yeah m8

1. Q1. how does your product
challenge the conventions of
real media products?

2. How our opening is not conventional
The role of our antagonist is portrayed by a female actress; this challenges
dominant ideologies because in most horror films the antagonist is a male
character. Horror films are usually associated with high cutting rates to build
tension, however our opening has a slower cutting rate and we
build tension through other mediums like dialogue which is cool.
We used a plain pretty standard white text font for a lot of the titles. We
chose it because it stood out clearly and was visible against the background
but didn't take attention away from what was happening on screen. The text
wasn't conventional because most horror films use bold bright fonts to
impose themselves upon the audience.
Our opening featured a lot of dialogue, this
isn't normal for horror openings because they
usually don't contain much speech.
Not many close ups are used in our piece,
usually horror films use many close ups to
intensify a scene or put the focus on one
particular prop like a bloody knife or dead body.
We convey horror through tracking shots and
over the shoulder shots.
We used a clock and had the time clicking
down which is rather unusual and quite
innovative I think.
In terms of costume the characters are
wearing normal clothes that don't particularly
reflect that the opening is a horror opening.
We altered the colour for some of our shots slightly to give the scenes
more of an eerie feeling. We also wanted the overall colour scheme of our
opening to consist mainly of three colours.

3. How our opening is conventional
The locations is an isolated and desolate ware
house with low key lighting, this is typical of a
horror film.
The main colours we
use are red and black
which convey danger
and death.
The exaggerated non-diegetic sound of the clock ticking
helps build tension and also conveys that time is passing.
Exaggerated sound is a convention of horror. We also
used it in the flash back where we showed montage
editing.
Props like the bloody
knife that featured in
our opening are
conventional to horror.
The location of our typography is
quite conventional and its
positioning is similar to the True
Detective opening.
We establish enigma by hinting through
dialogue that there are two serial killers
involved. In terms of plot, our piece
centres on people being killed by serial
killers. This idea is quite conventional to
the horror genre.

5. The antagonist in our piece is meant to be a female in her 20’s.
Both the characters given prevalence in our piece are white and
you can’t really tell what class group they belong to. Although
they are both relatively well spoken which could lead to you
saying they are middle or upper class.
Having a female antagonist serial killer challenges the dominant
ideological view that males are more likely to commit such
crimes.
There is no hint of physical disability in our opening however you
could argue that the antagonists must be slightly mentally
unstable because they are serial killers. Our sub-genre is
psychological which also reflects this point.
Social status isn’t a key feature in the opening and because only
four people come into the scenes not many social classes are
represented nor ideologies reflected.
The social groups that we do cover are not accurately
represented in my opinion because that would imply that many
women in their 20’s have a tendency to commit murders.
There is a binary opposition between the male and female
character as he questions her and she gives flimsy answers
before her husband murders him.
You could argue that detectives and people in similar roles are
represented negatively because they are portrayed as quite
hopeless at their job by our opening. This means our opening
shows residual ideologies.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?

6. we used a lot of tracking and over the shoulder shots to
emphasise the back and forth nature of the opening. This
highlighted the way in which the antagonist was prepared to
answer back and be quite rude to the detective. Following
on from the point raised in the previous slide a female
antagonist challenges ideologies as it is not typical for the
main evil character to be a women. This dismisses the
residual ideologies about the role of women in society and
so forth. Women can be serial killers too!
Both characters are young but this was mainly due to the
lack of actors in the ideal age bracket especially in the case
of the detective who would have been much older if we had
more resources
Stereotypical characters in the horror genre are
victims, final girl, a hero etc. in terms of characters
our opening isn’t stereotypical of the horror genre in
the sense of a typical male antagonist. The detective
personality could be viewed as the typical first
character to be killed in a horror film. He embodies
traits such as being calm and not really seeing a
threat in the situation. These type of characters
usually make the audience feel calm however when
they are killed the audience becomes worried
because the death reinforces the fact that no one's
safe.

7. Q3. What type of institution
might distribute your film?

8. What typeof distribution company might distribute ourfilm??
Frommyown researchintoTexasChainsawMassacre(Hooper,1974) Iwouldofcome
totheconclusionthatBryanstonPicturesshouldproduceourfilm.HoweverIdon’t
thinkthisisagoodideabecausethecompany isAmericanand Hasn’treleased
anythingdecentina while.I thinkthefilmismore suitedtotheBritishindependent
routesoI wouldchoose Vertigofilmsasthedistributioncompany.Fromtheresearch
thatI’vedoneintoMonsters(Edwards,2010).Vertigohavealsoreleasedmanyother
Britishindependentfilmslike StreetDance(2011,Giwa)
VertigoFilmsspecialiseindistributingcommerciallydrivenindependentcinema.
Thisiswellsuitedtoourfilmbecauseithasmanyofthecharacteristicsofthe
independentfilmsthatVertigorelease.Forexampleourfilmwouldhavealow
budgetandnorecognisableactors/actresses.Italsodoesn’tcontainanykeytalent.
Ouropeningwouldalsobe independentbecauseitdoesn’tinclude any
characteristicsofatentpole industrialfilm.

9. Vertigohavemadeuse ofinnovativereleasestrategiesinthepasttoincreasebuzzandrevenue.Ideallyourfilmwouldappealtoamassaudiencebutit
mightonlyappealtoaniche audiencebecauseit’salow budgetindependenthorror,becauseofthisIthinkitcould betrailedatsomecinemastoget
feedbackandthenifitdoeswellitcould bereleasedtofurthercinemas.
IntermsofsynergisticpromotionalactivityI don’tthinkourfilmwouldbeable toattractalotofinterestbecauseofitscontent.Other
companiesmightnotwanttobe associatedwithhorrorcontentinvolvingmurders.Furthermorefilmslike TheHobbit(Jackson, 2012) wereable to
partakein synergisticactivitywithNewZealandAirbecausethemovieisinternationallyrenownedand wasshotinNewZealand.Ourfilmisn’tan
internationallyrenownedtentpolefilmsoIdoubtitwouldattractsuchlargeinvestmentsfromcompanieslikeNewZealandAir.
A trailerwouldobviouslybemadeandreleasedbecause trailerscostverylittledue tothecontentalreadybeingmade.Aswellasthisthe
filmcould beshownatfilmfestivals,independentfilmsgainalotofpublicityasaresultofbeingshownatthesefestivalsespeciallyiftheywinawards.
Utilisingtheopportunitythatfilmfestivalspresentforafilmlike oursmakessensebecauseone ofthemainpurposesoffilmfestivalsistohelpthe
independentfilmmakingindustry.

10. Guerrillafilmdistributionisalow budgetwayofdistributingpromotingand
marketinga film.VertigohaveusedGuerrillafilmdistributioninthepaston
Monsterswhich wasa hugesuccessasaBritishindependentfilm.Moreover
Guerrilladistributiontypicallyinvolvesmethodslike flyers,stickersposters
andgraffiti.Howeverinrecenttimesithasdevelopedandexpandedanditis
nowwidelyusedontheinternet.Insteadofjustdrawingattentionlocally,
thefilmcanbe networkedthroughindividualgroupsonWeb 2.0.Intermsof
usingtheinternetforGuerrilladistributioneventscan alsobeorganisedto
promotethefilm,like flashmobsforexample.Duetothesefactorsa think
Vertigofilmscould usea viralcampaignasareallyusefulwayofdistributing
thefilmandmakingitappealtothetargetaudienceandevenpeopleoutside
thetargetage groups.Linkingintoearlierpointstheuse ofWeb 2.0anda
viralcampaigncouldattracta widerrangeofmainstreamcinemaswhoare
preparedtoshowthefilm.Which wouldbroadenthefilmsradiusforbeing
exhibited.
Inthemodernfilmindustrysocialmediaisveryimportant
fordistributingbothindustrialandindependentfilms.Mostmodernfilms
havesocialmediapagesanddo thingslike runcompetitions,socialmediais
usedbecauseitsfreeanditsparticularlyusefulforhorrorfilmsbecausemost
ofthetargetaudiencewillbeonatleastone socialmediasite.

11. Q6. What have you
learnt about
technologies from the
process of constructing
this product?

12. The blog was used to keep track of what we
were doing during the process of producing
our opening. It was useful as a reference
point for our collaborative work as a group. As
a group we completed the group tasks
together, on the individual tasks we each did
separate work.
We used other online tools and websites such as
YouTube as a source of information and inspiration that
we used in our blog posts and in the actual production
of our opening. A useful website for finding movie and
TV show openings was Art of the Title which helped to
give me a lot of ideas about different factors in our own
opening. The creative process of producing the horror
opening has definitely opened the door for me to a
much wider range of resources that I didn’t know I could
utilise.

13. Blogger was a key feature of our coursework
because it made it easy to keep track of our work.
Blogger is pretty easy and simple to use and it
allowed us to personalise our web page to fit the
themes of our opening which was useful. The fact
that it is a simple site to understand made it
comparatively easy for us to produce detailed blog
posts quite quickly. Blogger was also pragmatic
because it gave us an easy way to manage and
place content on the web. Overall I think running a
blog was interesting because there are currently a
growing amount of blog genres on the internet and
I feel that basing one around making a horror
opening is pretty groovy and innovative.

14. Initially we had problems with casting and location but
in terms of technology our project has run quite
smoothly. To film our work we used Ben’s DSLR
camera and a school tripod. We also made use of the
schools track and dolly so that we could shoot tracking
shots which made our work look much more
professional. The main warehouse location for our
interrogation scene was shot on two different sets so
we had to sort out on set problems with lighting to
ensure continuity. This meant we had to alter the
brightness/contrast of the shots when we edited them.
As well as this we had to be aware of the rule
of thirds and the 180 rule so that are opening
made sense and looked realistic because if
you break continuity the audience will have a
less immersive viewing experience. We didn’t
have an unlimited amount of shoots to get
everything right so we have had to change and
alter some things using aftereffects, for
example some of our tracking shots were
slightly rocky so they have had to be stabilised
even though we did use steadicam.