This post will evaluate our finished produtcion. The question which we need to relate each screen grab to is 'In what ways does your media product use, develop or change forms and conventions of real media products?'. We have been given nine sub-categories, these are : Title, Setting/location, costumes/props, camerawork/editing, font+style, story, genre, character and SFX (Special effects).
1. The above image shows our production logo. we came to a mutual agreement that this would;d be suitable for the horror genre, the raven is symbolic of death, we saw this as a fitting logo for a horror production. The raven is also coming out of a computer screen, to emphasise our function, which was the filming and editing, which people then see the death from the horror films, which is shown by the raven
Our title sequence matches the conventions of a horror as it sets the scene of the film, the pan across the river emphasises the importance f this location, when they see the title at the end of the opening we hope it becomes apparent to the audience that this location will play a huge part to the later story. However, from our questionnaires this was not made clear by the opening, but in the later stages of this film, 'The river' will relate back to this location and most of the key scenes will occur in this area. The horror film 'nightmare on elm sreet' uses its key location in the opening, with a road sign for the street being used, this is the impact we aimed to have with this opening.
2. We introduce the two victims when they first appear on screen, this allows the audience to see who the actor/ actress is who is playing the characters, we also kept their names the same, so in scenes where Rowen shouts out 'Michael' the audience will know that is who she is calling. Horror films do not usually have the characters names appear as the initial victims do not a;ways play a significant role in the film, this is where we challenge the conventions of a horror film as the initial victims will play a significant role in the film as the storyline will continuously relate back to them and solving their murders. The music used when the characters are introduced builds tension and you know from the music that they are to be the first victims, when Michael misses te ball, the music picks up, this takes away any suspicion and gives the audience a clear understanding that Michael will be the first victim.
3. This image shows the stereotypical horror victim, she is now left on her own after her brothers 'disappearance' . This matches the horror genre as the stereotypical victim is a girl on her own, this is prominent in horror blockbusters such as scream. The setting also emphasises the tension in this scene, even though she is in a bright area, the next scene cuts to a dark enclosed woodland area, which is a conventional location for a murder in a horror film. Death is also implied by the costume of Rowen who is in all black clothing to symbolise and connote death, a common factor in any horror film.
4. This scene is the turning point in the film, the ball was white to symbolise purity, this is then lost when the blood drips onto the ball, the high paced, eerie music, this will make the audience jump as their is only a subtle hum over the previous scene to emphasise the radical change in pace, the previous scene was ominous as it was from the killers perspective. the music stays at a high pace until the end of the opening when the title is shown, music is a huge factor in our film. We spent a large amount of time deciding which music we wanted to use for each section and we hope and believe that each piece of music fits each scene perfectly. We used music which is instantly related to horror, but we didn't want to be completely generic with our choices, so we looked at many different sites to find the final music, we had about 25 songs in consideration, which then went down to 5 for the final piece.
5. This scene is directly after the blood drops, which we have used internally as the key change in pace, we have called it 'the ball drop' after the ball drop, the effects begin to become prominent, this is the piece with the mostspecial effects in our finished production. However, we used many more effects on the climactic scene, however once we exported and rendered the film the effect made our film look amateur, if it had have looked the way it did in the editing program it would have been the highlight of the film.
6. This was our major change in editing in recent weeks. In the above scene we used a slo-mo effect, black and white and a subtle colour correction to make Michaels body stand out more from the background, we put this in black and white to show the emotion of the scene, this was emphasised by the slo-mo. Our special effects are not to the standard of a conventional horror as our budget and resources are of no comparison, but working with what we had i feel our effects added to the film greatly.
7. This is the first time the killers are shown on screen, the masks they are wearing are similar to that of the killer in the scream films, they keep the identity of the killers from the audience, creating a shroud of mystery, there will be suspects in the later stages of the film and the main plot will be the police officer (me) who is shown at the end trying to discover who the killers are. However, we do not actually see anyone dying, it is all implied in the opening, you instantly tjink these are the killers due to the music and the way they are introduced.
8. I used this image to show camera-work, this camera angle implies that there is a third killer, possibly the leader of the group, this has not been picked up by anyone who has watched the film, but i feel as though it could have bee executed better but due to time constriction we had no other option but to keep the footage. We this camera angle to show the two 'killers' and the victim, we used a variety of close ups and mid-shots in thsi opening, the mid shots are used when the characters are being watched and close up are used in the high paced, tense areas. This matches the conventions of horror as close ups are used in horror to build tension and to make people jump, we hope we succeeded in doing this with our camera-work.
9. The final screen grab shows our title, we added an effect so that the font flowed like a river, we felt this was a strong point of our production, we initially thought about using blue font but only further delegation we decided that this did not fit horror conventions as blue is a happy colour, the white font on the black background symbolises purity surrounded by death, this connotation is used in both our production logo and the ball drop scene. The general consensus from our questionnaires thought the title could be changed, but as a team we decided that we liked the title and it should be kept the same, it matches titles of films such as halloween, where the title is not over-extravagant like it would be in an action film or a kids film.
