Evaluation- Question 1

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



Main Title
The title of our film is 'The Hanging', and we chose this name because it relates very strongly to the storyline in our film, about a girl who was abused by her father and resulted in hanging herself in the woods, only to return and haunt others. This title is suggestive but it also leaves many viewers on edge as to what may happen. We stuck to the theme of red and black because it represented the genre of the film efficiently. The text is bold and daring, and looks like blood on a dark background. 

Since our main title was partly inspired by 'The Descent', we used Live Type to make it into an animation and to make it much more interesting for our audience. We also wanted it to fit into our genre so we added a heart monitor along with the noises it makes to add suspense and the sense of increased pace to our opening sequence. We continued this theme at the end of our opening sequence with a flat line sound and thought this was really effective.           





Opening Credits
For our opening credits, we decided to include some of our main credits on black screens in between the shots of Izzie walking through the woods. We used this idea because it showed time passing by and it also showed the woods getting gradually darker.

We decided that it wouldn't be a good idea to use black screens between every shot so later on in our opening sequence we added our credits to the side of the screen. We kept the same font as it was essential we kept the 'horror' element and it had to be continuous. We also placed the credits at the same corner of the screen and within every other shot so that it wouldn't distract the viewer from the main film. This worked really well as it didn't

cut up our film and also meant that it kept the pace we intended. We got this idea again from the film 'The Descent', where we could see the opening credits appearing alongside the scene and we believed that this fitted nicely. It is also very well suited for our genre.

Genre
The film 'Orphan' inspired our film genre because it had a very dramatic and chilling story, and the main focus of the film was a young girl which we wanted to use in our opening sequence too. Another film that inspired our genre was 'The Ring', which also greatly influenced our main focus of the young 'innocent' girl who became evil and the location as she was drowned in a forest.

Costume/Make Up
'Orphan' also gave influences to the style of the girl, as in what she wore, for example she appeared very innocent with small pigtails in her hair and bows, then she wore a dress with buckled shoes and long socks. We interpreted this style into our work as we wanted our young girl to have a hidden identity, where she may look very sweet but has a very dark side to her. The contrast of costume and personality was a very important factor in our opening sequence and story, because we wanted to deceive the audience and make them believe that this girl isn't as normal as some may think. We also used the element of make up to  make her appear deathly and haunted, by making her face extremely pale with talcum powder and then adding some darker eye make up underneath her eyes to hint that there was something unusual about her, and also to imply she could be dead. 


Another inspiration for our costume was from 'The Woman In Black', since the opening sequence to this film shows three young girls, about the same age we wanted, wearing very old and Victorian styled clothing to make them appear well dressed hinting they were very well behaved. We wanted to give this impression so we used this style in our little girl's costume.

Location/Opening Set up

These establishing shots were used for the opening of the storyline and they set up the scene quite nicely because they showed a teenager walking through the woods on her phone who was about to become a victim, and these shots also allowed the audience to see where she was and how time was moving on with the credits. Since the woods was empty whilst filming and all you can see is the teenager and nature, there is a sense of isolation and fear as if something dramatic is about to happen. The music in this sequence also helps to emphasise this and adds suspense. The audience can tell from both these shots and the music combined that the genre is horror. 



We got this idea after watching the opening sequence to 'The Shining' and also 'Twilight', as both of these included establishing shots in different ways, and we thought this would ease the audience into the storyline and show a build up before something dramatic happened instead of jumping straight into a murder scene. It increased the suspense and made the audience much more curious as to what would happen, and it also allowed for credits in between the shots.






Flashbacks

In 'The Shining', we discovered there was a scene which included flashbacks of these two young, innocent looking girls being brutally murdered and covered in blood. After viewing these clips, we were greatly influenced to produce similar shots in our opening sequence because it would demonstrate to the viewers why the young girl is haunting the woods. It also added pace to our opening sequence. However, since we had to change our storyline as our young actress (Emma) could no longer be a part of our filming, we used a teddy bear covered in fake blood to demonstrate the girl being murdered, then we also shot the noose hanging from the tree to represent her death of her being hung in the tree. These small, fast pace shots add suspense whilst revealing some of the film and making the opening sequence more interesting to view, leaving the audience on edge and wanting to find out what actually happened to this girl.