How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In horror films, they usually have a vulnerable female lead (for example in Scream), our film also has a female lead who is vulnerable. By doing this, females could feel more involved with horror films such as Scream and ours. In our film, we have a girl who is 'disturbed' and this matches with other horror films in the sense that they have a mentally ill person as the lead (such as Hide and Seek). This is because the audience may consist of people who aren't usually exposed to mentally ill people or deranged people, therefore making a film about it and exaggerating it slightly will make it more effective for them. This touches on the stereo type of mentally ill people demonstrated in the media, as our film plays on the stigma associated with mental illness, but also tries to address the issues at the same time by getting the audience to work out why the character is doing the things she is.

The film would be appreciated by those from all backgrounds and ethnic groups, in particular intellectual people as the film requires the audience to think for themselves. This may also mean that adults would appreciate the film more than teenagers as they are more aware of the different types of impacts on people who may suffer from a mental illness in comparison to teenagers where their knowledge may be quite limited.

The social group that our film would most represent would be young teenage girls as they would relate to the main character in the film. She's a typical teenage girl, looking through old photographs that bring back bad memories and then goes to burn them. Teenage girls can relate to this -it isn't something totally out of this world. A teenage girl wacthing this wouldn't find it difficult to put herself into this position as it concerns the death of a relative-which is something that happens in everyday life. However, this film takes it a step further in order to make it as entertaining as possible and to be typical of a psychological thriller.

Our film opening introduces a young woman who is the main protagonist. The reason why we chose a young girl to be the main character is to create the effect that is similarly done in 'Scream' where the whole film plot is affected by a young girl’s actions, thus we try to emphasise her significance. The protagonist is casually looking through some old photogrpaphs at the start of the film, and a lot of people ocassionally look through old photographs for memories. However, what makes this girl different is that these photos bring back bad memories.

A young woman entering an isolated park and wanting to burn these old photographs that connects to her dark past shows her vulnerabilty by the fact that she is on her own in an isolated park, which could also show that she's on her own in this world. The audience won’t know that at this point, but in some ways it illustrates that she is vulnerable. This expected meaning challenges the stereotypes that people may have about young people. In addition, the opening of a film could be regarded as the most important part of the film as it shapes the plot of the rest of the film. In our opening production, we focused only on one character meaning that there is no involvement from other characters. This is vital as it demonstrates the importance of the character because the whole opening focuses on her. Immediately, we understand her significance to the story and how the rest of the story plot depends on her behaviour. In conclusion, our media product represents a young woman in a negative light even though the story plot revolves around her mysterious life. It is not clear from watching our film opening that the character has great importance in the rest of the film. Our film opening explores a traumatic past of a young girl who is haunted by a memory from her past and we approached this subject in a very subtle way. This is because we did not want to overcomplicate the situation thus meaning that we left hints all the way through the opening of the film so that the audience themselves can figure it out.

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

The genre of our film is a psychological thriller, it compares to other films of this genre as it doesn't give a away the whole plot in the first few minutes as well as keeping the main actor's identity a mystery for the audience. In terms of the camerawork, the angles we used fit well with this genre as we tried to not reveal too much in order to keep the opening more interesting and eye catching towards the audience. Our film uses a variety of different camera angles and shots just like other films of our genre, for example, a close up of the photograph in the chapel. The music that we are putting into our film sounds typical of the type of music used in horror films, it connotes eeriness, mystery, suspense and fear and that something 'bad' is going to happen. The opening sequence of other horror films such as the one researched (Scream) usually has only one character at the beginning and the character is usually in a rather neutral atmosphere and a neutral mood. At the start, everything is usually 'okay' and the audience doesn't guess that something bad is going to happen, so we too used this technique to make the audience feel more surprised when something bad actually does happen, demonstrated by the image below which shows the calm, neutral atmosphere and mood of the actress in the opening sequence of Scream. Likewise, the actress in our sequence is in a calm and neutral atmosphere-she is at home looking through some old photographs and the mise-en-scene as you can see in the background shows that she is in her house and quite comfortable, likewise, the mise-en-scene in our sequence shows the actress in her candlelit house which made the atmosphere quite homely.

The actress looking at her photos:

Other films and media products that are of similar genre to ours don't include dialogue in their openings, so we too decided not to include dialogue. However, we challenged the forms and conventions of the other films because we put the production name of the film after showing the first bit of the opening sequence rather than putting it after the opening sequence. This is because a character in the film blows a candle out and then it goes to a blackout where the production company of the film is displayed. We think this is effective because of the style in which it is done (girl blowing out the candle and then going to a blackout). This may attract the attention of the audience further as editing techniques such as this aren't always used in other film openings, for example other low budget films such as 'Brick', where the opening is much happier with the use of photos, presumably from the character's childhood.

An important prop in our media product are the photographs that the girl is looking through at the beginning. We used a close up to show one of the photographs because it has a significant meaning here but the audience at this stage will not know how this photo ties in with the plot of the story. We thought the close up was vital to include because close ups on props really do give clues to the audience of what to expect later in the film.

In terms of sound, we found it confusing as to whether we should use music or not. The quality of diegetic sound we captured was very good so we really wanted that to stand out for example the creaking of the gates you hear when watching our media product really captures the mood-it creates an eerie mood to it, as if something bad is going to happen. However, we thought a lack of non diegetic sound would not create the atmosphere we wanted. We did at the end decide to use sound suitable for the genre of the film.

Animatic Storyboard

This animatic storyboard provides a rough idea of how our film will go. Things may be changed, not done or added but this storyboard shows the main shots of our film.

Images of the Loreto college chapel-The location in which we will be filming the first part of our video

These images have been taken from the Loreto chapel where we will be filiming the first part to our 2 minute film opening. The chapel is quite dark however with effects we will later use in editing will change this to what we would prefer i.e more light in certain parts of the chapel.

Images of Alexandra Park in Manchester, the location in which we will be filming the second part of our film

In our video, we will only be using two different locations. This includes the Loreto college chapel and Alexandra Park.

Discussions on Planning for our locations

We are currently discussing whether to start of with filming the protagonist in the chapel or in a dark room where she will be sat down looking at some old photos and letters sent to her by her deceased mother. Discussing this further we have decided to do it in a room and then film in the chapel and have a set up camera at the top of the chapel in the balcony area, we decided to do this as it would look more as if someone was looking down on her, from a high angle.

Production Treatment for Main Task: Zara, Francesca, Amy and Zeenat

The name of our film will be called 'The Spirit' and the genre is horror/psychological thriller.

The duration of our film opening will be two minutes, however we may film slightly over in order to not cut out any important bits that will make our film opening successful.

The intended audience for our film opening is males and females aged between 15-35 who form the main target audience for our genre which is horror/psychological thriller.

The opening of the film will start of with showing the production company which is called Popcorn Productions and have the logo along with some sound that we will decide on. The film will then start off with a young girl in a room with low-key lighting and the camera will do a high-angle shot of her looking through old photographs, the camera isn't on the girl it will be on her hands flicking through the photographs. However, she stops on one specific photograph which is a picture of her sister who died. The camera zooms into the photo and then does a close-up of her face looking at the photograph. The girl blows the candle and as soon as she does this this there is then an establishing shot of a local, public park (Alexandra Park) and then the camera films from behind her so allow the audience to see what she is looking at. There is then a close-up of her hands as she opens the gates, then there are a number of different shots as she walks down the path towards the grave. Then she just sits at the grave looking at the photograph and the camera is looking down on her then there is a close-up of her lifting her face up and the props used will show how she has become possessed. When she is looking through the photographs at the start, the credits will begin to appear on the screen coming in from the sides, these will include 'Directed by', 'Cinematography', 'Cast', 'Editing' and then the title of the film which is The Spirit. However, throughout the filming/editing we may change certain elements which we think would work better for our opening.

The Props will include contact lenses, photographs and burnt paper.

Recording Days:
For our filming we intend to spend about 2-3 days in the week for approximately 2 hours starting from the 2nd March until the 25th March.

For our post production we intend to spend approximately 2-3 weeks of which these sessions will last for 2 hours.

Also during lessons we will use this time to complete our blog and amend any errors.