Evaluation

Creative Artefact Evaluation

My aim for the unit F632 creative artefact was to produce a short horror film with the duration of 2 minutes and to relate to the films, which have influenced me and relate to the generic film conventions from my textual analysis.  I wanted to focus on the theme of paranormal and supernatural aspects. My basic premise of the short film is that a teenage boy is alone at college when paranormal activities start to occur and being a curious teenage boy he starts to explore whilst filming it all on his mobile phone as the activities become increasingly worse.

With my main aim to frighten my target audience, I made a conscious decision for the camera work to be majority handheld to increase the sense of realism to the short film and I chose not to use any other technical equipment for example a tripod even though I did have access to this, it was another conscious decision I made so it made the filming of the paranormal activities more spontaneous and to make the camera movement more shaky not only to highlight it’s filmed on a teenagers mobile phone but to focus on the fear of the character showing he is nervous and unstable. I intended to use my previous experience with cinematography and video camera operation to my advantage by examining different cinematography and shot types before filming because I wanted to portray the correct meaning in which I was planning; I found this handheld convention and many other conventions from Paranormal Activity (Oren Peli: 2007), which was the main film that inspired me. Paranormal Activity’s iconography has major horror elements in which I wanted to use, the mise-en-scene location of the house, kitchen, living room and bedroom these are all locations in which make the film have verisimilitude making it more realistic therefore in my short horror film my location is in a college.

In terms of use of codes and conventions identified in my textual analysis my character David Grey has psychological similarities because he is in a dangerous situation alone this makes David vulnerable and strongly confused similar to Martin Unknown (Collet-Serra:2011) and Eddie Limitless (Burger: 2011). Unknown provided inspiration for my narrative structure as Martin comes face to face with the life and death scenario and I wanted to put my antagonist David in this situation too, this aspect of death enlightens the horror genre.

The poltergeist within my film is the protagonist and to create the fear I decided early on in pre-production of my short film to show a faded figure not too clear but clear enough for the audience to have a visual image which would be that mysterious and metaphysical it would be memorable. This is similar to the deliberate style that Oren Peli tends to use in all his paranormal activity films showing the protagonist in this ghostly like way. I based my character’s emotions mainly on young curiosity then gradually realising from the increasing volume of his heavy breathing he was becoming more terrified and wish he didn’t explore because now he’s gave the poltergeist what it wants there is no way in getting out.  The use of the heavy breathing is a good horror convention as it creates suspense and shows he is isolated from any form of help.

In the middle of my short film is where I changed the camera work from handheld to a mid-shot however not from the view of the mobile phone but from the eye of the mac suite I felt this gave it a twist and involved the audience more as connotes that the audience are looking in on him, however, this frightens the audience more because even though they are looking in on him they can not help him.

I planned my short horror film by hand drawing a storyboard planning micro elements such as cinematography, editing, sound and mise-en-scene the reason I created this was so whilst shooting on location it would be a great guideline for me to follow which resulted me to saving a lot of precious time. I did keep reminding myself and checking my shooting schedule and which shots I still had to do left. Alongside my sketches of what each shot should look like I numbered each shot to create organisation plus were the notes of the micro elements, what type of shot it was, description of sound, description of mise-en-scene and an idea of what editing type would work well.

In my opinion, despite only having access to the college location on weekdays and only during our film studies lesson because of our actor’s busy schedule, I feel that my short horror film is successful in the principal focus of frightening my target audience and the focal point of the handheld camera work which I set out these aims at the beginning of the production progress. I originally wanted the audience to see my antagonist David’s face as I planned this on my storyboard however throughout the filming process it came to light that not seeing David’s face nor does he have dialogue leaves the audience to create their own imagination of David. Plus having the sound of heavy breathing, footsteps and the toilet flush emphasises the horror genre and is more effective. My actor is in my film studies class and sits next to me this brings an advantage to the table as he will know how to portray the character well as he has seen the creation of the character and the creation of my short horror film.