Jack Innes

1. Jack Innes Evaluation questions 1-7

2. Question 1 Our title sequence fits the slasher horror with similarities to the giants of slashers Friday 13th, Halloween and Scream (Our killer falls into the second category of slasher killer normal person/ someone related to group of victims out for revenge instead of the super natural slasher villain.). The plot itself deals with themes of obviously murder, revenge for the wrongs that have been committed against the character and to some extent there is linked with jealousy as the killer is jealous of the first victim stealing his role and the humiliation he felt at the hands of the other members of the cast has caused him to spiral to this point where killing those who ruined him is the only option out. We have changed the generic convention in a slasher that the instead of following the Final girl character e.g. normally the morally right main character and we instead focus on the killers perspective or for that fact even having a final girl. The characters used in our title sequence are to some extent extreme stereotypes slashers, the killer is meant to be silent, intimidating and unable to be reasoned with, The first victim on the other hand fits an overblown example of the preppy jock though actually our film does break one convention in a slasher in that it is rare for the jock/popular guy character to die first as normally this role is filled by either a secondary character such as a guard or a background character normally for the main character that generally leave them traumatised. Our film also has a somewhat questionable sense of equilibrium, by following the killer as our main character it becomes that the equilibrium is the killers life before losing his job and the disequilibrium the act that disrupts this all is when he loses the part and his confidence is destroyed by his eventual victims humiliating him so after the killer has enacted his revenge and escapes the scen this is the re-establishment of equilibrium so this is very different from how most other slashers tend to go as they follow a set plot and route through the film (e.g. murdering the characters one by one then stalking till the last 2, are left and a plan is made, one sacrifices them self, final character wins equilibrium restored.) for our film the killer is the character the audience are made to somewhat empathise not entirely as obviously he’s a murderer but to some degree. Aside from the limitations of not being allowed to feature anything that could be taken as sharp for the killers weapon our film still embraces the tradition of a Slasher with the killers unique weapon of choice and of course (though lacking from our actual title sequence) the mask or memorable face such as Kruegers burnt face. we used a simple hammer, one that could be found in most likely any tool box across the country which adds to his probability of escape and his mask which was initially intended to be a Japanese noh mask which represents demons and so on but the true intention for the mask is to hide his identity as the fired actor for the party whilst he pretends to be the first victim (the actor he lost his part to basically a look alike) so he can get close enough to kill them discreetly. This is very standard for a slasher.

3. Question 2 2. The characters in our film fit somewhat to the 20-30 demographic hipster party goer for the victims at least, they each represent a stereotype for slasher films as The Afterparty is about the cast of a generic slasher film (basically Scream) being killed in a similar manor to the ‘film’ so the first victim as said he is the preppy jock who never really grew up after leaving school but still fits in well with his 20-25 year old group of like minded friends, who use outdated catchphrases seriously, thinking he is a Casanova type filling the first typical character for a victim, along with that there should be at least a stoner/metalhead, cheerleader type eye candy for the film, a final girl who contrary to a normal slasher actually dies and isn’t as pure as the character she represented and so on. The killer on the other hand though sharing similarities to the murderer outcast from the groupkilling for revenge but however as he is the main character he sees himself more like Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver a underdog rising up against injustice I would imagine he would’ve actually filled the first victims shoes before being replaced and losing his popularity though this is not touched on in the current synopsis but could be hinted by his killing of the jock character first to assume his identity could hint at this along with the by assuming his identity he has to act like him. The use of a hammer as his weapon of choice makes him out to have become more akin though in his downfall from fame to assume the role of a working class man out to kill those who have done him wrong somewhat similar again to an action film like Leon or Taxi Driver. The fact it is based around a party will also lead the viewer to expect to see the stereotypical party in a movie with its typical mesh of social clichés.

4. Question 3 3 As for a distributor I think Columbia pictures would suit it our film, considering that they distribute a wide range of films from the terrible 2012 to the classic Zombieland they would most likely be very suited to distribute our film and enable us to get a it screened in most major cinemas, giving us access to our teen male target audience out for a gorey film with elements of block buster and indie combined. We would show the film at major cinemas because we are more likely to be accessible by our target audience e.g. teenagers not seriously interested in indie cinema are more likely to see/ hear about a film and go to watch it at a major cinema. For the poster for our film we should take a less star focused image, as thriller/horror tend to have less well known actors in them probably due to the characters disposable nature.

5. Question 4 4. Our thriller is aiming at an 18-25 year old audience as the violence to keep with recent slasher/thriller trend will be at least gory enough to receive a 18 rating for example Sorority Row, My Bloody Valentine though this tends to appeal more to a male audience. If we make the deaths less of an outright blood bath of the killer killing his victims with whatever produces the biggest cringe from people like SAW with death by needles and so on playing on people’s fears we could appeal to a larger audience instead by making the deaths seem more realistic, the killer and the setting does not play to having heavy machinery, a collection of bizarre traps or through ridiculous methods and instead he kills his victims to seem like accidents or as discretely/secretly as possible so as the killer can stay trusted for most of the film though these could be made to be much more shocking especially after a years of horror/thrillers hoping the more blood and guts they add into a death the more scary it will be, is kind of dated. Instead by opting with a realistic approach to the deaths, taking inspiration from how say Paranormal Activity is when being watched not all that scary but afterwards when people’s imaginations take over it becomes much scarier as they apply it to what they are doing. If this goes well it should essentially advertise our film through word of mouth alone especially since the setting of our film could be applied to any night out.

6. Question 5 5. For the marketing campaign we should approach with focusing on a viral campaign with a teaming up with alchohol brands like Smirnoff who set up their own parties which could be used for a The Afterparty event with killers disguised as party goers and prizes and so forth like tickets to see the film, Smirnoff and The Afterparty related goods. We could also focus on creating a countdown website for the announcement date to stir up internet traffic of people waiting to find out what is being released. Also it would be a good idea to possibly attempt something like the Aliens Versus Predator viral marketing by sending out actors dressed as the killer and another dressed as the victim to major cities to take the train then act out the kill of the first victim comically to create media coverage by the mainstream press which in turn though maybe not garnering the direct attention of our target audience will lead to those who do read the paper say parents to pass on the information word of mouth then after this stunt is complete upload videos of it to YouTube to further expose our young target audience. Merchandise should be focused on creating replicas from the film like masks and costumes to make money off people buying things for fancy dress like jasons mask or freddykruegers claws our killers mask and weapon as long the audience think its iconic.

7. Question 6 6. If anything what I have learned most about the current technology available is through mostly what we did wrong. I learned that it is as important to set the setting as it is to have the ideas and plot in film especially through what he audience can infer, it’s no good presenting an audience with a long dialogue especially in a opening, we tried to cram too much information and in the end decided against having dialogue at all due to continuity and it being rather hard to actually get good dialogue without actors. We found that during the research stage it is very easy to go onto the internet or go check out a location or look for a prop to use and at first glance it suits your needs but in actuality when it came to filming it was much more difficult than it all seemed. I learned how useful the tripod can when shots and angles have to be adapted whilst on location especially since even though we had to keep setting up then stopping part way through to let people past we could quickly get everything back to where we had started and without any adjustment. I also learned that really a film actually comes to life when in the editing stage, especially since when things aren’t filmed in chronological order or it features several changes of shot which lead to errors in continuity if not carefully edited in fact after capturing the footage we needed, most of our time was spent making sure everything fitted together. This could’ve been made much less time consuming if we had been shooting to edit but it didn’t occur to us at the time. Sound was another important factor that we should’ve taken more into consideration we ended up with having to have most of our sound non diegetic with the soundtrack playing over most of the scenes especially those were we had dialogue previously .The soundtrack options we had available were limited due to copy right and so we opted to have the soundtrack cut out at the moment the hammer was brought down on the victim for dramatic effect. It would’ve also been a good idea to add have recorded background noise at the station but again this didn’t occur to us until after we had moved into editing though we did learn from this with our actual diegetic sound coming from the photocopier which we opted to use to show our handmade titles in the form of an invitation being printed out. However we also chose to use both digital titles and handmade with our names printed out and the information such as “... presents” and “... production” where added digitally so they could be wiped out as the scanner crossed the screen which though repeatedly using the same effect is simple enough and is somewhat similar to what we had originally planned with the titles moving off with the train.

8. Question 7 7. After our initial short and having seen the importance of continuity the 180 rule which we stuck to religiously when filming. Continuity however isn’t as easy as it seems to pull off especially when it comes to swapping shots half way through say for example when walking down a staircase as we had to keep editing to make sure if a shot finished on the right foot before the staircase that the next shot followed as such. Looking back we should’ve used a match cut to show the killer swapping into the victim’s identity in filming but that would mean we would either have to A) find a similar looking actors to fill each roll or B) changed how we filmed the hammer blow which was difficult enough to set up without having the killer be shown. Our planning was much to vague at the time and should’ve gone into more detail with solid facts on what props and costumes we actually had available, we should’ve also drawn the storyboard/shotlist to be more workable incase things didn’t go as planned instead of having to improvise whilst on set .