Evaluation Part One (Post-Production)

Conventions:
Our title sequence doesn’t directly challenge the codes and conventions of horror, it  more complies with them. We wanted to stick to the traditional ideas of horror, as we now they are popular, especially with the younger audience.
We filmed most of the clips on two or three separate occasions, therefore some of the lighting in the clips is different. When on avid we found some tools which would allow us to change the effect on the clips to make them flow and transition better. We put the same effect over all the clips to make them the same tone. Having the setting as dark it makes it more eerie, scary and intrigues the audience. This is a subtle convention of horror, most opening sequences include it however when researching horrors myself I noticed that not all of them have it in the title sequence as they have the equilibrium in the beginning.
In almost any conventional horror film, where the murderer is a human, they will be male. The females are seen as the victims, more vulnerable, and this appears to be an extremely common but popular convention of horror.         
Breaking Christian Moral boundaries is included in our title sequence because again it is popular with our audience. Our main character Ainsley Moore has been brought up by a Christian family, however he commits crimes which are not accepted by the bible and are seen as unforgivable by God. Although Ainsley’s intentions are supposed to be good, he is troubled and confused as to what sins are and what aren’t.
Even though our film fits in with several conventions, it has a human serial killer, which is a slightly unpopular horror genre. Recently physiological horrors have been well-liked, or satanic stories with supernatural beings. This is one recent convention which our horror doesn’t follow along side with. Having a human and to the other people in the film appearing normal makes it more realistic to the audience watching as they could also be surrounded with people like the main character Ainsley, whereas supernatural beings are seen to be non-existent in many peoples eyes. 

Representation of social groups:
Our Horror is based around teenagers to young adults. We haven’t presented them as rebellious or people who constantly drink and are careless which many horrors do, as we have gone for a different approach. Our serial killer is mentally ill due to his horrific childhood: Ainsley witnessed his father murdering innocent young girls on their family farm, and therefore once his father dies he believes that he has to do the same.  Our title shows very little about the characters but instantly the audience know that the girl is in danger and is venerable.  We did discuss the whole story-line, and what we had planned what that one of his next victims has a chance of surviving because Ainsley develops a liking towards her, which is a representation of young people as being sexual. 

Our Final Production - Horreum, Title Sequence

Here is a link to our final production which we have worked on for several weeks. It took lots of planning, paperwork, editing and effort, so we are all pleased with the end result.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZo-rSJfxR0

Title - HORREUM

We thought a lot about what to call out film, we needed and wanted  name which would instantly make the audience know what genre it was. Eventually we decided to call it 'Horreum' which is Latin for barn, as originally we were going to film the killer Ainsley, taking the victims back to an old isolated barn. The Barn was part of the farm in which Ainsley grew up on with his family, and where in fact his own father killed young girls too. Ironically and conveniently Horreum sounds like horror, so it makes it easier for audiences to establish that it is horror.

Other Horror's have symbolic title appearances. The Ring has childlike writing because the film is a physiological film with a child killer, the writing is also surrounded by a ring, similar to a moon.

 

Our Title is shown written in newspaper cuttings, which implies a mystery about the film, as the idea of a letter written from newspaper letters cut outs is recognized as hidden identity, threats and the unknown.

Editing

Once we had the majority of our footage, we started editing our rushes. Using avid software we started peicing our footage together by shortening clips and slotting them in. As everyone in our group is new to AVID we couldn't be extremely fast, so it takes a lot longer than we had originally expected. After what we thought was all the clips put together we realised it was under two minutes long which is quite short for an opening and decided to make it longer, as most opening title sequences weall analysed were between 3 and 6 minutes long. Also because the shots were filmed at different times of day and we did not have much lighting equipment, all of our shots were different shades and colours of light. Therefore we decided to put an effect over all of the effects to make it flow better, and look well put together and effective. Some needed to be brightened and some needed to be darkened, as we wanted it fairly dark to create the horror tension although light enough to see the scenery and characters. 

Our film is called horreum and instead of writing this in text we decided to have the murder, walking away from newspaper clippings spelling it out. After this shot we want to change the music and make it more upbeat, showing more the equilibrium stage of the film and where everything is happy and good. This is a key part of horror films because it makes it more realistic to the audience as then when their life is good, it could suddenly go bad like this. We still need to develop the audio, because the music is a key element in our production and we wanted to make sure we made the right decision when choosing it.