Evaluation- Georgie Holmes

An example of a Zombie which
will be great to scare the target audience.

1.   For our Media Studies project, we had to create a short 2 minute horror film, which would be the introduction to a film, including a title sequence we designed and created.  We could work in groups from 2 people to 4 and had the choice of a variety of genres such as, 'Vampire' 'Zombie' 'Ghost' and 'Psychological'. The initial ideas for my groups horror film was a psychological genre, the threat being a clown. we liked the idea of a Restricted Narrative meaning that we hiding certain plots 'threats' from our target audience. Our film is based around a toy clown, we were hoping with the toy clown being our 'threat' it would confuse the audience as it looks cute and innocent, that it would interest the audience and create suspense. The audience are introduced to a disturbed teenage girl, keeping a toy clown in her room she seems anxious, (the audience are unaware with her past with this toy threat and want to know more). Super natural events start to occur, causing a tense atmosphere this leads to a climax point in our film. We carried out research in preparation for our film by watching a variety of ghost and psychological films. This helped us brain storm ideas inspiring our own ideas and how we could develop them to make them interesting and tense. We also watched horror films that were made by media the students in previous years, this was helpful because we learnt about the use of software and developing some of their ideas for our in ideas.
   The film IT inspired our initial ideas because of the clown being represented as a threat, and his character being extremely intimidating and frightening. To an audience watching the film it reflects on everyones fears of clowns and the threat they're known to be towards 'innocent' little children and teenagers. As well as horrors films there were a few ghost stories that both me and Ryan had heard about toy clowns being threats and 'haunting' teenage girls. We felt that using a teenaged girl as our victim would be the best result because she will be portrayed as extremely weak and stereotypically hopeless and vulnerable not being able to fight back.

This is the image of the Clown in the
film IT. This inspired us to
use a Clown in our film, because of the
scary facial features. Also not knowing what
is being the 'face paint'. Keeping the audience
wanting to know what the Clown has done
to the teenage victim to make her disturbed
and anxious. From this one image, I felt that the
angle and positioning of the Clown makes him
a bigger threat, because it is a close up of
his face and you can see the detail of his
expressions. We decided from this when we
introduce the Clown to our film, the
camera will be a close up of it's
face.   

This is a shot from our first filming session.
This one image is a great example of making
her look weak and vulnerable
which will have an impact on
the audience.

 
   Throughout the planning and creating of our film, it has been challenging to make sure that everything goes according to plan. In my group is myself and Ryan and being just the two of us we did find it hard in some areas to get jobs done because it meant we had to keep on track, not loosing focus and work hard because there was no one else to fall back for help. Me and Ryan worked well together as we were hardworking and organized. Problems did occur because we did not always agree on each others ideas. We made sure that we talked everything through and were aware of what we both wanted and tried our hardest to put each others ideas into the final film.

   Watching this trailer several times helped me and Ryan to work on our threat and think about how to develop a narrative behind the clown how to make our clown evil and look extremely scary. The trailer is very dark and frightening, the music works really well to develop the clowns narrative, as it is a fast pace piece of music which keeps the audience on edge. The fast cuts work well with the music because of the constant speed and the sense that the threat is getting closer to reality and you (as the audiences) life.

I love the angle of this shot in IT because the impact of using a Close Up of the threat is intimidating. You as the audience are closer to the threat making you feel uncomfortable and weary. The shot creates a very dark and frightening atmosphere which is great for portraying an evil and scary Clown (threat.) After watching this one scene through, I felt using a Close Up at the end of my film would be effective, because of the fast pace that the film is going through to suddenly jump to a close up of my threat, will work extremely well.

This is one of my favourite shots that is in the film IT. I like
the way the clown is presented as the threat, because he
appears in mysterious places. This is a two person shot which
works extremely well because you have both the threat and the victim in
one shot and even though the threat is placed on a lower angle, his positioning
shows that he is evil because of the dim lighting and the shadowing of his face,
which creates a frightening and extremely tense atmosphere, as you as the audience
are aware that the threat has no hope of escaping because she is young, weak and
vulnerable and is unaware of the danger of the clown.

                                                                                                                            

    


With this film, it helped us because of the supernatural events and what we could develop and make our own in our film, like the flickering lights, the TV turning on and off. These events create tension for an audience and work really well in a horror film.

This Mid Close Up of the couple works
really well to support the sense
of unnatural events
occurring as you can see the detail in
image.   

This is another great shot to help focus
on unnatural events. They are shown by the
over the shoulder shot, making the audience
feel like their is someone
behind her, more powerful
and aggressive. Making the shot darker
has an impact on the ghostly atmosphere.

2. We are following the conventions of a horror film, by using a stereotypical victim of a weak and innocent girl who is not able to fight the threat; also by creating tension through the soundtrack we are going to create, to help maintain the psychological ghostly genre and atmosphere. In our own research we went off and watched a horror film, I watched 'The Others' which is a ghost film and this helped me to come up with initial ideas for the shots and angles that we could use to create a very fast paced introduction. The use of close ups are very high because they are a very good way of showing fear in the victims face because you see extreme detail in the expression they are doing, which will help the audience to sense fear and become tense.

This is a shot from the film The Others,
I think that is is very effective as you can
see the fear in Graces (Nicole) face. As
well as the angle, the lighting
helps create a ghostly atmosphere, because
the of the shadowing on her face
portrays her as suspicious,
which draws you closer to the film. 

We kept to the conventions because we wanted to make sure we were creating a high standard film which staying to the conventions meant we had a back up and help if we were ever struggling or something in our film wasn't working, we could reflect on conventions of a horror film.

As said above The Others uses many close ups to create tension
and fear. We have took on the ideas of this and are using them in our
own film as we want to make sure our audience are very
tense.

Our First Shoot

After our first horror shoot, we were not to happy about the quality of the framing of some of the shots as the were not correct and didn't look very professional. We think that re-shooting our film would help as we would change some of the angles by using more low and high angles and using tilted shots to make a more unnatural environment which was what we wanted in the first place. As well as the framing we felt that the narrative did not work so well, as it did not have a ghostly atmosphere, therefore re-shooting will help because we are more aware of what needs to be done and how to improve it.

Shot example

This shot is effective in the short horror, because the framing is good as it is obvious of what is to be the threat (being the clown) and helps create the narrative for the film. To improve this shot, it would be a good idea to place to the clown towards the left corner as it would attract the audience more and look interesting as it is closer to the audience and it at its biggest position to the audience.