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This is my Media course work CCR task 1 for my a1 coursework<br>
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How does our film opening sequence use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?
Our Film Opening Sequence Our film opening sequence is called ‘Karma’, it follows a snobby upper class woman as she returns from her morning run. But after a series of unfortunate events, while she is making a post-run smoothie in a blender it activates with her hand inside resulting in her horrific demise. We wanted our film opening sequence to be a tense horror/thriller with heavy inspiration from the Final destination films. Unlike other horror media we wanted to focus on this idea of Karma being a super natural killer. In Buddhist worship, Karma is a belief that every action has either positive or negative consequences based on the nature of those actions. However we have warped this belief into something more appropriate for the horror genre creating a more aggressive form of it.
Unconventional Genre • The genre of our film opening sequence is quite hard to define as is more like a hybrid of Thriller and Horror. The obvious gory elements seem to point to more of an idea of horror. However, the tension build up as she puts the fruit into the blender, with the fast-paced editing between the timer suggests that the genre maybe thriller. Our film opening begins with a running sequence like that of silence of the lambs, which suggests more that it may be a thriller. But the supernatural elements of karma suggest horror.
Camera conventions in the Thriller/horror Genre Typically in the Thriller and horror genre, It is common for film makers to use different camera techniques to build tension. One example of this is from the film franchise Final Destination. In this example we see a girl walking towards her gymnastics teacher, while the scene cuts between strange shots of things that may lead to her death. These shots are usually at extreme angles or at are extremely close up, this strange use of camera immediately generates tension because of how different it is from the master shots of the scene, which are usually filmed at regular eye level with a medium composition. However, it is not just the final destination films that use camera techniques like this. In many classic horror films there are close up shots in order to show the audience something that is occurring that the characters are unaware of, one example of this is from the 1987 film hellraiser when the character named frank gets resurrected. This scene features unclear close ups of franks gory body reforming from the dead, which generates uncertainty.
Camera conventions in our film opening sequence. The later half of our film opening sequence features camera conventions heavily inspired by that of Final Destination. In the moments leading to the Woman death there are close ups of fruit, the Timer, her hands and her face/ears. These moments immediately create tension in a way similar to Final destination in how it creates uncertainty
Mise-En-Scene Our film opening sequence’s mise-en-scene features a few things unconventional for the genre of horror. For example the lack of a killer in a human form. Usually, most horror films feature a humanoid antagonist e.g. Halloween franchise (Michael Myers), silence of the lambs (Buffalo Bill). But there are some films that feature a more mysterious form of an antagonist for example The Thing and Final destination. Our film features a form of ‘killer’ which an exaggerated form of the Buddhist belief of Karma. The clear class difference between characters also helps to create a toxic atmosphere, especially for the cleaner. Seeing the woman getting her hand blended creates shock but also creates a weird feeling of satisfaction simply due to the way she treats her employees.
Setting ‘Karma’ is set in a rural British mansion. This in itself is quite an unconventional location for a horror film. Most horror films are usually set in US with American characters for example Halloween (1978, John Carpenter) and the final Destination films. Setting our film opening sequence in an unconventional location, such as an old British mansion can create tension through the many potential health and safety issues. large dark houses in rural, in the middle of nowhere locations are quite conventional in horror, but they’re not really ever owned by a rich home owner. One example of rural housing in horror include the Sawyer house from ‘Texas Chainsaw massacre’.
Costume and hair/makeup The costume of our film opening sequence helps to show each characters job role, class and status. Horror/thriller films often feature realistic clothes making the victims feel grounded in reality. The woman’s costume: consists of a pink shirt, a blue cardigan hoodie and navy joggers. she has her hair in a pony tail, with air pod pros and dirty trainers. We picked these in order to show how long her run has been. When we first see her she is running on a pavement, the muddy shoes show the distance she has been running. The female cleaner: she wears a cleaning unform and an apron, this clearly shows her class and job. The male cleaner: he wears navy overalls with black fingerless gloves, this has connotations of heavy cleaning work and maybe a plumber/electrician role as well as cleaning.
Props and location The Timer: the use of an outlet timer is not uncommon with middle/upper class people. They are usually used when they go on holiday to make potential robbers believe someone’s in. by having the timer be the cause of her demise has an element of irony to it as it highlights her indulgent life style. The hoover: the hoover in our film opening sequence acts as a distraction and as a plot device for the switching of the Blender into the timer. We wanted to make the audience feel like there were many things of risk happening at once. The Hoover acts as one of these. The blender: The blender is the thing that leads to the death of the woman. This is quite an atypical device for killing off a character. Another example of a blender being used is from the film unfriended.
Sound The sound in our film opening sequence follows conventions of horror for establishing the tone of the film and building tension. Since our film is Horror/Thriller we needed to create a track that would create an unnerving build up to something horrific (the hand getting blended). Typically soundtracks featured in horror follow a similar tension building technique to our film opening sequence. A creeping build up of dissonant high pitched instruments is very common in Horror. We used foley sound for all of the outdoor sections because we felt the recorded sound didn’t do enough to build tension. We wanted a bare sound of wind and birds accompanied with the tense drone of it. Our opening sequence features no dialogue, this is because we felt it may unnecessarily dilute any tension we may have created.
Editing The editing of our film opening sequence begins quite slow paced, with long takes of the woman doing her morning run. Horror films often use a dramatic change in editing pace in order to build tension. At the end of our film opening sequence it has a sequence of fast paced cuts between the woman, the blender and the timer where it finishes on a title card which changes from white to red. The slow dissolve of text is quite conventional of horror as It creates a unnerving visual image.
The Characters In Horror, characters are usually clear in their class and role in their world E.G. an overworked cleaner or a popular but dumb high school girl. In fact it is usually the main protagonist that demonstrates atypical attributes e.g. Laurie Strode from Halloween (1978) being a Wolf in Sheeps clothing. But since our opening sequence lacks an obvious protagonist, we felt that making their roles and attributes obvious, it would benefit the opening sequence as it doesn’t allow too much attachment to characters that will have minor roles in the future story of the film.
The woman The woman is a clear example of a stereotypical upper/middle class white woman in how she looks down upon those who work for her, she hires cleaners rather than cleaning herself, she clearly disregards the work her cleaners do for her. These are all shown when she enters the house and throws the towel at the maid and walks through the male cleaners freshly mopped floor with her dirty trainers.
The Male Cleaner The male cleaner is an example of a counter typical character. Although he is clearly older than the other characters in our film opening sequence, he demonstrates the least common sense. he also struggles to turn on a hoover and he fails to recognise that the timer is about to result in the death of his employer. Typically, in films the old man janitor archetype is used for dark comedic effect, as they usually stuck in their own world not really caring for what is going on around them. This carelessness is what results in the death, this may seem like manslaughter but is really the result of karma in our film.
Character representation In our film opening sequence we wanted our characters to have a clear role in our film opening sequence, which is to set up the concept of karma for the rest of the film. We also wanted to create a satisfying death by creating an immediately unlikable character and killing her off right away. We wanted to appeal to a working/middle class demographic because we felt that they may enjoy somewhat ‘just’ death of an upper class character.
