Dawn of the Dead - 9 shot and opening analysis

9 shots from 'A Nightmare on Elmstreet' analysed

0:08 - This shot is the first thing we see in the opening of 'A Nightmare on Elm Street'. It appears flickering black and red which suggests blood and death that could foreshadow the future in the film. The font is in the centre of the frame in bold, block capitals and this shows its importance as New Line Cinema are the production company. The 'From' isn't in bold and is smaller than the actual name because obviously it isn't as  significant. It is important to have the production institution at the beginning of the film because it lets the audience know straight away who are the producers and in many cases what genre the film is.

1:05 - This shot of the 'claws' of Freddie Cruger is show pretty much straight away which puts the audience on edge from the beginning. It is a iconic part of the film and is shown before the title so even if you are unsure what film your watching you would know as soon as you see the claws. The red of the jumper and the blade both suggests death is on the horizon. The dark shades and objects behind the hand sets the scene of what looks like a workshop  and this suggests he is indoors as there is no natural light, therefore he could be underground.

1:10 - The title appears at 1 minute and 10 seconds. 'Nightmare' is in bold, block capitals and in red which represents blood and this links to the genre of the film. 'On elm street' is in white that stands out from the red but has no real dominance on the screen, this also applies to the 'A'. The font of 'Nightmare' is rather unusual because it doesn't look scary but almost quite childish, this is symbolic because nightmares are linked with children. The varied height of each letter could also signify a street and the different houses that are located in it.

1:17 - We are first introduced to the woman at about 1 minute 17 seconds which is shown right after the claws of Freddie are seen to cut through a rag. This is also accompanied by a non-diegetic scream noise, this could symbolise that she is his victim. The background is white which represents a dream and this links to the title because obviously you have nightmares in your dreams. She is wearing white that characterises her as pure, innocent and the 'good' one in the film.

2:00 - This next screen grab is a mid shot of behind the woman, again she is still in the white gown however the fact that we are behind her as a audience puts us in the murderers point of view. She is creeping around which builds suspense and the fact we are put in a voyeuristic view of her she seems very vulnerable. The shot shows her looking down the hall way to what looks like an open door way. The hall is quite dark and there is light beaming through the door way which could symbolise that she is on her way to freedom however she is trapped at the moment as she is seen to be in the dark.

2:10 - Again this shot is interesting because it gives the audience a shot which looks like someone is spying on her. The piping is in the way which could represent she is trapped and has no way of escape but not only this the slight tint of red on the bottom of the pipe signifies that blood and death could be on the horizon. You get the feeling she is worried and lost because you wouldn't just be wondering round a place like that in your night gown. 

2:46 - She walks above and as the camera pans down we see the shadow and silhouette of a man (circled in the image), this is the first shot we see of the man full figured. The lighting shining from behind him and the smoke above creates a very sinister and eerie atmosphere keeping the audience alert. This also emphasises that he is the villain in the situation. The camera angle is a high shot looking down on the man,  who we assume is the villain, this diminishes the character however there is a diagetic sound of an evil, stereotypical villains laugh which shows he knows what he is doing.    

3:19 - Before this next shot, the claws are shown tearing a sheet, which is a repeat as this has previously happened, this reinforces the idea that he will murder the girl. The girl is shown one side of the sheet in the light and the man is stood in the dark which shows good Vs evil. We still only see a silhouette of the man so it is still a mystery to the audience who he is. The girl runs off screaming which shows a strong fear of the man however she is running towards a wall which shows she is trapped.

3:28 - In this shot the girl runs into a dead end with a furnace in the background. The burning fire links to death but also hell which could symbolically imply he is from hell. It could also show that she is going to die and end up in hell which makes the audience wonder if she is really that innocent. The juxtaposition between the black and red in the background with the white of her gown again backs up that she is innocent in this situation. This scene is different to the others because in the previous scene she hasn't really had any way of escape whereas in this one, left of the shot, there is a ladder which  shows that she could get away. 

Texas Chainsaw Massacre - opening analysis

Scream - opening analysis

Psycho - opening analysis

Evaluation

1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Throughout the course of creating an idea and making our film we were always thinking of ways in which we could make sure we addressed the audience to make sure that they could relate to it more. This would mean that the viewers could then get more involved with the film thus enjoying it more. As our film is quite a low budget film the best way to advertise and attract our audience would be to use the internet. Not only because it's a reasonably cheap way to advertise but because our target audience is 18-26 then they will be the most popular people to be on social networking sites. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube were the main three we wanted to put our advertising out to. We would release a short 30 second clip of our movie about 3-4 months before the release date which could include critics views and also the views of some other people, making the movie seem 'terrifying' and 'a must see movie'. This way people will get the 'hype' about the film long before it even comes to cinemas. This would then get people talking about it on social networking sites which as we all know spreads like wildfire. Closer to the release date of the film in cinemas we could release a trailer quite like the one seen in the clip below of 'The Devil Inside'. As you will see it includes tiny clips from the movie but also clips from the premiere at one of the states of the USA. They made the event a big night and showed the premiere at a church. This would build a lot of excitement for the film a while before it came out. Closer to the release date e.g. 3 weeks, we would release a full length trailer including some quick snippets of the most scary bits of the film which will hopefully even make people scared already.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

7. Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Final film - Dom Toby Connor

This is our final film opening for our main AS Level task:

Film Evaluation Feedback

As well as the written feedback I have located in my blue book. I made a video montage of what people thought about my video.


This is the video I made:





For more information I have gone into more detail in my blue book on what I took from my collection of feedback from people

Opening Credits

With the opening of our film we included credits of our names which were to appear somewhere in the beginning 30-40 seconds. We included a title for each of us, for example; 'Edited by Dom Simmons'. We did this so that our opening was more realistic so it actually looked like a film.

They appear with a slight dissolve and disappear with a dissolve as well way they appear reflects the calm atmosphere of the party and juxtapose with the things which are going to happen; it puts the audience in a safe environment but then when she starts walking they start to feel uncomfortable. 

Production Companies

I looked at many different production companies before making our film. This was so that I was able to look into them and see what type of films they produced and to see which one would one would be suitable to use for our production company. I looked at Universal, Paramount (in blue book) and New Line Cinema.

Universal:
Universal was founded in New York on 30th April as Universal Film Manufacturing Company in 1912 by Carl Laemmle, later changing there name later that year on 8th June 1912 to Universal Studios. It is one of the most well known members of the Motion Pictures Association of America and is the oldest American movie studio still in continuous production. The second oldest is paramount pictures (which is in detail in my blue book). 
Over the years Universal have spread there business into many areas outside of the film industry. These include:
- Universal Studios Orlando.
- Universal Studios Hollywood.
- Universal Studios Japan.
These parks and attractions have allowed the company to produce a better income and widen there range of people to target there films at. They have incorporated there films into there attraction parks which will make people want to possibly buy the film when they get home. For example the 'Jaws' ride is one of the main attractions at Universal Orlando and is also a very successful film of there's.

Films they have produced:
- Jurassic Park
- Jaws
- Twister
- Frankenstein
- The Mummy
- Van Helsing

This film company was good to look into because they have made many horror films throughout the years and this was good as it linked with the genre we wanted to make for our film. Also linking to the Theme Park attractions, this will mean that if our film was a success it would enable our the concept of it to be made into a ride thus bringing in more money for the company.

New Line Cinema:

New Line Cinema is an American film studio that was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne as a film distribution company supplying Art House films for college campus'. This was later changed when they subsidised with Time Warner in 1996 and was merged with the larger studio Warner Bros in 2008.

New Line have released many film but it is predominantly a horror genre label. Some of the films they have released are The Golden Compass and My Sisters Keeper. As we are more concentrated on the horror movies thought the list they have is truly phenomenal, they include:

- A Nightmare on Elm Street.

- Friday the 13th.

- Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

- Final Destination.

- Blade.

- Alone in the Dark.

We decided in the end that we would use this as our production company (as well as out own made up one - which is in depth in my blue book). This is because if we were to approach this company we would know that they have experience in promoting and creating successful movies and especially successful horror movies. This would inevitably help our movie be a hit at the box office because if people see a new film coming out from New Line Cinema they will expect it to be good and it will raise awareness easily and people will want to see what it is going to be like, although it would put pressure on because you would then need to live up to the standards of the previous movies that they have made and that have been successful. 

  

Film Name

Thinking of a film name was very difficult. We had some ideas but none that really worked well. We forgot about it and then realised that we desperately need to come up with a name for our film.

This is where the problem started! As we were in a rush to think of a name we used 'The Haunting'. You may recognise this because it is a film that already exists! We thought about changing it to something else completely different or something similar i.e. The Haunted, but we had already uploaded the video to YouTube and that in it's self took a very long time so we thought instead of taking up a lot more time going onto final cut and changing it then uploading it again we thought we would just keep it as it was and just inform everyone on our blogs about the little mistake that we made.

Editing

To start with we had to insert the images form the cameras to the Macs, this was done by plugging the camera into the Mac and then copying and saving them into a file. We then opened Final Cut and inserted the video clips we wanted/needed.

Editing was arguably the most important part to the whole process of making the film. We were lucky enough at school to be able to use an editing software called Final Cut. To start with it was quite a complicated software to get your head around, but as the time went on it was a lot simpler to use due mainly to the fact that you just had to get used to it. It was also made easier because we were given a guide to Final Cut booklet made by someone from our school (which is in my book and is looked at in more detail).

When editing there were many things we had to do to make the final piece that we have today. Things we had to change varied dramatically from the length of the shots to the colour of the shots to the timing of the music but the list goes on and on so I am going to talk about three or four of the key pieces in my opinion that I thought contributed to the most to making our opening what it is.

Firstly I feel that the ability to choose different transactions to change from shot to shot helped brilliantly. For example during the parts when Harri is walking, being able to put in dissolves and fades really helped create quite a calm atmosphere but then when we wanted the audience to feel like she was in danger we could alter the transactions from a dissolve to say for example a slide effect or even nothing at all to create sharper cuts between shots making a much more tense and anxious atmosphere. We used dissolves throughout the film, like I mentioned earlier, in the calmer parts but also to create tension as well. For example when Harri is walking it goes straight from a black screen through a quick cross dissolve to a close up shot of her upper body walking. Along with the music it creates a very eerie atmosphere.

Next was inserting text into the opening. This was used to make it look professional and a lot more like a film. We included the producer, music by etc and put each of our names by either of them. Although we all did a bit of everything we just put one person's name by each thing. Inserting text was reasonably easy but the harder bit as moving the text so it wasn't just located in the middle of the page. Once we found out how to do this (simply by just double clicking on the text and dragging it to the place you wanted it) we could do it a lot quicker. We also used the dissolve here to dissolve the text in and out.

Another big part of the editing was the colour. We didn't actually change any clips to a different colour but we did have to brighten/darken certain clips. This was because it was quite dark in some areas and if we didn't brighten them up then you would have hardly of been able to see anything. This was especially important towards the end in the murder scene and where Harri is in bed because they had to be filmed in reasonably dark lighting otherwise they would not have the same effect if they were in the light. 

Right at the end of our opening we sped up the filming to create a panicky atmosphere. This is where Harri goes back to sleep but the camera pans up and reveals the murderer at the end of the hall. If we just left it and played it in normal time the clip went of for ages and this would be boring for the viewer. We changed the speed of this by simply right clicking on the clip then selecting change speed. 

Sound

For the start of our opening we wanted to create a party type atmosphere so this meant that we wanted to pick quite a heavy and upbeat tune. We decided to choose, 'Who Gon Stop Me - Jay-Z ft. Kanye West'. This tune suited the ambience of the setting and worked well with the video transitions. We edited the audio so that when you could see the party on screen the music was much louder and clearer whereas when the video was out of the party, for example in the hall way, we changed the sound so it was quieter and more muffled.

The music we used for the walking scenes and the murder scene was our own music created by our friend Chris Martin. He is extremely good at music technology and we thought we could use him and exploit his talent by asking him to come up with a piece of horror music that we could use which included some sort of climax and which also created a lot of tension in the audience. This was better than trying to find a piece of music from the internet because for one, it saved time looking and browsing the internet and also it was good because it has meant we have used our sources well instead of doing what most people have done.

Character Profile

Name: Tom Simmons

Age: 19

Gender: Male

Tom is currently a University student studying International Business at Leeds. He is very outgoing, sociable and is a perfect representation of the type of person I am looking to aim my film at.
He goes out often with friends and this is shown clearly in the picture as it is from one of his nights out. It also shows that him and others are very social and gregarious which is what I want from our target audience because it will mean that they will be willing to go out to the cinema with friends etc to watch films. The age range would be 18-26 and predominantly male because I feel that we will get the most interest and curiosity from them.
The way he is dressed tells us that he is very comfortable in what he looks like and having scruffy hair it could represent that he isn't bothered about he appearance he just wants to have a good time.Not only does his clothes tell us about him but so do his surroundings, like I mentioned earlier the fact that people are around him show that he is very interactive with people and would be willing to go out and spend time with his friends.
As he is a Uni student it would suggest that him and his friends will be quite tight with money and wouldn't be able to go out to the cinema etc every single week, but it will also mean they will be willing to treat themselves every now and then which if we were to release the movie and promote it enough to make it seem like the next big film to watch then they will most probably be willing to go and see it. Although money may be a factor he does have a part time job and so do most of his mates and if he isn't spending it on drinks he will most probably spend it on luxuries.
He is a keen watcher of horror movies and this is obviously who we want to target as our main audience because there is no point targeting people who don't like the horror genre. He prefers gory and psychological horrors as opposed to the supernatural and mythical horrors because he finds them a lot more interesting and he likes the adrenaline feeling you get when your not sure what is going to happen. We want to create this is our film so he would be our ideal viewer.

Filming

Filming Session 1:
We first started our filming on the 5th of December. We were at Harri Nicholl's house and film the first scene (1-9) and the last scenes (41-46). This filming session was very successful and went really well although we did have some minor difficulties whilst filming. To start with we wanted the start of our film to feel like it was at a party but because there were only about 4 of us there (including the cameraman) which meant that it wouldn’t of been a very lively party if we would have tried to film one between us, but we came up with a solution. We decided to wait until 31^st January (New Years Eve) because we were all invited to a friend’s house party, this gave us a great opportunity to film a real party. We must have recorded about 30 minutes worth of footage which we could then edit down to the best bits and the clips we thought would work the best in our film. The Last scenes were quite difficult to film because the room we were located in was quite small. We got around this problem by having one person filming at a time. The main actor (Harri) was in the bed whilst one of us three were filming, and the other two were out of the room, this was good because it meant we could all film loads of shots individually and choose the best ones for our film.

Filming Session 2:

On Thursday 8th December we started our second filming session. In this part of the filming we wanted to aim on the part of our opening when the main character was walking home from the party. Once she walks out the door there would be a jump shot to the first of the walking shots. In these shots we wanted to create the sense that someone was watching her as she was walking and also create some good shots for mise en scene. We took shots from behind bars and gates so it had the impression that someone was watching her and also to create the feeling of her being trapped. We also included red lights in the background of quite a few shots to make the audience feel like there is danger on the horizon. Not only this but in one of the shots we specifically made her walk past a 'DANGER' sign which if noticed by the viewers, it will again make them feel like danger is coming. We took lots of shots with lots of different angles on the camera. We took high, low and canted shots. By taking lots of different types of shots it allowed us to have a wide range to choose from when it came to editing. This helped us to create a much better overall effect because as we wanted to build tension the quick transitions of shots played a big part of this.

Filming Session 3:

As this was the 'killing scene' it was definitely the hardest part of the filming so far. We wanted to try and build as much tension as possible as well as making sure the cutting of the throat look as realistic as possible. Also because this scene was the main highlight/climax of the opening we wanted to make it as good as possible, we did this by capturing a number of shots (like when we were filming the walking part) which in turn helped when editing because it allowed us to choose from a range of shots. We tried to make the transactions between shots very quick and snappy. When it actually came the cutting the throat we wanted to be quite clever and show as little of the actual cutting as we could. Also although it links to editing we made the shot when the cut occurs slightly blurry which also creates quite a nervy feeling in the audience.


Voice Overs:
Originally for the part of our opening we had a blank screen just after one of the party shots and it was a voice over of a couple (one of them being the main character) arguing. We put this is because we felt without it that people would be quite confused to why Harri would be leaving the party.
After watching our finished piece a number of times we felt that the blank screen with the voice over wasn't very effective because it lasted for quite a few seconds and it was quite confusing as to whats going on.
This then turned into Filming Session 4 and because we didn't have any free time after school when we could all meet we decided that we would have to film it during school time. After organizing a time and getting the actors to bring in the same clothing as they were wearing in the shots when they came down the stairs we began to film. We found a quite are that looked quite 'home like' so it wasn't obvious that we were filming in school. After filming the shots needed we edited them into out film piece. All in all it work really well and meant that people could understand and follow the story a lot easier.

Filming

 Below is a schedule of the dates we plan to film and other information like what props we need:

Props

Whilst filming our opening we used a number of props to help us really create a realistic and overall make the opening as good as possible. Below are the main props that we used in our opening:

 This is the coat that we used for the murderer. We wanted to use a dark coat which was quite big and heavy so that puts across the sense of danger in the audience when watching. It also doesn't reveal anything on the murderers body which again makes people feel unnerved about the murderer.

 We used the fake blood in the final scene of our opening. We used it on the knife (seen below) to obvious create the look of someone being cut. It is very realistic and all in all makes the scene a lot better and adds to the horror of it.

This is the knife we used for the murderer to kill with. As it was a real knife we needed to handle with care but when we used it to slit the throat, we used the blunt side of the knife so that it looked like it it was cutting the skin but obviously it was in fact just the blunt side.

This is the mask that the murderer wears in our film. We looked around and we thought that this mask was good because when someone is wearing it, it does looks very scary and puts you in some discomfort. It also conceals the identity of the murderer which also puts the audience very much so on edge.

Out of the props we used we had to purchase the blood and the mask. We asked around but no-one had any fake blood they could lend us and no-one had a mask that we thought was really suitable for our film. Although in the end it didn't cost us that much as we split the costs between the three of us.

CHANGE OF GROUPS! and first ideas for main task

Unfortunately after Toby and I made our  preliminary task with Harri, Harri and Becky, we were informed that we were unable to be in a group of 5. This obviously meant that we had to split our group and we decided that Toby and I would leave the girls, the main reason being that I was more likely to see Toby outside of school which meant it would be easier to arrange things and meet up etc.

After the split we gained an extra member to our group. Connor Thompson joined us from the other class. This helped us massively as it allowed us to split the filming/editing/directing into three instead of two which would have been much harder.

We began work on our main task and we came up with a story board of our idea:

The main basic idea we had was we would start our film off at a house party where the main character will have an argument with her boyfriend and will leave. This is when on the way home she will hear something and go to investigate. She will then encounter a fright from a dead body and then the murderer will appear from behind her and slit her throat. She will then wake up from a dream but unlike any other normal horror where it just ends there, the camera will pan up and the murderer will be seen at the end of the hall way.