Q7 - Reflective Evaluation - Raja Virdi

Here is a video explaining how my skills of pre/post and production have developed since starting the very first preliminary tasks to my final media coursework piece.

PART 1

PART 2

Q6 - Reflective Evaluation - Raja Virdi

Technologies in creating a product is how the film uses different types of equipment. For example in making the film a camera is a type of technology, and in post production, a editor like Final Cut Pro would be an example. Technologies are also part of the distribution process so how the film is shown to audiences for example TV advertising, or posters on the internet.

Here is a Prezi created by me, about the technologies about constructing our product.

The Technologies Of Constructing The Product - Raja Virdi on Prezi

Q3 - Promotional Poster

Here is our promotional poster. It was created using Adobe Photoshop CS5. We believe it gives the message of our storyline very well as it includes our main location we are filming at, our actress, ghost like figures, and the main title in a readable and appropriate font. Also, the black and white effect gives quite a sinister effect. We also added other effects such as lightning and clouds, as well as fixing the image for our location to make it seem as haunted as possible.

We feel we accomplished a successful poster, in that it will attract our target audiences.

We used ideas from other posters such as the Haunting in Connecticut which was very dark-looking. We did the same by only using darker shades which tells an audience it's a horror film. As we can see it seems as if there are some mediums in the poster with the person at the top of the ceiling. We tried comparing this to ours by putting our main location behind our actress which shows its importance.

Haunting in Connecticut poster:

Q3 - Reflective Evaluation - Raja Virdi

Distribution is the way in which you get your film seen and the way in which you promote it, for example posters & trailers.



Here are the different ways, an independent and major company will distribute their films:


Independant Film Companies


Hammer Films - It is a independant production company which specialises in the genre of horror films, and has produced many of them since opening in 1934.

Examples of films:


Woman In Black



Here is the trailer of the film, as we can see it looks like quite a large budget film, and considering their choice of actor (Daniel Radcliffe), you would expect that kind of film to be with a major institution such as Lionsgate.

Here is an example of a promo poster from the film:

As we can see from this poster, it is evidently well done in terms of graphics which you would expect from a larger production.

We can also see that, in terms of marketing, compared to larger companies they have similar techniques.










Let Me In






Here is the trailer for the film "Let Me In". Another film by production company Hammer. As we can see from this, it obviously has a professional edge to it you wouldn't expect from an independent production company. As it says "From the director of Cloverfield", we can see it is going to be a more up-market production as Cloverfield was backed up by a major production company; Paramount.

Here is an example of the poster for Let Me In. Again we can see from this that this independent production company has similar methods of marketing and distributing compared to larger companies.

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Black and Blue Films - Recently opened in 2007, and is one of the best independent production companies in the UK. They mainly focus on Horror, Crime and Comedy genres of films.

Stalker




We can see from this film trailer that it doesn't seem much up-budget, as the general trailer itself is quite boring and doesn't tell a lot about the film itself. You can see the difference between a large company and a smaller one in terms of quality of trailers.

Here we have the promotional poster, which in my opinion looks very professional and would definitely compete with larger companies, and definitely tells an audience the film is a horror genre with the image.

Devils Playground




In this trailer for the film "Devils Playground", we can see it is much more professional looking than the other film in that there's more gruesome scenes and scenes that show a lot of action by using quick shots, which implies to an audience there is a lot in the film. I believe this trailer isn't as good as larger companies due to budgets and such, but is still an effective horror genre trailer.

Here is the promotional poster for the film, which in my opinion is very bland and not as effective as other posters as it is very simple and unprofessional. On the other hand, the trailer does make up for a bad poster. Larger company posters are definitely more effective, but generally they are all using the same marketing techniques.

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Major Film Company



Lionsgate Films - Lions Gate is a North American entertainment company. The company was formed in 1997. As of 2011, it is the most commercially successful independent film and television distribution company in North America.




The Haunting in Connecticut






In this trailer for "Haunting In Connecticut", we can obviously see the difference in quality and professionalism, as they would have larger budgets for the whole film and therefore a trailer so it would look a lot better than independent production companies. However they used the same distribution such as trailers, the quality of them is completely different.

Here we have the promotional poster for the film. We can see from this that it is quite professional and eye catching in that, it says "based on a true story" and the overall look of the poster. This can easily be seen as a horror film from the position of actors. Special effects have also been used in order to get the character at the top of the poster, so there is a bigger budget needed for it.

Saw






In this trailer, it is the original Saw. This is a very captivating trailer in that it tells an audience what to expect to happen, which is what you expect from a trailer and its use of effects and camera angles gives a sense of professionalism and interesting to an audience. Considering the age of the trailer, I feel it is very effective at creating the horror genre, and is definitely a good way of distribution.

The poster of this film is very simple, yet effective. The image obviously shows a horror genre as the hand is cut off and there is blood and the style of font is very distorted. I think this isn't the best poster for distribution purposes however the trailer definitely distributes the film to an audience very well.

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As we are only students, we need to find other ways in which we could also distribute our film. We could try to get it put on film festivals, for example Mayhem Film Festival & Bang Film Festival which are based in Nottingham. Also, they take on student films, so it's more realistic for it to get distributed to a wider audience. Furthermore, we could upload it to youtube or vimeo and try to get promotion from that, as it can be viewed by anyone worldwide. From having it online, we could promote using social networking sites such as facebook and twitter.

Here is an example of the Mayhem Film Festival:

We can see from this photo that the location in which it is held is very busy and would definitely be ideal for us to get our film out too.

Here, we can see a past student film which is on youtube. It is a brilliant way of promotion as anyone can see it, so the distribution can be worldwide. Also, with youtube's new features we can watch the film in HD, which is also an added bonus to possible distributors as they look for quality footage.









Finally, in my opinion I believe the difference in quality and distribution can easily be seen between an independent production company and a major one. They do have similar ways of marketing like posters and trailers, but the difference in quality can be seen. As the bigger production companies would have bigger budgets, it means the quality would be higher and they could afford distribution like merchandise, advertising and such, however independent film companies can;t accomplish this because of smaller budgets but they still produce good films, which is what it is about at the end of the day.

Q2 - Reflective Evaluation - Raja Virdi

Representation is how something is portrayed. In this question, we need to show how our media product represents particular social groups.
Using the following videos and imdb.com, we can see the kind of age/gender and race of people which watch these certain films. From this information we can understand how we want our media product to be portrayed to our audience.






1. In this extract from the film "1408", it is quite clear which social groups the victim and threat belong too, and how they are represented. Firstly, the victim is a male character which is uncommon in horrors, as the typical stereotype are females being the victim. However, as it is a psychological horror, the representations of gender can be changed, because the sub-genre is not particularly aiming at a certain gender. Also, the victims in this sub-genre are usually represented as teenagers however in "1408" the victim is middle-aged, which is showing that a victim can be of any age to create fear and tension in the audience, so therefore the film is challenging stereotypes and gender as to how they are stereotypically viewed, by an audience.
The threat is unknown to the audience, so it is quite difficult to put it in a particular social group. As the room itself is the threat, we can view the representations by the different fears it creates in the victim for example; the slasher man and the little girl. These are obviously two very different representations of characters and stereotypes as the slasher threat is a normal stereotypical character who is a male, middle aged and effects the victim physically. However, the little girl is effecting the victim mentally, as she is his daughter and very young. Typically in a psychological horror, the threat will effect the victim mentally, which is doing here. Both characters are following the normal stereotypes of gender and age as by one being a male slasher which effects him physically, there is also the contrast which is his young daughter who effects him mentally, which are the normal representations of a psychological horror.






1. In this extract from the film "The Haunting in Connecticut", there are obvious social groups and representations to the threat and victim. Firstly, the victim is a male teenager which is the typical stereotype from a psychological horror. Usually in psychological horrors, the main victim has some kind of problem/gift for example in Sixth Sense, where the child can see ghosts, however in this film the teenage victim has a severe cancer which adds to his vulnerability as a victim. In this film, the stereotypes of age and gender are followed from psychological horrors, but yet it still adds a significant amount of fear in the audience.
The threat in this film isn't seen so it is hard to put it in a particular social group, but the threats from psychological horrors aren't usually seen anyway as the pain is done mentally, so there is a representation there of a stereotypical psychological. As it shows in the trailer, we do see some possible threats such as the ghosts, which again are a stereotypical threat in a psychological horror, because usually the threat is in the victims head. In this film, I think that the stereotypes of age and gender follow the normal psychological horror, as even though we don't see the main threat we can see what it can create and how those smaller threats effect the victim mentally and physically.

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2.

Here is the test shot of Katie, in the clothes she is going to wear for our psychological horror piece.















We chose Katie as she follows the conventions of a typical psychological horror (and a normal horror at that) because the victim is usually female and young, which will also attract our under 18s target audience. The normal conventions for a psychological horror would be like this (Katie from Paranormal Activity).

We tried creating our character kind of like this as our film has similar conventions to Paranormal Activity. The use of darker clothing creates fear and tension, and even though she is not as young as our character, the same kind of effect can be accomplished as our character is more vulnerable because she is younger.







In our story we have our character going to a large castle of which is haunted by unknown beings and occurrences happen which emphasises our threat such as lights flickering, doors slamming and lots of non-diegetic groans. Eventually our character ends up in a final room where she finds on a desk newspaper clippings of a girl who had died in the castle (our threat), and suddenly the room turns pitch black and as before lights go haywire and doors slam, and we finally see our threat behind our character.

There are many conventions we gained inspiration from our sub-genre such as the idea of a unknown threat tormenting our victim which we gained from Paranormal Activity, and we liked the idea of that kind of spine-chilling horror. We also gained inspiration from Haunting in Connecticut as the threat can is a ghost which had died years ago, and still haunts the premises. It is a typical convention but can be very effective if done properly. Finally, we thought of the different kinds of occurrences from the film 1408, which included lights flashing and doors slamming, among other things.

Here is my target audience sheet:

In this, I discussed about The Sixth Sense, and the kind of age group i would be appropriate for by going on IMDB.com.
Also we watched the clips of the film and saw how they targeted there age group of 18-45+ by seeing the types of conventions they added and how hey attracted the audience.
We also viewed on the user ratings what was the preferred gender, but both genders enjoyed the film.
The same is for race, in that it applied to anyone.


We can gain a lot of useful information from this because as the film is very wide spread in terms of age, gender and race. By having our film follow the same conventions and such, maybe ours can be appropriate for all age groups, gender and race. Although we are aiming at any gender and race, our target audience is the under 18s, but having a wider audience could be very beneficial.

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3.

The sequence of the ending from our film, where the hauntings get more dramatic is where we can establish our social group representation. This is represented because the hauntings are aimed at a teenager which would appeal to our target age group of 16+. Our social group representations are universal for gender and race. As we used a female being haunted, it will attract both male and females in my opinion because girls are stereotyped as non-horror fans, so our choice of gender representation may be able to draw them in.

We have chosen our representations to be similar to the Haunting in Connecticut trailer because nearing the end of it, we can see hauntings happening. Also the actor from it, is about the same age as our actress apart from the fact it's a male character as a pose to female. Although the same representations of age and gender can be the same as our film.

Feedback From Audience

Our feedback from our audience was all around very good. Using the Audience Feedback Evaluation form we used for Question 5, we can gather that our audiences reactions to gender/age/race were very good. Everyone circled the "positive" box for gender and age, as it appealed to our target audience and to both genders. However, as it was universal for race, the feedback was simply "neutral".

As we can see from the following Wordle of what our feedback was, it was very good and accurate. We had a good mix of people saying our age group was correct, it was universal for gender and race and much more positive comments.

Q4&5 - Reflective Evaluation - Raja Virdi

QUESTION 4

It is important to know who the target audience for your film is because it tells you how you should represent your film as different age groups like different kinds of themes. It is also beneficial as you can focus on making the film as best and interesting as possible for that target group, whereas if you didn't know what your target group was, you would be guessing and using wrong themes which may not work well.

Here is an example of examining the horror film: "The Haunting in Connecticut" and how they represent age/gender/class into target audiences:

In "The Haunting in Connecticut", there are obvious representations to the threat and victim. Firstly, the victim is a male teenager which is the typical stereotype from a psychological horror. Usually in psychological horrors, the main victim has some kind of problem/gift for example in Sixth Sense, where the child can see ghosts, however in this film the teenage victim has a severe cancer which adds to his vulnerability as a victim.
In this film, the stereotypes of age and gender are followed from psychological horrors, but yet it still adds a significant amount of fear in the audience.
The threat in this film isn't seen so it is hard to put it in a particular social group, but the threats from psychological horrors aren't usually seen anyway as the pain is done mentally, so there is a representation there of a stereotypical psychological.
In this film, I think that the stereotypes of age and gender follow the normal psychological horror, as even though we don't see the main threat we can see what it can create and how those smaller threats effect the victim mentally and physically.
From this, we can understand the target audience would be of around 16-25 as it has the main themes which interest them such as ghosts and fear of the unknown.


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The five films I have chosen to research into for there target audiences are;
The Sixth Sense
Haunting in Connecticut
1408
Paranormal Activity
Black Swan

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The Sixth Sense's certificate is a 15. We can gather that this film has parts which wouldn't be appropriate for younger children because of the rating.
Also, from the following IMDB user ratings, we can gather what the kind of target audiences are.

We can see from this user rating chart that the overall target audiences are very widespread in that people under 18 all the way up to 45+ have rated the film equally. Although, Females under 18 do have the highest average votes. The fact that they are all very widespread could be due to that the film doesn't attract any particular sex or audience so the film can be targeted at any audience.





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The Haunting in Connecticut's certificate is again a 15. As I have seen the film, I can agree with this certificate as the film is quite scary in parts and has darker themes, which would not be suitable for a younger audience.
Here are the IMDB ratings, showing the main target audiences.

We can gather from these user ratings that most of the target audience were mainly people under 18. This is understandable due to the fact the film is aimed at teenagers as the main character is a young teen. The females again are the highest average user rating. Even though the film doesn't exactly single out any particular sex, it seems that females were the ones who watched the film the most.





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1408's certificate is also a 15. Again, I have watched the film and can agree with this certificate as it does include themes which would scare anyone who is younger.
Here are the IMDB ratings, to show the main target audiences.

We can see here that the main target audience is the under 18's. Also, the main sex are males under 18. As I have seen this film, I am quite surprised that it's the under 18's as I would have thought people in there 18-30's would enjoy it as it makes you think and plays with your mind. As our film we want to create is based on films such as 1408 & Haunting in Connecticut, having the main target audience as under 18's can tell us that will be our target audience.




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Paranormal Activity is a 15, and I believe this is correct as the film is quite scary.
Here are the main IMDB user ratings.

We can gather that the main target audiences are the under 18s and 18-29. I think this is correct as it is a horror that the younger generation would enjoy because of its story and themes. As it is based on ghosts and is our film, we can see that the main target age group we are aiming at are again the under 18s. Also we can see that the main sex is males, which would be due to its themes of killing and such.





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Black Swan is a 15, it should be certified an 18 in my opinion for its gruesome nature.
Here are the user ratings on IMDB.

We can see the film does not appeal to people aged 30+. This could be due to its more disturbing scenes which older adults may not like. However, it seems pretty equal with people under 18 and the 18-29 target audience. Males under 18 seem to have the most average votes. The film is obviously targeted for the younger generation for its more scary themes which a younger generation would find interesting.




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Finally, we can gather from the certification and the IMDB ratings that the target audiences for the kind of horror we want to create would be the under 18s of any sex. We would need to follow the same kind of themes as these films in order to accomplish this.

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QUESTION 5


1. When planning our film, we watched multiple films and researched them to find the right target audience which would represent our script and themes the best. We believe our target audience of 16-29s would like our film because we have themes of hauntings which from our research is very popular with this age group.


2. We targeted a particular age group only because we wanted our film to be universal to any gender, race, etc. We targeted this particular age group by using a teenage actress. By doing this, our teenage target audience will be engaged more, rather than if it were an older actor.


3. We used Wollaton Hall as our location and only one main prop which are vintage photos. In general conventions from psychological horrors, our location was perfect and conformed to conventions as it was empty/desolate, vintage and old, it wasn't furnished a lot and had the right colours, which will definitely attract our target audience. These kind of indoor locations are normal for psychological horrors for example the main room in "The Haunting in Connecticut" was the kind of look we were going for.


4. Our victim is a teenage girl, so this is very appropriate to our target audience which are among the same age group as they can relate to a younger actress rather than an older one.


5. The title sequences were inspired by "The Haunting in Connecticut" using lots of old photos (which were our continuos prop). I feel this would engage our target audience as you want to know what the photos are about and how they will relate to our film. Also, the images are quite scary and abnormal which will definitely draw our audience in.


Here are examples of our title sequence:

We can see that our choice of photos are very vintage/old and can be seen as quite scary.

From these images, we want our audience to want to know what they're about and what it has to do with our film.

6. For our music, we want it simple yet effective. As I do a lot of sound to film as a hobby, I understand what sound is needed to make a film effective. Normally, strings will attract an audience and during steady shots were there is no action involved, deep sounds from pianos are very spine chilling. When it comes to action scenes we have added lots of different thunder sounds which have been edited to sound more sinister to give a fearful effect.

7. Here is the feedback sheets from our whole media group about what they thought about our first edit and what we would need to improve on.

In general, everyone thought it was really well done, and they enjoyed it. However, there were little things like parts which were too long and audio problems, however they can be easily sorted.

Overall, we are very happy with the comments and they will help us a lot with editing our piece some more.

In a "15" certified film their are many things which give it that rating in terms of content. We can gather this information from www.bbfc.org.uk

Suitable only for 15 years and over

No one younger than 15 may see a ‘15’ film in a cinema. No one younger than 15 may rent or buy a ‘15’ rated video work.

Discrimination

The work as a whole must not endorse discriminatory language or behaviour.

Drugs

Drug taking may be shown but the film as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse. The misuse of easily accessible and highly dangerous substances (for example, aerosols or solvents) is unlikely to be acceptable.

Horror

Strong threat and menace are permitted unless sadistic or sexualised.

Imitable behaviour

Dangerous behaviour (for example, hanging, suicide and self-harming) should not dwell on detail which could be copied. Easily accessible weapons should not be glamorised.

Language

There may be frequent use of strong language (for example, ‘fuck’). The strongest  terms (for example, ‘cunt’) may be acceptable if justified by the context. Aggressive or repeated use of the strongest language is unlikely to be acceptable.

Nudity

Nudity may be allowed in a sexual context but without strong detail. There are no constraints on nudity in a non-sexual or educational context.

Sex

Sexual activity may be portrayed without strong detail. There may be strong verbal references to sexual behaviour, but the strongest references are unlikely to be acceptable unless justified by context. Works whose primary purpose is sexual arousal or stimulation are unlikely to be acceptable.

Theme

No theme is prohibited, provided the treatment is appropriate for 15 year olds.

Violence

Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable. Strong sadistic or sexualised violence is also unlikely to be acceptable. There may be detailed verbal references to sexual violence but any portrayal of sexual violence must be discreet and have a strong contextual justification.

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In our film, we can aim for the "15" certificate as our film as it states in the Horror section that there is a strong threat which will be haunting our character. However, we could use 12A, but some themes such as the level of horror we could include would not be substantial enough to our target audiences of under 18s and 18-29. Also, looking at the films researched such as Haunting in Connecticut and Sixth Sense, it can be justified that our film is a 12A as the horror isn't as bad as Haunting in Connecticut, but is on the level of the Sixth Sense.

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Q1 - Reflective Evaluation - Raja Virdi

In this question, we have to show how these images from existing films develop or challenge the images from the horror film we made. We will need to show how these photos show conventions from our films and how we have used these as a kind of inspiration for how we want our film to be perceived, and how well it has turned out like these images.

This is the Lionsgate logo in the opening of the film. Personally, I feel it represents the film using the red which is kind of like blood. Also, I like the font of "Lionsgate" as it quite scruffy but bold which gives it a very interesting look which would certainly attract an audience. I also like the background of the clouds as fonts contrast with it. For our opening logo, I would be very interested in creating something like that.

This is our logo, we created for our production company - Diamond Films. We believe we have developed conventions as we have used colours which have been found in other company logos such as the Lionsgate one which is mostly red, to show blood/evil. We also used a Serif font which challenges the Lionsgate conventions as we wanted it different and not as bold and in your face as we have used the logo of a Diamond to symbolise our logo.

The use of this logo is very simplistic in that the logo is on its own with a black background which represents darkness and fear. Also the font is very bold with "Haunting" and "Connecticut" in bold which could symbolise the importance of those two themes. It represents the sub genre of psychological as it makes the audience think what the film will be about with such a simple logo and title sequence, which creates tension and fear of the unknown.



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This is the last scene from our opening credits. We believe it develops conventions from the Haunting in Connecticut titles as we are using old photos, used similar colour correction to show aged photographs but we challenged them in that we added bold text which fades in and out. We also added some eerie dark piano music for an added scary effect.

The use of the titles represents the conventions of the psychological sub genre as it shows vintage family portraits at first with eerie piano music but the camera then zooms out as the music starts to distort to show the photos are actually people with corpses. This represents how the psychological sub genre can play with your mind and create quite a scary and fearful image.




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We can see here that our sub-genre is shown as the lights are flickering (showing ghostly presence) and it's a dark tone. We also think we developed conventions because in establishing a psychological sub-genre, there needs to be a haunting, which was happening at this point in our film.

We can see here that the sub-genre of this psychological film is shown, as it is showing a ghost (the girl), which implies it's a ghost/psychological film. The use of mise en scene is used here with lighting as we can see the lighting on the girl which shows she is a key character and is ghost-like. Also, she is dressed all in white to show purity whereas the male character in in darker clothes and along with the destroyed setting it reflects him as a character.


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We have developed the conventions of character here as we can see she is a young teenage girl. By her facial reactions here, it shows she is scared which is another convention of a psychological that we followed. We put our character in dark clothes to represent our films dark tone.

In this image we can see that the character has been scratching the walls. The idea of being hurt from the mind reflects a psychological which is happening here. This could reflect the conventions of a psychological story as usually they target younger characters from the inside. Also, the mise en scene can tell us that the character looks like he is wearing something from a mental institution, and the fact he has no top on could show he is confused.



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This shot shows good mise en scene which develops the conventions of our sub genre as we used the photos in the beginning of our title sequence so it shows continuity. Also, the photos are a key prop in our film which are found to be haunting or character everywhere she goes.

This scene is showing good mise en scene as the woman is in the direct lighting whereas the ghost-like being behind her is in darkness. Also, we can see she is in clean clothes whereas he is in old tatted clothes which have been burned. The sub-genre of a ghost psychological can be understood here. This image also shows that the darker character may attack the woman.




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4 Key Images:

In this image, it is showing the character seeing a wall break down with blood. It implies the sub genre of a psychological as the Room 1408 is playing with his mind. The mise en scene shows him in quite a lot of shadows which could imply darkness which is usually represented with psychological horrors.

In this scene, we can see the characters soul being taken out as the paranormal happenings have taken over her body. We believe this is a key image because it shows the climax of our film as to why she is being haunted. Also, we feel we are developing conventions because in a psychological usually a ghost can take over a human, for example in Paranormal Activity, which is where we got this idea from.



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In this image is shows a ghost about to jump out the window. This is also showing the room is playing with the characters mind, and is a key point as he contemplates suicide.

The lights are a key scene in our film as it is when the haunting begins to start for our character. The lights turn on and off by themselves and we added electrical sound effects to add to the scare of the scene to show the haunting building up.











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In this scene, the character starts to become mentally unstable as he keeps seeing ghosts and past histories which cause him to lose his mind. As the characters hands are on his head like that it shows he is confused, which is a normal convention for characters in a psychological horror.

In this scene, our character is trying to escape the room as she has been haunted and is scared. These are developing conventions of a psychological film as in Room 1408, the man is trying to escape the room but he can't.







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In this image we can see the room giving him a rope to hang himself on. The ideas of a threat playing with a characters head are the conventions shown here, which is very normal in a psychological horror. Also the conventions of the story start to build up as we as an audience now understand that the room destroys peoples minds until there death, which is shown in this image.

In this scene, as it is a long shot and pans around the room, we can see it shows the conventions of a psychological as the scene is in a old/vintage styled room. This is quite a scary image as the room is also desolate and we don't know what is going to happen. The mise en scene for lighting is very good in my opinion as the shadows are quite long and scary.