Horror film conventions

To help connote the typical horror conventions me and my group partner Ishpreet Sundal decided to pair up with another group and work collaboratively  in order to come up with a unique way of denoting the typical horror conventions. To do this the other group member Bryony had the idea of using the iPhone app 'Vine' in order to create a short video clip of both of our group members acting out the typical conventions. We found that by doing this it would be easier to show our audiences as instead of having to just read the writing of the conventions as they would be able to see the demonstrated version. Once we had filmed this Bryony then uploaded this to her app and we was able to access it on an online source.

Costume List

My partner Ishpreet Sundal created a costume list using polyvore. The costume on the left is what the character Tiffany appears to be wearing, from her use of clothes we can see that she is very fashionable as she has black leggings with an over sized jacket and a creme bag. Her fluffy head piece also connotes to the audience her personality of liking to take care of her appearance which suggests she may be quite self-conscious.

Our second character Gretchen is wearing fairly casual clothes and a large use of dark colours, she also happens to be wearing Vans which is very common and fashionable for teenagers/young adults who is our target audience and the use of dark colours also denote that she appears to be quite reserved which is a common convention used in horror movies.

Bentley Priory Location Shots

Here is some location images which I found of where we will be filming at Bentley Priory Wood's. I took these photos and uploaded then onto 'Imgur'. From the pictures you can see that they are very conventional of a horror movie which helped us when constructing our narrative.

Ident Storyboard

When me and my group member had been doing some research into idents, we found that it was very conventional of a horror movie to have incorporated and ident, me and my group member took this into consideration and I decided to also create a storyboard of our ident for our opening sequence. This gave us a rough idea of the type of ident that we wanted and we used sources such as www.footagecrate.com in order to help us get the ident that we wanted. By creating a storyboard I found gave us a guideline of what we wanted and the type of imagery we would want to incorporate. Below is an image of the storyboard I created for our ident.

Ident Homework

Ident Homework

Here is the dictionary definition of an ident:

Ident’s are usually used in films in order to connote the production company of whom has produced the film, depending on the production company ident’s contain very distinctive features. The first ident I have chosen to research is ‘Working Title’  which is a British production company owned by the conglomerate Universal Studios. 
This is an animated ident which me and my partner Ishpreet may be considering to use for our ident, the ident is fairly simple with the use of dull colours such as blue and brown connote that the ident may be fairly old. As the ident is quite simple this may connote that they do not have such as a mass target audience compared to Lionsgate Productions. However the target audience would be based mainly in Britain as they do not tend to go as mainstream compared to American based production companies such as ‘Lionsgate’. This ident doesn’t appear to contain any music or sound, as it begins it starts with a drawing which then leads onto the main opening titles, this could signify the process of the ident going from an independent production company to a conglomerate or may have significance. Me and my partner are still negotiating whether to include music into our ident or way may just interpret natural sounds and keep it quite simple. The Working Title ident doesn’t appear to give away the type of genre that it is representing, this could leave the audience questioning as to the film that they will be watching. Typically for horror genres the ident would usually appear to incorporate some use of blood or gore so as our opening sequence is only 2 minutes long we will make sure that our ident helps denote the genre of our film.


Lionsgate
The second ident I have chosen to research is 'Lionsgate' they are a very popular and well known production company and they have produced a variety of very popular films such as 'SAW' and the record breaking 'Twilight Saga'. They have created films from very different genres however when it comes to creating our ident I will be making sure I try and include some similar conventions from their horror ident. The clip I have chosen to use is for the horrow genre of films and I have chosen this one as I will be creating a horror opening with my partner.

From the 'horror' ident above I gathered that there was a large use of rustic metal bolts this could be to connote a typical horror convention as being quite old and ragged. The use of the visual connotes a brown colour to connote quite a dull atmosphere to the audience which reinforces the genre of the film, in the ident we see the two metal doors open which then goes to show the rustic bolts transform into normal shiny ones, this could be used to connote the difference in genres which they produce. The use of the translucent typography of the caption 'LIONSGATE' is embedded onto a dark red clouds which could represent the use of blood which is commonly used in horror films.

The use of the red clouds could use suggest a use of hell or danger which is a common statement used with this colour, this reinforces its target audience that the film may contain very typical horror conventions such as blood and gore. The target audience for this type of ident would either be a 15+ or 18+ this would depend on what is usually incorporated into the film.

Lionsgate also have another ident in which they use for their other genres of film, the ident appears to be quite similar to the horror one, this ident begins with the camera panning across similar bolts which is also used in the horror genre one however in this one they appear to be much more clear and shiny. The ident then zooms into the opening doors and similarly we see the typography of 'LIONSGATE' in a Sanserif font which is also embedded onto a set of clouds. The use of the blots and knots all structured together could be used to connote the themes of power and strength in which they have earned from creating such succesful films. The use of the bolts moving in unison could also be used to denote that they are continuously growing and producing more and more films.

Bolts are also used to connote quite hard working jobs and is usually used by strong males, this could be used to suggest the amount of hard-working and effort that they put into producing there films and the use of the heavenly image could be used to connote their final product. This also suggests that in order to get a successful final  piece you have to go through all the hard work in order to complete a high standard final piece, while studying media at A-Level I learned that to create a successful final piece we have to go through a large use of research and planning in order to get our opening sequence to the best of our ability which could also be what Lionsgate is trying to signify.