Cabin in the woods research

So our film uses Cabin in the woods as an inspiration for the type of atmosphere we want to create for our audience. Even though Cabin in the woods is a horror film, it still uses key conventions such as dark lighting, quick shots and the different angles and shots which we aim to use during our film in order to give it more of a scary and thrilling atmosphere.
Cabin in the woods is about Five friends who go for a break at a remote cabin in the woods, where they get more than they bargained for. Together, they must discover the truth behind the cabin in the woods. I feel even though this film is a horror, in some aspects the lighting is more softer and gives a brighter feel to it contrasting with the scary elements to the film, making them even scarier as the audience is aware that its not the norm.
Similarly to the Cabin in the woods, we have a similar target audience. I found research that suggested that 65% of the audience for Cabin in the woods were from teens to young adults making this the most significant as the next highest was 25-35 which was only 26%. This clearly shows that younger people from teens to young adults will most stereotypically be attracted to this genre of the film.
A Souls redemption uses similar themes as Cabin in the woods. Themes related around the devil and sin can often be attractive to young audiences as they contain many real life enigmas which enhance entertainment for certain people. I think taking this into account it will help us to produce our film. However, we also have to take into account that Cabin in the woods is a thriller and even though we have similar ambitions to create something similar to Cabin in the woods, our task is to create a thriller so we need to make sure that we don't make it as scary and gory.

Logo Ideas

 Today I decided to make two logos for our production. I liked this title as it incorporated all our names and I used a different font for each letter to represent our initials. I used a bitmap of one of our shots used when we went into the woods which I will post as a blog soon, to colour in all our logo which gave it more of a theme and related to our thriller film.

However, I think this logo is my favourite out of the two as all our initials interlink and you can see more of the background to the wood, making it more obvious of our actual theme we're going for, I really liked the use of the different font and how it all fits together into one image, but all our fonts are different to show our individual differences.

For both of these images I used serif draw plus which  allowed me to crop, Photoshop and cut anything I needed too.

Our practice piece

One of our group members decided to go to Widderson spring woods in which we hope to film our final thriller film in, and did a practice piece with our main actor Bertie. This was to give us a initial idea of the potential shots we could use and help us to decide an appropriate time of day as we're using natural light for our film but as it becomes darker earlier this time of year, we have to test when a good time to film would be. Here they used Windows movie maker to edit all the clips together, which isn't the same programme we will be using in our final thriller, but for this practice piece I think it is helpful just to use in order to visualise and give us a hint of how it may look. I think higher quality of equipment will help us to achieve a more realistic opening and make it seem more professional, here, only an IPhone was used to shoot this and so won't be as high quality as a DSLR.

This was filmed at around 4:30-5:00pm which I think is too late to film as we're lacking natural light, we aim to try avoid the use of artificial lighting and so I think if we film around 2-3 pm it still is getting darker, but not too dark to the point where we struggle to see and have to use aftereffects to brighten up the film.

This is our one page pitch, one of our group member's wasn't here for the filming (Connor), and so we had to do it without him. Enjoy :)

IMDb A Soul's Redemption

IMBD Page for a Soul's Redemption

Audiences

Risk assessment

excuse my handwriting, but we finally completed the risk assessment, from what we've thought of from the environment we're filming in, there are not many risks, however, we also thought of the equipment which we didn't mention in the risk assessment, but due to the slippery surface on the ground, we may have to be careful where we place the tripods to reduce the chances of any camera equipment being broken.

uses and gratification

According to Bulmer who was writing about media in 1950 5 years after the second world war, During which he concluded that most propaganda protests where through media such a newspapers, poster art, radio and films, which attempted to persuade mass audiences to follow their polices, Bulmer concluded that media must have seemed like a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands as it was capable of persuading millions to follow evil men, showing how powerful media can actually be to an audience.

The uses and gratification theory is a popular approach to understanding mass communication. The theory places more focus on the consumer, or audience, instead of the actual message itself by asking ‘what people do with media’ rather than ‘what media does to people’ (Katz, 1959). It assumes that members of the audience are not passive but take an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their own lives. The theory also holds that audience are responsible for choosing media to meet their needs.

It is suggested that the uses and gratifications theory has to fulfil one of the following when we choose a form of media:

• Identify- being able to recognise the product of a person in front of you, role models that reflect similar values to yours, aspiration to be someone else.
• Educate- being able to acquire information, knowledge and understanding.
• Entertain- what you are consuming should give you enjoyment and also some form of ‘escapism’ enabling us to forget our worries temporarily
• Social interaction- the ability for media products to produce a topic of conversation between other people, spark debates.

 

This could relate to our thriller due to the fact people use thrillers and horrors to put others in that position and make them think it is them in that situation, I think this is a good use due to the fact that we aim to make the audience feel involved and part of the thriller rather than them just watching it and not identifying with it, we aim for the audience to be entertained, be educated and identify with our thriller.  

Helping to understand the criteria

So on Friday we had a lesson on evaluating other thriller openings, I thought overall this was a useful lesson due to the fact that it gave us an idea as to what was required for the grade we aim to achieve and gave us more of an understanding on the criteria given. I felt that the A grade video was very successful as it had lots of focus pulls making it more mysterious and the camera skills being more experienced, this clip also contained material which was appropriate for the target audience and task as it created a lot of tension giving an idea that its a thriller, I felt that this clip had a lot of control on the setting and what was in the frame as everything looked planned, and nothing out of place not breaking the mise-en-scene they aimed for, it was clear they wanted to create a more rural idea to the clip in which was met.  I also really liked the use of the voice over as it gave an edge to the video and broke up any awkwardness that the audience may have experienced if there was other sounds or dialogue, as it was on a beach, the noise of the waves may have made it difficult to understand what was said from the microphone of the camera picking up background noises so the use of a voice over went well with the setting.

I felt that one of the clips we were shown which was a C grade did meet the requirements as it used sound with images and editing appropriately and that they used appropriate titles, However, I think that it didn’t meet the task set, as it was meant to be a horror, it didn’t create any tension, it seemed more like a comedy, I think that if they filmed at night time and made the dialogue more clearer by having voice over’s instead of using the microphone on the camera due to the fact that there was a lot of background i.e. wind and cars, then maybe it would’ve cause more tension making it less funny for the audience as that wasn’t the aim of the clip.

Practice shots

Elsie and Bertie decided to do a few practice
shots for ideas and inspiration of what we could
do for our final opening thriller film.