5 Opening film textual analysis's

I have just finished all five of my texual analysis's. I think they are good :) Just 3 whole movie analysis's now... in the space of 2 days! HELP! The five textual analysis openings i chose to do were...

1) The Amityville Horror (2005)

2)Final Destination 3 (2006)

3)Drag Me to Hell (2009)

4)The Sixth Sense (1999)

5)The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007)

This is a clip of opening scene of The Amityville Horror...

This clip is the opening scene from Final Destination 3...

Here are some of the analytical notes i made of the these two openings concerning the lighting...

The Amityville Horror...

The lighting in the opening of the film is extremely dark. The main source of light are from the television and the lightning flashes. Whilst the opening scene comes to a climax, when George kills everyone upstairs, the screen becomes almost totally black and the audience can only see the image when a flash of light (from the lightning storm) lights the whole house. This makes it extremely intense because the audience do not know what George is doing when the screen is completely dark, and the flashes of light are quite intense, which builds up pace and creates an enormous amount of enigma. Also the storm brewing outside the house also adds to intensity as it portrays a sense of uneasiness, danger and anger.

Final Destination 3...

The lighting used in the opening of the film is quite dark because it is set at night because night connotes danger and the unknown and therefore ideal for a horror/thriller film. The main sources of light are the smaller bulb lights on the fairground rides. The main colour of light is a deep red, which makes the film feel more eerie and red connotes danger and death, and used for effect, will create enigma and suspense to the audience.

3 Horror Film Analysis'...

These are the 3 whole horror films i analysed...

1)Cabin ever (2002)

2)Creep (2004)

3)My Bloody Valentine (2009)

This is the trailer for Creep...

This is the trailer for Cabin Fever...

This is the trailer for My Bloody Valentine...

Our Questionaire...

This was our questionnaire :)...


Horror/Thriller Research Questionnaire

This questionnaire is about your views and opinions on Horror/Thriller films…

1) Gender:[ ] Male[ ] Female

2) Age:
[ ] 12-15
[ ] 16-17
[ ] 18-21
[ ] 22-26
[ ] 27-35
[ ] 35-40
[ ] 41-50
[ ] 50+

3) Occupation?
[ ] Student
[ ] Employed
[ ] Unemployed
[ ] Retired
[ ] Other, if so, please state- ________________________________________________


4) State 2 hobbies and interests of your choice?
1.
2.

5) Do you like watching Horror/Thriller films?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No

6) Name 2 of your favourite Horror/Thriller films?
1.
2.

7) Is there anything you would find inappropriate in the opening of a Horror film?
Please state what you like about the opening of Horror/Thriller films and what you would expect to see in one?
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________

8) How often do you watch Horror films?
[ ] Not at all
[ ] Sometimes
[ ] Quite Frequently
[ ] A lot

9) What types of films do you prefer to watch? (tick 2)
[ ] Action
[ ] Fantasy
[ ] Romance
[ ] Sci-Fi
[ ] History
[ ] Thriller
[ ] War
[ ] Comedy

10) What is your preferred sub genre of Horror films? (tick 1)
[ ] Comedy Horror
[ ] Disaster Horror
[ ] Gory Horror
[ ] Thriller Horror
[ ] Light hearted Horror
[ ] Vampire Horror

11) What elements do you think are of up most importance to create tension and suspense in a Horror film? (tick the appropriate ones)
[ ] Sound track
[ ] Settings
[ ] Plot twists
[ ] Language
[ ] Props
[ ] Characters
[ ] Murders

12) Where do you think would be the best location to film a Horror film?
____________________________________________________________

13) What type of characters would you expect to see in a Horror
[ ] Yes
[ ] No

14) What emotions would you like to feel whilst watching in the opening of a Horror/Thriller film? (tick the appropriate boxes)
[ ] Enigma
[ ] Tension
[ ] Anger
[ ] Scared
[ ] Happy
[ ] No emotion

15) What do you expect to see in the opening of a Horror/Thriller film?
________________________________________________


Thankyou for your time!

Friday 22nd Jan with Mr Cramb!

Today i spent over three hours creating the presetation of anaylsis of our results to show to the class in last period. The powepoint contained every question, a graph and an analysis. I took a long time, but it was definatly worth it! We presented it to the class, and although nobody was listening except sir, we were told we did very well :D! We watched other group presentations and found that information from the same genre was similar, but our presentation was more in detail, giving us the advantage. We also took notes from other groups information as we thought it would be helpful and beneficial.I will try and upload the powerpoint onto my blog! The results from our questionaire are very helpful and show alot of potential to show us who exactly our target demographic is... As we only distributed 23 questionaires, we are yet to add more. We are aiming to get results from 50-100 to get accurate information. We will then ajust the presentation, so we have our results clearly displayed for us and others to analyse...
Today i will try my best to get as many analysis' done as the deadline is for Thursday and today is Sunday! I will also have to start collection more information for my portfolio! Here are a couple of slides we created and used from our analysis of results presentation...

21/01/10 media lesson with cramb!

Today we sorted out our results in lesson. It took a while, but the results are really helpfull. We also started making our presentation on the analysis of the results for tomorrow...

Preparing for deadlines...

Me and charl printed off around 30-35 questionaires and handed them out today ready for our next deadline. People's responses have been quite positive! We'll just have to summarise and analyse the results when we have all the questionaires filled in!

Welcome

Thank you for inviting me. Welcome to blogging and your foundation portfolio. Make sure you maintain your blog a couple of times a week as this should be a reflective working document.

Welcome

Thank you for inviting me. Welcome to blogging and your foundation portfolio. Make sure you maintain your blog a couple of times a week as this should be a reflective working document.

Thursday's media lesson with Cramb! Our questionaires...

I didn’t know how to invite people yesterday so I finally got help in today’s lesson! :) Well today, we sorted out our blogs and showed our questionnaires that we created last lesson to Mr Cramb who did say (I quote) “Yours is the most impressive one yet” !! Well we did try hard! ;)! The questions that we generated were all okay to use, however we had to adjust some of them, like the age question and the boxes available to tick with the age boundaries. Also in our questionnaire we generalized the questions, such as “Is there anything you would find inappropriate in a horror/thriller film?” whereas it should have been “In the opening of a horror film”… because that is what we are aiming to create and finding the information on. We also needed to add “Vampire Horror” as a subcategory (as Mr. Cramb suggested) because of the new craze of Twilight and New Moon. I was shocked to discover that the twilight films would come under the category of horror! We have different types of questions, allowing us to generate both quantitative and qualitative data!
I took the questionnaire off Sophie’s area and put it on my memory stick, allowing me to make the adjustments now and dispatching the questionnaires on the weekend to get our results by Tuesday in Miss Ledwidge’s lesson! I am defiantly going to do a textual analysis of a film opening tonight! I need to start now if we need 5 done by the 28th! STRESSFULL! ... but interesting :)

Thursday, 14th Jan 2010, Media Lesson

Today in A-Level Media Studies, we were told about our coursework for the course. We had to get into groups of four and at the end of the process, produce a two minute film opening. We decided our group would be me, Sophie, Charlotte and Ellie, because we are close friends which means it will be easier to access each other out of school time, work together and be comfortable in the group :).We were given a booklet, containing deadlines and work to complete towards our final product. Our first task (FOR TOMORROW!!..tight deadlines!) was to produce a mind map of all the things we knew about the genre of film opening we were going to attempt to make… but first we had to decide on a genre! It didn’t take us long to realise that horror/thriller was the genre that most appealed to us all and the genre that we all felt we could be the most creative with. We then went and gate crashed a year 11 media class in room 29 (the room the nicked off us) to get some flip chart paper and pens! They weren’t very impressed ;)!
After getting the equipment we made a brain-storm of all the relevant and crucial information we all knew on the horror and thriller genre, dividing the page into such subcategorize as, settings, stock characters, props, connotations, listing all the horrors we know and appealed to us etc. We filled the whole page as between us we must have seen a million horror films! After that we filled in a sheet about questionnaires, which was research into the type of data available to get from questionnaires, such as quantitative data and qualitative date. After that we decided to start drafting the questions we were going to put in our questionnaire to get the relevant information we needed and to discover who are target demographic was. We put in basic information like gender, age, occupation etc. and also questions about horror films such as; if they enjoyed them, what subcategory of horror appeals to them most, why they enjoyed horror films, if they prefer the film if the can relate to the characters more etc. A target demographic is important because it will allow us to cater to our audiences and produce the best possible opening we can, using the right sort of camera shots, costume, characters, lighting, props and storyline.
After we completed the draft questions, we wrote them out on the computer, ready for Mr. Cramb to look at them tomorrow! Hopefully tomorrow we will find out whether our questionnaire is worthy enough to be distributed!!! We were also deciding as to which films we will try and do our FIVE textual analysis’s by, by the 28th of Jan! eeek! Hard work! We’ll see what happens tomorrow :) ….