Media Evaluation by laurennoakesox

The House - Opening Thriller/Horror

Progression in our group

Through out the progress within our group i feel like i have gained a better understanding on how to work better within my group as a media student, as coming into media with no previous knowledge i feel like i was able to learn with in my group. However at first it was quite difficult, our group as a whole had no real idea of what or how we were going to approach things. Since this point our group pulled our selves together and made dramatic changes to make ourselves progress as a group and individually. As an individual i do feel like i have been able to work on my team management skills and team work skills which play a big part of making a team able to progress. 

At the beginning when doing the blog i didn't take it as seriously as i should of neither did the group, we soon realized how important this was when one group member took charge and helped us move on quickly and blogging more. When doing our Continuity task i felt like i was very much in charge of this, i was doing the filming and organized the people to film. However i soon realized that trying to do everything was very difficult and put pressure on me. This was when two group members helped me a lot with the filming. And we found that Jordan was very good at filming and was able to collect very good steady shots. I found that within in the group i was the one who was good at organizing things. 

When it came to editing I didn't know anything at the beginning. But working as a group Jordan helped me learn how to do basic editing on the Adobe (Premier Pro & After Effects) program. This helped me feel more confident within my group as i now had basic camera skills and editing skills. When we moved onto our opening film task i felt like one member in particular took role of the leader and helped our group progress massively. 

When choosing location for our film i straight away said my house would be good for shooting a thriller horror film. Now looking back i think this put a lot of pressure on me, realistically it would of been a lot easier for our group if we chose Jordan house as he lives very close to our school, this would of made it more convenient for our whole group. As it was my house i would have to keep checking with my parents if it was okay to have the house free a lot and having a baby in the house proved to be quite difficult as every time we filmed we would have to move all her toys etc. Although the fact that we had baby equipment helped with out story as it was about a baby sitter. Further more i found that the Actor i chose often couldn't make shooting sessions which held our group back, as she was one of my friends i felt that if she didn't come it put pressure on me as our group couldn't progress with the film any further. If we thought better at the beginning we should of used a girl within our own group making it better and easier for us to film whenever.

Overall i feel like the decisions that we made at the beginning did effect our progress however we managed to pull through it and our end product is very much to our standards of how we imagined our opening to look. Even though i wasn't the leader of the group i still do feel like i am able to take better charge of a group and i have shown i can learn new skills as well as develop old skills.

Opening Background Music

For the our music within out piece we decided we wanted background music that continued throughout the whole opening. We wanted the music to help heighten the tension and ominous feel within our clip.   So when strange things are happening in the house the music changes to a deeper scarier sounding music which will then relate to our genre of a horror-thriller film. Our group member looked for the music, we found the clip on a copy-right free website this means that we are allowed to use it legally. The piece lasts just over 3 minutes therefor this gives us enough time for editing to help match the music to our piece at the right points. The piece of music that we have agreed and chosen on has an ambiguos, sinister tone and is perfect to have in the background quietly due to the monotone level and the synths to portray our horror-thriller genre.

The House Final Intro

This is our final intro, our whole group was happy with this opening title and it fits with the atmosphere of our opening. The text zooms down with a blur and stays on screen for a few seconds for the audience to establish the title and create tension before it quickly zooms out towards the audience with our first establishing scene. This title is perfect for our films and helps set a tense nervy tone to the start of our film.

The House 2nd Intro

This was our second idea, this match the criteria of how we imagined our opening title to look like. We took away the wiggle and included a 'blur' effect to the text. This blur carried on  as if the text was jumping forward before it quickly fades out into the background. However with this intro i felt that it didn't flow very well with the text coming back out, i also thought that we should have the scene fading in through the 'O'.

The House 1st Intro

At first we thought of the idea of the title zooming out with the 'wiggle' effect. We thought this effect would distort the audience, however we thought that this title as a whole looked fake and changed the tone of the film. Our film is quite flowing and ominous. This title represents a quick jumpy opening. As we do want a moving title we will have to further improve this and look more into titles.

Productions Intro

We decided that we needed a production company logo animatic to be at the start of our film. When researching we found that the production company was always present first so we felt that this was important for our short opening.

Sound in Horror films

Se7en

Within this opening the director has used parallel sound to create a tense nervy atmosphere for the audience as it shows sharp knife blades scratching away at skin which is represented by the sound of an eery chalk board scratching sound. For our thriller horror i think that if we could use parallel sound to rein-act the action of what happens with in it would create the nervy feel for the audience, which is what we are trying to do. Further more it uses thunderous sounds, which connotes danger and darkness. In our thriller horror opening, we could use sounds like this to show something bad is going to happen.

The conjuring

The first sounds i hear in the clip are deep drowning sounds like a trumpet. This again creates a dark tense atmosphere. The director has also used non-diegetic sound which sounds computerized which helps to add a scary atmosphere. In our opening i think by adding in sound effects it will help build up the tensions the the audience when watching, such a dramatic noises which you wouldn't expect.

Our Title

We got together and discussed the ten fonts I previously posted of the possible title typographys that we might use for our title. We then settled on the following font: Optimus Princeps. The image below is an example of what our title would look like with this font:

We felt this was the ideal typography four our film opening due to it being a very traditional looking font and not sticking biasedly to one side of the genres. For example if we had a bold, sans serif capitlised font like the following of an action genre:

We wouldn't use the text above because it is a typical font of a action thriller with bold, sans serif and capitalised text. However the smoke kind of rubbed out affect on the text looks good and make it seem distorted and more of a horror. This is something we could use in our own text over the top it to give it the same effect.

Furthermore this is a science-fiction/psychological thriller that uses the same bold, sans serif, capitalised text as the skyfall text above. Furthermore the colour red would represent danger and make it stand out more because it is an eye catching colour. This is not what we want to go for as a look as we want a more mysterious, classic and old fashioned serif font.

The reason why we wanted to choose a font such as 'Optimus Princeps' was because we had looked at previous fonts in horrors and thriller-horrors that had this similar style of old fashioned, classic styled text. 

For example these are some similar horror typography fonts:

Then here are some examples of some more specific horror thriller typography fonts that are very similar to ours which we have based it on:

This is why we wanted this classic, serif, old fashioned style similar to times new roman because it is very reoccurring in horrors and thriller horrors.

Evaluation

I think looking at horror and thriller film titles helped us decide on our final title. We feel that most of the titles of these films had a very classic, serif style font, this is then heightened with a dramatic and eye catching background. I like the text for our title because i feel that it is quite plain but effect because it doesn't give to much away in a sense of being a horror movie. The writing also symbolises a typical house number and seeing as the the title is 'THE HOUSE' it fitted with our theme.