Evaluation questions:

Q1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real life media products?

In the very beginning of our planning stage, we set ourselves specific goals and aims to achieve at the end of the filming and everything else. One of these aims was to write, film and take part in a traditional horror that ticked all the boxes of the norms that can be found in horror films. We wanted to be as close and as accurate as we could to the horror genre. In the planning stage of our media product, we did not have a clear idea of what our film was meant to be in terms of a genre but we decided to go with horror. This was because horror is not just shocks and gore but can be split into many different sub genre's to. For an example, you can get psychological horrors, your plain gory ones etc. but the great thing is that thrillers come into the idea as well. We based our film choices on this basis so we decided to study films to give us ideas that were specifically horrors but also shared distinctive conventions of thrillers.

One film that we looked at was Memento. This is a psychological thriller that plays with your mind and toys with the ideas of confusion and desperation. Memento is not seen as a horror but there is no clear line as to how horrors and thrillers should overlap/counter from each other. Although this is the case, Memento does have scenes of violence in it which is always the key element to horrors and most thrillers. We wanted to portray and use this idea throughout our film opening because we wanted to stick with horror but also the fact that we did not want to concentrate or even use gore at all as our film is much more of a psychological horror than a gory thriller.

Another key element, form and convention to the majority of horrors is the idea of shock-tactics. This is where there has been a long period of time that has been dialogue and not much movement or action but suddenly the film shows alot of movement or violence to shock the audience. A great example of this is the scene in The Shining where Johnny is on his tricycle moving down a hall way where he sees two twins holding hands with each other to show vulnerability, the editing then changes and cross cuts between the two sisters as they were and to them lying dead on the floor in a pool of blood with a huge axe by their side. Although this is a very common convention in horrors, we challenged this as we disagreed with the use of it in our film. We wanted to portray a more psychological horror more than a gory horror filled with shock-tactics.

Our film (Aftermath) uses many examples of 'subjective' camera work, where the characters on screen know alot more about the situation than the audience giving a sense of confusion and desperation to find out the answers. Subjective camera work is another key convention of horrors and it is also used to create restricted narration which results in a mystery. This is partly through the fact that our film is an opening but also because we did not give the audience alot of information, there were more camera shots/angles/movement than there was dialogue. This keeps the audience intrigued and wanting to know what is going to happen to the people involved in the film. Subjective camera work can be done through editing, angles, movement and shots but the most important thing to remember is that for it work there needs to be close-ups and extreme closeups in order to confuse the audience as they can't really tell what is going on or who is involved in the scene.

This is an example of subjective camera work in our film as the camera is focused on the feet and you cannot see the character's faces so you are confused and do not know what is going on, this is a key element to horrors/thrillers. 

Things that didn't work/fit and the problems we faced

Music:

In order to get some music to play over our opening we chose to use garageband. Garageband is a website which has music that is not copyrighted meaing that we could chose any genre of music we wanted for free. There was a wide range of music on this particular website but we wanted a certain type to emphasise, and portray a sense of sadness, distress and loneliness but also to sound scary and mysterious. We narrowed it down to 5 that we liked that unfortunately sounded pretty similar all together. These were not songs written but noises that conveyed a certain message.

Music plays a key role in horror films as it can act as the heart of emotion for both the characters and the audience. Depending on the music being played can result in a sudden or gradual change in the mood of the characters and can change the story all together. This can be through synchronous/asynchronous sounds or contrapuntal sounds etc. Our overall thought regarding the music to include in our film was that we wanted it to be non-diegetic meaning that you could not see the music being played and also for it to be sychronous to what was going to happen on the screen.

In order to maintain the ideas, codes and conventions of traditional, modern day horrors, we had to keep in mind the fact that alot of horrors have the same music being played all the time in the opening credits. This is so as to not confuse the audience but to make them feel uneasy because if the scene was a sad scene where someone has died for example but the music being played is content then this can be seen as wierd and/or freaky. On the other hand, if there was a happy scene so in this case, Chloe's flashback of her and her sister Aimee playing in the park but the music being played is distressing, scary and generally opposite to the pictures on the screen then this can have the same effect or if not can create a feeling that everything is not right and the characters should not be doing what they are doing.

Things that didn't work/fit and the problems we faced

Plots:

There was alot of confusion between our group over what to include in our plot which made this particular category hard to pick a distinctive final idea. On the basis of this we left the plot to the very end. The problems we faced were that we couldn't get everyone in one place to shoot our film at the same time. As there were only four of us in the group and only one actor, we needed other, extras to be in it which was difficult as nobody we asked was around at the same times as our filming schedules.

However this did not matter as we wanted our finished product to be focused on Chloe's character but also her sister who is actually her sister in real life. Our original plot was that Chloe's character had gone mad at the idea that her sister (Aimee) had gone missing and presumed dead. She comes to the conclusion that she must be dead but thinks that some man has killed her. She decides to go to the extreme and hunt down and kill the man she thinks abducted Aimee. Our original plan regarding this particular plot was that the last scene would be of Chloe walking towards a small room where a man would be in there tied up and blind folded but the screen fades to black where you here the man screaming and preferably dies. The idea is that Chloe gets her revenge, which meant that the ending of the film was shown in the opening credits but the idea was to have the story of how aimee disappeared and how chloe lost he way shown after and then have the ending at the end again.

Although this seemed like an acceptable plot as it fitted well with the codes and conventions of a typical horror and it had taken into account the popular answers that we got from our questionnaire in which there were things that our target audience required, we decided against it. This was because not all of us agreed with the ending how ever plausible the build up to the climax sounded. We decided after deliberation that the ending was very typical and too predictable and went against one of our aims in which we wanted to make a unique ending and in general unique horror opening. Alot of openings to films show the end of the film first to give the audience the feeling that they want to find out  more and what happens to the characters, which we didn't want.

Things that didn't work/fit and the problems we faced

Dialogue/script:

In order to maintain the idea of simplicity throughout our film we decided to keep the script to a minimum. Our original idea was to have Chloe's anonymous character leaving an answer phone message to the sister's mum saying that she had done something wrong and that she was confused both mentallyand physically. Our other idea was to have a scene right at the very beginning of the clip where Chloe is seen walking up and down a balcony (Abby's house) where she begins to have flashbacks and screams out, "AIMEE!!!" Although this was a good way to keep the plot simple but effective as both the phone message and the fact she screams Aimee tells the story, we decided against this. This was both seperate scripts made the opening to our film very confusing, it was hard to tell what was going on or who was involved.

Another problem is that many horrors use dialogue to emphasise someones feelings so they maximise the potential that the dialogue has on the audience. The fact that we only had two separate scripts where only Chloe was talking made the film confusing as the scream was at the beginning and the phone message is right at the end. In between these two pieces of dialogue is just various different shots of the locations and the characters body language.

Final ideas

The dialogue:

We decided that in order to maintain our simplicity idea throughout our clip, we wanted to keep the dialogue to a minimum. The only dialogue we hear is through flashbacks. The first piece of dialogue is through the underpass where Chloe's character shouts (non-diegetic sound), "I can't do this anymore". We are made to think that we don't know what she means until the end. The next piece of dialogue is one word, in the middle of the clip, Chloe's character whispers the word Aimee (sister's name) and Aimee's face appears on the screen with an extreme close-up with the park behind her. After this is the scene where they are in the park together and they are sitting on the bench where Chloe goes to touch Aimee and says, "sometimes, I think she is still here." Aimee then disappears. The final part of dialogue is the final shot where Aimee walks off leaving Chloe holding the flower and saying to the audience looking away, "Well, I guess you want to find out how my sister disappeared?"

• I cant do this anymore
• Aimee (WHISPER)
• Sometimes I think shes still there
• I guess you want to know how she disappeared

The props:

We decided that in order to maintain our simplicity idea throughout our clip to only use two props, which were the flower at the beginning and end of the clip and the music box. We thought that if we added the baby photo of Chloe and Aimee would be too much and would go against our aim of simplicity. Also a common answer in the questionnaire regarding props was that they should not play a big part in horrors because the audience should be made to focus on the dialogue, facial expressions, and body language portrayed through the character's emotions using close/extreme close-ups.

The music:

The final element to our finished product was our music of choice. Using garageband, we had narrowed it down to four songs that unfortunately sounded very similar to each other. They all had an eerie feel to them which was great but the problem was that they did not compliment the mood of the film and each one by itself changed the mood all together. Although this was a problem, we all came up with the same idea this was that if we narrowed it down even further to the three we liked best but then we mixed and played them over the top of each other, then we could get an appropriate, overall feel for the film. We did this and miraculously, it worked, there was the eeriness of the low cello in one of them to symbolise Chloe's distress of loosing Aimee, the guitar/drums that gave it a bit of a cheesy but effective feel then lastly, the sound which (on garageband) was called 'Alien' this was a very effective piece as it gave a sense of confusion which worked really well and ticked off our aim to create a unique horror/thriller. 

This is a screen grab of the period of time when were choosing songs from garageband to use in our final opening to our horror film. In the end, we all agreed to use 'Conspiracy' as it ticked all the boxes. and also went really well with the shots and angles in the film.

Final ideas

Name of our film:

After the planning stage we decided to call our horror film 'Aftermath'.

The plot:

The plot is all about an anonymous girl who we never know the name of who is looking for her lost sister. Chloe's character and her sister (Aimee) had a really good, loving relationship but Aimee was kidnapped and Chloe's character fears the worst has happened. The opening scene begins with the anonymous girl holding a flower that she drops standing on a wall but you don't see her face, the screen fades to black and, "One week later" appears on the screen.

The next shot is of her turning and twisting a music box that we are meant to think she shared with her sister. She opens the box and the music plays she then violently hits the bedroom walls with her fists and knocks off some books on a shelf. The vision switches to the girl walking by herself, drunk in an underpass where the visions are still happening but she appears to be confused and hits the walls again, on the other side of teh underpass, she nearly gets run over and the music box appears again, she whispers, "Aimee" who is her sister.

The final clips are of her with her sister in a small park, we don''t know if she is dead or is Aimee is back but they seem to have a good time together. the very last shot is of chloe's character looking away as Aimee walks off into the distance.  

Final ideas

Target audience:

After much deliberation and in terms of our questionnaire regarding the people we asked, we had finally come up with our target audience. We agreed that because our film featured two girls who looked around about 17-19 years old we would focus on portraying youth through horror/thriller genre. We decided that our target audience would be aimed at people between the ages of 15-25 which is pretty much when youth begins and finishes.

I believe that the reason why we chose this particular age group and period is that our film not only features youths but also portrays them in a certain manner. I think that youth is heavily regarded as the time of issues and trying to find yourself and realising who you are. Our film focuses on that as Chloe's character is confused and sad through losing her sister but is also realising her potential.