No

1. Evaluation – Q1
‘In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms
and conventions of real media products?’

2. Conventions of an opening – Plot
As an opening, our film’s plot is reasonably
conventional. Two establishing shots are used
to set the scene and music is used too. This sets
a mood for the film at the very start, allowing
the audience to make their opinions fairly
quickly. In our case we don’t immediately show
any horrific images but the music connotes
horror. Our opening reveals the general theme
of the film without trying to cover it up in any
way.

3. Titles
Our film titles are also rather
conventional of the flow and
mise en scene of openings.
They abide by the rule of
thirds and feature every few
shots, therefore focusing
attention more on the visuals
rather than the text.
They all contrast with the
background, an example
being if there is a dark
background or an area with
low key lighting, the titles
would be white to stand out
from this.
Se7en (Fincher-1995)
The typography is supposed to
represent the theme of the
film & I think we did this with
Goutida sans light, which is
subtle but also has sinister,
slightly gothic undertones to
go with it.

4. Character exposition
Conventional of film openings, we
introduced two of the main
characters briefly in the first
minute. We also show a small
overview/ summary of their
situation in an enticing way.
Dialogue is used but not too
much. This helps the viewer
construct a slightly more
informed view on the character
and their personality, not quite to
the extent that Tarentino does in
his signature dialogue sequences
(like Pulp Fiction – 1994) but to a
small degree at least.

5. The things in our film that create enigma are:
• The newspaper wall
• Fast cutting rate
• Montage of newspaper
• The darkness of the basement
• The young victims
• His relationship with the female victim (sexual?)
• The harsh conditions & array of props (cages, chains)
• The meat (are they cannibals?)
• The relationship of the couple & their past experiences

6. Conventions of sub genre (psychological)
-Location/set
• It is set in a domestic, middle class household.
• The kitchen we chose conformed to the stock kitchen location we often see in horror films. See ‘The Ring’
(Verbinski – 2002 – left) & our production (right).
• This is done to make bring home the fact that nowhere is safe. Home environments are seen by viewers as
‘safe’ zones, much like a police man would be as a ‘safe’ character. When this is invaded or the inhabitants
change (in the viewers opinion), the audience can be left feeling venerable & open to be scared.

7. Characters & plot
• Our main character is not visually conventional due to his age but the concept and his character are.
• We often see in psychological films the dark side to seemingly normal characters, a prime example being
‘The Lovely Bones’ (Jackson – 2009).
• In this we see a man who also kidnaps children under the nose of society & even his neighbour.
• This, and making the character look as regular and white collar as possible are done to create unease and to
make the audience believe this story could really occur.

8. Camera work
• We included a lot of close ups when filming & this was to create intensity. Being more of a psychological
horror it was apparent to us that close ups were signifier’s for the crazed mind of a killer, in this case the
wife in the kitchen scene.
• The low angle pan we see in both The Ring and in our opening. However we purely used it as a method of
ensuring continuity whereas in The Ring we see a puddle at the base of the door creating anticipation of
what’s on the other side.

9. Titles
• We implemented the titles so they didn’t detract from the visuals but are still contrast from the background.
An idea we got from ‘Se7en’.
• We also added a movement effect and a fade which seemed to be common among openings to make it feel
that bit more professional. For example in Se7en, overlapping and jittering of text is used.

10. Sound
The sound is pretty conventional of not just the
psychological sub genre but also of the horror genre in
general. The piano music featured in the kitchen reveals
to the audience as soon as they start watching it that
the normal looking house is not quite what it seems.
The music is eerie and it coveys a rather sinister
underlying tone to the film. It is conventional for horror
films to do this as it allows the director to create a
certain atmosphere and mood, making the audience
feel uneasy right from the start of the film.
The non diagetic sound in the basement is an ambient
sound we found on Freesound which anchored our
visuals well as it’s quiet, creepy ambience creates
tension and keeps the audience guessing what other
horrors lie within the basement. Psychological horror’s
tend to have interesting sound mix’s and ours can’t be
labled conventional or unconventional of the sub-genre.
Kitchen piano music
Ambient basement sound

11. Mise-en-scene
Harsh
spotlighting
Makeup to make
Tiernan look starvedProp (cage)
Sinister & animalistic
Wall/set is grimy and
dirty
Simple, ragged, basic clothing
reflecting his now substance lifestyle.
Victim’s non verbal
language is hunched,
scared and is rocking
back and fourth
implying he has been
mistreated
This is all conventional of our sub genre
as this image can be disturbing for a
viewer, a reaction the genre wants to
achieve, especially seeing as it’s a pre
adolescent who’s in the cage.

12. Q2
‘How does your media product represent particular social groups?’

13. Social groups that appear in our
production
• White, middle class male
• The male is a white collar city worker
• Female is a housewife who is shown to
be cooking for her husband
• Victims are all teens, white
and of different sexes
• White, middle class female
• Both are young

14. Representation
• Although the male is represented as the ‘breadwinner’ of the couple,
they are both represented equally as by the end we see them as
accomplices more than anything. This is a positive representation of
women excluding the Sweeny Todd like circumstances of this
observation.
• The fact the lead is neither black nor female could be construed as
recessive, however this purely down to limited options available to us. In
a production with a budget for actors we may have found a different
lead & so I don’t think a comment on the lead’s race can be made.
• The female victim is shown to have her face stroked and her cheek
pinched. The idea is that he is ‘testing’ the meat however as she is a
young girl and he is an unhinged male who has her tied up, it is also a
slightly sexual, degrading act. This is a negative, recessive ideology that
women are objects for some men however that is the intended effect
here and is done to get a reaction of disgust from the audience.

15. How we technically constructed these
representations (1)
• We created the binary oppositions of the victims and the husband predominantly through mise-en-scene.
• The props the victims were captured in (cages & chains) were reasonably sinister & animalistic giving the
snese that in that situation the antagonist is their owner/captor.
Character blocking
places both victims
lower down than him

16. How we technically constructed these
representations (2)
Sound helped represent distinguish the character roles through dialogue:
• Hun’
• Good day?
• Pete asked if you wanted to play golf… - golf is a middle class sport and it enforces her housewife status (As
she was at home to answer the phone).
A lack of sound helped enforce the false ideology of young people as being weaker willed in the modern age.
The fact that we heard zero dialogue and no resistance or fighting back from them portrays them as mere
objects in the hands of the murderous psychopath.

17. Question3

18. Momentum Pictures
Momentum pictures are an
independent UK distributor who I
think would suit distributing our film
due to the wide range of genres they
produce, one of which is Horror. This
includes Let the Right One In
(Alfredson – 2008), a critically
acclaimed film & House at the End of
the Street (Tonderai – 2012).
Our film is more similar to the latter of
those two being set in a domestic
environment & featuring a basement and
a protagonist could be introduced after
our introduction, possibly similar to the
character Jennifer Lawrence plays.

19. Although I could imagine our
film being produced as a
mainstream, industrial piece
of cinema, I believe it would
be more suited to an
independent
production with a more
unique take on the situation
our film denotes.
Rather than the predictable take
which would follow a
protagonist possibly fighting to
uncover or escape this couple
presented as the antagonists.
Instead I’d prefer the story to be
focused around these two and
follow them as the evil yet
likeable protagonists. Much like
the couple in ‘Sightseers’
(Wheatly-2012), creating a film
for a more niche audience.
The nature of our film means the
budget for it could be very low with
unknown actors playing the leads
as I would want the audiences
opinion of the characters to be
based solely on the events of the
film, not on any previous pieces.
There would also be a large amount
of character development of the
couple.

20. Seeing as Momentum Pictures aren’t one of the big
6 studios they don’t have the same subsidiaries
available to them to market the film via synergistic
promotional methods. Therefore
symbioticpromotional methods are how
our film would be marketed.
Firstly I think that a feature in a
respected film magazine such
as Empire or Little White Lies
magazine to appeal to the core
target audience and to people
who will possibly blog and have
a deeper interest in films.
A large part of the campaign would
utilise the web 2.0 by using social
media and possibly a website. By
doing this we can create a buzz
around the film & target positive
technological determinants all with
little or no cost attached.
For the P&A side of our
campaign we could use mosaic
profiling to put up posters in
specific parts of London to
appeal to our TA of young adults
of water cooler environments.

21. Exhibition
Although this film may be
targeted at a specific, slightly
art-house audience (with
showings in cinemas such as
Curzon), I think that the film
could, given the context, be
exhibited in mainstream
cinemas such as Odeon as
well. These multiplex
features however would
probably be few and far
between as they may not
have viewing space for a
small budget film like this.
Although a simultaneous release may create a media buzz
like with ‘A Field in England’ (Wheatley – 2013) where the
film was released on all platforms at the same time
including DVD, in cinema and on VOD, the novelty may
have worn off for audiences and it may cause a flop. The
alternative however would be just as risky as a standard
release wouldn’t make the film stand out in any way and
so it may be lost among the bigger Hollywood
productions.
A standard release would mean Momentum Pictures
would show our film in Cinemas first, then it would
release on DVD & blue ray, & finally online on to VOD
services such as Netflix. These video on demand services
would be crucial to the film’s success as films (not in
Netflix’s case) can sometimes get paid for the amount of
viewings they get on the VOD site. This means that only
people who want to see the film will actively search it out
and watch it, meaning that there are no wasted marketing
costs of advertising to people who are never going to
watch it. Curzon supplies one of these pay to play services.

22. Question 6

23. Blog
Posting on the blog was a very helpful source of communicating with the group and sharing our
ideas and opinions. It allowed each person in the group to collaborate in the planning leading up to
lessons, meaning that we could come into the planning lessons with a selection of ideas to
contribute to the team. Often in blog posts we embedded pictures and videos to visually illustrate
our points and to provide a reference point to refer to when reading and writing the post.

24. We posted 3 videos on YouTube, 1 was the rough-cut and the other two were finished versions
however one of them is a more stabilised version. The videos being on YouTube provided a great
reference point for us when writing blog posts and it helped us produce the written pieces more
efficiently due to the ease of tabbing to the video quickly.

25. Kit list
• Main tripod
• Mini tripod
• LED lights
• DSLR camera
• Skateboard as track

26. Lighting
One of the major problems that we had when
filming was lighting. During the shoot we
realised that in each room there was only one
light bulb, usually positioned above the
doorframe. Therefore filming a shot into a room
became problematic as the camera and camera
man always cast a very visible shadow into
frame. We fixed this by standing further back
and positioning the camera behind the door
frame, looking into the room or by filming
towards the doorway in the room.
A further problem was that when we looked
over our footage the week after, a lot of the
shots in the basement were far too dark to
put on the editing timeline. Therefore we
turned the brightness up on some shots using
the brightness & contrast tool on Adobe
Premiere which made it slightly grainy but not
noticeable if you had never seen it before and
after.

27. Filming
When filming we used Freya’s mini tripod. This was
very helpful for some shots where we couldn’t
position the large tripod such as the shot to the left in
which the camera had to be placed a few inches above
the counter, a length that the large tripod could not
de-extend down to. The small tripod could do this
because its legs were bendable and could be adjusted
to smaller heights to perform unusual shots.
It also acted as a makeshift steadicam which made
certain shots slightly steadier than they would be if we
were holding it directly.
During filming we tried to pay attention to the
rule of thirds as much as possible, applying it to
necessary shots such as the shot where Rob
enters the first room of the basement, giving a
more professional look.

28. As we didn’t have access to the track when filming, I had to borrow a skateboard off a friend and
use that instead. We realised however that rolling this along the kitchen’s floor would not be a
viable shot opportunity as the floor tiles cause the camera to shake. To combat this we used
Harry's desk from upstairs, a large piece of wood around 1.5 metres long. This provided a
smoother surface for a tracking shot.
Issues when filming
The tripod often couldn’t be adjusted to
position the camera in the right place for
certain shots. This caused us to have to go for
a handicam or steadicam shot instead. For
example the birds eye view shot of the pan
was very shaky when we looked at it post
filming.

29. The Sound Mix
The creation of the sound mix was one
of the most lengthy processes of the
production. The sound to the left is a
collaboration of overlayed newspaper
reports, the intended effect was to
inform the audience with the fact that
there have been a good number of
children gone missing and for questions
to be raised as to why this is relevant,
which is answered in the next scene.
Probably the most difficult piece of editing we had to do
in terms of sound was the dialogue. In the clip you see in
the bottom right, there is no diegetic sound. This is
because we couldn’t hear the dialogue between the two
actors from outside, meaning the shot would be
unusable. This meant myself and Freya had to record
them talking into the camera, de-link the video and
audio of that shot on the timeline and replace the old
audio with the new audio. Thankfully the dub was lip-
synced well with the video and so the result is a seamless
shot in which the dialogue can be clearly heard.

30. Editing (1)
One of the techniques we used when editing to achieve continuity was cutting on action to
create matched cuts. We did this throughout to clearly show the lead’s movement through the
house. An example of this is when he goes from the first room in the basement to the next. At
first we didn’t put anything in between the two rooms but after looking at it from a viewer’s
perspective we added a low angle pan following his feet through the corridor. As he steps
inside the second room we cut to a high angle shot which you can see on the right below. This
provides the viewer with a clear yet not tedious image of the basement and a clearer image of
the set.

31. Editing (2) Title
I performed the editing of the title
‘Flesh’ on Adobe Photoshop. First I
chose a suitable font and then typed
‘Flesh’ onto the Photoshop document. I
then double clicked the layer to bring up
the layer style menu in which I could
customise the font to make it unique to
our piece.
The colour overlay I chose was a light red, a
colour most relatable to blood. Next I added a
small outer glow of a dark red colour to
emphasize the splatters of blood seen around
the S & the H of the font and to give the title a
greater depth. Finally I finished it up with help
from Rory with the contour tool which gave
another dimension to the font, but not enough
depth to make it look cartoonish.