Unit G321 ‘The titles and opening sequence of a

new fictional film.’

Emma Gower - 6028

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

Before we started, we both decided that we wanted to create a horror/thriller type of film because it was our favourite genre and we enjoy watching those types of movies. As we have chosen 2 types to base our film on, this meant we had to do some research into both of these genre's, which we did as

soon as we had decided.

WHAT GENRE DID WE CHOOSE AND WHY?

HORROR'A genre which is meant to scare its readers and make the audience feel terror.' 'Unsettling films designed to frighten, panic, cause dread, alarm, terrify, shock whilst also providing

captivating entertainment in a fearsome experience.’

THRILLER'High stakes, non-stop action, plot twists, exciting settings and an adrenalin packed climax.' 'An exciting, suspenseful play or

story, especially a mystery story that thrills the audience.'

I chose to look at 3 film openings to decide which are the most important codes and conventions so that we can follow and use them ourselves. I looked at 1 contemporary film, 1 British horror/thriller film, 1 inspirational

film and 1 genre defining film so I had a range of different ones to see if the conventions were all the same or different.

-1 CONTEMPORARY FILM: ‘LAW ABIDING CITIZEN’

The mise-en-scene is similar to what we wanted

The action and horror that is portrayed in first 2 minutes is the same effect that we want to create

-1 BRITISH HORROR/THRILLER FILM: ‘DORIAN GRAY’

Good audience appealing techniques

Mass amount of horror

Inspiring overall concept

-1 INSPIRATIONAL FILM: ‘THE MESSENGERS’

Main inspiration/similarity

Used black and white editing, dark lighting, house scenes

-1 GENRE DEFINING FILM: ‘PSYCHO’

Famous and worldwide horror and thriller film

Fits well with genre of own film

Good to analyse for ideas for our own

WHERE DID WE LOOK FOR CODES AND CONVENTIONS?

CODES AND CONVENTIONS

Codes and conventions shape what is expected and what is produced when you are creating a new media product. I had to look at the typical codes and conventions of the genre’s we had chosen so we could use them as guidelines and create a successful film

like real media products already. These are the camera, editing, mise-en-scene and sound conventions that I found in the 4 film openings I looked at:

Camera:•Quick changes in camera angles – LS to CU quickly – pace is faster and picks up audience’s attention more•Close-ups of key subjects/events – shows importance/relevance to the storyline•Wide shots – establish surroundings, but normally surroundings are in darkness and even though audience are being shown a wide shot, they can’t always see the background clearly

Editing:•Quick cuts – make the pace fast•High angles – show that characters are in danger, suspense for audience•Low angles – empower the characters, heroic, excites audience•Dark colours – different techniques including black and white, blurred edges, tail feathers, etc.

Mise-en-place: •Dark lighting - mystery, hard to make out scenery•Dark coloured props and background – eeriness, sets the mood and tone to very suspicious, creepy•Not many objects in scene/only relevant ones – doesn’t draw audience’s attention away from main action

Sound:•Music that creates tension – sets the mood of the scene, audience can guess what might happen from the music, puts the audience on edge, sets the scene•Short, sharp sounds to exaggerate movements/actions – draws audience’s attention to the action more, makes it important

Above: From the film ‘Dorian Gray’ showing a

Close-up shot of an important object

Above: From the film ‘Law Abiding Citizen’ showing a High angle shot of one of

the characters

Above: From the film ‘Psycho’ showing a scene in almost

darkness so it’s hard for audience to make out what’s happening

The same as a I did to the 4 films that I analysed for, I have broken the opening of ‘Necrophobia’ into 9 key shots as a sort of summary as to what happens in the first 2 minutes. Here are the 9 shots:

9 KEY SHOTS

It was important for us to obviously stick to the research of codes and conventions that we made at the beginning, so these are the forms and conventions that we found from

other films, and actually put into practice for our film:

-Variety of camera angles – high and low (e.g. High angle when main character is ripping up paper to show from his perspective, Low angle when character is being hurt to show their view)

-Variety of camera shots - CU to LS (e.g. LS of house at beginning, CU of knives being sharpened)

-Fast cuts - to increase speed of pace (e.g. when characters were running through the forests and fields)

-Dark lighting – make it more mysterious (e.g.. edited tail feather, black and white editing)

-Tense music – eerie, suspenseful, scary to influence audience (e.g. music starts at beginning and sets the tone)

-Short, sharp sound effects – to add edge and power to key scenes/points (e.g. in one of the final scenes when the bedroom cuts to blackness)

-Stereotypical villain and victims – audience can relate well to characters and understand events (e.g. the victims typically being all females and wearing light colours, and the villain being quite tall and dressed in dark colours)

HOW HAVE WE USED FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

High angle

Close-up

We developed certain forms and conventions so that they were adapted to our film (for example: we used the original ‘editing’ but used that to edit our work with a ‘tail feather’ around the edges to make the scenes darker and look like they have natural shadows). These are the codes and conventions that we then

developed and even though keeping the same original idea, we produced more of it:

-Included CU shots and LS in both one sequence – (e.g. the zooming in and out in the first scene with the house)

-Close ups of important subjects and then zooming out to important settings – (e.g. close up of door name and then zooming out to show entire house)

-Edited on Final Cut to make the lighting even darker – makes it more mysterious for audience if they can’t make out some of the scenery as they are in the ‘unknown’ (e.g. the final scene of the village is in almost blackness and only the houses and roads can be made out)

-Dull coloured scenery – (e.g. forests, fields, dark weather) – specifically chosen objects to feature that are typical horror/thriller scenery/locations, and were chosen to build the suspense and action of the film

-Variety of pieces of tense music – to change it around a bit so that the audience doesn’t get bored of hearing the same piece of music throughout, and the variety allowed us to choose more appropriate pieces of music for different scenes (e.g. starts off with one music, then changes when the pace increases and then goes back to same piece of music at end when pace calms down again)

HOW HAVE WE DEVELOPED FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Dull coloured scenery, and shot in

evening time

Zooming in to out

To make our product our own, we had to remember to challenge some of the codes and conventions that we found out, and this meant by twisting them and turning them into something unique, or making up one of our own conventions. These are the forms and conventions

that we challenged completely to make our own:

-Using camera focus appropriately – we had to do this by ourselves, but I think this is an important convention in most horror/thriller films because it’s so the audience concentrates on foreground subjects rather than background, and if they are clueless as to the surroundings then they are more likely to feel tense and scared.

-Blurred out some objects and the edges – similar to the above, but instead we edited out some of the edges on the Final Cut programme so that it fit our ‘in the past’ scenario we were trying to create.

-Edited into black and white – (inspiration from the opening of the film ‘The Messengers’) I chose this to make it darker and duller- therefore more scary and more horror/thriller like- and show that it’s from the past- as it was set in 2001 which was 10 years ago from the rest of the film.

HOW HAVE WE CHALLENGED FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

This shows slight blur around the

edges and in the area highlighted

Above: ‘The Messengers’Below: Our Film

‘Necrophobia’

Horror Definition: http://www.filmsite.org/horrorfilms.html

Thriller Definition: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/thriller

Opening of ‘Law Abiding Citizen’ via Youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3FAyARAVVI

Opening of ‘Psycho’ via Youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzkIaD6QGQw

Opening of ‘The Messengers’ via Youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8-XOYNHa9c

Opening of ‘Dorian Gray’ via Youtube (was removed)

Youtube – www.youtube.com

Google Images – www.google.com/images

REFERENCES