Draft - Evaluation Activity 1

Title Font and Style

The title's font and style reflect the tone of the opening, with the extravagant curves representing the outward appearance of the killer, who (as noted in evaluation activity 2) is a person who cares more about their appearance than what they actually do. The style of the title reflects the music being used as well - all of it comes together to have a fairly nice introduction to the character of the killer.

Setting / Location

The setting is portrayed fairly appropriately in the first few shots after the abductions, involving a panning up of the victim but at the same time showing a fairly wide view of the room, displaying the floor, the doors, the blinds, and the area in front of the victim (in the shot coming from his perspective).

Costumes and Props

The costumes were designed very specifically. The killer was designed to be fairly similar to Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, being an upper-middle class person with more dedication to his appearance than was needed for the situation - what better way to show that to have him kill someone whilst wearing a (snazzy) suit? The victim is meant to be somewhat similar to him in clothing, but the way the clothing has been designed is meant to clearly show to the audience that he is the victim in the situation from the first shot that you see him. His face, though unclear on the video, has also got marks along it, and clearly there's a lot of blood (that's meant to have came from the previous gunshot). 

The props were also chosen to create a sense of something not being right - mainly, the newspapered floor and the KNIVES. The knives, clearly, make the whole scene fairly sinister from the get go, and later on they're shown with blood on them to show that they've been used (after the timejump in the video - the second knife was meant to have been used to cut him up, but we forgot to record the shot for that, so we missed it out, which has lead to there being some confusion as to what is actually happening in the video).

Setting Up The Story

The story is set up fairly well, in our opinion, via the super dramatic skyline shot at the beginning, followed by the abrupt gunshot and the dragging of feet over the ground. The rest of it sort of follows that slightly, but it's clear from the get go that the guy with authority in the scene - the killer - is the bad guy of the situation. The lack of information on him actually being shown, even with his appearance, is also there to draw in the audience who could want to know more about him. He's clearly a guy that abducts and murders people, but the motive behind that isn't shown, and it's something that could be answered throughout the film.

Portraying The Genre

I think several conventions of the genre were conformed to appropriately. When people say "horror", they generally expect slasher flicks with plenty of gore and dread. Whilst we have deviated from it to an extent, with us not really showing anything directly (though that's more to do with the conventions of a film opening in general than the genre), we have managed to increase the pace drastically by involving a murder with the help of special effects, the kind of thing that people see horror films for (just go along with that). The very idea of killing someone for a reason has generally been kept to either action or horror films, and clearly this isn't an action film.

Character Introductions

Whilst the entire opening serves as a sort of semi-introduction for the character of the killer, there is a small introductory set of shots for the victim, that all link together nicely and, of course, culminate in his death. For example, it starts off with the feet being dragged across the floor after the gunshot, before cutting to a shot of the exact same set of feet in a chair, and panning up to the guys torso to reveal a gunshot wound. Already, that sets up the character's start with "he is shot, abducted, and taken to a room where he is to be killed", all in the space of a few seconds. Admittedly, the pacing feels a bit wrong (or at least, too rushed in to), but the introduction matches the pace of the music even if it is out of place and doesn't leave the audience waiting impatiently to find out what it is they're actually looking at.

Special Effects

Specialy effects, as mentioned before, have been used to portray the genre and to show what's actually happening even when it's not on screen. For example, the blood on the floor after the killer picks up a knife and walks to the victim clearly shows the killing of said victim, and the television-camera shot following it reveals the action to eliminate any ambiguity, as well as revealing a "trophy" keeping side to the killer (as many real-life murderers tend to do). The stray eyeball, as well as the blood-covered knives, is also meant to show that a timejump has occured and that the victim has been chopped up and put in a bag (the one seen earlier and the one he carries out of the room at the end), though admittedly the pacing is fairly off and we did forget to film one fairly crucial shot that involved the bag itself and blood, to tie everything together. I think we did a fairly good job with the special effects, considering all we had was an old toy flashing eyeball (which no longer works after covering it in blood), spare earphones (that we cut up), red and green food colouring and syrup (for the blood).