TITLE SEQUENCE EVALUATION: “DINNER

FOR TWO”Joe Grogan

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions

of real media products?

We have changed some of the conventions of our genre, whilst retaining some of the more significant conventions of horror/thriller films (music, lighting etc.). Research was imperative in discovering the codes, conventions and key concepts in thriller films and these findings helped me and my group develop a more extensive knowledge of genre and structuring meaning whilst it also allowed us to create a clearer vision of the sort of opening we wanted to create.

This research has been linked back to our task, justifying why we have chosen to include these elements of genre/codes and conventions. I researched how the inaugural titles of horror/thriller films create meaning. The basis of my research centred on the camera, editing, mise en scene and sound. It was apparent that horror/thriller features use a very dark background combined with white, bold text to ensure the audience are able to comprehend the titles. This format was used for production company names as well as film titles. This justifies why we chose to present “Brothers Productions” in a plain white, bold font in conjunction with a black background, as it is clear – ensuring the audience can process the information easily. In terms of typography and colour format (not the timing in which the titles are presented) our opening titles adhere to the conventions to a certain extent. We also used parallel editing as our research informed us that this particular code was excellent in building suspense/tension – one film we cited as a good example was an extract from “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991)

Our “Dinner for Two” title used an abstract transition when it was presented, with a font named 'I Still Know' – downloaded from dafont.com, who provide uncopyrighted fonts.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions

of real media products?

Our research impacted our product greatly, it constituted the vast majority of the decisions we made: our abstract transition to present the title was chosen as we had researched a number of productions that also used this style of title e.g. Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 thriller “Psycho”. Cast and crew members' names are presented segment by segment which, like our titles, builds suspense even before the narrative enters the frame of the camera. In essence, we maintained the conventions as we wanted to achieve a similar effect in our feature – we felt that our product was relative to “Psycho” - we considered our product to be a psychological thriller/horror.

In terms of generic thrillers, our findings informed us that the vast majority of thrillers begin with action. This confuses the audience slightly, there was no suspense built for the scene to culminate, which provokes a question from the audience: what happened in the build up to this stage of the narrative? Why is this happening? The rest of the feature is usually spent unfolding/unearthing what has gone before – it keeps the audience passively engaged. This is why we chose to present our female lead tied to a chair in a dark, sinister environment, before our male lead enters eerily and grabs her by the throat. This causes the audience to postulate, and make assumptions on the narrative, however, they cannot be sure of what has happened before and therefore they continue to watch as they want answers to their questions, to evaluate whether their assumptions comply with the narrative.

A serious of rapid jump-cuts and an extreme close-up in our opening built meaning, we wanted our protagonist to be conspicuous, although we also wanted to conceal his identity.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions

of real media products?

Below depicts the abstract effect applied to Hitchcock’s “Psycho” (1960), it creates suspenseas the audience are unsure as to the name that will appear on screen, which prepares themfor the themes conveyed in the feature. Below I have placed screen shots from both titles to display the similarities between our titles (left) and Hitchcock’s titles. Our titles reel off a seriesof letters rapidly changing until they display the name of our feature. This is very similar to the fashion in which Hitchcock’s titles are presented, segment by segment grey and black strips enter the frame, creating an abstract effect.

This constituted a large part of our decision in utilising the typography and the transitions we used. As we wanted to maintain some of the more traditional conventions.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions

of real media products?Our research suggested that women in thrillers/horror are physically inferior and also very feminine, therein we felt it was important for Daisy to portray the character in a very feminine manner – which is why we decided on filming Daisy in front of a mirror applying her make-up and styling her hair, as these are very stereotypical presentations of women, suggesting that they take huge pride in their appearance. We also played on this notion in our inaugural scene, our establishing shot consisted of a close up on Daisy’s necklace – a bright silver pearl like necklace that represented purity and innocence. By conveying purity and innocence, we were able to build binary oppositions – the contrast of Daisy’s necklace and the dark, sinister environment she finds herself confined in. Jewellery is another way in which we exploited the Mise en Scene in order to build meaning and play with the notion of feminine features, as research suggested that jewellery is far more commonly sported by women than men.

We presented our female lead through jump cuts and parallel editing to establish a binary opposition between the male (antagonist) and female (protagonist). We used predominantly natural light sources for our female protagonist (although we also used some artificial light to ensure our shots retained some clarity) because we wanted to establish an opposition between the safety of the protagonist and the dark mysterious environment in which our male antagonist was found.

We instructed Daisy to tie her hair into a ponytail as it would paint her as a more youthful character, accentuating the dark and sinister tones of our antagonist. Our research informed us that Mise en Scene is pivotal in building meaning in the narrative and also conveying information to the audience.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions

of real media products?Given that our male antagonist is represented as superior to the female protagonist through a series of high/low angle shots and tailoring the Mise en Scene, we have maintained some continuity in the conventions which we felt were important, as we preferred to use more traditional conventions (which is why we took copious elements of Hitchock’s productions and attempted to adapt them to our production, as we wanted a modern thriller that wasn’t in anyway anachronistic). This is why when selecting actors to feature in our product we wanted a male lead who was significantly more robust in stature than the female lead. Facial features weren’t an issue for our male lead, however, we needed our female lead to come across as relatively attractive in order to instil a sense of innocence about her character.

We ensured our male antagonist sported dark clothing such as the colours black and navy, this created a sense of verisimilitude within the Mise en Scene. This also structured a sense of foreboding in the feature and hinted to the audience that the male was in fact the antagonist.

How does your media product represent social groups?

We decided on using a young British male and female who were middle class, as this would generate more of an appeal to our demographic. We used this as it seemed more sinister if it was young adults who were portrayed as mentally deranged as the audience (who are adolescents themselves) will feel less secure and our feature would frighten them considerably more than if we used adults. This is similar to the scenario Hitchcock presented to the cinema through “Psycho” (1960) – by placing mentally unstable criminals who commit murders in the home environment, it made the audience feel even more insecure as these murders are usually committed in obscure environments that are not particularly well known. However, Hitchcock broke this convention and frightened his audience by outlining that sinister happenings could just as well happen in houses as well as obscure country fields etc.

Our Mise en Scene contributed to our representation of young people, as we asked our female protagonist to sport trainers and leggings – both of which are worn by young girls today. This added a sense of verisimilitude to our feature and therefore felt we had engaged with our target audience/demographic.

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

audiences would your product appeal to?After some extensive research, our product could be distributed via a number of different media/production institutions. Lions Gate Entertainment, Dimension Films and Hammer Film Productions all distribute media comprising of similar themes (thrillers/horrors) and so I believe some of the establishments listed above would distribute our product as it adheres to their film ideologies. “Woman in Black” (2012) and “Sinister” (2012) were distributed by the production companies above, and the films mentioned all relate back to the thriller/horror genre. We have ensured the conventions in our product are consistent, and a variety of the codes and conventions we have chosen to retain in our feature are used in films distributed by some of the production companies/institutions mentioned above. These companies produce films that on average are released for the satisfaction of 15 year olds, although they also release products that they render suitable for persons ages 18 and over. However, we knew our target audience/demographic where primarily males and females of the ages 15 and over, as if we found thrillers/horrors targeted at 18 year-olds tended to be far more disturbing and gory, and we did not want to stretch these themes and ideologies to anything too extreme, as this would interfere with our chances of manufacturing a product suitable for our target audience. SAW II, Hostel, and You’re Next have all been produced and distributed by LionsGate, therefore I feel it bears the most relevance to our feature and would be the most appropriate in distributing our product as we share a similar target audience, and aim for the same demographic.

However, I do believe that it’s important we retained some originality in our feature and broke some codes and conventions, as there is no point in putting out something people have seen before as it comes across as obsolete. We needed to create something with elements that we have influenced ourselves as well as elements that have inspired us. However, it is important that we distribute our film via a source that has distributed products of a similar nature, as the have experience in this field/genre. The films distributed by LionsGate are also evidently about thriller/horror ideologies due to their titles: “SAW”, “Woman in Black”, and “Sinister” are all words with scary and negative connotations, which is why we should probably have come up with a more sinister name to go with our production.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? What audiences would your

product appeal to?

We discovered that it was 15-17 year olds who enjoyed thrillers the most. It was the horror/thriller genre that came across as the most appealing, which is why we proceeded to devise a story line that included horror and thriller codes/conventions. The fact that our target audience ranged from 15-17 meant we were able to experiment with different themes and ideas. But overall, we felt if we were to give our production an age suitability, it would be rated a 15. Young male and female demographics will appreciate our product as it features both genders of a young age, however, it presents the male antagonist as superior to the female protagonist, which may affect which demographics enjoy the film.

This inequality typifies what happens in most horror/thriller films. Our film is presented with the ending as the inaugural scene to create suspense and a sense of foreboding. Retaining anonymity in the male antagonist was crucial in creating tension and provoking a reaction from the passive audience, as it leaves the audience questioning the sequence of events that has lead up to this situation.

How did you attract and address your audience?

We gripped our audience through the use of young actors, as it presented our audience with a number of social issues that they could relate to. Most notably, things such as fashion would appeal, we had to utilise modern fashion but adapt the colours to suit the themes and ideologies presented in our product. Interest that appealed to a proportion of our demographic were included to ensure they felt the film bared some form of relevance to them e.g. the application of make up and fashion ideas used throughout. Likewise, with our male protagonist we have ensured established brands e.g. “Ben Sherman” and such have been used although we have tinkered with the colours to create meaning through the Mise en Scene.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this project?

I learnt how to adapt our footage into more of a thriller/horror format. We had to utilise colour correction and contrast tools in order to make our footage darker to render it with more sinister undertones – a technique that had been informed by research. It is extremely common for the Mise en Scene to appear darker to adhere to some of the common codes and conventions. Below depicts the process I went through to adapt the footage to suit our production more fittingly and to engage the audience more.