My Final Post
I can’t believe this is my final post ever!!!
It has been a very long and interesting journey for me and I have learnt so much from it!
More importantly, I have had so much fun especially with the two loveliest group members ever Mel and Alice!
I will really miss working with you two…Thanks for being so great! Everyone else in our media classes including students, Miss Blackborow, Miss Thrasher and Mr Deans, have all been equally great and helpful...so Thank you all!
I will miss the good times I had during this project but it’s always good to move on, and I am especially looking forward to the next project, when we shall meet again =)

Bye for now =) xxx

This beautiful pink Blog is now closed.

Love you to Death

Cast
Laura Christofis -Killer Girlfriend

Barney Phillips -Victim Boyfriend

Crew
Produced, Directed, Edited, Sound and PA by
Mel Kannur Alice King and Aarti Diwan

Company Name

Perspective Productions

Locations
Filmed at:

Bush Hill Park, North London
House, Enfield, North London

Edited at:

The Latymer School, Edmonton, North London

Release Date:

13th January 2009

Denotation of the Opening Sequence
The Opening Sequence begins with a cross dissolve from black to an establishing LS of a house. It then cross-dissolves to Laura in the shower, followed by, an MCU of her feet stepping out the shower and picking her towel up.

This then cross-dissolves to a MCU pan of the dressing table followed by two shots of Laura walking out the bathroom with the use of match on action. Laura drops her towel and immediately we are introduced to the dual narrative with a VLS of Barney walking through the park.

There is continuous cross-cutting between the two characters to show that the two parallel narratives are connected. There is a CU of Barney’s feet, tilt shot from behind and a pan as he walks round the corner of the street.

Meanwhile we keep cross-cutting back to Laura’s montage of shots which consist of her tying her dress and finishing her lipstick.

The two characters then exchange a short phone-conversation after which Laura walks down the stairs which is made up of a MS shot of Laura walking out the room, a pan as she walks to the stair case, a CU of her feet going down, and a pan of her walking round the hallway. Each of these shots use matches on action, very much inspired by shots from 'The Ring' (Verbinski, 2002).

We then see a MS of Barney walking towards the door with two CUs of him ringing the doorbell and waiting at the door. In between we cross-cut to Laura lighting a candle for their romantic dinner and then her reaction shot to the doorbell.

The final shot is a slow pan of Laura picking up the knife.

Film Summary

Does she kill her boyfriend?

Yes, Laura does kill Barney, who is only one of the many guys she has killed before and she takes him to the basement where she has kept the rest of the men. Here we see the more gory and murderous aspects of the film. The story conventionally consists of a detective like in Seven (David Fincher, 1996) who comes to investigate the case of the missing males in the area. He falls in love with Laura who whilst trying to seduce him, also falls in love. This is where elements of romance will be incorporated in our film. She spends her time trying to hide her crimes from him.

The film will consist of flashbacks showing her childhood and the cause of her madness. The story goes that when she was younger, her brother was drowned in the sea back Greece, and she has always held his friend to blame for this incident. She remains silent about it for years, but when she moves to London she is taken over by a psychological disorder when memories of her brother return. She begins to date and kill anyone that looks like her brother’s friend, and ends up falling in love with the detective. When he eventually finds out about her crimes, she is faced by a dilemma...

Should she kill him too?

One of my favourite shots...

Laura- Striking the Match (1.25secs)

Evaluation Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our film’s opening sequence conforms to the forms and conventions of both real film opening sequences as well as genre specific conventions of thriller/horror films through its simple yet enigmatic narrative, action codes and the overall slow paced editing style.

It begins by establishing the setting with an LS like many real film openings such as Cleaner (Renny Harlin, 2007), for example. It then goes on to introducing the main female character through a cut up montage of shots of her getting ready.

Legally Blonde (Robert Luketic, 2001)

-Our broken up montage sequence very much compares to the ‘Legally Blonde’ opening which also uses cross cutting between the girl getting ready indoors, and her cycling outdoors.

-We do not see her face and likewise, Laura’s face is not revealed until the near end.

Here we have used theorist Roland Bathes’ idea of the enigma code, where details of the story are held back in order to increase the effect of the final revelation. It also helps to build up suspense and captivates the audiences’ interests who maybe suspicious as to who she is.


Propps Theory

Being a thriller/horror, each of her shots signifies that she may be the victim or according to Propp’s theory the ‘princess’ character involved, who being home alone, needs protection from the villain, especially due to the sexually exposing shower shots which have been used in many thrillers since Psycho(Hitchcock, 1960). We challenged this genre convention by revealing the conventionally victimised female character to in fact be the villain or so called ‘psycho’ of our film, introducing a great twist to the story through this unconventional role reversal.

The themes of the film however remain conventional to the genre of thriller/horror films including:

-Revenge- wants to kill her boyfriend
-Psychiatric behaviour – Evident in the diologue ‘you’re two minutes late’
-Isolation -within the ordinary but empty house, a typical setting for a thriller
-Entrapment- Dark and enclosed areas of the house, feeling of entrapment is created through tight CUs of Laura as she gets ready which makes it feel like there isn't much space around her.

To make it look like more of an opening sequence rather than a trailer montage we:

- incorporated cross cutting between the two characters
- presented a parallel narrative
- used the idea of ellipses within the storyline for example in one shot she drops her towel and in the next she is tying her dress. Here we can assume that there was time in between where she put her dress on.
- We also incorporated a phone conversation indicating the continuation of the story line

Some of the more obvious elements that conform to real film openings include the use of:

- Credits maintained throughout the sequence introducing the cast and crew
- The production company name ‘Perspective Productions’ is conventionally mentioned at the beginning.

- An enigmatic title at the end in a sophisticated font to suit the style of the opening sequence
- Abandoned- the calm and mysterious soundtrack composed by Robert Davis- plays throughout the opening and fades away towards the end slowly taking the audience into the core of the film.

From the opening sequence it is evident that our film breaks the conventions of Todorov’s classic narrative pattern as it begins with disruption rather than equilibrium, which we see when the female picks up the knife within the first two minutes of the film’. Audience feedback shows that this has a lot of dramatic impact on our sequence and leaves them wanting to watch the rest of the film, and this is a function of an opening sequence.

Iconography

Our opening sequence also establishes the core iconography set around the house through the consistently red mis-en-scene, which is very specific to thriller/horror films.

Red Connotes: danger, blood, murder, love, romance

The idea of using red as a theme in our sequence (red roses, lipstick, candles etc.) was also inspired by Legally Blonde (Robert Luketic, 2001) where pink is a prominent colour throughout the film. It was also inspired by the classic horror Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973) where the colour itself adds a lot of impact in making the film more dramatic and gory.

The title ‘Love you to Death’ is also in red sophisticated font anchoring the two main themes of love and danger. It looks like it has been stained in blood connoting death.

The low-key lighting in our indoor shots creates a very sinister mood and contrasts with the bright outdoors contrasts with the indoors indicating the use of binary opposites, a concept identified in many films by theorist Levi Strauss. It suggests that the victim, Barney, is walking from light or safety, to the dangers of darkness. Here we have also used pathetic fallacy as the weather seems to get worse as Barney comes closer to his own death.

The knife at the end is probably the greatest genre signifier featured in many horror films such as Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978), and Psycho, suggesting violence, and as an opening sequence should, it establishes audience expectations for the rest of the film.

Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Although our film is targeted at those aged fifteen and above, the film itself represents young adult/ couples around the age of twenty. We purposely chose actors that are quite mature looking, and as audience feedback from friends out of school shows, they look much older than seventeen years.

Female Status

We chose the main character to be female in order to reflect the change in women’s social status in Britain today. The female today is given much more importance than ever in the past and likewise, our sequence represents a young woman who is assertive and overpowering with the upper hand in the relationship between herself and her boyfriend. This is reflected in the telephone conversation where she says ‘you’re two minutes late!’ in her strong tone of voice where she seems extremely stern and demanding.

Looks
We chose our actress very carefully so that her striking looks including the bold brown eyes and curly dark brown hair, complements her strong personality. This was extremely important as a blue-eyed blonde actress for example, would not have represented this personality with the same effect as she is stereotypically seen to be the vulnerable victim. However, even then our protagonist is primarily represented as a passive object of the male through the nude shower scene where she is quite exposed.

Personality
The woman is also presented to be quite a sophisticated and feminine character and this is evident from the mis-en-scene:

- Largely lit by candles
- Elegant dress with red roses
- Carefully applied make-up
- Red nails

Here she represents a typical victim who is home alone and about to be murdered. On her dressing table however, everything is arranged in height order, which represents this young female adult as overly organised as well. This hints a slight strangeness in her personality which is emphasised when she says ‘you’re two minutes late’. Here we are representing those in society who suffer from psychological problems, which cause them to be extremely paranoid and in the long-run, lead to acts of violence. This is an underlining theme of our film, very much inspired by Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960) where character Norman Bates is represented to be an ordinary man but in fact turns out to be a complete psycho. Another character that inspired us to use a female was Alex Forrest played by Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction (Adrian Lyne, 1987) who seems like an ordinary woman at first but actually suffers from a form of obsessive condition. Likewise, our protagonist suffers from a similar mental illness, which is revealed at the start, and therefore the rest of the film gives an insight to such a woman’s life.

On the other-hand, the male character represents:

To break conventions we have represented the boyfriend with the virtues of a female.
Here we have represented the binary opposite of good versus evil through both characters and their contrasting intentions: Love and Murder

Being a British film, our film also represents people of Greek background as our actress is of this ethnicity. This goes to reflect the British society as being more and more multicultural. It also shows that it is not only the white woman that has equal status to that of a man, but women in general, despite their ethnicities have increased importance. The rest of the film would perhaps address elements of Greek culture more directly through more traditional mis-en-scene and the character’s lifestyle. This links in with our company name ‘Perspective Films’ which makes films to represent the perspective of people from a range of ethnicities and minority groups.