For our task in Media Studies, we were asked to work in groups and begin planning and constructing a short film of a genre of our choice. We eventually chose the Horror/Mystery/Thriller, which we thought would be a lot more fun to make as we already had the right props to use.
Upon planning our film, we viewed others that became our influences, which were Edgar Wright's 'Hot Fuzz'; Guy Ritchie's 'Sherlock Holmes' and Bob Clark's 'Black Christmas.'These films were a mixture of genre to help us decide how to do our film and what genre we should choose, but also they helped us with identifying camera angles/shots and using some of them in our short film.
Further planning of our film consisted of 3 page storyboards containing 18 stills that we created. These storyboards were re-drawn twice; producing our own versions of certain camera shots to give a clearer example of how we achieve them; we were also given examples of opening credits (after the planning and during construction of our film) from Drew Goddard's and Joss Whedon's 'The Cabin in the Woods', which showed very big and bold red letters accompanied by a death-metal type of music that clearly reflects the genre as horror because a title credit with this style wouldn't be common at all in any other genre.
We eventually thought up the film's title, which is 'Curiosity', as it tells the implied audience: ages 12 and over, why the central cleaner character 'Bob' began to follow an entity (figure) upstairs to see what it is, not knowing what would be the possible consequences, so the title refers to the curiosity that gets the best of him.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
As we filmed the scenes for the film, we created a stereotypical horror character who always goes to see what the source of the 'bump' is instead of staying away from it incase something happens. Our film criticises that statement through the actions of 'Bob' after he goes to see what the figure is, and it ends with Bob screaming, implying an obvious negative outcome for him. Binary oppositions are present in the film as we intended Bob to be the 'good' character by showing him to be as innocent as possible through the simple act of cleaning with the implication shown through the props: a coat, mop and bucket. The colour of his coat is white to signify the innocence of his character as he is oblivious to what will happen to him. This would oppose with our 'evil' character, the figure, that makes very short appearances to give us the sense of unease as the figure wears a black hooded jacket with a plain white mask to hide its identity, which signifies the evilness of the character. So the audience is given a clear view of who is good and who is evil.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
The target audience for our film is ages 12 and over, mainly due to the psychological horror content, which isn't lingered upon, therefore avoiding a higher target demographic. Other reasons for this target age is that in a mainstream film aspect, there would be availability for a larger audience and would therefore gain more popularity. The 12 rating would also suit actual students from schools who may want to see how the film represents an average school.
How did you attract/address your audience?
We then needed to consider how we would attract the audience, which we achieved through building up tension by showing very limited sights of the figure. However, audiences 12 and over could be expecting blood and gore to entertain them, which would therefore become hard to do as that alone would raise the age certificate and drastically lessen the available audience numbers. Yet we thought that instead there should be horror over violence, because it's a horror film and we need to keep it as a horror film: scary and psychological. Other similar examples of horror over violence are James Watkins' 'The Woman in Black' where blood is shown, but very little compared to the jump scares and psychologically scary scenes. Alejandro Amenabar's 'The Others' uses no blood at all, yet it is horrifying and disturbing despite its 12 certificate, which 'The Woman in Black' also has. It is more wise to show very little blood and loose a little of the target audience than add more blood, raise the age and loose a whole section of the target audience.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Through construction of our film, we became more adapted to our cameras and how we worked them along with iMovie and the editing process. After straightforward examples of how to work the different technology involved in making our short film, such as how to zoom in swiftly; controlling the focus and using the USB drive to import the updated film from every week as we progressed.
In our film, we had as many different camera angles/shots as we could, including cross-cuts (that were influenced by Hot Fuzz's opening scene with Simon Pegg describing his past work in the police force) for sense of location; establishing shots (influenced by the shots of the sorority house from Black Christmas) for sense of place and tracking shots (following the two office workers in Cabin in the Woods) to give a point of view from a different perspective along with zoom in/outs to increase tension, panning shots again for sense of location, low angle and high angle shots to create a sense of power and unease.
Upon finishing the film with many edits in between shoots, we were finally done with the film, and all there was to do was the editing process on iMovie. We became quickly accustomed to the editing process and how we used and worked certain features. Through the course of editing, we added royalty-free music with a tense tone to build the suspense throughout the short as well as just two sound effects: a stormy background effect to give a sense of pathetic fallacy at the beginning to reflect what happens through the film; and the screaming sound effect at the end to surprise and shock. Through the weeks of editing, we also deleted shots, lengthened and shortened others, replaced and added them as well. When we finished the main editing, we needed to add a credits sequence with the title attached to it. As though only three in our group worked on the film, we were able to show the credits as the film played through, with the title 'Curiosity' showing up at the end of the scene, implying that the sequence we shot was for the beginning of a longer film if there ever was one.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
If there ever was a chance of theatrical release of our film, we would expect a known Production company such as BBC Films, Studio Canal or Optimum Releasing to produce and distribute our film. This is because they all help produce UK films that quite often contain either realistic, gritty, scary or periodical subjects. 'Curiosity' is a horror film set in a British school, much like Nick Murphy's 2011 film 'The Awakening', a period horror drama set in a British Boys school in 1921, which was produced and distributed by BBC Films and Studio Canal. Robin Hardy's Scottish horror 'The Wicker Man' is produced by Optimum Releasing as well as Optimum Classics. 'The Wicker Man' is similar to our film in a way that there is always something unnatural looming throughout nearly every scene up until the last scenes, where a revelation, shown in any style, is revealed. So these are the production companies that we would expect for our film if released theatrically as they would also be cheaper and probably more helpful with distributing it.
Improvement
To improve on our film, we would darken the style of it as we thought it seemed too bright for a horror film opening, so the dark effect would be a priority. Another improvement would be to try and avoid as much transitions as possible, (there were many shots that were needed but did have problems with them, so they were hidden by the transitions)as the more transitions were added, the more we felt it would detach the audience from the building suspense. Using smoother camera shots would be another improvement as it could juxtapose to the lack of 'smoothness' when the scene draws to the end.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
From the preliminary task to our finished short opening to a film, we have learnt how to use iMovie in a more advanced way other than just moving clips around that started mostly with the task as well as the Sandman short. We have also learnt how to include sound, transitions, credits and a wider range of camera shots/angles as well as how to export and save and import and save movie files in between updates. From the preliminary task itself, we learned how to use the match on action, 180 degree and the shot/reverse/shot techniques to control the conversation from both characters points of view. Another thing we have learnt from the preliminary to the full product is how to silence certain scenes and add your own sound into them to help create a better, clearer sense of how you want your film to look and be presented without causing any misinterpretations.
Many examples of our filming
Preliminary Task- http://www.ryandeeganasmediastudies.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/preliminary-task-short-scene.html
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