conventional to the genre, were things such as woods or forests, old houses, grave yards or abandoned/isolated areas. 
By looking at examples such as The Blair Witch Project, Insidious and Paranormal Activity we were able to choose from conventional settings of the supernatural genre in order to make sure our film fit the conventions of the genre.

 

Another conventional aspect which we found was in quite a few of the films we looked at was that it would be filmed using a handheld camera, this helps in order to create the enigma and also to give you the story from the point of the characters, therefore creating verisimilitude. Examples of films using hand held are Paranormal Activity 1-3 and The Blair Witch Project.

The lighting would be dark, dull and often highly contrasted in order to make it appear scarier. The editing along with straight cuts are usually at a normal pace to create realism, however when approaching and throughout a tense moment the editing speeds up (along with the sound) in order to create a suspenseful mood and tone. Conventionally, there would be eerie non diegetic or diegetic music, and often odd diegetic sounds in order to create a suspenseful mood. 

Insidious and The Unborn use dark and contrasted lighting in order to create a scarier atmosphere.

In our opening, we decided to conform to the conventions of the supernatural genre, we started by having the stock characters as a group of friends. We decided this in order to make it familiar to the viewer, and so they could relate to the characters as each of the characters have a different personality so it can appeal to a wider target audience.

The stock setting we chose was that of a wood, as this is conventional to the genre, and also we thought it would add a sense of tension and 'eeriness'. Also it shows the characters as being isolated and put in to a dangerous position which tells us that something bad will happen to them.

The sounds and colours we decided to use in our opening are dark and eerie things. The sounds are loud and create a tense mood and tone. The colours we changed to show different perspectives, however all of them are darker. 

The different perspectives we decided to use is the perspective of someone who isn't in the film. The colours we decided to use for this are darker than what we originally filmed, in order to create a scarier mood.

After we edited the colours

The original colours

Another perspective we used is the character of 'Jess' as she has a camera and she is filming  their 'investigation' this conforms to the conventions of the supernatural genre by creating verisimilitude.We changed the colours by making it have a green tint, we did this in order to make it clear that it was from a different perspective and from a handheld camera.

After we edited the colours

The original colours

The last perspective is from an onlooker in the film (a character that we aren't yet aware of) this creates an enigma as we don't know who this character is or what he is doing, and we wonder why he is watching them. We made it more contrasted to show that it is from a 'bad' characters perspective.

After we edited the colours

The original colours

We decided to conform to the main conventions of the supernatural genre in order to create a scary opening and to make it easy for the viewers to relate and understand the story from the beginning, rather than making it complicated.

Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product represents a group of teenagers, each character has a different personality, which means we are representing a range of social groups so they are therefore made more relatable. 

The 'leader' of the group of friends is the character Jess, she is presented as being an average teenager, but unlike other girls of that age she isn't obsessed with beauty, which could therefore present her as being a tom boy. We decided to present her character like this in order to give her a strong leading character as she takes control of the situation. We have constructed this representation by usually framing her in the center of the shot. The characters costume is casual and could be perceived as 'manly' however she appears to be well prepared for the situation showing that she is a good leader. The props that she is carrying consist of a map, a camera and a bag; these props help present her as the leader as she is well prepared, it conveys a strong, independent character. She challenges the typical feminine stereotypes.

Another social group presented is a 'girly girl' as the character of Kate is obsessed with beauty, and wears dresses and appears to be unprepared for the situation. Her costume strongly conveys that she is a girly girl, as she is wearing a dress. This could also show that she is a 'dopey' character as she didn't dress for the occasion. Her character is constantly interrupted and is shown as being a less dominant character. She conforms to the feminine stereotypes, which allows the audience to be able to relate easily with her character.

We presented two different types of 'girl' characters in order to appeal to a wider range of a female audience, so that they can relate closer to one of the characters. Also it presents clearly the divide between the characters and clearly shows who is a leader.

We created the character of Adam, and decided to represent him using masculine stereotypes. He is a 'lad' character who likes to often be center of attention. He frequently interrupts people. His costume conveys the representations of a masculine character, as he is wearing jeans and a grey jumper, he is also carrying a rucksack. Along with his costume his 'cocky' tone of voice and arrogant presence represents the social group. We decided to construct Adams character like this in order to appeal to a wide range of a male audience, and to make him relatable to teenagers.

The final character is Jack, he is considered as an introvert as he rarely talks and doesn't like to be center of attention. We conveyed this by framing him to the side of the shot or behind everyone else showing that he is behind and pushed away from everyone else. His costume is plain, and dull colours showing that he doesn't like to attract attention. When he speaks his tone of voice is low and he comes across shy. He challenges typical masculine stereotypes which makes his character relatable to.

The male characters appeal to the male audience by allowing them to relate with their characters. As we have two different types of males it appeals to different types of audience by allowing them to relate more closer to someone who is similar to themselves.

Question 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

We started by decided that the Universal logo would work well at the beginning of our opening, however we didn't think about how that would work with our style of film. After we further considered it we decided that Film 4 would be the best institution in which to distribute our film. 

Universal is a mainstream New York institution that has been around since 1912.

They have produced films such as Kick Ass, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Johnny English Reborn and Contraband. These films are typically American set films, whereas our film is a strongly British film with British cultures present throughout. This is a main participant as to why our film wouldn't fit in with the typical films that Universal produce.

Film 4 was launched on 1 November 1998 and is owned by Channel Four Television Corporation. The audience share for Film 4 for is 1.5% and 0.2%. It is based in United Kingdom, which allows it to feel as though our film would work with their institution. Film 4 has many sister channels: Channel 4, E4, More4, 4Music, Kerrang!, Kiss, Magic, Q, Smash Hits! and The Box - as they have many different types of channels they are well known and have a wider target audience.

Some of the films they have produced are: Submarine, Inbetweeners, Iron Lady, The Lovely Bones and Slumdog Millionaire. Most of these films present the British culture throughout their films, which is why it would be a best fit for our film to be distributed by Film 4.

Film 4 have utilized convergence to the fullest as they have a TV channel and also a website, not only that but they have a 'catch up' page (4OD) which you can access from your computer, Xbox, iPhone etc. This allows their viewers to be able to access their things freely from where ever they want. 

Film 4 does specific 'theme nights' for example "Horror Night" in which they would only play horror films, this allows the reader to be free to choose what they watch.

Our film would work well with Film 4 as it is a predominantly British culture based film and therefore our film would work well as it contains British characters in a British setting so would be familiar to the Film 4 audience.

We used the Film 4 'Coffee Cup' logo at the beginning of our film in order to present what institution is going to distribute our film. However we removed the sound so we could play our chosen eerie music over the top of it. And we also sped the clip up so that it didn't take up as much time as we thought it had a fuller and scarier effect when it was faster.

Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for our film is 15-21 year old boys and girls who like going to the cinema, spending time with friends, camping or other outdoor activities and films such as Paranormal Activity 1-3, Insidious and Blair Witch Project. 


We gave our 15 questionnaires to girls and boys ages 15-21 in order to find out what they would expect from our film opening. Our audience research help us to work out what music, settings and story lines that they would expect, this helped us to work out the small details of the film before we started to film it. 

We appealed to our target audience by using the expected stock setting of a woods and the stock characters of a group of friends, we did this as the audience research showed us that our target audience enjoy films with these aspects. The camera shots we thought would appeal to our audience are close ups, very long shots and two shots (or group shots). Also the camera movements we decided would work are a pan and tracking. 

The lighting that we have created is dark and contrasted as the audience research helped show us that they enjoy the eerie view. Along with the dark lighting the sounds also eerie, loud and scary. The creation of an enigma and the creation of tension is expected to be introduced in the opening of a film, without giving to much away, by doing this we have appealed to our target audience. Also the characters are introduced in the opening, this is so that we have the whole film to be familiar with them, and to create a close and personal relationship with them. 


The genre we chose was Supernatural, we did this as our audience questionnaire showed us that the target audience that we want to watch our film enjoy films that contain the paranormal or the supernatural.

Question 5

What technology did you use in making your film?

Research

In the research we started by using Microsoft Word to create a questionnaire, and then graphs to show our results. This helped us to be able to see what our target audience expected, and the graphs made it a clear and easy way for us to be able to see the results. The audience questionnaire is an important part of this project as we wouldn't have been able to be sure we were including the right things if we didn't know what an audience would expect, the questionnaire helps us to see specifically what out target audience wants and helped with some of the decisions when making the final opening.

We used the internet frequently during the research part of this project. We often used websites such as wikipedia, google, youtube and others similar to this. We used it to look up for information and examples of the genre. We also used the internet to get ideas from other openings and to look at the conventions of a Supernatural horror. It impacted our project greatly by giving us ideas and evidence of different aspects of the Supernatural.

Planning

In the planning stage of our project we used Celtx in order to create a storyboard and a script. This allowed us to use the specific layout for the storyboard and the script. This impacted our project by allowing us to get a professional look for our research, and to make it clear and precise for us to allow us to change and alter things easily. The script allowed us to add extra information such as shots and information about the characters.

Along with this we used digital cameras in order to take photos of the different shots we would use in our opening. This allowed us to get a visual example of what our opening may look like, this can also allow us to see what parts might not work which would allow us to easily change then when we are creating the final production.

We frequently used scanners during the planning stage of this project as we would scan in work that we had written on paper such as the mind maps and other information like this. Scanners impacted our planning stage by allowing us to update our blogs with other information that we have been looking at during the planning of our opening.

We used the scanners to scan our storyboards and our scripts after we had made notes on them.
















We also used scanners to scan in mind-maps and sheets which contained information such as audience feedback. 


It is important that we have this information scanned on to a computer so we can update our blogs with information that has changed our final coursework project.








Production

We used digital cameras during the production stage, in order to film the opening to our trailer, along with the camera we also used a tripod. We started by filming the title image and the later filmed the parts with the characters. We filmed from many different shots in order to get a range of views so that we could decide which was the best when we edited it together. The camera had a large impact as it is a vital piece of technology that was needed in order to make the opening. 

During the production stage the main technology that we used was iMovie, as it was the base of where we created our opening. We used the transitions, the titles and the sounds from iMovie. We also changed the colour of the film in iMovie to show the different cameras and different perspectives; also to create a scarier mood. This technology had the biggest impact during the production stage as we wouldn't have been able to create our opening without it. It has allowed me personally to develop skills in being able to spot when things work and when they don't and then use the different aspects of iMovie to change it. It has also allowed me to experiment with different styles of editing.

We used Zamzar and Youtube in order to convert files in to either mp3 files to use for sound effects or mov files to use. We converted the Film4 logo to mov so that we could have that at the beginning of our opening, this has a more professional look as all films have these titles in. We converted two different Youtube videos to sound files so that we could use them for sound effects throughout the opening to create a scary and eerie mood and tone to the film.

Throughout all of the stages of creating our opening, we used Blogger as a place to present our work. For each stage and each different task we uploaded a blog post on to Blogger to present it in order to show our stages and to make it clear what we have done throughout the project. It allowed us to bring the three stages (research, planning and production) together and present it in a clear and formal manner. It allowed us to have a visual portfolio in which we could get feedback on to through comments on the posts. It impacted our whole project by allowing us an easy and manageable way to keep track of our progress and to easily see what we should've done.