The short film follows many of it's genre's codes and conventions such as having low lit lighting, eerie music, death and blood.
The film starts off with a continuing sound of something that sounds like a wheel / car travelling in an empty hall. This sound is echoed whilst the opening titles appear on the screen. The opening titles follow conventionally of most horror films as they are on a black screen and slowly fade the texts in and out. The production company is shown at first, followed by the director and title of the film. How this can apply to my product is that we can start our horror film with a fade in from black and ambient sound of the atmosphere Mila (our main character) is in. For example, it would be a flashback of Mila stabbing one of her bullies, then it could fade into black and say 'A Dark Arts Production".
The opening titles in 'ABE' followed the 3 words per second rule as there were enough words to read in teh space of 3 seconds. The texts of the titles followed after each other after 3 seconds of display.
The eerie sound of the echoing builds up to a climax and sounds orchestrated. As the handheld shot of the footage of the blooded chains cut from one moving image to another, there are other instruments that enter the scene. For example, at 0.42 seconds, it sounds like an instrument similar to chimes. There are continuous cuts from the chain scenes which we used similar editing techniques in our production too. For example, the daily routine of Mila getting ready in the morning was full of continuous cuts and jump cuts show show that mentally, she is not steady and to connote that she is not a normal person. After the chime type of sound in ABE, it is then followed by the flutter of the moth as soon as the woman's eyes flutter open.
This links with the scene where there is a high angle shot of the moth being sliced by the robot, it connotes that he will do this to the woman he has kidnapped. Additionally the sound links to the scene when he says human desires can all end in the "blink of an eye", with the diegetic sound of a slice in the air as he cut the butterfly without looking. This foreshadows the woman's death as she is being represented like a beautiful butterfly. There is also intertextuality in this scene as this may represent the same as 'The Silence of the Lambs', another horror movie but on a larger scale in all costs, timing and production.
Going back to when the woman wakes up, she sees that her mouth is taped and her arms and legs are strapped down to operation type of bed. She tries to scream but the scream is muffled. This is similar to our production as we have a scene of one of the bullies on an operating bed with tape on her mouth, and she cries, tries to scream and struggles. The wide and long shots used in ABE to show the angles of the woman trapped are similar to our use of camera work as we have had close up's of the bully's face to show her struggle and the blood on her forehead is visible like the blood coming down the woman's nose in ABE. We also sued the idea of chains to chain the bully up so that she doesn't move instead of strapping her down to the bed like the woman is in ABE. Here we have applied a convention as there are usually the props of chains in horror movies. For example in 'ABE', and in the movie 'SAW' which is visible when the main character is chained in a room with three other people and has to cut his leg free from the chain.
Although, in the shots in ABE the woman's hair was straight and neat but in our film we wanted to adjust her hairstyle and make is messy as we wanted to show that she had been kidnapped and stabbed / operated in the stomach. We used a white sheet to put on top of the 'stab wound' in which the blood leaked through to create realism.
The film starts off with a continuing sound of something that sounds like a wheel / car travelling in an empty hall. This sound is echoed whilst the opening titles appear on the screen. The opening titles follow conventionally of most horror films as they are on a black screen and slowly fade the texts in and out. The production company is shown at first, followed by the director and title of the film. How this can apply to my product is that we can start our horror film with a fade in from black and ambient sound of the atmosphere Mila (our main character) is in. For example, it would be a flashback of Mila stabbing one of her bullies, then it could fade into black and say 'A Dark Arts Production".The opening titles in 'ABE' followed the 3 words per second rule as there were enough words to read in teh space of 3 seconds. The texts of the titles followed after each other after 3 seconds of display.
The eerie sound of the echoing builds up to a climax and sounds orchestrated. As the handheld shot of the footage of the blooded chains cut from one moving image to another, there are other instruments that enter the scene. For example, at 0.42 seconds, it sounds like an instrument similar to chimes. There are continuous cuts from the chain scenes which we used similar editing techniques in our production too. For example, the daily routine of Mila getting ready in the morning was full of continuous cuts and jump cuts show show that mentally, she is not steady and to connote that she is not a normal person. After the chime type of sound in ABE, it is then followed by the flutter of the moth as soon as the woman's eyes flutter open. 
This links with the scene where there is a high angle shot of the moth being sliced by the robot, it connotes that he will do this to the woman he has kidnapped. Additionally the sound links to the scene when he says human desires can all end in the "blink of an eye", with the diegetic sound of a slice in the air as he cut the butterfly without looking. This foreshadows the woman's death as she is being represented like a beautiful butterfly. There is also intertextuality in this scene as this may represent the same as 'The Silence of the Lambs', another horror movie but on a larger scale in all costs, timing and production.
Going back to when the woman wakes up, she sees that her mouth is taped and her arms and legs are strapped down to operation type of bed. She tries to scream but the scream is muffled. This is similar to our production as we have a scene of one of the bullies on an operating bed with tape on her mouth, and she cries, tries to scream and struggles. The wide and long shots used in ABE to show the angles of the woman trapped are similar to our use of camera work as we have had close up's of the bully's face to show her struggle and the blood on her forehead is visible like the blood coming down the woman's nose in ABE. We also sued the idea of chains to chain the bully up so that she doesn't move instead of strapping her down to the bed like the woman is in ABE. Here we have applied a convention as there are usually the props of chains in horror movies. For example in 'ABE', and in the movie 'SAW' which is visible when the main character is chained in a room with three other people and has to cut his leg free from the chain.
Although, in the shots in ABE the woman's hair was straight and neat but in our film we wanted to adjust her hairstyle and make is messy as we wanted to show that she had been kidnapped and stabbed / operated in the stomach. We used a white sheet to put on top of the 'stab wound' in which the blood leaked through to create realism.
There are clear narrative codes throughout 'ABE'. For example the clear binary opposites between human and robots. Normally, humans are the ones experimenting on robots but this film took a twist and made the robot end up experimenting on humans and their happiness. There are also binary opposites in my product as there are two identities of Mila, one good and one bad. Also, the victim of bullying is killing the bullies whereas in reality, the bullies would be hurting the victims. Although this is seen as a type of revenge in our narrative.
ABE, like ours has a non-linear narrative. This is because there are flashbacks included at the end of the film of the robot looking at the woman with ginger hair that he has fallen in love with. In our narrative, there it is non-linear as there are flashbacks of Mila stabbing her bullies, and they come in forms of nightmares in order to confuse the audience.
I believe both ABE and our film SENSELESS aim to confuse our target audience, as in ABE we do not know if the ginger haired woman is his next victim or previous victim, and in our film, we do not know if they are flashbacks or actual nightmares, but this is clarified at the end as the audience realise that they were flashbacks from when the evil identity took over Mila's mind and body.
ABE, like ours has a non-linear narrative. This is because there are flashbacks included at the end of the film of the robot looking at the woman with ginger hair that he has fallen in love with. In our narrative, there it is non-linear as there are flashbacks of Mila stabbing her bullies, and they come in forms of nightmares in order to confuse the audience.
I believe both ABE and our film SENSELESS aim to confuse our target audience, as in ABE we do not know if the ginger haired woman is his next victim or previous victim, and in our film, we do not know if they are flashbacks or actual nightmares, but this is clarified at the end as the audience realise that they were flashbacks from when the evil identity took over Mila's mind and body.
Both are films also challenge Todorov's equilibrium theory as we start and end in a disequilibrium and there is never an equilibrium.
No comments:
Post a Comment