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

Our film:

'hurting'

Genre: Supernatural/Psychological Horror

Target Audience: 16/24 year olds, both genders.

Secondary Audience: Sub(genre) fans.

Certification: 15

Logline: After losing her sense of reality, a mentally disturbed British girl is forced to confront her fears, which in turn become more frightening than she could ever imagine.

Typical opening sequences are meant to produce the atmosphere and mood that will allow the audience to be effectively introduced to setting, character and narrative. This is done through the above and we have tried to use and develop, even challenge many conventions.

Our film is meant to look cold, and through grading and the vignette we wanted to portray Violet's mental side visually. At the same time though, we wanted the audience to feel close to Violet, so through the end conversation she is portrayed very vulnerable and scared.

We looked at titling in similar films like Silent Hill 3D and Psycho. They all had a lot of titles, but we decided to use less, but at the same time choosing the ones both of these films used that we thought were more important.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Gender

We wanted to develop the role of women in horror films into a more dominant and protagonistic role. Although Violet is initially victimized, she survives the torture she faces. She is presented as strong and clever, through her choices, a feature that will attract more females to watch our film, which is important as we discovered lately more women than men watch horror, so we wanted to achieve a big reach.

Although she is a strong protagonist, she still needs her dad, the male father figure to help her along her way. This is presented in the opening sequence as she results to calling him at the end for help, when she is most vulnerable. This is shown as she is physically very cramped and is not free to move as she is in a closet. Also her facial expressions present her as vulnerable and in need of help.

The final girl specifically refers to the last woman or girl alive to confront the killer, the one left to tell the story. This theory has been used for a long time in many horror films including Halloween, The Cabin in The Woods and Resident Evil. We used this with Violet, who will at the end of the film have to confront her demons.

Sidney Prescott (played by Neve Campbell) is a reoccurring  'Final Girl' throughout the Scream movies.

Rachel Keller (played by Naomi Watts) is the protagonist in The Ring. She is a white female, blonde and vulnerable throughout, but manages to combat the disruption of the narrative, and overcome the problems presented to her.

Race

Challenging that idea of a female protagonist, we decided to have Violet of Asian decent. This is fresh for the mainstream horror genre, which lacks in strong non-white roles.
There are asian female protagonists in British film, such as Bend It Like Beckham, and is a successfully trending concept in modern times, although it is still unknown in the specific genre of horror. We decided to take both concepts of the continually growing asian community and the horror genre and merged them to create something potentially new and interesting, without alienating the audience and being too different. As there is such a big asian community in the UK, creating an asian lead can reach a wider and new audience, that initially might not watch the film.

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

                                            
                                                                                                                                                                                         
                                            

I chose a British production company as our film has a British cast with British locations and is filmed in Britain. Also, as it is low-budget, an independent production company would be necessary.

                  

As we have a horror film, we took inspiration from Paranormal Activity that had a very viral campaign, based on word of mouth and teaser trailers. We want a similar viral campaign.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Recent figures from 2007 show that females watching horror has exceeded male viewers for the first time. The UK film council website stated that 'the number of women attending cinema screening of horror films now marginally exceeds male attendance figures for the first time.

This shows that more and more women are now watching horror, so we as film makers need to appeal to women as much as men. By having a strong female lead that was originally a victim, we incorporate understanding of many women's expectations in films in general.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

We applied our knowledge of the horror genre audience into our opening sequence. We wanted to scare them, with relevant characters and themes that they would expect from a horror film. The video below presents how we applied what we knew to specific parts of the opening sequence.

I got audience feedback from around 10 people, some that are horror film fans, and others that aren't.

Below is a video of two of the people that I conducted the questionnaire at and these are their reactions.

From the questionnaire, these are the results and how much percent of the audience successfully answered each question:

1. What is the film's title? 100%

2. What genre do you think it is? 100%

3. Mainstream or independent production? 80% mainstream

4. Who do you think it's suitable for? 100% unisex teens or 16-24 year olds

5. Can you identify the characters? 100% remembered Violet, but couldn't remember the dad's name.

6. Describe what happens in the sequence. 100% successfully remembered the narrative.

7. Do you think the opening sequence works? 100% yes.





When I asked what they thought could be improved, many said that they wanted more jump scares, and what we provided wasn't enough. This tells me that although this is just the opening sequence, the audience expect an almost climactic beginning to the film.

When I asked what they liked, many enjoyed Violet's room, and liked how it was simple but effective. This tells me that we successfully used sound to portray the villain.


As I was worried about if the audience would relate to Violet and feel close to her, as I thought our opening may have been a bit distant and cold, I also asked if they liked her, and thought she was a relatable character, and to my surprise they all said yes.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Technologies we have used helped me construct an idea of how important they are for a media shoot. Aside the basics such as camera and editing software to enhance our work, technology such as lighting was extremely important. All these technologies needed to be versatile and easy to use so we could achieve what we wanted, and I feel like we did.

Pre-production

Our DSLR was important as it allowed us to take stills for an animatic we would create on Premiere Pro. This allowed us to roughly create a sequence and see where we could potentially have titles and sounds, but overall showed us if our narrative worked with our setting. 

Production

Canon HV30 was a video camera that was very easy to use. The depth blur allowed us to physically change blur from foreground to vice-versa which we used in some shots of our opening sequence, for example when Violet looks at the clock. 

The tripod allowed us to pan and also keep the camera still for master shots necessary for continuity.  

The lighting kit enabled us to shoot in low-key locations. It meant we could reduce the grain from the camera and although we didn't manage to remove all of it, it was seriously less than if we hadn't used artificial lights. Also, the filters allowed for our artistic style at the beginning of the opening sequence with the blue-lit drawings.

Post-production

We used Adobe After Effects to reduce the grain and make some shots smoother.

Before

After

We used Adobe Photoshop to create a PNG. of a vignette, which meant we could layer it over our opening sequence and have it gradually come in, as PNGs don't have backgrounds. This meant the vignette was soft and not too dominating, and created the effect we had hoped for.

As sound was important in our opening sequence, we needed a microphone for me and Raagavi to talk into for the opening conversation. As the microphone we used was professional and with it we used Adobe Audition, we were able to reduce the gain on the recording to smoothly introduce it into the sequence and at the same time making it sound realistic.

Overall, technology helped us make our opening sequence clear and easy to understand. The use of focus for example really allowed us to portray to the audience exactly what we wanted.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

The most important things we learnt from the prelim include the importance of continuity, and how we achieved that through master shots and setups and editing.

This video contains a commentary that compares and contrasts the prelim I did, with the opening sequence.