I'm in a group of 3 with my class mates working on a slasher film opening with DOM ELLIS and DECLAN WILLIAMS and on this blog you will see the research planning and production aspects of the film of which we are producing which had the working title of Black Nightmare.







Wednesday, 19 December 2012

Narrative Structure and Representation in 3 Slasher Openings

Considering what to expect in the films e.g Sex age textuality Architype and include your own interpritation. Always back it up with specific detail from what you can see from the txt and use semiotics to denote and connote and explain and say why these signifiers were used and why they were chosen to be shown.
E.g A Red rose connotes romance
look at the characters clothing and how they speak
E.g Adult figures of authority and showing their power to inferior characters such as children

The Three films that I looked at were The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper 1974), A Nightmare on Elm Street (Samuel Bayer 2010) and Halloween (John Carpenter 1978)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)

Opening Shot of mangled body 
The opeing shot is a close up of a mangled up face, then the camera slowly zoom's out of it and reveales a shot of a grave yard with a dusty american background also theis scene has diegetic audio of a radio which is telling the audience of what crime happened to make this startling scene apear.




Showing or giving some info in the titles of what is going to happen


The Titles of the the film are a yellow colour on a black background also they are a san serif font which indicates the film will be very dramtic and sort of scary,The titles go upwards off the screen so that more come up however this can give off a sence of mystery of where its leading



 
Scream Queen of this film

The typical screem queen is not shown in this film due to the female character is a brown haired interlectual character who seems to have alot of common sense also she is not a very busty woman therefore she doesnt have the atributes of a typical screem queen




A Nightmare on Elm Street (Samuel Bayer, 2010)
Freddie Krueger  (The Killer)
The Opening shot of the film is a medium shot which shows the killer Freddie in shot which is unusual for a slasher film to just reveal the killer straight from the opening shot as it removes all of the narrative enigma. It also gives the audience a little information on who and what the killer looks like and what weapon he uses to kill his victims with, These being the bladed hands shown in the picture above.



This shot is a long shot of the bed of which the final girl is in of which shows that the focus is on her and that the killing is taking place in her dream. The lighting has been focused on the bed and purely the girl in the bed to add more effect and emphasis on her which is key to capture the audiences attention

Long Establishing shot of scream queen

This shot shows the scream queen locked or tied up in a room of where she is about to die, this shot is in her dreams and all the focus of this is on the girl sat in the chair, you can tell this because of the way the light is reflecting on her and making her look in the middle of the light. This shows the audience that there is only one character on screen that is visible at this moment of the film.


Halloween (John Carpenter, 1987)

The opening shot of the film Halloween is an extreme long shot of the house of which the final girl or in this case the sister of the killer is in, the shot has a title before it with halloween the date on it and then we follow the camera in as a POV shot towards the house

The Killer in this film is linked with the victim, this is the archytype where by the boy you see here is the younger brother of the the victim which is the girl who he kills in the opening sequence. The girl he kills would count as the screem queen due to her actions leading up to the killing.
This shot shows the victims commiting a sin which would be seen as bad by god and that is why they are being killed due to what follows by them progressing upstairs and then having sexual intercoaurse upstairs and that would be a signifier as to why they were killed

Friday, 7 December 2012

Idents and Titles Analysis

Slasher (2001)
Low budget indie $165K,no idents and no titles
Set like a game show and no titles ran throughout the film even after the main plot had begun

Urban Legend (Jamie Blanks 1998)
Budget $14m and made $38m in the US and $1.1m in UK
Has a Trimark Ident and Pheonix ident also has non diegetic music over the titles opening stops after 2:31s and more titles start again.

Scary Movie (Wayanes 2000)
$19m budget for this film in US and made $157m
Dimention Films is an only ident, after the opening scene there was the title of scary movie

Mad House (William Butler 2004)
Budget
Opening shot is wall with blood and no credits or titles and opens with a window screen, titles apear on a black background with white writing. Lions Gate ident.

Black Christmas (Bob Clarke 1974)
Budget
Serif font used quite often in the opening titles and

Cry Wolf (Jeff Waldow 2005)
Budget
An ident for rouge pictures and then dissapears and then a hypnotic pictures ident appears behind it. Then the opening title show the title and is in a sort of typewriter style and has a serif font also has decayed lettering on the title.

Donkey Punch ( Ollie Blackburn 2008)
Warp Films ident and film 4 ident appears with titles following with a serif font also then

Dressed to Kill (Brian De Palma 1980)
Has a metro goldwyn mayer ident then a Samuel Z Arkoff ident follows that with roughly 6 titles on this.

All the Boys love Mandy Lane (Levine 2006)
only one ident the colours are grey and black and there is very little audio and has the ident occupant Films ident. also this has a very strong serif font signifing the knife, 4 titles are in the opening sequence

April Fools Day (Fred Walten 1986)
ident of paramount pictures and then a hotel films production, titles end at 5 mins in and has 13 titles 21 seconds in and the characters are filming one another.


Babysitter Wanted (Jonas Barnes and Michael Manaserri, 2008)
bigscreen ident and the inependant film company ident, music is similar between idents, white sans serif font.

5ive Girls (Warren Sonoda 2006)
alliance atlantis ident and has alot of annimation then the second ident is archetype films and the titles appear after 4 mins in and has a rock music audio. Use of blood in opening titles. and graphic behind the titles. vioce over of a man reading a prayer.



Wednesday, 5 December 2012

My Idents Vodcast

We had to look at 4 films each and i paired up with Dom and we had looked at the idents included in these Films in this Vodcast. 

My Ident

This is my ident:
The technology i used to create this was mainly final cut pro and then garageband to produce the sound also i used flash to create the effects of which the sloth spins around

Slasher Franchise Vodcast

This is our slasher franchise vodcast:
In this vodcast you will see and find out about some of the various different slasher franchises the genre has to offer.