"Caught in the Web" is a psychological horror/thriller following the investigations of a series of teen suicides. What the detective soon learns, is that they are not suicides, but homicides. The killers use the internet as a weapon, trapping the girls in a "suicide support" website and gaining the trust under the alias "Julie". They rape and murder their victims, making it look like suicide using evidence on the website of depression, and forged suicide notes. The case becomes personal for the detective when his daughter becomes their next victim, but will he stop them in time? Or will he also get caught in the web?
By including themes of death, victims and villains, and making the audience feel scared, we deliver a thrilling experience, which is what they expect. They will get so absorbed in the film that they will forget about their everyday life, which is the kind of entertainment they are looking for. We stuck to these conventions, because otherwise it would not really be recognised as a horror/thriller film. The audience in our screening found our film creepy and scary, and it made them consider internet safety, which is a massive issue in today’s world. In a separate blog post (“evaluation – more info”) I made a comparison between my film and “Suicide Club” (2002) which shares the theme of suicide.
We had to continually adjust our film to guarantee its appeal to our audience. We were originally going to use teenage male actors as our villains, however after several group meetings, and audience feedback, we decided that an audience wouldn’t be scared of teenage boys, so we used men. This is more conventional, and makes the villains more frightening and believable, which is what we are aiming for. We needed to clarify who the characters were in the opening sequence, because our on-going feedback contained some confusion as to who the characters were in the first few shots. They thought it was the girl logging in as “Julie” when really it was the men using their fake internet identity. We rectified this by repeating the shot of a whiskey glass and the keyboard with the man’s voice over the top, to reinforce that it was him logging in.
A shot that appealed to many members of our audience was where the camera is level with the keyboard in the men’s den, and there is a whiskey glass in the foreground. This creates enigma, and looks really good. I created this shot spontaneously, as we all liked the ‘level with keyboard’ shot in the girl’s bedroom. We made these similar shots very different by using different lighting and shooting them from opposite sides (the 180° rule).
For our screenings, we used a marketing mix, similar to what we would do if we made the rest of this film. We told people about it (word of mouth), put adverts in people’s registers (like magazine, posters etc), and created an event’s page on Facebook.
Feedback indicated that we did in fact attract our audience; we were rated between 7/10 – 10/10 for our opening sequence. Thanks to our clever branding and filming, our genre was extremely clear, and everyone who saw it recognised it as a horror, thriller, or a combination of the two. They all identified the themes, and the title stuck in their minds. One shot mentioned was the shot where the main villain’s face is reflected in the mirror, and he says “Haha, yeah that comes later darling”. Not only was it the composition that people liked, but also the line, because it was so creepy. When screening our film, everyone went “ooh” at that point, demonstrating that it creeped them out. A few people mentioned that our lighting could have been more dramatic, so that is something we could work on if we were to film the entire film.
The audience identified the characters successfully, however only half of them understood that Emma didn’t actually know “Julie”. One person suggested delaying showing the face of the villains, however we thought it better to show the villains’ faces as they affect the atmosphere of the film. 100% said they liked the sequence, and more than 95% said they would like to watch the rest of the film. They enjoyed the suspension of disbelief, keeping them gripped and wanting more. We guided them down a false path with misleading clues; a typical convention of horror/thrillers.
Our primary target audience are 18-25 year old students/working people of all races and genders because this is the average age of horror/thriller fans. We believe we will appeal to a wider audience than that, so our secondary target audience ranges from 15-30 year olds, couples, and families with older children. Our film would either be classified as a 15 or an 18 certificate, thus affecting our secondary target audience.We are targeting both genders because I have found that women also enjoy horror/thrillers and this widens our audience.
The kind of audience we want to attract is people who are a bit daring, who use the internet, and are up-to-date with technology, and of course they must have a taste for horror/thriller. They are the sort of people who want to explore their fears and challenge their minds.
I have found that when I watch a good horror film, I get a feeling in my stomach similar to dread, but more satisfying. It is like getting your thirst quenched, triggered through visuals and sound. This is how I want our audience to respond to our film. I want it to be widely recognised, acknowledged and for it to gain enough popularity for it to become ‘coffee-shop chat’.
Since horrors and thrillers appeal to mainstream audiences, “Caught in the Web” would be profitable.
Our main theme, suicide, is not used often in horrors and thrillers, thus giving it a Unique Selling Point (USP). When researching other films based around suicide, we could only find 29 that have ever been made, and we had never heard of any of them. We looked at three in depth, so that we could see how they handled this delicate issue. I’m not sure why these films didn’t make it; perhaps they were too focused on the depression of the suicidal person, and not on the rest of the story. Our film stands a good chance of being successful because it is not just about suicide.
Being a genre-crossover, “Caught in the Web” targets more people, as thriller is more popular than horror, and one of the most popular genres, according to an internet poll of favourite movie genres.
We want our reach to be as wide as possible, starting with local distribution, then national, and finally international. Our film’s appeal is similar to “Disturbia” (Caruso 2007) because it is more genre targeted than age targeted. According to the figures in this table, we are targeting 24.4% of film-watchers. This is fantastic; our film will appeal to a quarter of film audiences, so we will take this into account within our marketing strategy. Our audience theory tells us to screen it when people go to cinemas the most (holidays) and when there aren’t many other films of that genre on (like now at Vue).
My product is very versatile when it comes to representing social groups.
We have ethnic diversity in our two main actors as one is mixed-race and the other is Caucasian (which the audience sees in the first minute). This lends appeal to a wider audience without offending anyone by stereotyping their race as murderers. By using a British brunette, rather than a blonde American girl in the beginning, we have avoided using too many stereotypes.
We have represented males as the villains, because it is more believable that men would prey on teenage girls, than women preying on teenage boys. Teenage girls are more vulnerable emotionally than 20 year old girls, and more likely to surf the internet and be suicidal than 10 year old girls.
The men are in a stereotypical underground den which we created by designing a mise-en-scene that people would recognise. We used my cellar for this, and made it dark (by covering the windows when we were filming during the day) but used spotlights to enhance the atmosphere. We showed the paint peeling on the wall to suggest the men are not well-kept or hygienic, and a prominent whiskey glass and bottle to create an identity for the men, so that the audience can start to make assumptions about what they are like and what they will do. The “bad” is represented by this dark den of creepy men with their briefcase full of torturous tools, and they are wearing black/dark colours. This is a big contrast to the “good”, represented by the girl. We designed her mise-en-scene to look typically teenage and girly, and my bedroom fitted this description perfectly, with its raspberry-coloured wall and pink cushions. This, coupled with our actor being a pretty teenage girl and wearing pink, made for good opposites and interesting visual contrast.
The Antagonists are of different ages too; the younger one, 23, charms the girls, whereas the older one, 53, does the dirty work with the weapons. He is dressed in a black leather coat, black hat and black gloves, and the other man is wearing a big black overcoat with a khaki t-shirt and jeans underneath (showing his youth).
Caught in the Web” is a low budget British film which would most likely start off being screened at a film festival such as the “Raindance Film Festival” which promotes independent films in the UK. If this was a success, which I believe it would be, then it might become mainstream and be screened at multiplexes such as VUE, Odeon and UGC, in their smaller screens. After its run at the cinemas, we would release it on DVD so it could be bought, at places like HMV, or rented at places such as Blockbusters. We could also screen it at local arty cinemas such as “The Phoenix” in East Finchley.
Our production company “Hand Print Productions” would seek to employ a good distributor such as “The Works” who are distributing “The Broken” (horror/thriller) this year.
Our product demonstrates that special effects (such as in “Underworld: Rise of the Lycans”) are not the only things that make a film scary and our clever filming, editing, and script-writing proves this. I think our film should be screened in big cinemas because although it is not a Hollywood glossy film, it is professional and appeals to a mass market.
I have researched the current horror/thriller films showing at Cineworld (on my blog). Although there are many films in our genre currently showing, Cineworld Cinemas are the 2nd largest multiplex cinema chain in the UK, and their films are spread out across a myriad of cinemas, leaving plenty of room for our film to be noticed. The fact that there are several horror/thrillers coming out now indicates that our film genre is in demand, and will be watched. I think it would be better to screen our film at VUE cinemas, because currently they are showing no horror/thrillers, therefore ours would capture all their customers wanting to watch that genre.
At the moment there is an independent film called “Bronson” which is screening at the “Sundance Film Festival”. It is British, and is a good example of where our film could be screened. By entering “Caught in the Web” in “The British Independent Film Awards”, it could receive good critical acclaim, helping persuade cinemas to pay for a run. “Slumdog Millionaire”, released on 9th January 2009, won Most Promising Newcomer (Dev Patel), Best British Independent Film, and Best Director of a British Independent Film (Danny Boyle), showing British independent films can be major box office hits.
We could also reach a global audience by putting our film on a website such as http://www.firstlightmovies.com/ that fund young film-makers and show their work. This would be good to gain popularity, as word-of-mouth is the best form of marketing. We could also put a funny/interesting clip on http://www.youtube.com/ (viral advertising) because we have a low budget and other forms of advertising (TV, magazines) are expensive. We would take advantage of social networking sites like Myspace, Facebook and Twitter to attract attention and gain exposure.
My film title sequence, “Caught in the Web”, both challenges and conforms to conventions of actual opening sequences. Our dialogue develops the use of technology within the horror/thriller genre. “Phone Booth”, a thriller (Schumacher 2002) and “The Ring”, a horror (Verbinski 2002) both use phones as tools for the basis of their plot. “Caught in the Web” is a cross-over of these genres, and develops the use of technology by dialogue through internet forums. The camera angles create an intimacy which draws the audience into the action, heightening the viewing experience.
Music – (We used “A Cinematic Touch” composed by Dean Barrett & Judy Whittaker, published by http://www.freeplaymusic.com/, and an ominous drone- “track 88” from a CD of horror sounds)
Establish key characters
Titles throughout
Introduction of narrative
Indication of themes
Showing the production company name and logo (“Hand Print Productions”)
Showing the title of the film
Dialogue (mostly face-to-face)
Having many shots of computer screens, typing and weapons, along with the first victim saying “I just want it all to end” tells the audience our main themes are suicide, murder, abuse and the internet. This is apparent within the first two minutes, creating tension and letting them know what to expect. We flash the name of the forum, “suicidesupport.org”, to point at the theme of suicide.
We used the convention of showing the film title at the end of the opening sequence. Our title, “Caught in the Web”, anchors the shots of keyboards, forums and computers because “the Web” is another name for the Internet, and “Caught in the Web” is a well-known phrase. This double-entendre makes it a good title for our film.
Audience feedback reflected that our title sequence did what it was meant to - everyone remembered the title and wanted to watch the rest of the film (except for one person who didn’t like horror/thrillers).
Genre
Our genre is horror/thriller. We narrowed our research down to successful horror/thriller openings, and watched many opening sequences, including “Halloween” (Carpenter 1978), “Seven” (Fincher 1995), “The Shining” (Kubrick 1980), “Face Off” (Woo 1997) and “Jaws” (Spielberg 1975).
We found:
The music is often in a minor key, giving it the menacing feel of a horror/thriller, for example in “Jaws”. They only use two notes, one semitone apart, however this motif is so clever that when anyone hears that, they think of jaws. Like in “Jaws”, the music in “Caught in the Web” is non-diegetic.
The victims are introduced in a similar way to other genres, but the villains’ identity is delayed – suspension of disbelief (“Halloween”). Our villain’s identity is slightly delayed.
Pace of editing a nd action is changed effectively – slow to build tension, choppy to get the heart racing.
The mise-en-scene is often darker, with key iconography including weapons (knives, guns).
When making our film, we thought about existing successful films in our genre. We realised that success is down to utilising tried and tested conventions that audiences love, so we thought it best to follow the leaders. Individuality then comes from themes and editing styles. We decided to play it safe when it came to breaking conventions in our opening sequence, because we wanted to focus more on producing a professional-looking film.
Opening sequences often involve only one character, or characters are often in the same location. In “Caught in the Web” there are three characters introduced; the victim (Emma) is in a different location to the Antagonists (two men). Later in the film, the protagonist (‘final girl’) is introduced, which is challenging the convention of introducing the main character in the beginning. We thought it would be more interesting to show two different locations (both in London), and thanks to our study of Levi-Strauss, we could use the obvious binary opposites between the two locations and character groups, the “good” and the “bad”, to their full potential (more in Q2).
Style
We mimicked the typical style of horror/thrillers by creating tension and suspense. A convention we have challenged in the opening sequence is ‘face-to-face dialogue’. We used this once between our male characters, however the rest of the time dialogue was expressed through the internet and our forum. This demonstrates that our film is in-line with modern culture and technology, and addresses current affairs (which I have researched on the blog). We couldn’t find any films in our genre that used the internet for dialogue. “Bridget Jones” (Maguire 2001) and “The Holiday” (Meyers 2006) came up in our research as using the internet for dialogue. Our film is very different to those romantic comedies, because ours is clearly horror/thriller, which the audience can instantly tell from the music, iconography (knives) and story. We made it obviously British by our actors only speaking in British accents.
Having studied continuity in depth, we chose to use seamless editing so we could exhibit our skills. In contrast, we used a choppy montage at the end to pick up the pace and heighten the tension. We used a sound bridge (printing noise) between a shot of Emma crying and “Julie” (the main villain) getting the print-out, to link them and further inform the audience of where the men are heading.
“Casino Royale” (Campbell 2006) has an inspiring opening sequence which has influenced the way in which I styled my sequence. It illustrates its themes (gambling, murder) using the title, “Casino Royale” and by an animation sequence which depicts cards and guns. Similarly, we illustrated our themes in our opening sequence.
Our shot distances range from Extreme Close Up (ECU) to Extreme Long Shot (ELS) to show facial expression and establish the scene. In the montage we used other angles: Low Angle, Over The Shoulder (OTS), Point Of View (POV) etc. to give it an edgy feel, as well as using a master shot for each location.
Narrative structure
We didn’t use Todorov’s classic narrative pattern (equilibrium à disruption à resolution à new equilibrium) because we wanted to shock our audience. We started with disruption - the girl already in conversation with someone she thinks is a different person. This is, however, the men’s equilibrium because they do this all the time. This is similar to “Scream” (Craven 1996)
because the disruption happens early on. In our film, the girl shown, Emma, is not the main victim (‘final girl’), she is just there to add to the body count and expose the men’s characteristics to the audience.
We want “Caught in the Web” to end on disruption, which challenges the conventional narrative pattern. We want our audience to go away thinking about what could happen after the film finishes, because leaving something unresolved is what the audience expects at the end of a good thriller.
Conventional narrative techniques helped our sequence make sense; most of it was filmed in real time, but we used ellipsis (e.g. between when Emma asked “Julie” to come over, and “Julie” printing the address) because some parts of the story were unnecessary to show. We used cross-cutting between the men and the girl, and kept to the 180° rule. Non-linear editing allowed flexibility, and it was easy to back up and save our work.
Drawing from our study of Barthes, we used many action/enigma codes, for example, one of the male characters packing a briefcase with weapons. Obviously, this shows the audience what he is doing, but also is an enigma code, because it implies what he is planning to do with the torture tools.
We go against Propp's theory because "Caught in the Web" is not a folk tale, and does not have the standard 8 character roles. In Propp's theory, there are 31 functions which are always highly predictable, such as the villains being punished at the end of the story. "Caught in the Web" doesn't do this, as we leave our story open-ended, and it being part-thriller, means it is in no way predictable.
Hi, back from South Africa. Just posted on the group blog about how I discovered our film title was used as an article title in a magazine in South Africa for an article about teen suicide pacts over the internet.
Right now, I am working on my evaluation, and at some point in the next few days we have to make questionnaires and advertise for our screening on Thursday.. So much to do!
Hi, back from lovely Christmas holiday, back to snowy school..
Been spending most of my free time on media things, editing has taken SO long, but is rewarding :)
I've got to do A LOT of editing this week, more than everyone else, because I am missing next week to go to a my first cousin's wedding in South Africa (I'm a bridesmaid :-D)
The actual wedding is on the day of our production deadline! But it has all been agreed with my teachers and the Headmaster, as they are all sure I can catch up.
So it looks like I'll be hand-writing my evaluation questions on the plane!
Hi I'm Laura and I LOVE films. I go to The Latymer School and am doing French, Maths, Media and Drama for AS level. I also did Media for GCSE, which was great fun. I have an extensive DVD collection and I like pretty much ALL genres (except westerns..). This fabulous blog is to showcase my work for AS Media, which focuses on Film. Enjoy! xx
