Audience profile survey

1. How old are you ?

• 12 and below
• 13-16
• 17-21
• 22-26
• 27-31
• 32 and over

2. What gender are you?

Female      or       Male

3. Whats your favourite film genre (type of film)?

Horror

Comedy

Action

Gangster 

Romantic

4. Whats your favourite sub genre of horror? Confinement (where they're trapped) or Pursuit (where they are chased)

Confinement     Pursuit

5. How often do you watch films?

Never     Rarely      Sometimes      Frequently

6. Do you own more than 1 DVD? If yes; whats the main genre?

Yes   No

7. What was the last film you watched?

8. How much would you be willing to spend on watching a film?

£5 and under    £6-8    £9 and over

9. Whats your favourite actress and actor?

10. Whats your favourite film? and why?

The Devil's Backbone- Opening sequence analysis

The Devi's Backbone     

Released 2002

Directed by: Guillermo Del Torro 

The film is set in a remote Spanish orphanage during the Spanish civil war, it's about a spirit called 'Santi' that brutally terrorises the children. As the film builds up the children start to learn about how 'Santi' died and how they get vengeance on his murder. 

• The DVD cover immediately suggests horror from the dark image that gives off an eerie atmostphere. The picture denotes a man holding a gun with a white blurred image overlapping him, this could connote that a spirit is involved in the film and normally this means something bad is going to happen. The font used is written in red and this could connote blood, it also looks like a persons handwriting, so it could be suggesting that it is wrote by someone with blood, this connotes violence and death. The title has the word 'devil' in it, this connotes to the audience that the devil is involved, and the devil is always associated with violence and torture. 
• During the first 10 seconds of the film, a creep is used to slowly zoom in on a hallway that is dark. A voiceover then asks 'what is a ghost?'. The creep causes tension within the audience as you expect something to happen, also the use of a rhetorical question allows the audience to feel involved in the film, and to actually think about what ghosts are. 
• The scene then goes on to show a bird's eye view of a dark city with a bomb being dropped on it. The bomb that is dropped feels like it is coming from where you are sitting and this connotes you are very close to the enemy and causes tension. The fact that the city is then covered by black shutters connotes that the film is not entirely based on the war, but it is happening whilst the film is being filmed. 
• The next scene we see is a creep to a young boy laying on the floor with an injury to his head, he is blinking so is not dead, a brick is next to him, this connotes that he could have been hit with a brick by someone or something, or he could have been a victim of the war. The use of a young boy immediately causes sympathy throughout the audience as children are seen as vulnerable, and many people watching could relate to how they would feel if their child every has to die alone in the darkness. 
• As the other character picks up the injured boys head, we are still on a close up of the boy, so all we see are hands, this makes the audience question who the other character is and whether he was the one who killed him, this makes the audience feel intrigued. The camera then moves up to a close up of the other character, and we see its another child with the boys blood on his hand crying. This connotes vulnerability, and suggests to the audience the film is going to be targeted on children and may be gruesome. 
• The scene slowly fades under dirty water, and a faint image of the boy tied in rope is shown, and he is sinking. The camera then tilts up to the other young character that perhaps pushed the boy in the water. For a split second a low shot is used to connote that the boy feels power, but then it moves into a middle shot to show him crying, and the audience realises that the boy feels no power at all, he just feels vulnerable and scared, and didn't push the boy into the water for hate reasons. 
• Throughout the whole of the opening sequence a classical instrumental is used in the background. This is stereotypical in many horrors as it builds up the tension, causes an eerie atmosphere and makes the audience feel uneasy. 

Treatment Feedback- Group 2

What conventions worked well? 

During the feedback from the class they said that the way we intend to challenge the conventions of a normal horror makes it different and more interesting. They also said our story line we are thinking about doing will be really good and has a lot of potential to make a good film. 

What would make your initial idea even better? 

As we are only in the very early stages of of getting our ideas together, we still need to do a lot more research into horror, this will give us more knowledge on the genre and this will make our film better. We also need to have a discussion as a group and figure out an idea for the first 2 minutes that we will stick to, so then we can develop on this idea. 

What will you do next? 

The next thing our group aims to do is to do a lot more research on the genre horror, and hopefully this will give us a better idea of things and we will feel more confident about producing a short clip. We also need to figure out the storyboard of our first 2 minutes, and then hopefully start filming. 

Horror Movie Research Powerpoint

http://www.scribd.com/doc/42752455/Media-Horror#

Peer Assessment

I presented my idea to my coursework group, my idea was ;

To start off with a man kissing his mum goodbye, and then as he walks out of the door he lights up a cigar and walks towards a group of men on the street corner. They then share some dialogue throughout their group about "did you get it done?" They all look the bar opposite and a man walks out of the bar and gets into his car, the car blows up. All of the street goes crazy and police sirens and ambulances are heard, but the group of men calmly walk away. 

What worked well? 

My group told me that they liked my idea because it shows that gangsters have a family life, and are not completely bad like most films portray them to be. It also suggests that there may be a reason behind why they are a gangster such as money problems in the family. They said that they thought it was well thought through and would be an effective opening to a film. 

Could it be even better?

They said that to make it even better I could have added in some classic religious music whilst the man was walking to the group of men, as this would have connoted that like stereotypical gangsters, he was actually religious. Also music tends to be more effective than silence in most cases. 

How is Gender represented in this 'A clubbabble woman' episode from Dalziel and Pacoe?

Gender is represented in various ways. One way is by the use of Mise-en-scene. The first setting we see is the men on a rugby pitch playing rugby, this immediatley connotes the masculine side of the men as rugby is known as a violent sport that involves a lot of contact. Also after the rugby match and many more times during the programme we see the men drinking a 'pint' in the pub. Drinking beer is associated with men, so this connotes the sterotypical man who likes to socialise in a pub and drink beer, also the bar is mainly filled with men with the odd woman that is flirting, this maybe suggests that men are the dominating gender. 

Gender is also represented through camera, the first shot we see is a close up, low angle of the men, this really shows the aggresivness in thier facial expressions and it also connotes the power they have.

Sound is used to represent gender because when the man comes home, you can hear non-digetic music and this connotes to the audience that the man is not feeling too good, but infront of all his mates he was acting like he was okay, this portrays the sterotypical man that feels he has to act hard in front of his friends, and can't show emotion. 

Prelim Editing

What was your role in the editing process? 

My role whilst editing was adding transitions and I also I cut out a scene that wasn't really needed. i also adjusted the audio on some of the clips. 

How you met the brief and edited 180 degree rule and match-on-action; 

Our group met the brief by creating a scene that started with a character walking through the door and ending with the characters leaving the scene. We failed to stick to the 180 degree rule and we noticed this whilst filming, the only time we failed to do this was when it was a close up of me Sean was on the right side of me filming when he should have been on the left side, and this could have caused confusion within the audience. We did match-on-action by cuttting a scene of Alban walking towards me and cut straight to him approaching me, this saved time and meant that the audience didnt have to watch 10 seconds of Alban just walking. 


What worked well and what could have been even better about your groups planning, filming and editing of the prelim?


I think my group worked really well together, we all listened to each other and let each other put in ideas and would always take them into account. I think it would have worked better if the two other members of our group were in, but this was something we was able to overcome and I don't think it effected our filming much. Whilst planning the prelim I think if me and Sean had taken more time to come up with a scene, we would have been able to think of a better idea then what we did. During filming we had to rush a bit because Alban stepped in for us and had his own group to focus on, but next time this can be easily solved because hopefully all of our members will be in. I think the editing part went really well for our group, and I don't think nothing could have been improved because we all put in ideas and tried our hardest to make the short scene look good.