Evaluation of AS Media Opening.

Before creating our opening, we did plenty of re-search so we fully understood what we wanted to achieve. Horror, being the genre, holds a massive variety of types of film whether its gore, action based or involves monsters. We found that gore most suited what we wanted to do as our idea consists of a murder. A key theme that runs through horrors is the disruption of normality which we were keen to incorporate into our opening. We did this by having a girl’s night being interrupted by a male that is obviously going to hurt her.

In the openings of horror films, shock tactics are used following a time of tension. Tension is important as it sustains the audience’s concentration and interest. Without it, a horror can be very boring and not have a very good narrative.  By having a shock happen quite suddenly, it hooks the audience into wanting to see what happens later on. When editing our opening, we continuously referred back to whether we have created ‘tension’. It’s also important that the tension that is built isn’t ‘scary’ as this is what it would need to be led to.

The choice of shots used is also crucial for the building up of tension. We decided to start with an establishing shot of the house which the girl lives in . Many horror films start with establishing shots as it’s important to introduce the setting. The following shots are all a mixture as its key to have a variety. Although a popular choice of shot for us was the extreme close ups, examples are when the man was turning the engine off, getting out the car, holding the scissors, the opening of the doors etc. I feel that the extreme close ups of the man in places was possible a main reason why we did so well. I believe that they contributed to the ‘creepiness’ as the audience doesn’t get to see his whole face and features.   One piece of positive feedback that we were given was that the narrative (plot) was very clear; it was easy to see what was happening. We believe we did this by swapping the shots from the male to the girl, nearly one after the other. By doing this, it was also quite frightening for the audience to watch as they could see how close he was to her, yet she didn’t.

Another convention of a horror film that we included was a dark setting. Our original idea was to have a vulnerable girl walking down an alley at night, which would consist of a flashback of her being in the shower when she noticed ‘Im Watching’ written over her bathroom wall. Shortly after noticing this, she would be murdered in the alleyway. A massive problem for us was the lighting. With having to film at night time, it is obvious that the action we want to film also will be dark, therefore not being able to see any of the action or what is going on. As we simply loved our original idea, we did all that we could to try and lighten it, but with still having a night setting. We didn’t have any of the appropriate lighting technology which would have made this work, so we had to improvise. Firstly we used the headlights from a car; we thought with these being placed in the right position we could see the girl. This did work but when editing the variety of shots, the lighting was different and it didn’t run smoothly. After a discussion between my group, we decided to change the opening. We kept the shower scene, but using this for when she actually gets murdered. As well as this, we showed cuts from this to show the strange ‘male’ walking into the house. When shooting the outside scenes of the man entering the house, we didn’t really have a problem with lighting because of the street lights. These obviously were the same in every shot, so we managed to get it to run smoothly. Even though we believed that the change of plan was a massive improvement compared to the previous filming, we still had negative feedback on the lighting. Viewers said that at one part, they couldn’t see what was happening and just assumed that it was the door opening because of the sound. I’m sure that if we had to do this production again from scratch, we would change it to being set in the daytime, as we really struggled with the lighting.

The audience we were looking to attract were older teenagers and adults. With it being a horror, it would mostly be aimed at men as they are more likely to be able to interact with the characters on screen. Women can also do this but would do it differently. This could be the case for women and our opening as the victim is also a female. Also by being set in the victims own home, it can make the female audience feel paranoid to when they are also home alone. Horrors can sometimes have long effects on people, as it can massively disturb them. With our opening involving gore, this could also be the case for some of our viewers. So with this we have to be careful with what age to attract it to.

The social groups of the opening are youth and gender. The girl obviously fits into both. With her being young and female, it creates a huge amount of vulnerability and could never compete to a man that is in her home. A victim in a horror is always stereotypically a female, like the exorcist for example, a girl was possessed by a devil. The story may not have been as effective and frightening for the audience if a boy had been possessed; girls are stereotyped as more fragile and weak. Their is also another massive stereotype in our opening; a male being powerful. Nearly all horror and action films have a male as being the leader, murderer etc, depending on the plot. Males quite obviously over power women and by having a male in our opening, emphasises the vulnerability of the girl. I believe our choice of male actor was perfect for the role, as he was an older man with rough looking hands; this being crucial as we did many extreme close ups of his hands.

The soundtracks that we added to our opening, really were a lucky find. I believe they pieced the whole production together. The first track starts at the beginning quite slowly but with a ‘creepy’ feel to it. If you listen very carefully to it, you can hear some quiet piano notes. The second track bursts into the opening when the man picks up the scissors from the girls room. The change in soundtrack is very obvious as it’s loud and has even made some of our audience’s ‘jump’. From this moment, the sound is still quite slow and creepy, but with some added ‘bangs’. The change of soundtrack at that time is crucial, as that’s when the audience begins to know what is going to happen. Both soundtracks link in very well with the opening. Something that we took into consideration was the volume of these tracks; they aren’t too loud so your are also able to hear the television, the car, the shower etc. It’s important that the tracks aren’t too overpowering as it would break the tension and it wouldn’t seem realistic. Some of our best feedback was about the soundtrack, and how it fits on with our storyline.

I believe as a group we have developed and grown so much with knowledge from the preliminary task up until the main production. Our preliminary task isn’t a scratch on our opening; so many things went wrong. When filming it we didn’t really have anything organised and had pretty much improvised; we simply only had a script to work with. We learnt that for our main task we shouldn’t have much speech or acting because that could really bring the mark down. We believed that with much editing and tension that would be created would make an exciting opening. I do feel that making the preliminary task really helped us as it prepared us for the massive challenge ahead. It also gave us the opportunity to get to grasps with the technology.

The technology side to this production was a first at struggle, as no one in my group are confident with many aspects of it. The Apple Mac’s and the iMovie software was our main worry as neither of us had used them before. By having the opportunity to make the preliminary task, we learnt the basics of the software and where then happy to move forward with the main opening. Through the making of the opening, we pretty much learnt the ins and outs of iMovie and were able to experiment with different ways of editing, soundtracks and photo contrasts, to see which better suited our genre. The technologies used for the filming were the camera and tripod. The camera was pretty straight forward to use, but the tripod did seem quite complex. We soon realised the importance of the tripod as we tried without it and the shots were very obviously ‘shaky’. Even though it takes time to change the angle, height etc, the shots are very clear cut and look very professional. If we were to do this production again, we would use a different camera as the one we used really didn’t do it justice; the quality wasn’t very good.

I thoroughly enjoyed making this opening and am very proud with what we have achieved. The ending of our opening caught the eye of most our audiences. They believed it is extremely effective. When editing this part of the opening, we thought that by showing these shots in a photographic like form, it would also show shock tactics.  The majority of feedback was positive, and some people were even scared. One friend said, ‘you’ve made my fear of bathrooms even more apparent’. This not being an obvious positive source of feedback, but we felt like we have exceeded our goals.