RA: [QUESTION 1] In what ways does your media product use, develop or challengeforms and conventions of real media products?

Horror/Slasher Conventions in 'Gutted'


Character

• The three protagonists in our opening are all female. This is conventional of many horror films, such as Scream (Craven, 1996) and The Ring (Verbinski, 2002).

Alexis, Imogen & Sophie of Gutted

'Sidney,' the protagonist in Scream

Plot

• In 'Gutted,' the antagonists are undead zombie creatures. Zombie films are a popular subgenre of horror, with notable films such as Dawn of the Dead (Snyder, 2004).

A zombie in Gutted

• Within the opening sequence, Sophie, one of the protagonists, is killed. This is conventional for many horrors, such as the Scream trilogy (Craven, 1996-2000), in which a character- usually female- is killed within the opening sequence. This technique is used to create fear early on in the film, to establish the genre and scare the audience.

Mise-en-scene

• The chase half of the opening is set in a graveyard, which is a frequently used location in horror films, because of it's connotations of death.

• The costumes of the zombies are ripped and bloodstained, which is conventional for many zombie films, such as Dawn of the Dead (Snyder, 2004)

Zombies in Dawn of The Dead

Sound

• We used non-diagetic sound in our opening in the form of a royalty-free soundtrack. Almost all film openings of any genre will include a soundtrack of music or at least some non-diagetic sound to create an opening with more dimensions.

• The soundtrack we chose was low and ominous in the slower parts, and suspenseful during the chase, adding to the tension of the opening; conventional for a horror film.

Camera Work

• A significant part of our opening consists of Alexis' dialogue in the form of a video diary, which involved our actress operating the camera herself while talking into it to give a realistic effect. This use of handicam positions the audience with the protagonist, as it breaks the fourth wall. 

Alexis' handicam in Gutted

• Similar techniques can be noted in films such as Cloverfield (Reeves, 2008) and Blair Witch Project (Myrick/Sánchez, 1999)

  

  Handicam techniques in Cloverfield

Editing Style

• We used a fast cutting rate in our opening which gained speed as time went on, particularly during the chase scenes. This is a common technique used in horror openings; beginning slowly then increasing the pace to a climax at the end of the opening.

• A good example of this is the opening of Scream (Craven, 1996), which begins with a girl making popcorn and end with her hanging dead from a tree. 

Colour

• In post-production, we edited the footage to bring the saturation down, particularly in the initial outside scene, to make the corpses look more realistic as well as creating a more filmic and atmospheric look.

Drained colouring in Gutted

• In graveyard scenes, we darkened the clips slightly to create a more intense visual.

Visual Techniques

• Showing 'gore' is a vital part of any zombie film. We used prosthetic intestines which I made with liquid latex to add the gruesome zombie element to our opening.

Gore in Gutted

HR: [QUESTION 1] In what ways does your media product use, develop or challengeforms and conventions of real media products?

• The establishing shot that we see in our horror opening is a corpse of a young girl. Compared to the openings that we studied, it does not conform with the conventions of an opening as tension is usually built up to a death rather than seeing someone already dead.

• Much like Scream 2 (Craven, 1997) horror film opening, there is a death at the end before the titles of the film show in our opening. We decided to stick to this convention as it would be easier to build up tension through music, pace and diagetic sounds before the death so it appeared to be more shocking than just a couple of teenage girls exploring a house and there being no zombies.

• Moving on to the point of gender, usually in a horror film opening there is a victim that is female. As our three protagonists are female which challenges usual conventions, we decided a death within the opening would provide the audience with a interest to carry on watching the film and to see what happens to the two remaining survivors in the rest of the film.
• We used more dialogue than you would usually expect in an opening so the audience know what is going on in the plot. We made this work by the protagonists documenting on cameras and incorporating this into the opening to explain the scenario.

• We went for a desaturated colour scheme to make the mise-en-scene seem more eerie and dark and for the corpses to appear more dead, like the colour had been taken from them by the zombies.
• The music used was tension building which helped to create enigma as the audience were aware that something was about to happen, but did not know when. We went for a high pitched, morbid, obscure track with the chase scene and death scene as this made the scene seem more manic and out of control. This style of music was similar to Seven (1995, Fincher) which we studied in our research. For the exploring of the house, we chose low pitched stringed instruments as we felt this gave a good atmospheric horror feel to the piece.

• We used a lot of canted angles and unusual camera angles as this helped to heighten the chaos of the situation and to visually show the audience how the characters see the situation. For example, the handicam shots used by the protagonists. We got this idea of filming from Amityville (2005, Douglas) as it would make our piece seem more realistic

• For locations, we decided to stick to the conventions of a horror opening by using an isolated house and a graveyard as these connote fear of the unknown which is what we want our audience to feel.

Group: Audience Research Questionnaire

We have composed an audience research questionnaire to ask audience members after the viewing of our final cut. The questionnaire comes in two parts, questions 1-7 which are filled out as a normal questionnaire, and questions 8-11 which we will be filming the audience responses for.

Audience Research Questionnaire

1)     On a scale of 1-5 (5 highest), did you like the choice of all female protagonists?

1                      2                      3                      4                      5

2)     Was the choice of music appropriate for the genre?

Very appropriate       Appropriate               Neutral            Not appropriate

3)     The zombies were effective in creating fear. To what extent do you agree with this statement?

Strongly agree           Agree             Neutral            Disagree        Strongly disagree

4)     On a scale of 1-10 (10 being highest), how believable was the character death? [scale]

1          2          3          4          5          6          7          8          9          10

5)     Were the titles appropriate for the genre?

Yes                                                                  No

6)     How would you change the pace of the opening?

Faster                                     Slower                                    No change

7)      Rank these aspects of the opening according to how well they added to the feel of the piece? [1 best]

(   ) Make-up

(   ) Costumes

(   ) Locations

(   ) Props

8)     How did you feel about the protagonists? [open question]

9)     How was the dialogue in the protagonist’s main speech successful in explaining the narrative and creating tension? [open question]

10)  What was your least favourite aspect of the opening, and why? [open question]

11)  What was your favourite moment in the opening, and why? [open question]

Group: Evaluation Planning

Questions 4 & 5

• For our collaborative evaluation for questions four and five, we are planning to make a multi-media Prezi presentation demonstrating audience responses to our final cut, in the form of both questionnaire results and interviews.
• We will also be explaining who our target audience are, and how we attracted and addressed them within our opening, with reference to past audience research that we have carried out.

Question 7

• For question seven, we will be scripting and recording an interview in which we will be discussing how our film making skills have developed since the preliminary task and adding clips from our film opening and preliminary task and comparing them.
• For both the initial task and the final cut, we will comment on how we carried out our filming and editing, what challenges and difficulties we faced and how we overcame them. We will evaluate both pieces for their strengths and weaknesses.

Group: 'Gutted' Final Cut

This is the final cut of our horror opening, 'Gutted.' It will be premiered on 29th of March to an audience of media students and other members of our target audience, who we will ask to complete our questionnaire on their response to the opening.

Group: Photoshop Title

• The effect we wanted at the end of our opening was the video to show through the titles, so in order to do that, we went onto Photoshop to make the titles, then put it onto the timeline.
• The way in which we did this was to start by checking how big the video was (1280 pixels by 720 pixels) and making a transparent layer.

• The next thing we did was to fill in the box with black, then to add our text in with white and placed and re-sized it until we were happy with how it looked. Then we merged the two layers together.



• Finally, we used the magic wand tool and clicked on all the white areas and deleted them until we could see the transparent layer again (where the video would be).

Group: Colouring 21/03

• After editing all of our clips and adding the titles, we have started on colouring each clip so that the corpses in the first scene look more dead.
• We have decided to mute the colour as we filmed in the day when the sun was just about to set and it was too bright, which would not have gone with conventions of our horror opening.
• The way we have changed this is by altering the brightness and contrast, saturation and lightness and making this consistent throughout the first section of our opening.

Before

After

• The setting we have gone for are the following:
• Lightness: -1.4
• Saturation: -40.3
• Black clip: 1.54%
• Brightness: -2
• Contrast: -5.5
• Blend with original: 20%