Part 4 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Doing our media production we looked at different media texts and researched a variety of codes and conventions to see what we felt would work best in ours. We decided to create a thriller/horror film, to show and play with people’s fears within our title sequence.
The narrative:
Our plot was established by thinking of creating the story based around the young boy, which would make it easier for the audience to understand the change in the child, due to the action in which his unborn brother is doing to him and others close to him. In the footage in which we have made for our title sequence we decided to follow the child, Harry with the camera so that people felt that they were always watching him from what he would see. This relates to the chosen genre as while the child is being followed and taken over, he harms others, making it a quite disturbing feeling, which could play with people’s fears. Due to this storyline we reasoned films that we felt could be linked to ours, such as 'The Omen' and 'Orphan'.
With our title sequence we used dark colours within the footage to connote something being hard to see, as it was quite dark. The colours were also used to match the genre as in horror/thriller films the dark colours create more suspense and an eerie feeling. The genre is also shown by the props in which we used, this was for the child to use and destroy in the title sequence. An example could be when the boy rips the heads off the teddies, showing he isn’t an average young child who plays with his toys, instead he is destroying them. The drawings in which have also been drawn show that the child is quite distressed, as they include drawings of people being killed and things being set alight, which links to horror films due to the typical horror film of destruction.
Camera, angle, shot movement and position:
We used many camera angles within our title sequence, these consisted of:
· Wide shot
· Hand held
· Close up shot
· Tracking shot
· Match on action
We decided to use a tracking shot with our title sequence using a the hand held camera, as we felt that in some parts of the title sequence, for example when the young boy Harry is walking up the stairs, if we used a hand held camera it would make it make it easy to understand Harry by following him. Also, we felt the connotation to this could be that the camera shot could be representing the boy’s unborn brother following him everywhere. We decided to use a close up shot of the young boy’s drawings so that the audience were able to see the different details of the drawings, allowing the audience to see the disturbing images in which the young boy was drawing. We decided to make sure the camera didn't view above the childs head as we wanted to create the sense of mystery and the idea of not knowing to the audience during the title sequence.
Editing:
When editing the title sequence, we made sure everything followed at the beginning of the scene, for example, the young boy walking into the house to walking up the stairs to his room. We then decided that we wanted to make the scene in the child's bedrrom, with the teddy bears being ruined and the pictures being drawn quite jumpy, making the footage look more like it's someone watching as it isn't steady and making the footage follow the connotation of someone runing everything, making things difficult to see.
Sound:
The sound in which we used for our final title sequence was added to the piece to bring more suspense to it. We started the sound process by researching title sequences such as, 'The Omen' to see how other title sequence makers had created an eerie feeling to the film. After researching this, we made our own piece of music on 'garage band' on the apple Macs. However, the group felt that this didn't create enough suspense and searched for a new one. Once we had found one and added it to the sequence we all felt that it made the piece more thriller/horror like. The group decided that there were two main parts in which we all felt the music needed to build up more to keep the audience watching. We added a build up of music when the fridge door closes and the titles appear and at the end of the sequence when the shadow walks across the boy when he is laying down, we all felt this would be a good point to build up the sound as it was the end of the title sequence and the part that seemed most eerie when receiving feedback about it.
Mise-en-scene:
Within the shoots of the title sequence the lighting in which was used started quite light, for example when Harry is walking throught the downstairs of the house, the rooms are light and easy to see most things. However, when he begins to walk up the stairs the light becomes a bit darker and when he reaches the top, the light is very bright. Nevertheless, when the boy walks into the room, the room is very dark (becoming a contrast from the previous light outside the bedroom). This is done to connote to the audience that he may come across as an average child to many, but when people are able to see his room, they would be able to realise that something isn't right with the child, making the film look more like a thriller/horror all due to the lighting.
Typography:
In the title sequence we wanted to use typography that would firstly represent a horror film but also represent the idea of a child being involved. This is when we decided to use a font for the title of the film looking as if it had been scratched by nails onto the fridge door, connoting that someone is in pain, or very dangerous. Then the typography for the names and credits during the title sequence we wanted to make more child-like, which is why the group chose to use a font that included rough lines to draw inbetween which are normally used for children learning to write. For the typography we researched into childrens writing and edgy font to see what worked better with the title sequence, making the typography link.
