Q1. how does your

product challenge the

conventions of real

media products?

Characters

The antagonist is usually given prevalence in horror films

and shown as one of the main characters next to the

protagonist. Our us of a female antagonist is

unconventional because usually antagonists male and more

obviously physically intimidating. The character is that of

a female fatale who doesn’t take the detective seriously

and is clearly not bothered by the gruesome crimes she had

committed. This type of character is shown in Basic

Instinct as well as Pulp Fiction and these were our main

inspirations for our female antagonist character

The male detective character is a stock character in the sense

that he is a classic 1st victim in a horror film. Because he is a

detective he makes the audience feel safe and lures them into a

false sense of security. This isn’t massively threatened by the

female antagonists blasé nature however it undermines his

authority and gives the feeling that she is in control. This

contrasts with patriarchal ideologies in society that women are

less dominant than men and less intellectually and physically

imposing. Once the detective is killed the audience would feel

a sense of tension and they would feel constantly on edge

because its already been established that any one character

could be killed. The film Halloween also does this in its

opening when the main antagonist is a young boy who kills his

sister implying that no one is safe.

The husband s face is never shown,

this creates enigma and an air of

mystery which adds to the horror

conventions and also implies that the

killer could be anyone.

The idea of having a husband and wife

double act was inspired by Bonnie and

Clyde and the actual main reason for

only showing POV shots of the husband

was because we couldn’t find a

realistic actor to portray him.

However we were also partially

inspired again by Halloweens opening

and its use of POV shots of the knife

which created enigma and suspense

around who's point of view was

actually being shown.

Mise-en-scene

Aswell as the cigarette we

used a bloody knife which

can be seen in all three

locations. This type of

prop is makes it obviously

that the opening is that of

a horror film, this was

important to emphasise

because the interrogation

scene might lead the

audience to think they were

watching a thriller film.

We used a single desk lamp for

lighting, this gave the shots an

eerie feel and single lamps are

also widely used for

interrogations in movies. We

took inspiration for our low key

lighting on the two characters

from The Dark Knight (Jackson,

2010) we also thought it would

be a good idea because we didn’t

want it to be to be too obvious

that I’m 16 because the

detective in the film is meant

to be much older.

We used a cigarette as a prop, we were

inspired by the character of Mia Wallace

from Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994). The

cigarette gives the image of a female

fatale, we included this because we

wanted her to be laid back and calm in

the face of being interrogated. The

dominant female character wasn’t

conventional of horror and it challenged

residual ideologies that women are less

intimidating than men.

Our title was a plain serif font in

white on a black back ground. This

wasn’t massively conventional of

horror because a lot of horror films

will include references to the plot

in their titles.

soundFree sound and YouTube were two sites we used when looking for sound to use in our

opening. One of the most unusual features of our project was the inclusion of a semi-

continuous clicking noise which showed that time was passing. It was non-diegetic and its

main use other than showing that time had passed was to suspend the sense of tension that

is present during the opening

Getting the various sound levels correct was

important. We lowered the volume during the parts

where the actor was speaking because this made it

easy to hear clearly what was being said. We also

used the sound effect of a camera flash as a photo

is taken. The noise was old fashioned and added to

the openings noir nature, it also reinforced to the

audience that the police were involved and it was

an official investigation.

In horror films there tends to be a slow beat

throughout with sound focussed on action

areas that release visceral pleasure. Our

production did this as well so it was in this

respect conventional of the horror genre.

EditingWhen you watch our opening one of the first things

you pick up on would be the cutting rate, which is

slow compared to other films of the horror genre.

This slow cutting rate goes against normal horror

conventions which tend to be fast paced to suit the

action. We chose a slower rate because our opening

contains a lot of dialogue.

We did also employ a faster cutting rate in the

flashback scenes this created contrast with the

rest of our piece and was conventional of horror.

So in terms of editing and more specifically

cutting rate we were both conventional and non-

conventional.

We chose to desaturate our footage using image controls. This took a lot

of the orange light from the lamp away, this improved the overall look of

the footage aesthetically as well as making the footage look more typical

and conventional of the horror genre. Another affect it had was making the

lighting look more lowkey.

TypographyWe used a plain white font called Adobe

Calson Pro on a black back ground. We

chose it because it was typical film

noir and its plain and easy to read. As

I said its very plain and this

challenges conventions as many films

use more obviously horror related fonts

that include features like being

written in blood. Our title challenges

conventions of horror through its lack

of conventions of horror.

We thought a lot about hierarchy with our

typography. The titles first show the actors names

followed by producer , director and the film

title. Each name was in larger font than there

role because this looked professional .

“Causation” was the largest word, because it’s the

title of the film, obviously.

Monsters was our

main inspiration

for the title.

Camera workOur main scene is the interrogation scene in which the detective

interviews the suspect. The interrogation scene from The Dark Knight

heavily inspired us both in terms of content and camera work. It

incorporates an array of slow moving shots which reinforce the unsteady

undertone of the two characters as they converse. We wanted to emulate

this because we felt it was very effective. Furthermore our shots were

quite steady as a result so it looked really rather splendid. The steady

nature of the shots could be interpreted as unconventional because a lot

of horror films employ handi cam shots which convey unease.

Another positive from the Dark knight was the framing which was quite

intimate and as a result had a visceral nature which made the

audience feel as if they were part of the back and forth. Our use of

over the shoulder shots also helped to keep the tension in the

conversation.

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.

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.

Q.2 How does your

media product

represent particular

social groups?

Social groups that are represented

and how they are represented

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.

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.

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.

How are representations

technically structured?

The female character wears a red

blouse with black trousers the colours

indicate danger and are typical of

film noir. The male character is

smartly dressed in a blazer and shirt,

this connotes that he is upper class.

This shows us using costume and mise

en scene to reflect social class.

Another factor is that a lot of

prevalence is given to the female

character which shows that she is

actually more in charge of the

situations than the detective who is

meant to be the voice of authority

Low key lighting imbeds a sense of

criminality and the one source of light

is typical of a police/detective

interrogation scene in a noir movie.

Representations of gender.

Both male and female characters are given equal

prevalence in our opening. A female is not the

conventional choice for a horror antagonist and

the idea of a young women committing murderous

crimes is unusual and goes against ideologies

that men would be more likely to commit such

crimes. Throughout the piece the female is

portrayed as the more intelligent character and

her persistence to not properly answer the his

questions whilst using a monotone voice shows

her lack of respect for authority. Along with

her male partner she is shown to kill only men

in the opening so she could be seen as

matriarchal. Overall in our opening the only

female character is shown to be dominant over

men but in a negative way because she is a

serial killer.

We challenged gender

associated ideologies with

our use of sound, mostly in

terms of conversation.

Although the male character

is asking the questions the

female is controlling the

conversation by answering in

a monotone voice and not

giving anything away. This

becomes more clear at the end

when the male character is

killed because the audience

realise that the female was

just stalling until her

accomplished arrived. The way

in which she ignores the

questions shows she is cold

hearted, its like Drake said

“you know a girl is hurt,

when she ignores you”.

Q3. What type

of institution

might

distribute your

film?

What type of distribution company

might distribute our film?From my own research into Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Hooper, 1974)

I would of come to the conclusion that Bryanston Pictures should

produce our film. However I don’t think this is a good idea

because the company is American and Hasn’t released anything

decent in a while. I think the film is more suited to the

British independent route so I would choose Vertigo films as the

distribution company. From the research that I’ve done into

Monsters (Edwards, 2010). Vertigo have also released many other

British independent films like StreetDance (2011, Giwa)

Vertigo Films specialise in distributing

commercially driven independent cinema. This is

well suited to our film because it has many of the

characteristics of the independent films that

Vertigo release. For example our film would have a

low budget and no recognisable actors/actresses. It

also doesn’t contain any key talent. Our opening

would also be independent because it doesn’t

include any characteristics of a tent pole

industrial film.

Vertigo have made use of innovative release strategies in the past to increase buzz and

revenue. Ideally our film would appeal to a mass audience but it might only appeal to a

niche audience because it’s a low budget independent horror, because of this I think it

could be trailed at some cinemas to get feedback and then if it does well it could be

released to further cinemas.

In terms of synergistic promotional activity I don’t think our film would be

able to attract a lot of interest because of its content. Other companies might not want

to be associated with horror content involving murders. Furthermore films like The

Hobbit (Jackson, 2012) were able to partake in synergistic activity with New Zealand Air

because the movie is internationally renowned and was shot in New Zealand. Our film

isn’t an internationally renowned tent pole film so I doubt it would attract such large

investments from companies like New Zealand Air.

A trailer would obviously be made and released because trailers cost very little

due to the content already being made. As well as this the film could be shown at film

festivals, independent films gain a lot of publicity as a result of being shown at these

festivals especially if they win awards. Utilising the opportunity that film festivals

present for a film like ours makes sense because one of the main purposes of film

festivals is to help the independent film making industry.

Guerrilla film distribution is a low budget way

of distributing promoting and marketing a film.

Vertigo have used Guerrilla film distribution in

the past on Monsters which was a huge success as

a British independent film. Moreover Guerrilla

distribution typically involves methods like

flyers, stickers posters and graffiti. However in

recent times it has developed and expanded and it

is now widely used on the internet. Instead of

just drawing attention locally, the film can be

networked through individual groups on Web 2.0.

In terms of using the internet for Guerrilla

distribution events can also be organised to

promote the film, like flash mobs for example.

Due to these factors a think Vertigo films could

use a viral campaign as a really useful way of

distributing the film and making it appeal to the

target audience and even people outside the

target age groups. Linking into earlier points

the use of Web 2.0 and a viral campaign could

attract a wider range of mainstream cinemas who

are prepared to show the film. Which would

broaden the films radius for being exhibited.

In the modern film industry social media

is very important for distributing both

industrial and independent films. Most modern

films have social media pages and do things like

run competitions, social media is used because

its free and its particularly useful for horror

films because most of the target audience will be

on at least one social media site.

Q6. What have you

learnt about

technologies from

the process of

constructing this

product?

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.

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.

Most websites on the

internet now allow the

comment function! Blogger

stays true to this trend as

Callum King demonstrates in

this screen shot.

The ability to receive and

reply to comments allows

you to receive feedback and

criticisms so we know how to

improve our posts.

We used YouTube as well as Blogger as I said

earlier. YouTube was also vital because we had to

upload all our pieces to YouTube before we embedded

them onto our Blogger blog. YouTube helped us gage

how popular our videos were and you can see one has

got near to 250 views.

YouTube is also more widely used than blogger so it

opened up everything to a wider audience which let

us receive comments from anyone. You can also see

how all our various rough cuts are presented on

YouTube

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.

Obviously the whole process required editing . The

programme we used was Premiere Elements 9.0. we also used

this for the preliminary task where we all used the soft

wear to produce various effects and just basic editing to

put shots together. We each took part in the editing and

the main thing we learnt was how to use the Premiere

programme. We used music throughout all the videos we

have produced to emphasise certain things so getting the

sound mix right and learning how to put edit sounds in

was very important.

Our opening was legitimately a whole new ball game,

before we started editing the opening the most

complex editing we had done was the split screen

inserted to the right for our preliminary.

We also had to alter the lighting and colour scheme of our piece.

To do this we used image controls to alter the saturation of

colours on the screen, another thing we did was changing the

brightness/ contrast. On the left there is a before and after . The

bottom one is the after, you can see that we made it darker and

edited the amount and degree of shadow. This basically made the

opening feel more intimidating and conventional of horror theme.

One hard thing we learnt to do was ensure consistency of colour

because otherwise it wouldn’t of looked professional.

Because we used two locations it was quite difficult to ensure continuity especially as

we wanted to use shots from the two shoots seamlessly and make it seem as if they were

natural and coming from the same warehouse location. Furthermore this two screen shots

below show the two separate locations which we filmed with a two week gap. This gap could

have been a problem because you might be able to tell that they were separate mainly due

to my sideburns looking much more lively in the later segment we shot at school in the

drama studio.

For our titles we took inspiration from Monsters (Edwards

2012) it’s a simple white Serif font on a black background .

This doesn’t take any attention away from what's happening on

screen so the audience thoroughly understand the story. We

added key frames and changed the size of the text, this

allowed us to have a slow zooming effect on the font. Simple

titles are also classic and conventional of independent

films.