EVALUATION Q1a: Conventions

Part of our Question 1 evaluation for conventions used in our film opening, we talk about how we have challenged and used conventions and represented social groups and issues. The style is based on James Cordons carpool karaoke and sees us driving around Luxembourg while talking about our film opening
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Here I highlight some of the key conventions I have demonstrated in my film opening.

IDENTS

I found after looking at many general genre film examples that the average amount of idents to be shown at the start of a film is 2-3. For our opening we have 3 idents, Gingerbread films, LugNut productions and CLINNICKmedia. Also, the average duration of the idents of these films that I have looked at were between 5-10 seconds, for all 3 of our idents the time is 22 seconds, the longest being CLINNICKmedia which is 9 seconds.

TITLES

After looking at many film examples I discovered that the font and font colour of titles connotes genre. Specifically the titles in Slasher movies usually have a font which is sharp to represent the blade of a knife and the font color is usually red on a black background.

DURATION OF FILM OPENING

The average duration of film openings were between 3-6 minutes.

OPENING SHOT

After looking at many different general genre film examples I discovered that the opening shots varied. Opening shots were all establishing extreme long shots which is a typical convention of films for the opening shot. The opening shot usually establishes the setting and time of the film to the audience.  Our opening is opened by a series of establishing extreme long shots inspired and based off of the opening of psycho with the camera moving closer and closer to the window with a series of cross fades.

SCREAM QUEEN

The term scream queen is used to reference a young, attractive, sexually active and rebellious woman, the convention is that the scream queen is the first to be killed. A perfect example of a scream queen is Drew Decker is Scary movie. To read more about scream queen here is my blog post.

In our opening although the scream queen is not blonde she is portrayed to be sexually active, young, rebellious and reflect many of the key scream queen conventions.

Final Girl

The final girl is a term used to describe a female character that is usually tough, resourceful, nerdy, unattractive, innocent and not sexually active. The key archetype for a final girl is Laurie Strode from Halloween. To read more about final girls here is my blog post.

SOUND

The sound in horror slasher films is usually very scary, suspenseful, creepy and makes the audience's heart beat fast and irregular. Also, the music can make the audience hold their breath unconsciously and therefore feel more scared. At the beginning of the opening the music has long drawn out notes with a high pitch but as the opening progresses the notes become shorter, more urgent and of a much lower pitch.

LIGHTING

Lighting is used in horror films to give the effect of something bad is about to happen for example shadows and light flickering makes the audience feel scared and nervous. This can be seen during both the scene when Santa is on screen as well as in the garage scene. The lights flicker in both these scenes, when santa is on sceen the effect if this is it makes the audience uneasy however in the garage it is used to make the audience unsure as to what is about to happen.