Project 1!!!

Project 1

Our project was to create a film still within our school grounds, firstly we had to decide upon the genre of film still that we would create and due to the nature of our schools setting (old buildings and many trees) we thought it best to try and produce a film still of the horror genre.

We tried many different loaations ranging from indoors to outdoors and I felt that this shot was the best of all of the shots we had taken. I feel that this shot can be identified as a still from a horror film due to the composition, character and mise en scene of the shot.
Firstly, the "monster" is in the middle of the frame behind bars, this shows that it dominates the space and therefore is one of the more powerful characters in the film, the character itself has a concealed face which creates a mystery about the monster as we don't know exactly what it looks like which gives the still another element of mystery which adds to the scare factor of the still. Also, the juxtaposition introduced by the monster wearing stylish clothes shows clearly the target audience of the film (teenagers) and also shows that the monster could appear anywhere during the film as it could fit in with main characters. The mise en scene of the steep staircase, wooden door and black railings suggest that the still was taken in an old(er) building, conventionally, monsters of the horror genre live in old buildings with many hiding places which again, helps to identify that this still belongs to the Horror genre of film.  The black bars also show that the monster may be trying to escape however, it seems that the bars might not be able to hold back the monster which makes the audience anxious as to where the monster will go and who will get hurt, this anxiety is further amplified as we can't see where the monster is going so we don't know which of the good characters is going to be attacked.

In Hindsight, I would probably allocate myself more time in order to play around with camera settings and make the shot darker and more shadowy, I would also choose a slightly drearier day to take the picture on as it would be fitting with the conventions of horror films, I may also have experimented with having a good character walk by the monster and not realise it was there