Main Task Evaluation - Dolls Domain

Media Analysis Dolls Domain from meganbyrne1223

Timed Analysis - Child's Play 1988, Insidious 2013, Annabelle 2014

Childs Play:

00:00-00:05 - Age Classification
00:06-00:09 - United Artists, Communication Company title
00:10-00:14 -"everyone has a birthday they'll always remember" dialog, birds eye view shot over sky scraper buildings - tension created
00:14-00:20 - Young boy opening birthday gifts, opens doll, very excited. Slow zoom towards doll
00:21-00:23 - Doll speaks, looking at boy smiling "Hi, I'm Chucky!"
00:23-00:25 - Mother looking happy "He's something isn't he!" evokes tension, whats going to happen
00:31-00:40 - Andy tucked into bed with his new doll, Chucky, kisses him goodnight as the camera zooms into Chucky's face, fades to black as Andy says "goodnight Chucky"
00:41-00:48 - hand held styled filming as though someone is running through the house, someone runs past door way, presumably Chucky, creepy music begins to play, lots of banging noises creating fear
00:49-00:53 - "Most accidents happen at home" narration, shot changes to flower split on floor
00:53-00:60 - Aunt "how did that happen?" shot changes to a close up of a hammer suddenly aunt gets thrown out of the window screaming
00:60-01:00 - police coverage of accident, quick shots of police scenes creating fear and tension
01:06-01:08 - Fast paced hand held zoom towards door
01:13-01:15 - Mid shot of a shadow walking with a knife in hand, evoking more fear
01:15-01:16 - Fast paced zoom towards womans face screaming helplessly on the floor
01:23-01:25 - Woman tries to remove batteries from Chucky, she screams in panic and drops doll to floor
01:28-01:33 - "why don't you believe me" as a close up of Chucky holding a knife is shown"because i'm sane"
01:37-01:38 - Chucky's head appears in an 'over the shoulder' shot in mans car
01:39-01:42 - Car crash in a mid shot, lots of fire evoking fear
01:43-01:46 - "theres nothing nice...about murder" use of pause creates tension
01:47-01:48 - Knife goes through door, close up shot of woman's profile as she screams
01:51-01:57 - Explosion in toy store, dolls get blown up showing corruption of the dolls. Slow motion shots used as narration states "theres nothing innocent about Childs Play"
01:56-02:00 - Childs Play titles roll, as the screen fades to black
02:00-02:06 - End titles roll

Link to trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhU0cCXYqw0

Evaluation:
- Studying a timed analysis of a trailer our production was influenced by was an extremely helpful process, especially for my role as the camera woman. Studying the shots that were used and how to create horror within the different camera techniques was extremely useful, for example - the use of slow zooms built up tension and this helps to keep the audience on edge. The use of over the shoulder shots helped to further build tension, for example in the car scene when Chucky is behind the man, this makes the audience feel fearful. The fact that this film was based on an evil doll too really helped to develop my ideas for the shots that could be used to create tension - such as close up profile shots, these were frequently used within our media.



Insidious:

Trailer linked here- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBbi4NeebAk

00:00- 00:02- BBFC- Film Certificate
00:03- 00:07- Shot reverse shot of lady looking out the window of father and son playing- fade in, fade out
00:08- 00:09- Credit- fade in, fade out "It began two years ago"
00:09- 00:10- fade in long shot of house, car driving up drive.
00:10- 00:13- Fade transition- far shot of a family greeting- kissing each other but the front door
00:13- 00:14- Credit- fade in and out "Their child inherited a gift".
00:14- 00:17- Jump shot from tucking in the child- far shot to kissing him on the head- close up
00:17- 00:19- Short zoom in to father son mother sat on the sofa, looking worried 
00:19- 00:22- Shot reverse shot between father comforting mother.
00:23- 00:26- Fade in, mother shown looking down, Eye-line shot to a baby lying in cot, fade out
00:28- 00:33- Over the shoulder shot, showing half mother's face, seeing an empty baby walker move in.
00:34- 00:44- Jump shot showing mother moving around the sitting room, pacing- then when she walks                                back reveals a woman sitting on the sofa- who wasn't there before.
00:50- 00:54- Shot reverse shot between mother and baby monitor- mother looking worried, some woman                          is singing to her child. 
00:54- 00:58- Showing mother about to run up the stairs- quick jump shot to her at the top of the stairs                                trying to enter a bedroom which door has just slammed shut.
00:58- 1:00- Credits- "From the makers of saw and paranormal activity"
1:02- 1:04- Slow zoom to a silhouette behind a house door.
1:06-1:10- Shot reverse shot between the word dice and the woman- showing whatever it spells out is scary-                   showing the woman's shocked face. 
1:10- 1:18- Jump shot of shot reverse shot, showing double shot of son hiding from father, to single shot of                     father to close up of father, far shot of son looking around the corner.
1:20- 1:28- slow fade in, father pulling out a tooth, quick shot out- straight to black
1:28- 1:30- Credit- "This Fall".
1:30- 1:38- Quick jump shots- between a conversation between 3 people to the worried mother, to the                            searching in an abandoned building with touches- touches revealing- bodies covered in blankets,                    to close up of the rotting hands of the victims int his cinema-like set up.
1:38- 1:40- Credit- "The terrifying secret".
1:40- 1:43- Jump shot between two men, to empty rocking horses which are dusty and rocking on their own
1:43- 1:44- Credit- "Will be revealed"
1:44- 1:57- Quick jump shots varying of the conversation played as narration- showing creepy faces behind                    nets, to the "ghost hunter" touching a costume and seeing the creepy woman black bride and the                    baby walker chasing in the air. Sharp cut off
1:58- 2:10- Shot reverse shot- between conversation of old man and father- showing close up of old man-                      side profile silhouette of father by the hand held lantern.
 2:12- 2:22- Credits- Title screening "Insidious Chapter 2"- September Friday the 13th.
2:22- 2:24- Credit fades to black screen
(TAKEN FROM FERN DISNEY)


Annabelle:

Annabelle 

0.00 - 0.01 - Fade out black screen, non diegetic sound of birds.

0.02 - 0.05 - Dietetic sound of woman taking to man. Sets tension 'John wake up, I heard a scream.' 

0.04-0.05 - Jump cut, black screen, man opening door. Dialogue ' Ill go check it out'

0.06 - 0.06 Woman standing on porch calling out husbands name in the middle o the night.

0.07 - 0.09 - transition into next doors house.

0.09 - 0.10 Sudden non0diegetic sound of a crash and 'John' comes running out.

0.11-0.14 - panicked dialogue between husband and wife & wife runs.

0.15-0.18 - Following shot of two bedrooms, wife disappears whilst the camera turns into another room to see a silhouette of a woman carrying a doll.

0.18-0.19 Black screen with someone whispering "I like your doll", sets tension, allows heart to race.

0.19 - 0.22  Very fast cut and junp cut shots with strobe effects. Mise en scene shows fighting, blood and you can hear the diegetic sound sof screaming.
0.23-0.23 A white flash transistion
0.23-0.24 Women looks like she is in a traumered state whilst man is panicking and shouting at her, looks like he is trying to move her.
0.24-0.25 Zooming in on a woman sitting agains the wall with blood dripping
0.25-0.26 Jump clut to close shot of dolls face and a drop of blood. Tense music rising.
0.26-0.30 continous zoom of dolls face, constant tension music.
0.30 - 0.31 Black screen to a transition of WarnerBros company Logo
0.31 - 0.32 Replacement of New Line Cinema diolouge of a man talking over the top
0.32-0.35 A man sitting talking to the couple seen in previous scenes. Shot reverse shot between couple and man then junp cut to couples hands. Dialouge man saying the couple shouldn't be scared anymore.
0.36-0.39 Cut of a flat and man walking with boxes
0.39-0.41 Black screen then fades out to woman pulling doll out of box
0.42 -0.43 husbands diolouge saying 'how did that get in there, i swear I threw it out'  this sets tension for viewers as they know the man threw it out.
0.43 - 0.45 Back of woman putting the doll onto a shelf and turning and smiling at man
0.45-0.49 camera zooms into doll whilst a clapping noise starts and a baby noise

0.49-0.52 transition of credits to a ticking clock matching the non diegetic sound, becoming diegitic.
0.53 -0.53 Parents/couple laying in bed
0.53 - 0.55over the shoulder shot, dolls head whilst the background is fuzzy, however the door closes but no one can be seen closing it.
0.56 - 0.58 cut to stereo turning on, lights glow up blue
0.58-1.01 camera goes up and music starts playing
1.01-1.03 Text saying 'before the conjuring' displays
1.04 - 1.08 mise en scene, woman asleep on couch whilst someone walks through the corridor in the background
1.10-1.15 someone appears infront of the sleeping woman and looks down into the babies cot.
1.15-1.16 text saying 'there was annabelle'
1.16-1.18 shows woman sewing.

I think this trailer shows horror very we as it uses lots of different paces in shots. It also shows a story line, whilst distrubing childhood innocence which we also tried to do in our product.
The trailer shows lots of junpy bits but also hides what is happening within the movie.
(TAKEN FROM KAYA DALTON)

Film Opening Secondary Analysis - Dead Silence, The Woman in Black, The Conjuring

Dead silence analysis from meganbyrne1223

The conjuring from FernDisney

Woman in black from kaya dalton


- Creating these secondary analysis's was really useful in furthering our researching skills, all of the horrors we evaluated have inspired our production massively and studying them on this further basis has helped us as a team to have a wider knowledge of all of the factors they obtain.
- For me, as the camera woman, it was especially useful to research the different shots that were used - this was a really helpful process as it helped me have a wider knowledge of different shots, and how these shots helped to show the genre of horror, for example, slowed down zooms help to build up tension and atmosphere - thus keeping the audience on the edge of their seat.

Horror Film Timeline:

Megan Byrne time line of horror


- Overall, it was useful for us as a group to further evaluate and and deconstruct the horror genre. From this research we recognised how our media production is likely to fit into the more modern styles of horror, considering the 2000s are renowned for some of the most famous supernatural horrors such as Paranormal Activity (2007) and Insidious (2010) - films our production was was highly influenced by. 

Props, Locations, Makeup and Costume

Location 1: A Forest

- We decided that this would be a good location for our film opening as we decided to set it in a small country side village, and we feel that this is a typical styled forest that you would find in a village in England. Another perk of using a public forest is that there were no rights against us filming there as it is a free public place. Luckily on the days we were filming there were no people in the forest, as obviously it is a public place one of the difficulties we may have faced when filming would be passers by. We also had no problem with the sounds of birds or rustling of trees as we had already decided that we were to place narration over our production, but this too could have been a struggle we could of faced. We got the inspiration for this location from other horrors of the same supernatural genre such as The Woman in Black, the locations for The Woman in Black are highly 'natural' and often set amongst forests, woodland grave yards etc. We though the aspect of setting some of our opening in a forest would make our production feel like a realistic horror of the super natural genre.

Prop: Plastic Tea Set

- We purchased a plastic tea set for 1 pound which was convenient for our budget as it was extremely inexpensive. The fact that the set was plastic too meant that it looked 'childlike' as stereotypically children wouldn't be aloud to play with real china as it is too expensive, the fact that it was plastic also helped us make them look 'destroyed', we did this by placing them in mud and covering them in leaves to give them a more 'used' look, helping them look aged. The use of tea cups links to the supernatural horror genre, as often in supernatural horrors children are heavily featured for example in films such as Dead Silence, Annabelle, The Woman in Black etc - we gathered our inspiration from films such as these and decided the childlike aspect would add a vulnerability to our production as often the lives of children being at risk within horrors evokes fear and tension for the audience.

Prop: Chalkboard & Chalk

- Kaya already owned a chalkboard and chalk so this part of our props was not an expense issue. We thought that the use of a chalkboard would help add an eery effect to our titles, and make them seem more ghostly than just adding them in with a normal text over the production. It ties in perfectly with our 'dolls' theme by adding a stereotypical childlike aspect of the chalk and board, whilst also tying in with the victorian aspect as in victorian times, chalkboards were classically used amongst schools. A difficulty we could have faced with using this to display our titles could have been that perhaps the text wasn't clearly visible, or if the camera shots were shaken it would be hard for the audience to read the titles. In order to avoid this we shot each title a couple of times, just to make sure that we perfected each shot. This idea linked in to our supernatural theme perfectly by making the text seem slightly opaque and ghostly.

Location: My Bedroom

- We decided to use my bedroom as the setting for the doll scenes. My bedroom was a good setting as we wanted a room that would almost portray a room within a dolls house. My room is stereotypically 'girly', and as we wanted to portray the image of the dolls sitting in their doll house we thought it would be a good idea to place the doll sat on the bed, this way the audience are able to see straight away that this is a bedroom and one of the rooms within the house. Using this location wasn't an expense for any of us as it was in my house. The realism of a suburban house juxtaposed with the natural forrest location helped the audience to identify the panic and horror amongst the villagers i.e with the use of the images of the victims hung about the village and the terror the dolls are to plan, with the slow clockwork movements of them.

                                                           Prop: Images of Victims       

- We decided to take photographs of 'victims' of the dolls and place them in various places of the forest. We decided to make the images look old and battered so we ripped, scratched, tea stained and rubbed them in dirt. This whole process was inexpensive to us as we were able to take the photographs at college, using the college's equipment, and destroying them and placing them in the forest cost us no money at all either. We found that this was a really good way of getting the idea of what the dolls had been doing to their victims across, by destroying the pictures it helped to show how the victims of the dolls were being destroyed too - also, this helped them to look aged helping to show the long period of time the murders in the village had be going on.

                                                                Prop: Wish Dolls

- We used the wish dolls for the scene when someone is playing with the dolls house, the idea of using wish dolls helps to add an eery effect as usually wish dolls are used to take nightmares away from children at night, the fact that these dolls are being played with and pushed down the stairs and almost tormented furthers the evilness of the dolls and adds a creepy feel to our production. The wish dolls were Kaya's and as she had them in her house it cost us no expense to use them. Whilst 'dolls'  are commonly used within supernatural horrors, when researching we didn't find any supernatural horrors that used 'wish dolls' - as aren't commonly used in supernatural horrors this aspect of our production challenges the conventions of supernatural horrors.

Prop: Dolls House

- Arguably one of the most important props within our whole production was the dolls house, it fits in perfectly with our dolls theme. As Kaya already owned a dolls house this was a massive benefit for our production, it really helped to tie the whole theme together - this was also not cost affective to our production. The dolls house was empty, it wasn't furnished and didn't have any colour to it apart from the wooden background. This helped to give our final production a really eery feel to it, unlike a usual happy dolls house that is used and played with - this one is completely empty, giving it an a 'abandoned' feel to it. 

 Dolls Costume:

- We wanted our costumes to clearly represent the doll theme, however with a twist - the use of the black, dark colour of the costume is not stereotypical to a 'cheery' doll, this furthered our horror theme and made it clear to the audience that the dolls were evil. We wanted to get a classic doll styled corset, luckily the one we used for our production was exactly what we had in mind, the dark black contrasting with the white polka dots are almost clown like, perhaps reminding viewers of films like Stephen King's IT. The tutu we used wasn't a classic styled tutu - it was slightly distorted and the ruffles weren't well coordinated, this furthered our horror theme, pushing the idea that the dolls weren't regular dolls forward.

Makeup:

- We wanted to make the contrast between the two dolls obvious, we decided that makeup was the best way to show the difference in the pair. For one doll, we decided to use brightly coloured makeup, as a more 'classic' doll look, we used bright red lipstick, neon pink eyeshadow and large fake eyelashes - however this was juxtaposed with an extremely pale 'ghostly' looking skin colour, we decided to use a very pale foundation this helped to further our horror theme. The second doll was an extremely obvious representation of horror - we used extremely dark makeup, black eyeshadow, black lipstick, large fake eyelashes and pale foundation. It could be said that this makeup makes this doll more fearful, however the use of makeup within our production was intended to show a contrast between the pair evoking more fear. 

MKF production logo - Dolls Domain

Logo Explanation:

- We decided to chose 'MKF Productions' as our logo title as it is all of our first name initials put together, a simple way to get our recognition towards our production.

- We liked the image of an eagle with a film role for the wings as this represents us as team the best. The strong eagle who has the knowledge and ability to conquer anything and the film role wings tying in with our passion for media. 

Creating Process:

- We decided to create our logo on www.freelogoservices.com. The process of creating our logo was simple, on the website there were various different logo options which were all customisable by changing the fonts, colours etc.

- This is what the editing of our logo process looked like on www.freelogoservices.com 
- We wanted to keep the logo as 'classic' looking as possible, we gathered inspiration from logos of production companies such as Disney's 'Touch Stone', as we think that our production company would feature the same style of films as Touch Stone:

- Touch Stone's logo style keeps everything very simplistic and classic, using darkened, neutral colours. This was our main inspiration when creating our logo.
- Touch Stone's capital lettering inspired the 'MKF' part in larger capital letters with 'productions' in a slightly smaller font.
- For our font choice we picked 'Helvetica'. We decided to pick this font because it is one of the most popular typefaces in the world, using such a common and popular font we decided would reach out to our consumers, as stated we believe our consumers are likely to be of 'The Mainstream' bracket thus meaning they are likely to reach out with popular and common fonts.

Dolls Domain - Film Synoposis

Our Synopsis:
-"We are introduced to the small village of Boven in the countryside of England, a village that inhabits members whom have gained acquaintance for many, many years, through many, many generations. A quiet, peaceful, tranquil town... Or so you would think.
When Lucy (Kaya Dalton), a kind student from London, decides to take a trip to Boven for a reunion with her long lost cousins, things just do not seem to add up. Friendly, welcoming members of the society begin to disappear, one by one. Frantically Lucy tries to search for an answer, who is doing this to Boven and what do they want?
It could be Lucy's detective-like work that gets her into a seriously dangerous and life threatening situation. When faced with death - Lucy finally comes face to face with the Human Dolls of Boven. Was it fate that brought Lucy her, or perhaps a very convenient coincidence? Leaving us all questioning who are these dolls, what exactly do they want with Lucy?"

Explanation:
- As a group we came up with this synopsis, upon researching other film synopsis' of a similar genre to ours, such as The Woman in Black (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596365/synopsis). Researching this synopsis helped us to only include information that we thought was totally vital and interesting too the audience, whilst also outlining the plot, an almost 'who done it' style of synopsis, we found that many supernatural horror synopsis's have a 'who done it' element to their synopsis's and therefore we gathered inspiration from those.
- We wanted to set our film in the isolated setting of a village to evoke fear within our consumers - typically villages have a low count of police, ambulance and other emergency services. We intended for the lack of these vital services and the terror that is caused by the dolls to create tension and a sense of hopelessness for the lives of the villagers and Lucy.
- We decided to use a lot of rhetorical questions within the synopsis, again, to keep the audience questioning and guessing  - thus creating mystery and the fear of the unknown.