Task 2.1: Horror Film Intro Analysis - 28 Days Later

In the introduction for the film '28 Days Later', the first thing the audience sees are riots on the streets being recorded on a hand held camera. In this shot, there are diegetic sounds of people screaming, this is a very iconic sound in horror films as it makes the audience scared and they wonder what's going on. It is also filmed on a handheld camera which allows the audience to feel like they are there in all the chaos, making them feel stressed out.

After this, it cuts to a dark room with apes inside of it. The lighting in this shot is dark as it aims to creep out the audience - similar to other horror films. Not only is it dark, but there is a diegetic sound of apes screaming and shouting. This, again, sounds like people screaming in a prison as they are all in cages. The shot also pans around the room and we can see an ape who is dissected, showing its rib cage and blood - this makes it look like a zombie.
We see a man walk in with a white lab coat on. From this, we can connote that he is a scientist and he is keeping the apes locked up. Mad scientists are often characters used in horror films and they help create the theme of zombies.

In this dark room, there are quite a few red lights scattered around. The colour red can connote themes of violence and danger which will happen - it's almost like a foreshadow. Soon, some people in dark, black costumes enter the room in order to save the apes, but this makes them look mysterious and dangerous and makes the audience wonder who they are.

Soon, the apes are let out and they start infected the people in the room, turning them into zombies. When the first woman turns into a zombie, the camera does an extreme close up on her red eyes in order to make in look scary. As this happens, non-diegetic music plays and it builds up in a creepy way in order to intensify the situation. This is done in a lot of horror films as music has a big effect on the actual horror at hand.

Feedback - Miss Spencer

A fantastic start to your blog Sam, you have gone beyond the basics and made sure that you have studied a variety of films of all three genres that we are studying. There is a good level of detail in your analysis, however there is still room for improvement. In order to get into a level 3 more comfortable you should:

• Embed the film opening into each of the analysis
• add stills to all of the work to illustrate your point and break up the text
• Make sure you always comment on why each element was used and whether it is a traditional convention of the genre or not

Task 2.1: Mission Impossible 2: Intro Analysis

In the beginning of the introduction scene for Mission Impossible 2, the denotation is an establishing shot of some high up cliffs. This makes the audience feel like they are actually in the sky next to the rocks. The sound of wind and birds compliments the sound as it adds to the realism of the shot and reaching out to the audience.

We also see a man climbing the rocks with no gear what so ever, this connotes that the character is a daredevil and lets the audience know that he's dangerous. The music adds to this as it slowly builds up, intensifying the danger and makes the audience worry for him. As he's climbing the rocks, we get a medium shot of him as his arms are spread on two rocks. The fact that his arms are spread makes him look like two things: one, it makes him look like an eagle as they are to an animal of prey like him, showing he's dangerous. The diegetic sound of the eagle also supports this theory as it's almost like it's symbolising what he is like. The other thing his arms make him look like is almost a Christ figure on a cross, and he helps the world, just like the idea of Christ did.

Throughout the intro until he uses the sunglasses, he doesn't say a word. This is done to make him look more and more mysterious. As he jumps onto another rock, the shot goes into slow motion to make the audience worry for a bit longer, just to make sure he will be okay. As the scene goes on, the music gets louder and much faster, this again, is used to intensify the situation.
   

Preliminary Task Evaluation

The 180 degree rule is what is used for a shot reverse shot. It means that you can only keep the camera on one side of the people in the conversation, the cameraman can't move on to the other side of the two people involved.
Also, a match on action shot is when you show somebody holding something and the camera will then cut to a close up of the item they are holding.
An eye line match shot is when two people are in different locations and are facing the same directions whilst the camera keeps transitioning from shot to shot. It is used to make two people look like they are talking to one another.
In our short video, we used the match on action in two instances. The first time we used it was when we gave David's character a phone. At first, a long shot was used to show him being given the phone, and as he took it from her, the camera transitioned to a close up of him holding it. From this point on, every time the phone was shown it was used in a close up of it.
 The second time we used a match on match action was when my character had to detonate the bomb. We first showed me holding it from a medium shot and then after I laughed, it moved to a close up of the detonator. Both of these shots are used to emphasise the danger and add some intensity.
We used an eye line match shot when the two actors were on the phone to each other and we used it to make it look like they were talking directly to each other. David's character was facing left as my character was facing right, both off screen.


Around the school, the filming process was easy as the locations were very easily accessible. The noise in the background of the shots were a bad thing as they took away from the situation in the film, however we fixed this by muting the sound and putting music in the background. One example of this was when we used the close up on the phone timer, there was a lot of noise surrounding the microphone, luckily we didn't need to keep the sound from this clip and we could mute it.  Also, we were able to use an extreme long shot whilst David ran into the building, this shot was easily done as nobody was around to interrupt us although the wind did make noises on the microphone.
We also used a close up on David's feet as he ran which added intensity to the situation, this was another example of match on action.
When my character picked up the phone, we used a tilt to make it look a bit more mysterious as we don't know who the character actually is and people will want to know.

Editing the video was quite interesting as we were quite new to the software. One thing that we figured out how to do was how to lock audio and video tracks. This became useful when trying to mute audio or try to make sure certain videos didn't get in the way. Another thing we discovered was how to use the green screen in order to make our explosion, which was really useful as it looked somewhat realistic. Something we didn't know how to do at first was how to cut audio and video tracks lucking we figured it out and found out we had to click a certain button to change the way the mouse works.