Valentines Day Nightmare (coursework pitch)

Mis En Scene

• Middle class/ medium to large house
• Sofa infront of television
• White painted/tiled bathroom
• White bath (to contrast with red blood

Character

• Teenage 17 year old boy, socially awkward. Dark brown hair, brown eyes, tall, suspicious smile.
• Teenage 17 year old girl, socially awkward. Short blonde bob, attractive.

Costume

• Boy: 1990's 'look' = ripped jeans (horizontal slits across the knee) for 'grunge' look. Nirvana cut off tshirt denoting that he is interested in Nirvana and connoting that Nirvana were popular in 1991.
• Girl: 1991 'Grunge' look, strappy Nirvana top and long brown skirt.

Music

• Nirvana (to show era)
• ''Aint No Sunshine'' by Bill Withers from 1971

PLOT

Boy (brown hair) and girl (blonde hair, possibly connoting that she is a scream queen) on sofa together watching television (One of Nirvana's concerts) diagetic sound. Colour TV (because colour TV was introduced in 1974 and the film opening is set in 1991)
Medium high angle shot of boy and girl sat together on the sofa.
Boy: ''Happy Valentines Day babe'' in an english accent, denoting that its valentines day and also denoting that the boy is english, possibly connoting that the film is set in the UK.
Medium close up shot of boy falling asleep.
Close up of boy waking up, expanding into a long shot to reveal that the girl is no longer next to the boy and there is a bloodied kitchen knife replacing her by his side, blood down the boys face and blood down the boys clothing.
Long shot of boy moving off the sofa and into the next room trying to find the girl, shouting 'Marion' or 'Janet' (intertextual reference from John Carpenters Psycho).
Medium close up shot of boys feet walking up the stairs.
Point of view shot of boy walking along the corridor and stopping at a bloodied hand printed door frame and door.
Over the shoulder shot of boy opening the door to find white tiled bloodied walls and girl lied across the bath with bloodied clothes and multiple stab wounds.
Medium high angle shot of the dead girl in the bath.
Medium close up shot of the boy screaming: 'Janet!' or 'Marion!', as this happens, effect is used to make the shot fuzzy.
BLACK AND WHITE shots used to connote that the boy is in a flashback.
Point of view shot of the boy walking into the bathroom as girl is washing her hands.
Girl laughs and says 'Norman?' then looks down at the knife.
Close up of the knife in boys hand.

Medium close up P.O.V shot of girl struggling to defend herself against the knife, camera moving around and girl pushing camera out of way.
Hand goes over the camera to create a black screen, diagetic screams and banging is heard.
COLOUR SCREEN shots used again to connote that the boy is out of the flashback.
Long shot of the back of the boy stood in the same position as he was before the flashback.
Long shot of the boy getting into the bath with his dead girlfriend.
Medium close up of the boy pointing the knife towards his chest, the boy is crying.
Screen goes black and diagetic screams are heard from the same person.
Non diagetic radio sound with fuzz audio is heard, formal and fast language is used to connote that the radio is a news report, a brittish accented woman says "17 year old's Marion Crane and Norman Bates (Or Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins) deceased bodies were discovered in a bath in their hometown of Leeds on February 14th 1991, police suspect a greusome murder followed by suicide"
White text appears on the black screen with director, followed by actors and editor.
At the same time, Bill Withers 'Aint No Sunshine' is played.

Hammer Horror

• Dominated throughout the 1960s
• American and British
• Teens werent the main characters (20s + 30s)
• Middle/Upper class characters (contrast with working class from slasher and horror genre)
• Influenced by sex (eg Countess Dracula)
• Alot of stereotypical horror characters eg Frankenstein or Dracula
• Phallic aspects = using teeth as knives
• The bite of a vampire = sexual metaphor
• Theatrical
• Gothic theme (characters and setting)
• Low budget - repetition of use of sets and stages
• Often set in the past (contrasting with slasher)
• Old methods of death which people used to actually do (Eg burn a witch to a cross, behead somebody, or commiting suicide off a bridge)

LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT DEMOLISHED HAMMER HORROR BY ADDING MORE HORROR AND MORE SEXUAL REFERENCES, WHICH THE AUDIENCE WERE MORE INTERESTED IN.

Representations in SCREAM

I chose the 1996 slasher movie scream to explore the different representations in a slasher movie.
The first character that is shown on the screen is an attractive late teen years girl, whom seems oblivious to the dangers around her. The representations of the girl being shown first may connote that the film is 'sexual' and sells to the male gender. Another interpretation of the blonde girl being shown first is that she is the 'scream queen', a typical blonde attractive sexually active dumb girl, who in the killers mind, deserves to die, this representation also shows that the killer may be a misogynistic, someone who has a hate for the female gender and therefor kills them.

The general audience of this film are teenagers, this is represented by the age of the scream queen and her boyfriend, teenagers can relate to the social norms of the film, for example, the scream queen has a boyfriend and the scream queen makes popcorn and likes 'scary movies'.
Another way the intended audience may be shown is how the adults do not make dominant decisions and arent a big part of the opening scene of SCREAM, they fail to save their daughter which portrays that they are useless and not authorative, which may be real teenage audiences opinions on adults.

In SCREAM, the target primary audience are males, as this horror film would particularly interest males because of the gore, violence and the scream queen.
The scream queen is usually a blonde haired, busty pretty girl who on nearly all occasions (unless the film is going against general slasher conventions) is killed.
Scary Movie represents a good rip off scream queen as they over identify with the stereotype of a scream queen and exaggerate her character.

The killer 'ghostface' in the film is not presented as being heterosexual or homosexual, yet he stabs his victims, the killer could be phallic, therefore he is metaphorically raping his victims, but his first victim was the scream queens boyfriend which could show interpretations of homosexuality. Ghostface then kills the scream queen, which could be oedipal, he could be homosexual and frustrated by it so then takes his frustration out on the girl.

My Mise En Scene Practice: School Rules

As a group, Tom and I created a short film which focused primarily on mise-en-scene. We did this by using a secluded part of the school to shoot our film which had the plot of an abandoned school in which teenagers used to hang around, and two unlucky teenagers ended up being stalked and killed. Yet narrative enigma is used as the audience does not get to see the killer.

School Rules Movie Analysis

Our task was to create a film based on the mis en scene, 10 words/text was the limit.

We created the movie on Imovie and rearranged all of the clips to create the film. We then needed to make a soundtrack to our film.

The first thing we did was open Garage Band. To make sure that the soundtrack went exactly in time with the text, we needed to somehow get the movie into the Garage Band and create the soundtrack to go with the movie.

We did this by selecting ''track'', and then selecting ''show video track''.

This enabled us to drag our video from Imovie into garage band. We dragged the movie into the space where is said ''drag movie here, along the top, as you can see on the screenshot, the film clips are running along the top of the screen.  To mute the original audio from the movie, we selected the speaker button which is on the left hand side of the screenshot, highlighted blue. 

To then start creating our own music for the soundtrack, we selected ''new track'' in the ''track'' settings. That brought up a new icon on the left hand side, below the original audio. We selected the 'eye' at the bottom left of the screen, which showed us different music types. On the right, in the middle of the page, there was an option of the music software list. We chose what music we thought went best with the atmosphere of the film, and what emotion we wanted to provoke on the audience. We started recording the music by pressing the red circle button which means record. We used the keyboard to create a tune whilst recording, we were also watching the movie whilst  recording this so we knew exactly what it would look and sound like.

We created new tracks so that the music would play together on different instruments, so the soundtrack was beginning to work.