PJ: Media Evaluation Question 1,2,3 and 6

Media Evaluation

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MJ: Film Opening Evaluation

Q1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In the area of a vampire horror movie our opening is extremely conventional to the genre with a gang of vampires, headed by a male figure, claiming a victim within the opening of a film, however the female vampires in the opening are shown to be very strong and in some ways pose a threat to the patriarchal system that the male vampire is shown to be working on. Although this "unconventional" representation of women in horror films is actually something that is frequently challenged, with characters such as Selene in Underworld (Wiseman, 2003) and Alice in Resident Evil (Anderson, 2002) challenging the stereotype of women being the damsel-in-distress, and so with our female characters we tried to show this also. In one part of our opening we have a vampire drop into the shot in great athletic style, which is reminiscent of the opening scene of Underworld, in which Selene drops from the roof of a building in the same style, showing the convention of the vampires being stronger than humans.



Selene dropping from building in Underworld

Our drop-in from Stakeout

 


From looking at other film openings of the same genre and even others we found that a frequently used shot is a tracking shot, as the slow movement of the camera builds tension, and so we used a short tracking shot at the beginning of our piece to create a slow lead in to a sudden vampire attack. The camera work within vampire films also tends to be in some ways claustrophobic, with the camera being very close to the characters with frequent close-ups and extreme close-ups to draw attention to characters features and make them the prominent character. So our piece of work conforms to the vampire genre as some of the shots are framed in close-up, giving the feeling of the audience being so close that it invades personal space and includes them in the action.



One thing that challenges the genre of horror is our use of heavy music in the first scene, as many horror films use very calm music or even silence to create a feeling of terror, however we wanted to explicitly show the animalistic attitude of the vampires within the scene, and the bass and guitar riff of the song (Oh, Stranger by The Raveonettes) is like a heartbeat that mirrors the vampires need to attack their prey. The soundtrack also anchors the visuals well, as during the editing process we made sure that some of the shots would cut as the heavy guitar beat would sound, making the sound and visuals go together very well.



Oh, Stranger is a track from a Norwegian group called The Raveonettes which was originally released on the soundtrack to the 2011 video game Batman: Arkham City. Whilst listening to the soundtrack I figured it would work for our film opening as the track fit the Gothic genre and the lyrics of "I see death in your eyes" fits the part in which the vampires kill the man. As well as the fact that to the vampires the man is a stranger and so pity him that they caught onto his scent.

Our film opening form can be seen both as conventional and different at the same time, as it carries a stock plot of introducing main characters whilst also gripping the audience, however it is unconventional as it lacks enigma, due to the fact one of the characters seen to be important dies, although this could be seen as enigmatic because they are now left with the mystery of how this tragedy will be resolved and what the man in the suit will do now without part of his team.



Bela Lugosi in Dracula (Browning, 1931)



One of the biggest conventions within vampire horror films is to do with mise-en-scene, especially with costume, as the use of capes can be frequently seen in older vampire films, such as in Dracula (Browning, 1931) and sharp teeth, with both being extremely iconic for the vampire role. However as a group we wanted to challenge that, and by looking into the history of vampires I found that they were based on the mythology of people who believed in drinking the blood of other living creatures in order to keep their youthful looks and survive, therefore in reality there were no extremely sharp teeth or any of the "special powers", such as super-speed, that these people actually had, so we wanted to challenge the current belief of vampires created by mainstream films such as Twilight (Hardwicke, 2008).

Within the vampire genre, and even the horror genre as a whole, blood is extremely iconic, especially with vampires, as it being a key to their survival, therefore making it iconic, and so for our opening we needed the props of fake blood. We had many packs of fake blood to use on the day of filming, though we should have checked out how good it was beforehand because on the day of the shoot we found that it looked no more than water with a little food dye in it. So we filmed our opening without any blood and used editing software in post-production to create a spurting effect from the neck of a victim and the look of a blood puddle.

Within the film industry vampires are shown to be aggressive and brutal in manner, and so we had to show this through non-verbal language, and so during the vampire conversation the male vampire has his arms out in an aggressive way to show that he is the alpha-member of the group. The way that the teenager is attacked in the final section of the opening also shows the aggressive style of these vampires, however it also shows that the vampires use a strategy of sending the female vampires out first to attempt to catch the prey, which is conventional to horror films with the patriarchal system, as seen in Van Helsing (Sommers, 2004) when Dracula first sends out his wive's to attack Helsing first. We replicated this in our piece by having the female vampires suddenly pop up in front of the teenager as the first line of attack as he's chased.

Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The group of vampires in the opening scene are representative of the social groups in society who are shunned due to not following society’s norms and values as a sub-culture, such as Goths, especially in recent news of attacks on Goths, as shown by the dark clothing and heavy jewelry worn. The way that the male vampire acts is partly representative of the stubbornness of the young nowadays that they are seen as by the elder generations, as he explains that he only cares for himself and not the needs of others.

 

 

The other teenagers (the vampire hunters) constructs a growing view of the technical side of the younger generation, through their conversation when using mobile communication. They are also based around the more mature group of teenagers, as shown through the costumes, such as a suit, and the fact that they are attempting to trap the vampires in the woods shows the initiative to do large things is something which younger people are showing today.

Therefore our film opening challenges stereotypes of young people, whilst somewhat reinforcing them, as we do show them to be independent and doing their own thing, as shown by the vampire hunter, however we explicitly express the animalistic behaviour that is frequently shown in the media accusing the young of being abusive and only work in particular groups, rather than getting along with everyone.

Due to the fact that all of the actors used are teenagers we can only actually represent the younger generations, as we decided that pretending that these young people were actually older than they appeared would be difficult to take seriously.

Q3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

It is highly likely that a film institution would distribute our product, instead of a film released via services such as Netflix, and more specifically an independent film company, like Fox Searchlight Pictures, who specialise in independent British films, due to the low budget of the opening and lack of bankable stars, meaning that it would be more suited to being shown in art house cinemas, instead of large multiplexes. Not only would this be to do with the low budget, but also because the plot of the film is not typically suited to Hollywood style films, as the film focuses on the vampires way of life and the trials and tribulations that come with this, as well as the journey the vampire hunter is on.
 

However if our film was to be seen as more mainstream due to vampires being extremely popular in the 21^st century, our film would be produced by Screen Gems, a company well known for its urbanised horror franchises Underworld and Resident Evil, so due to this our production would suit this.

When marketing the film we would have to use Web 2.0 for a lot of it, with the main way to get the film in the public eye would be to create independent teaser trailers and use a YouTube account solely created for “Stakeout”, and so we would have to film other parts to create these teasers, such as a small piece of back story on the vampire hunter, much like the recent campaign by the marketing group behind Man of Steel (Snyder, 2013) who released a video of the character “Zod” taking over a YouTube account and producing videos of how he plans to destroy Earth if Superman is not handed over, which gives some back story.

This would generate some interest amongst the target audience, as short thirty second episodes would create intrigue as to what it would be leading up to. Therefore word of mouth would also play a large part in marketing, as the free publicity would draw people in.

The target audience for our film would be around males aged 15-24, as this is the peak time in which young people are interested in horror films and the vampire mythology, the fact that it is also a comedy horror, much like Zombieland (Fleischer, 2009), opens our production up to a more varied audience also, as Zombieland was an extremely successful film that's merits come from the hybrid genre of comedy horror. To work out our target audience we also had to think about psychographics, with psychographics being someone's likes and dislikes, and so our production is aimed at those young males who are not satisfied by the "new Hollywood's" way of representing vampires as "beautiful" creatures and so Stakeout returns their mythology to the more dark and gritty style.

 

When thinking about after our product would have been exhibited in cinemas it may well have a DVD release, however a new way of digital distribution in the times of Web 2.0 is to use an internet streaming website, such as Netflix or LoveFilm, who in some cases have films and television programmes that are released straight to their site. This has become a big thing for Netflix recently, who, since early 2013 have had their own "Netflix Original" titles that have gained acclaim for their TV shows, such as House of Cards (Willimon, 2013). This could well be the future of how independent film makers get their films seen in the world without having to pay a high price to have them shown at a cinema, whereas if it is on a web based site some people will just stumble upon it and watch it, then passing the news onto their friends about it. Therefore I believe Stakeout could be well suited to this style of distribution, as the incredibly low budget would make it difficult for a cinema release.

 

An advertisement for House of Cards boasting the "Netflix Original" banner



 

Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

From the start to the end of our work we have had to use our group blog on Blogger, which we used for many different tasks, such as the planning stages up to sharing our final piece of work. Using the blog allowed easy access to sharing our thoughts on what shots and style of filming we should use for our work, and in return the comments section allowed the other members of the group to comment on such thoughts about whether that would work and whether that would actually be possible to produce in our final product.

The blog also has a link that allows you to post videos straight from YouTube or even a webcam, both of these functions are very interesting and helpful to know about, as with the YouTube function the ability to put a clip straight onto the blog can allow someone to explain that they would like to use a particular shot from a film they used and be able to provide the example. The webcam function is very interesting, as it made me think that in the future when using a blog it could be used to just think up an idea and being able to click a button and just speak about the idea, which sometimes can be a lot more helpful than having to write it all down.

Header to Group 4's Blog

During production we used a Nikon D5100, a camera which has a great resolution on it, as well as a low key lighting setting, allowing us to get some really good dark shots. At the beginning of the shoot we used a dolly with a track which allowed us to move smoothly up the road we were using, for most of the other shots we used a tripod for extra stability and smooth pans. The Nikon D5100 is a firm favourite DSLR camera for amateur film makers because of it's great abilities, such as the resolution, it's professional depth of field ability, and how well it copes under low light levels. Some of these functions are shown in the short film "Beautiful Summer" below:

 



To edit we used Adobe Premiere 9.0 which was tough to start as we had only used the programme for our preliminary task and Wilderness Woods reccie previously, however I have used other editing software previously, but not for something as complex as the film opening and so we used our prior editing knowledge to create a cross cut within our piece as the suited teenager talks to the man in the woods via mobile phone, and so by splitting up the two separate pieces of footage to cut from one to the other to show the conversation happening, and creating a parallel narrative.

The editing process took a long time, and we had to be extremely thorough, as we found that occasionally the actors in the scene would start acting before our cameraman had called action, therefore making it difficult to edit when you could almost hear “action” as dialogue began. We also used Photoshop CS3 to create the black outer shadow that can be seen bordering the film opening, creating a darker mood for the film.

We also had some problems when trying to film when we found that our actors were unable to make it to the shoot, meaning we could not film then, and so when we managed to get a new cast together we were pushed for time to get it all done, which ended up happening with only a week to go before our filming deadline.

In comparison to real film making our opening scene is rather different, as we filmed our piece in sequence to how it would be shown in the final cut, whereas most films will not, which is done so that some actors can get all of their scenes for a film done as early as possible to allow time for the harder parts of a film. However there were some positives to this, as it meant that because we were filming in the woods it was highly likely that with all the running we would get our costumes dirty, and so filming in sequence meant that if one actor got muddy from one shot, in the next shot film after they would have the same mud spot, adding to the continuity, the only problem was that on occasion some of the actors forgot about this and so wiped some of the mud off, losing some of that continuity from the last shot.

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