Tadiwa's A2 media

As part of the planning stage, I made a screenplay and storyboard as a way to combine my final ideas. I looked at examples of  film storyboards and screenplays to get an initial idea of how to make one similar to the one's used. Here they are below: Storyboard: This is my storyboard, it contains rough sketches of what each scene of my short will look like. I have also included small descriptions of what sound will be included, the camera angle and what occurs in the scene. And in some of the panels, I have included an arrow which shows what action the camera would do in that scene and which direction it will be, such as pan towards the door or zoom in. Screenplay: This is my screenplay. As you can see, it is in a similar format to an actual screenplay, but because this is only a short film, the screenplay will only have a few pages. I have used the same font and size for it and I have made sure that I included when the scene cuts, when a character speaks and a descri

Transcript: After many hours of research and planning. I've finally managed to come up with a final idea. Here is a quick synopsis of my film: Girl plays with toys. Mysterious unknown being watches the girl play Girl checks it out But! It runs away into hiding And girl goes back to play [ Not with a balloon ] THE LIGHT BULB MOVES!!! AND THERE'S NOISES GIRL GETS SUSPICIOUS [ So she goes and checks again ] THEN SHE CHASES THE BEING whilst it's still under the bed And then, It hides back into the gap under the bed and the girl waits for it. It then reappears and the girl wants to play with it. It does so and then it goes away for the final time. It comes back, but it escapes and the girl confronts it as it hides on her bed. The being goes towards her and the scene cuts to black. The last scene consists of the light swinging and a zoom in of the gap. THE END 

Like all forms of media, horror films do influence the audience, whether that's good or bad depends on one's mental state and their personality. There are 6 main effects of horror films, and they are followed: Imitation : Many films, including horror, has been known to take significant effect on society. Films have been known to ferment actions such as general violence, murder and even hate towards a certain group, and this idea is backed up by the cases of "copycats", people who are inspired by a film character and act regarding that character. In 1999, two high students murdered twelve other students and one teacher at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado. The massacre ended with both perpetrators committing suicide. It has been confirmed that both students were fans of Natural Born Killers. Prior to the massacre, they had used the initials 'NBK' as their code and made many references to the film. Catharsis: Catharsis is "the p

This is a preliminary poster that I have made in class, in which I looked at the conventions of a successful horror poster and have applied them to a 'faux' poster where we had to come up with a word and make a horror poster using that word as a prompt.  What I love about this poster is how simple it is, in which the main image is simply an unnaturally coloured eye, it goes with the title seeing as vision is associated with eyes. Also, the unnatural colour of the eye can be associated with the horror genre because of how surreal it looks and how the "unnatural" is a major trope to the genre. Furthermore, the colours are contrasting seeing as white is the lightest tone and purple is a fairly dark colour, by the two colours contrasting each other, the main focus will be towards the purple iris. However, white is not a conventional colour for a horror poster, whereas black is known to be the most used due to the connotations with the colour, in which black repres

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Media text, whether it is horror or romance, are open to multiple readings. Horror films are considered to be deliberately ambiguous in which the audience who watches them are more likely to misunderstand the whole plot (such as Babadook or The shining..)   Stuart Hall, a cultural theorist and a professor of sociology, looks at the role of audience in the interpretation of media texts by different social groups. Hall came up with a model suggesting 4 ways in which we may read a media text: Preferred/dominant: This is when the audience will prefer to read the text (in our case, a horror film), in the way the producer has intended them to. So that the meaning is clear, natural and transparent to do so. Oppositional: This is when there is a disagreement with the ideology/film from the genuine idea, so they reject the reading. Negotiated: This looks at how the audience would work out the meaning of the film with the concepts that they disagree with or they don't unde

Doing some research, I have looked at some horror auteurs. One example, is John Carpenter, who is a populist film director who has been heavily influenced by 50s Sci-fi and horror films and is well known for his horror films such as the "Halloween" series and "The thing" (1982). What makes his films fall into the Auteur category: Entrapment: Characters or a group of characters are trapped either physically or metaphysically Carpenter's heroes: Defined by action and has an ideology that all people are defined by what they do Anti-authority: Carpenter's films disrupt authority. Likes to put humanity into perspective: There is more on Earth than we know Genre: Follows the syntactic /semantic approach to genre and will allow generic cross over A good example of Carpenter's film that supports him as an auteur is, "The thing": Looking at the Dogme 95' and the Vow of chastity, it has got me thinking about whether I should app

In regards to my film, I will be using a small budget. This is only because I'm barely a student, not just because I'm making a horror short. So, for me to work on a big budget film, is fairly close to impossible. But there are many softwares out there that I can use to make this film look like a big budget film and that's what I plan to do. If all works out to plan, that is. 

Uses and gratification theory looks at why and how people seek out specific media/texts to satisfy specific needs. Uses and gratification is an audience-centered approach to understand what the audience wants in a certain piece of media and how to communicate with them through that piece. As for horror, we must look at what the audience want in horror films and why they watch it. This does connect with my " Why do people watch horror films " post seeing as we do look at the reasons behind it.  Dr. Goldstein: Goldstein suggests that people watch horror films because they want to be frightened, because otherwise they wouldn't keep going to them. People choose to watch these films because they want it to affect them, and in order to feel satisfied at the end there must be a resolution. Audiences can control how much or how little something will affect them, therefore some people may not be affected at all. Dr. Walters: There are many factors that make people want t

Story and narrative are surprisingly two different aspects of storymaking, whether it's in a book or through the media. One thing that we can establish, is that they are both important and are used to create an effect on the audience that is long lasting.  The story is the events that occur within the film or text. It will give the audience information about the setting, characters and what is happening in the film. The story is usually built up over time to captivate the audience into the film in the way the director/writer intended it to be. Whereas, the narrative is how the story is told. This is mainly looking at the structure of the story, the themes and how it is presented. There is a basic structure to how a story is narrated and this includes a beginning, middle and end, but there are other ways in which a story can be narrated. Todorov's narrative theory: Tzvetan Todorov has proposed a theory in which he looks at the conventional structure of the narrative

Unknown number (June 2016)   Unknown number, directed by David Nguyen, is a short that I have looked at in my own time. It involves a young woman in her home reading at late hours, however, this is disturbed when she starts receiving calls from an "unknown number" and so she ignores the number every time it rings. After a while she decides to switch her phone off, yet it still rings regardless of its situation and she answers it, all to receive no answer and then a voicemail after the phone has cut off.   After then, the phone rings again but from a different room and the woman walks to the room, opens the door and finds nothing. At this point, the antagonist, who resembles a dead girl, is behind the woman and then it cuts to her being directly behind the protagonist, who screams once she sees the dead girl and then the short ends. Like Lights out, this film has a similar MES in terms of location. It is set in the home of the protagonist, rather than the convent

Lights out (2013) Lights out is a Swedish short film, directed by David F. Sandberg that has become a feature length film because of how successful it was. It takes place in the home of a woman who is about to go to bed. However, her usual sleep routine has been disrupted due to the fact that as she switches the lights off, the woman sees a silhouette of another woman. Out of fear, the woman tapes the light switch and heads to bed, leaving the door slightly open. However, she then hears creaking and the hallway light turns off and rampant footsteps, hiding under the blanket. She then peeks out to find the bedroom door wide open, and the desk lamp plugged incorrectly, flickering. She then plugs it back, with everything reverting. She then sees the creature, who turns off the lamp, ending the film. What made this short really effective is the lack of dialogue, the use of sound and the camerawork. The MES of the film is effective in which it is set in a natural setting, the h

Better grab that popcorn and your history books, because we're about to go deep into the history of horror. Looking at what made the horrifying horrible and where we have evolved in terms of the dark and the dangerous. The cinema is MADE for horror, dark and quiet atmosphere, enough to make the film feel real. Enough to make the audience to jump out of their own seats whenever the main antagonist appears to attack their next victim. The cinema is another way for us to escape reality and enter a realm of collective dreams, however, these dreams are nightmares , where the evil and supernatural can roam free with no bounds. The only thing that keeps us safe from them is the screen that separates us.  The roots of filmed horror were an extension of a genre of literature that started in the late 1700s known as Gothic Horror. Developed by writers in Great Britain and the US, the Gothic part of the name refers to pseudo medieval buildings that these stories took place such as an old

This is my preliminary film, in which we had to make a guerilla style horror short. We didn't have much planning for the film seeing as we were to see what our abilities were when making a short. For example, what camera shots we can use for effect, what we can do to build tension and our abilities in terms of editing.  Gif.1 We had to work in a group for the prelim, but within that group we edited  our films separately and this is what I have made from what we have filmed. We all filmed different sections and directed at different points, seeing as we were in a 3, we also had to swap roles each time we progressed with the story. I filmed the scene where the protagonist finds the dead body on the floor (Gif.1), I used a pan as a way to gradually expose the body of the girl from the audience's perspective, as if they were looking at the scene themselves. Gif.2 We have used various shots and angles for our short, for example, mid shots have been used throughout the

Short films do vary from feature length films in many and different ways, such includes:   Low budget: Small studios will only need a small budget to produce their film seeing as they wouldn't need complex equipment and certain elements of MES will not be needed. Further more, there may not be a large amounts of money available for the small studios.   Relatable setting: In order to convey emotion and tension efficiently, the location of the film should be recognisable to the audience. For example, a bedroom in a horror short. Creating a lasting effect on the audience.   Simple title: This is usually something that relates to the plot of the film   Online release:  You are more likely to find short films to be released online than in cinemas and such places because of the niche audience and low budget. This can be advertised through social media to reach the required audience   Small cast:  This can be due to the low budget or due to the director keeping the p