Evaluation Part 8

Evaluation Part 8: 

What do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

Overall I think the Title sequence Taylor and I made was successful because we created a sequence that had an interesting style and soundtrack whilst still following the codes and conventions of typical horror / thriller movies.

Some of the cinematography follows the codes and conventions and so does the editing. The cinematography contains a lot of high and low angle shots and the editing has made the video dark and distorted. We also have used some more creative and unique ideas in the narrative with the ghost that can only be seen on camera and the video effects containing heavy static. We have used some interesting cinematography too with some pans, inspired by Insidious, and shots like the camera falling over. We also used the research we did into other films to give us the idea of putting the timecode on the video footage to make it seem more realistic, like in the title sequence for The Purge.

Our use of typography was very successful because we surveyed people on what they thought and then decided as a group which would fit the best, before the final sequence we changed the font because we found a new font that we both thought would fit better than our previous one even though the audience liked both fonts.

The only thing I think was unsuccessful is the darkness of the video. Some people commented that they couldn't see some of the footage and that it was too dark. We tried to improve this every time we created a new draft of the sequence and for our final sequence we felt it was corrected well enough. A few people mentioned they couldn't see some of it but that my just be the brightness of the screen. Almost everyone thought it had improved and we thought that the darkness suited the video and that the view is supposed to be obscured, If the video was easy to see, there wouldn't be much of an enigma, which is important for our film genre.

Evaluation Part 7

Evaluation Part 6

Evaluation Part 6: Attracting Audience

I think I have reached my target audience because the title sequence fits in with most common horror/thriller codes and conventions. The sequence contains suspense, mystery, a scare and it begins to set up the plot. The audience of 15-30 year old males, who are the main audience for horror films, will enjoy the title sequence if they like other films from the genre.

When planning we thought we would include a heavy soundtrack to appeal to the audience. The soundtrack is slightly different from most usual horror soundtracks where the music may be more eerie. The soundtrack is aggressive and electronic so fits with the static style and is more exciting than most soundtracks so would appeal to the younger part of the audience who may enjoy more exciting films/music rather than things that build up with lots of suspense. The soundtrack also can be used to build suspense because it builds up even more with a distorted "revving" sound. This makes this appeal to a wider audience than if it was just a slow suspenseful horror vs a fast paced action horror/thriller type film.

Some of the major things we changed from the audience feedback was that we needed to reshoot the scenes with the main character because it didn't put enough focus on him and to some people the shots from the found footage were unclear. When we reshot we received much better feedback.

Another thing was that the sequence got boring because the music was repetitive especially for the 2+ mins of video. We responded to this by cutting down the video and editing the soundtrack to have more of a build up so it wouldn't be as repetitive.

The idea of the sequence and the music itself was well received.

Evaluation Part 5

Evaluation part 5 from charliemead

Evaluation Part 4

Evaluation Part 4: Conventions

My film is a Horror/Thriller. We tried to make our title sequence conform to the codes and conventions of this genre to some extent to make it appeal to our target audience.

The narrative involves a teacher investigating the disappearances of children that are caused by a paranormal force. This contains a common convention of thrillers being the detective part. Thriller films are often about detectives or spies etc. because they contain an element of mystery. Our narrative also contains conventions of horror films because of the mystery/enigma element, it makes people anticipate what will happen and build suspense, which is used a lot in horror films.

The soundtrack for our film is a somewhat conventional for our horror title sequence. The actual sound is really gritty and abrasive as reflects the style of static effects we used in the sequence as well as contributing to make our film reflect the genre because horror and thriller films are often made to seem gritty and real to make audience think whatever happens in the film could happen in real life. The soundtrack also contains a build up which is used a lot in these genres to build up tension and then to frighten the viewer. This allowed us to make the videos clips match to the parallel soundtrack and use faster cuts to build up to make our sequence more exciting and frightening.

The setting challenges the convention of horror to some extent because it is in a school.  School settings would usually be seen in a teen movie, comedy or drama film, the films might also be aimed at a younger audience. Some examples of films with scenes in a school are ‘St. Trinians’, ‘Superbad’ and ‘High School Musical’ which are all teen movies and/or comedy films aimed at a young audience. However the setting can be used as a horror setting because we filmed with the lights off and added effects to make the school seem creepy and dark.

The camerawork was inspired by ‘Insidious’ and we used worms eye view and close angle shots to obscure the full view of the main character and to make it seem like he is being watched. We also used a pan for a similar effect that we tried to make seem like it was shot from a surveillance camera. We were also inspired by the dark shots that are almost just silhouettes of the light/dark so we purposely filmed very dark shots.

Insidious

In editing we made some of the shots that appear as found footage darker and more obscured by using a high contrast and heavy static effects. This is makes the audience wonder what is not in view and creates an enigma. We also wanted the cuts to be generally medium length but used match on action to make the scene appear to merge and seem slow paced, later on during the build up we used slightly faster cuts and no match on action to make the video seem to get more erratic and build up just like the soundtrack. We wanted the editing slow at first to build suspense and them get faster to build up to a scare which are commonly used in horrors and thrillers.

Evaluation Part 3

Evaluation Part 3: Media Distribution

Evaluation Part 3 from charliemead

Evaluation Part 2

Evaluation Part 2: Target Audience

The target audience for our film primarily is:

o Male (Which are more likely to watch horror films than females)
o 15 - 30 year olds (Which is the age range most likely to watch horror films)
o The demographic for horror thrillers is a wide range that covers all demographics but films containing elements of psychological thriller like our film may not appeal to the E or D class of unemployed/unskilled because they generally required you to think about it instead of just being all action.

The age certificate for our film will be 15, horror and thriller films are generally 15 or 18 because of adult content like swearing, violence, sex, distressing scenes etc. We would rate our film 15 instead of 18 because there is no sexual scenes and the violence is minimal and not gory or over the top. Other films we have looked at also have similar age ratings, for example The Purge is rated 15 and so is Insidious.

To research our audience we looked at ratings for other films, like the ones we were inspired by, and also by researching age ratings in general, most horror films are either 15 or 18 and we saw that the elements that our film/title sequence contains would only make it a 15. We also looked at graphs and charts that show ages of people that watch horror and thriller films and applied this to our own.