Jeepers Creepers 2 Film opening

Our main task is to create the start of a teen horror so we set the task to watch the start of a selected horror film and answer some questions on the film.

Our group’s film was Jeepers Creeper 2. The film producer is myriad and the distributors are American Zoetrope Pictures. The film was released in 2003 with the certificate of age 15 and Victor Salva directed the film.

The film opening is eight minutes long and starts with a low crabbing. From the first part of the film as it opens we see a very large corn field and can tell this film is set on a farm. We don’t see anything else around the farm which shows us its excluded from everyone. (This is a common horror film convention) The opening scene consists of 86 shots. There are some special effects used such as the scarecrow grabbing the boy and flying away. The opening starts slow but builds up tension as it goes along and then music start which slow speeds up as the young boy is kidnapped.

Pitch

This is our groups pitch for our main task:

dhillon cassidy mander 60 sec by kbamediastudies

Pitch

Today at 12:05 our group pitched our idea for our main task the teen horror to our teacher.

Preliminary Task

Today our group imported out preliminary task footage on to the Macs and then edited it using Final Cut. Before doing these we had to make sure that our preliminary task had all the camera angles that were requires and that the audio was clear. After achieving this we cropping clips and then started adding effects and music to our footage. Editing our footage was fairly easy as final cut is user friendly software. After creating out final product someone had deleted it off the Mac so we had to create our preliminary task again. This wasn't too much trouble as we had recently made it so we could remember everything.

Transferring footage

Today we taught how to get our preliminary task footage from the cameras to the macs and then convert it to QuickTime so that we can edit the footage using a program called Final Cut.

Media Lesson

Today in our lesson we were all assigned a common role of film making such director or boom operator. We had to find out from each other all of the roles and what they did.

Some of the new roles we learnt were:




The production Manger - draws up the budget
The boom operator - Operates the long "boom" stick with the microphone on the end (grey spongy bit)

The make-up artists - changing the actors into character in the way they look

Preliminary Task

Today our group booked out the camera and tripod and went to our desired location where chose to film. It took us less than 1 hour to film everything because we had planned it so well. I think our preliminary task went well. The next stage for our group is to use Final cut and edit the footage.

Survey Results

Here are the results of our survey

This shows that 15-17 year olds did my survey the most and then followed by 12-15 which is good because my final product will be a teen horror aimed at teens.

This show me that mainly scared of the suspense during a horror film. 

These results tell me that out of all the people that did my survey most prefer the Comedy Horror Genre and this then followed by Thriller Horror.

Common Conventions found in horror films

I was set the task to write a post about some of most common horror film conventions that are feature in most of the top films.

I will start this post with my first convention which is in all horror films and that is the location. I think that setting/location of a horror film is very important as the film is based around this area. For example an old wooden cabin in the middle of the woods excluded from society with no electricity or connection to outside world. I would say this convention is one of the first ever done but it’s still used today and is still very effective. The audience then know that when watching the film there is no help for miles so the people in the film can’t be rescued.

 

                                                          

Here is the next convention I will write about it. After someone has recently been murdered their friend aren’t too shocked and quickly forget as if they were never friends and then they forget the danger and die in the same way. The audience know that they will then die because their friend died in the same way so tension is made waiting for it to happen.

Another very common convention that always happens is someone hears a strange noise and the goes to investigate what has happened but them always end up going alone. They normally don’t return and then someone goes looking for them stupidly and also dies.

Here is the next convention I will write about it. After someone has recently been murdered their friend aren’t too shocked and quickly forget as if they were never friends and then they forget the danger and die in the same way. The audience know that they will then die because their friend died in the same way so tension is made waiting for it to happen.

The next convention that I will write about is with phones. Back when horror films started the electricity went or someone would cut the phone lines when you were in danger and needed help so there was no outside contact. However in today’s society we have mobile phones so to get around this most commonly in horror films the person usually has no signal or runs out of battery. This also links in with lights because every time someone is in danger the lights cut and the power is gone. This then makes the audience anxious and then they want to see what happens next.

Another very common convention is the character falling over. Always at the most important moment just as the character is about to get away they fall over and then die.

Another convention is double scares after everything the character has been through the audience expect a scare and it’s a pet or a lost friend which then relaxes the audience because it didn’t happen then straight after the real scare happens which scares the audience more because they weren’t expecting this.

London Media Trip

Today we visited London film museum. My media class were taken on a tour around the museum and shown the history of how film product first started and how they worked and then on a timeline to a more recent film. I though the tour was interesting because we got to see original clothing and props from films such as Harry Potter. After the Museum we were given a break before we started the second part of our trip which was a 2 hour workshop. In the workshop we had to come up with an idea of a short film including the title, cast and props. After this we filmed our short films in the London film museum. After filming our workshop host showed us some editing features which we could use for our main task later in this year.

Our survey

Click here to take survey

questionnaire

Today we created a survey on survey monkey to help us collect information for our main task. We created a questionnaire to gather information from people and get to know what they think about horror films. The questionnaire was deigned to help us chose a target audience and what type of horror we would create. To create the questionnaire I used a free website called "survey monkey. I Think survey monkey is a good resource because it's set out well and also allow to electronically distribute your questionnaire and then graphs yours results.

How to create a survey monkey account

This presentation below will show you how to create a survey monkey account.

Survey Monkey Presentation

View more presentations from Suzie Vesper