CCR1

1. CCR1 How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues? Evie Broomfield

2. What genre did I make? My genre for my opening scenes brings in two genres, making it a hybrid genre. It is mainly horror from the aspects of the gory blood, knifes and the dead bodies and the triller is coming in a little at the end, because of the police scene. Typical conventions for horror? • Mise en scene – low-key and dark lighting, underexposed, using shadows making the audience feel tense and on edge. Dirty clothes, use of blood and weapons. • Sound - high pitch non diegetic sound, creates a sense of awareness with the audience. Highlights footsteps, doors creaking and certain noises, making the audience feel as though they don't know what is going to happen. • Editing - Fast pace and many jump cuts to make the audience feel troubled, fearful and builds intense tension for a jump scare. • Camera - close-ups to stress a character's emotions or in contrast extreme wide shots to create loneliness. Unique and unusual angles to create confusion and unsettling feel with the viewer. Low key lighting and wide angles Blood

3. Examples from movies Camera: Wide/Close ups Mise-en-scene: Blood, shadows, low-key lighting and settings/locations Editing: Slow pace/long takes

4. Conventions in my opening scene • Blood • Dead body in a body bag • Police knocking on door • Bruised victim • Knife • Dirty killer • Close ups • Cleaning up crime scene – bleach • Close ups • Footsteps • Creepy music

5. Comparing films Se7en 1995 Director: David Fincher Saw: The complete Collection 2004 Director: James Wan Psycho 1960 Director: Alfred Hitchcock

6. Similarities in mine and SAW Mise-en-scene: Blood, Dirty, Low-lighting and Weapons. Blood/Dirty is used to signifies pain or death. Low-key lighting to give an airy and dramatic atmosphere Camera: Close up are used to stress the characters emotions My opening scene: Close up, blood, weapons etc are used to set a tone of danger and fear.

7. Similarities in mine and Psycho = (Black + White) Camera: Close ups of eyes to show the evil in their eyes and make the audience fearful Mise-en-scene: Police characters contrast with the killer Editing: Slow pace and long takes to build tension

8. Similarities in mine and Se7en Editing: slow-paced montage of finer details to start to create a story line and uses enigma codes to get the audience questioning Camera: Close ups to empathies the finer details so the audiences plays goes attention to them Mise-en-scene: Shows weapons to show that violence has occurred or will occur, grabs the viewers attention

9. Challenging conventions Non-conventual Sound:Classical slow-paced music to make a contrast of the horrific actions and his calm emotions Conventual Sound: Creepy high-pitch music adds to the suspense Steve Neale Genre theory: In my opening scene it relates to Steve Neale Genre theory as there is a lot of similarities in typical horror conventions and mine which he said is used for comfort for example blood and close up shots, however it has differences to keep the audience engaged such as not having intense music instead having calm classical music

10. Conventions of an opening scene that my opening sequences included Conventions of opening scenes • Titles; Production Company • Indication of time set • Indication of tone/set • Indication of genre • Mise-en-Scene Titles; Production Company Mise-en-scene Indication of genre, from the blood covered sink Indication of time, as using an antique clock Indication of tone, bloody weapon which suggest a violence

11. My opening scene challenging conventions Action, normally happens first and then we find out what has happened but in our opening scene the action has already happened, and the murderer is cleaning it up, we did this to engage the audience so they want to know what has happened, who the girl is and why is may have killed her Introduction to character, typically is the first clip of the opening scene and makes it clear who the main character is , however we did a montage of his other body parts and indicated it was the main character, but we didn’t see him till the end of the opening scene to get the audience wondering who is he and what he has done.

12. Social groups represented in my opening sequence • Representing men, in my opening sequence I represented the power and dominance men use against women • Representing women, in my opening sequence I represented women as weak and how men are typically more powerful • Representing police, showing them in contrast to the kill and showing how they think they have more power than him but really do they?

13. How have I represented these groups? To represent the man as powerful and violent to the audience we shot a low angle to make him look dominant towards the victim, we had bruises on his knuckles to show violence has happened and paired with all the blood shots to express he was the one who has committed the crime. This is a conventional representation of males in the media and men tend to be the ‘villain’ in the media. Men Although we tried to make the policewomen higher for the police scene through the use of dialogue. Overall, the man is portrayed as physical stronger as he is the one to kick down the door.

14. How have I represented these groups? Women To represent the women as weak to the audience, we used a high angle to show she is lower than him and it is obvious from the cuts on her head something has happened to her, and she couldn’t fight back. Typically, women are the ‘damsel in distress’ in the media. Laura Mulvey theory is shown here her theory states that women are shown in a passive way and the men are the active characters which is shown in my opening sequences as she is just lying there, and he is cleaning and in most of the sequence For the police, we can see that women are represented as gentler through the gestures of tapping the door in contrast to the man hitting it.

15. How have I represented these groups? I represented the police as not being smart enough and too slow, they think they have caught the murder and outsmarted him finally but when if fact he has outsmarted them once again, as they didn’t end up catching him. I did this through that fact that the murderer was slow paced, and the shots were long shots of cleaning up the crime which indicates he is clearly not worried about the police and then they finally showed up after we can infer he has already gone. It tells the audience that he is very intelligent as he repletely outruns them. Police

16. How I represented women/police in a countertypical way • Typically, women in jobs especially in police are seen as lower than men and less respected as they are seen as weaker mentally and physically and women should follow the demands of the men. However, in my opening sequence we represented the policewomen higher up then the policeman we did this using dialogue, she is the one giving the demands and taking on the main role of dealing with the situation, this demonstrates she is higher up in the police hierarchy then he is.