Evaluation question 1

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

Narrative
Our film narrative followed a stereotypical linear narrative which is a convention of most films similar to our genre; it follows a chronological structure that the audience can easily follow. However we challenged part of the conventions as we added elements of dual narrative/ flashbacks throughout the opening. As a result it develops the overall narrative by breaking up the story that fully explains the situation of the characters to the target audience. The idea of combining the different types of narrative were our own as we wanted to create something that other horror/thriller film haven't done before and that would appeal to the target audience. It challenges the stereotypes of horror which is something that we aimed to do.

Mise en scene
The lighting in the film opening was quite dark and bleak as we wanted to create a sinister and tense atmosphere that would appeal to the target audience. The shadows cast by the tress in the woodland helped to give this feeling, and represents a sense of seriousness. We desaturated some of the clips so that it would convey the dark atmosphere, and by taking out the brightness and colour it portrays that the main character is in a dark or dangerous place. The lighting is similar to other horror movies, for example the opening of The Woman in Black features an extremely dark and shadowing location which creates the horror feeling that is conventional.
The antagonist wore dark black clothing; a hoodie, coat, trousers, gloves and shoes. Through doing this we met the conventions of other media products where the antagonist does the same. Following this convention helps to create tension and the feeling of danger as black connotes death and danger, so the negative connotation links with the other horror films where people associate the person wearing black is going to do something bad that will affect somebody.
The female characters were dressed in casual, non representing clothes, that featured colour. This doesn't represents them as being vulnerable which is something that most horror/thriller films do. We wanted to present the females as being strong individuals rather than weak and open to danger as this would appeal to more females if they are aware that a normally degraded and victimised gender are being represented as strong.
By casting a female protagonist, we have challenged and defied stereotypical conventions of horror films, as they normally feature a male protagonist. By doing this and going against the normal form we hope to appeal to a wider target audience, which will make our film available to more people.

Sound
We used a conventional non diegetic tension builder sound track throughout our film opening in order to create suspense and to make the audience aware that something bad is going to happen. we added more soundtracks towards the end and overlapped them to signify that something imminent is going to happen; this is a stereotypical feature of most horror films, where the music comes to a climax when an event is about to occur. To create more of an atmosphere, we included some ambient sound such as the two girls laughing and the stick snapping when the antagonist steps on it, as this gives it a more real feeling and to add to the context of the situation.

Editing
When we were editing our film, we removed some of the colour (as mentioned above) in the
flashbacks to help notify the audience when the flashback begins and ends. Through removing the saturation and colour it also gives a tense and sinister atmosphere for the audience to feel. A conventional flashback in any film also does this, for example in 500 Days of Summer, a different coloured and saturation is used to define the flashback.
We also used a lot of quick cuts between shots to create more tension, and this is something that many other horror films do as it picks up the pace of the film and it builds up to the climax of the film.

Camera
When filming, we ensured that we captured a variety of different shots and angles so that we would have a choice of which ones we wanted to use when it came to editing. This conforms to the conventions of horror as many different shots and angles are used to build up tension and often to show points of views from the different characters. We did this in our film, for example the chase scenes where we had the camera shot from the antagonist POV and the protagonists POV. Having over the shoulder, high and low angles and shot - reverse - shots help to make the film more interesting for the audience to watch as they are aware of the events from a variety of perspectives.

Titles
One of the most important stereotypical conventions of any film, especially horror movies are the

titles. We decided on the name 'The Hunted' for our film as we felt that it fit in with the narrative of it it and described the basic plot of the film. It also creates a sense of mystery because it doesn't give away who  'The Hunted' is/are so will leave the target audience wanting to watch more in order to find out who it is. The typography that we used was 'No Fear' by Jonathan S. Harris, and this is because The way that the font sat on the screen made it look like it had been painted on - and with the colour red used it represents that it is blood being painted on. It is a stereotypical font as it relates to the genre because it looks like blood. It represents the narrative of the film, but also the colour red connoted danger and death, which relates to our film. Th white bordering of the title signifies the innocence of the two girls in the film, which presents them as the protagonists.

Location
Our film opening was set in Farthinghoe Nature Reserve, which is a woodland area close to our village. The wood setting is a conventional feature and setting in horror/thriller films because they allow no escape and there is no place of safety that the characters can run to; therefore it conforms to the features of the genre. The woods also creates an atmospheric feeling to the film as it is eerie which relates to our narrative. 

Post production - making changes

With our given feedback from our focus groups and the questionnaires that we asked them, we made various changes to the final film opening in order to improve it as much as possible. These changes were made after we produced the rough cut. The first change that we made was the fonts for the credits and the titles that the focus groups helped us to decide, and we also came to the conclusion that the titles would look better if they were on screen for a little bot longer, so we extended the time that they were on screen for. This would help to create more suspense for the audience as they would be anticipating what happens next; we also added a red shadow to the titles as this colour connotes danger and blood, which are both common themes in our film opening; though the blood representation is something that foreshadows what comes after the film opening because there is no specific mention of blood in the actual opening. The fade to black at the end of the titles signifies that the full film is about to start, and also the use of black connotes darkness and danger as what comes after the black is unknown.

From our audience research we also found that they thought the saturation levels in the flashback should be stronger, so this was something that we did in order to make the flashbacks more recognisable. The questionnaire also told us that the participants thought that we could add more sound into the film to increase the tension, and that this could be done by increasing the pitch of the music. So this was a change we made, as we want to create as much tension as possible. Megan and I also felt that the positioning of the credits could be better as occasionally due to the background they would disappear because they blend in. As a result we tailored each element of the credits so that it didn't go out of sight

Post production - editing

When editing our film, there were a number of specific things that we did other than just cutting and moving the clips that we had filmed. The basic editing that we carried out was changing the timings of the clips so that they smoothly transitioned into one another. As well as this we had to synchronise the sound to some of the clips, for example we separately film the sound of the antagonist stepping on the stick so we needed to ensure that the timings matched up to make it look professional. We changed the timings using the main bar where all of the selected clips collate at the bottom half of the screen, and we were able to specifically remove and cut the clips to make the transitions better.

One if the main things that needed editing was the flash back scenes, both before and after the incident occurs. Along with the feedback from our audience questionnaires we felt that the clips would look more convincing if we removed some of the saturation and colour to give it a feeling that it was from the past. 

We did this by using this adjustment tool bar:

Within this tool bar, are the settings for the saturation levels and the colour levels, and these were what we minimised in order to get the effect that we achieved in our final film opening. 

In order to fulfil audience pleasure with tension and suspense, we felt that the laughter over the top of the flashback should sound more eerie than just the original audio. As a result of this, we found a few audio effects pre programmed in iMovie that we put over the top of the original audio clip that made it sound more eerie. The effects that we used were 'Pitch Up 1' and 'Large Room' as the first effect helped the audio to sound more scary as children's voices in thriller films are a convention feature to help create fear. The second effect that we used provided the echo that is present in the final film. We also increased the volume on some of the clips to make a specific sound stand out to the audience. For example, when the antagonist stands on the stick, we increased the sound of the stick snapping so that it would have more of an impact on the audience, and instil more tension into the audience. 

A further thing that we edited was the sound score than ran throughout the film opening; along with a second track that we layered over the top. We layered the tracks on top of each other by adding a second tier of sound to the editing bar at the bottom of the page. This allowed us to play both tracks at the same time, and we selected the climax of the second track so that it would portray tension and suspense. 

Post production: making the credits

We needed to add the credits to our film opening as this is a stereotypical convention that all films have, either at the beginning or at the end, and as this is an opening the credits will be inserted throughout the film. The opening credits will include the most important people in the production of the film, such as the actors/actresses, the directors, and the producers. 

Having decided on the font, we used LiveType as our software to create the credits as it allowed us to make the text so that it would move across the screen as well as allowing us to place them in a specific place on the screen. We could also tailor the specific credit to fit a shot, so that the colour would stand out against the background.

Post production: making the title

We used the website www.dafont.com to find the font for our titles as there weren't any preprogrammed fonts that conformed to the expectations of our genre. After looking through the variety of genres of font that there were on the website, we found a font called 'No Fear' that we felt fitted with our film.

We downloaded the font onto LiveType so that we could edit it to fit the timings and colours we wanted. The original font was black and white, with a smaller size and a different width. In order to fit on the end screen that we had planned, we had to increase the size and width; we were able to do this in LiveType. We felt that the colours of black and white didn't fit in with the theme and genre of our film opening, so we added in the colour red because this represented danger and death - which is a common theme in our film. The finalised text was then given transitions and saved in the correct format.
When we finished the title, we imported it into iMovie.

Post production: deciding typography

For our film opening, we had to find a font that we could use for our credits and the titles of the film. We used the website www.dafont.com as this was a website we had used previously in other projects, so we knew the layout and how to download the fonts once we found them. However when we looking through the different fonts for the credits we couldn't find any that we thought suited the genre, as some where very extravagant and we felt this may detract from the film itself. We designed a questionnaire that asked a focus group to decide on three fonts, and the highest votes was MS PGothic in regular. As a result we used a pre downloaded font on LiveType which was MS PGothic in regular. We chose this one because it was simple, yet the harsh lines of the letters reflected the tone in the film opening.

Post production - deciding credits focus group

For our credits, we wanted a typewriter style font that would fit in with the stereotypical conventions of our film opening genre. The typewriter style font is often seen in thriller films as it presents an eerie feeling to the credits as it is an old fashioned piece of equipment. However we wanted to keep the font simple as we didn't want it to take attention away from the visual element of the film; as a result we didn't look on www.dafont.com because the fonts that are on this website tend to be very over bearing, something that we were trying to avoid. Because of this, we chose 3 different fonts from the editing programme LiveType as this was the easiest was to find what we wanted. We asked the same focus group as the titles group so that we could have a continuous opinion from the same people.
The three fonts that we chose were

• 
  
• MS PGothic - regular, 
• Baskerville old face 
• Century Gothic.

1. Which font best fits the thriller genre and narrative?
The results from this questionnaire were;
MS PGothic- regular; 5
Baskerville old face; 1
Century Gothic; 2

The least popular font was 'Baskerville old face' with 1 vote and the focus group said that this was because the font was very plain and quite boring, and that it wouldn't stand out over the tope of the visual material. They also said that the font was too elegant and feminine for the genre of our film, so it wouldn't fit with what we wanted. The second lest popular was 'Century Gothic' with 2 votes, and this was because the font was a very popular font in general, so it wouldn't make our production stand out from the crowd. They also said that it didn't have the typewriter feel that we wanted so would not be suitable. Finally the most popular font with 5 votes was 'MS PGothic' in regular, and this was the most popular because it had a thriller type feel to it, and best represented the typewriter theme that we wanted.

As well as this questionnaire to help us decide, Megan and I wanted to make the final decision on the font for the credits as there were still some things that we wanted to decide.