I'm working in a group of 3 with Ben Brearley and Dom Ellis on a slasher film opening with the working title of Black Nightmare, and on this blog you'll see all the research and planning behind our production.

Wednesday 19 December 2012

SlasherEG6: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Orig

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 
(Tobe Hooper, 1974)

PRODUCED BY: Vortex
DISTRIBUTED BY:  Bryanston Distributing (USA)
BUDGET: $83.5k
BOX OFFICE: $ 30.8m
IMDb RATING: 7.5

TITLES:
This film starts by giving the audience a sense of realism, even though it might not be fully correct it still leads the audience to believe that this film is based on true accounts, this sense of realism is used in quite a few slasher openings as it adds to the scare factor in making the audience believe that the films based on a true story making them think that it could happen to anyone.

It then goes on to reveal the date giving away exposition which is also a common convention in most slasher films.




SOUND + MUSIC:
This film is more about what you can hear at the start rather than what you see as it uses these sounds very well and in a way using narrative enigma as we can hear stuff going on but we don't know what it is leaving the audience in a sense of mystery, and this is using Barthe's theory on narrative enigma well.

NARRATIVE ENIGMA V EXPOSITION 
Then when this body is shown there's a radio in the background playing giving away the exposition to what has happened which is also used in most slasher films.
   

However this film goes against todorov's 5 part theory as it starts with a disequilibrium instead of a state of equilibrium where it's normal and hasn't been disrupted but here it's been disrupted from the start, which also acts as a genre signifier giving away the thought that this films a slasher or horror.
 
Also the theory of the final girl from Carole Clover is used in this film as the girl is brunette and seems to be the sensible one in the group, and there's also the 'other' in the group with his disability in the wheelchair making him the outsider.
 

Vodcast on the editing in a sample stalk/slash scene

I chose to do the well known stalk scene in the original Halloween by John Carpenter as it's a good example to analyse the stalk scene as it demonstrates key skills when making a stalk scene.

Monday 10 December 2012

My Ident: Paper Plane Productions

This was my final ident designed, i designed the animation on Coral Draw and then exported it and imported it to Final Cut Pro to finish it off and put it together as a final ident which i can use when making my films.

Friday 7 December 2012

Vodcast On The Halloween Franchise.

In this vodcast we analysed the Halloween franchise and looked at each movie whiles distinguishing common conventions used in them and other aspects which we explain in our vodcast.

Monday 26 November 2012

IDENT IDEA

An ident is a bit like a commercial, but not. It is basically a production company in our example, but you can get TV channels etc, identifying themselves on a small like video just before the film starts, and we're going to create one using Livetype, a software that we'll use in the lessons, or Flash to make our own animations. The ident can also have an audio track over the top of it that we can make ourselves, we will then use these idents at the start of our short films so that the audience can recognise who made it.

What Idents should include:
.Company Titles
.Audio/sound
.Animation
.Company Logo

This is an example from Warner Brothers Pictures production company:


In this example it's easy to identify the logo which is what we will try to do when creating our idents, but also they use a soundtrack with the ident which is unique to Warner Brothers.
The name that i've come up with for my production company is ' Paper Plane Productions' and i've chosen this because it's easy to remember and get stuck into the audience's head , and also everyone is familiar with a paper plane so hopefully they'll become just as familiar with ' Paper Plane Productions'. I tend on having a Paper Plane for the logo with the name ' Paper Plane Productions ' on it , and then build on this for my ident by adding animation, sound , etc.

Friday 23 November 2012

THE FINAL GIRL CONCEPT

 

Laurie Strode
The final girl is a thriller and horror film tradition that specifically refers to the last woman or girl alive to confront the killer, and sometimes the one left to tell the story. The term was created by Carol J. Clover in her book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Clover suggests that in these films, the viewer begins by sharing the perspective of the killer, but experiences a shift in identification to the final girl partway through the film. The final girl has been observed in dozens of films, including Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Hellraiser, Alien and Scream.


History:

According to Clover, the final girl is typically sexually unavailable or virginal, also she sometimes has a unisex name.Occasionally the Final Girl will have a shared history with the killer. The final girl is the "investigating consciousness" of the film, moving the narrative forward and as such, she exhibits intelligence, curiosity, and vigilance.
Buffy, Buffy The Vampire Slayer

One of the basic premises of Clover’s theory is that audience identification is unstable particularly in the case of the slasher film. During the final girl’s confrontation with the killer, Clover argues, she becomes masculinised through "phallic appropriation" by taking up a weapon, such as a knife or chainsaw, against the killer. Also Clover points out that the villain of slasher films is often a male whose masculinity, and sexuality more generally, are in crisis. Examples would include Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. Clover points to this gender fluidity as demonstrating the impact of feminism in popular culture.
Examples of final girls

Williams gives several examples of final girls from the Friday the 13th franchise: Alice from Friday the 13th, and the heroines from Part II and Part III. (He observes that Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter does not have a final girl.) He notes that they do not conclude the films wholly victorious, however. The heroines from Parts 2 and 3 are catatonic at the ends of the respective films, and Alice survives the monster in the first film only to fall victim to "him" in the second. The final girl in Part 2 is carried away on a stretcher, calling out for her boyfriend (which Williams argues again undermines the notion of final girls always being victorious). Moreover, Ginny's adoption of the monster's own strategy, in Part II, brings into question whether the final girl image is in fact a wholly positive one.
 
  How Laurie Strode defines the final girl archetype: . Carrying books.
Final girl Laurie Strode with books and scream queen.
. Later on she say 'I've forgotten my chemistry textbook' and her friends laugh at her and tell her how they forget their book all the time. .Her clothing is very unglamourous, not very sexy. . Also the hair colour dark brown. .She doesn't have a boyfriend, which is usually the case that she un sexually active, whereas the scream queens do have boyfriends and are sexually active. .Responsible character, unlike the other scream queens.   How Sydney Prescott defines the final girl in Scream(Wes Craven , 1987): .Denotation of her night dress is quite childish, and when we first see her she's doing her homework. .She has the conventional hair , dark brown. .Mise-en-scene used for her bedroom with it being neat and tidy. .Boyfriend talks to her about the lack of sexual activity , she's still a virgin. .'I wouldn't dream of breaking your underwear rule' Billie Loomis talking to Sydney Prescott.

Saturday 17 November 2012

FESTIVAL MASTERCLASSES

we went on a media trip to the ASFF short film festival in York on Friday the 9th of November.We went to two master classes, a talk from Danny Cohen the successful cinematographer, and a talk from the head of production at Warp films Barry Ryan.
Danny Cohen Master Class:

This master class was set up like a relaxed conversation between Danny Cohen and Mariayah Kaderbhai where she'd ask him interview styled questions. He started by talking about how he got into the industry and how initially he did a social science degree and then became a photographic technician which gradually led into him being the cinematographer he is today.

Throughout the master class Danny was asked on how he made numerous scenes and these scene would be shown to us and then he'd explain how he put them together, for example one of these was a scene from This is England (Shane Meadows, 2006) and he explained how it was difficult to find an area where everything was like how it should be set out in 1983 so he had to make make changes to the area, like changing the satellites on the houses, and the cars all had to be from the 1980's time period and he told us how some cars were used more than once in the scene as they were on a low budget and couldn't afford any more, he also gave useful tips to the camera angles he used during this film and why he used them.

He also gave more general tips not just about cinematography but he talked a lot about location and how directors like Shane Meadows got a lot of ideas and inspiration on location meaning that you have to react a lot to what you see when on location.  Also he mentioned about how natural light was great to work with and he always worked around natural light and he gave examples of how he was filming in winter where the days were shorter as it got darker sooner so he had to film quickly.

Warp Films Master Class:

Barry Ryan talked about the latest in film productions and a lot about Warp films and its achievements as this year it is celebrating its 10th year. He talked a lot about how to get ahead in the business and all about budgets and how much you truly make off box office intakes once all your financers and people who put money into the project have been paid.

He talked about what the future of film making was going to be in his opinion and how most of it will be over Internet rather than cinema releases, etc. For example he reckoned youtube will be a future hit for film makers.

He went into a lot of detail about how warp films have advertised and presented cover art for their films and how you need to get the attention of your target audience by showing them what they want.

Thursday 15 November 2012

MICRODRAMA: FINISHED FILM + REFLECTION

LADS ON TOUR MICRODRAMA.



I think for a first attempt at a slasher genre microdrama we did well to say we had no knowledge of how to make slasher microdramas. However, we've learnt from this and have taken what we did well and what we could have done to improve into consideration for our next task.



Establishing shot, no narrative enigma.




For example in our opening scene we revealed the characters straight away instead of using the idea of narrative enigma where we could have revealed the characters later on in the microdrama, but we did however use an extreme long shot to establish the setting of the place which is used in most films so in this sense our opening scene was done well.


Panning shot.
 Also when the characters were revealed for the second time we could of used a variety of shots with one of them being a high angled shot to show the vulnerability of these character and how powerless they are to their fate that's ahead of them, but it's used well as a panning shot as we used a tripod to track the characters to keep them in the centre of the frame.

 


Over the shoulder shot.

Although this over the shoulder shot is good as it adds to the variety of shots, we could have thought about what should have been playing on the TV , for example using intertextual references like in Halloween the 1950s flick The Thing plays on the TV while Laurie Strode babysits - another 'thing' lurks outside.

High angled shot.

This high angled shot is good as it adds to the variety and gives the sense that someones in the building and also shows how vulnerable the characters are.





Also to make this scene more creative and give a more variety of shot type this scene would work better if the camera was inside the fridge and the door opened, and this is also a long take so it would break the long takes up if there was a variety of shots instead to make it more interesting.

Here instead on being 1 shot there could of been a match on action shot as the character goes to put the kettle on , then also after he realises it's already on to show his reaction and emotion a close up shot should of been used so the audience senses he's reaction.

This scene is where we included the false scare and we get a great effect from natural lighting and the framing is very effective too. however, a dutch angle might have further accentuated the signification of threat though.


This scene unfolded with a single long take. The framing is initially effective, but when George enters his head is cropped off so it needs to be re framed, and in any case we need shot variation to sustain audience interest, applying the 180 degree rule as we do. Also, the Declan character was meant to be isolated in this scene - so he should be framed separate and alone, with 3-shots for the others signifying their togetherness and Declan as 'the other' (the outsider).


 
This is the scene where the character George meets his death , but the lighting in the first scene could have been done better as the camera light was on .But the natural light when George opens the door was used to a good effect. Also it was a long take and in a violent scene it would be better to do short takes and keep it fast so the audience are on edge and so the more convincing the scene is, and so the preferred reading of seriousness was lost and the oppositional ready of comedy came in.


Also the angles in this final scene were important as we should of created a claustrophobic feel, as the more space there is (ELS-MLS) the more sense the victim will/can get away.

So overall i feel for our first attempt it wasn't too bad , but we could of included a more shot variety and demonstrated a range of cinematography.

MICRODRAMA: EDITING

In our group of 7 we split up into 2 group2 to edit and I went in a group of 3 which had it's advantages and disadvantages, for example we had more variety of ideas when it came to editing techniques but it became awkward when it was only 1 person doing all of it on the computer whiles the others just shared there input.

We started by importing all our footage from the memory card into the computer's hardrive then into final cut pro, where it appeared in the final cut pro library, from here we could then delete all the footage that we didn't want and cut or edit the ones we did want, then added them to the time line where all the shots build up to make a final piece.

These titles at the start of the microdrama were made using the titles tool where you could choose the design for the titles to appear and what they'd say and the font, we used a red font on black to go with the slasher genre.Also using the transition tool we could use the fade from black to normal transition to go form our titles to the opening scene, this transition is used at the start of most films so we thought we'd use it here.

Also all the sound effects that we added to our edit we choose from the music and sound library where there's a wide range of sounds and music to choose from so we choose the best suited for the scenes we used them in. Also we could make our own music from a keyboard which we composed ourselves and then imported it to this library that added it to the scenes which we wanted the music in.

Wednesday 14 November 2012

MICRODRAMA: THE SHOOT

We planned to shoot our microdrama at Ben's house , a member of our group, and we planned to use up a whole day to shoot it, because as it was a microdrama it shouldn't of take as long as a normal film would and we already had most of it planned and ready so all that needed to do was shoot it.

We didn't have many problems organising the shoot as we just communicated over mobile networking and organised a time and place for the shoot. However straight away we encountered a few problems during the shooting. For example,  our arrival scene was next to a busy road, even though there wasn't any dialogue at this point in the film we still wanted to get an extreme long shot which meant crossing over the road and waiting for no cars so we could get the house and the characters in the frame. Another problem we had was the lighting because some of the rooms in the house were dark so we attached a hand held torch to the camera, also we had the problem of natural lighting as it was getting dark sooner because we're in winter so we had to get all the day scenes filmed quickly before it got dark. Also we obviously couldn't get hold of real blood for the slasher scene so on the day we used our creativity skills and used a fake blood recipe to create some blood.

With assigning roles we all thought it was best to let George film most of the difficult scenes as he had the most experience with camera work, so this meant that as we were all involved in the acting we had to change it round so that George's character was killed first, and also at the start of the microdrama when all the characters but the killer were in shot we had the killer, Jake, to film it which worked well, we also had a tripod and a rode dead cat microphone to make it look better on the panning scene and stability also with the dead cat microphone it helped to not pick up any unwanted sound.

Something we did learn however was that we should of had some documents with well structured plans for the variety of shot types that should of been used in each scene, so in our next task we'd organise this better so we'd then have a much larger range of shot type and variety.

MICRODRAMA: PLANNING

LADS ON TOUR.

Lads on tour will be the title for our micro drama as we've decided to base our micro drama on a group of male (lads) to go for a break (tour) to a rented out holiday home, however the genre of our micro drama will be horror as there's a twist to this story where all the lads will be killed off 1 by 1 by the supposedly owner of the holiday home.

We've decided on having 7 characters as there's 7 of us in the group with 6 being the lads on tour leaving 1 to be the killer.

At first we planned on only have 5 lads and 1 killer leaving someone to film. However we needed everyone to play a character so to overcome the filming problem the killer would film the scenes where all the 6 lads will be filmed then in the scene with the killer and the victims the lads that aren't involved in the scene will film this way everyone in the group plays their part in the creation of this micro drama.

We've planned to go with the stereotypical plot of a slasher film where the person that survives at the end is the innocent,nerdy cautious character, and the killer kills off his victims with knifes.

In the oppening sequence we plan to use narritive enigma with the characters by revealing them 1 by 1 , and with the killer using narritive enigma all the way through the micro drama till the last scene where he's revealed.

Binary Opposition.
Throughout the micro drama we'll have binary opposition between the characters from some being loud and rebelious compared to the quiet sensible character that survives at the end. Also the binary opposition with the killer being taller than the other characters.

We'll also include some signifiers for example the clothing that the killer will be dressed in to give the symbolic meaning of his weirdness or in this case he's a farmer who owns the place, and the dark cellar to symbolise the darkness that'll happen there.

SEMIOTICS:THE CONCEPT + KEY TERMS

Signifier & Signified: A signifier is a single we pick out which we think has symbolic meaning ( the signified ): A low angle shot ( signifier ) often signifies power or strength; with a high angled shot the signified is often weakness or vulnerability.

Denote/Connote: Denotation= description of what we see or hear; connotation = the symbolic meaning of these factual details: When we can denote a male having stubble and dark hair this often connotes villainy; this may be anchored through use of menacing, non-diegetic music.

Binary Opposition: The juxtapostion of the refined parson high up on horseback, and the lowly D'Urbeville character, at the very beginning of the Tess mini-series is an example of binary opposition: any mutually exclusive pair form a binary opposition (male/female, rich/poor, rural/urban). Binary opposites are a key device for generating conflict and thus drama. When placed together, we can talk of binary opposites being juxtaposed- paired together to emphasise the contrast; their difference.

Polysemy/ Anchorage: Every media text is essentially polysemic: it has many possible meanings. Our interpretaion will be influenced by our knowledge of other texts, genre, our values, cultural background, age, gender, etc. Signifiers are embedded within texts to point us towards a particular, preferred, interpretation. The mise-en-scene will generally give us clues as to the geographical and time setting, but we often require on-screen graphics or dialogue to precisely anchor the period/location.

commutation Test: Always consider what we didn't see; the choices the producers have rejected.

Preferred/Contested/Oppositional Readin: We may be mainly considering what we consider to be the preferred reading (the interpretation the producers wish us to follow) but as texts are all polysemic, they are open to contested or even oppositional readings. its useful to highlight any sequences you think invite contested/oppositional readings through being poorly constructed.

Narrative Enigma: Mysterious elements within a text form a narrative enigma, needed in any drama.

Intertextual: Meaning of one text is tied to another, earlier text, e.g. to fully understand Scary Movie you'd need to have seen Scream, which it spoofs. This can cause contested readings.

Thursday 8 November 2012

MICRODRAMA: PITCH

My Vampire Girlfriend.

Characters: .Boyfriend
                   .Girlfriend
                   .Boyfriend's mum
                   .Boyfriend's mate
                   .Pizza delivery man
Props: .Fangs
           .Pizza delivery box


The opening sequence would be revealing the vampire biting the boyfriend but not revealing who the vampire is, so here it'll be using narrative enigma, also to show the boyfriend's age, personality etc. using mise-en-scene the room will have pictures of him with his mates.

Then the next day the boyfriend's mate comes round to his house to see if he's coming out but the boyfriend says he's ill and doesn't come to the door but hides in the door because the light from outside hurts him, and all that day he stays in being sick and hungry for something but he doesn't know what.

But later that night the boyfriend's girlfriend comes round and they order a pizza , then when the pizza arrives he eats it but starts to feel faint , because what he doesn't know is he's a vampire and that pizza had garlic in it . Then he realises that he's a vampire and that his girlfriend is and starts having flashbacks off all the times he's seen her it's only been whiles it's dark outside, but this is too late as he meets his death.

Wednesday 7 November 2012

KEY NARRATIVE THEORIES

Propp's 8 recurring character types:

1. The villain - struggles against the hero.
2. The donor - prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object.
3. The (magical) helper - helps the hero in the quest.
4. The princess or prize - the hero deserves her throughout the story but is unable to marry her because of an unfair evil, usually because of the villain. The hero's journey is often ended when he marries the princess, thereby beating the villain.
5. The princess and her father - gives the task to the hero, identifies the false hero, marries the hero, often sought for during the narrative. Propp noted that functionally , the princess and the father can not be clearly distinguished.
6. The dispatcher - character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off.
7. The hero or victim - reacts to the donor, weds the princess.
8. False hero/anti-hero/usurper - takes credit for the hero's actions or tries to marry the princess.

These roles could sometimes be distributed among various characters, as the hero kills the villain dragon, and the dragon's sisters take on the villainous role of chasing him. Conversely, one character could engage in acts as more than one role, as a father could send his son on the quest and give him a sword, acting as both dispatcher and donor.

Todorov's 5-part narrative formula:

Todorov is associated with the theory that every narractive can be broken down into three basic stages: situation, conflict, resolution (or equilibrium, dis-equilibrium, new equilibrium). Crucially, yourprotagonist is not the same as at the outset, but has been changed in some way from events.
1. A state of equilibrium at the outset.
2. A disruption of the equilibrium by some action.
3. A recofnition that there has been a disruption.
4. An attempt to repair the disruption.
5. A reinstatement of the equilibrium.

Levi-Strauss binary opposites & dramatic conflict:

When we consider the use of stereotypes, it is often evident how a binary opposition is at play: how we describe a stereotypical poor or working class person, for example, is nroadly the opposite of how we'd descrive a middle or upper class person.

Scenes within dramas often reflect a use of this idea, with clashing pairs (male/female; rural,urban; rich,poor; hetrosexual, homosexual; good,bad; dominant,submissive) of opposites, in other words binary opposites, sparking conflict or tension.

There is a philosophical argument underpinning this idea: when the world around us (so, not just fictional texts) is organised and categorised through pairs of binary opposites, there is generally a powerful, or 'good', side:
Men are powerful, women submissive; the poor unintelligent, the wealthy intellectual. In other words, the very existence of these binary opposites contains a value judgement in itself, with one side of the equation being negatively cast as the other, or simply wrong/lacking in some way.

Barthes' concept of narrative enigma:

A puzzle created within a narrative; a stranger arrives in Hollyoaks who is s/he? What os s/he doing here? These are narrative enigmas. Trying to figure out these puzzles is part of the pleasure of watching fictional texts.

When the US drama Dallas ended a season with the main antagonist gettig shot, watched by 25 million UK viewers way back in 1980, the nation was gripped, and speculation raged for months as to the identity of the killer. The tapes containing the episode revealing the killer had to be imported under armed guard, and the outcome was reported as a lead news story in the paper and on TV news.

Tuesday 6 November 2012

SEMIOTIC RAP

I've made a rap about semiotics so listen tight,
and these signifiers I think about almost every night,
It's all about symbolic meaning, if you've got that then you've got it right,
and then you could have it signified, yeah you just might,
denotation is all about what you hear or what you see,
and if you've got that then you're on a spree,
which Dave's trying to tell us for free,
this links to connotation which is just the symbolic meaning of these factual details whoopee,
binary opposition is where it's at,
male/female, rich/poor, small/tall are examples of that,
it's all about generating conflict like a dog and a cat,
polysemy anchorage, i see you confused,
where something has many possible meanings, that's where it's used,
commutation test, i see you stressed,
but what about what you don't see , what's being addressed,
that's the commutation test, so don't get depressed.

Tuesday 23 October 2012

M.LANG IN OTHER MEADOWS OPENINGS

Media Language in Twenty Four Seven

Twenty Four Seven (Shane Meadows, 1997) 


Budget: £1.5m
Gross: £175k
4 minutes or 16 minutes.

The idents shown at the beginning of the film are BBC films and Scala. The directors name is presented as 'A Shane Meadows Film'. This is reflecting the auteur theory. There is only one star in the film named. The first thing you notice from the opening shot is that it is in black and white. The film starts with an establishing shot. It is bleak and obvious from this very long first shot that it is going to be a serious drama. This first shot lasts for 30 seconds. More names start to appear after this first shot. The names stand out well against the bleak background as they are all in upper case and bold. The next shot is of the older man. This is a close up and shows the emotion and the condition that he is in better than it would from any other shot. It also helps the audience to sympathise more and feel the same emotions. 
There is then a voice over. Up to this point there had been very minimal dialogue so there was some narrative enigma as it was hard to hear if the characters had an accents may be indicating where the film is meant to be set. 
Depending on where you interpret the opening sequence ends it ends at either
A Room for Romeo Brass (Shane Meadows, 1999)

Budget: unknown
Gross: $18k
The length of the opening: 5 minutes 39 seconds.Failed to get a UK cinema release. But a very brief US release and only made $18000. The first take of the opening sequence is 1 minute and 10 seconds. This shows that it is more of a drama that an action filled film as they tend to use very short shots. Appears to be a rural setting. There is an initial establishing shot also an extreme long shot. Again this lack of editing implies it will be a drama. Only one company ident. As with Dead Man's shoes the directors name is presented as 'A Shane Meadows Film' this is reflecting the auteur theory. BBC films and The arts council also helped fund this film, as they do with other very low budget films. 
In the second take the mis-en-scene is a very poor area with metal shutters. This is not very glamorous and the complete opposite to hollywood style films. This is one of the features that indicates it is a social realist film. The non-diegetic music makes the film seem a lot more light-hearted and doesn't make the atmosphere seem serious. This upbeat is played over the whole opening sequence and is called an audio bridge.

VODCAST ON CONVENTIONS

Films:
Violent Enemy (Don Sharp, 1967)


Outlaw Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood, 1976)


Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright, 2007)
Nacho Libre (Jerad Hess, 2006)

Bullet Boy (Saul Dibb, 2004)


Wild at Heart (David Lynch, 1990)


In this vodcast we related different conventions to different films all ranging in genre and time of production, and in some cases comparing the old films to the more modern ones and seeing the similarities and differences in them and why these are.


Friday 19 October 2012

COMPARING 2 PAST AS FILM OPENINGS


Here are the past 2 film openings i assessed:

Red Run:                                                 Tiny Terror:




These are both the idents that appear first on screen for both AS films, and they both have non diegetic slow piano music playing.


These are then the idents that follow however they're are done using real footage that the students filmed themselves which adds to the creativity of the film openings.

Both film openings start with 3 idents which is common in short films. 


The similarity between these two is that they both reveal the title at roughly 30 seconds in which makes it seem like the common thing to do when presenting a short film opening, also they're both revealing the genre as the audience with a preferred reading will understand that the red on black will act as a signifier to symbolise blood and death, which also links to the slasher genre.
Straight away in the first shot we notice the difference between the two films as Red Run uses great narrative enigma with a variety of quick shots and continuity and doesn't reveal the character until about a minute in, whereas with Tiny Terror the character is revealed straight away in the first shot with not much variety of shots either. However in them both they use this audio bridge of music which builds up tension as if something bad is about to happen and this works well.

Both films use the false scare idea to a great effect by making the audiences think something bad is about to happening when it doesn't this also builds up to what actually happens when the killer is the scare later on.

POV shot

POV shot

 Both of these shots are point of view shot of who'm the audience will think is the killer. However the point of view shot in Tiny Terror is a high angled point of view shot and makes the two characters look vulnerable to the supposebly killer, they both also have a shaky effect which makes it more realistic that it's a point of view shot so it seem like it from the person walking.These both also use great narrative enigma and reveal the character slowly.
  Also both films use a 'normal' house as a setting which uses the whole idea that this could happen to anyone , including the audience watching , which is what most slasher films use so it could also be classed as intertextuality. Furthermore they both use this intertextuality with the slasher being a doll from the film Child's Play (Tom Holland, 1988)
In conclusion i think Red Run worked better with the continuity of variety of shots which was what Tiny Terror was lacking. However both stories worked well.

ASSESSING A PAST AS FILM OPENING

Tiny Terror Film Opening:



Ident 1
 The opening sequences starts with non-deigetic music playing from a piano, it's slow music and makes the audience feel uneasy so it gives this sense of horror genre. This non-diegetic music plays over the idents being revealed with a fade in fade out transition, and the idents are in block capitals which symbolises the seriousness of this film.

Ident 2
This is the next ident to be revealed and it's revealed after the first ident with the transition of fade out form black.
Ident 3
This is the third ident and every ident has had it's own non-diegetic music to but have all been in block capitals.
Title
The title of the film is then finally revealed with creepy non-diegetic sounds which is giving away the genre , and also the font is patchy with cuts and blood drips which makes it seem like a slasher genre and the colour of the font is red on a black background which makes it seem like a horror.

Point of view shot
This point of view shot makes it seem like it's the view from the killer, but using narritive enigma by not revealing who it is giving this sense of mystery. Also using non-diegetic sounds to give again the sense of horror.

Low angle , 2-shot
This scene shows the girl's bedroom and we get the impression from her with the mise-en-sene of how her bedroom is decorated, etc. It's also a two shot showing the relationship with the two characters.