Creative critical reflection

Made by, Nida Asim As-I

How does your product use or challenge conventions?

Just like before launching a product we do some market research, similarly before making this movie I also did some research asking the masses that what kind of movie they prefer watching and the reason for their choice. I questioned, actually interviewed almost all the age groups, many men, women and children. And I got many different answers from different age groups. I questioned many of my neighbors, friends and some of my cousins who said that they like to watch action, suspense and horror genre films. But the old aged people said that they prefer watching olden times movies as the believe that they were much better than nowadays movies and they said that they like movies that are intense and have a serious topic. whereas, many middle aged people like my uncles and aunts they said that they like action,thrill and even horror films.As I was already planning to make a horror films so i questioned them more on horror films and they said that they like to watch horror films if it's good. so I asked them that if I make a horror movie so would you watch it and they all replied with great excitement and said yes! Even the old aged people showed willingness to watch my horror movie which encouraged me to finally make up my mind to make a horror genre movie which will be watched by the mass audience.

The movie opening that I have made has a horror genre and I have named it as ‘Unrevealed’. The name of the movie gives an idea about some secrets or unknown things and the story revolves around this young girl who visits her old house after many years and starts experiencing supernatural. She has a secret connection with this house about which even she is unaware of and now that secret will never let her leave.

I have seen many horror movies and many of them share the same plot. Some of them are closely related to my movie opening and inspired me, Like:

Usually the conventions used in the horror movies are blood, darkness, horror soundtracks, evil laughs, horror costumes and many others. The themes of horror movies are always like good versus evil, depression, revenge, supernatural, childhood issues, zombies, nightmares, madness and many others….

… but I have challenged and used the conventions, I do have a soundtrack to give a horror feeling to the viewer but I have shot my movie in the evening not in dark and this is how I have challenged the convention of a typical horror film. The supernatural is not shown in the beginning, just the glimpse of it and she is left with a hint when the key falls on floor, unlike most of the movies in which any one of the characters die in the beginning.

My movie characters specially the girl who apparently turns out to be the leading character of my movie is represented as a young, rich, decent girl who is dressed very formally. She belongs to a well off family who once used to live in this house and now moved to a much more better place.

How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

As I have used daylight instead of the usual conventions like darkness and blood etc., this is my unique selling point(USP). I think my movie opening is a bit different than those which start with bloodshed, my movie opening ends up with leaving a suspense behind, that which room the keys are for? Why does she cares so much for that room? Etc.

There were many distributors in my mind and this was one of the difficult task I came across. 20th Century Fox is the one who distributes the most of the horror films but keeping my movie in mind I decided to not to choose these distributors instead distribute my movie on the other social media websites. For me I have made a great movie but I think it is still not up to their mark.. And even if I distribute my movie to them, maybe my movie will not be liked by the majority of masses as they might be expecting a much more better movie as they would see the logo of 20th century fox…

…Hence, I will distribute my movie on Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Dailymotion, Instagram, Amazon, Netflix, Pinterest and Flickr and any other famous site. I think that according to my movie these social sites suit it the most. And because many people who do not watch movies specifically, might come across my movie through surfing internet and they might watch it.

How did your production skills develop throughout

this project?

As every new task gives you new experience, this project also gave me a great new experience. This project helped me to expand my knowledge with production and equipment. During this project I have used and developed many angles and camera movements. I have learnt how to do handle a camera without a tripod and I have practiced hand panning in the beginning when I have showed the big trees to give a natural effect of the scenario.

The art of camera work is an important element displayed in horror films. Through this convention, the audience can easily be understood to what the film is trying to say. Weird angles and canted cameras are most common within the horror films specially the point of view and extreme close-up are often used in order to make audience feel more involved and feel fear. I have learned all the angles in my media class so I can easily relate to them and understand when and how they are used and have used them in my movie

opening. Overall I have realize that each convention links to another strongly for example lighting and location

The place I chose was in Malir cantt. This entire cantonment provides you with the best places to shoot a horror sequence as it has big old trees and houses, so much greenery and bushes all around. At the night time this place looks so scary so I thought that this would be the best location to shoot my horror movie. The house that I chose perfectly suited with what I was imagining and expecting for my movie.

The lighting mostly is dark throughout the horror movies in order to keep up the fear in the heart of the viewer, but there are some movies which I observed that used daylight such as , ‘Halloween’ and ‘Misery’ suggesting that these films started like any other day for these characters allowing the film seem realistic and that characters live a normal life.

The shooting part was really very fun and interesting but the editing part was the most problematic for me. It was difficult for me to cut down the whole movie and bring it till the required time limit, it was definitely very time consuming. There were so many ideas coming in my mind regarding the making of movie opening but I chose this one as I had to keep all the other things in mind such as mis en scene, proper location, setting, plot and actor’s satisfaction. So I decided to pitch my idea to my camera and got started with this.

As we discuss many things in the class like so many flaws in the dramas or in any movie, I have become more observant when I am watching the Television shows and dramas. I can easily point out the flaws and mistakes in dramas (if any). Like if I see any character shown as a patient and wearing makeup, I start commenting on that. When I see characters represented as low middle class and have the latest smartphones, my commentary gets started. At times, even my family members get distracted by me and get irritated and they prefer not watching television with me because I keep bugging them by telling them about the different camera angles I have learnt and pointing out the things which I feel are wrong.

How did you integrate technologies (software,

hardware and online) in this project?

• Software: The software that I used was Windows Movie Maker for editing. As I didn’t know how to use this software, I started making short videos of my family and friends and learned to do editing and so I got in practice and now I can do it.

Hardware:My camera in which I recorded my movie is NIKON COOLPIX L320.

It was a bit difficult task for me to handle the camera as it couldn’t be attached to the tripod so I had to tie it up with pieces of cloth.

As mentioned before there are many camera angles and shots that we have learnt. And many of them are used in the majority of shots in the movie like wide shot, I have used this camera angle often in order to show the background as well as the character, to show the condition of the house when the girl sees it after so many years.

There are many camera angles used and in general even they are very significant specially from the start so that audience are able to get sense of scenery or the onscreen movement. Close ups, medium shots and tracking shots are few shots used to portray this.Camerawork is very expressive, high and low angles can connote fear and nightmares. POV(point of view) shots are important because they allow the audience to make out what is happening. Sometimes framework uses depth of field, makes it difficult to see the evil or ghost. The editing also plays great significance as editing can suspense and disturbing tension, we can use different effects like fading out colors and writing the name of the movie with a horror background.

We used to get so many projects since the beginning of the session that now we don’t find it difficult at all making videos and doing their editing. Our teacher made sure that we all have made Blogs on which we sent him our videos and he used to assess us and he made us quite punctual in sending our videos to him on time! The first video that he assigned us was to make the opening movie of someone driving the car and we had to shoot the car by taking different camera angles. The other video assigned to us was Monologues. This was also another very interesting activity. Then we got to make Public Service Message, which further improved our skills. And now we are making this movie opening as our final video.

I used to post our videos on blogs and blogs on Tumblr. On which our teacher used to check our videos.

Making blogs on tumblr is very easy and my video used to get easily uploaded on it without consuming a lot of time.

My media studies sir is a really very helpful teacher. I knew very less about this subject but he guided me and helped me expand my knowledge about this subject. I used to think that the projects he will assign me, I would not be able to do them but he paid his personal attention towards me and helped me out. He has made this subject the most interesting one and I personally like this subject the most.