Group opening sequence evaluation

1^st question: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our films title ‘euphoria’ completely contrasts to our genre of film and our film itself, the meaning of the word is ‘bliss’, which is a state of being where one experiences happiness, humour or joy. We used it because in a way it can be related to a clown you would find in a circus and since our horror was based around a clown it made sense. As you can see on our group blog when we were planning we looked at many fonts for this title but chose this one, the white font on the black background gives a sort of evil or sinister feel to the title as well as the rest of the film. This is a very effective way of contrasting the film title and the graphology of the film; the black and white colours also contrast as they are opposites which could link show that our clown is different to others.

After discussion we decided that the best setting we could do this film in since we don’t have a circus was woodland as it’s deserted and is separated form any urban areas, also we believe the continuous view of trees give it a feeling that there is no escape for our character. The setting would hopefully let the audience know that this is a horror film and that they felt uneasy about what will happen within the film.

We thought of a few different costumes for our clown but finally settled on a basic normal looking clown, with the typical red nose and wig; I believe that this would give the audience the feeling of uncertainty as they would notice that there is something about the clown that doesn’t seem right. For the main character Jennifer stone however we had to think what a escaped psychiatric would be wearing so we got ragged and dirtied clothes for her costume so that she appeared homeless and alone, we only used one prop for our film and that was the noose, this is usually essential in a horror film as it is a weapon and shows the viewers of our film there will be violence and death within our film.

We made a few additions while editing the film, when it was starting we made it slowly zoom on the main characters psychiatric report while having quick flashes of the clown as if it was lightning, this would give the viewers the feeling that the film will be fast paced which will make them feel on edge and uneasy. Because it was the afternoon when we filmed the opening we had to use some of the effects available on Imovies to make it darker as if it was at night time which could give out a feeling of uncertainty about what may be hiding in the dark. Another effect we used on the film was that we changed the look of the psychiatric reports so they looked aged as if she had been locked away for a very long time, this could gain the character pity from the audience as she had been suffering her nightmare since she was young. The coloured tinting of the film sets the audience to be uneasy as people in modern society are wary and cautious when it comes to things that are strange or different compared to what they are used to. The same technique has been used in many horrors such as 28 weeks later and the paranormal activity series.

In some of the shots like when the main character is running we used a perspective camera as it allows the audience to feel as if they are the ones who are running away as it only allows them to see certain things. This way can make viewers terrified of a film; another film that does this is the paranormal activity and its sequel.

The plot for our film is about a girl called Jennifer stone who suffers a phobia of clowns after a experience that scarred her for life and is mentally terrorised by one clown, she believes that the clown had killed her family and was now after her to finish the job. The idea of the clown is that he was an imaginary friend gone awry, and even though she believes a clown killed her family it was in truth her and this is the reason she was put into the mental institution in the first place. However she has now escaped from the institution and is now on the run from the clown yet it is her imagination, this is where our opening begins. The opening sequence as I said earlier slowly zooms on the reports while there are quick flashes of the clown, the zooming magnifies three words "Psychiatric", "unstable" and "harm".  The flashes are also used as a hint that the clown is what she fears. For coming out of the opening titles and the opening we decided when the shot zoomed on the character’s face that the picture would become animated and as it zoomed out shows the viewers her now and that she is running away from something that terrifies her. When she is running away we see that the clown somehow seems to get closer to her, this shows that there is no escape for her away from her fear, we see the clown put a noose over her head and watch through her point of view as she fades out of consciousness and dies to the title.

The film shows itself to be a horror film due to the many conventions we tried to include within our scene e.g. the flashing images, the creepy music, the effects and the perspective shots.

2^nd question: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

For this question I’m using our films main character Jennifer and comparing her to Nina out of the film black swan. The two characters have a very similar role within the two films, they are both mentally unstable. Jennifer is afraid that a madman dressed as a clown is out to kill her as it apparently killed the rest of her family and Nina is driven crazy by the paranoia that someone who she had beaten to a part in a production is trying to kill her. In the end of both films the characters end their own lives to stop their misery. They both believe that they are been hunted by someone, however it is them that are causing all of the problems; they hallucinate causing them to mix fantasy and reality.

They have very different appearances at the start of the film, Jennifer is dressed in ragged and dirty clothes meanwhile Nina is dressed formally and is quite presentable, however as the film goes on Nina’s appearance gradually becomes more like Jennifer’s which is the typical appearance of someone who is insane. So within this aspect of the film the two characters are similar to each other. If our group had been able to make the complete film we would have started the main body of the film with Jennifer dressed like a normal person as it shows that the character is normal on the outside but unstable inside. This way allows the audience to know what is going on inside the film but not the other characters within the film.

3^rd question: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

The horror genre is a very popular genre in the film entertainment industry, since 1995 only 320 horror films were released in the cinemas in America yet it still came 7^th most grossing genre with over 9 billion dollars in gross income, I think that if Euphoria was released it would be on lower end screenings such as less successful cinemas and on channels such as film4 and horror channel as it doesn’t really strike me as a high grossing film.

4^th question: Who would be the audience for your media product?

For our films target audience I’d range it between mid teens and young adults who enjoy films of the horror genre, and they would be both genders and all races as this film does not contain sexist or racist insults. Though when marketing our film we would aim towards more towards the male side of the market as research has shown that males enjoy horror films more than females. But mainly the people who would come to watch our film would be people that enjoy getting thrills and shocks.

5^th question: How did you attract/address your audience?

The unique selling point of our film would be the mysteriousness of the clown been the supposed villain when actually it was the main character herself. The use of clowns in horror films is very low as clown are not really characters that would by believed to be evil or sinister. When researching, we only found three films that contained clowns that were the evil characters, these were IT, House of 1000 corpses and The devils rejects. We tried to use the music as our signature music like the film Jaws does so that the music starts and ends when the clown appears and disappears.

Although we used an unusual character we used a few conventions that went well with horror films such as the dark setting, the flashes of something and the use of perspective camera shots as well as the storyline. We tried to make the film in accordance to the results of the questionnaires and surveys we had conducted, we had eerie music to add a tense feeling, we also had the main character as the victim but also made her have a hidden dark side, we used a humanoid figure also we used a perspective camera because it makes the audience feel that they are experiencing it in first person as if it was them.

6^th question: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Digital camera: we had to use a camera to film the product and it had digital so we could transfer the video onto the Mac’s, doing this I learned how to use digital cameras as I had had little experience with them beforehand, here is the camera we had used

Excel 2007: we used this to record all of our results from our questionnaires and surveys as it is a very efficient program, i already had a good knowledge of this program and how to use it.

YouTube: we used this website as it contains thing that helped us with research and developing our ideas, I have used this website a lot before so I have a good knowledge of it.

The Macs and I movie: I had to learn how to use these as I have never used these types of computers and programs before yet I managed to get the hang of it quite quickly even though I was used to using a pc.

We all also used blogger: blogger is something none of us had used until we started this course yet it was simple to understand and everybody got the hang of it quickly.

7^th question: