Hannah Greenfield.

Evaluation : Foundation Project.

Fixation

The project our group produced is the opening sequence to a certificate 18 horror/thriller film. I worked with Rebecca Thorburn , Emily Howarth and Charina Clarkson. My contribution to the project was the camera and filming work and editing the project once filmed. The genre of the production is horror/thriller and is inspired by the film “saw”. The appearance of the characters and the way they acted gave a basic horror film setting , e.g. in most horror films villains dress in black to give a dark and mysterious look , and the victims act very sheepish and scared as to not knowing in they are going to survive . Where as the way the characters are introduced shows that there is more to the opening horror sequence than just the typical killing scenes as our opening sequence shows the kidnapping and the torture scene.
The way we tried to make our opening sequence stand out and to show a successful horror , was by using an obsessive killer , who is not just obsessed with the two young girls but is also obsessed with perfection maybe due to the way he treats his murder weapons.
Our feedback shows and all around view that our opening sequence was different to any other opening sequence and that it fits in well with the genre , and also that the way the victims are introduced gives a sense of mystery that makes you want to watch on more.
The type of people represented in our opening sequence are teenagers who are very frightened by what is going on . Our villain is represented as a potentially dangerous person , by the way he acts with his knives .

This is how we wanted our audience to see him to establish that he is a very dangerous man. The actions of the victims are that they are very young and frightened due to them not knowing where they are , where as the villains actions are seen as obsessive and controlling by how he organises his knives. No speech was used in our opening sequence just the scream at the end which I think worked more of effectively than speech would have done as the victims were under the influence of drugs so the villain would have only been able to talk to himself. I think the teenage girls in our opening sequence are stereotyped as clueless and vulnerable.
Our feedback told us that the way the villain acted was stereotypically how they normally acted I.e. intending to scare or hurt someone and generally look unhappy and sinister.
The audience for our opening sequence would most likely be 16-25 as many teenagers like watching films as a leisure activity and with teenage victims in the opening sequence itself, teenagers can relate to what they might be thinking or how they are feeling. Fans would just be any type of person who are interested in this sort of genre.
Our audience expect to be thrilled by the opening sequence and to be scared by the film. The shot of the victims suddenly appearing in the background of the room I think comes as a shock as you weren't expecting the victims to be in the room at the time as the previous shots gave no mention of them.

I think this set s enigmas such as how did they get there ? What is he going to do to them ? And Why does he want them ? I think this is important for reeling the audience in to carry on watching the rest of the film. Our soundtrack in the background fits in well with the opening sequence as it is a typical low beat track with high jumps that set an eerie feel. The way he uses the knife to stroke the victims face builds up the tension to “ Is he going to kill her ?”but just cuts to her waking up and screaming which then cuts to the title . I think this is good as you ask yourself what is going to happen next ? Which leaves the audience in suspense. Our opening sequence sets ideologies that crime can be very unexpected and can happen to anybody who may have done a lot or nothing wrong. I think our opening sequence shows men as having power over women and that they feel they can treat young girls as they want and it gives a very pathetic and helpless view of the victims.
The lighting in our opening sequence is very dim low key to the villain being in a dark place which shows off his psychological state , but this builds up to when he turns the flickering light on to reveal the victims this was important as it showed that he didn't maintain the place they where in and also the flickering light only gave bits of the victims away at a time. The panning shot at the beginning fits everything in ( pictures, alcohol and drugs) and then cuts to the shot showing how precise he is about the arrangement of his knives .

The slow tracking shot reflects his slow and deliberate actions. The medium camera shot where the girls appear works very well as it is a very centred shot and works well at establishing that there are two victims here that the audience did not know where there. We edited the panning shot and added on titles and a short amount of cast just to establish a few of the characters names. Using the cut to black screen at the end made the opening sequence look better as you weren't able to see what happened to the character after she started screaming. I think this may have made the audience wait to watch more to find out what happened to the victim next.
Using the internet to research films gave me a more insight view of what goes in to making a horror film fit its genre. Certain sites helped us to pick the route of how we wanted to go with our opening sequence , for example youtube, where we could watch clips of “Saw” ( which we took inspiration from).

The blog helped me to keep track of where we were up to in the project. Being mainly the only one to use the camera , I had realised how much I really didn't know about a video camera. Being able to move the camera to what angle I needed and being able to use it on the tripod making the camera more steady really helped in making out shots a lot better . But with the camera not having wheels it was harder to move on our panning shot . The panning shot had to be done quite a few times as finding the best way to film it was hard , we tried using the camera hand held but this made it shakier , so when using the camera on the tripod at a high angle distance it was clearer and easier to fit the whole of what we were filming in.

Our opening sequence is a big improvement from our preliminary task as many aspects have changes like the lighting,, the camera angles the use of sound and how we made our characters look , as the characters in our preliminary were just ordinary people but in our opening sequence they fitted the genre. The light was much better used as we where able to move and dim the lights to give our opening sequence a sinister look. Our shots where smoother and more precise as having more practise made our shots look even better. There wasn't much of a character in our preliminary but in our opening sequence we now have three main characters who we can identify as either villain or victim. The final credits and end Title make a good overall finish but adding a male name to the titles made the film seem that it wasn't full of girls . the end title was hard to come up with as we didn't wan't a basic title.

Over all I think our project was a success a very long and hard success , but in the end all though filming and editing where hard due to never really having done them before I think our opening sequence is a very good opening sequence .Despite the difficulties we faced such as us all being there at the same time and ready to film , or that many more people are needed to make it easier , I still think that the work we all did has contributed to making a better overall project.