Evaluation Task 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)

Evaluation Task 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)

Countdown Clock:

The countdown clock has confused some of the audiences, however we have used this to our advantage. The countdown clock is meant to symbolise the counting down to the deaths of each victim. Them when the timer suddenly goes to 12 hours, we were using this as a time frame as in 12 hours earlier. This is quite a typical convention of horror genre movies as there is a deadline which creates tension, and the sudden change of timings create suspense as the audience want the victims to get away. This idea has been used before in movies such as the purge.

Close up of wounds:

The close up of the wounds were to show the audience the trauma that the victims had been through, and to show how it hasn’t just effected them physically but also mentally, for example the close up of the girl on the train when she mouths help. The audience can see that the victim has been in distress.

Train doors opening:

The train doors open twice within the film opening, first of all when the victim is on the train trying to get off, but then also as the whole group of victims get on the train near the end of the opening two minutes. This is a typical convention of horror genres as the film would mess with the audience’s heads as they try and work out the storyline and make links, showing this is sometimes a psychological horror.

Train moving past:

As the train moves past, it is partially an establishing shot as the audience would know that the train is a key feature and aspect of the film, as the opening 2 minutes show trains and the station. The train isn’t always a convention of the horror genre, however when the train firsts appears on the screen with the text it helps the audience to gage that it is a horror movie because of the text font and the non-diegetic sound.

Murderer’s feet:

The floor view shot of the murderer’s feet isn’t a typical horror convention, however it does create mystery, therefore within our horror film with brought in aspects of other genres such as mystery. The colours involved of the black legs and feet of the murderer create a sense of mystery and being under cover and not wanting to be known, it also represents a dark side of the characters, the dark side we find out later on. There from the train is a typical convention of the horror genre as it represents blood and violence.

Close up shots of emotion:

Throughout the whole opening, the close ups of the victims show the emotion and distress they’ve been through  this is typically part of the horror genre as there are always close up on victims faces to show their expression to the audiences.

Props:

The props used are typical of horror genres because the rope is black but also because it is used to harm the victims. The petrol can being black again is a convention as the colour scheme works with the genre.

Introduction of the characters;

When each character is introduced, they’re either dead of half dead, the audience may be confused in having four victims at the beginning, yet when the teenagers get on the train there are only 3, therefore we decided that if we were to make more of the movie, the victims would meet the last victim on the train.

Over shoulder shot:

The over the shoulder shot of the murder is also an establishing sot showing the location but also the time of the day, this shows that it’s late as it is very dark and that the victims have been stalked and victimised throughout the day. The station looks abandoned therefore showing the audience that there isn’t anyone around to help.

'Everlasting Journey' Opening Two Minutes: Final Video

'Everlasting Journey' Opening Two Minutes: Final Video

This is our final version of our opening two minutes.

Tick... Tick... Tick... The Countdown begins... 

Finally the weekend! A group of friends head up to London in search of a good time. But it seems someone else has decided to come along for the journey...

To Do List 4.0

To do List 4.0

• Filming each other editing
• Shot list
• Script
• Adding directors ect. To titles
• Start evaluation tasks

Filming Diary: Day 3

Filming Diary: Day 3

Date: 27th February 2017  

Location: Stoneleigh station

We were hoping this would be our final day of filming, focusing on capturing the final male actors sections in the waiting room and the knife scene. The male actor was thankfully available on this day and we managed to film the variety of high, low and close up angles of him being unconscious in the waiting room. We filmed these quite early on the day as the waiting room was already quite dark and isolated.

After long deliberation we choose not to film the knife section at the station as we didn’t want to affect or offend anyone on their day to day lives and we didn’t really fancy getting in trouble. So opted to film it out the front of one of our houses.

Filming was complete.       

Shot Evaluation

 Shot Evaluation:

Over the shoulder shot of the murderer –

The over the shoulder shot of the Murderer looking at one of the victims is an important shot as it presents the vulnerability of the victim being tied up. The murderer was just standing, watching and not helping the victim, this portrays the mystery murderer as evil and inhumane. The shot also represents the vulnerability of the girl victim, as she cannot escape and the murderer could do anything to her. No one is around to see her or hear her scream therefore she is also isolated.

The over the shoulder shot was an effective shot as the audience feel as if they’re the murderer looking onto the victim. The audience would also possibly feel tension or guilt if they were to become the murderer.

Shot of train doors opening –

The wide angle long shot was a critical shot as it again shows another victim who’s been stranded on the train. Again it shows the vulnerability of the victim, but this shot was a long take therefore also was an establishing shot. This is due to showing the vehicle (train) therefore the audience know it is at a train station. It also helps set the scene as our opening two minutes is only set within the station therefore it is a critical aspect of the storyline.

Shot of the time counting down –

The close up shots of the timer counting down was put in place to show the timings of the day but also to count down the time until the death of the victims. These shots create tension as the audience at first wouldn’t know why there timer is counting down until further into the two minutes. We decided to use this countdown type of countdown as it was a good colour scheme to accompany the horror genre.

Help shot –

The close up ‘help’ from one of the victims is shown as a close up to emphasise her mouthing the word. The word is also significant as it shown that the girl is helpless. The shot was filmed just outside the train but because the lighting was similar it worked. The close up also showed the audience the victims scars and bruises representing the abuse and trauma the victim had gone through.

Waiting room shot –

This shot was a high angle medium shot of one of the victim’s legs, alongside the legs there was pool of ‘petrol’ though we used water from the rain outside showing that we used our resources around us. The petrol can was also present to make the audience think that petrol was used. This high angle shot shows the helplessness and weakness and vulnerability of the victim and the murderer looking down on them showing that the murderer is superior.

Wrists shot –

The shots of one of victims wrists show the rope that she is tied up with, also it shows the wounds that the girl has gained through the trauma, the wounds are supposedly from the rope therefore gives the audience the illusion that the rope was really tight so much that it scared and cut her. The struggling hands show that she cannot move, the hands being in the foreground and in focus show that they’re the focus of the shot.

Production Company Title – Re Evaluated

Production Company Title – Re Evaluated:

After deliberation, as a group we decided that our first idea of the production company title was too unprofessional. We spent a lot of time on our first idea however, we didn’t feel that it was right and professional enough for our media project.

Therefore, we set to work trying to come up with something that looked more professional, we went through ideas of keeping the cloud made up of nines, however we decided to get rid of it and to just keep it plain and simple.

To keep it simple we went for a simple font, but also decided to put a backing video which was an establishing shot of the train station, this was so it set the scene, and it also creates an enigma code that the station and trains play a vital part of it. The establishing shot behind the production company title blurs, we used this to our advantage to then put the company title over the top to make the title the focus for a few seconds.

There were certain aspects of the title we liked such as the thunder effect but also having some white within the title. We wanted to keep the thunder effect, so we found a way to put it over the title coming up onto the screen, alongside this as we wanted the thunder we needed to show a storm, however in the shot there isn’t real rain, therefore we used a rain simulator on adobe after effects and this worked perfectly.

 When looking at different fonts, we went through almost 100, until we came up with a shortlist of 5. However, two were the same font but one was in bold.

The first font we thought didn’t represent our company as we though that the company would also have to look sinister, as we thought that if we were to make more films, that it would be again of the horror genre. 

The second font was too bold to be our font, and the 9 was too small.  The third font we liked but didn’t think that it would stand out. The fourth font was actually one of the first fonts we looked at but we thought it was a typical typing font. Therefore we ended with number five. This was number three but in bold, we liked this as it would stand out more and it made the company title look more professional. 

This is our final production company title opening:

The Editing Process Continued

The Editing Process Continued

Having completed our final day of filming, it was time to do the last bit of our editing and put it all together. We had filmed our last victim and a few key shots (e.g. the two watches displaying the time which we would later use as a graphic match) and uploaded all the footage to the computer.

 We began editing and thought it was important to make our footage look realistic. This is why it was so frustrating when it came to things like the use of phones and watches, as the dates and times weren't correct due to us filming different parts of our film on different days at different times. Some of these factors we didn't realise until after we had finished filming so were left with a few solutions to solve.

We realised that the time and date was wrong during the end of our opening and beginning of our narrative due to it being much later than we decided that it would be. We thought of some different solutions to the problem including changing the time that the events took place (but that could confuse out storyline), refilm the clips that included the time or date being shown (but that requires our actors again and we felt unfair asking for their help for a fourth time) so we came to the conclusion to remove these shots from our storyline and replace them with a countdown/timer to show the different times in the day.

Below is a short video explaining how we undergone our editing process.