CCR #1- Draft

1.) How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

Camera Work-

The film I created uses and challenges many conventions of filmmaking. The first notable convention in the film is the pacing. The film is driven mostly with multiple short takes that keep the audience from fully being able to grasps what happening and help the film move along. Based on my research, horror film tend to have very long drawn out takes, with over exaggerated acting as they avoid a threat. A perfect example, is the opening of Nightmare on Elm Street with Nancy wondering an open corridor for a minute and a half. This conventions really doesn't convey much to the audience as far as plot, more in establishing the specific scenarios sort of like a cold opening. I took a note from the film Child's play, that establish the entire premise of the posses doll in the opening that more resembles an action film. However when applying this to my film i decided to scale it down to a small on set location to help limit the audience perspective on the situation. Similar to the opening of friday the 13 and Halloween. Another more notable camera work technique wa to establish who was dominant in the scene. Most of the shots of SCout the antagonist where shot in low angles to assert his dominance while the shots of Adma where in high angles to show he is the lesser victim.

Dialogue/Plot Reveal -

The way i decided to convey the plot in the opening was through the dialogue. Unlike the opening to The Texas Massacre that translated the plot of the story in the opening through long text paragraphs that resembles a Star Wars opening i decided to clue the audience in through the dialogue that would eventually match up with the visuals. This is what the opening to halloween did with the perspective switch at the end, but they chose to have no dialogue to explain the plot. I did the exact opposite of this concept choosing the focus on the dialogue. Most times the dialogue is serious and dark but I worked in a bit of stale humor in to resemble the humor used in Nightmare on Elm street.This also was another tactic implemented to keep the audience engaged.

Mise-en-scene-

I also used the set and props to help build the story. For example the radio broadcaster references a colt 1911 as the weapon used and when their are close ups of the clock  that same gun and ammunition can be seen laying on the desk which could have been used to clue in audience on the plot implicitly. This tactic was take from Friday the 13 and how part of their opening included a storage boat house that had a ski mask and machete that would ultimately be what the antagonist used at the end of the film. Also on the bulletin board their is filled with health reports of how the butchery closed due strong odors coming from a strange meat

Antagonist- 

Most times the Antagonist appears on screen and is made obvious that his the villain. But I want to see if it could be possible have the antagonist be present during the entire film and make the audience ponder on whether he is bad or not, but ultimately reveal that he is the villain. That is how I accomplished this by having the antagonist be hidden throughout the film but also do the opposite of things that are he is being accused of such as removing a bullet out of the a shoulder that he shot.

Styling- 

I followed the styles of most of most horror films such keep the image dark to build a dark atmosphere. This was accomplished in two ways both during filming and during the editing process. Firstly The majority of the shots are close up to further help in building suspense due to the audience perspective being reduce.Secondly in the editing software Premiere a adjustment layer was added to be able to bring the down the contrast darken the image and also a unsharp mask to style the the film by having very well defined line while also enhancing the noise in the image that gave it the effect of  film grain to make it resemble if it were filmed on a film camera like all the horror movies i researded. One additional thing added to the image was letterbox bar. They where manually placed in instead of changing the resolution due to a problem with the footage but this helps give it the professional look  as seen on all the openings. 

Sound/Incidental Music-

The one thing that really helped bring the second half of the film together was the incidental music that ends in loud almost jumpscare climax. This is a way to que the audience to feel suspense. All the films a i researched used this technique.The music i choose to incorporate was orchestral all thi was the conventional music used in the openings.Also the music was queued in when a dramatic reveal happened as this was common in horror films opening such as In Night Mare on Elm Street the when freddy sillotheues is seen in the back ground. Also the voice over dialogue is source music coming from the radio that is explicitly seen on screen.

Titles-

The titles in opening where implemented into the the film opening in the very fashion they can be found in any of the horror films opening i researched. The font is very simple nothing super flashy. However the one thing that is different is that the color. In the horror films i researched they where either white or a yellowish color but I changed it a gradient of red because otherwise it would be way to prominent on screen. They appeared when when when what they are saying matched up with the visuals. such as SFX and the bullet wound. The location of the titles was place along the bottom of the screen in one of the open left or right thirds of the screen. The duration of the horror films research was about 5 seconds so that what was done in my opening. It may appear that all the title are crammed in the beginning of the opening but this was done intentionally to comment on the horror films i research as they seem to have them a overload of credit in the beginning of their openings but only a few at the end so to emphasize this i had them abruptly end about half through. Lastly, the in all the horror films i research the title has it one black screen personality at the end . The font i extra large and so this what i did for my film opening. 

Social Group-

When it comes to the social groups and social issue, the only issue that comes to mind is the issue of cannibalism, since the film revolves around having cannibalistic butcher. It's portrayed as wrong with him carrying out his operations away from the public eye.But the original idea in the conception of the opening what to shed light on a literal interpretation to the often asked question of ,"Where dose our food really come from?"