This post is here to introduce you to my blog in which I will tell you about the things I liked of this school year of AS Media Studies and the things I disliked.
What this blog is for
My blog includes a large variety of research into the film industry such as British Cinema researching the two production companies Working Title and the indie, Warp. I also looked at Distribution, all the semiotics, and have analysis of a few films which I have looked at. These are films from different genres to get a grasp of what the general film opening conventions are. I have also looked at a few slasher openings to get more genre specific research. Throughout the year I have learnt a huge amount and have really developed my knowledge for the film industry, which ultimately led to having a final cut of our film opening Christmas Sleigher.
What I liked
I enjoyed a large variety of the course this year. I found that working with James and Oliver to be really good as we worked well as a team. I enjoyed researching all the theories and applying them to real life examples and our final cut. The practical work was definantly the highlight. I enjoyed the course as a whole and have had a great time in this AS Media Studies course.
What I didn't like
I fell behind at the start of the year and the catch up process on all the work that was missing took a huge amount of effort and I still feel if I had worked at my best from the start my blog and final cut would be better. I enjoyed the work but actually evidencing progress and research turned out to be hard for me. Getting used to the whole blogging on every single step took a while, but I feel I got there in the end. It was also hard to get a grasp of semiotics but the more I use them, the more I feel comfortable using them.
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Part of our Question 1 evaluation for conventions used in our film opening, we talk about how we have challenged and used conventions and represented social groups and issues. The style is based on James Cordons carpool karaoke and sees us driving around Luxembourg while talking about our film opening.
IDENTS
I found after looking at many general genre film examples that the average amount of idents to be shown at the start of a film is 2-3. For our opening we have 3 idents, Gingerbread films, LugNut productions and CLINNICKmedia. Also, the average duration of the idents of these films that I have looked at were between 5-10 seconds, for all 3 of our idents the time is 22 seconds, the longest being CLINNICKmedia which is 9 seconds.
TITLES
After looking at many film examples I discovered that the font and font colour of titlesconnotes genre. Specifically the titles in Slasher movies usually have a font which is sharp to represent the blade of a knife and the font color is usually red on a black background.
DURATION OF FILM OPENING
The average duration of film openings were between 3-6 minutes.
OPENING SHOT
After looking at many different general genre film examples I discovered that the opening shots varied. Opening shots were all establishing extreme long shots which is a typical convention of films for the opening shot. The opening shot usually establishes the setting and time of the film to the audience. Our opening is opened by a series of establishing extreme long shots inspired and based off of the opening of psycho with the camera moving closer and closer to the window with a series of cross fades.
SCREAM QUEEN
The term scream queen is used to reference a young, attractive, sexually active and rebellious woman, the convention is that the scream queen is the first to be killed. A perfect example of a scream queen is Drew Decker is Scary movie. To read more about scream queen here is my blog post.
In our opening although the scream queen is not blonde she is portrayed to be sexually active, young, rebellious and reflect many of the key scream queen conventions.
Final Girl
The final girl is a term used to describe a female character that is usually tough, resourceful, nerdy, unattractive, innocent and not sexually active. The key archetype for a final girl is Laurie Strode from Halloween. To read more about final girls here is my blog post.
SOUND
The sound in horror slasher films is usually very scary, suspenseful, creepy and makes the audience's heart beat fast and irregular. Also, the music can make the audience hold their breath unconsciously and therefore feel more scared. At the beginning of the opening the music has long drawn out notes with a high pitch but as the opening progresses the notes become shorter, more urgent and of a much lower pitch.
LIGHTING
Lighting is used in horror films to give the effect of something bad is about to happen for example shadows and light flickering makes the audience feel scared and nervous. This can be seen during both the scene when Santa is on screen as well as in the garage scene. The lights flicker in both these scenes, when santa is on sceen the effect if this is it makes the audience uneasy however in the garage it is used to make the audience unsure as to what is about to happen.
In this vlog I talk about how we have connected with the audience and how we are planning to distribute our film opening. Since its a micro budget film we will distribute to a streaming service. More detail on this blog post here:
Sorry for the ambient sound in this vlog with the wind, it was something I did not take it into account.
For question 3 in evaluation I decided to work with James to do an interview talking about the steps taken to create the final cut and the huge learning curve I have had throughout the years. I talk about the setbacks, what I have learnt from these setbacks, how the idea developed and how I think I have improved overall myself.
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This is part of our answer to the AS evaluation question for use of technologies, we have made a remake of an apple keynote address for final cut pro x ...
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AS my previous blog posts state:
I have used a large variety of technology over the course of this year. I have used:
Hardware:
Camera
DSLR
Action Camera (GoPro)
Smartphone
Stabilisation
Tripod
Monopod
Gorillapod
Gimbal/Stabilizer
Computers
Mac to do the editing
Windows at home to do research
Chromebook for blogging
Keyboard to record music
Microphone to record voice overs and music
Software/websites:
Final Cut Pro X (nearly all feautures)
Titles
Transitions
Keyframing
Colour correction
Greenscreen
Animations
Special FX
Freeze framing
Adobe Premiere (when there was no access to a Mac)
same features as used for final cut
Audacity (for sound distortion)
Blogger
blogging on the journey taken throughout the media course
Using Microsoft Office
Word
Powerpoint
Soundcloud
uploading
embedding
Screen recording software to record screen on PC
Slideshare
uploading
embedding
uploading from Word and Powerpoint
Photoshop
creating ident
Youtube
playlists
uploading
embeding
Here is the Adobe Premiere Pro tutorial where I talk about how to use the effects and tools in more depth.
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Below I have a screen recording where I go through some of the software used to create this blog and to help with research and making of the film opening.
We have changed the colour correction on a lot of the shots, made the sequence walking down the stairs shorter. We have tried to add more shot variety in the false scare but aren't sure if this works. We also re-filmed the whole first sequence up until the couple see Santa on the t.v as we thought this needed a lot of work. We need to tweak a few things such as editing pace at killing scene and remove the texting part. ...
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Feedback
We got a lot of feedback on this cut both verbally and writen.
Some verbal feedback we got was from a male within the target audience say that the texting scene ruined the continuity and killed the effect of tension, he also said that the killing scene was quite gory and that he would have faster paced editing to "hit the sweat spot".
Some written feedback we got from a previous rough cut from a female who is in the age range 15-24 which we took into account for this one.
To sum it up:
Need to imply sex in a better way
Facial expressions and feeling aren't very scarred
This is a playlist with all our rough cuts and sample scenes so they are easy to find and look through to see the improvemnet from the beginning. We ordered it by date so the latest cuts are on top and the oldest are at the bottom.
Here I have made a podcast explaining how music was created and how we ran into a problem.
I was influenced from Psycho which had this sinister non - diegetic background music during the establishing shots which gave a creey feeling to the music.
Here is the music we are using:
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The above video is me showing the keyboard setup with notes to guide me since I am a beginner.
Here are clips we are planning to use for our establishing shots. The ambient sound heard here will not be in the final cut as we will put some music over it instead.
What went well:
Effective use of time
Had 2 people to double check shots were good
Had planning sheet so we knew exactly what to film
Here is some audience feedback from teenagers aged 14-15 on the titles we have used in our rough cut. Most of them have mixed opinions but each are backed up with reasons that we will consider. We have chosen to use the font HAUNT and for general titles and WHO ASKS SATAN as the main titles. Having taken all audience feedback, both written and oral, into account, these were the two obvious choices and it was also the personal preference for the majority of our group. A rough cut will be uploaded soon with all the titles present.
I will consider splitting up the questions (Q1 & Q2 into two parts ) to make them easier to answer
Q1a: how you used or challenged CONVENTIONS Q1b: REPRESENTATIONS of social groups/issues Q2a: how you engaged with AUDIENCES Q2b: how might it achieve DISTRIBUTION Q3: DEVELOPMENT of production skills throughout the entire process Q4: how you integrated TECHNOLOGIES (software, hardware, online) in the project
Creative approaches to each question
(have an ad break in each)
Q1. CONVENTIONS and REPRESENTATIONS
Carpooling interview
Picked up by a friend who will drive around and ask us questions while there will sometimes be music and singing
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Drama Skit
Have a drama piece of a story of how have used representaitons
have all the actors be 'stereotypes' that are used in the slasher genre
e.g have scream queen
film drama skit in auditorium
Q2. AUDIENCES and DISTRIBUTION
YouTube Vlog
Have a vlogger go and talk with audiences
Vlog about distribution
Inspired by Casey Neistat (Vlog)
Walk around and ask people on the street on how distribution may be achieved
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or Inspired by Seen Through Glass (Car Vlog)
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Drives around and asks people on the street on how distribution may be achieved
Q/A
A basic Q/A with one person asking questions
Another person answering the questions
and then have bonus rounds including the audience to show engaging with the audience
Q3. DEVELOPMENT Game show/ Quiz show
Who wants to be a millionaire
Can be for all questions but would need a duration of 5 - 10 mins
We have created a short sequence of clips of the fonts we narrowed down from previous research to prototype them in our opening. After receiving audience feedback we will analyse them and pick an overall "winner" for both general titles and the main movie title.
This is the 10th podcast, in this podcast we talk about the titles we are going to use, how we are going to make multiple and choose based off of audience feedback, how the drone we wished to use for our establishing shots is broken and the rough cut we have finished.
Our newest rough cut where we have 99% of all the clips included. We have identified the clips we need to add and will have a new rough cut produced very soon after.
What went well:
We were able to piece all filming sessions together
Added and removed bits we though were wrong sicne last cut
What went wrong:
Planning wasn't the best at times
What has been changed since last:
Chnaged false scare (removed "stalking")
Have killing scene put in
Cross cutting
TV being turned on with remote to make start flow better
... In this vodcast we go over the titles used in 6 different slasher movies and we talk about how they are effective. We go over the way the titles are designed to connote the horror genre. We also go over the fonts we will be using for our own titles and personal preferences along with audience feedback.
Here are 5 examples of titles in other slasher film openings, which will be applied to research towards the font we will finally pick for our film opening.
... Here is a rough-cut without sound effects of how the killing scene is going to play out. It is a base design and needs improvement. This needs to be refined and added to the newest rough cut which will be uploaded by tomorrow.
What went well:
Planning made filming easy
Clear directing
Quite effectively edited together
What went wrong:
Makeup got a bit all over the place
Missing a few shots and cross cuts to break up sequence
Over the course of our AS Media Studies year we have received countless amounts of audience feedbackvarying from verbal, written and online feedback.
Overall they were positive, they liked a few things here and there however, the feedback we have received has been more than appreciative. I mean just look at our first few sample scenes, they are 100% different to our final cut. A recurring problem for us was trying to increase the pacing in the film openingbut in the end I think we managed pretty well. From the first rough cut to the last, the whole group thought "oh we can cut a second or two there," but had it not been for feedback saying, "This pace needs to increase dramatically," our film opening would not have been as good as it is now.
We have received feedback from ages ranging from 14-22 and have also received a bit of feedback from older adults. I admit, some of the feedback we received was vague and we couldn't really use it. However this gave us an insight as to how these people of these ages were analyzing our "media" and we could build upon that instead. This also links into Stuart Hall's preferred reading theory as, especially for the title feedback, we received a lot stating which one looked "most horror" or "most cool." when we as creators wanted the most fitting for the genre. This means the audience who analysedthe title fonts applied it to the knowledge they had on slashers to choose their preferred ones. This came from our target audiencemeaning we had to take a lot of it into account when choosing the final fonts for our titles. They would not have been what they are now, if it weren't for this feedback as our group had a slight discussion about this too.
The film opening of Cherry falls is a couple who are being intimate and showing obvious sexual attraction between the two. The cuts are mostly close up and are short. The editing is fast paced with sinister non - diegetic music in the background which makes the audience hold their breathe. The couple have a small argument and the shot goes from inside the car to the outside from a stalkers POV.This is a common convention in slasher films. There is non- diegetic sound in the background such as crickets chirping and wind blowing to create the verisimilitude. There is another car that pulls up and the male gets out of the car to play the role of the strong hero, while the girl stays and watis for him to return. The actress holds her fright and sadness throughout the film opening and never 'recovers'.
To sum it up
Fast paced editing.
Large variety of different shots.
Use of close ups (with hand placement, to show more emotion).
The characters are frightened throughout.
Use of diegetic and non - diegetic sound to create verisimilitude.
How will we apply this to our film opening?
We will use a variety of shots and shorten our takes from our previous rough cut.
There wil be close ups of hand placements to signify more emotion.
To create verisimilitude the actor/actress will need to seem frightened even after the scare.
Have fast paced editing to keep the audience engaged.
... This is an interview with a guest speaker, we answer a variety of questions about our blog, coursework including the problems we have had, how our idea has changed and what may surprise an outsider about our work.
The BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) are a trusted guide to media content and work as a independent, self-financing, not-for profit media content regulator, this means they aim to protect the public from content that may be harmful and to empower the public to make informed viewing choices
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BBFC Guidline for an 18 age rated movie
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BBFC Guidlines for a 15 age rated movie
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BBFC Guidlines for a 12 age rated movie
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... If a movie is rated an 18 it severely reduces the reach of the film, the movie is much less likely to do well in cinemas as the most common age to go to the cinema is 15-16, this is a huge loss of market potential and will not only reduce the box office but the overall success of the film. However, the majority of slasher films will be an age 18 due to the gore and swearing, also, having an age rating of 18 for a slasher film can appeal too a slasher audience as it can suggest gore and for the movie to be scary. Because of this we are aiming our film for an age 18 certificate, also, because our film is micro-budget we are not looking for a theatrical release so the negative sides of having an 18 certificate are less prominent. Here is one of our previous posts with research on age ratings in slashers
