Researching Genre

Genre for Alien films

Whilst researching and watching different films that centred around aliens we discovered that they generally fall into 2 different genres. Below I complied these genres and some of their conventions and common reoccurances.

Horror
Nearly every early film that had an alien was a horror movie and even still today many alien films heavily incoporate horror aspects into their films.
Horror is a genre seeking to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's primal fears.

Conventions:
There are endless sub genres of horror such as pyschological, gore, zombie, body horror, action horror, comedic and gothic.
But we found for most alien films they were either slasher(alien, the thing) or pyschological(the fourth kind, UFO).
For slasher horror the main staple storyline for this would be a group of characters (typically teenagers or young adults) would be one by one hunted down by the alien threat until there are only one or two remaining who have a final showdown with the alien in a climatic and suspensful battle.
The location typically seen in this type of film would be a secluded area like an abandoned house, forrest or in space. Theses types of locations are typically chosen to increase tension as there is little hope of rescue and the characters are isolated from the outside world.
A common convention but a negative trope of this genre was the way characters often act irrationally to increase the suspense of a scene. Films like halloween have characters who will constantly fall or act stupid so that the killer will catch up to them or kill them. Whilst this increases supsense we also found that it ruins immersion as characters behave in a manner that does not reflect real life.
Editing tropes:  
For these types of films the editing is usually methodically and slow at the start. There are well paced establishing shots of the location the characters will be staying or even a tracking shot showing characters travelling to the location. Everything is slow to reflect the calm atmosphere before danger emerges. 

As the story progresses the editing becomes fast
paced and frantic with many jump cuts and quick pans to reflect the tension ramping up and the characters frightened mind set as they are met with danger and peril. 
There will often be many close up shots of characters face to show their heightened emotions as they deal with each situation. In some horror films the cinematography becomes shakey and hand held shots are employed to give the film more realism and enhance the momentum of intense scenes. The close up shots  characters also increase the fear of the unknown as the audiences view is obscured from any surrounding threats. We found this worked especially well in scenes with dark key lighting as the audience is given even fewer clues to the setting and they feel empathy for the character as they know as they know as little as they do. Barthe's enigma code can be applied to this technique as elements of the scene are held back from the audience which frustrates and intrigues the audience.
The sound design in these films is also an important aspect which is used to increase the tension or set the mood in horror films. The soundtrack in these films is usally dark and menancing with heavy percussion strikes to reflect the danger or action in a scene. Loud stings are used when the alien appears on screen and are used when a 'jump scare' happens to quickly frighten the audience and capture their attention.

Thriller
The 2nd biggest genre which encompasses alien films is thriller.
Thriller is a film genre that revolves around anticipation and supsense. The goal for a thriller is to keep the audience alert and on the edge of their seat. The protagonist is face with a problem such a mystery, an escape or a trail.
Conventions:
The tropes of the thriller genre are usually employed to enhance the suspense and action of the film. The film usually resolves around a resiliant character who seeks to resolve an equilibrium much like Tordorov's equilibrium film. 
Realism is a big focus in these films. The tension will be increased if the audience thinks the events in the movie can happen to them and this furthers the immersion they will feel. 
There are many typical professions and characters that feature in 
thriller films such as law enforcers, marines, detectives, spies and criminals. 
A negative trope/convention of this genre is the contrived nature of many situations that occur in the film. Many main plot points will usually be the result of something extremely unlikely or a chain of concidences that result in a character having to go on the run or try to clear his name. 
Editing tropes:
The editing in thrillers is usually complex as there is often many things occuring at once that needs to be effectively conveyed to the audience. Cross cutting is often used to build suspense as different plot points interwine and the action progresses. Many different camera angles are used to build momentum in a scene like over the shoulder shots, point of view shots, low/high angle shots and tracking shots. The varitey of coverage seen in a thriller film is often used so that frantic action happening can be conveyed in a precise and logical sequence so the audience is engaged and not confused.  

                                     

Soundtrack is also important in thrilers especially diegetic and background sounds like cars, gun shots, people shouting and city ambience. This helps immerse the viewer in the environment whilst heightening realism. The violence seen in thrillers is often emphasised with loud spikes in decibel level for the audio to enhance the dramatic effect of the action.
Below is an example of this from the film collateral when the antagonist shots two side characters and the gun shot sound is heightened with an echo effect so that audience feels the impact of the violence.
                                                 https://youtu.be/oEFPcljAXgs?t=1m10s
           

Character Research

 Researching Mentality of our Protagonist

When we set out to make a film cented on a mentally unstable individual, we wanted to depict as accurately as possible the behaviour of a depressed/unhinged person.
To do this we looked at several research papers and thesis on the subject of mental illness and depression. A couple of notes stood out to us 'Sadness or downswings in mood are normal reactions to life's struggles, setbacks, and dissapointments. Many people use the word ''depression'' to explain these kinds of feelings, but depression is much more than just sadness.'
http://www.helpguide.org/articles/depression/depression-signs-and-symptoms.htm
http://jenniferkennedy.co.uk/depression/
Some more symptoms are listed below

• you feel hopeless and helpless
• you’ve lost interest in friends, activities, and things you used to enjoy
• you feel tired all the time
• your sleep and appetite has changed
• you can’t concentrate or find that previously easy tasks are now difficult
• you can’t control your negative thoughts, no matter how much you try
• you are much more irritable, short-tempered, or aggressive than usual
• you’re consuming more alcohol than normal or engaging in other reckless behaviour

After reading this we realised that we did not want to make our protagonist too crazy or unrealistically pyschotic. We wanted to accurately show someone who had lost someone close to them and was struggling to make sense of his situation.
In many articles we researched we saw depression of losing a loved one felt like having a feeling of imepnding doom often feeling lifeless and aggressive.
We reflected these symptoms in our characters behaviour and mise en scene by having him sleeping on his sofa with alcohol bottles scattered everywhere and the room darked out.

We also made him act on edge and aggressive by having him pull a knife on his friend and act suspicious of him even though he was the one who called his friend round(paranoia). This reflects the symptoms of someone who is depressed or psychotic as they are always untrustworthy of others and only feel comfortable alone.

An additional aspect of our film which we wanted to mirror our characters mindset was costume. We looked at many different disshelved appearances such as a stained hoodie or ripped t-shirt. But we eventually settled on a bathrobe aswell as disshelved hair.

Newspaper clippings

To accurately depict a mentally unstable person obsessed with UFOs we searched online for different alien conspiracy articles. We then enlarged them and printed them out so we could plaster them all over the walls for the scene when we discover the main character is obsessed with aliens.

Recce List

List of required props and costume 
This is a list of props we need to assemble before shooting our film for the mise en scene.

Alcoholic beverage containers

Bathrobe

 Alien newspaper clippings

Laptop with alien conspiracy website displayed on it

 

Bright studio light

SPEC SCRIPT (Draft 1)

This is the first draft of our script, changes will be made later
After exploring the video tape news article we began constructing our idea while altering it so that was unique and gave it our own twist. This is the intial script that came from our idea.

Spec Script 

FADE IN

INT. SUBURBAN HOME (DAY)

Doorbell rings. DAVID opens the door to find a briefcase sitting there. He looks around the area before he brings it inside. When investigating the briefcase, he finds an unseen object and a note stating nothing but, ’They’re coming. Run!’ 

FADE OUT TO:

EXT. STREET SIDEWALK (DAY)

We see a MAN enquiring about where a certain house is.

MAN

Excuse me, could you tell me where this address is.

He shows the WOMAN the address.

MAN

I was supposed to have a meeting with the owner but I can't seem to find it. 

He reaches for his concealed weapon

WOMAN

Yeah it's just down the road and take the second right

MAN

I'm glad you answered, the last person I asked wasn't as helpful.

 He takes his hand off the weapon and leaves. 

INT. SUBURBAN HOME (NIGHT)

DAVID and his friend, PAUL are discussing what to do and who the note could refer to, they decide to leave but DAVID insists on going to get stuff from the shop.

PAUL

We can’t stay here, come on, we have to leave!

DAVID

Hold on, we need to get food and some money first.

PAUL

Fine, fine, just..I’ll start packing, just hurry back.

David leaves the house. The man arrives at the house and kills PAUL and proceeds to search for the briefcase. DAVID arrives home and sees the killer and his friend’s corpse. He flees the house, grabbing the hidden case on his way out.

EXT. ALLEYWAY (NIGHT)

DAVID continues to run from the assailant but is caught in a dead-end. The assailant is slowly approaching with his knife drawn. DAVID hides, then wrestles the assailant, grabbing the knife out of his hand before proceeding to stab the assailant. He then returns home to see the man who he just killed. It is then apparent to the audience that the man who had been killed and this man are twins. We cut to the outside of the house where a gunshot is heard and we see the man leaving with the briefcase and cleaning his boots.

FADE OUT 

Learning about Final Cut After Effects

When considering our film we knew we would have to look at special effects in post production in order to give our film the look we wanted and convey the story effectively to the audience. We used the green screen for our prelimary film but it was unsuccessful and the scenes filmed with it were not included in the final product. So we decided we would try and research tutorials on how to use it so that we could implement it into our film.

              

The main problem with our intial research of the green screen was that many of the tutorials we looked at were for experts or people that had a huge budget which we did not have. So after a while of searching we discovered the above video which was able to explain to us using simple instruction how to properly set up and use a green screen.

The above video was useful as it taught us how to add effects which be useful in the murder scenes in our film which would save us having to use practical effects which could stain actors clothes and damage filming equipment.

Profile of an Ideal audience

After extensive research into Alien/sci fi films through studying demographics for different films and looking at audience graphs on IMDB and taking into account the survey we created we came to the conclusion that those most interest in Alien films are males aged 18-40.
This is probably because these films generally centre around strong male protagonists and have gritty themes like violence, death and colonisation. Our film is also similiar to films like 'The Shining' and 'A Beautiful Mind' as it focuses on an unhinged, mentally unstable protagonist. Both these films have a similiar demographic being favoured by a slightly older audience of 25-45 probably due to their heavy themes.
Fans of the science fiction genre would be interested in our film and in addition the ambigious nature of the plot of our film would draw many viewers based on curiousity alone. Also it was clear from our analysis that western audiences would be more interested in the science fiction genre as America is were the genre was popularised with early 50s with flims like 'The Day The Earth Stood Still', 'Destination Moon', 'It Came From Outer Space' and the popular tv series 'The Twilight Zone'.
Below is an ideal viewer for our product and someone we showed the initial script and storyboard to.

 

This person found the concept involving aliens intriguing as he had enjoyed science fiction films in the past such as 'The Force Awakens' and 'Interstellar', He said he was interested in the direction we were taking the intial alien idea and would like to see a more developed story. Another person we showed the storyboard to is shown below.

They didn't express as much interest as the male but they still were able to give valuable feedback. They said if the film were to go for a lighter tone it would interest her more. Also they said that they enjoyed the mystery and tension throughout the film.
                  

Scrapping our short film/changing course

 Scrapping Our Film
After much deliberation we decided to scrap our intial short film idea and look at other ideas. We decided that while our film had some promising elements to it overall it was too cliche. Many people we showed the film to were intially intrigued by the premise of the film but felt that they had seen the story we had in our script and storyboards too many times. A few people also felt that the murder scenes in the film did not mesh well with the overall tone of the film and in addition we decided that these scenes in particular would be difficult to film with our small budget and many actors we talked too said they would be uncomfortable doing so much physical work for a short film.
In addition the plot of the film was over-ambitious as the plot is non linear and trying to convey this to an audience within such a short time could only be done in a rushed and contrived fashion. Overall we looked back at our conventions for successful short films of keeping it simple and decided we had strayed too far from the standards we had set at the start and abandoned the idea all together.
Changing Course
Our group was faced with a new challenge as our deadline for filming was closer and we did not have an idea. We decided to go back to our brainstorming session and see if there was any additional ideas that we could pursue. We looked at our UFO story and decided that this was a much more interesting story than our other film and could be filmed much easier if we altered the plot a little.
We outlined a story were a man who had lost his wife would be so overcome with grief that he would be convinced that aliens had abducted her and there would be scenes in the film that would leave it up to interpretation whether the man was crazy or the aliens were real.