Narrative

Narrative

Five girls who’ve been best friends for seven years have received their results for their final year of college and are pleased with what they have received. Because of this, the girls decide to throw a party in celebration of their hard work. The girls have made a reputation for themselves over the years and are very popular amongst their peers – especially Aisha who is the leader of the group.

 

Three years before this Aisha, Seda, Leyla and Stephanie went on a road trip however Tiffani couldn’t make it as she had to attend a family wedding. On the car journey home, the girls had too much to drink which resulted in a car accident and a young male was killed. When the girls rushed out to see what had happened they realised that they had accidently hit their best friend Tiffani’s boyfriend. In a panic, they got back in the car and drove away never speaking of what happened that night again.

 

The next day the group set out to prepare for their fancy dress party and it wasn’t long before their friends started flooding in.  During the party, a mysterious figure kept appearing within the crowd however; because it was fancy dress no one suspects anything.

 

After a great night of partying, the five best friends pass out (from tiredness) at Aisha’s house and are woken by a loud noise during the early morning. As they get up the girls notice that Tiffani is not there but they are not alarmed as she is very ‘adventurous’ and often goes off on her own. However not long after, Leyla and Stephanie notice a trail of blood leading outside and quickly inform the rest of the group.  The four remaining friends fear the worst and start searching frantically for missing Tiffani. As they run outside to search for her, trails of her belongings such as her phone, bracelet etc. are found in the garden and the girls begin to panic.

 

Moments later, a scream can be heard not too far from the house and so the girls decide to split up to look for her. Leyla and Seda are too scared to go out alone (as they play the innocent, shy and nerdy characters) and therefore end up going out together. Aisha and Stephanie go into a wood type location, whereas the others stay in familiar territory and look for their friend in areas close by.

 

The girls agreed to meet back every half an hour at a spot near the house to get updates on each other’s findings however one by one, at every meet up, another girl disappears. As Aisha and Stephanie explore the woods in the hopes of finding their best friend, Aisha catches a glimpse of the mysterious hooded figure that was present at their house party. She quickly turns to tell Stephanie but she is nowhere to be seen.

 

After half an hour, Seda and Leyla go back to the meeting point to tell the others that they have had no luck but already waiting is distressed Aisha. She tells the others that Stephanie has also vanished and about the hooded figure she saw in the woods. The group then decided that it would be safer to stay together and so they set off for the final time in the hopes of finding their two best friends.

 

The girls reach the woods a final time still desperately searching for their friends when suddenly a loud noise startles them and they start to run. Aisha trips and falls over a mysterious object but soon realises that it is the foot off Stephanie who has been buried and covered with leaves. Before she even gets the chance to scream the villain covers her mouth and drags her away.

 

After a tiring struggle, she manages to break free, and out of nowhere, Seda hits the villain over the head with a log of wood and the hooded figure falls to the ground. The three girls struggle to reveal the identity of the villain but when they do they come to the shocking discovery that it’s their best friend, Tiffani.

 

In disbelief the three friends ask her if all of this was some sort of joke but they soon realized that she was far from playing games. Tiffani then hurtfully explained how she knew what they had done to her boyfriend three years ago and thought that through getting revenge, she could finally move on and get on with her life.

 

Aisha, Leyla and Seda began to cry and tried to explain how sorry they were and that the whole situation was an accident. Tiffani began to get angry and pulled out a knife from inside the hoodie. She proceeded to stab Aisha and the others but before she got the chance to the ‘thought-to-be-dead’ Stephanie appeared out of nowhere and turned the knife back on her, stabbing her in the side.

 

Leyla, (the innocent)

Aisha (the fashionista, playgirl and the ‘slut’)

Tiffani (the adventurous)

Stephanie (the motherly Christian girl)

Seda (the shy nerd)

Groups for final task

We have been given our groups for our trailers and I have been put with Precious and Leyla.

I am really excited to be in this group as I have worked with Leyla in AS media and I know her working style and because Precious is a determined media student and with all three of us together we are going to create a good piece of work.

I feel that our trailer is going be really good because we all have similar ideas and our narrative for trailer has already been thought of and its sounds really good and we have already considered some of the places we can use to film our trailer.

Prelim Task

Preliminary Task

This is the preliminary task we were set to complete. We were given the task to remake a scene from a movie in one day and edit it. This is what my group produced.

It was very hard becasue we used public toilets in the sixth form and therefore people wanted to use the toilets so I had to stand outside whilst my group were filming and ask people if they would mind waiting or using the other toilets as we were filming for a media project.

I found doing this task quite easy and it helped us to produce ideas that we are going to use in our final trailer.

 

Questionnaire

Research Questionnaire

Which horror do you prefer?
Slasher Horror – I I I I I I I I
Comedy Horror – I I I I I
Thriller Horror – I I I
Psychological Horror - I
Paranormal Horror – I I I

What do you think horror trailers should include?

Dark colours                    Scary Music                Running               

Isolated Locations            Blood                   Fast Pace          

Something interesting e.g. ghosts, vampires                      

Dark Places                    Action                       

High Pitched Noises                               Screaming

What makes a bad horror?

Unrealistic Things               When the storylines rubbish       

When things happening are not clear       Too much blood      

Too much happening at one time       When its too scary

When the ‘chase’ carries on for too long
                  
When its mixed with comedy           When too many people die

When it doesn’t have any bits that make you jump      

When the camera zooms in on things slowly

What do you like most about horror?

The adrenaline rush       People being chased and not getting caught

When you think the villain has died but they are still alive          

When the murderer dies              People surviving 

When its a mystery and you have to put the clues together         
   
The twists when things get calm

The thrill and excitement of what comes next                         
   
Seeing people face my own fears

The blood and gore            Being scared for the victims

What do you like least about horror?

When it’s too complicated and the stories hard to follow               

When everything’s unrealistic                 Scientific Horror

Watching murders take place          Being scared constantly

When there is no proper story line                 Watching it by myself               

Never ending dramas                      Psychological horror                

When all the good people die                When people do silly things

Opinions on trailers

I thought of a few questions to ask one of the people who watched the trailers in order to gather research on what not to do and what to do when it comes to me creating my own trailer. This will influence the sub genre of my horror trailer for example, slasher, paranormal. And it will also help me to include rings in my horror trailer that people expect from it.

Reactions to horror trailers

Trailer Reactions

As part of my research for my trailer i asked two media students to watch there trailers for:

• The Possession
• Scream 1
• Orphan 
• Saw
• Insidious 2 

I filmed their reactions to the trailer so that I could see which bits of the trailer scared them most and which genre of horror they found scary and also so that I could see how they felt about each of the trailers as they were watching. 

Research Rationale

Research Rationale: 
The target group that I have access to and have decided to use to conduct my research with is 15-19 years old. The reason I have chosen this age group is because of Pauls Wells’ research that he did that wasn't considered accurate or reliable because he didn't have enough people from each age group. The majority of people I am around are 15-19 year olds which is why I chose to use this age group. It will easy to get a good amount of people involved in my research to make it accurate and reliable when I analyse what I have got out of my research. I also think that the age group I have chosen to conduct my research with is good because you are likely to find many people within that age group that like horror and has a lot to say about it, especially people who are doing horror in media and like to watch horror in their spare time.

The types of research that I am going to use is a focus group in which I will have around 5 or 6 people telling me what they like about horror and I will show the focus group different types of horror e.g. slashers, possession horror, comedy horror.

The next piece of research I will do is film their reactions and then finish conducting my focus group and ask them which horror they preferred and why and I will ask them if anything in particular stood out to them which made the trailer good which could influence my trailer.

Another type of research I am going to do is a questionnaire. I am roughly going to try and get 15-20 people to answer the questionnaire in order to make get clear results. My questionnaire is going to focus on what makes a good horror and what people most like and least like about horror and which horror they prefer e.g. slasher, possession, etc.

The resources I’ll need to conduct my research is going to be a camera to record my focus group. I will write up my questionnaire on a word document and paste it onto my blog. Ill need to use a Mac computer to film my audiences reactions to trailers to analyse which parts of the trailer they found effective and which parts of the trailer they didn't really like. I will also need to use websites such as YouTube to get trailers for my audience to watch.

Starting Research For My Trailer

Starting my research

In this mornings lesson we looked at different types of research e.g. quantitative research, questionnaires, focus groups and qualitative research.

In this lesson we began our research by answering 3 questions:
Target group you have access to?
What types of research and why?
What resources will you need?

So far I have answered the first question about the target audience and I have come to the decision that I think it will be a good idea to use 15-19 year olds as that is the age group I am around the majority of the time. Therefore it will be easier to conduct my focus groups and I'll have enough people to answer my questionnaire.

I have also chosen to use these 2 types of research: Surveys Focus Groups I need to think of 1 more way I am going to conduct my research and then I need to begin to do it so its all ready for next week.

The resources that I have already identified that I'll need to use are a camera for my focus group, survey websites for my questionnaire, people aged 15-19 willing to participate my questionnaire and be part of my focus group and my blog to post tall of my research in the end.

Making My Trailer Effective

Effective Trailers

In the lesson on the 4th of November we went through what makes a good trailer and how we can use good examples to influence our own trailers.

The first thing we thought of is:
What are the main elements of film marketing campaigns?
Posters, Buses, Magazine covers, YouTube, Social media, Soundtracks, Focus groups and Merchandise.

The second thing we thought of was:
What makes you go and see a film? Sequences Actors Directors Word of mouth Good advertisement High film ratings Good reviews.

We then looked at titles of movies such as 'The Amazing Spider Man', 'The Bourne Legacy', 'Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: Dog Days', 'The Three Stooges' and 'Total Recall' and we look at what we think the movies might be about from the title that they have.

For example I wrote down that Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: Dog Days has something to do with kids whether it has kids in it or its aimed at kids. I also wrote down that the film could be in the style of a diary because the title has diary in it so it could be something like a documentary about a few days of a kids life.

Another example is The Bourne Legacy. Because it has the word legacy in the title it suggests that something lives on. By this I mean it could be someone who has passed name lives on or it could be someone coming back from the dead. In this lesson I fully understood what makes a good trailer and some of the things that my trailer needs to include in order for it to be good and realistic.

Bathes Enigma Code

Enigma Code

Bathes enigma code believes every narrative is interwoven with multiple codes. Hermentic code - story not fully explained, full truth avoided, keeps audience guessing till final scene when all is revealed. Proairetic code - action/event that indicates something else is going to happen. By witnessing this, the audience can say what characters will do/what will happen next.

The enigma code portrays a mystery to draw an audience in, pose questions and make the audience become intrigued in the piece.

Things Barthe focuses on: 
Thematisation (what in the narrative is the enigma?)
Positioning (additional conformations)
Formulation of the enigma
Promise of an answer of the enigma Fraud (convention to the true answer)
Equivocation (mix of fraud and truth)
Blocking (enigma cant be solved)
Partial answer (some facts of the truth are revealed)
Disclosure (of the truth)

Orphan Review

Plot – a couple lose their baby which would have been their third child, so they decide to adopt and the dad goes off in the orphanage and gets talking with a little girl who the couple decide to adopt. Esther (the orphan) then turns ‘evil’ and begins harming, killing and threatening people and gets the couples biological daughter involved.

In my opinion I think that Orphan is a typical ‘killer kid’ horror film and uses the conventions of a typical horror movie, e.g. someone commits a murder and there is a witness that is told to keep quiet, however the murderer ends up getting caught out in the end.

I think Orphan is a good horror movie because it isn't too scary but it does get your heart racing at some points during the film. The main character Esther is an interesting character because its as if she has two personalities depending on who’s around at that moment e.g. when her adopted parents are around she behaves like an angel who could do no wrong and when its just Esther and Max (the biological daughter) she’s evil and murders the nun from the orphanage. Esther is a smart character as she comes across as if she has a mind of a mature woman but she’s trapped in a little girl’s body e.g. she knows exactly how to cover herself and hide things from people.

The mother is also an interesting character because from the beginning of the adoption she works out that Esther is not an ordinary child, however because at first she is not sure whether she is correct or just being over the top when she finally opens up to her husband he refuses to believe it. She is quite a frustrated character as she knows her instincts are right however Esther portrays herself as the opposite to her instincts. As the horror goes on you begin to understand the mother more.

Overall I think that Orphan is a good horror to watch as you can follow the story line easily and it doesn't get boring at any point because its like one event after the other.

New or original?

We looked at the idea of is anything 'new' or 'original' in horror. In my opinion I don't think anything in horror is new or original anymore because I think that most horror films have the same theme just put across in different ways. For example Halloween and Psycho kind of have the same plot e.g. a young beautiful girl is murdered because of their purity and they are both killed by men and both happen to be naked when they are killed. Also Carrie and psycho have a similar show scene right up to the shots and angles it is the same.

Therefore in my opinion it is rare that you will find a horror film which is seen as ‘new’ or 'original' because everyone views horror in a certain way these days therefore they are all the same.

Horror Wordle