Initial Ideas

 Idea one:

Themes and Representations:

• Brightly colored theme

• Coming of age themed(for the first few scenes)

• Turns darker, typical horror themes

• Paranormal activity

Narrative:

• The main character, who is a naive student enjoying their day to day life, has friends, a loving family and a bright future. But then the MC finds a cursed wooden statue right by their school, then everything changes after that.

Characters:

• Will appear in majority of the scenes

• Represented as a nerdy and shy person

Technical codes:

• First half of opening sequence, color graded with bright colors

• Closeups to show happy emotions

• LS,MS to show the MC’s life and how wonderful it is

• Second half, darker tone, more shadow and apply a darker filter

•  Closeups, long shot, medium shots to show changes in the MC’s life

Symbolic codes:

• Wears school uniforms in the first few scenes

• Happy emotions, everyone in the first few scenes have happy emotions on them

• Typical coming of age looks

• First half of the scenes will represent how the happy outside of a person look and second half shows what actually is happening inside of that person

Typography:

• Handwriting(like Napoleon Dynamite)

• Credits written in a simple font

Visual Effects:

None

Idea two:

• Themes and Representations:

  • Dark theme

  • MC is represented as a curious person who doesn’t know when to stop

  • Two sides of a person

  Narrative:

  • A serial killer is emerging in the area of the MC

  • MC and his friend decided to try to find this serial killer since they find the local police is too scared

  • As they slowly find more and more details about the serial killer the more similarities they find relating to the MC

  Characters:

  • A out-going main character who is confident and curious

  • Close friend 1 is a nerdy person and easily scared

  • Close friend 2 an average guy who likes partying and is out-going.

  Technical codes:

  • Zooms in the tv talking about the news of a serial killer, inside of the MC’s room with his 3 friends

  • Lots of Longshots and closeups

  • Plain simple cuts

  Symbolic codes:

  • MC and close friend 2 dress in a trendy way, close friend 1 dresses nerdier than the other two friends

  • MC’s room looks really current time, shows that it is set somewhere in the 2000s

  • Closeups of two different sides of things 

  Typography:

  • Clear and simple fonts

  
  

  Visual Effects:

  None

Idea three:

Themes and Representations:

• Modern

• Mystery horror

Narrative:

• A test subject for a neural chip implant just had his surgery

• After a while of using it, he start encountering weird things

• Some Kind of life form start showing up around him uncontrollably

Characters:

• Main character who is a male student, bad grades, not much future and talent

• The advertiser who wears a suit and looks really professional

Technical codes:

• A Lot of closeups, zoom ins to show weird phenomenon happening

• Shots from weird angles, mix between dutch shot at different angles to encode feeling

of being watched

Symbolic codes:

• Advertisement of the neural chip looks really sketchy but professional

• dress like current time

Typography:

• Advert like font

• 
  

Visual Effects:

• Some visuals of the human body with the chip inside

This is my moodboard for each idea:

- Idea 1:

-Idea 2:

-Idea 3:

My first idea is the most liked idea, it fits with my horror genre and there is a good twist.

It might need to be cutted to be fit into the time stamp and it can use some POV/eyeline to show the changes when they find the statue. It is achievable and most of the scenes is in a school which is always available.

My second idea requires more than the time stamp, it also is more of a crime genre than a horror genre. It is achievable but quite difficult since i'm trying to make the props.

My third idea is quite long, it more of a science fiction genre than horror in the first sequence, requires alot of vfx and it doesn't have a motive for the action of the main character.

 

Genre Study

 

This is my Genre study slideshow.

Primary and Secondary audience research

PRIMARY AUDIENCE RESEARCH:

For my primary research, I’ve made a survey about people's film watching preferences, questions about the genre of my sequence and got a total of 20 answers back. For my demographic questions, over 80% of the people who did my survey is male and the other 20% are female. Majority of the people who did my survey are Vietnamese at 65% and the other nationalities are Brazilian, Indonesian, Malaysian and Thai. The age group that I'm targeting is between 15-25 years old, majority of my results are below 20 and above 14 years old.

The favorite genre that I can observe in the chart is, not surprisingly, the science fiction genre with action, thriller and mystery genre right behind it. The genre for my opening sequence is Horror which is not that popular with only 30% of the people picking it, which is the category with the lost pick rate.

Majority of people watch films using online applications with a staggering 80% and 60% of people watch movies by going to cinemas. The most common online platforms used are Netflix which takes up 12 votes, Amazon Prime with 2 votes. Most of the interviewees said that they watch movies when they feel like it. Most of the answers said something between the lines of once a week or monthly.

There are alot of mixed opinions about their favorite horror movies, some of the popular answers are The Ring, Alien and Stranger things which are household names of the horror genre. On another question, the most favorable kinds of horror are psychological horror and paranormal both with 70% of votes, other types of horror also includes apocalyptic with 45% and folk horror with 25%.

The general trend of favorite types of character in the horror genre is a smart character, a character that can help themselves get out of tricky situations.

People in this survey said that what makes them watch a movie is because of its plot and storylines, which is the most important aspect of a movie now, compared to before. People will be more satisfied with the movie that they’ve watched if the plot is really special and developed properly. Recommendations from friends and trends on the internet is also a really popular reason.

Common narrative for a horror movie that is commonly picked in the survey is being stuck in abandoned places and hiding from a serial killer with 60%. The other two popular narratives are being stuck in haunted places and finding an ancient artifact.

SECONDARY AUDIENCE RESEARCH:

 

In the top 20 films of 2021 chart, we can see that it is mainly dominated by superhero action movies, although there are a few movies of the horror genre like A Quiet Place Part 2 and The conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. Those two are the only “pure” horror movies that are in the top 20 of the most popular movies in 2021.

This is the chart of top films that will be released in the UK sorted by genre in 2021, the most popular film of the horror genre is A Quiet Place Part 2 with 6.6% of  the total gross box office.

For the horror genre, I’m mainly targeting the group between the age of 15-24 and 25-34, those are the two age groups that go to the cinema the most right under the 55+ age group. Age group of 15-24 and 25-34 are more likely to watch a horror film than the 55+ since they’ll likely go out with friends to watch horror movies.

This is the chart of the top 10 most watched horror films in 2023, we got Five Nights at Freddy’s at the most watched horror film. We can see that 4 out of the top 10 has the general narrative of paranormal beings affecting the lives of the main characters which might show that in 2023, there is a trend of watching paranormal horror genres.

This is a chart of cinema-goers by age and social grade in 2021. We can see that for all of the age groups that go to the cinema, males always take the majority. For the social grade, the working class and lower class that goes to the cinema is relatively less than the upper & middle class.

This chart proves that the majority of the people in the UK uses streaming services, specifically more than 65% uses paid-for content like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video… and more than 62% uses free supported content like BBC Iplayer, Youtube…

This graph shows the type of content viewed in the UK in 2021, for the most popular streaming platform, Netflix the most popular type of content is TV series taking up 73% and movies only taking up 27%. For Amazon Prime Video it is 64% TV series and only 36% films. Disney+ is a bit more balanced with 57% of usage for TV series and 43% for films. The total type of content viewed is dominated by TV shows/series at 65% and 35% for films.

The Spies - Editing Practical Final Clip

 This is the clip from the editing practical that I've edited. 

Heres some picture during my editing stage.

This is the cuttinng stages, where I cut up clips and mix it together so that it have an order that make sense. I hoped that we filmed at many different angles and shot types so that when we're editing we can have a more diversed shots which can overall increase the screentime, personally its a bit too short for me which requires me to extend the length of some shots. I also used fade ins for the begining clip so that the sequence can appear smoothly and the same thing with the final clip. Just before the final clip ends, I added a graphic of the title saying "The Spies" on top of the bench and we can see the whole graphic clearer after the final clip have faded into darkness. I also tried to put an fading effect from the middle and fades onto the whole graphic, but it was a little too tricky so I just stuck to a simple fade in.

This is when I was messing around with the color filter tool to get a consistent look between each shots, but then I decided to manually change the colors of each clip to get the orange-ish look so that it looks like how I first envision it.

This is when I was messing around with the sound tool, I imported some footstep noises and organise them in places that would make sense, I mess around with the sound editing tool to change the volume and tone of some of the sounds. I imported a paper shivering sound to simulate the noise of the folder contacting with other object and I also added a background track which fits pretty well with the dramatic spy scenes, even though I wanted a track that sounded more futuristic, I couldn't find any track that fit my liking. I also used some transition effect during my sound editing stages, specifically the sound fades, I used it to add dramatic effect when the folder is delivered by adding a slightly louder and intense track. 

Overall, I think the sequence resembles the group's planning pretty well, like I said before I would want many more shots in different angles so that the clips can have more variety and overall provide more creative approach for the editing stages.

Opening sequence analysis

 I have chosen The Platform and Ready Player One for my research in opening sequence analysis.

Substitute file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FvV-EYeZdP7BS9ZeEMdimslsiLolEKAc/view?usp=sharing

Opening title sequence analysis

This is the link of my slides about opening title sequence of Se7en and Hellbound.

In case you can't see the slide: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TKESo5mTTcfvp18WQ8ukoRFPL2-v5igq/view?usp=sharing