Evaluation

"Fear"

Question 1

The Setting for our opening sequence is an isolated country park which is shown through the establishing shot. In the next shot our main characters are introduced, a young innocent couple, walking through the park. They are shown laughing with each other to establish that there is a warm relationship between them, and to show these are nice, friendly people causing the audience to identify with them and more importantly care about them. One thing I noticed in recent slasher films is that the main characters are often unlikable therefore the audience does not care a great deal what happens to them, such as Rob Zombie's "Halloween" (2007). 

An isolated location and a young cast is a common convention for slasher horror films, it was necassary to have these to prove that we understood the conventions of a slasher film. In terms of technical aspects, such as camerawork, we used POV shots from the antagonist of the couple, with the accompanying sound of heavy breathing and one short take of the antagonist through the trees to keep mystery as to what the antagonist looks like, and what his motivation is; The antagonist is typically fully revealed towards the end of the film.

An isolated location is important as the environment surrounding the characters is quiet, with only ambient sounds being heard. This creates a calm and relaxing mood which is in contrast to the final moments of the scene, where one of the characters is brutally attacked. This sudden change, makes the scene more dramatic and shocking.

As the male is attacked and the girl presumably survives, then the film opens up a story about her and her attempt to find and kill the stalker for killing her boyfriend and before he kills anyone else. This relates to the"final girl" situation in slasher films where all other characters are killed off but one girl is left do destroy the antagonist such as Laurie Strode in Halloween, Nancy Thompson in A Nightmare on Elm Street and Alice Hardy in Friday the 13th.

The work of John Carpenter greatly inspired me when making this this film. I was pleased to be able to direct the sequence as well as compose the music, something that Carpenter does in the majority of his films.

We considered several aspects of his films, including:

• POV shots
• High key, minor piano/ low synthesized music
• Never fully revealing the killer
• The titles - white lettering, black background
• Wide isolated locations (generally, Carpenter's films begin with open locations and gradually become smaller as the film progresses, until the effect becomes claustrophobic. In the case of "Halloween" (1978), the main character Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is introduced to us outside where she is walking to school. By the end of the film she is forced to lock herself inside a small closet, hiding from the antagonist, Michael Myers.

Title sequences in Carpenters films are often always a plain background with relatively plain lettering. Notable examples include:

• "Assault on Precinct 13" (1975) 
• "The Thing" (1982) 
• "Escape From New York" (1981) 
• "Christine" (1983) 
• "Starman" (1984)
• "They Live" (1988)

But the film ours most resembles is "Prince of Darkness" (1987) where the story progresses as the screen cuts to black every 4-6 seconds showing 1 or 2 credits. However, in Prince of Darkness the credits go on for 9 minutes; we only showed the most important credits including main cast members, writer, music composer, editor and director. Other films tend to credit Director of Photography, Executive Producers, Associate Producers etc. however due the time limit of the sequence we could not fit more than 9 cuts to the credit sequence.