Welcome

Welcome to my blog, on this blog you will find all the research and planning that i have used to build up towards my final coursework.

Black Nightmare Final Cut

Here is our final cut, in this final cut you will notice that we have considerably changed a large amount in comparison with the two previous rough cuts, such as using different editing styles by which we cut down many of the takes and sped them up to help build suspense and tension, we also used more mise-en scene and used a bucket of guts and leftover meat from the butchers to give a sense of verisimilitude  We have also taken extra time to take into consideration the types of shots used and the editing done to make this final cut as best as possible.

Evaluation Q1 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

When we first set out to make our film we were looking at previous slasher movies which had been made and were successful, we took notes and inspiration from others to make our film opening as good as possible, some of the movies that we looked at we used some intertextuality such as the title of our film and the ideas of using a masked killer.


When we did our film we tried using some of the common conventions examples from previous movies made, these examples that we based our film opening around were: 

• Halloween ( Wes Craven, 1996 ). This films story line is relative to ours by which the stalking scene in which the killers identity is hidden ( Barthes narrative enigma theory ). We also used this theory in our opening to help build up suspense and tension.

• Texas Chainsaw Massacre  ( Tobe Hooper, 1974 )was the next film that influenced our film opening. The reason that we based our movie around this film is because we thought our film showed some aspect of Todarov's stages of equilibrium. We believe that our movie shows this by the use of dis-equilibrium by which we cut back and forth between two sets of time ( equilibrium and dis-equilibrium ). 

Evaluation Q2 Representations

All of the actors and actresses viewed in our opening scene are aged 16 - 17. We wanted to make our killer seem a lot older aged about 30 so that this would help our secondary audience which is people aged in there 20's. This helped us allow our film appeal to a larger audience.

The characters in our film are all from West Yorkshire and have Yorkshire accents, this is  not a very commonly known accent this means that people from other countries such as America, some parts of Europe and even parts of England would not understand what is been said. Therefor we would not aim our target audience to be Americans. Despite the Yorkshire accents the movie is a slasher film which commonly many people are not overly fussed about the accents in which the characters speak nor the location in which the film is made as they are only interested in the gore and the thrill they gain from the movie.


Characters that are viewed in our opening scene

The first characters that are viewed in the opening scene of out film are, the final girl, the scream queen, the jock and the killer at certain points. The final girl in our film is the classic stereotype of the final girl with brunette hair and wearing clothes that signifies she is a rather nerdy person who is intellectual and has a very small social life. At the beginning of our film she is seen getting out of a car and carrying her studying books in her arms down the road. The next character that we show in our opening scene is the scream queen, she is typically blonde and busty and sexually active, in the opening scene she is seen exiting the car with the final girl and her boyfriend (the jock). Finally the last character that we view in the opening scene is the killer, we only view him a couple of times throughout the opening scene cutting back and forth between shots. He is your typical killer with a certain weapon which is relevant to his history or his profession. I have connoted my characters as the stereotypical characters you would imagine to find in a slasher movie.

 

Final Girl 

The final girl in our film we based around Laurie Strode who was the final girl in the classic Halloween.

She represents the stereotypical final girl carrying her study books as she is getting out of the car and is wearing her school clothes with her skirt rather low to connote that she is rather intellectual and has a minimum social life.

 

Scream Queen

The scream queen in our film opening is based on the classic stereotypical scream queen from all slasher genre's. She represents the stereotypical scream queen as she is blonde and busty. She also represents the role well as when she gets out of the car she walks inside the house with her boyfriend ( the jock ) and we see further into the opening scene the pair of them going into the bedroom and shutting the curtains behind them to connote the fact they are a partaking in sexual activity.

Killer

Finally the killer in our film opening is based on many classic slasher movies such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween where both the killers are wearing masks to hide there identity. We also included this in our film to build narrative enigma until the end of the film where the killer is finally revealed. He wears a black mask to hide his identity and his common choice of weapon is a meat cleaver. The reason for this is due to the fact that we linked our killer to have had a past as a butcher who over years psychological obsession with a certain teenage girl becomes a killer.

Evaluation Q3 Distribution

Distribution is one of the three main areas in the film business:

1. Production
2. Distribution
3. Exhibition

Distribution is when a film is made available to watch by the public after it has been distributed by a film distributor. This can be accomplished in many ways; firstly there is theatrical releasing where the film is able to be viewed in a cinema, next there is home entertainment releasing in which the movie is placed onto a DVD and is made available to purchase in stores or online via streaming sights such as Love Film and Netflix. Finally there is releasing on television programs such as Film 4 etc.

Distributing films for some film companies is relatively easy, for example, major film companies such as Universal and Paramount as they are conglomerate companies meaning that they have subsidiaries which help distribute their movies for them. However smaller film companies such as the two that we are looking at as part of our media coursework Working Title and Warp find it some what harder to distribute their movies, and some end up not being able to make it to cinema listings and are placed directly onto DVD's. This generally tends to happen to smaller film companies (indie companies  which do not have a lot of money to make high end movies.

Evaluation Q4 Target Audience

 

As a group our aim was to target our film at a audience of 15 - 24 and as our additional audience 24 -34. We chose to make this our target audience due to the fact of the genre of our movie been a slasher.

Age Restrictions

Below are the recommended age rating certificates that have been given by the British Board of Film Classification ( bbfc )  are seen at the beginning of every movie :

                            Suitable for all audiences

                            Parental Guidance 

 

                   

                    Cinema release suitable for 12 years and older

                  

         

                     Suitable for 15 years and over

             

        

   

                   Suitable for adults only

                    Adult works for licenced premises only 

BBFC places these recommendations to helps parents, carers and other viewers make informed choices about what they watch. It is displayed under the title and running time for each film in every cinema.

The bffc has two key guidelines in which they apply, these are :

• First, films and videos should be allowed to reach the widest audience appropriate for their theme and treatment.
• Second, adults should be free to choose what they see, provided it remains within the law and is not potentially harmful.

 

Who our film wouldn't apply too?

Our film is a slasher movie which in general are aimed at a target audience of 15 - 21 year olds, however sometimes they can have a secondary audience which is aimed at people aged 24 - 34. The genre of the movie however impacts the audience that will view the movie. As our movie is a slasher the older audiences will not enjoy the gore and the thrill that a slasher movie provides, neither would those who are under the age of 15. Therefore our movie if it was to be viewed by the BBFC would likely to be banded under 15+  this is because it portrays sexual activity and violence which under the BBFC guidelines places the movie at a 15+.

Here are two example slasher movies with age restrictions given by the BBFC

Texas Chainsaw Massacre  ( Marcus Nispel, 2003 )                                                 

                                                             

Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a slasher genre which is about a group of friends passing through are stalked and hunted down by a deformed killer with a chainsaw in order to sustain his poor family who can only afford to eat what they kill.

 

This film includes scenes of violence, alcohol and drug taking, profanity and scenes of sexual activity/ nudity. This would place this movie at a age rating of 18+.

 

 

 

 

Halloween ( John Carpenter, 1978 )

 

Halloween is another classic slasher film which is about a psychotic murderer institutionalised since childhood for the murder of his sister, escapes and stalks a bookish teenage girl and her friends while his doctor chases him through the streets.

The film includes scenes of sexual activity, violence and gore, profanity and also scenes of drug taking and excessive use of alcohol drinking. This film would place this movie with a age rating of 18+.

Audience feedback

We asked a group of teenagers, ages 16-17, to watch our rough cut and give feedback as it'd be useful to know what they think because they're in range of our target audience ( 15-25 ), then from this feedback we can see what worked and what didn't, which we can then use if we were to remake improvements to our film.

Our audience thought that our film was very good and was a suitable for the age range we had targeted our movie at. They said throughout the movie the scenes of violence where the killer is swinging the meat cleaver at the meat was very violent and that the use of intestines and left over meat which we used as our props gave the movie a more gory effect and made it scarier. They also commented on the choice of camera angles and editing used which helped the movie a lot better as the fast paced editing helped build suspense through out the film and the cross cutting was used very well.

Overall they said that our movie was relatively good and they thought that it was suitable for the correct target audience that we had decided to aim it at been 15 - 24. They also said that if it was aimed at audience any older or younger they didn't think that it would be appealing to there age range as it was to gory for younger audiences.

Evaluation Q5 How did you attract your audience ?

To address our audience we made our slasher film appeal to the target audience group we were aiming for, this was the age group of 15 - 24 year old's. The reason for this age group was because we thought collectively as a group that certain aspects of our film would benefit this age range and the filming industry, this is due to how we have made our film and the certain  types of editing we have used and the soundtracks we have created which helps build up suspense and tension which are key factors which slasher movies require to be successful.

YouTube 

One of the way in which we helped attract our audience was by posting our rough cuts and videos of our film on YouTube, by doing this, it enabled us to get audience feedback from our footage which allowed us too take note on the certain aspects in which they thought were good and bad. This then allowed us to make any improvements on our final video to ensure that it was to a good quality.

Use of theories 

Another way to attract our audience was to use Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze theory and Levi Strauss's Binary opposite theory. Mulvey's theory focuses on the girls body within a film which it is objectified in slasher films which is used directly to appeal to the male audience. This is generally done by having a female character in a film or TV show who is wearing revealing clothes which show some of her body. This is to draw men into watching the movie. In our movie our scream queen was wearing a pair of tight skinny jeans instead of a mini skirt or shorts, the reason for this was due to the fact we couldn't use nudity or reveal to much of our actress, however the skinny jeans still worked overall.

Facebook 

Facebook enabled was another way which allowed us to use various techniques to address our audience, by using Facebook we were able to also post our video's on the social network site where many of our friends and age group are able to view our videos. This was good as people could leave feedback in the comments box at the bottom of our post and could give direct feedback about our film and give quick responses. These responses allowed us to make a well informed decision on any adaptations that we could make to our film to improve it.