Part 1 - Brief

The brief I was working to was to create a Title Sequence and Opening Sequence for a film. The title of the one my group and me made was called ‘Bitten’. It’s about a girl that goes missing but is actually turned into a vampire, by an evil vampire that has been stalking her group of friends for a while and has decided they will be his victims. She is declared dead by the police but her body is never found. After her funeral, her boyfriend is sure she is still alive and is determined to look for her. One of her friends is then killed and after a lot of detective work the rest of the group manage to find the evil vampire and go to find him. The girl manages to save them from being killed by killing her creator. She disappears from her friends so that she never hurts them but stays close enough to protect them from any more harm. The sub genre of the title sequence is Vampire Action because it involves vampires and we wanted there to be a violent action scene at the end between the victim and the vampire.

Part 2 - Who would be the audience for your product?

The target audience for our title sequence was for white females aged between 12-19; who would most likely be in full-time education and would consume a vast amount of media, for example TV, films, adverts, magazines. So if our film was to be advertised I think it would have attracted them easily. Also, the younger age group are interested in the whole ‘vampire genre’ because of the ‘Twilight Saga’ that really did boost up the hype on vampires. This makes me think that our film would have attracted some vampire lovers. We only conducted one interview that was with several young teenagers to find out what they thought of the vampire genre in film and we wanted to know if they liked the sound of our idea for our film. The answers from the interview weren’t very informative into our idea for our film and they mainly thought that it was going to be another ‘Twilight’ film which, although we wanted to go into this kind of genre because of the hype ‘Twilight’ created for vampires, that wasn’t really what we wanted to become attached to. We didn’t want our film to become associated with ‘Twilight’ because it does have a limited target audience.

Part 3 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

I chose Warner Bros. Pictures to distribute my media product because of the certain films they have produced for example, the ‘Batman’ films and ‘Sweeney Todd’ which relate to the dark action and sinister tone to our film. ‘Corpse Bride’ is another one of their films that would relate to the younger side of our audience but also holds on to the dark and twisted side. Also, for our film we would use the Warner Bros. Pictures logo but the dark and grey one that they used for batman so that it would show what kind of film it is.

Part 4 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our plot changed quite a few times because of how confusing it would have made the title sequence. At first the film was called ‘LOVEBITE’ and the plot was slightly different as it contained the victim being hunted by the police because they thought she was a murderer as she was missing and her friends were slowly being killed. A problem with this film was that we had planned for the girl’s boyfriend to have been killed quite early on in the film (and he was supposed to be played by Zac Efron) so this created problems as this wouldn’t appeal to the younger part of our audience. We then had to rethink our entire idea and came up with ‘Bitten’, which is quite obvious from the title what it is about. I think it looks like our genre when it gets to the bit of her running as this really shows the action side to our film. We didn’t want it to be so obvious that it was a vampire film because the title already gave that away. The continuity in our sequence, I think, was really good as we managed to keep the stability throughout even though we had flashbacks (the vampire crosses her out as he is remembering that he killed her).

We used a lot of camera angles, for example, we used worm eye view when the girl was jumping over the camera, and almost like a birds eye view when the camera was higher than the girl running. Our camera shots and movements were quite varied, for example, point of view shot we used quite a bit because we wanted to create more tension and suspense if we can see what the girl is seeing. We used a long shot for when she ran past the camera, which we thought worked well because it showed the fast pace of the film and really adds to the tension. I think that this does show a good title sequence because it sets the tone and mood for the rest of the film. This is also shown through our use of music and non-diegetic sound; for example, the music keeps a signature tone and finally escalates when she is running full speed, the scream was chilling which would add to the anxiety for the victim. Our typography, which was also said by many other people, made the title sequence seem more eerie and we were all so thankful to Sonal for finding it on Final Cut Pro because it was so much better than the one we had before because of how well it faded out in time to the music. So overall, I don’t think our title sequence really challenged the forms and conventions of real media products, I feel like it stuck to the ‘rules’.

Part 5 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We used a lot of stereotypes in our title sequence, for example, the teenage girl that we used to play the victim was slim, blonde and pretty like a typical, but modern, ‘damsel in distress’, I think we showed this through her high pitched scream and all the shots of her running. As well as the victim, the murderer was stereotypical which I think we showed through the darkness of the scenes when he is in it. However, I think we went against the stereotype of a vampire because a lot of television programmes and films have had vampires that can’t go out in the daylight and ones that can run a lot faster than humans. Whereas, our title sequence clearly shows the vampire out in daylight and is running at the same speed of the human (although it was meant only to show a chase not that he doesn’t have special abilities).

Part 6 - How did you attract/ address your audience?

I think we did manage to reach our target audience because it attracted all female vampire film lovers. However, we didn’t even think that it would appeal to the majority of the males because they didn’t really like the concept in the beginning, but from the title sequence the majority actually wanted to carry on watching it. “Also how you put the camera sideways on the floor when she was being attacked in the woods. It was a good effect to make you feel she has actually fallen down,” this quote from our audience feedback appealed to our title sequence because we wanted the audience to feel exactly what this terrified girl running from her murderer was feeling so that they would be trapped in the atmosphere of the film. “The title sequence was very good, the music was dark and it drew you in. It made me want to see what happened to the girl,” this made me happy because it made me feel like the music really was a success after the mishap of getting ‘Creep’ recorded, a lot of other feedback supports this.

The least successful bit was the opening scene that we added to the end after the title sequence, “I didn't really get the bit where Charlotte is sitting on the bed and looking at the pictures,” it would seem that not many people really understood why we included the opening scene and I each time I see it I think I agree with them. I think our work could be improved by removing the opening scene because of how confusing just that tiny bit of film is or creating a longer and easier to understand opening scene, which we wouldn’t be able to do as we were only supposed to have a title sequence of up to 2 minutes. Also, I think the photos at the beginning could do with a bit more tweaking but I wouldn’t be sure what to do with them I just feel like they don’t look right. 

Part 7 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

We all made the decision that we would need to take a tripod when filming with the video camera because even though we wanted point of view shots we still wanted steady straight shots of her running past. All of us got to do some filming which I think is good as we were all putting a lot of effort into it, for example, Emily was trying to film herself falling over which took a lot of takes. Sonal and me both took pictures of Emily as they were needed for the wall. I mainly did the editing on Final Cut Pro because we all felt that I was more confident at doing it, but Emily and Sonal both contributed. Emily edited all the photos and put all the date and times on them and Sonal found the new font on Final Cut Pro and slowed down all the clips that we all agreed on. The only technology used throughout each stage was a Video Camera, a Digital Camera (for the wall images), iMovie (Final Cut Pro didn’t work at first and so we had to rough edit it on this), Final Cut Pro, the Recording Studio (for ‘Creep’), and Logic Pro (we had to ‘bounce’ the files for ‘Creep’ before we could put it into Final Cut Pro. Final Cut Pro was a successful new use of technology in our production process because once I had been shown something I could remember how to do it, but I did have to ask to be shown a lot of things. The less successful new use of technology was Logic Pro because we had no idea how to use it, as we had never even seen it before so we had to get a lot of help for that. I have learnt how to use Final Cut Pro quite well so I’m quite proud of myself because if you’ve never seen it before it looks quite intimidating but it’s so much better than iMovie so I like it a lot.