This document contains Callum King's coursework evaluation for a horror film opening sequence project. It discusses various aspects of the opening such as its conventional form and plot devices. Callum analyzes how the opening conforms to horror genre conventions through its characters, plot, mise-en-scene, sound, camera work, editing and typography. He also discusses how the work represents social groups and could potentially secure a distribution deal. The document concludes by describing how the project was filmed using low-budget equipment and lighting techniques in tight spaces.

1. Coursework Evaluation
Callum King

2. Is the form of your opening conventional?
• I personally believe the form of my
opening is conventional for the
following reasons:
• The titles in our
production were inspired
by Insidious (Wan, 2010):
• Similar fonts
• Similar use of sound and
animation in the main title
(Loud bang, flickering and
emboldened font
• The less important titles
fade in and out on the
edges of the screen much
like in Insidious.

3. • The plot of our piece is also
conventional
• The ideas of summoning, troubled
teens and undead little girls are stock
situations in horror openings
• Our use of character exposition is highly
conventional for a horror film
• The two main boys’ faces are not revealed
until quite late in the sequence, and their
morbid nature and distinct lack of dialogue
makes them a great source of enigma for
the audience
• The character of the little girl is also very
enigmatic , and viewers would want to
watch on in order to find out who she is,
and her story
• The use of continuity editing
makes the sequence seem
like an opening rather than a
trailer, because a trailer
would generally have
snippets from the whole
film, rather than a single,
continuous sequence

4. How does your opening conform to or challenge the conventions
of your chosen sub-genre of horror?
• Character- Stock characters of
troubled teens and a creepy
undead girl feature reasonably
frequently in horror openings
• Plot- The idea of ritualistic
summonings is also very
conformist to other horror films,
for example The Conjuring (Wan,
2013).
• Mise-en-scene- The location of
eerie woodland and a haunted
house are extremely common in
horror films. An example of a
horror film set in woodland would
be The Blair Witch Project (Myrick,
1999) and a haunted house is
featured in ‘The Conjuring’ (Wan,
2013). The use of black costume
conveys an idea of death and
darkness which is also common in
horror. We decided to dress the girl
in white, to convey to the audience
that she isn't evil, as it makes her
appear innocent, which goes
against common conventions of
horror.

5. •Sound- Scratching, whispering, eerie
drone sound, screaming, chanting and
child-like laughter are all major
conventions of horror
•Camera work- Mostly steadicam, which
is frequently used in horror to give a
sense of immediacy, use of close-ups on
the boys’ faces, shows their pallid,
deathly complexion and their cold, dead
facial expressions
•Editing style- Continuity editing was
used, which is commonly used in all
films, also shot reverse shot was also
used to create an effective jump scare.
Finally, an increased cutting rate was
used to accentuate the action, when the
girl was being summoned

6. • Typography- The font we used for the less important titles was quite spikey and creepy,
reminiscent of old witches’ spell books and the like
• The font for the main title is also quite similar to what you would expect to typically find in a
spell book, however it is more legible and larger, therefore it stands out more, and draws
the attention of the audience, which makes it recognisable as the main title
• The title position and the background is also important, and can be compared to those seen
in Insidious (Wan, 2010). As you can see from the pictures below, we took inspiration from
these titles, specifically we used a black background for the main title, which helped to draw
attention to it, and make it obvious that this was the main title for our piece
• Also, we took inspiration for our secondary titles, as you can see, we used a similar font, and
positioned our titles in a similar manner, as it was appeared seamless and professional

7. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
• The characters represented in our
media product are:
• Lower middle class, white teenage boys
• An undead, young girl
• The lack of characters helps to
emphasize the seclusion of the house

8. • Social class and disability aren’t really
important to our production, however,
the ideologies surrounding gender in
our clip could be discussed
• There is only one female character in
our opening- A young, vulnerable,
innocent ghost of a girl who has been
kidnapped and killed by the antagonist
in the film.
• The two boys in the opening are trying
to contact her in order to avenge her
death, therefore they are playing hero-
like roles. This could be considered to
be patriarchal.
• Therefore, it would be justifiable to say
that our production represents more
residual ideologies, although this was
not an intended ideological
construction
• As well as this the idea of
the ‘final girl’ is not
featured in our film, which
could represent an
emergent ideology, as the
female is not seen as a
typical ‘damsel in distress’
type
• There is in fact a male
‘sceptic’ who would be
killed off quite early in the
film, which makes the
victim a male rather than a
female, challenging
dominant ideologies

9. Who might your film secure a distribution deal with?
• From my research it is clear that an
appropriate media institution to distribute
my media product would be Pathé
• Pathé has successfully distributed many
independent UK horror films including:
• The Cottage (Williams, 2008)
• Dog Soldiers (Marshall, 2002)
• The Descent (Marshall, 2005)
• All of these films had budgets under £5m,
which is exactly where the budget of our
film would lie
As well as this:
• In the past Pathé has had
symbiotic links with
Lionsgate Films in order to
distribute to North
America as well as Europe,
which would broaden the
audience for our product.

10. Case Study
• The Descent (Marshall, 2005) • Country: UK
• Budget:
£3.5m
• Box Office:
$57,051,053
• The success of this film proves that
Pathé are able to effectively and
successfully market an independent,
british horror film, like our product,
Pathé is a quasi-independent company

11. Would you consider your work to be in the style of an independent film or
would it be produced as part of an industrial model?
• I believe that our film is in the style
of an independent film because:
• Use of prosumer cameras eg.
Canon 1100D
• Low budget, no use of CGI or big
special effects
• No bankable stars
• Skeleton Crew

12. What might be their strategy in connecting your film to an
audience?
• The invention of new media
technologies, specifically
Web 2.0 has made the media
landscape more pluralistic,
which would make it much
easier to market our product.
• One of the main techniques which
would be employed to market our
product would be viral marketing,
and the use of Web 2.0
• Technological convergence would
make it easy for our target audience
(predominantly male teens, and fans
of the genre) to access our content,
as the majority of them are positive
technological determinists.

13. • It could be a good idea to use a
simultaneous release strategy
across all platforms, which would
create buzz and allow us to be
more competitive with the big six
US studios, especially vertically
integrated conglomerates such as
Warner Bros. This technique was
successfully employed in A Field
in England (Wheatley, 2013).
• Due to the niche audience, a
blanket release strategy in
multiple territories would
probably be a bad idea, although
it could be beneficial for us to
link up with Lionsgate Films in
order to distribute our product
in the US, as was successfully
accomplished in The Descent
(Marshall, 2005).

14. How did you use a blog collaboratively?
• We used blogger, which is
an e-portfolio, in order to
share our work with the
world
• Blogger allowed us to upload and
share our content and secondary
and primary research, comment on
and view the rest of the group’s
work and communicate our
concept in a simple and effective
manner
• We were also able to use a main
homepage, on which we could view
tasks and deadlines, and we were also
able to receive feedback from our
teachers over the internet
• Finally, it also enabled us to see
exemplar work from previous years,
and so improve our own work

15. • For many of our posts on the
blog, effective and interesting
presentation was needed, we
experimented with various forms
of media, one of which was Prezi
• One such post in which we used Prezi
was our film pitch, as we felt this
would effectively and coherently
communicate our idea
• I contributed to a number of slides,
which I feel improved my ICT skills,
because prior to this I had had very
little experience with Prezi

16. How did you actually film your work?
• Equipment:
• Canon 1100D camera
• Two tripods - One light,
smaller tripod, and a
heavier, larger tripod
• A large sheet of reflective
material
• A variety of torches
• We found space
was quite a big
issue on our set
• We used the
smaller tripod for
the tighter spaces
where the heavier
tripod wouldn't fit,
however with the
heavier tripod we
had more control
• Lighting was a major issue in the production of our
opening
• We found that although shining torches on the set
made it brighter, it also looked very harsh and torch-
like, which was something we didn't want
• So instead we shined the torches onto a reflective
sheet of material (as depicted to the right) which
flattened out the light, and brightened the set in a
more realistic manner

17. • When filming the sequence in
which the girl appears, tension
was built using a number of shot
reverse shots
• The repetitive nature of the shot
reverse shot lulls the audience
into false sense of security so to
speak, making the jump scare all
the more effective
• We established the scene within the
house using a series of steadicam long
shots, originally, many of these were
handicam, however after reviewing it
was clear that the slower movements
were much more effective at building
tension
• There were also times when the
tripod wouldn’t go low enough to
capture the shot we wanted, for
many of the low angle shots that
we captured we had to take the
camera off of the tripod and prop
it up using a book, thus we were
able to capture the lower angled
shots
• Framing was also an issue, as we had to constantly consider mise-en-scene, and shift objects
in and out of the shot, in order to maintain good mise-en-scene

18. How did you edit your piece?
• For our editing we used Adobe Premier
Elements 9.0
• One of the main issues with our
production was lighting, therefore we
were forced to film our production in
the day time, which for a horror piece is
not ideal
• We got around this in post-production,
by utilising the brightness/contrast tool
• Using this tool, we were able to edit
our piece to give the impression that
the action on screen was occurring at
dusk-time (see before and after
pictures on the right)

19. • The brightness/contrast tool also came in
handy because it allowed us to make the
lighting look the same in all shots.
• This was an issue because over the course of
the time when we were filming the sun
went down making our set look a lot darker
• The brightness/contrast tool helped to
ensure continuity in our editing
• A sound bridge was also used to give the
production a continuous feel
• Fading in and out was used at points to
show time passing, for example when the
pentangle was being made, we saved time
and kept up the pace of the piece by putting
a fade in
Below is a close up of the sound
bridge
• We were also able to cut
together our piece using this
programme, we added titles
and cut together all the
separate clips.
• We notably used an increase
in cutting rate in order to
increase the tension towards
the end of the sequence