Evaluation Part 1, 2 and 3 - Lucy Clark Clark Re-sit

Question 7

Final Cut of Film

This is our final edit of our horror movie opening. We adapted it from the earlier rough cut to try and adhere to comments made by friends and family in order to appeal more to our target audience. We edited the photos that appear during the titles to make them look like xrays in order to comply with our film brief, where the men stalking the young female victims are doctors. We also changed our titles to make them longer and therefore easier to read; in our rough cut they faded out too soon and it meant that the over all pace of the film was more rushed.

Final Film Rough Cut - Lucy Clark Re-Sit

When editing our film we made a rough cut which we showed to various friends and family to get feed back. The comments that we recieved from our classmates included:

"Consider where the titles are positioned"

"Name and title layout should not be above each other"

"Cut the scream out at the end because it makes the film feel more like a trailer than a film opening"

Comments from friends and family were:

"What are the photographs there for and what significance do they have?"

"Good production logo"

"The voiceover and camera angles make you want to know what happens next"

"The title doesn't need to come up at the end of the film as well as the beginning"

These comments will help us when we go to edit our final draft of the film because we have the opinions of the people who are our target audience. The ways in which we will change our film to comply with these comments are as follows; we will get rid of the scream and the titles at the end of the film to make it seem more like a film opening than a trailer; we will reconsider the positioning of the titles to have the most impact on the audience; we will try and make it more obvious why the photographs are being used.

First Draft Title Sequence - Lucy Clark Re-Sit

We created an initial title sequence for our horror film which we thought was very original and visually effective. These are the titles we initially came up with;



However, after researching into the way that titles in horror films are set out, we found that ours didn't fit the conventions typical of this genre. For this reason, we are now in the process of creating a new opening to our horror film, but keeping the qualitites of our initial idea that we liked so much. What we liked about the first set of titles was that there was a collage of photographs of the girls who the stalkers were following; this looked effective because it showed the audience exactly who was in danger and, paired with our music choice and camera angles, was very unsettling and created suspense. In order to transfer these ideas to our new titles, we will still make use of photographs of our victims but we will have them fade in and out singularly with the credits accompanying them. These are the photographs that we are planning on using.

Research into Titles - Lucy Clark Re-sit

I have been researching how titles and credits are used in films, and in particular in the horror genre. To do this I have watched the openings of several films and then listed the order in which people are acknowledged. This is a copy of my basic notes I made after watching the opening of "Catch Me if you Can". I have found that the institution and production company's names come first, followed by the main cast members or the most well known. The title of the film would be next and then the remaining cast members. After all of those would be the casting director and co-producer and then the rest is shown in my photograph of the list I made.

The reason it is important to research how titles and credits are presented is because it helps to make a film look professional and polished, because it is complying with expectations. When editing our horror film opening, we will ensure that we take this into consideration and follow these guidelines.




In "Catch Me if you Can" the plot of the film itself is hinted at throughout the title sequence, and shown to a certain degree. Whilst the order in which the titles are shown comply with typical film title sequences, it is done in quite an original way through animation. This is something we will try to replicate; a title sequence that conforms with the correct layout but also is something a little bit different.

Costumes and Props research - Lucy Clark Re-sit 4124

Costumes, props and makeup are an important part of a film and so we wanted to make sure that what we chose complied with the typical conventions of the horror genre.
For our female protagonist, Louise Chick, we decided on a white coat with work attire underneathh. By choosing a white garment, we are complying with convention, because white connotes innocence and naivety, and many horror films make use of this for their female victims. For example, the film "Scream" makes use of a female victim wearing a white jumper and "Nightmare on Elm Street 3" sees
Patricia Arquette wearing a white nightgown. The reason we have chosen to have our female protagonist wearing work clothes underneath her clothes is to keep away from the obvious nightgown or school uniform stereotype.

We have chosen to use this white coat for Louise in the opening for our horror movie. The colour white connoting innocence and vulnerability complies with the idea of women being the damsel or princess figure who needs rescuing by a man in Propp's Theory of Narrative.




The makeup we have chosen also portrays women as being vulnerable; in the flashes of film, various women will be seen tied up or bruised and bleeding. For the shots of the women in the bath, we used red hair dye to denote blood.This looks very effective because of the contrast it will be to the young women in the bath tub. For the bruising on the girls faces and arms, we have experimented using various shades of eyeshadow and lipstick to create a mottled purple-blue bruised effect. By having bruising prominent on the face, it brings it directly to the audience's attention and so is instantly noticeable. Many horror films use fake blood or makeup; the 1980's "Nightmare on Elm Street" used over 500 gallons of fake blood during filming. Although we personally aren't creating a horror film which makes use of monsters, I have researched the work of Jack Pierce who worked for Universal Pictures and did the makeup for films such as the 1931 "Frankenstein" and "The Wolf Man" in 1941. His use of makeup in the "Frankenstein" has become iconic, and is how people recognise the monster nowadays; Jack Pierce was the first to portray the monster as having bolts through his neck.



The one prop we will be using is a door key, which the female protagonist is seen inserting into the key hole of her front door.

Information from;

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087800/ (Nightmare on Elm Street Information)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Pierce_(makeup_artist) (Jack Pierce information)

(http://www.shockya.com/news/2010/08/15/patricia-arquette-thomas-jane-separating/)
(Photo from Nightmare on Elm Street)

Scream photo is a still from the film

Emmaline Gordon Resit - Target Audience Profile

Our horror film will have a large target audience and will hopefully branch out to demographic groupings such as A, B, C1, C2, D and E. However of these groups we will aim our film to attract mainly students and the middle classed. These are people in demographic groups B, C and D. Our immediate targets are specifically teenagers and young adults ages 15-25 as these are the sort of people that have a larger amount of free time to visit the cinema and watch films resulting in maximum profit. This is also a reason our film is also largely aimed at the un-employed as they are available to visit the cinema on more of a regular basis than people who work full time. Another reason for our horror film being aimed at this class is because the most popular sub-genre at the moment is that of gore, blood and violence and because our film will include these aspects it is imporrant that we are selling ourselves to the correct British audience that will enjoy these concepts, which is traditionally a person of middle class.
Our film uses the Male Gaze Theory as all of the lead victims are female and they have been targetted as they are beautiful, which see's the whole film through a males eyes. However the film will be aimed at both the male and female gender and we will have male antagonists through the horror. This type of film genre is often successful with young couples as it allows a male to comfort a female whilst watching the film and can be seen as a romantic increasing popularity in cinemas. Obviously with there being references of a sexual nature in our film, we would most probably have to start looking at making our film cirtificate an 15 so they can make their own decisions on whether or not to watch the film. Although many 12A year olds are influenced by horror movies/games/television shows we can't say that it is alright to advertise our film to them because legally they arent 15 and some of the contents of our film may disturb them.
Another thing we would have to take into consideration is the race, religious and social aspect of our film. As it is a British horror, we have cast British people to act in it, but we have to be careful that we dont offend or discriminate anyone when filming our horror film. We will need to make it religiously open for everyone to view and we would also have to take into account social issues. For example, the 9/11 bombings are quite a social issue for people so creating a horror film where a plane gets over taken, and flown into a building may cause to much upset.When looking at the data recieved from people filling in our 'Target Audience Questionnaire' the majority of people that go to watch a horror film at a cinema would expect the age certificate to be that of an 15 - 18 so maybe if it was any less then we would loose our audience, therefore the film wouldn't do very well.For our film however, we have all decided that we are going to make it an 18 because of its content. However, we have looked at all the issues such as;- sexuality- race- religion- social and polital issuesand have treated each one with care, and created our horror film that wont offend anyone.In our 'Target Audience Questionnaire' we asked whether or not a films trailer would be enough to make you go and watch the film when it is out, and all of the people asked said yes. Therefore, we would need to create a trailer that is catchy, but however suitable for all audiences. For example, we couldn't have a trailer for our horror film come on before a film such as Shrek starts because the likely audiences will be between the ages of 5-16 therefore it would be innapropriate. We could however advertise before films of the same genre and certificate rating. For example, we could put a trailer in the adverts before films like SAW vI and THE STRANGERS, because they all have the same sub-category genre.