The document describes a group's film opening project for a horror film that takes place in the woods. They aimed to keep the audience engaged through suspenseful sounds and a documentary-style presentation without revealing the killer. Through researching horror film conventions, the group worked to represent teenagers realistically and leave the audience wanting more information about the threat in the woods.
2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media products?
Our film opening is probably similar in ways sue to the sounds and effects. I think the main importance of any
film is to keep the audience engaged, this is done by having the audience at the edge o their seats, and this
could be done by the sounds o the suspense of what could happen next. Because we only had to do a short
opening I think we have hopefully put enough edge to the sounds from the film, In our opening we have done
this by the sound effects. We tried to draw attentions to the fact that the opening was a documentary, So we
saw what the actors saw, this is similar to the film the blare witch project. I think because we did it like this it
gave more detail to what they could hear and also how they dealt with this. Sometimes this was hard to pick up
because of the camera we used could always pick us the smallest of details so we really had to exaggerate with
the sounds.
Because the viewer never got to see the killer or ghost, I think this adds to the effect on the audience of wanting
to know who or what it is. This is similar to the scream film as the murderer is hidden under a mask and a
costume giving off no glues as to who it is, but the audience get a feeling that it is someone with in there group.
But out filming the audience have no clue who it could be.
To help our group have a better understanding of horror films we watched a few of the openings to help us
grasp what worked well and what sounds effect to use, Most of the openings that we watched consist of
teenagers or young adults. We decided to watch these ones because we could see what body language they
would give off and how well they dealt with the situation and we thought that we could try and see if we could
do that also.
3. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
• Before we started to film we wanted to get a grasp on what horror films actually involve, we googled the locations of some
films, and what the actors were wearing due to the stereotypes. A lot of horror films had teenagers and young people in
this. This could be used to stereotype the younger generation that they are more likely to go out into the woods almost
knowing that danger is going to happen. We wanted to know what costumes they were wearing and to see if they were
appropriate for the age group. We found that they were normally wearing suitable everyday clothes. We also found out that
the body language was quite natural. After looking at various concepts with the horror media we found that we were ready
to start filming.
• Due to the actors being young there body language would be different to the older generation and we tried to interpret that
in our opening. We had the teenagers as almost bickering with each other to show the stereotype or immaturity. To try and
get the characters believable we showed them as venerable. Whilst doing some research we found out that the stereotype
is normally a girl to be the first victim. So we decided to put this into our opening, even thought the viewer doesn’t
nesseserly see the girl to fall to be the first victim, they will guess.
• We found that during the serotype film opening the boy was almost the saviour in some ways, always almost helping the
other characters deal with what's happening around them. In our film opening Josh was getting aggressive during an
argument, Boys are portrayed mainly as the more aggressive leader with the film.
4. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
• Due to the type of film budget we had to stick with, we were unable to establish a large film company such
as universal studios, so we had to go with a company such as Blumhouse, this will be realistic because they
have done productions such as insidious and paranormal activity.
• Because our film is low budget film, you-tube and word press would be a good way to present the film
on. This is because YouTube is the most famous used video publishing website. For the social websites
such and Twitter and Facebook, this we will good to keep in contact with individuals who enjoy and like
the work in which you create. To create a good atmosphere on these sites you use the hashtag to enhance
the impact of the post.
5. Who would be the audience for your
media product?
• As a group discussion we came upon a decision to classify the film as a 15. We knew even before we started to film
that the genre was going to be on horror. And we figured out a suitable age to class it upon. We found this information
on the British board of film classifications. Once we filmed it we knew that it would be classed higher due to the
footage that was going to feature violence and blood.
• We decided that the age 15 would be the best possible choice due to we could use enough scenes that were suitable
to the majority of the audience. We thought that if we were to go for a younger age we would then have to re film
most of it due to scenes that would not be suitable for that age range. If we put it as higher as a 18 classification we
would then lose a lot of audience members
6. How did you attract/address your audience?
• We chose to do a horror because it will attract a lot of teenage audience. We also
thought that we would use the age closer to a young adult or teenager, because we
thought if the film was mainly made for the younger audience, they would then more
than likely watch it if the actors were closer to there age range.
• We created a questionnaire on the film to see what the audience rated us, this would
be another way to get a insight of what others thought. We thought that it would be a
good idea to have a idea what the audience looked for in a horror film, If we did certain
things wrong we would then know how to correct them further on.
• Another way we felt to keep the audience engaged throughout the opening was to have
most of the opening where they are felt as though they are figuring out a guessing
game. I think in an ending of anything such as a book or film the ending is one of the
crucial parts. If the book or film has the wrong ending it could instantly change the view
for the audience. We decided to end our opening with heavy breathing followed by the
screech of a scream, giving away that something was out there and ready to almost et
them. Because our film was a documentary it was important for us to keep the
audience engaged the entire time. If they lost interest they could miss a major part. I
think with a documentary the interesting part is the main fact that you feel you are
there with the actors at all times, because you only see what they are seeing.
7. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of
constructing this product?
During the construction of this project I’ll felt I gained new experiences with editing and using the film camera. I felt I learnt how to
use a film camera better and at what angle it was best to capture the signs of emotion, I also learnt how to use the various
different angles, such as medium close up, long shot and extreme close up. To capture the most emotion I learnt that the extreme
close up was the best possibility, due to the fact that you could see almost every emotion on there face and in there eyes. Extreme
close up and close ups are normally use for very emotional scenes. You would necessarily have a emotional scene and do a long
shot angle because you wouldn’t see how they deal with that emotion on there faces.
With the thought of using a camera, we all mainly knew how to do the basics on film camera, but not how to do it in detail, The
camera we used was a D3200 which I personally had experience in using but not the film part in it.
Again with editing I hadn’t really experienced that much, we used the serif movie plus X6, which I had no experiencing in using and
neither did Courtney. But Josh on the other hand did which gave us an advantage, But we soon got the hang of it. Once Josh helped
us concur how to use it we felt we got it done much quicker. We learnt how to overlaps scenes so they ran thought smoothly
rather than jump from one scene to another, we learnt how to change the whole film or just a couple of scenes into black and
white. How to cut scenes if they were to long of if we wanted just one specific section.
We also learnt how to import music o sounds onto there by converting it and then placing it on the soft wear and then to where
about we wanted it and last we learnt how to put credits in and change the colour and the way they moved onto the film
opening, We also changed how they appeared.
The last thing we learnt by construction this project was the different techniques, For example the 180 degree rule, Which goes
back to our preliminary task, which helped us to establish the rule and how to do it. By the end of the opening we establish the
best way around to go about doing the techniqes.
8. Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the
progression from it to full product?
• The preliminary was the first time experiencing how to properly use the camera and the right
angles mainly the 180 degree rule. Doing this help us gather information of how we could use
this shot in our opening. I would say one thing that didn’t work well with this was the way it
was almost shot, because of the situation with the way Josh and Courtney were sitting and
there wasn’t much room to move around the back of them, so the camera has to be higher
up, this then resulted in not really having a smooth transaction. I think we learnt form this as
we used the experience from this and fixed it when we did our actual filming. So from this we
needed to figure out what went wrong and then learn fro our mistakes and make sure they
didn’t happen again.
• I think what we did learn from the preliminary task was the fact that we had to figure out
before we started to film what angles and positions we had to use in order to get the best
possible run we could get.
