Tuesday 29 May 2012

Are we meant to make a new blog for A2 orrrr...?

I did it anyway. 




The URL is http://www.wittymediarelatedurl.blogspot.com
I couldn't be bothered to think of a good URL for it, so there it is.
There's no posts on it but I'll do one now.
Okay. Good. Cheerio.

Tuesday 15 May 2012

So that is the Media exam out of the way. And the Russian history exam, but that's not relevant because this is a Media blog. The Media exam went quite well, I think. I hope. It probably didn't. I've probably failed. 

And I've got a Maths exam to fail tomorrow.

  
On the plus side, I also have an English Lit exam tomorrow, so I get to write about how wonderful Gatsby is for two hours, hooray!

Tuesday 8 May 2012

Evaluation Questions 4 and 5 New and Improved!

Evaluation Questions 4 and 5
View more presentations from Sarah Byard.

Here is the actual presentation for questions 4 and 5 of our evaluation. 

I was going to say something else about this but I sneezed and the thought must have evacuated with it. 

Evaluation Question 7 New And Improved!

Here is the new and improved version of my evaluation question 7.
Although how something can be both new and improved, I'll never know.

Monday 7 May 2012

Bugger, I fell asleep.
I was hoping to have everything up by now, but my insane sleeping patterns always catch me off guard when I'm doing something important...
Hmm.
Okay, I'm on this.
The last two questions will be up soon.
I'm doing them as one presentation, because I keep finding myself going into question five whilst writing about question four.

Evaluation Question 6 *Updated*


Sunday 6 May 2012

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 3
View more PowerPoint from Sarah Byard

There is a better version of this with clicky links and all such wonders, but Slideshare is being a bum and I really wanted to get this up. I will do the whole video conversion thingmabob and then post that one after. This is really just so you can see what's in the presentation and the one that's been fantangled will be up later. 

Evaluation Question 2


Wednesday 2 May 2012

part two.

Lighting:

Our use of lighting in the dream sequence subverts the general rule of thumb for horror films: dreams in horror films must be nightmares and they must be dark. For example, in the opening of A Nightmare On Elm Street, the dream is dark and tense, like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn_DjzN8410 

However, our dream sequence includes lots of bright scenes, such as the butterfly clip, the daisy clip and the memory clips.
In this memory clip, which is in the dream sequence, there is high key lighting and high saturation, because we decided to show Jess's time with Sarah as good and happy. We also didn't want the dream to be too dark, because Jess still had part control over herself, shown when she throws Hannah out of her room. However, parts of the dream have low-key lighting, such as the mimicry scene. This was to show how dark Esther is and how dark she makes Jess's mind.

Editing:
The psychological thriller aspect of our film is really shown through editing. We use a technique called psychorama, which means splicing in an image quickly so it flashes up, sometimes too quickly for the human mind to pick up. This is used in other horrors and psychological thrillers, such as Terror in the Haunted House and Fight Club. I spent so long looking for the scenes in Fight Club on YouTube, but there's only one uploaded there; however, it's a good one:

I won't mention the other one at the end.
It's so much more subtle in Fight Club, literally blink and you'll miss it, than in ours. However, our films had two different intentions: Fight Club didn't want to give away the twist at the end, but  wanted to leave hints for eagle-eyed viewers, whereas our film wanted the audience to question reality from the very beginning and question what was real and what was not. 

Character:
The killer in our film challenges the normal convention of murderers in horror films. In our film, the murderer is Jess:
She doesn't exactly strike you as the killing type, right? That's because, in horror films, they generally use grown men, sometimes with a disfigurement. For example, there's Freddy (Nightmare On Elm Street), Jason (Friday the 13th), Leatherface (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and Michael Myers (Halloween)

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

Our coursework piece is the opening to a horror film, Esther. We wanted to create something that hadn't been done over and over again, but we still used many things that are used a lot in horror films, because we thought that certain things signify horror to people, and create tension and fear within an audience and a film.

Props.
Rocking horse: the rocking horse has been used in numerous horror films/TV shows, such as Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II, Insidious and Dark Vengance, an episode of Ghost Story

Here's the scene from Hello Mary Lou:

 

Rocking horses are often associated with the horror genre, possibly because of the connotations it has with childhood. Childhood is associated with innocence, purity and naiivety, and so to possess or make something child-like evil would be terrifying for audiences, because it is spoiling innocence and purity. They're also frightening because it shows innocent things can be dangerous and can do harm. These can be especially frightening for children, because children often have rocking horses in their bedrooms and may associate what they have seen in a film with real life. It can also subconsciously scare a parent, because they don't want to believe that even a children's toy can do harm, especially if their children have one. Rocking horses also can allude to ghosts or spirits, as films often use them as a means to show a 'presence in the room' by making them move without anybody moving them.

We use a rocking horse at the very beginning for the latter method, to reveal the presence of a spirit or malevolent presence (Esther) in the room with Jess whilst she performs her ritual.


 Pentagram: pentagrams are often associated with Satanists and Satanism. 

On the left is the pentagram we used in our film opening. It is considerably lower budget than the one used in Supernatural (below); however, it still gets the message across, and gives it a more authentic feel, because Jess is meant to be just a random girl who wouldn't have the resources to bang out a high-budget pentagram with all the trimmings.


 
 Pentagrams are used in horror because of their Satanic association, which stems way back to the Bible. Hundreds of years ago, people around the world were deeply religious, so to them Satan or demons were the ultimate evil, something which has carried through to today. The staying power of religious fear is especially shown through pentagrams and demons in films, because even religious people are frightened by these things. They are also frightening because they epitomise the unknown and the supernatural, something that frightens people because of its very unknown nature.



Mirror: mirrors are often used in horror films, such as Mirrors and Candyman, and is also used in many folklores, such as the Bloody Mary legend, where you chant a name into a mirror and the subject appears to kill you. Many superstitions involve mirrors, which is where I believe their use in horror films comes from. Such superstitions are that if you do not cover a mirror after a person dies in a house, their soul will become trapped in that mirror, or if you shatter one, you get seven years bad luck. Mirrors are considered a reflection of truth and the soul, so to break one shatters the soul. This 'reflection of the truth' is often used in horror films, because things often appear in a mirror reflection, but when the character turns around, there is nothing there. This scares people because, if the threat is invisible unless looking in a mirror, what could be following them around?
 

This is our mirror. We decided to use it because they reflect 'the soul' and show a person for what they really are. The view of the mirror is obscured, so who knows what Jess is seeing in there? ooOOoooOooo.







PART TWO OF THIS WILL BE POSTED IN A BIT, IT WON'T ALL GO INTO ONE POST, HATE LIFE.