With demonic laughing or Without?

We had planned on having the same audio repeat through our opening yet after gaining some class feedback, a possible alteration that was suggested was to have either a faded crying audio playing or a demonic laughter in the background.

To aid in making a decision I carried out some research in the style of a tally chart to record the audience preference in having the the same sound play throughout or adding a demonic laughter when the blood shots begin.

votes for demonic laughter      

votes for without demonic laughter 

Total summary ;

votes for demonic laughter = 10 

votes for without demonic laughter = 3

The majority of the people I asked had preferred viewing the film opening with the sound of the laughter attached and using to to move forward we as a group have that this adds a greater impact for viewers and again heightens the uncomfortable feeling created .

Opening Title Roles Research

In order for our opening to resemble a real-life-media product we wanted to embed the opening credits  in the same style that they would appear in films already produced. Having searched some well-known movies within the same/similar genre as our opening I noticed that a common order that  many had used was:

Some films that I found followed this structure were 'Se7en', 'The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo' and 'Silent Retreat'.

For our film opening,we are going to use the same order in which the credits will appear as it will give a more professional look to the film and they are a significant convention used often within the horror and psycho-thriller genre.

Age Certificate

For our film product it is important to have an age certificate as all films shown in the UK need an age rating by law and therefore it is important that we replicate elements that real-life media products have to include.

when releasing our film we would have to make sure that our film has a BBFC age rating symbol from one of the following below ;

For our film opening "Trapped" we have chosen to use the 15 age certificate. My reason for this being the most suitable choice is due to the fact that our opening is centre around murder and has graphic content like blood which is quite gory and would require a more older audience rather than young children, which movies are typically labelled U, PG,12A and 12. On the other hand I would not rate it 18 age certificate as it does not contain any explicit sex,strong language supernatural horror or drug use therefore would not be an appropriate age certificate.

Moreover, the themes that our film opening is centered around is of interest to young teens and young adults and movies such as "Paranormal Activity" and "The Purge" have also been give the same age certificate by the BBFC, so having researched films within the same genre I think that this is the most suitable rating for our film.

As well as  considering a movie like "The woman In Black" it was given an age certificate of 12, which led to it receiving a lot of criticism from its audience.

Women in the Film Industry

Our film opening has 2 leading characters, however we are challenging societal constructs in our film opening as both characters are of Asian ethnicity and females which is uncommon and rare in the mainstream film industry.

From the diagram above it is clear that there is some sort of stigma on having the female gender being lead characters on the screen and in comparison towards men it is quite unlikely.
In recent years, statistics have shown in 2016, females comprised 29% of protagonists. This represents an increase of 7 percentage points from 2015 and a recent historical high.

In addition to this, females are used as 'props' or side characters as female characters continue to show dramatically more skin than their male counterparts, and feature extremely tiny waists and other exaggerated body characteristics. This hypersexualisation and objectification of female characters leads to unrealistic body ideals in very young children, cementing and often reinforcing negative body images and perceptions.Research shows that lookism still pervades cinematic content in very meaningful ways.

Sound in Psychological thrillers

A common aspect with psycho-thrillers is the involvement of sound/ music in order to emphasise the atmosphere and build tension. 

In addition to this audio is majorly significant in creating a  sense of foreboding and a sound motif such as danger. 

Another thing I noticed is the use of non-diegetic sound which is played at a low volume such as in the "Green Room" trailer, specifically between 0:19-0:22 seconds.The pinging sound slowly reduced in volume and faded which had the effect of signalling an even that will cause trouble.

Likewise screams and loud noises are also commonly a feature within this genre to make shots more disturbing and dramatic yet in opposition to this silence is also used in order to make the audience feel uncomfortable.

Sound

We are including non-diegetic sound in our film opening that will run throughout the whole duration of the shots, in addition we have decided to include hysterical laughing that is slowed down to aid the fact that the opening is central to the illusion of the mind, which I found on a site called 'Free sound' which includes a variety of non-copyrighted audio.




The specific audio that we used was called 'sfx girl laughing' and I felt that it fit in perfectly as it was very cryptic and added to the the audience feeling uneasy.

Mis-en-scene in Psycho -Thrillers

Typically the mis-en-scene is very realistic to the plot and is very detailed in all aspects.
Also many times there is use of different levels of lighting to help create a mysterious atmosphere and aid in reflecting the emotions of certain characters as it can create shadows showing fear or even duality of a character.

Costume and makeup can involve special effects makeup to show the fatigue a character may feel or that they have been crying e.g  by smudged eye makeup or redness or either an injury, which looks believable.

Psychological thrillers tend to be very particular with props as it can ruin the verisimilitude of the whole film also the objects helps determine the personality of characters e.g. guns show lack of morality.
To add to this locations can have very small space in order to illustrate a sense of entrapment or foreboding e.g haunted house 



Some films that come to mind when having sets that are intricate and realistic is 'The Woman In Black'(2012).

Another movie that had a really good mis-en-scene is 'The Conjuring' (2013)

Mental Health in Films

As our film opening has the central theme of mental heath, I wanted to do some research on this topic specifically in films.
Through the years the portrayal of Mental Health within films has tended to stay biased and conform to the stereotypes, the majority of the time.

False representations in the media feed off of prejudice and fear, which encourage damaging stereotypes. It’s estimated, that a quarter of the UK’s population is experiencing mental illness, yet it still remains a taboo subject.

Common attitudes to those experiencing mental health issues are:

• Dangerous and Unpredictable 
• Incompetent
• Crazy 
• Self-inflicted 
• Aloof
• Little hope for recovery
• "Need to get over it"
• "It'll pass"
• A joke

Whenever men are asked to share their opinions about the stigma attached to mental illness. With answers like ‘we’re men, we’re supposed to be tough’, it’s clear that the discrimination towards men and mental health must change. The 90s, an era of male-gone-mad characters, saw box office successes like ‘Goodfellas’, ‘Fight Club’ and ‘American Beauty’, which dealt with social anxiety, insomnia and depression.

Psycho killers, unhinged stalkers and crazy patients are Hollywood’s definition of the mentally ill –  but, it only invites cinemagoers to assume they should be feared.

Editing in psycho-thrillers

The editing within our chosen genre typically involves quick cuts creating a fast pace pace and emphasising the lack of control the character is feeling or either conveying a sense of urgency e.g victim being chased by killer,therefore unnerving the audience as they suspect the worst.

An alternate method of editing is slow motion which can be done by decreasing the pace of the shots, the effect this has is that it pro-longs what is to occur in the following scene.

In addition to this flashbacks are quite common as they allow the audience to have an insight into why the characters have ended up in a particular situation.