Evaluation Activity 1

 Q1 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 

The Title of The Film. 

The title of our opening scene it at the end opening sequence as it helps keep the audience in suspense at the start as it is not yet clear to what the film is about when watching the opening scene. As a group we wanted the title at the end as the title is revealed to the film and it also gives an impression on the viewer. The title its self if is in front of a crying girl who also has an impression and clue about the genre. As a group we decided to call the film “HIDDEN” was important to put at the end as it would have given the clue away too early in the opening and this would have made the audience less interested and keeps the viewers watching as it may show a scene of mystery. The title that we have uses is very short, we chose to have a small title as just the word "HIDDEN" can mean so many thing, but just only having the one work lets the viewers come up with their own idea of whats going to happen. In Thriller and horror films the titles are normally short tiltes for example "The Thing" or "The Exorcist" these are short titles. they are normally only one or two words long. The reason for this is that they want it to be sort and sharp so that the tilte can be easy to be remembered. The tilte of the film normally gives a clue to the type of movie and what the film is going to be about, so the producers want it to be mysterious for the viewers.
This  first shot establishes the title of the film. The title of the film is 'hidden' and is placed over the top of the girl being hidden's eye. We as a group thought this was very striking and caught the audience's attention very well. The font of the title gives the immpretion of secrecy and the unknown which refelcts spot on to what the film is about. The eye placed behind it, shows a tear falling from her eye creating the immpretion to the audience of fear, desperation, sadness and lonelyness which once again reflects not only the story but the character aswell.
The title fades in from one end and out the other giving it very much a suttle entrance to the screen and not so much a rushed one. We chose as a group the colour as white for the title because it showed up better against the background and still gave your eyes looking at the screen room to see what else was going on in the screen.

Setting and location. 

For our opening scene we decided to do it in the evening as it is not clear to see everything that is going on and it makes it spookier for the viewers. We chose to film in an old house which had not been used for a while which had older looking objects to fit in with our genre/theme and story plot. As a group we thought it was important to use the correct setting at otherwise it will not fit into our genre and without the correct setting it would not have the correct feelings for the film to keep the audience in suspense for the film.


Friday the 13th(1980) - the scene on the lake towards nightfall when Kevin Bacon and his character girlfriend are sitting by the lake and she is telling him about the nightmare dream she had as a kid and then it shows the lake and the skyline going kinda orange

In this film that i have selected, the film company have started the opening scene with a dark by the lake. This is a perfect example of a Horror / Thriller opening scene where it is dark and mysterious. This is why in our film we chose to star with the setting of our opening scene in the dark using night vision to enhance the darkness.

Costumes and props. 

We used props in our opening scene to make it more realistic for our film. We use props help create the background to a drama. Props are the items that are held or used by an actor in a scene to make it more realistic. We used: Army Sgt uniform for the main character (Samuel Evans), a cage for the other main character, dog food, and house hold items such as a radio and other old fashion equipment and Army relevant items. All films use some kind of props to get the viewers to get a more realistic feeling to the film and to let the audience understand the film better.

The package of reality which props bring to a movie production serve as tools for the actors to get the feel for their role. An actor feels more like a gangster when he has a Thompson sub-machine gun in his hands, and the actors playing Jedi in the "Star Wars" films each had their own light sabres to give them a better sense of their parts.

In most common Horror films they have props such as a knife or other offence or deadly weapons, this is because horror films are about gore and one of the ways of doing this is using props such as a knife or a pipe.

All great horror films have their memorable moments and their respective props, it helps to add value to the killer. Every great horror killer has an equally great prop with them. Even movies without a killer, say like a ghost movie or vampire movie have props.
An actor can only do so much, people won’t get scared if Jason stood over them looking all plain-like and shouting booga booga. Give him his machete, mask and tattered clothes and that’s when you feel like running away from your friends and into the darkened woods.

In our opening scene we did not use dangerious props in the opening scene as we did not want to give away who was the bad person in the film. In this picture we have props including a radio and bear bottles which could be used as a weapon but it is not certain. 

This shot establishes all the costumes and props, forst off starting with sam sitting in the chair wearing Army gear. This is the costume we as a group chose to put sam in as he is supposed to reflect in the film as being an 'ex army sargent'. Because of this background to the  character this uniform gave that immpretion to the audience straight away. Now looking at the props we have the overall setting of a old fashioned styled house with the odd british flag and radio added in and the odd few beers giving the audience even more of the immpretion that sam 'the actor' still does rituals from the olden days when he was young i.e. like listening to the radio instead of watching TV.
Special effects. 

For this shot we used slow motion with helps give an unsure effect or insane person and is not focus correctly. We used this in this shot as the army man is keeping him self fit and keeping his discipline up. We did use some fade in effects to make the opening run smoothly. 

This final shot shows the special effects. The reason for this is in doing press ups we as a group have put it in slow motion giving the time taken effect. This effect works very well due to the only action sam is doing being up and down.

Special effects have been strongly associated with horror movies ever since Max Schreck donned the infamous vampire makeup in Nosferatu. Horror is a genre that puts everything on the line in regards to the physical boundaries of at least semi explainable human anatomy and any and all possible items that can be used to destroy it.

The reason we used special effects in our film is so that it will fit more into other horror films. It also gives something different for the viewers and it keeps them interested in the film which encourages them to keep watching the film. 

Title font and style.

We wanted the title font and style to fit in with the style of opening and to fit in to the genre of film as from research we found that the style of fonts were different depending on the genre of film so we wanted to make sure we had the correct style to fit in the genre.
The titles in most Thriller and horror films are easy to read and sometimes quite fancy writing normally in the color red which represents blood. From this you can straight away know that in the film their is going to be a lot of gore and a death, this is why in our film we chose to have the titles in white which does not give any clues to what may happen in the film.  This next shot shows the certain type of font and style we have used, we as a group wanted to give of the impression of secrecy and the 'unknown' and we believed with this font it gave off this impression. The font used isn't clear cut which is the reason for the colour 'white' but we thought that white worked well considering you can see it on all shots used in the film.
As the font is not clear cut it also gave of a thriller genre to the audience working well with the film itself.

Story and how the opening sets it up. 

In the opening scene is important to show the story of the film as that is what keeps the audience watching and interested in the film and is what keeps them watching the film. We had looked at many openings to see how they had made theirs interesting and this helped us figure out how we would make our opening scene so that it was interesting to watch. In the start we added flashes of an image of a girl in the cadge and it is not clear to see what it is. We did this so the audience can make up their own mind about what the picture was and it added confusion to the audience as it did not fit into what was happening in the scene. This makes it more mysterious for people when watching. This shot most defianly is the best for showing you as the audience about the story and how the opening sets it up. The story is about a girl and her father. The father suffers from shell shock and after already loosing his dear wife he does not want this feeling to happen again with his daughter doing the same thing. So to prefent this he keeps her in a cage at the end of his garden which now one knows about but him. This shot shows a view of someone looking out a cage and looking towards the light inside the house.
The gist of the shot was supposed to make the audience look from the characters persepective but not actually knowing from who's persepective they are looking through giving the sense of unkown and chilling sensation through them.
The shot is also in night vision making everything on screen not perfectly clear except the light coming from the house.

Genre and how the opening suggests it. 

In the opening scene it is dark so people don know what is going on, it also makes the opening scene spookier when people are watching the film. In this picture it is dark we are using night vision so you can see that it is dark but you are still able to see what it in the image or scene. Using the dark atmosphere and the music that we put together helps us to get the feeling of horror. . The lighting was important to and we had to keep this in mind whilst filming as we needed to keep up the atmosphere to our chosen genre. This shot in hand shows you very much what genre of the film it is. This is because of the un-nerving shot of a dark place outside, suggesting it is cold and the sight of seeing a young girl in a cage. No light hearted films have scenes like this creating this much suspense. The genre is thriller and therefore we need to show this within the forst few minutes of shooting. So with shot looking through night vision it creates that chill for the audience. Within the shot it pans through giving everything mise-en-scene.

How characters are introduced. 

The first character (army man- Samuel Evans) was seen in the seconded shot and introduced in the third shot. In our opening scene their were only two characters to introduce as they are the main characters. It is important to how they are introduced into the film as the people watching the film want to know who the actors are in the film and what role they play. The best character introductions tend to include both a sense of what you see (the character’s physical appearance) and an intriguing tidbit about their personality and/or situation. For major characters, you’ll often be able to structure a scene so that it showcases a character’s introduction. In all films characters have to be introduced so for our film we wanted to introduce sam one of main characters in a light in which he performs everyday, that is putting on his army uniform, this helps show the audience about his authority and power over other people this uniform shows people that he is part of the armed forces so is strong and his rank of sargent (Sgt) show that he is a type of leader of men. It is an over the shoulder showing him in a different perspective than just face on. The shot shows him putting the final touches on putting his hat on with the title 'Samuel evans'. This tells the audience who is the actor playing the character.