2) How does your media product represent particular social groups

Our opening sequence we tried to reflect different social groups in order to appeal to a wide range of audience. Two main ones that we included in our sequence was:


• The state of mind of the male protagonist

• The way in which we represented teenage girls

In our sequence we took a risk by making the main male character in our opening have Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). In order for us to represent this properly we obviously had to do research on it and really get into the mind and character of someone with OCD.

This was the OCD video that we really used for inspiration it really helped us to convey the state of mind representation. This is who we based our character on.

We then chose to represent teenage girls:

Question 2 Female Charc

• The protagonist in this film inspired us to do the OCD idea the way in which he cares for and obsesses over his victim is what we found very strange. In our sequence if we were to continue it he wants to get the 4th girl and he would look after her.

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

When we began researching into different genres and looking at lots of different opening sequences, we knew pretty much from the start that we wanted to a horror opening. From basic knowledge I knew major conventions that our always included in horror films e.g.: dark lighting, murderer (usually male), victim (usually girl). We began to focus our attention on finding horrors that we were able to draw inspiration on. We found from this that it was quite hard to distinguish between a horror film and a thriller film as they shared common conventions such as the dark lighting, victim, murderer as well as the horror music. Examples of film that really made me familiar with the forms and conventions of horror films were


• ‘Psycho’ (1960- Hitchcock)

• ‘Scream ’ (1996 Craven)





Scribd

Overall we managed to stick to a lot of the horror conventions making it obvious to the audience that it was in fact a horror film; however we used original twists to make the opening more exciting and to make it stand out.
Our opening sequence did useTodorov’s classic narrative Pattern. The beginning of our sequence started with an equilibrium as we had the normality of the house and the normality of his usual routine, however we also added a small disruption in the first 2 miuntes. This is because we wanted to make impact straight away so that the audience were hooked. The small disruption was only to introduce the narrative and we would have the major disruption later on.

In order to make our piece look professional we looked at the conventions of an opening sequence and included some of them for example:

• Titles (The Ring 2001-Verbinski)

• Introducing main characters (Legally Blonde 2001- Luketic)

• Music (Panic Room 2002-Fincher)

• Introducing a story plot ( Blair Witch Project 1999-Myrick)

• Themes in the film ( Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1974-Hooper)

 

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• I believe we used all of these in our opening sequence as we used blackouts with titles on them.
• We introduced 2 key characters that will be throughout the film.
•  We used music to create suspense.
• We introduced the story and the key themes of OCD, murder and stalking.
• This made sure that the opening followed a function and looked like a real opening sequence

• The overall style of our piece is quite scary and weird, we only have the small dialogue from the radio and instead we just see the characters actions to telling the story. The pace of our piece begins of slow and then becomes faster to create a build up. We used classic continuity techniques such as match-on-action, cuts, shot-reverse-shot and 30 degree rule. We used binary opposites such as dark vs. light, dirt vs. cleanliness, good vs. evil, murderer vs. victim and calm vs. fear.

Equipment

Equipment Used
On shoot:
Tripod
Sony mini DV Camera
2 batteries
Sound equipment
Microphone (shot gun)
Headphones
Pag Light
Clapper board
Production board
Storyboards
Pen and Cloth
Editing:
Software
Premier  Pro
After Effects
i-movie
Soundtrack control
Capturing
Rendering
Titles (on the Mac)
Timelines
Transitions-fades, dissolves, cuts
Razoring
Contrast
Brightness
Saturation
Sound-digetic and non-digetic
Linking and unlinking
Audio tracks
Speed/duration
Volume-adjusting volume and treble
Re-ordering
Parallel editing
Importing clips
Frames (zoom)

Plot for the final opening sequence and cast and crew

Introduction


Before I begin my evaluation of my overall opening sequence I thought it will be easier to understand if I give an outline of the film and the cast and crew members.

Opening Sequence

It begins with a close up of a man’s eyes in a deep trance we then see a kettle boiling and the time ticking to eight o’clock. As soon as this happens the man snaps out of his trance and we are left with what he had been staring at ; a shed at the end of a neat garden. He walks over to the cupboard and on his way switches on the radio at exactly the time the news begins. He gets to the cupboard and he opens and closes it 4 times whilst saying 1..2..3..4. He counts the cups in 4’s and there are only 4 mugs in the cupboard. He makes his tea in a similar way while we here on the radio about the disappearance of a third girl. We then see his calendar with 4 dates circled and these all match up with the dates the newsreader is saying. Immediately the audience know this man isn’t what we first thought. He then walks back through the tidy kitchen over to the window to look at the shed, drinks his tea and walks out. Then we rewind through the house back through the kitchen down to the end of the garden to the foot of the shed. We snake in and see feet tied up we then see hands tied up. It then becomes clear it’s a girl tied up to a chair in the shed and we slowly see her waking up. She begins to scream as we then see all round the shed 4 photos of 4 different girls lined up and she is the 3 rd girl. We are left with her screaming and crying in desperation to get out of the shed.

The Rest of the Plot

In the rest of the story, the third girl who we see manages to escape we then see her trying to find and hunt down the fourth girl to protect her and warn her. We also see the murderer trying to hunt her down and following her and we also get to see the police tracking down the murderer however he kills one of the police officers. The victim finds the fourth girl however the murderer has hunted them both down and he now has both of them trapped. The police are soon onto the case, he kills the third girl but never gets to the fourth.

Cast and Crew

                                   Alex Thomas- Murderer

                                 Ciara Borkowski-‘Hayley Summers’-Victim


Producer, director, editor, script, music-Spencer Wilkinson, James Hammett-Burke, India Downes and Ciara Borkowski

Location-James Hammett-Burke’s House

Date- Final Shoot -7th March 2010

Signed Off!

We've been signed off and it's all over. Im so happy with our final opening sequence and ive learnt so much along the way:

• I've learnt how to edit and add effects and titles
• Ive learnt how to use the camera properly and get good shots
• I've learnt how to be patient on shoot and while waiting to act
• I've learnt to work in team
• How important timing and planning is
• I've learnt how to properrly storyboard and get shots logs and shooting schedules compleleted

Overall I've really enjoyed this project and I couldn't have done it without my team who have been really good. However at least i won't be spending my life editing and stuck in the media block. I'm now excited for next years shooting and editing and hopefully my skills that i have improved from this project can be used again.

(the team)

Goodbye For Now

I am going on a geography fieldtrip this week which is also taking away India and James leaving Spencer to finish of our piece and make final ajustments. This week everyone will be getting signed off so hopefully Spencer will be ok and sort everything out.

I am really nervous we won't meet the deadline but we have had a group meeting and have sorted out all the jobs to do and we have made sure we know exactly what is happening so that Spencer won't have to make any crucial decisions.

Reshoot

We did a re shoot for my shed scene because our teacher didn't like some of the shots, and she felt we gave to much away of me in the shed. We used different lighting then last time so i don't know if our teacher will like it or not. We worked well however and got it done in a couple of hours. We lost the rope however so had to use tape so again have to see what our teacher thinks

Second Re Shoot

We did another re shoot of the shed scene, I guess 3rd time lucky! We changed the lighting back to dark and used a pag light. I again had to act and was so cold! But i actually really enjoyed todays shoot more then the others because we had a really good time and got on well. I hope this will be the end seeing James India and I are going on a geography field trip next week