Very Final Film

FM3 REFLECTIVE ANALYSIS

For my Fm3 creative project I produced a sequence from my imagined film Left Dead. The genre is thriller using elements of horror genre and I hope to use the codes and conventions. This is to appeal to my target audience of mainstream age 15-24 both male and females in the economic group E as most of them will be full time students. My aim was to introduce the learning of FM1 exploring creative mise-en-scene and cinematography in order to create drama and thrill to satisfy the audience.

 

Initial stages of production involved deciding on the storyline and writing a script. To help me develop the story I had to think about the story type my film would follow. After writing and developing the script (providing dialogue and a clear sense of narrative in my film,) I roughly drafted a storyboard to get a vague idea of how the film would look visually.

I decided to make a film within the horror genre, as I had focused on horror for my FM1 project I felt I was more confident and knowledgeable with this genre and I could easily fit the stylistics to the genre as they are very specific. The initial steps of my research and planning was to research the conventions of Horror, which I did in the ‘Genre Conventions’ this consists of an in depth analysis of the specific features that make up a horror. These helped me to later decide on stylistic elements of my film based on the genre conventions (such as scenes with a grey hue to reflect the negative emotions of the characters and low angles making the victim appear small and weak).

Before starting the bulk of my research, I had to define the aims and context of my film. The context of my film is that it is a 3-5 minute sequence of the horror genre, called ‘Left Dead’. The audience of my film (being the same as the audience for horror,) consists of both men and women within the age range of 15-30. My main purposes were to progress the narrative of the film while inciting tension and fear in the audience, and to reflect the character’s fears. The stylistics I decided to use most effectively were cinematography and mise-en-scene, as I thought they would allow me to fulfil the purposes of my film. Stylistic inspirations for my film included many modern films which fall under the genre of horror, such as Taken and The Eye.

In my genre research, two of the main recurring themes I encountered in horror were Family history, mainly lies that lay within the family and how the past can interfere with the present and the possibility of the evil being an imagined result of the character’s paranoia. These ideas were reflected into my own work the idea of a family secret been founded (The protagonist dreams the death of her aunt who died in a ‘car crash’) she discovers her aunts brutal murder this reflects the idea of the past coming back to haunt the present. The idea of evil/horror coming down to the characters paranoia is reflected by the cinematography (medium shot as she awakes from her dream) the shot of her awakening from a dream toys with the idea that she is becoming obsessed with her dreams and letting them effect the present. Guilt is also another main element I found within the Horror genre; the murderer is haunted by his guilt which I expressed through alcohol. I collaborated mise-en-scene and cinematography to take close ups and medium shots of alcohol bottles and alcohol been poured to signify his guilt.

My research also influenced my use of music, as in the genre, music is usually slow and low pitched music, to build tension and suspense and make the audience feel nervous. The music then usually builds up in moments of horror and the climax of the film. This is similar to how music is used in my film; I used slow paced violin non-diagetic sound in the sequence were the victim is walking towards the car to increase tension and paranoia in the audience leaving them on the edge of their seat wondering what will happen next. The music is then used as a motif in the film as it slowly fades in at the most tense moments of the film sequence (e.g panning of her dead body)

Initial stages of production involved deciding on the storyline and writing a script. To help me develop the story I had to think about the story type my film would follow. After writing and developing the script (providing dialogue and a clear sense of narrative in my film,) I roughly drafted a storyboard to get a vague idea of how the film would look visually.

The two factors which influenced my decisions on props, costume and settings (the main factors in the mise-en-scene) were the representation of characters. For example I didn’t want the audience to become emotionally attached to the antagonist therefore I dressed the character in all black suggesting he is a dark person with no emotion the scenes in black and white (i.e when he is murdering th protagonist) also emphasis on the way he is represented as emotionless even though I wanted to emotion associated with the antagonist I needed to express the innocence of the victim: to do this I dressed her in a plain white dress expressing simplicity and innocence connoting how she was an innocent victim making the audience sympathise towards her as she had no reason for her life to be taken away from her at such a young age.

Other props such as alcohol bottles and knifes on were used to imply the negative sides of the antagonists personality, as he was shown to drink an excessive amount of alcohol to deal with his brutal lifestyle. In the close up shot (where the antagonist drinks several shots of vodka,) the focus pull brings the alcohol bottle to fill the full of the frame then aligns the antagonist with the empty glasses. This juxtaposition of character and prop is an effective combination of mise-en-scene and editing (the focus pull) to give insight into the life of the protagonist, thereby affecting how audiences view him.

Another important part of the editing was some of the different effects I used on the footage. For example, to distinguish that the audience where going back in time connoting how life flashes before your eyes I Copied the footage and pasted it onto a new sequence. By using ‘speed/duration’I changed the speed of the shot then kept playing it back until I got the shot to around 7 seconds. This is an effective part of the sequence and works really well. When I did my audience feedback I found that this was one of the most positive scenes of the film because it is unexpected and makes it feel ‘real life’ as the protagonist awakes from her dream.

 

The contrasting editing was found to be a convention in horror. The slower editing makes the audience feel uneasy and builds tension, often allowing for a sudden release of fear to have more of an effect on the audience (this style of editing is used in my film when the antagonist is drinking many shots of vodka to try and deal with the guilt and depression of his ‘task’). The faster-paced is used in the flashback shots to make them more sudden and make the violence depicted more shocking, for example the flashback re-lives the violent events in the space of 10 seconds emphasising how life can flash before your eyes just like in this young girl’s case.

In the climax of my film, mise-en-scene is used to provide an effective ending. The red blood on her body contrasts with the white dress implying how the antagonist is an evil man he lied his danger (ie. Red blood) upon a innocent girl (ie-white dress) it also connotes how horrific the event is. The editing between the two knifes implies the contrast and the horror of the next event, we see a black and white shot of a knife then the sequence fades to black and is replaced (in the other direction) of a knife covered in red (i.e graphic match) this represents the evil in the antagonists actions and fears the audience for what they are about to see next.

The final shots of my film switch between the ‘real’ world (the present the world in which the protagonist lives in) and the ‘dream’ world (The dream which is in fact a replay of her aunts real death) These shots were added to draw the sequence to an end and to help the audience understand the narrative as the sequence opened with a medium shot of a girl in bed it is only knowledgeable for her to awake after the dream for it to make sense however a fast paced cut to the protagonist eyes is added to make the audience jump and know that the mystery of the dream ties into the narrative and is a flashback.

The stylistic element of music, while not one of my main focuses, was also used effectively in my film, particularly the murder scene and the after-math of the murder scene the non-diagetic music adds to the drama of the scene and the sadness. It adds to the audience’s sympathy towards the character sand plays on their mixed emotions of sadness and sympathy as it is toyed on the audience to feel a little guilty for the murder as the shot-reverse shot between him and his boss implied how he didn’t feel comfortable to go through with the job but feared his boss.

I decided to use Social Networking sites such as YouTube as a basis to get audience feedback, as they are used mostly by males and females within the mainstream 15-30 audience (i.e. the target audience of my chosen genre). I took my feedback seriously and wanted to improve my film to satisfy my audience as that was a main aim. Therefore I organised a re-shoot and shot this shot and added it to the film.

Overall, I believe I consisted to my aims and context and used the main stylistics of cinematography and mise-en-scene (as well as editing and sound) to make an effective horror film aimed at the mainstream (male/female 15-30) audience. Examples of how I used my main stylistics are slow panning shots revealing the horrific parts of the murder in a devastating way to the audience to make them sympathize towards the innocent girl and slow steady tracking shots following the victim as though she has been targeted and is the ‘bulls eye’. In terms of mise-en-scene I have used the contrasting of red blood alongside white innocent clothing.