evaluation for tormented

I created the film 'tormented to ideally fit into the genre of psychological horror. It has several generic conventions throughout, such as low key lighting which is used from the beginning of the extreme close up of Nicole to the end of the opening. As a common fear for most people, darkness creates tension in the demographic. Another typical psychological horror convention would be eerie non-diegetic audio, that gradually cresendos throughout the scenes. Also typical shots such as extreme close ups and low angles to create the perfect psychological horrific atmosphere. I also used a girl antagonist, the fact that she has dark hair and pale skin is another typical generic convention as this type of antagonist also appear in well known films such as 'The Grudge' and 'The Ring.

Antagonist from 'The Grudge'

Antagonist/Protagonist from 'Tormented'

My film challenges these codes and conventions by making the main character both the protagonist and the antagonist. The plot of 'Tormented' is about a misguided girl that develops a multi personality disorder. Whereas usually the girl is shown in distress. By using these things the demographic is able to decrypt that is a psychological horror.
Several stereotypical social groups are targeted amongsnt the film 'Tormented', first the mother figure is presented in a household setting (kitchen) this creates therefore the stereotypical typical role as a housewife. Nicole Davis is used to create the vulnerabilty factor. She is a stereotypical little girl through her costume and the way she is presented. The older version of Nicole Davis however is not exactly what you would expect, she goes against her feminin side as she has a demon like personality to her.
There are several low budget film distributors that could be used for this psychological horror. However one in particular that i think would be representanle and suit well would be breaking glass productions, it distributes films of many genres, one in particular is horror, and the sub genre psychological horror. It has distributed many films that have several things in common to ours, for example 'hanger' which is about murder and vengance, very similar to our plot. We however would have no way to create merchandise or franchise our film.

'Breaking glass pictures' Logo. 

'Tormented' does not aim at a particular gender audience. However it is targeted mostly to rebels, as it has twists within it, like the multi personality disorder. With violence and torture throughout, there are specific scenes that would fit our film into the BBFC rating of 15. As viewers will be exposed to disturbing scenes like when Nicole Davis is a young child and she gets kidnapped. Also the plot itself is about vengance and has murder involved. Therefore it is not to be shown to a young audience as it is unsuitable. There is no need for it to be an 18 as it is not too explicit.
As we had a typical Horror related target audience. We used the suspense factor to keep people on their toes. Through the use of non-diegetic audio in a minor key we were able to transition equilibrium into disequilibrium. This therefore has an effect on the audience and creates enigma codes as to what is going to happen as the plot thickens. These enigma codes that are created throughout, such as, 'who kidnapped the young girl?', 'what destruction is Nicole Davis' alter ego going to do?'hook the audience.
We used several different pieces of technology that we were completely new to. The camera that we used was a HD1000, it gave good quality picture and sound.

Sony HD1000

However we probably would have been better off using a flash recorder for the sound as it would have been more precise for example in the conversation, the speech would have been louder and clearer. We also used a tripod, which was very helpful for making our film look more professional, because our shots were very still and it made panning much easier, due to the camera being very big and heavy. The editing software we used was final cut express. I had never come across this software before but i found it very easy to use and had everything we needed on it, for example the effects at the beginning were called 'add noise' and 'saturate'. They worked really well together to create the 'flashback' effect we were after. We were also able to edit any lighting faults, the scene where Nicole Davis is tied up, was a rather light shot to begin with however we managed to change this by using the effects within the software, so it turned out to be great for our advantage.

Final cut express, the middle shot shows the effects used on this shot. 

We progressed our project throughout. We spent a lot of time on preperation of things like storyboards and scripts, this was genrally to make filming easier, because we knew what we wanted and how we wanted it. Designing a shooting script gave us an idea of how we wanted our overall film to look like, and researching into other psychological horror films we had an understanding of how we needed to edit it. For example, finding different ideas for presenting our flash backs helped us to chose how we wanted ours to look like. Spending a lot of time on filming i have been able to understand my rules such as the 180 degree line, shot reverse shot and match on action more, because throughout every scene we had to think about these things all the time. Therefore it got more natural throughout. I have progressed in my editing by being able to use and understand the software. Before i came across final cut express i was using adobe premire elements. But i now prefer final cut, as i find it easier and that it has more potential to it. I feel that the film 'tormented' has reached the criterias that we set for it well. It produces a change from disequilibrium to equilibrium and fits under the targeted genre well. I am satisfied with the final outcome, however i feel we still could have experimented more, creating more establiishing shots at the beginning maybe to set the scenes better, and having more conversation to create a greater vulnerabilty factor towards the young girl.