Born to Kill: Main Task

This is our final main task. It is the opening sequence of a psycological horror which we named 'Born to Kill'. In our introduction the audience gets a slight preview of what the rest of the film will be about and acknowledges that it is about a girl with some sort of mental disorder. We got the idea of the close up shots over the girls face from Alfred Hitchcocks film 'Vertigo'. I think we showed that it is a psycological horror relatively clearly in this sequence as the main girl is showing abnormal facial expressions and looks threatening, she also has cuts and blood on her face which makes it look scary. We used a dark background so the audience only concentrates on her and shows how its mysterious and the auidence wants to know more about her and carry on watching the film.

Preliminary Task

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oEldPNlqEw&feature=related

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In our main task we used close up shots to portray the genre and show the bruising and cuts on her face which shows that it is a psycological horror. We used 'Vertigo' by Alfred Hitchcock to emphasise the horror, he does not show the womans whole face just her facial features to make the audience on edge and make them want to continue watching. We tried to base the mise en scene as a horror to make it clear to the audience what genre the film is. The girls costume; a plain white gown; we researed on google what someone in a mental institution would wear and it said a plain gown which is stereotypical and tells the audience she is in a mental instiution. We used dark lighting, black, stereotpye of a horror as it makes it more scary and mysterious, and the audience only concentrates on the main thing being shown on screen. The music used is echoey and creepy; as it would be in a horror, we also blurred someone speaking to add a frightening effect. When the girl screamed we shook the camera to make it seem more psychological, we got this idea from a pscycological horror film named 'Orphan' which is shown in the trailer below. We also used close up shots of her arm which showed she had been self harming which also adds to idea of it being psycological. I think we used many different effects to create a conventional real media piece.

                              'Orphan' trailer;

'Vertigo' opening sequence;

 

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

media product only represents one social group; people who have a mental disability. We have included the stereotypes of those with a mental disability in our film. We have constantly represented this throughout, we have used many different drama techniques to portray this. For example, in the first short scene there is a camera shot of the girls eyes and lips, we used this camera shot to create distress and make the audience feel on edge and uncomfortable. This idea was taken from Alfred Hitchcock's 'Vertigo'. We chose to set the film in a dark room as it clearly states that the movie is a horror. In terms of costume, we researched into Google what people in mental institutions are likely to wear and it said white gowns etc. therefore we did so and used a white gown. We used purple makeup around her eyes to emphasis the bruising which shows the psychological side of the genre. We have just used one character in the whole opening sequence as we think it would make the audience understand the type of genre more.

This is a picture from 'The Uninvited' . About a girl who 


has got out of a mental institution after recently trying to commit suicide. This character links to the character in 
our films as they are both mental and delusional.

Another film we looked at was 'The Orphan' which also shows psychological horror and helped us with our film making. As in the orphan, our media piece also shows the dark side of mental illness which makes the movie more scary as you do not know what they are going to do next.

Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

The genre of our film is psychological horror. Psychological horror tends to be subtle compared to traditional horror and usually contains less physical harm. As this sub-genre works mainly to mentally affect the audience rather than the display of graphic imagery seen in the slasher sub-genre.We have decided that our film is going to be mainstream and have a mainstream audience therefore it would be shown in cinema's such as 'odeon'. Media distribution is really important on how successful the piece of media is, where and how we distribute our music is a key factor. DreamWorks pictures is a distribution company, it produced a psychological film named 'Paranormal Activity', after finding this I looked more into DreamWorks pictures to see if I could find that they have made anymore psychological horror/thriller films. I found 'The Ruins' and 'The Ring' which are both horrors that DreamWorks pictures have distributed. 
Another distribution company I looked at was Warner Brothers. They created horror films such 
Nightmare on Elms Street' and 'The Exorcist'
  

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

For question 4 we had to get some primary research about what kind of audience is suitable for our media piece. We asked five different people of various ages to get their opinion. We asked them, what sort of genre films they enjoy watching, how do they feel about watching people who have mental disorders in films and if they liked or disliked horrors. The five people we interviewed all felt very differently about the questions and all had their own opinion and views.

Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

This is the poster we made for our film - Born To Kill. We used dark colours in the background so the viewer only concentrates on the main image, we also edited the lighting on her face to make it stand out more and appeal to the audience. The bruising under her eyes shows really well and tells the audience that it is some kind of horror as it looks scary. I think the red bold font also emphasises that it is horror. I think this really cleary appeals to an audience who like horror, as soon as you see it you recognize straight away what genre it is and someone who enjoys horror would be interested.

Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSLbYf4c1wg&feature=g-all-u&context=G2793d5cFAAAAAAAAAAA

1. Open iMovie
2. Highlight and drag what you need to go into the 'new project' space
3. Watch through to see what needs editing
4. Go to options button on the bottom left hand side
5. Press 'clip trimmer'
6. Make sure the yellow is only around what you want
7. Press 'done' once you have got rid of anything you do not want
8. Do the same for the rest of each clip that needs editing
9. Once finished, go to 'Share' then 'To youtube'
10. Write your email and password and click 'Publish'

Uploaded to Youtube

Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I think I have learn't a lot since we filmed the preliminary task. I feel that the preliminary was just a warm up of filming and editing for the full piece. I found some camera angles and shots easy and some very difficult. For example, when we were filming we kept breaking the 180 degree rule without realising, this for us was really difficult to get right. However, match on action we found relatively easy in comparison.

As I have never used iMovie before I found it quite hard to edit etc. at first nearer the time of the preliminary, now I have more experience using it I feel the editing for our main task is a lot better than it was in our preliminary. Also, at first when the course started I had no experience of properly using a video camera and filming, so we found simple tasks harder than we would if we had experience. In our preliminary task we used a lot of shot reverse shot and match on action, because they were the basics. However, in our main task when I filmed myself I felt a lot more comfortable with filming and getting it right rather than worrying if it wasn't good enough. We also used a lot more different camera shots in our full piece. I found editing a lot easier as it got nearer the time of doing our final piece, for example, we added in voiceovers and music. I think our final piece is a lot more advanced in a media perspective than our preliminary task was and I know much more now about the different techniques on iMovie, and the effects we added in. I feel now that I have a wider knowledge of skills and hope to carry on developing so I can film really well in future. Making the 'Juno' 9 title opening sequence I think really helped me in terms of knowing the timing for our final piece and how long we should keep each clip up for etc. The storyboard I feel also really helped me know what the piece was going to be like and get an insight of the film itself. I think our skills as a group and individually have really been enhanced and we all know so much more now than we did whilst we were doing the preliminary. I also now have a bigger understanding of different genre's and how you can tell which film is what genre etc and what different angles are used in different genre's to provide evidence of that. We picked up a lot of editing skills from trial and error in our preliminary.

In conclusion, I think I am a lot more skilled and have a better understanding of filming and using iMovie, I think if we were to carry on using it and making more films, they'd be a lot better each time as we make mistakes in each short experiment however, learn from them, what to do and what not to do in our final piece.

Presentation

Our research presentation to the class

Girl Interrupted

http://www.alluc.org/movies/watch-girl-interrupted-online/32190.html 
Girl interrupted is a story about a woman who tries to kill herself and gets sent to a mental institution as the consequence of this. Whilst being in the hospital she has a lot of flashbacks. As we know this move is classed as a drama therefor we are only used the idea of 2:16-2:19 in our movie. However we will use some other ideas from this such as the flashbacks, but change them to be more horrific and psychological. I like the idea of making our movie about someone in a mental hospital as I think we could use a lot of sound effects and different camera angles to make it really effective and realistic.

Psychological horror

The reason we chose to do horror as our main task was because we liked the eerie, scary music used we thought we could use this really well in our own movie to make it effective. Because we are doing psychological horror we will use echo-ing sounds and make things that the characters say very blurred to add to the horror.

Genre: Psychological Horror

We chose to make our movie a psychological horor as we looked at other genres and found this particular genre was our favourite. We like the use of settings in many different trailers and the music used. The use of the eerie music made us want to create our own as our main task.
Psychological horror: a subgenre of horror fiction that relies on character fears, guilt, beliefs, eerie sound effects, relevant music and emotional instability to build tension and further the plot. Psychological horror is different from the type of horror found in "splatter films," which derive their effects from gore and violence, and from the sub-genre of horror-of-personality, in which the object of horror does not look like a monstrous other, but rather a normal human being, whose horrific identity is often not revealed until well into the work, or even at the very end.

Juno opening sequence

I like the way the titles are shown in this sequence and how the real life turned into cartoon just while the credits were on I thought was really clever. This not being psycological horror however, means that I cannot use this idea I just wanted to use this as an example of an opening sequence.

Setting

Here is a photo of Sandra, who plays the main charactor in our film. We took this photo where most of we did our filming. I think the dark room makes it seem more scary and you only concentrate on the charactor rather than background props. Her facial expression shown is also evidence to the audience that the film is a psychological horror.

Props

The main prop we are using is this doll... It will be used in the flashbacks as it was Jamie'a favourite toy. We have used to a doll to make it more psycological horror. An example of a doll in a horror film is 'Chuckie'



The outift that Sandra wears in the film whilst she is in the mental hospital is a white kind of sheet. As white is the most common colour that people are seen to wear in mental institutions.

Storyboard

 Mid shot - audience can see the charactor properly, also seeing their facial expression

Close up - shows the audience that the girl is feeeling uncomfortable as she is itching implies that shes nervous or on edge

Close up - the audience can see in this photo that she is angry by this close up. This also shows the bruises and marks on her face telling the audience that she self harms - relates to psychological horror.

Here the camera is shaking and the image is a bit of a blur. This shows ab-normal behaviour in the charactor, represents psycological horror.

Mid shot - shows the audience who were asking the questions to Jamie - makes the audience feel more in the know.

Long shot - shows the audience the costume and the setting in fuller detail.