hw 18th dec

Analyse your film opening in regards to genre

In my first year of media studies, I created a film opening in the genre of horror. However I also had the sub genre of slasher, by having genre, the creation of the production became a lot simpler as there was existing codes and conventions to follow, which we recognized from research and interpreted through planning and production.

We tried to establish a common mise-en-scene with our production by using a pathetic fallacy, this included a dark night time back ground with slight rain, almost fore shadowing that something bad was going to happen. Also concerning mise-en-scene, we used a background of a forest, creating the sense of no escape. Both assets of mise-en-scene were conventions to horror, however Lacey comments that "genre is not fixed". We differed from the common convention of genre by using a female protagonist who became the only survivor, which is not common within horror movies, as more often than not the protagonist and the survivor is usually male due to the gender roles he is given which shows him to be masculine and tough. In addition to this a female is represented to be feminine and simply there for the male gaze, however we defied this by introducing a female as the main role of a horror movie and making her the only to make it to the end and the one that manages to fight off the killer doll.

Genre is very important to both institutions and audiences. Genre is important to institutions because they can the market the movie much easier due to being able to identify the target audience and accumulating ways to access them in a message which will get them to see their movie. Genre is important to audiences as when they go to a cinema or go to buy a horror DVD, they know what to expect, therefore they are assured they wont be wasting their money. Gledhill 1985 comments that "there are no rigid rules of inclusion and exclusion". This meaning that there is no particular rule saying what you may or may not put into your movie, despite the importance of genre. In our opening, baring this quote in mind, we decided to include the editing techniques of fade to black and what was considered to be 'spooky' music to create an eerie feel for our movie opening, which is a convention within horror openings, e.g. The Ring, Scream, etc. However adding to our experience concerning the quote, there are certain conventions we didn't include, for example, for our actual visual setting there was a park, (despite the fact of the secluded forest background) seemed quite open, which in comparison to existing film openings which we researched, was not common. A common convention was that the area was secluded, in the middle of nowhere, with minimum people, however due to a limited availability for us, we had to use a park which had a main road beside it.