NW Production Log Wilderness Woods

At wilderness woods we did some filming which gave us the opportunity to practice different camera techniques and helped us to decide what we would like to do in our sequence.
In my group I acted in the shots as the protagonist who is being followed through the woods,  I also did a little bit of filming when I was not acting in the shots which was a good opportunity to practice using the camera. On a seperate blog post we mentioned what went well and what didn't during the trip.

NW: Deconstruction of opening scene- Saw (Wan,2004)

Genre

• Saw (Wan,2004) belongs in the psychological horror sub-genre, however it does contain elements of other sub-genres such as Splatter and Torture Porn due to its use of graphic torture and gore. It fits the conventions of psychological horror because it makes you think what would I do in this situation, so it pulls you into the narrative by imagining yourself in the characters position and therefore affects you psychologically.
• During the first part of the opening, audiences generic expectations of the text would be fulfilled as they would be questioning their actions of they were in the situation, also the use of a domestic prop like the bath tub will relate to all audiences and will scare them just within the first few minutes of the film. The second part of the opening is not completely conventional of psychological horror as we see the gun as a weapon and normally weapons don't appear much in psychological films as it's normally based on mind games, so this will challenge the audiences expectations of the text.
• On the whole the text conforms to the characteristics of the genre, as the audience we see the fear of the characters and their desperation and so its presents the text as being serious, it doesn't treat the characteristics in a comical or playful way, which allows the audience to know how they should react to the film.
  

Film Language

• Camera: The scene begins with an  extreme close up shot of the man submerged in water, we see the struggle and sudden panic in his facial expressions which automatically connotes that he was not aware that he was underwater and perhaps was forced there by someone/something. Further into the scene a high angle is used when the bright lights are turned on and we see the mans reaction, it puts the audience above the man and makes him look vulnerable, weak and scared. After showing the two men in the bathroom and their blurry POV shots which suggest they are trying to adjust their eyes to the light as the shots are out of focus and shaky, the camera pans around to reveal the dead body in the centre of the room followed by the camera spinning above the body in a birds eye view shot and then extreme close ups of the body parts and props that the dead man is holding. These shots connote danger and tension as it really involves the audience by seeing the body really close up, also the spinning shot suggests a sense of loss of control and madness.
• Editing: In the beginning of the scene there is a fairly slow cutting rate which challenges the horror genre as we expect a quick rate which causes tension, this makes the audience wary of what is going to happen. Towards the end of the scene however the cutting rate speeds up a lot after the two men have seen the dead body, this connotes their panic and fear after seeing the horrific tortured corpse in front of them. Jump cutting is used when the first man is trying to break himself free from the chain, this suggests his desperation to be free and perhaps his disbelief that he is actually in this situation.
• Mise-en-scene: The location of the old, dirty, rusty bathroom creates a sense of eeriness as it looks as if no ones been there for a long time. Considering its a bathroom the room is very big which makes the characters seem smaller and more vulnerable, it also creates a sense of loneliness. Their costume is fairly casual and plain, which suggests they are just normal people, the second man has sweat and dirt on his shirt which connotes that he's stressed and perhaps has been there for a long time. Also the use of pale makeup and cuts on his face makes him look unwell and rough, all the colour has drained from his lips, this could suggest that he hasn't had food for a while and is undernourished. The lighting is not conventional of a horror movie but its so bright and has a blue tinge to it which connotes a cold surrounding and could be used as an effect to disconcert the audience.

• Sound: There is selective sound of the lights being turned on, the sound is amplified and it sounds like electric shocks every time a new light turns on in the shot so the sound links with the images. There is diegetic sound throughout the scene, the sound of water moving through pipes, the pipes creaking and there's also non-diegetic sound, a dull drone in the background which links to the images of the confused men and when the corpse is revealed a high pitched sound occurs which sounds like a rocket firework. These sounds create tension for the audience as they have visceral effect as they are determining the emotions of the audience by building up their anticipation through the use of sounds.
• Visual Techniques: In post production a blue filter may have been used to create a cold surrounding. Post production techniques may have also been used to blur the POV shots to create a dizziness effect so the audience are put in the position of the man effectively.
• Titles: All title credits come before the scene properly starts, the text is blue in quite a traditional font and all names are centred in the middle of the frame. When the words leave the shot they dissolve away like waves on the water, which is linking to both the sound in the background and the first shot we see which is the man in the bath. The title of the film is revealed after we see the mans face in the water with the mysterious blue light showing parts of his face, the title is written and positioned in the same way as the opening credits and dissolves away in the same way.
  

Narrative

• Plot outline: There's and man who awakes in a bath tub with a blue light floating around in the water, he clambers out and falls onto the floor finding himself chained to the wall by his ankle, he struggles to get up and staggers around whilst shouting out for help. He is shocked when a second man speaks to him from the other side of the room in a rough voice, the second man finds the lights and turns them on causing both men straining their eyes and trying to adjust to the bright light. When they can see the room, they are horrified by seeing a dead body in a pool of blood on the floor with half its face completely disfigured, in reaction to this, the first man tries frantically to pull himself free from the chain, with no success. The stock characters are the two men and the stock situation appears to be that they are being held hostage by someone who tortures people.
• The sequences in the opening scene are all in chronological order so it has continuity which tells the audience the story in order and they can follow it along easily.
• The audience is placed in the narrative a lot in this opening sequence, there are POV shots which make the audience feel like they are in the room experiencing the same thing, also the high angle used makes the audience feel like they are there standing above the characters, which not only makes them feel involved but it also makes them feel like they have power and authority.
• Tension is created and maintained through the use of selective sound, types of camera shot and angle, various aspects of mise-en-scene including location, lighting, costume and makeup. Many enigma codes are presented, questions such as Why are they there? How did they get there? Who are they? Who's the dead man? How long have they been there? 

Representation and Ideology

• The two men in the sequence are presented as being mad and out of control, however given the situation this is understandable. The first man is presented as being more ‘normal’ than the second man as he reacts to the situation as any other human being would, panicking and acting in disbelief. However the second man is presented as being more mad as he is relatively calm in the situation and he doesn’t react as you might expect therefore challenging the stereotype in horror films where the protagonists always react dramatically to the situation.
• The ideological discourse for this sequence puts the two men in the scene as the protagonists, we see them as vulnerable and the audience feels sorry for them because they’ve been put in this horrific situation. They generally conform to the stereotype of a protagonist in a horror movie, they are confused and affected emotionally to why they’ve been chained to the walls of an old bathroom with a dead corpse lying in a pool of blood and this leads the audience to believe that they are innocent and have been unfairly targeted. Masculinity is challenged in this scene as both men are vulnerable in the situation as they have no way of getting out, they are helpless and act irrationally in response to this, this is unconventional of the horror genre because normally the men are the heroic characters who aren't scared of anything and they normally are the ones to sort out the situation.

Media Audiences

• The target audience for Saw is males from around age 15, this is because it has lots of gore and torture which tends to attract a more male audience than a female audience, its not for young children to watch however it would appeal to late teenagers because it has a certain amount of excitement and action to attract these audiences.
• The possible audience readings of this text might include confusion to why the two men have been put in this room with a corpse, they might feel vulnerable themselves because they could imagine themselves in the situation, the use of POV shots would especially encourage this. The audience may also feel horrified by the dead body in the room, the mise-en-scene of the blood and makeup effects on his face to create a distorted effect would add to the terror.
• Personally I read the text as being conventional of the horror genre, the blood and gore especially reinforce this as that’s what I would expect in a horror film. However I think the lighting later on in the scene challenges horror stereotype as its very bright and makes me feel quite ‘safe’ when watching the scene as personally I find the dark scenes more scary. Being a female, this film probably wasn’t targeted for me as much as it is for males due to the use of gore and torture, however I do feel like it appeals to my age range as it includes quite a lot of mystery just in the first few minutes.

Institutional Context

• The production companies involved in the making of Saw are Evolution Entertainment and Twisted Pictures, the distributor was Lionsgate Films. Since the first Saw film and its success, there were six more films that make up the seven part Saw franchise.
• There is evidence that this film is independent because it had a very small filming budget of $700,000 and a very short amount of time to film in so Wan was only able to film a couple of takes for each shot, they also found afterwards that there were gaps in the edit so they had to take still photographs to fill the gaps and use video from surveillance cameras to complete the film as they didn't film enough takes when shooting for the first time. 
• There were no major A listers in the film, however since the film came out the actors became more popular as the film did really well. 

After watching this clip I have now collected more ideas to put forward into my concept development, I think that use of sound and lighting in this clip was especially interesting and i hope to take some of the same techniques forward into our concept.

ED NW- wilderness trip

Today we went on a trip to wilderness woods to experement with new ideas and work with camera's which was a very successful beneficial trip.



What went well in the trip?

• We used the track for the first time and that went really well it made the shot look very proffesional and was probably the biggest success of the day.
• The use of handy cam shots worked very well in the woods and created alot of panic in the scene and came out looking really good.
• We used panning shots  and close ups to look at writing in huts and that looked very frightening and that shot went really well and we would like to put these possibly into a jump cut or intercut a scene of something else we found.
• We used a canted angle to film a stream and we thought that this could look good at the end ofour video as often streams and running water can look very sinister.

What could have gone better?

• POV shots seemed very difficult to do and to look good because holding the camera correctly is difficult.
• The tripod which we were using had brocken and this made it very difficuly for us to do things such as pedding shots and so next time we must make sure that the tripod were using isnt brocken.
• The weather made some filming harder than others as we had to keep equipment safe and dry while we were trying to film.
• Some extreme close ups didnt look very good this could have partially be because we were unable to do things such as pull focus with the school camera's.

Overall: 

we are not going to use woods in our next peice we are going to try in a urban area this is because it was very difficult to film in the woods. We also intend to use lots of tracking shots in the real peice and use the jib because we got to experement with that today and it looked very good and proffesional.

ED deconstruction of an opening sequence

Genre-

• Seven belongs in the sub-genre of psycho it conforms to the conventions of classical psychological films as it has a character collecting information and obsessive behaviour of people and there seems to be a underlying obsession with hands as the character has many images of hands and the sequence only reveals hands to the audience. A obsession with a certain thing suggests mental illness to the audience. 

• The audiences generic expectations of the text are fulfilled as the text follows conventional patterns of psychological thriller. It shows obsessive behaviour followed by collection of data of certain people. It is using extreme close up shots and low lighting to make the scene also feel more scary and restrict veiws for the audience which is sterotypical of a psychological thriller.
• The text conforms to the characteristscs of the genre, the sequence is very serious and it is not playful or ironic and therefore it is encoraging a dominant veiw of the text. This text can only be perceived in the way that it is serious and would be difficult to misperceive it as ironic.

Film language- 

• In this montage lots of the camera is in close up or extream close up this is because the audience are meant to be confused and not able to see everything that is happening to create a enigma code. Lots of panning shots are used when moving across the images in the scene and they move slowly so that the audience is able to see the differnt images. POV shots are used which places the audience with the antagonist which conveys being inside the head of someone with a mental illness. A steady cam is used in the filming to represent that the atmosphere is calm and that there is no panic but this is juxstiposed by the things that the character is doing seem to be strange.

• There is a fast cutting rate through the sequence as lots of images and clips are being put together at once this conveys that there is lots of imformaion and the rapid thoughts of someone who is metally ill. Jump cuts are used when he is writing in the book to speed up the process this connotes that he is is taking his time while writing down this imformation which conveys to the audience that he takes pride in the work he is doing because he is mentally ill. 
• Mise-en-scene on this text is very significant there is lots of symbolic codes such as cutting his fingertips so that he is untracable which conveys that he is invlolved in crime and doesnt want to be traced. The lighting in this scene is very dark for most of it when he is writing in books and sewing things together this connotes that there is something being hidden which creates a enigma code to the audience and imformation they want to know. The photograph of the man with his eyes crossed out represents that he has been killed and that it was planned by the man in the scene this conveys to the audience that the man is a murderer of some sort. The lighting in the red room where the photo's are being processed is red and this is used to connote blood and danger because the colour red has lots of negative connotations to it. 

• We can see in this text that the character is mentally ill this is conveyed through non-verbal launguage of him cutting pictures and sewing  imformation into books this connotes killing and danger because it is the obbsession of gathering this imformation and how he slowly carefully cuts pictures because it is his pride and his work. We are able to tell that the characrter is male through his actions because they are masculine and this conveys to us that the antagonist is a male character.

• Sound in this clip is all non-deigetic but it helps to support the images in the clip such a the high pitched screecing sound when the man cuts of his finger prints this is because the images are gory and there is alot of tension in them and so the sounds adds to this tension in the scene. There is a deep moaning drone in the backround and this comforms to the conventions of the sub-genre that it is in, it conveys to the audience that there is danger and makes the montage scary for the audience. 
• The director has used post production to add other parts to this text there has been a picture of a face which we cannnot see properly with a cross over it to make a sense of danger and fear of the unknown in the montage, this helps to create meaning as the audeince is now in question to who is being killed and why. There has also been a de-saturated effect put on in post production and this connotes a cold enviroment in which there could be a killer. This cold enviroment helps to convey someone with a mental illness in the scene and it creates a dark mood which the audience feels afraid of.

• There are 38 titles that are included on the sequence, the director of the film (david fincher) is put in twice at the beginning and at the end this establishes his importance this is done for the proucer as well. Apart from having the directors name at the start the names go in importance we see the name of the cast first and then the crew, the producers, the writer and then finally director just as the montage ends. All the names are written in white and it is on a font that looks simmilar to handwritting this fits in with what is happening as the man in the sequence is writing things down. The film title comes shortly after the names of the director and producer at the start it also comes after the main cast, the first thing to appear is 'new line cinema' and this helps to show the importance of the distrubution company. 

Narrative

• The plot outline in the opening sequence is clear we are able to see that it is a man that is hunting down people to kill them for a reason and he is a phsycopath and therefore it is mental illness and obsession as motivation for the murder. The stock charaters in the opening sequence are the characters which are being crossed off and the ones which have images of their faces. There is only one character present in this montage and so we only see him.
• The opening scene of this is in a structure of a montage and we are revealed through organisation differnt bits of imformation revealing things about the characters personallity. The montage helps the audience to understand that the character has a mental illness and that everything that is about to happen in the film is planned and a string of events related to this one person, however the identitity of the character is not revealed in the montage.
• The audience is positioned outside of the narrative they are looking in on events happening how ever have no influence to what is happening in the scene, the audience can see what is happening through close ups  and therefore look very closely at things happening.
• The main themes in this narrative are mental illness, obsession, and murder we can see this with the a extreme close up  on him cutting of his finger prints this is clear that he has a mental illness and is trying to hide something by doing this creates a semic code and the audience is now to look out for cases without finger prints. The photos of faces with lines through them and the obbessive writing suggests that there is some sort of hunting and chasing down people because of a reason and a theme in the killing this we later find out that this is the 7 deadly sins. During the montage the audience does not yet know the link between the murderd but the audience is able to assume there is a link between them because of the obsession of one person.

• Tension is created in this montage as there is very little lighting as so the audience is unable to see properly what is happening and they would like more revealed to them, there is also a fast cutting rate and this stops the audience from being able one scene for a long enough time to reveal to much. The audience sees the character crossing out photo's and words in a book which creates a enigma code as to why he is doing that and what he has done to the people, who the people where and why he has killed them. Another enigma code is why he is cutting of his finger prints as this suggest that he has something to hide and that eh ahs possibly commited a crime that would need to be traced.

Representation and ideology

• The social groups presented in this sequence are the mentally ill because the sequence focuses on the mind and activity of a mentally ill man. Another group which is represented in is male and the audience is able to assume that the character is male because his hands are manly and dirty, this comforms to the sterotype that men tend to be less clean than women and that they have dirty hands sometimes when they are working. This is binary opposition as it is a males hands in comparisson to a females hands. 
• The ideological discourse in this sequence shows us that the sterotype of a male antagonist and and the fact that a male antagonist is dangerous is very relavent as it helps to reinforce dominant veiws of male being more dangerouse. We are able to see in the opening scene the film title 'seven' and the fact that the antagonist looks in  religiouse books allows us to assume that it could be to do with the 7 deadly sins and this is reinforces the importance of religion as we can see that it is religiouse teachings that are motivating this character.

media audiences

• The target audience is 16-30 although the rating of the film is a 18 its target audience is 16 to 30. in the openng sequence we can see the target audience it may attract as it has alot of mystery which will mean people want to watch it because there are questions to be awnserd however is manages to attract the 16 year old audiene because it feels like it will have a element of gore to it when the man pulls the needle out.
• The dominant audience readings of this sequence are that the man is killing these people he has images of and he has a metal illness and obsession and therefore there is a motive for why he is killing them. The negotiated readings of this are that this man may not have necessarily killed these people he could have organised them dying or have a obsession with them and he is doing it for a motivated reason but is not mentally ill. The oppositional reading of this text could be that the audience feels he is not a killer of these people at all he is trying to find there killer and he is not obsessive over them he is just watching these people for their saftey.
• I evaluate this text to be this is a mentally ill man that is a guilty murder of the people he is showing photo's of. My age and backround teaches me that if a man is collecting photo's and imformation in private about people and is creating a book of this imformation and then cutting of his finger tips he must be a murderer because this is not seen as normal.

Institutional context 

• This film was produced by Arnold Kopleson and Phyllis Carlyle it was distrubuted by New line Cinema. Arnold Kopleson has been invlolved in films such as 'Devils Advocate', 'Platoon', 'The fugitive' and 'Eraser'. New Line Cinema has been invlolved with films such as 'A Nightmare On Elm Street','The Lord Of The Rings','Blade','The Hobbit' and 'The conjouring'.
• It is a industrial film this can easily be seen because is has been produced by a famouse producer Arnold Kopleson and it has also got a ultra high budget of $33 million. The film is directed by David Fincher and it has been backed by a large studio (New Line Cinema).
• Seven incudes A-listers such as Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman these are very famous actors and are well recognised world wide. They are very significant because they are both main characters in the film and the fact that they are so famouse brough publicisty to the film.

NW ED Group- Mind map

Initial ideas presented on mind map displaying some of our inspirations and ideas for plot, locations, editing etc.

NW: Response to ED still frame experimentation

 

 

 

 

• The framing of this image provides a long shot, it allows us to see the girls whole body and take in some of the background which helps us identify the location.
• Mise-en-scene in the form of costume and props stereotypically relate to the horror genre, the little girl wearing a dress suggests her youth and innocence as well as the teddy bear that she holds, these both being stereotypes of young girls. To contradict this, she is also holding a knife which connotes that she has a more threatening side and suggests she could be dangerous.
• The location is domestic which is often used in the horror genre as it makes the audience think they are safe in the home environment but then something scary happens which makes the audience feel uneasy and worried.

NW Institutional Context - It Follows (Mitchell, 2014)

Production

• The film was shot in 2013 in Detroit, Michigan
• Director David Robert Mitchell used wide-angle lenses when filming to give the film an expansive look, and cited the works of George Romero and John Carpenter as influences on the film's compositions and visual aesthetic
• Produced by Animal Kingdom, Northern Lights Films and Two Flints
• Mitchell started writing the film in 2011 while working on a separate film he intended to be his second feature film

Distribution

• Distributed by, RADiUS-TWC and Dimension Films
• It Follows premiered at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival on May 17, 2014. It was released theatrically in France on February 4, 2015 and in the United Kingdom on February 27. 
•  It was given a limited release in the United States on March 13 and a wide release on March 27 in 1,200 theatres.
•   The film also received a limited release on March 27, 2015 in Canada by Mongrel Media
•  It earned $163,453 in its opening weekend from four theatres at an average of $40,863 per theatre making it the best limited opening for a film released in the United States and Canada in 2015
•   It paved the way to a new, flexible partnership between cinemas, VOD platforms and iTunes.