Synopsis of film

In a unknown forest, with a body just lying in the ground. Bishop the main detective with the trend and culture of the stereotypical detective, along side him, his partner Reece Youngs. This guy is the new guy compared to the experience Bishop has, with no where near the same personality... This time they find themselves confused and impressed of how this unknown murder has skills of a doctor to get clean cuts through a victims chest. The killer has some strange obsession with collecting certain things. This killer is an unusual killer, could he be helping Youngs and Bishop out? Bishop is starting to slowly get annoyed with Youngs. Could something happen to Youngs relating towards Bishop?

Tasks To Be Completed

Tasks To Be Completed:

Genre Theory: Christian Metz model of genre development, 27th - 4th
Image embedding for Christian Metz, 27th - 4th
Genre theory: Film Noir - HSR, 27th - 4th
Writing: Film opening sequence - HSR, 27th - 4th
Film Noir textual analysis: Maltese Falcon + Video/Image embedding - HSR, 27th - 4th
Media Theory: Stereotypical Representations in Thrillers/Horrors (Dracula/Single White Female) + Embedding Images, 27th- 4th

Genre and Classification - BFI Statistical Yearbook 2014 - Summary

With the data that is shown in the graph you can clearly see what films are preferred and which ones are not. The reason i know which films are preferred is because in the table you can see that for example, Horror and the Thriller genre are apart from each other, you can see that the Horror genre has done less films within the genre unlike the Thriller genre. Horror has done a total of 37 films unlike Thriller that have accomplished 64 films. This is a crisis because Thriller have spent more money in making more movies to get even more profit and unfortunately failed at this takes because their Gross box office (in £ millions) is near enough half the price of what Horror have made. In total Horror genre has accomplished 37 films with a Gross box office of 57.5 million which is incredibly more.

Unlike the Animation genre they have made even less films than Horror and Thriller but are at the top of the table. In total they have made 33 films with a Gross box office of up to 246.6 million. The reason for this is quite simple. Horror films have a target audience which would usually be adults are older teenagers, kids from 8 years old wouldn't appreciate been scared to death by zombies or ghosts so they would be unable to watch this from the cinema. Unlike Animation where kids from any age accompanied by parents can watch these types of films but also elderly people would also not appreciate being scared by the Horror genre but may enjoy the Animation genre films. This gives a much wider range of ages that will watch their films allowing more money to go into their company. Plus kids are more enthusiastic about going to the cinema than adults.

This table shows the amount of films that are shown on cinema screens overall in the UK. You can see that Sci-fi is the most popular with an Average number of 422 cinemas showing that kind of genre. This does prove people enjoy that genre much and it does have quite a big audience target as 12 year olds may to a certain extent enjoy this kind of film, but it is the 4th down in the 'Films Released' table, but only releasing 9 films but getting a Gross box office total of 87.4 million which is quite incredible realising the joint 3rd least amount of films released. You can see a trend within the Average number of releases, all the top 3 have really low number of releases meaning the US studios could massively advertise and promote these movies tempting more people to go watch these. They possibly could also pay more cinemas to release them for the public to watch them. You can see that the Genres that have a lot of films that need released are quite near to the bottom as they would have to spend money to advertise and promote all of these movies, so what i thought they would of done would be promote and advertise the best looking films so they can try make the most profit but unable to pay cinemas to possibly release them.

Planning for Movie

Character Profiles:

Detective (Bishop): Suit, long coat, single, cold personality,

2^nd Detective (Reece Youngs): Conflicts opposite number, sarcastic, similar appearance/attitude, social opposites

Killer: Blood stained shirt, tools in garage, Jar of hearts in garage, scruffy dress code.

Setting the scene: Old garage (with dark filter applied) body possibly in a woodlands/field.

Keeping the city unknown, getting a high up angle view of the woodland/field where the body is kept.

Script:

Fade in

Exterior. Unknown forest- late morning.

Closes into a crime scene, Detective Youngs is on the scene and Bishop is just arriving. There is a body on the floor with deep gashes around the chest and heart.

Bishop: What we got?

Youngs: Dead body.
(With a grin on his face)

Bishop: (slowly loosing temper)…I’ll ask again, what have we got Youngs?

Youngs: Young male, charged for possession of illegal substances 3 months ago, probably looking for somewhere to get high, but obviously hit a low last night.

Stage direction: Bishop looks up with a disgusted look. 

Bishop:(angrily) Christ sake Youngs, you don’t speak ill of the dead.

Stage direction: Youngs flails his arms in defence of his comment.

Youngs: But sir he was a low life drug dealer, if anything we've been done a favour.

Bishop: That may be the case, but think about this. That man has a family, I can’t go and tell his mother, or wife and children that their Husband, son or father has been killed but it’s not important. There are consequences to each and every action.

Youngs: Whatever.

(Bishop sighs)

Bishop: (Snaps) What was that Detective Youngs?

Youngs:(Sarcastically)  Nothing Sir

Bishop:Lets let forensics start processing some of this before any evidence deteriorates.

Stage direction:bishop walks past the camera out of the scene.

Youngs: Probably best.

Stage direction: Takes a final note about the crime scene.

Fade out

END OF SCENE

Stereotypes in horror films

Female Victim:

·         There is almost no horror film without a female victim, as they are portrayed as being vulnerable and in need of protection. This representation dates back to earlier horror films that were made in a more sexist era, and the idea continued. Usually young, blonde and attractive, will help to attract and hook a definite proportion of male viewers. The woman character can often be portrayed to be stupid and annoying (going back to the sexiest era when they were just meant to be house wife’s and not able to work) the stupid annoying ladies would be one of the only characters the audience sometimes will be to be killed. Although she is shown to be dumb, she isn’t typically the first to be killed because she is some sort of key to the narrative and will be needed throughout the movie. It will also give the hero someone to have some charm with. When she is unfortunately killed it is usually gruesome or graphic. The woman character helps to build up some suspense in the audience throughout the production, as her behaviour often puts them on the edge, and whenever she gets scared/frightened or possibly even jump, even when its unnecessary it will often make the audience feel the same.

  
When it comes to male characters you can really see the instinctive stereotypical look of eachother. For example Dracula is one of the biggest American made films to current date with many different copies of the original with most played complete different actors, but when you are to look at them in the movie they both really look the same. This is because big productions/studios do not want to un-attract the media or public away from the film because something is different. With the public it is hard to convince them to watch something different when the originals where just so fantastic, so they have to keep the stereotypical look of Count Dracula the same. The Stereotypes are listed:

He always has something related to a Bat
He can not be seen in a mirror
Every Dracula has some sort of Cape
They can fly

All Dracula's actors have been usually 6 foot ish white men.

If you were to change the height or definitely the colour (race) of Dracula i think it would be really hard to hook the viewers because they want/like the original story so much it will be hard for the viewer to hook to the movie. You just couldn't have a black Dracula as it has been going on for so many generations i believe it would shock people if some studio/production changed the race of Dracula (It's like you couldn't have a black 007)

Film Noir and Genres

·         Where did genres come from?

Genre began as an absolute classification system for ancient Greek literature. Poetry, prose, and performance each had a specific and calculated style that related to the theme of the story. Speech patterns for comedy would not be appropriate for tragedy, and even actors were restricted to their genre under the assumption that a type of person could tell one type of story best. In later periods genres proliferated and developed in response to changes in audiences and creators. Genre became a dynamic tool to help the public make sense out of unpredictable art. Because art is often a response to a social state, in that people write/paint/sing/dance about what they know about, the use of genre as a tool must be able to adapt to changing meanings. In fact as far back as ancient Greece, new art forms were emerging that called for the evolution of genre, for example the tragic comedy.

·         How did the ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’ re-inforce genres?

the Golden Age. In the popular imagination, this is a glitzy era stretching from the '30s to the late '50s that is, essentially, present-day Hollywood cranked up to elven with hollywood costuming and gorgeous period dress. While there were some really great movies made during this era, let's remember that Sturgeons Law and the Nostalgia Filter apply.

Actors during this time include

• Cary Grant
• James Stewart
• Great Garbo
• Humphrey Bogart
• Robert Mitchum
• James Cagney
• Marilyn Monroe 
• Joan Bennett

·         Which genres became popular in Hollywood

• Action Adventure
  Action adventure movies make the big headlines with the record-breaking ticket sales. However, huge ticket sales are usually matched by huge budgets, which means that these movies bring in a lot of money, but not the best ROI. For instance, to date, "Avatar" has made over $2.7 billion, yet its ROI is "just" 500%, as compared to lower-budget action film "Mad Max" (1979), which returned 24,837.5%. In the top 20 movies that have the best ROI, you won't see any of the blockbusters you'd imagine, and "Mad Max" is the only film of its kind in the top 20.
• Drama, Romance and Comedies
  Dramas and romance don't typically have huge budgets for special effects and sets, so when one really takes off, it can make an incredible ROI. The movie "Once" was made on a shoestring budget ($150,000) and took off, gaining Oscar nominations in the music category and taking in nearly $19 million. Overall, it has the 10^th-highest ROI at 6,232.39%. George Lucas' second film, "American Graffiti" is number nine on the list at 8,909.01%, "Napoleon Dynamite" is at 12 with a 5,667.62% return on its $400,000 budget, and the classic "Gone With The Wind" is at 15 with an ROI of 4,906.73%.
• DocumentariesWith little in the way of cast, crew, special effects or big name stars, documentaries can often be made for a tiny fraction of what it costs a big-name Hollywood film, and when these films become popular, the ROI is astronomical.

  The film "Tarnation," which is pieced together from videos the filmmaker recorded throughout his whole life, had a reported budget of $218. However, take that "budget" with a grain of salt, as it is the amount that it cost the filmmaker to make the movie, but does not reflect the amount for marketing and distributing the film. Still, taking that number as a rough estimate of the film's costs to create, the ROI is 266,416.97%. This film is only beat out by one on the ROI list. Following "Tarnation," in fourth spot, is the anti-McDonald's film "Super Size Me," which cost $65,000 and had a return of 22,614.90%. There are no docs in the bottom 20 for ROI.
• Horrors and ThrillersHorror is another genre with a lot of huge ROI hits and few misses. The number one movie for ROI is the hit "Paranormal Activity," which was made for $15,000 and had a box office gross of $161,830,890 for a return of 539,336.30%. "The Blair Witch Project" gave the studio a lofty 20,591% return. "Night of the Living Dead" comes in at six with an ROI of 13,057.89%, "Friday the 13th" is (coincidentally?) at 13, with 5,332.24%, "Open Water" follows at 5,110.09%, "Saw" comes in at 18 with 4,195.68% and "Evil Dead" closes out the list at 3,820.00%. Horror makes a much smaller appearance in the bottom 20 for box office ROI. 

·         Why do audiences like genre films 

• predict story outcomes based on applying knowledge of prototypical storylines — for example, predicting that at the end of a romantic comedy, differences plaguing a couple’s relationship will be resolved, or predicting that a detective will sort through conflicting clues to solve a murder.
• identify the symbolic meaning of images, techniques, or characters’ practices — for example, knowing that images of black or darkness in film noir or a gangster film represents evil; that suddenly breaking into song in the musical is a familiar, if not unrealistic technique; or that the sidekick figure is often attuned to the local environment or world in ways that assist the hero.
• infer the function or role of the setting or context to explain characters’ actions — for example, knowing that the eerie noise or music in a horror movie is signaling the potential for something dire will occur, or knowing that the “live-audience” setting for the talk show serves to enhance the talk-show host’s sense of performing for both a live and a television audience.

Excellent textual analysis of Carrie, Seven, Blue velvet, we now need you to complete the following to the same standard.

1.   TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF THE OPENING OF SE7EN WITH IMAGES AND VIDEO EMBED FOR SE7EN

2.   CHRISTIAN METZ MODELS OF GENRE DEVELOPMENT – HORROR (12D ONLY) + IMAGES

3.   FILM NOIR & HISTORY OF GENRE (HSR) + IMAGES/VIDEO EMBEDS

4.   STEREOTYPICAL REPRESENTATIONS OF THRILLER/HORROR GENRES/CHARACTERS

Horror Genre 'Carrie'

At the very start of ‘Carrie’ you can clearly see who the definite main character of this movie is. She kind of looks a bit younger than most of the girls that play the sport. The reason I see this girl to be one of the main characters is because obviously she is named after the film but also because of how she gets picked on because she isn’t very good at the sport. In this film you have the typical teenage blonde girl and she is socially withdrawn from everyone else within the school.

Age seems a massive factor within this opening scene because most of the girls definitely look older than her by a couple years. You get that dominate feel with how the older ones treat the younger ones poorly when they should really be setting an example. The teacher comes running out to see a riot of girls picking on Carrie. This shows age because you can see the potential older girls picking on her but with the teacher being older than them all and instantly going to help Carrie out.

 

Camera Angles: You get a lot of different camera angles within this opening sequence at the very start you get the birds eye view camera shot which really sets the whole scene of the opening sequence. It then forms into a moving shot through the girls changing rooms. After what you see on the volley ball pitch where the girl is singled out and bullied, it shows all the friendship groups and how much they are ‘loving’ life; plus you see how comfortable they are with showing each other their bodies.  Then you get to see Cassie how she is all alone trying to mind her own business. You get different shots with her body which again shows her to be the main character of the whole film. Then some disaster happens and the whole scene just breaks into her getting unfortunately getting bullied again. You get a dramatic instant camera shot at the light which the bulb seems to pop, this can give an indication of worse to come when she gets scared and this camera shot also would hook the viewer within my opinion.

 

Editing: When Carrie is under a lot of stress because of the disaster (finding out she’s on her period) the girls start to bully her because she wasn’t prepared for the circumstance. This also gives an indicator that the girls are older than her showing more dominance. The teacher runs out to help her and to tell the girls to stop what they are doing. At this point they are quite and you get a dramatic high pitched noise (which many movies have used before) and the light bulb just pops. This is creates a dramatic feeling and good easily hook the viewer to find out what happens next as it seems that she has some sort of power.

 

Mise en scene: With the first Camera view it instantly sets the scene and you can see that they are outside in a volley ball court at some sort of high school. They are all wearing the same kit as they obviously go to the same school. With the way they dress you can tell that this film is a very old film and the way their hair is you get that instinct feeling that it is a olden times film, but also how the teacher treats all the girls. This is because the teacher slaps carrie to get her out of her uncontrollable state to allow her to calm her down while towels and other items are being thrown at her.  

 

Sound: The music played within the opening scene is quite uplifting for some reason even though you can see that the main character is under stress and possibly depression the way she is treated on her volley ball team. With the music you get kind of feel some kind of symphony for this girl how she gets singled out and left all by herself. When the camera is moving around you don’t hear anything over the sound of the music, but you get the sound in your head of joy, this includes them shouting and screaming plus laughing with joy. This is quite creative how they haven’t implemented those sounds but you still actually hear them in your head.




The first scene is from 00:00 - 06:27

 

Se7en

In the film ‘Se7en’ it has the typical detective/thriller genre on board. The opening credits can describe a lot about how the movie is portrayed. This is because the camera angle use is used exactly how, when the killer would be seen in the movie. The sound is the typical city sound (dogs barking, car alarms and people arguing). You can clearly see dominate characters and different kind of generations.

 

With the camera angles they all seem to be very close up shots of maybe the razor cutting rubbing against the man’s hand. This could suggest that as it is a detective film the killer has to be unknown and silent. If you were to see the killer within the film no doubt there would just be an extreme close up of maybe his mouth or his eye, this is because they want him to be unknown until the very end of the film when usually they get caught or killed. Both the close up and the image instantly shows that it is some kind of detective move.

The movie at the very start of the movie David Fincher decided to copy the ‘Film noir’ style and go with a starting scene then bring in the credits which is now used in pretty much day to day crime/detective programmes/films. Although throughout the credits it is all extreme close ups which I’ve said suggests the unknown about who ever the killer may be, it starts with the medium/long range shot of Morgan freeman which could be shown as the good guy/detective.

When it comes to sounds David Fincher has been quite original, what I mean by this is when he is lying in bed trying to relax and clear his head with the metronome you can hear the typical and known city noises which include Dog barks, sirens from police cars or fire trucks etc, car horns and even people arguing/shouting. When the two main characters get together right after they see the body you can hear the extremely loud rain over the lightly sounded city sounds and their voices. David Fincher hasn’t been creative with sound other than the music he inputs in the opening titles.

 

 

 

The editing is quite unique in the intro scene obviously you have the cut to cut from different places implemented, you couldn’t really do anything else other than maybe add a couple of special effects or filter like there was in spooks then you have to edit it the sound which was very original. In the opening sequence the use of the camera angles and the different images which were edited in with the perfectly timed music for the transactions to appear and disappear, was great. The music its self is quite tense especially with the images that appear. It gives the viewer the feeling of the genre of the film, it hooks them to continue to watch especially after the introduction.

 

 

When Detective Somerset and Detective Mills meet up for the first time you can clearly see who is more experienced and who is more dominate. You can see that Mills is wearing a shirt and tie but with a leather jacket which would possibly be the style of his generation, but Somerset is in a full coat with a full suit on. This could suggest a change within the different generations and how things will progress when his generation is not around. When they finally meet outside you can again see the difference between the clothing. You can see that David Fincher has created the stereotypical detective with his long coat, hat and full suit when it comes to Somerset but it’s not when it comes to Mills which again suggests the change of generations.

 

With Detective Somerset you can see that he has some sort of suffering with OCD. You can clearly see this when you get the close up of him in the mirror doing his tie up to perfection. But also when he starts to pick up his personal items off of his desk. When the movie continues he picks them up in a purposely order, this could suggest some sort of routine but overall I think it’s some sort of OCD. Couple seconds further he inspects his suits jacket. You can then again tell he is the detective due to the fact that he picks up one hair off the jacket. This means he looks for minor details like hair samples which is a massive gift to detectives.


 

Blue Velvet

Blue velvet

In the start of the opening sequence of blue velvet you get the start of the very peaceful and relaxing music within the whole of the opening 2 minutes. You get a worms eye view of some kind of roses that are red with the blue sky plus the white fence. You get the serotype feeling of the old times America.  With the colour scheme you get the idea of the American flag and these colours are used through out the whole of the open sequence. The editing over the top of these scenes feel like they’ve made the speed minimal, creating a safe and peaceful environment for people to live in. The cuts and transitions are quite unique to the way that not many films cut so many times into different parts of the film but the director of this film makes it work to perfection.

In the next cut you get another feeling of safety due to the fact a stereotype American fire truck passes though the same neighbourhood, but if you look closely the fire truck alone gives you the sense of the Red, Blue and white. The slow peaceful music still continues. The neighbourhood you can see throughout the opening sequence seems to be a rich retirement neighbourhood, this is proven when all the neighbours are outside waving and smiling possibly at each other or the camera. You again get the sense of safety and that it’s a friendly and secure place to be in.

 You also get the hint of safety and security when the kids are walking across the road with a lollypop lady with no parents means that there is trust around the neighbourhood and nothing could do any harm. Even when it cuts from that scene to the house, when you get a look inside you can see the same colour scheme. Blue, White and Red. Where at the start it indicates either safety or could even mean danger.

When it shows the image of the gun on the TV it’s when the film starts to get intense and interesting. This is because it jumps from scene to scene with the music changing making you sure that something bad will occur. The sound goes over the top of the music giving you even more of a bigger indicator. Then of course he falls over because he seems to be having some kind of stroke. This is very good editing. It hooks the viewer onto the film to continue to watch. It is important to hook the reader within the first couple of minutes and the editing during this part of the film really does hook the viewer.

When the man has fallen you get a fear because of the way the music changes, it becomes more dramatic and normal sounds are heard over the music. You get a worm’s eye view through the grass straight to a nest which seems to be beetles. This could relate to some sort of danger that no one in the neighbourhood could control or do anything about. So even though the first few minutes you get a lot of hints of safety, nothing is ever safe.

Prelim Evaluation

What is the 180 degree rule?

The rule states that the camera(s) should remain the same side of an imaginary line. The line is drawn perpendicular to the camera’s viewpoint in the establishing shot of the scene. The rule also enforces continuity of the film, an example is that in a car chase scene, if the car is travelling from right to left, the next shot must also be shot from the same side meaning the car has to end the frame right to left again. The same applies for football matches and other sport.

A match on action:

Match on action (or cutting on action) is an editing technique for continuity editing in which one shot cuts to another shot portraying the action of the subject in the first shot. This creates the impression of a sense of continuity – the action carrying through creates a visual bridge which draws the viewers’ attention away from the slight cutting or continuity issues. This is not a graphic match or match cut, it portrays a continuous sense of the same action rather than matching two separate things.

Eye line match:

An eyeline match is a film editing technique associated with the continuity editing system. It is based on the premise that the audience will want to see what the character on-screen is seeing. The eyeline match begins with a character looking at something off-screen, followed by a cut to the object or person at which he is looking. For example, a shot showing a man looking off-screen to the left is followed by a shot of the television that he is watching

Reverse Shot

Shot reverse shot is a continuity editing technique used in conversations or simply characters looking at each other or objects. A shot showing what the character is supposedly looking at (either a point of view or over the shoulder shot) is followed by a reverse angle shot of the character themselves looking at it, or of the other character looking back at them, for example. Shot reverse shot often ties in with the 180 degrees rule to retain continuity by not distorting the audience’s sense of location of the characters in the shots

Throughout the whole of our production we managed to stick to the 180 degree rule without hopefully breaking the rule. We did take caution when filming our production and deleting scenes that broke that rule. We used the match on action when we passed over the folder from George to Sam, it was quite successful with the 180 degree rule still in mind not to break. When we did the close up of George with the speech ‘Who are you’ the audience might not of known who he was speaking too, then the camera turns to Sam to make the Eyeline shot. The reverse shot is in the same scene as the eyeline shot.

The film process went really well. This was due to the fact that we all came up with great ideas and managed to develop all our ideas into one. We converted our ideas onto a storyboard making a lot easier to record as we knew what to say and what to do. We did make a couple of errors when we were recording, but obviously we could simply delete them and re take them. Overall the filming went perfect.

The editing was just the same, we knew what we were doing to some extend and the music layout was in perfect time with our production meaning it wasn’t hard to cut out music parts. We made a few parts with music over it, with it loud or quite but also intense and not. We didn’t use transitions in our actual video, but for the titles that were quite easy we did fade them out and in which was in perfect time with music and the video its self.