For our Media task, we were told to produce a two-minute introduction to a film. In my group were Grace Pickard (http://hellogracesmedia.blogspot.com/), Danni Gisbourne (http://dannigisbourne.blogspot.com/), and Georgia Entrican (http://1234mai.blogspot.com/). Right from the start, I had already been inspired by the music video for Massive Attack’s “Angel” that had quite a thriller like atmosphere. This created a very gritty ambience, and the air of uncertainty, as to why all the people are chasing the character in the first place. This made for quite a scary prospect; a decision made by the director to hide the reasons, and concentrate on making it scary by utilizing different camera angles. The thriller genre as a whole is quite a versatile one, as we have found out. It can be very easily manipulated, and can be applied to action films like ‘Enemy of the State’ or ’88 minutes’ that don’t necessarily contain much violence, but concentrate on keeping you on the edge of your seat. At the other end of the spectrum, there is the horror thriller genre, including films such as ‘Them’ and ‘Untraceable’, which contain classic elements of the horror genre. such as a focus on victims. In these violence plays a much more important role.
Here is Massive Attacks Video for Angel:
http://www.muzu.tv/massiveattack/angel-music-video/56829
What lies Beneath Image (important in establishing our own bathroom scene):
http://winteralfs.com/stills/WLB_bathroom_edit.jpg
Our project as a whole tried to represent youth, in the form of Grace, acting in quite a mature way. This is a representation that it is not played upon much in popular film and TV, particularly in TV shows such as ‘Skins’ or ‘The Inbetweeners’ that deliberately highlight the most immature elements of young people. However, we decided to break away from this mould, in an attempt to challenge such TV shows. We were constantly trying to keep the scene looking as verisimilar as possible, regardless of the nature of events, due to our influences from gritty, realistic pieces of film. In this respect, we were trying to break away from conventions sent up by major media institutions, to try and make a more interesting film. However, we were aiming this at a general audience of mid teens (15 or 16) and above, as our target audience. As a result, we conducted a survey of our media studies class, who were all intrigued about the psychotic murderer in particular, as he is effectively the main character in our extract. In classic horror films, such as ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ or ‘Friday 13th’, the focus in the advertising is always on the killer, and as a result, this becomes the selling point for the film. We took this into account during the filming, as we thought about how our character should be represented, using mise-en-scene and cinematography as the most crucial elements. In terms of mise-en-scene, the most important decision that we made, was to have me (The Psychotic Killer), wearing a mask, usually used for stopping any dust or harmful substances from being inhaled. This became another important factor, as it kept the identity of the killer from being revealed, but also referred to another media convention of a sort. The idea of using a mask takes an object that is not usually considered scary in anyway, and putting it in a situation where it can be considered scary. Examples of this would be in the TV adaptation of Stephen Kings “It” , another film that we looked at, when a clown is used as a traumatic reminder of the characters ill fated past. Also Gas masks have been used to great effect in many pieces of film, such as in Doctor Who. In taking our decision to use a mask, we left an air of uncertainty as to the identity of the character. It is a proven fact that people do not like things being hidden from them, and not knowing what is about to happen or what they cannot see, is an important trait in horror movies in particular, and thus creates tension. Tension also became an important factor in our postproduction stages, as we had decided that we would have music playing an important role in our film, and that we didn’t want to use dialogue. This was a choice taken earlier on and added to the overall air of mystery, which, judging by the verbal feedback we have received, has worked to good effect. With this lack of Script, we were able to concentrate on our Cinematography much more, and were able to watch other films for research, purely concentrating on camera shots. As a result, we played along with this particular convention, to create the desired effect in our film.
I think that Film Four or Channel Four films would be a good institution to distribute our film, as they are not afraid to promote gritty and realistic pieces of drama, like ‘This Is England’ and the recent TV show ‘Red Riding’. They also produce smaller films for TV such as ‘Yasmine’, which targeted quite a niche audience with its subject of the Asian minority that is apparent in the North of England. Also our film, could go straight to TV as a drama, as there are elements of the plot, which lend themselves to splitting into different parts. This is because ours is not a clean flowing film, as there are flashbacks present, such as the intro itself. Also, Channel 4 have been shown to be particularly good at advertising good films such as ‘This Is England’ and ‘Trainspotting’, both of which were quite gritty and controversial, and contained possibly undesirable elements of subject matter. These are now renowned as cult ‘classics’ so I could see our film being quite appealing to this similar sort of audience.
I have been using Mac computers for many years now, and know a lot about the audio side of projects such as this, but I never have really got round to using their film software. However, via this project I have now learnt a lot more about Final Cut Express HD in particular. It was very interesting to find out the similarities between applications such as Final Cut, and Logic Pro (which I had used previously), as the editing software is much the same, and as a result, I found it quite easy to adapt when using Final Cut. Also I have learnt the basics of Photoshop, on which I was able to tweak the colors on our poster, using filters and effects, to make it seem even more horror like, and am now interested in finding out much more about this application. Also using LiveType, I have found out how to put credits in films, and learned how to try to find the ones that suit the film; something that may come useful in further projects.
Looking back at my preliminary task, I have learnt a lot about being adventurous in Cinematography, such as the shot we decided to use, with the knife being dragged up the banister, which I had certainly not considered before. Also, my planning skills have hopefully been improved by this project, as collectively, we had troubles fitting in filming time around our busy social and work lives, so we had to find time to finish up shots, or redo shots which were shaky or unusable. Also my filming skills have advanced quite a bit I think, as I feel now I take into account what is needed, rather than just using certain shots for the sake of using them. Also, I have learnt to be imaginative with editing as well, as we decided to keep the focus on the killer rather than the victim, which is quite often the opposite to what is done in Hollywood horror films. Also, probably the most annoying thing that I learnt about was keeping continuity. Unlike a professional film studio, we couldn’t pay somebody to deal with recording where all the props were so they would always be in the same place. We found we had to take many shots again because of continuity issues, and as a result this made the project longer than it needed to be. Also I have learnt about using music effectively, and more importantly, getting something to fit the needs of the film.
I knew quite a lot about the thriller genre, due to watching films like “What Lies Beneath” and a film that Georgia cited as a reference “Them”. My original idea of trying to film in a car park was impractical, but we had a good idea of trying to do something along the serial killer lines.
