Our finished film opening 'The Trap'

The trap. Finished film opening-

Planning/Textual Analysis of 'The Trap'.

The opening of the clip 'The Trap' begins with an establishing shot of the woods which fits the conventions of a horror. Although its outside and there is natural lighting, a special effect was used so it would appear darker which adds suspense. Non-diegetic music is playing, and its parallel to what's on screen. Its slow and quiet,this is the only sound you can hear. The next shot is of a pan around the sky it then cuts to an over the shoulder of a guy. As the colouring is darker and you cant see his face, the character appears more mysterious . We then automatically make the assumption he is stood in the same place as where the camera had just panned. The cross cut has a fade effect so it runs smoother.

Next is a long shot of a girl character, this means the audience can see what she's wearing, although she looks quiet walking alone she isn't dressed showing her body and is in a plain jumper and top. An effect has been put on, so there is a tint of brown/sepia effect. This means its easier to establish the time difference between both characters. It pans her walking up towards the camera,as the camera gets closer we can see that she the same age as a teenager and on her own. The credits come up and are shown with a black background and red writing, these two colours relate to horror. Along with the low lighting and tense music it feels more scary to watch. It cuts to a shot of the floor this means we can see a characters point of view, it looks as if the camera has been hand held and that makes it a little shaking and that's to show how the character is breathing, which makes it look as if he's nervous? However it's the same colour as it naturally would be just a little darker therefore we know its the boy walking and not the girl. The dim lighting makes it more tense on screen. We then see a shot of the girl walking up the same bit of path and that's how we establish the relationship between both characters. It would appear as if the boy has been following the girl. The girl then gets a phone call however you can only see her from behind and her facial expression isn't on display. The girl then begins to run, as an audience it leaves you on edge as you want to know why.
The continuous use of establishing shots and over the shoulder shots, to show the location and show the audience how it is from their point of view makes the girl look more innocent and vulnerable walking home alone and the guy look mysterious and dark. As the non-diegetic music becomes more sudden it sounds a little like breathing which makes it scary. Throughout it fits the conventions of a typical horror.

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

Evaluation for media.

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Evaluation-What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Dimension Films' is an American company who have distributed over 120 films. We thought they'd be a good company to link our project with (The Trap) as many of these films have been in the horror genre such as 'The Mist' and 'Venom'. As the company is so big it would seem they would blanket advertise the media as this is what they've done with previous films such as 'Piranha'. With that film they showed short cuts on social networking sites and places such as Youtube.This helped to attract a bigger audience rather than posters. Our target audience are most likely to go onto these sites on a daily bases. Many people aren’t going to want to see a small budget, badly made scary film as it just wont work, where as if its flooding the media and made to look like it's a must see, it would attract more people. This is why we thought a bigger company would be better than an independent one.

Some of our case studies including 'Scream' was a big influence as our opening is very similar. Along with 'Halloween'. Although the names automatically give away what genre it is, within the first few minutes of watching if you were unaware of the title you wouldn’t guess its a horror. This is why i think Dimension Films would want to distribute our film opening :).

Evaluation- Who would be attracted to watch the clip and how does it attract social groups?

Many horror films are certificate 15 upwards, by making our main character in this age band it makes the audience want to watch it more rather than the characters be old, as its not something they can relate to. Although in a horror, it is quite unrealistic and unlikely to happen in real life, there is still something more on edge watching someone who is the same age on screen.  We conducted a poll and found out that people in this age gap mostly liked horror and pyschological thrillers. This is why we knew that the genre would work for us. At this age many groups are a mixed gender this is how it would attract both boys and girls. Therefore the audience would be ages 15 onwards, its not actually bloody more jumpy which is why its better than being an 18. At this age it also would attract more viewers, as seeing a horror film in the cinema is a regular thing to do. Many films that are similar such as 'paranormal activity 1/2' and 'the devil inside' were shown popular at box office and they were produced with the same kind of techonology and likewise didn't include too many characters. This indicates that they focused more on sound and effects which is what we've done. Therefore our textual analysis proved a big help.
Stereotypically girls are more under harm rather than boys. Therefore we've done it so its a girl being followed by a bloke except you cant see his facial expression. Therefore it represents girls as being a little slow and as if they often put them self under risks. Although the task was to only make a 2 minute opening clip it would be better if the audience could imagine something happening from that point on. It doesn’t particularly show a certain social group however it fits the stereotype of a girl trying to be more independent by walking home alone and the 'killer' a dark and mysterious man. We purposely modernise it by using texts instead of a phone call (like in the film scream, which was our biggest influence). Although this isn't what always happens this is what we perceived to be a regular convention of a horror =Dark/mysterious guy kills innocent/sweet girl.

General sum up - Evaluation.

Originally the idea was to make a psychological thriller based on an Ouija board and ghosts however it wasn't enough, so we added a guy watching our girl characters (previously written about). However when showing a preview to the class, the genre wasn't as obvious as we wanted and we just realised that it didn't fit well together, so we looked at more film openings and changed our idea.

We have now based the 2 minute opening clip similar to the film 'scream'. This means we still could use some footage as before and have the time to edit new material. We kept the location the same, which was outside in a wooden gazebo along with the woods next to it, not much would change and if the weather made a small change we could easily edit it so it was similar to a week beforehand filming. In many film openings that we looked at, the location didn't seem as important. Often it was in a house,street or woods where we wouldn't normally expect something scary to happen. It's same with this location, it doesn't look that morbid.

We used a variety of different shots such as, point of view or over the shoulder. So it was hard to guess what was happening next. We also thought as a group this made what was on screen more tense. It was only until we added sound that it was all brought together. At the beginning the sound is dieagetic and in sync with what's on screen. Suddenly the music then changes to non-dieagetic which makes the atmosphere on scene tense. (This is what we wanted) So the audience are already on the edge. Although the task was to only make a 2 minute opening we wanted to make it look as if something more could happen from it. We think this has worked, although we didn't necessary stick to the original plan we had it almost worked out better for us as it wouldnt of fit the conventions before and we needed to learn from our mistakes so the project could develop and get better.

Evaluation-What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

When I first started this project, my group used a digital compact camera like other groups in the media AS class. This also allowed us to take photos too. Although the quality wasn't the best, like many other horror films this wasn't the main priority. At several different occasions we used a tripod, at first i thought it was difficult to pan, as its important to get the characters full body in the shot.However with practise I managed to get use to it and learnt new skills when using the camera. On one shoot we'd forgotten a tripod therefore used hand-held effect. Fortunately for us it worked and made it look as if its from the characters point of view when researching more into horrors we also learnt that this was one of many conventions, we decided it looked good so kept it. I then learnt about cross cuts and now know how important it is to make it look like its happening and keep continuaty a main factor rather than having several different clips otherwise it wont flow well. When putting together the credits we used a programme called 'After Effects'. This was very different to something id use before however it was easy to get the hang on and soon after we were changing what type of font and what effect made it show up better on screen. I then learnt to import it onto Adobe Premiere. Previously i hadnt used Adobe Premiere very much so making the preliminary was an important task. Not just for our ideas but so we could test what shots worked,what effects looked good whilst editing and just getting use to changing basic things. Such as cropping or adding sound.