Before the production of our two minute film opening could begin there were several things that we needed to consider, so that our film could contain similar forms and conventions of real media products.
Focusing on film genres and the conventions within a genre we looked at several other films with the genre: slasher/stalker horror. The three films we looked at were: As we were producing only the first two minutes these are the clips we analysed from these three films. All three films have young characters acted by late teens as the main characters. These characters could either be the villains or the heroes.
We needed to find actors for our characters so therefore we needed to decide on genders of both the stalker and the innocent character. In ‘when a stranger calls’ and ‘scream’ the stalkers are both male. Therefore we took this convention and we used it in our two minute film opening. The male actor we chose looked quite rough due to not being clean shaved and had slightly messy hair. However like other stalkers he did not stick out to the eye in public as being a stalker. He had normal characteristics such as normal clothing and he was not hiding his face. The clothing however is mainly black, which we had planned to create darkness upon the character and the shirt which he was wearing was white and red to connote blood and death to pureness- which in my opinion is a connotation to the colour white.
For our film opening we needed to put credits on it showing the names of the actors and the production team. For this we needed to carefully choose font type and colour. Yet again we looked at the film openings of: One missed call, scream and when a stranger calls. The positioning of all the font is in the centre (therefore we did) and also our main credits are white and are a similar font to ‘when a stranger calls’.
Even though scary movie was not one of the films I had originally analysed when the name of the film is shown near the fifth minute the font colour changes from white to red, this has a connotation of blood and death. Therefore as we liked this we included it in our film opening.
These two screen shots show the transition from white font to red font.
Our plan was to add uniqueness to our production by challenging certain forms and conventions of other slasher/stalker horror films. Darkness is one main convention that is used to create bad connotations. In our two minute film opening we did include this in the first few shots so that the audience would be able to recognise the genre so that they would be captivated immediately. Also as the beginning is actually the end this would hope them keep them watching until the end. The part which showed us challenging the convention is when the shots filmed in Worcester are filmed in the day. I thought we did this quite well as it made the setting a normal day.
Pathetic fallacy is usually created through bad weather, which is usually linked to horror films: thunder and rain. In our two minute film opening there is one main icon: the aviator sunglasses shown before and after the credits. This also challanges usual conventions of slasher/stalker horror films as the sunglasses connote sunshine, happiness and good.
Also the setting for all of the filming was in every day locations. The first location was in a flat which is a type of accommodation. Then beside the river is very normal, with people walking their dogs in the same location. However the only thing concerning the locations which could be used as a convention in a horror film is that water/rivers could often be used to dump bodies.
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