Welcome To My Blog!

Hello! My name is Laura and this is my blog tracking my AS Media Coursework from 2022-2023.  I specifically researched film openings and the film industry, and applied my research into my own production. I collaborated with Sasha on this project. 

I tracked my research of conventions, audience, genre, terms, and industry through multimedia, as well as logging the process of pre and during production. My experimentation and finalising of the opening is seen through the various edits and rough cuts, as well as further experience I gained extra-curricularly. These are all linked on the side of my blog, and categorised so they can be easily found. 

I have studied Media since GCSE and am very passionate about film. I hope to become a film director one day, and have made short films for competitions, as well as working on film sets and film festivals. I also study Drama, Art and English Literature for A-Level, and enjoy theatre, books, and arts as well as having an interest in politics and global issues. 

Films I analysed: 

Throughout the year, I analysed various film openings, looking for general conventions, the trailer playlist is embedded below: 

The playlist below contains the trailers of the horror genre openings I have analysed:

Sources I used: 
The sites I used to research the film openings were; IMDB , BoxOfficeMojo, Art Of The Title, thenumbers.com

The books I read were: 

I also used Guardian Film , and the RSS Feeds on the blog (NBC Universal, The Guardian) for industry research. 

Index: 

I have colour coded my blog in order to categorise terms and what I discuss. 

media/film terminology

theorist 

film/book name 

slasher character archetypes 

shot types

fonts

company name

technology

FINAL CUT: The Trees Have Eyes

This is my final cut for my slasher film the "The Trees Have Eyes". 

The soundtrack features a cover of "Killer Queen", and the main title is downloaded from dafont.com in the style "nightside". The film was produced by L48 Films and Skyscraper Productions, and presented by New Heights Films, with help from the BFI and Film4. 

Changes made since last rough cut: 

- Adjusted volume in voyeurism shots

- Made the wind in the forest even 

- Made the snap less loud 

- Added an echo to the snap

- Removed a glitch in the locker scene 

- Removed a fan noise in the locker scene and added foley footsteps

- Removed a turning shot in the forest scene 

- Varied title positions 

- Added a glitch to the titles

- Separated the written and directed credits 

- Changed "releasing" to "films"

- Changed the font of the first company credits

- Changed the font on the producer names 

- Reduced the sound of the external bell

- Added length to the worms eye shot

- Changed "New Heights Releasing" (distributor) to presents

- Separated producer and support titles

- Switched around titles, (casting-starrting-introducing)

- Added earthquake effect to main title

- Added B&W clip of burial scene to create a flashback effect

- Added music (Friday the 13th inspired)

- Switched shovel cross cut with zoomed out body shot

Playlist of sample scenes:  

Playlist of rough cuts:  

Throughout the sample scenes and rough cuts, certain elements were changed such as the intended match in action of the dirt covering to the locker opening. The full detail is seen in my sample scene and rough cut posts.

Audience Feedback:  

I also collected audience feedback, seen in the playlist above, to adapt the opening better and understand the audience's opinions in order to achieve my preferred reading.