The Hills Have Eyes 2 has a horrific, gory opening. It starts with a woman tied up giving birth to what the audience is shown to be a mutant. She is dirty and unkempt, as shown by her dull, stringy, dirty hair and over grown toe nails which shows the audience that she is there by force. She is also tied to the bed, showing her to be a prisoner and unable to escape the real-life nightmare.
It uses non-diegetic sound over the diegetic sound. The high pitched strings in the non-diegetic sound enhances the tension of the opening, while the quieter, muffled screams of the woman inform the audience of the danger of her situation.
The frequent close up shots of the woman present the audience with a clear idea of the situation that she is in. The close up shots of her hands being tied to the bed show the audience that she is there against her will, while the close up shots of her hair and feet show neglect and imply abuse. The close up of her screaming face show her to be in immense pain which, when taken with the close ups of the baby, show it to be the extreme pain of childbirth without painkillers- as she is a prisoner, she would not have any priviledges such as drugs to ease the pain of birth.
The shots are mostly still mid shots edited together with straight cuts, fairly quickly, to add to the franticness of childbirth while still showing enough on screen to shock yet entice the audience.

(Just so you know, this film sucks but the opening is suitably gory to analyse for media :P)

Time passing techniques Sunday, March 28, 2010

Techniques found to show time passing on film

- Dissolve between frames, instead of sharp cuts
- Doing a shot away from the action
- Cross-fade from the middle of an action or speech
- Characters shifting position – or new interruptions
- Pan off subject
- Blurring in and out
- Classic clock speeding up
- Day to night time lapse shot
- Reaction shots and speech

Ideas from http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=19580

"Layer cake" deconstruction Wednesday, March 03, 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcG99G9tfSM

The character “Freddie” from this particular scene is a similar character we had in mind for our murderer. He is presented as a stereotypical homeless person. He has a greasy complexion, with un-kempt hair, and worn out, old clothes. He further exhibits connotations of greed and alertness to his surroundings, which is shown through quick abrupt movements and his ravenous attitude towards food.

I deliberately chose this particular scene to deconstruct, because we wish to use the same approach of the food being eaten as our hook to our film opening. We are hoping that the audience will respond by feeling repulsed and nauseated, but also intrigued by who the character is. The fact that the breakfast meal is a fry up will fit conventions normally attributed to an “evil/murderous” character, such as greed and selfishness. We will keep the ambiguity of the murderer by only showing shots of the mouth eating.

The shots used in the “eating scene” are quickly edited with a variety of shots showing different angles of the mouth. The fast paced editing allows the audience to be continually shocked and disgusted at the close ups. There are 11 shots overall showing both the plate of food and “Freddie”. The use diegetic sound, and the acting in these shots are brilliantly effective in supporting the sickening affect on the audience. We have decided, however, that we will not show the actual plate of food, only the food being eaten. This is because we thought the presentation of the plate might become awkward both for continuity reasons, and the fact that to have a plate will not satisfy the codes and conventions of a murderer, simply because a plate might imply a slight sense of manner and effort.

Mask Research Tuesday, March 02, 2010

In our new narrative, we have decided to mask the murderer. We decided that the scariest masks are the ones that look like scarecrow heads, the ones made from potato sacks.

This mask is a simple design but isn't the scariest of masks and the features aren't like what we had in mind.





This mask is good but doesn't look like we want it to- we want a more sack like look.







This sack mask is good but is hard to be taken seriously as it is smiling. However, it could also been seen as sinister as the smile could be ambiguous- happy smile or the product of satisfaction from killing someone?




This mask is good because it looks angry and is tattered and worn, suggesting that it is well used. It also has stitching over the mouth. We may use this design as it is similar to what we want.





This mask looks really good but it seems too complicated to make in the time we have and again doesn't look sacky.






This mask is really good and fits in well with what we want our mask to look like as it has the stitching over the openings which is really scary. We will probably try to make our mask as similar to this as possible.

Second Narrative Sunday, February 28, 2010

Ok - so when we had uploaded our footage from the camera from over half term onto the school macs, we found that the majority of our shots were wonky due to a faulty tripod and camera.

We had a "sit down" with Ms Hollis and decided that we would have to re-film and do a different narrative.

----> Here is the story I drew up for our second idea.

From our original idea we have cut out the "meat scene" and instead opted for our murderer to eat the "fry up" - thus following slasher film connotations more closely. We will also be introducing a mask for our murderer...

Editing Effect Saturday, February 27, 2010

(The picture is rubbishy quality.)
I was watching this film and I thought this was an interesting editing technique. As the focus is on the opera, the conductor in the foreground has been blurred out. However, as the focus shifts to show who the conductor is, so does the blur and the background becomes blurred as the conductor becomes more sharp.

Taken from "Amadeus".

Finished filming for halfterm Saturday, February 20, 2010

Hey! We have finally finished our filming today!

(Hopefully we won't have to film any of our shots again)

We would like to say a BIG thank you to Jenny for being our amazing actress :)

-------> AND here is our cute mascot! Loves :)