CB- Evaluation

1.
Throughout our film opening the typical conventions of horror can easily be seen through mise-en-scene, camera work, sound and editing. We did this so that we could easily portray our horror genre to the audience. We believed that using the typical conventions of horror would help the audience to easily establish the narrative. We aimed at the film opening attracting the core audience (16-24 age bracket) as similar films have done so, such as Zombieland (Fleischer, 2009).

The style of our film opening is similar to 28 Days Later (Boyle, 2002)and 28 Weeks Later (Fresnadillo, 2007), this can be seen through our montage at the beginning and titles which are red in colour, representing blood similar to 28 Days Later and other blood-like gore films.

Our character exposition is very important in the opening sequence; we used another typical convention of horror which put the character in a very isolated and ‘alone’ situation. This allowed the audience to see the point of view of the character in a frightening form. This idea was developed through the location of a deserted train station and walkthrough, set at night.
The camera work allowed us to create allowed us to create the form, putting the protagonist character in a vulnerable position, through close-ups and low angle shots we could portray this.


2.
Our film opening represented social groups through the position in th narrative, developing it through camera work, mise-en-scene, editing and sound.
The protagonist character, we aimed at looking around the age of 20-25years of age, intelligent, upper class and with a well paid job. We put him in a smart suit representing his job and upper class statue, clean and smart movements of the character and camera representing his clean and smart attitude.

The camera work and mise-en-scene allowed us to represent the protagonist, as well as the clean movements of the character we used low angles as he became vulnerable to represent the fear. However the mis-en-scene challenged the ideaology of this particular social group through location. The deserted location was put in to seem strange to the audience that an upper-class male would have to wlak in such a frightening area. This is another convention of horror, situating a particular social group in an eccentric area.

The other characters we used (zombies) we used were shown to be lower and middle class, we did this because we wanted the audience to easily relate to the characters involved in the narrative. No specific social group was portrayed so that it seemed every social group was represented in the norm. We represented these characters through the costume, dressed in low cost clothing, dirty and ripped tracksuits represented the lower classes.

3.
As our opening sequence appeals to the mass audience as our protagonist character is aimed at 20-25 years of age. Therefore along with the genre of our film which is horror we will be able to distribute this film to other multiplex’s cinemas. Along with this however we would have to be careful with the financial investment, as everyone knows horrors have a very little budget and distribution costs.

There are many companies that could distribute our film, Fox Search Light Pictures (parented by Fox) have distributed films such as 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later, which are both similar horrors to our film. This was also distributed to a similar market (American) and therefore could be very effective in this market. DreamWorks have also distributed horror films such as Paranormal activity which have been very successful in the American market and could distribute our independent film very strongly.

6. Throughout our film opening and the creation of it I used many different technologies to help create the opening sequence and help its progress run smoothly. All the way through the planning, creating and evaluating of this film opening our group worked collaboratively to blog our updates. This kept very formal communication between us, allowing our ideas to be expressed in formal communication rather than kept in our minds. I learnt how to blog posts with images and videos on, helping progrees continue smoothly and efficiently.


The HD camera we used took some getting use to, as a group we went to 'Wilderness Woods' to experiment with the cameras, getting to grips with what we had to do. It helped me understand the framing of the shot, the mise-en-scene, composition and zoom. This allowed us to get first hand what needed to be in the shot and how we could make it effective.


Moreover the 'Adobe Premiere' editing software was very helpful in creating an effective film opening. Although it took quite a while to understand all the 'ins and outs' i soon got the hang of it and was able to help fit together some continuity editing and the 'ALTERATION' title at the end. This in turn, again allowed me to express my ideas and put them into practice, although some ideas were poor, others were very effective and were used in the film opening. For example the 'blinking' effect at the end of the clip.