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REMEMBER ME? Media Evaluation. Hiren Bahri Jahangir Nawab Javan Ryde. Film. Comparison to textual analysis . The film we explored for our textual analysis was Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell (2009) . Both the films were of the same supernatural horror genre.
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REMEMBER ME?Media Evaluation Hiren Bahri Jahangir Nawab Javan Ryde
Comparison to textual analysis • The film we explored for our textual analysis was Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell (2009). • Both the films were of the same supernatural horror genre. • Both the films had the same type of story: person being haunted, then dies at the end. • Both the films had something different from typical supernatural movies as good did not triumph over evil.
Name and titles • ‘Remember Me?’ is meant to have a depth to it as it is a question. • ‘Remember Me?’ suggests that someone or something form the past is going to come back to influence the future. • The audience will want to find out about the movie just by hearing the title, and will let them know that it is a horror movie because it just sounds scary as you don’t know who is asking the question. • The title is written in big, red, capital letters. It is animated to come on abruptly synchronized with a thunder sound to make it scary. • There is a ghost effect that floats after the title has faded away, to make it more typical of the genre.
Narrative structure • Our movie has an unusual narrative structure. It doesn’t have the typical Todorov’s equilibrium model. • The films starts with the equilibrium of a haunted past, then the disruption begins of the haunting. Then after the main character dies, there isn’t a renewed equilibrium. • Unlike other supernatural horror movies, in which the main character gets rid of the ghost that is haunting them, the main character in our movie comes to an unhappy ending as the villain (the ghost) gets his revenge and kills him.
Characters • The main character is typical of the genre, as he seems innocent and portrayed as the ‘good guy’. • He seems scared after the death of his friend, so he is usually quite and looks disturbed and is usually alone. • The ghost is typical because of the mask that he has on, which is really horrifying and ugly. He barely moves, just stares at the main character. He wears the same clothes as he wore when he was alive.
Mise-en-scene • The main place that we shot our film was inside a house which is located next to a dark, empty park at the corner of the road. This gives a isolation feeling making it more scary. When the character’s best friend dies, we decided to use a remote location like an empty car park to make it creepy. • We used a lot of scared and confused facial expressions to add to the effect of seeing a ghost. • The lighting is usually minimum to make the environment as scary as possible.
Use of camera, editing and sound • We used a variety of camera shots to make it look scary. The main camera movement for this is when the character hears the ghost, the camera slowly zooms in to him whilst twisting clockwise as well. This gave a great effect because the audience could feel that something ‘twisted’/bad was about to happen. This technique was inspired by “drag me to hell” therefore we made an intertextual reference to it by inputting the camera movement into this scene. • The film’s editing made it more appropriate to the genre as we added a lot of effects to make it more scary, for example: Freeze-frame jump cuts when the ghost is staring into the bathroom; and quick cuts to different camera shots, to give a fast paced effect. it makes the film more scarier because the shots are unexpected and the shots make the scene look surreal, unrealistic and as a result it looks scary. The jump cuts are complimented by timed loud sounds to make the audience feel sympathy for the character who is getting haunted and it therefore sets the scene. • Sound was a really important factor for supporting the film to make it more scary. We used weird monster type noises when the main character woke up to give an eerie effect. Also we used a sad minor key violin music when the character was reminiscing to add to the effect. • Also we used a scary slow and tense noise when one of the characters is about to get run over. • We also featured a suspenseful heart-racing piece of music as the main character runs down the stairs whilst being haunted which builds up tension to progress on to the next scene where the past friend continues to haunt him.
Storyline and themes • For our opening sequence, we decided to start of with a flashback. We thought this would be a powerful opening and will grab the audience’s attention straight away. A lot of other supernatural horror movies also start off with an eye-opener to get the audience on the edge of their seats right at the beginning, example: The Grudge, Haunting in Connecticut, Drag Me to Hell, etc. • A significant theme of our film is about grudges. Most horror films have this theme like the famous: I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream. • Another theme our film possesses is the theme of revenge as also most films contain this for example in ‘Carrie’ she got bullied in the past and then came back for revenge by scaring the bullies and killing them.
Comparison to other posters • The posters we analysed: Our movie poster is significantly different to the ones above mainly because they are teasers. All three posters have one big image which only mentions the genre of the movie, however ours is heavily supported by the information given in it.
Communication of genre to audience • Our film poster has a screenshot from one of the scariest parts in our film. This shows the genre of the film easily because the picture is scary and ghost like. • The title and some other writing is done in big, broken letters so its looks more dramatic which shows that it is a horror movie. • The unique selling point of the poster is the credit above the title, which shows the director of the movie.
Written language • ‘Revenge is a dish best served dead’, the tagline of the movie is written in different font, to increase the audience’s interest. • There are also different distinctive fonts used for the tagline, title, USP and release date. This is to attract and inform the audience. • We’ve used something very simple yet creative for our tagline to make it more appealing to the audience. • Regarding these points, the poster still sticks to the conventions of horror as the consistent red coloured text symbolises blood which is a frequent thing which comes up in horrors as people die whilst loosing blood. • Overall, the poster is really dark as the only colours mainly used is dark red and black. Although there is a hint of white, there is more dark colours as horrors are mostly dark films so this sticks to the conventions. • The film name ‘Remember Me?’, conforms to the horrors conventions as the statement sounds psychologically scary as the friend who got killed wants to remind the killer of who he is when the audience and the main character both know that the main character remembers him but is just shocked to see him.
Written language • The main image in the middle shows a scared, innocent person and the antagonist with a scary mask behind which implies that someone is being haunted by someone scary. The image also has smoke to the side of it which also compliments the dark colours as it implies that things will not be seen as if they were covered by smoke. Typically, this happens in horrors as the person getting haunted suffers in silence as if no one can see what is going on. • The poster also mentions the age rating which is a 15 and also says that it is a psychological, supernatural horror. This implies the film is not suitable for younger people so it is bound to be scary. • The main title is the biggest text as the audience needs to know what film they are reading about. It conforms to horror films as its in red text which signifies blood.
Comparison of content to other reviews • The reviews that we analysed had a lot of information about the movie and a small section on the production company the movie originated from. We conformed to this by putting a lot of information about the movie and less about the production company. • The written language was informal so it would be more friendly towards the reader, we also did the same and tried to interact with the audience as much as possible because our target audience is mainly older teenagers who wouldn’t like reading too formal language as it would get boring.
Comparison of content to other reviews • We mainly decided to focus on the genre of the movie and told the viewers how scary the movie actually was and if it lived up to its standards. • We added two pictures in the review to show the audience more about the movie, and we wrote a lot of information that is not sentenced and very brief so people can get a overview look of it. For example: movie information, ‘if you liked’ section, verdict, star rating, important sentence emphasised, etc.
Comparison of layout to other reviews • The reviews we analysed: As you can see, the layout is fairly similar to the one’s we analysed. We also used as many features of the reviews as we could fit. We used the structure of these reviews and changed them to make ours more interesting to our target audience. Also the name of the film is always large.
Comparison of layout to other reviews • We used two main images, the biggest one that put was of the final scene in the movie. Although it doesn’t spoil the movie, it tells you the general idea of it. We used another one which is specially made for the poster, but we made this picture smaller as there wasn’t that much space. • To make it look neater and more organised we split the review into three columns. • The same font size was used for all of the review however the important bits were increased. The title is in the biggest font. The entire review had the same font style to keep it tidy and not make it messy. • As most people like to get a quick, brief review of a movie, we included a star system. This can quickly tell the reader if the movie is either good or bad.
Genre • In creating the film, poster and the magazine there has been a link between them, this is that they all are very appealing and look horrific. The genre being horror it communicates with the audience through images. Images which are from our movie also are put into the poster and review this would be a scary image to give a tease of the movie, and it would also have a blend of similar dark gloomy colours, black and red which are usually associated with horror. • The colour and style of font, these all contribute to the horror factor, which indicates our genre of the film, which is Supernatural horror. • The colours we mainly use are black and red, these are often associated with horror films. Also sticking to the colours, the directors name would also be shown to draw attention, in black and red and in bold and usually larger font size. • Our film review contains an image of the main character(Jahangir) also known as the star in the dark frightened of his friend who has come back to haunt him. This indicates that the genre is a horror as he looks scared as if someone has frightened him and this happens mainly in a horror. • This is because red represents blood and black darkness which overall all contribute to horror. • All of these difference aspect will be appealing as they are typical of horror films, such as Haunting in Connecticut and Drag me to hell which also uses red black for the poster.
Target Audience • The clear target audience for our film are mainly people aged 16-24. • The obvious reason for this being as a result of our questionnaire analysis we have found most people aged in between these ages like to be scared. • They like jumpy films and tend to be frightened by this so we took this into account and adjusted according to the feedback. We achieve our target audience by conforming to the interests of 16 – 24 year olds. • Also according to our questionnaire analysis, more people like psychological tension and tend to be scared of this more than jumpy movements therefore adjusted because of this. • We also took this into account and is a sub-genre of our film. • With our poster we attracted our audience by not making it to complicated or different as in we used main colours black and red and bloody effects around. • Our poster has a main image of a teenage boy which engages people of that age group as they can put themselves and their friends into the scenario and become more attached to it. • The poster also has a teenage approach to it as the text in the main title has a teenage slant to it as the text is almost kid like due to the slant of the individual letters.
Representation • Our film have a clear approach to representation, this is because our movie, poster and review page are very typical of a supernatural horror movies. • The images and colours used are very typical of horror movies such as Drag Me To Hell, this is because the colours used and images are very devilish. • The colours used are black and red often associated with horror themes. • In our movie we have represented themes very clearly such as, friendship, horror and revenge. • The suburban areas are represented typically to the conventions of a horror as most horrors occur in the in Suburbia such as Halloween. • The main characters in horrors are seen to be silly, slow and clumsy which is typical of its conventions as this leads to the build up of the narrative and how bad things seem to always happen to them. • Also in the beginning when the two boys are arguing and taking about girls and parties this represents young teenage boys in a negative way as it implies that all young teenage boys talk about is girls, parties and end up arguing about it.
Themes and Narrative • Themes are very typical and indicated easily, as in the start of the film there are two friends, this brings the theme friendship into the film. • They soon have an argument and as a result of this 1 of the friends died so the theme lost is introduced. • The friend who died because of their argument comes back to haunt his former friend, the theme revenge is present here. • He comes back as a ghost therefore this relates to the main theme and core theme within the movie which is horror. • The image sends a clear message to the audience as when the dead friend is standing behind the main character, it implies that he has come back for revenge hence why the main character looks shocked. • The review also relays the themes such as revenge, grudges and death as the narrative in the review explains what the movie is about so by saying “Two friends argue and one gets pushed in the road as the result of this, he then comes back fro the dead and attempts to scare and possibly kill his killer”. This sentence already indicates that death, revenge and grudges are involved within the movie.
Characters • The characters are between the ages 16-24 so this effective in the combination between main product and ancillary text as it relates to the target audience. • The representation of the characters are also typical as well as indications of the target audience this is because the costumes worn whilst filming were casual and normally what people aged between 16-24 would where so there is a clear creation of synergy between our film and text • The main characters names as Adam( Jahangir) and Jo(Aysh). • As you will see in our poster it relates to the characters heavily and then communicated and appeals to the audience as it shows them the 2 main characters and the shot we have used is to imply the genre revenge.
Unique Selling Point • Our unique selling point would be that we had a quotation from empire magazine regarding our film. • We have a critical acclaim, stating our “is a must see film of the year” • This is the USP because this is appealing to the target audience as their reassurance, that the movie is not ordinary in fact it is a really good horror movie. And it has been reviewed by the top critics. • Overall our main use of the USP is that the positive feedback we used were displayed as it will be attractive to our target audience.
Questionnaire • In the questionnaire, we wrote the synopsis of our film and asked the audience if they’d be interested in paying to watch it in cinema. We got really good results for this so we stuck to this idea.
Questionnaire • This graph shows the average rating that people gave these similar movies out of five. This shows that the movie people prefer have no similarity between the storyline and the characters. However, the top three films included dead people haunting the characters.
Questionnaire • Statistics show what genre of movie people like to watch on a regular basis. Comedy is the most popular genre. However, our genre which is horror is the third most popular genre which is good enough. It shows that 20% of the people like to watch horror movies on a regular basis. • The analysis also shows how often people watch a horror movie. The results show that they watch it sometimes, once a month.
Information learned • From our analysis, we gathered quite a lot of information to suggest ideas for our film. We found out that people get scared mostly by psychological tension and jumpy movements. So we added a lot of that to make our movie effective. • As another question asked about what was people’s favourite scary movie, their response included mainly of the movies that had dead people haunting others. This supported out story so added more of that element to the film.
Audience reaction to draft and improvements • Our first draft was incomplete and had a number of errors in it. The audience didn’t disliked the quality of the filming in one of the scenes, so we went and re-shot it to improve it. They also wanted more sound in the movie to create tension and atmosphere so we added as much as we could. However they liked the scene when the main character’s ghost is appearing so we added another shot of that, and kept it as our final shot. • For our draft poster, the audience’s reaction wasn’t positive as it didn’t show the genre of the movie clearly as it was meant to be a supernatural horror. We changed the whole layout and images of the poster and put in as many supernatural, surreal shots and a ghost image in, so the genre would be as clear as possible. • The draft version of our review was too unstructured and not neat according to the audience’s reaction. After that, we created a whole new review by borrowing ideas from other popular magazines.
Final product reactions • People had generally favourable viewpoints towards our film and complimented the editing. They also liked the special effects and found that the movie flowed much better than the first draft. • The main point of interest that scared the audience the most was the mask, which looked extremely grotesque and suited the genre perfectly. • The poster has also improved as the audience can now clearly see the genre of the movie. • The poster was also complimented as being eye-catching and looks active. It was also seen as more informative as other posters which don’t contain a lot of information about the movie. • The magazine review looks much more neater now and more professional. The audience thought the layout was very tidy. • It contained interesting information that was also easily readable, such as the verdict and the similar movies section. The star rating was also preferred by the audience as it gave a quick overview to the movie.
Pre-production phase • For our pre-production work, we used a lot of Microsoft Office programs. Word was used to create the documents in. Excel was used to make charts and graphs for our questionnaire analysis. • We used a 5 mp camera phone to take pictures for our recce report as we found that it was much easier to transfer to a PC. • The internet helped us find posters and reviews to analysis to help in our production.
Production phase • To shoot our film, we used HDD cameras which had really good quality and helped greatly in making the movie more effective. It was easier to transfer our clips on to the computer because we used SD Memory Cards. However, because the clips were shot in High Definition the process took a while. • Photoshop helped greatly in creating our images for our posters because we could edit the pictures in detail. Then after we used Publisher to easily organize the pictures and write details in. • We again used Word to create our review page. This was done easily because of the new features that Word has to help edit the layout of the page and pictures.
Post-production phase • I relied heavily on editing my movie to make it as good as possible, for that I used the Final Cut Pro program on the iMac. • For the sounds and music, we used a program called Garage Band which was really simple to use and had a huge variety of built-in loops which were compatible to the conventions of horror. Garage band allowed us to make our own beat in whatever way we wanted therefore we could adapt it to the movie to make the scene scarier. • We used Garage Band by combining loops of organs and pianos placed in order on a timeline which in slow or fast tempos created a tense or slow paced scene. The organs and pianos worked well together as they achieved the conventions of a horror when used in the correct places. • I wanted to create unique titles in the film, so I used a different program on the iMac to do it called, Live Text. This program had a wide range of texts to use in our movie. • Although we didn’t officially use it, I played around with Adobe After Effects to see if I can find something special to use in our movie.
Final Cut Pro • Final Cut Pro had a lot of features to assist me in creating special effects and editing techniques. I used filters to give a different look to the dream scenes in our movie. • I used the built-in transitions that were on the program to help flow the movie better. I mainly used dissolves and fades. This allowed the continuity of the film to go from flashbacks and future effectively and avoid confusion. • To create my final shot, the program let me merge three different shots in together to create a really effective ending scene. The last scene is probably the most hardest shots I had to edit as I wanted a ghost effect, therefore I had to overlap it over the existing shot to make it look like a spirit/ghost is coming out of the character. • Overall, the final shot worked effectively as we gained the reaction we intended to receive from the audience as it was clear that a ghost was emerging from the dead body. This scared the audience as scary music complimented the effect and it was shocking to see after the suspense previous events.
Photoshop • Photoshop was a great help in creating the layout of my poster because we could easily organize our pictures the way we wanted them. • I edited a lot of photos from Photoshop, it helped me cut out backgrounds of images that I didn’t want. I also created some really cool effects as well. One example is below where I took a normal screen shot from the movie and edited to make it look like a ghost face.
Evaluation stage • To create the evaluation, we used this PowerPoint because it is more interesting and easier to display the information from our work. • For the blog we used the internet to upload our work. We had to put them in one single folder. • The work was collected on a USB.
