Task 20 - The Evaluation - Question 1 (Sophie&Imogen)

Question 1) In what ways does your media product (opening sequence) use, develop  or challenge forms and conventions from real media?

Firstly we found that our title met the forms of real media. For example, our title is The Register and horror films have similar titles such as 'The Purge'. By having a similar and typical title it shows that we are meeting the standard horror movie criteria. We thought that snappy titles are usually better for horror movies as they grip the audience therefore, we changed our title from The Psychopath Behind the Smile' to ' The Register'.

Although in some areas we used forms and conventions from real media, we also challenged it in some areas. For example, we believe that the psychopath strayed away from the stereotypical looking psychopath. Usually the psychopath is cast as a old man whereas, we used a young man instead. We also challenge forms of real media as we set our opening sequence is a school. Although this has been done before usually horror movies are located in an abandoned building or a deserted forest. By having it in a school which is considered a safe place it challenges the idea of horror movies being set in locations that are considered 'creepy'.

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Task 19 - Target audience feedback (Imogen&Sophie)

"Pivotal moment of the opening sequence"

"It made me want to watch more"

"For the more intense parts there should be darker lighting"

"I enjoyed the music as it created tension throughout the clip"

"I think you could use a more mysterious character to build tension"

We gathered a sample of our target audience age group and showed them our opening sequence. From this we found what our target audience views and ideas were on our opening sequence and what they thought we did well and what we could improve on.Overall, all of the group enjoyed the opening sequence and found it engaging and tense. The improvements included "I think for the more intense parts there should be darker lighting" and this allows us to see what we could of done in order to make our opening sequence better. Many of the group enjoyed the ending (the hand against the window) as they found it extremely tense and gripping and made them want to continue to see the rest of the film.
I think it is important that we find out what the target audience think of our opening sequence as this allows us to see where we went wrong and what we did well. This then allows us to see what we could of done to meet all of the needs and expectations of our target audience.

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Task 18 - Use of opening sequence convention

In our opening sequence we defiantly knew that we wanted it to portray and real-life assumption and  be relatable and realistic. We done this by thinking of serious and realistic scenarios

 By looking back at the task 'What is a opening sequence?' when analysing the opening sequence for the film 'Scream' we noticed that in the scene, mise-en-scene was used when presented with the ringing of the telephone. The sound of the ringing gives the audience the thought of someone mysterious calling and this builds up tension in the scene. In our opening sequence we used this to build up tension however it was presented in a shot of a blank screen rather then showing the phone ringing therefore we had the use of non-diagetic sounds.

At first we decided to have a lot of scrip in our opening sequence however after evaluating the opening sequences for the films 'Up' and 'Se7en' we realised that we didn't necessarily need a lot of script in order to get our story across to the audience. We noticed that we were able to evaluate more and understand more of the storyline from watching the opening sequence with less script work. In addition to this we thought that this would get the audience thinking more about what is to come next and keep them on the edge of their seats and to carry on watching. Consequently, the only script we had was after the investigator said "Hello.", after saying this nothing else was said therefore showing and telling the audience that something was wrong but not entirely sure what.

As well as this, we thought of focusing our opening sequence on 3 main characters, Daisy, Taylor and the investigator. However, we changed it to only having the main focus on Daisy and Taylor because we thought that this would be more effective and we didn't want to give away too much of the answers of the storyline to the audience, resulting in the audience wanting to carry on watching.



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Task 17 - Editing Process

Editing Process

To edit our opening sequence, we used a program called "Final Cut Pro"

Firstly, I decided what clips to use and how much of the clip we needed.

To do this, I reviewed each clip and decided which scenes went best. Once decided, I used the blade tool to cut the clips and deleted the parts that were not needed. 

I decided that the clips sounded good with background noise as well as music, however, some of the clips were too loud.

 Therefore, I dragged the volume down on certain parts of the clips.

Once I had cut all of the clips down, I began editing in detail. This started by adding transitions between the "real time" scenes and the flashbacks, to show the difference in time.

We wanted the scenes to look as if it were the evening time, therefore, I decided to add a dark and gloomy filter to every clip.

I attempted to use the "earthquake" filter on the flashback scenes to make them look more shaky/scary, however it looked too over dramatic and we decided to delete the filter.

To build tension, I slowed down the scene in which the psychopath's face appears in the window.  I also decided to speed up the scene in which the girl is grabbed as it makes the moment seem more sharp.

 To create the feeling that the girl has been hit and "blacked out" I included a blank screen and the sound effect of ear-ringing. The music then changes to a more tense track.

For the majority of the track, i used the same 'horror' loop that helped to build tension within the clips. I decided to fade the music in and out so that the track didn't start too dramatically.

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Task 16- Choice of Music

Choice of music

When deciding what music to use as a backing track, I had to consider the content of our opening sequence and how to build tension within the scenes without going over the top. I spent a long time analysing different backing tracks from known horror movies and finally decided on 'Dark ambient Space Music' 

This track plays throughout the majority of our opening sequence. I chose it because it gradually gets louder with more instruments as the track plays on; this complimented our opening sequence as the first scene is rather subtle however it graduates and becomes more creepy throughout the film.

I decided to change the track to more 'violent' sounding music after the girl in the film blacks out. This is because I wanted the music to give the impression that something bad is about to happen in the film.

As well as the music, I thought it would be effective to use various sound effects such as 'ear ringing' when the girl blacks out and the sound of a telephone.

I also used a 'boom' sound effect in the last scene as a type of jump scare for the viewers.

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Task 15 - Production company logo

                         

WISE PRODUCTION LOGO

From the research we have gathered we decided to use the program Motion 5 to produce our logo, following a tutorial on YouTube called "Apple Motion 5 For Absolute Beginners - The Interface".



The first thing we did was decide what colour the background should be. we decided to have a plain white background which reflects the light day time in our opening sequence however in the center there is a black box, we chose the colour black because it reflects the mysterious and darkness that runs through our opening sequence.

After, our next task was to add our company name "WISE Productions". This was done using a individual text boxes for each letter and choosing from a variety of fonts suggested by the program (Motion 5).

In order to get the letters to appear at different times, one after another using the bottom of the time line we were able to move the letters to the time we wanted them to appear throughout the 10 second space we had. In addition to this we were able to use different types of 'behaviors' of each letter. This enabled the logo to look more appealing and eye catching.




To finish creating our company logo we added a sound track that we downloaded from 'YouTube converter' called "Typewriter and enter". This worked well because as the sound of a letter being pressed down on a type writer, our individual letters of "WISE" would appear in the box.

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Task 14 - Filming schedule

The columns that are used in the film schedule made:

1. Scene: should be the scene in your film. A scene changes when the location and/or time passes
2. Description: brief scene description 
3. Characters: character name and name of the actor 
4. Location: where are you filming?
5. Setups: the number of different camera angles planned to film this form
6. Time: how long we think it will take to film - including 5 minutes set up time 
7. Props & Kit: props needed for this scene
8. Costume: state the costume being worn

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