Evaluation Activity Task 1

INHABITANT Analysis

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)

Inhabitant, a film produced and directed by myself and Luiza Paulielo, develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media products. This is introduced through several ways. Firstly, our film title conforms to the horror genre as "inhabitant" literally suggests a creature of somewhat occupying somewhere or something.

The opening to our film begins straight up with "found footage" this insinuated the plot of the story immediately as we associate found footage to lead to something out of the ordinary, this suggest that the film may be of the Horror or Thriller genre. It flows nicely with jump cuts, this infers that the footage is old.

This is the first significant shot to our opening sequence. This shot is shown effective due to it establishing the location, which is proven to be a home. Here we are shown the character of a young girl, this shows prevalence to the character which means that we will empathize and relate to this specific character. This shot is edited through adobe premier pro where we have cut the format of the video to express more of a found old footage effect. The use of VCR digital font conforms to the stereotypical found footage format. This is effective because it is more realistic and the audience can relate to this. We chose to begin with establishing the concept of "packing" in a home environment, which allows the audience to have a brief idea of what is going on. By colouring the video, we added a slight touch of a video camcorder, by lessening the vibrancy, and adding grain, by altering the RGB we were able to find the perfect tone to portray this effect. It is important to do this so that we enable the audience to immediately realise that this is video footage, despite the use of text in the corner.



Following the first shot, this is the second most important shot to our film. Here we are shown an extreme closeup of a box, to the audience, this wouldn't be a significant part of the film, however we then learn this is the reason and object into leading into the next scene. The "camcorder" lingers on the object by zooming in and out of the object, this identifies its significance, and brings the audience to focus on the box other than the dialogue. This is done to develop mystery and suspicion towards the prop. The close up also suggests how this box may be relevant to what happens next in the film, this foreshadows the events that occur in the attic throughout the film. We also repeated the editing process shown in the first shot to this one, as this is the same location and lighting.




This is our third significant shot of our opening to INHABITANT. This is a blacked out screen with the title of our institution. In this cross cut we decided to include our film institutions credits. We used bold white font to make our film institution stand out more. we also used clockwork effect to make our film institution appear slowly in a distorted way which links in with the tense distorted mood of our film.

This establishing mid shot shows the location of the scene, and also identifies the character behind the camera. The format has changed to widescreen due to it switching from found footage, to the film. This is effective because it shows the audience that this is in fact a movie due to its widescreen nature and still shots. This shot isn't the strongest, as it lacks quality and the image is tilted slightly as we had a problematic tripod. This is something we can grow on in the future. 

This is our 5th significant screen grab. Before this shot we had a blackout shot of our credits reading "in association with" then there is a quick jump cut that takes us back the scene and it is a shot of Ellie pulling down the metal stairs from the attic. We zoomed in the camera so that it is a close up shot of the metal stairs and we did a panning shot where the camera panned down the stairs as she pulled them down. The sharp sound of the metal stairs scraping was recorded and added on top of footage so that the sound was louder and in better quality. As this sound of the stairs scrapping added to the eerie mood. This shot is also effective as we see the characters face looking up into the attic with a curious expression indicating that this is the first time she is entering the attic making the audience wonder what the attic is like.

This is our sixth screen grab of our opening scene. It is  Black out shot that cuts in between the scenes of Ellie going up the attic. It included the title of the institution we have a synergy with. We chose to have the credits shots in between scenes so that they are used to cross cut from one shot to the other. This helped increase the pace of the scene by jumping from the scene to shots of the credits it would leave the audience on the edge of their seat.  We used block white font for our clockwork productions so that they stand out on the black background.

This is our seventh screen grab of our INHABITANT opening. It is a medium establishing shot of the attic the story is based around.In this shot we added a downloaded font with the time and date at the bottom corner so this suggests that filming is being done by hand by the main character at this point suggesting this is a home-made footage. This was effective as we were able to control the time and date and we chose a time in the evening so that it connotes danger as scary things usually happen at night time making this character more vulnerable. In this shot we can see a dim lit attic that is full of clutter such as old cardboard boxes and wood.the far end of the attic how ever is dark and this makes the audience curious as we cant clearly see what is in all of the attic.

This is our eighth screen grab from INHABITANT opening. It is a shot that is taken right after there is a black out in the attic as the lights have mysterious turned off. Our main character then used the torch on her phone as a source f light so that the camera can reveal what's in front of her. We decided to have a shot of the camera focused on a white box in front of the character while everything else in the attics surroundings is in darkness. This is an effective shot as it creates suspense as the light is only shinning on irrelevant objects making the audience fear what else is in the darkness. As the the character in this scene is made to feel vulnerable as she can only see a limited amount of what she shines her torch on. We also increased the time at the bottom corner of the shot to inform the audience that time is passing and that it is getting later into the night which connotes danger we did the by using VCR digital font that conformed to a typical handmade footage.





This is our ninth screen grab from INHABITANT. It is a medium shot that is filmed in the dark attic we used the torch on the characters phone as a source of light as she slowly panned to right with her torch, it created a tense atmosphere and then when the camera revealed a figure in white in the right hand side, we edited this shot so that it would have a glitching effect that causes distortion and indicates that there is bad connection. This editing was very effective in this shot as it makes the audience feel scared as they didn't clearly see what that figure was and it makes them wonder "what was that?" The distortion used in this shot also emphasises the realism of the hand made footage and suggests that the camera could stop filming at any moment leaving the audience tense to find out what happens to this character.