Obsessed Film Opening

Directors Commentary (Obsessed)

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

We learnt a variety of different things about technology throughout the process of constructing our film opening.


We learnt how to properly and effectively use the camera to achieve a number of different shots. We were also able access shot footage and also how to zoom-in / zoom-out. Most importantly we were able to change the settings such as brightness, contrast and colour on the camera which enabled us to achieve the best quality shots possible. We then had to propery convert our film footage to Quicktime using mac software, We did this so that it would be compatible with the editing software "Final Cut Pro".

Throughout the editing process we learned how to effectively use the time line to our full advantage for example locking layers whilst we edited sound, we were also able to cut the length of our shots and sound and also how to put them together piece by piece so achieve interesting clips, for example the match cut of the killer picking up the screwdriver. We were able to apply different effects onto our footage such as "fade-in" and "bad-film" which added to atmosphere of the film opening. I believe we a group gained a strong understanding of "Final cut pro" throughout this process.


Music is a key feature throughout our and many other film openings. To create our piece we used "Garage band", this enabled us to compose a chilling piece of music which plays in the background. We used a number of different instruments provided on the software and brought them together whilst closely watching our film as to ensure the music fits perfectly. The music builds as the scene develops which adds suspense and builds tension.

Before this task none of the group had had previous experience with "Garage band" and only limited experience with "Final cut pro" and professional cameras. We therefore feel like we have learnt a significant amount and would be happy and confident to work with these tools again in the future.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We represented the social groups of teenagers in our film opening. Both teenagers portrayed in our opening are juxtaposed. The male seems to lead a regular teenage lifestyle and to be quite sociable, which can be saw through the photographs placed in the diary, these photographs show the male victim with his friends. Whearas the female is clearly not a normal teenager and appears to the audience as isolated and hazardous, we know this as she lives in a abandoned mill and also stalks and tortures the male character . This also challenges regular conventions of gender in horror films as we have the male character as the weaker victim and the female character as the the dominant killer. In almost all thriller movies the female is the weaker character being pursued or hurt by a male character , eg "Halloween" , "Scream". The audience wouldn't expect a teenage girl to be capable of performing such horrific acts. Some members of the audience may not expect a petite female such as the chosen actress to be able to physically dominate the male in the way in which she does. This challenges the patriacal society view.

The female antagonist is represented in a dark and negative way to show she is an evil character. we never see her face to show she is a mysterious character. It also means the audience can't connect with her as they dont know who she is thus making them feel sorry for the male victim. We deliberatly chose for her to wear a long black coat to represent mystery and evil, this is similar to the slasher in "Scream" who wears a long dark costume. This is completly juxtaposed to male victim who wears a white t-shirt which represents good and purity as he has done nothing wrong and is innocent.

What kind of media institution would distribute your media product and why?

There a number of different distribution companies that we feel would be effectively be able to distribute our film.

"Working title" have produced many low budget films which have done extremely well in the cinemas, such as "Notting hill" and "Shaun of the Dead". We would ideally choose a company such as "Working title" as it is mainly British company which would mean it would be better able to market a British film and make it look appealing to a British audience . They also use many cheap and effective marketing techniques such as viral marketing, etc. However, despite many exciting campaigns such as "Shaun of the dead" which staged live public events such as 'infected zones' we feel they haven't had much experience in marketing and distributing psychological horrors. This could prove a problem as working title are commonly associated with comedies or romcoms.



Other distributors we could use are those fully owned by the large American conglomerates such "Warner brothers" or "Universal studios". These companies have large prints and advertising budgets which means that thier films are widely distributed and marketed around the world. This would be a huge advantage as more people would see the film. However as our film is low budget these large companies seem unlikely to market a film such as ours.

Other UK distrubutors we could use are "Filmfour" and "Hammer film productions". "Filmfour" which is owned by "Channel four" is known for makeing low-budget films. We could also ask "Hammer film" which specialises in low-budget psychological thrillers, etc.

As our film is low-budget we could use digital distribution to bring the P&A budgets down and also to appear in as many cinemas as possible as prints of films can be quite costly. One low budget British production company known for digital distribution are "Optimum"which released Shane meadows' "This is England" to a number of cinemas purely through digital releases.

We could also apply to the National lottery which is known for providing grants and funding.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The genre of our film opening is Physcological Thriller. In many ways it compares to other films of a similar genre as it contains similar horror and gothic elements such as dark mise-en-scene and blood, it also has the use of props such as weaponary, etc which is seem in countless horrorand slasher movies such as "Hostal", "Scream" ,etc.

The mise-en-scene of the film, e.g. the costumes and location were similar to other horrors, the ripped t-shirt Mark wore relates to "Hostal" where the victims top is ripped and also blood soaked, the long black coat Jess was wearing were just like that of the "Scream" films as the dominant main character (the killer) is dressed head to toe in black and has their face covered up.




Through the use of sound we were able to a build a tense atmosphere and create suspense just like many other thrillers, this really helped to set the scene. For example our music began to build up and get louder as the killer approached the victim, this happens in films such as "Halloween" where the killer (Micheal Myers) is approaching his victim.

The structure and use of shots is important when relating to the genre, it begins with an establishing shot of the old abandoned mill which reinforces the element of horror and mystery, this relates to the stereotypical old films that begin with a establishing shot of a spooky house or castle, for example Bram strokes "Dracula". We then moves to a pan shot of all the weapons, moving at a slow pace before eventually moving onto a clip of the killer violently cutting up photographs of the male victim. The camera goes from one shot of the victim to one of the killer creating the tension which is so frequently used in thriller films.

Our opening does seem to develop from other real life media products as the killer is a girl, the girl is the one with all the power in the scene.Where as the male victim is left helpless and vunerable. This isn't seen often in these type of films, as the females always seem to play the innocent, helpless victim and the man is commonly the strong figure of the film. In "Saw III" there is also a female killer that tortures male victims however she is the apprentice to the main killer (Jigsaw) and therefore still dominated by a male character.

Looking back on the preliminary task, what do you think you have learnt from the progression from it to the full task?

Since the preliminary task we feel we have picked up a number of new skills. We feel are camera work, use of software and our planning have all vastly improved. We used all of the knowledge gained through the preliminary task to put together and finish our our film opening.

In the preliminary task our planning was minimal with only a simple shot-list to help us. We then walked around looking for a location and built our story up around the location. This wasted time. In our main-task we learnt from this mistake and effectively planned our story and plot first and then made a detiled shot-list and storyboard. This enabled us to complete all of our filimg in a single day as we knew exactly what type of shots we wanted to achieve and how we were gonna edit them all together.

We noticed we had used a larger variety of different camera shots, all from different heights and angles in the film opeing since the preliminary task, however we felt we wouldn't have had the confidence to experiment with all these different types of shots without have first doing the preliminary task. The preliminary task taught us how to film simple close-ups and medium long shots, such as the male teacher (Mark) walking down the corridor which we then able to do in the main task, we also had the confidence after practicing with the camera and tripod in the preliminary task to be able to achieve an establishing shot which was achieved by tilting the tripod, this gave us a perfect, non-shakey shot.


We applied the same method we used in our preliminary task to achieve close-ups and medium long shots in our main task. We Knew from our preliminary how theses types of shots could build tension in a scene and thus deciced to apply them to our own film opening to also build tension and fear. Having already used a number of these shots in the preliminary task we knew eactly what we wanted to achieve.We felt we could use them with confidence in our main task.

In the preliminary task we also learned how to effectively edit these shots seamlessly together which proved essential to the main task, for example the method used to achieve the match cut when opening the door was used in the main task where the antagonist (Jess) picked up the screwdriver. since the preliminary task however we learnt how to apply special effects such as "bad-film" to our footage and also how to add opening credits which are found in almost all film openings.

How did you attract/address your audience?

We as a group believe our film appeals to both a male and female audience. We believe the male audience will be interested in the gore and horror elements of the film. However we feel a female audence will also enjoy the film as it challenges the regular conventions of gender and has the male character as the victim and the female character as the the dominant character. In almost all thriller movies the female is the weaker character being pursued or hurt by a male character , eg "Halloween" , "Scream".


The title of our film was also the title of the diary in the film, this sums up the idea of the film which is about the female antagonists obsession with the male victim. We deliberately chose the text of the title of the book in red to be in a mismatched, jagged style, this is to show the audience that the film is disturbing. The obsessed book was also used to emphasize the female killers obsession with the male victim and to show that she has been watching him for a long time which the audience can see through the use of with different location pictures and diary dates. This would attract our target audience who are interested in psycological thriller films as this comes across as stalking and would make them think about why the female antagonist is doing this.


We also added fake blood to the book and to some of the props, this creates more horror and reflects our film theme. The blood also creates tension and questioning for the audience to where the blood came from, and if Mark had been injured by them. The mise en scene of the make-up on Mark also explains this, as fake blood on his face and make-up bruising reflects he has been hurt.

In the opening scene we have used a wide range of shots, sound, mise en scene and editing to attract our audience. Firstly we used mise en scene effectively to fit with the genre of the film. We used props such as different tools (eg. screw driver, hammer), a chair, the obsessed book, and the belt to show the audience somthing was wrong. We used the chair and belt to keep Mark trapped inside to create the tension we also used a pan shot of the blood-soaked tools to create create tension amongst the audience, as this shows the male victim has been harmed. The audience would want to see these types of clips as it is psycological thriller so they would expect to see this type of stuff.

The use of mise en scene for the male victims t-shirt emphasizes the state that he was kept in, with rips and blood on it, this suggests to the audience he has been pooorly treated and tortured. The use of colour of the victims white t-shirt represents purity and innocence. This compliments the character in the opening scene, as he is innocent. The costume for the character Jess also had fake blood, which was on her hands, and a black coat which was used to hide her identity. The use of colour for Jess also compliments her character, as black has connotations of death and evil. The use of all the colour directly attracts our target audience further as the negative colours will evoke an emotional response of fear and tension. To further evoke emotional responses we also used harsh diagetic sounds such as scribbling to make the audience feel uncomfortable. The sound is uncomfortable and was placed in the film to recieve a physical reation such as that a person may get when a chalkboard is scraped

We used a number of fast paced, seamlessly edited close-ups of the female antagonist cutting up photographs and scribbling out faces. This was done to make the audience think "what's going on?" and "why is she doing this?" however it becomes clear to the audience that this character is an obsessed stalker when we see her diary with various different dates and events written in it about the male character. Using the close ups of the male victim struggling adds a fear factor to the film, as he's trying to escape and the audience would be on edge watching. We used final cut pro to create the fast cut editing, we did this by editing in a variety of shots to build up the tension.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for our media piece (film opening) would be people interested in the Physiological Thriller and also the horror genres of films such as "Hostal" ,"Saw", "Seven and also films such as "Shutter island" and "Law abiding citizan". We feel this is because the theme and the constant atmosphere of our film is silimar to all of these films.

We aimed the film at 15 - 25 & 25-40 age groups. We decided to choose this wide audience as we felt anybody aged 15 and over would be able to watch this film and have the desired effects we were looking for, Which were to intrigue, create suspense and fear while watching our final piece.

In order to appeal to the fifteen to seventeen audience we censored the section of the film opening where the female killer is torturing the male victim. We replaced this scene with a black screen and a loud male scream. We did this so our film wouldn't be classed as an 18 which would exclude these viewers and make them unable to see the film. We chose to do this as we felt the younger audience would be our main audience as opposed to the over 40 age group which we felt wouldn't be particularly interested in horror films. This decision was based on nielson data that suggests that the over 4o market responds better to Tv dramas and aren't frequent 'cinema go'ers'.

As we felt such a wide audience would enjoy the film, we aimed our film at a mass audience by using younger cast to appeal to a younger audience and also cleverly implented gender conventions such a female antagonist with power over a male to appeal to an older audience.