Analysing a media text

In order to be able to make a successful short film of your own the best way to get an idea about what different conventions that you need to include and the ways in which the film should be filmed is by watching previous short films that have been created. My short film has multiple genres within in which means that there are a rang of short films that I need to watch in order to get a feel for the ways that my short film showed be filmed.

The short film below is a Horror film that shows many of the typical conventions that causing it to be an obvious.

Sound:
As the film first starts within the first five seconds you are aware that it is going to be a horror film as the tense music followed by the scream as the title is shown gives this away. The scream as the title appears gives an indication of the fact a women is going to be harmed or killed during the film. As th news report of the missing person is being shown on screen with the girls voice in the background makes the audience feel like the missing person on the screen is going to have an effect on the women who is talking in the background. As the two women are having their conversation and saying things in sync with each other we can see the close friendship that they have, the use of having the two women talking in sync allows the audience to see the type of relationship that they have as they are talking in a jokey manner. Although the women did turn the TV lower to prevent it from being the dominant part of the scene as she looks away from her laptop it then becomes the most clear thing that the audience can hear, with an added sound effect to the back of it. This is further implying the fact that something more is going to occur during the film in correlation with the news story being shown, as soon as the news story goes off so doesn't the added twinkling noise in the background. Once we start to see a black figure appear in the background of the webcam a low pitched tense sounds starts to appear the sound isn't very dominating as the women's voice is louder however it ends more tension to the scene, due to the news article being such a dominance this is who the audience are going to think they person is. The same twinkling noise starts to appear as the figure disappears behind a wall. The tense noise then re appears once again however gets deeper to show that the figure is actually there and something more is going to occur. The creaking of the floor boards as the women walks across them is a typical stereotype of horror films it adds more tension and shows how quiet the rest of the house is as we are able to hear them. The use of the women doing things in sync then occurs again however this time it isn't for a good reason, they are both screaming in fear of the fact some random person is in the house. From this moment onwards everything else gets more tense, the twinkling noise in the background then becomes a repetitive thing through the next few scenes. We hear further screams coming from the laptop in order to show that the person that has taken her is harming her which causes the women on the phone to panic even more.

Lighting:
As the film starts and we see a long shot of the woods the lighting used creates shadows on the house which is typical of horror films. It creates an image of the fact the house is haunted, it also looks abandoned as there is not any street lights making the area friendly and welcoming. Throughout the film the lighting is coming from background lighting like fairy lights or the light that is coming from the laptop screen. The woman on the other side of the laptop has what looks like a bed side table lighting up her face. There is then a light coming from a door behind her which later allows the audience to she the shadow that appears later on. Due to the lighting in her bedroom only coming from the bed side lamp and back door/window we are unable to see what is occurring in the rest of the room, the lighting is focused on the two main areas of the room that we need to see.  Although we would typically associate fairy lights with happy lighting the ones used in this short film are out of focused, they are also a orange// red colour. As we see many more long shorts of the living room while she is on the phone there are many lamps and candles being used in order to light up the room which means that there are many shadows in the room, which denotes the fact the genre of the film is horror. 

Mise en scene:
The film has been set on halloween with the two women having a night in, so the mise en scene is of their home environments. The women that is in her bedroom doesn't have anything extra in her room to help the storyline of the film, she is just on her bed with her laptop in front of her the audience does not see anything else. However we see a little more of the other women's living area. We also see that she has a bottle of wine on the table which may have added to the reason that she over reacted a lot to what she has seen and also split over while carrying the knife which also cause her to harm herself. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIFkut11Xpc