BSS

1. Creative critical
reflection
Made by,
Nida Asim
As-I

2. How does your product use
or challenge conventions?

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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:

6. 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….

7. … 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.

8. 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.

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

10. 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.

11. 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…

12. …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.

13. How did your production
skills develop throughout
this project?

14. 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.

15. 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

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. 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.

19. How did you integrate
technologies (software,
hardware and online) in this
project?

20. • 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.

21. 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.

22. 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.

23. 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.

24. 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.

25. 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.

26. 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.