WELCOME TO THIS BLOG!

WELCOME!
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PLAYLIST OF FILMS I'VE RESEARCHED

These are all of the films I've referenced to in my blogs and done some research on. I haven't gone into lots of depth on all of these films.
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• High School Musical 3 (Ortega, 2008)
• Focus (Ficarra, Requa, 2015)
• Baby Driver (Wright, 2017)
• Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee (Meadows, 2009)
• Tyrannosaur (Considine, 2011)
• Legend (Helgeland, 2015)
• Bridget Jones's Baby (Maguire, 2016)
• Shaun of the Dead (Wright, 2004)
• The Theory of Everything (Marsh, 2014)
• Warm Bodies (Levine, 2013)
• Zombieland (Fleischer, 2009)
• Pretty in Pink (Deutch, 1986)
• The Brother's Grimsby (Leterrier, 2016)
• Scream (Craven, 1996)
• This is England (Meadows, 2007)
• About a Boy (Weitz brothers, 2002)
• Ali G Indahouse (Mylod, 2002)
• Atonement (Wright, 2007)
• Wish You Were Here (Leland, 1987)
• Friday the 13th (Nispel, 2009)
• Four Lions (Morris, 2010)
• Bridget Jones's Diary (Maguire, 2001)
• Hot Fuzz (Wright, 2007)
• Dawn of the Dead (Snyder, 2004)
• Dawn of the Dead (Romero, 1978)
• 28 Days Later (Boyle, 2002)
• Mean Girls (Waters, 2004)
• She's All That (Iscove, 1999)
• Paul (Mottola, 2011)
• Billy Elliot (Daldry, 2000)
• Love actually (Curtis, 2003)
• Four Weddings and a Funeral (Newell, 1994)
• About Time (Curtis, 2013)
• Dead Man's Shoes (Meadows, 2004)
• TwentyFourSeven (Meadows, 1998)
• Notting Hill (Michell, 1999)
• '71 (Demange, 2014)
• Les Misérables (Hooper, 2013)
• She, a Chinese (Guo, 2010)
• Submarine (Ayoade, 2011)
• Green Zone (Greengrass, 2010)
• The World's End (Wright, 2013)
• Smokin' Aces (Carnahan, 2007)
• Withnail and I (Robinson, 1987)
• Kidulthood (Clarke and Huda, 2006)
• Halloween (Zombie, 2007)
• Seed of Chucky (Mancini, 2004)
• The Boat That Rocked (Curtis, 2009)
• Anna and the Apocalypse (McPhail, 2018)
• Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968)
• Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)
• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Steers, 2016)
• The Dark Knight (Nolan, 2008)
• Avatar (Cameron, 2009)

USEFUL BLOGS

https://mediabritishcinema.blogspot.com/
https://asmediafilmopening.blogspot.com/

THE FINAL CUT

This is our final film opening of Donnie of the Dead.

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This is the final cut of our production, Donnie of the Dead, being a zombie-rom-com hybrid genre following Donnie and his friends take on the zombie apocalypse. We have taken key influence from Shaun of the Dead along with other Egar Wright movies and other Horror movies.

Our primary audience is males and females aged 15-24, and our secondary audience being males aged 25-40. We would expect our film to get a BBFC rating of 15, as this was the rating given to Shaun of the Dead.

Changes since last rough cut:

• Music positioned better
• New and better foley sound
• No more wind in the outside scene
• Colour of titles has changed
• The main title has changed
• Audio bridge is shorter at the start
• Audio levels have been improved
• Kitchen scene is even snappier
• Trimmed down to 3 minutes

EVAL Q4

How did you integrate technologies - software, hardware and online - in this project?

This blog post covers:

• How we integrated technologies in this project
• Disruption, digitisation and convergence

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TRANSCRIPT

Hello it's Scope Productions here and I'm going to discuss the different, software, hardware and online resources I used as well as how I engaged with audiences online.

First of all, at the beginning of this year, the first thing we did was set up a blogger account.  We got to edit it how we wanted and as I chose the name Scope Productions, I wanted to have a scope background.  Once we did that, we made all of the links lists down the side, including labels, DB blogs, Box office analysis by the Guardian in the UK, the US and globally.  We used these different blogs and websites for a lot of our research.  We also added our top bar which had all of my groups blogs at the time.  We changed some of the settings so that our comments would be moderated and we would add hyperlinks on some of our posts.  After some contemplation, I decided to make my blog a bit cleaner by having fewer posts so I created a new one and transferred the old blogs over.  I decided to keep everything else about it the same as I was really happy with the look of my old one.  

I used instagram to promote the tile product which is featured in our film opening.  This was because we saw many examples of tie-ins.  I also used instagram to create a story where i could receive questions to answer one of my posts.  Spikey Films used TikTok as his social media.  

We were introduced to FCPX early on in the year to get the grips of it as it can seem quite complicated at the start.  I learnt many different things, such as, how to use greenscreen, import fonts and create titles, do a voice over and import and use sound effects.  For fonts, we downloaded true type fonts from the internet.  These were all vital things to learn at the start to help with creating our film opening.  I did struggle with the creating of a library and events but soon got the hang of it.  We also learnt how to key frame.

Our media group collectively used snapchat as we were most active on that platform.  We created a group called Media Y12 and used it very often to discuss different concerns or achievements.  This was very helpful for all of us.  I also used snapchat to link some videos or surveys and put them on my story.

I used slideshare a significant amount throughout this time and it was very useful.  It is such an easy platform to use and it made my blog so much more user friendly.

I think I used youtube the most out of everything.  Every-time i filmed something i made sure i posted it on there.  I would then copy the embedded link and upload it to a blog post.  I found that youtube was one of the easiest ways to share my videos onto my blog.  I also used youtube to search up greenscreen videos or sound effects to download and use.  With this I also used youtube to mp3 or youtube to mp4 to download the videos or sounds.

I used powerpoint and word a lot.  I found that it was an easy, sleek way of presenting information which could easily be put on my blog with slideshare.  

Survey monkey is a website where you can set up your own surveys.  To help figure out confirm our predictions of our target audience, I created a short video showing 3 different videos, audio clips or pictures from either a movie/TV show and then asked people to answer the survey.  This helped a lot for us.

We collectively used Teams a lot as a way to discuss our ideas and thoughts.

To screen record some of my tutorial episodes i used quicktime which was a quick and effective way.

We did a lot of research on IMDb and BoxOfficeMojo as well as looking at previous coursework.

When it came to our film opening, we had quite bad audio so I also used voice memos on my iphone to re-record.

I used giphy quite a lot to make my blogs a bit more interesting and visually pleasing.

Currently to create this, i will be using the keyer effect on FCPX as well as taking screenshots with the shortcut cmd + shift +3 or 4 which i searched for on chrome.

As hardware goes, we used DSLRs, however for our film opening we used an iPhone 11.  We used large and mini tripods with the phone adapter.  I mainly used my Macbook Pro to edit and do most of my blogging.  I also often used my phone when I wasn't in reach of my laptop.  I did some of my research through reading books such as Studying Horror Genre by Bryan Turnock which we bought from Amazon.  To film this right now, I'm using my iPhone 11 and I will be editing this video on my macbook pro.

Digitisation, disruption and convergence

• Digitisation is the process of change that is moving away from analogue to digital
• We filmed our film opening on a phone instead of a DLSR
• Disruption is the consequence of digitisation and the impact of it on media industries
• Convergence is the barrier between things disappearing or blurring
• A phone was originally used to call with, but now the gap between producer and audience is blurring as a phone can film with 4k quality.  

EVAL Q3

How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

This blog post covers:

• Tutorials for different FCPX tools
• The Prelim and Microdrama
• Our sample scenes
• The journey

FONTS AND TITLES TUTORIAL
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• Find an website where you can download fonts
• Find the font you want to use
• Click download
• Make sure the font is a True Type Font (ttf)
• Double click on the file and then press 'Install Font'
• Make sure Final Cut Pro is closed
• Open Final Cut Pro
• Drag in a title
• Change font to the one just downloaded

SOUND EFFECTS TUTORIAL
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• Find a sound effect on YouTube
• Copy the URL of the video
• Change the video to mp3 using a website
• Import sound into Final Cut Pro and use

GREENSCREEN TUTORIAL
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• Find a green screen video on Youtube (or film something in front of a green screen)
• Copy URL of the video
• Download video
• Import video into Final Cut Pro
• Drag effect keyer onto green screen clip

VOICEOVER TUTORIAL
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• In Final Cut Pro, press on window (top left)
• Click record voice over
• Make sure you can see where you want to put the voice over

PRELIM AND MICRODRAMA 

To help put these tips and tricks into place, we did a Prelim practice and a Microdrama.  We created call sheets and did some preparation for both of these.

Prelim
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Preparation for prelim from westhamwindows

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Prelim call sheet from westhamwindows

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Microdrama
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Prep for microdrama from westhamwindows

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Microdrama call sheet from westhamwindows

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How we worked as a group:

• I think it was quite difficult to work as a group as we all had such strong ideas of what we wanted to do.  
• As we haven't ever worked together as a group, I think we weren't doing great because we weren't used to each other's ways of working.

What could have been better:

• I think we could have listened a little bit more to each other as we could have worked better together.  

SAMPLE SCENES

Here are the first and last sample scenes Spikey Productions and I have created:

Mine:
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Spikey films:

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I think there is a clear improvement in these examples.  We improved each of our sample scenes by getting audience feedback and tweaking it.

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Here are the behind the scenes for our shoot 1:
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How we worked as a group:

• I think we worked a lot better than the times doing the prelim and microdrama.
• We were all more used to how to utilise a camera and how to direct so it went a lot smoother.  
• As it was a long 2 days of filming, I think we were all a bit tired of each other at the end of it but we came together and pulled through and I'm proud of us. 

A timeline of my experiences:

• As I had some experience from doing media in GCSE, I knew how to use DSLR, however I was a bit rusty.
• We started by shooting handheld and we didn't use a single tripod in our Prelim and Microdrama
• We did a lot of panning and tracking shots which meant that the footage wasn't very still.
• We found out how to use FCPX, with the greenscreen, SFX, fonts and voice overs.
• We pitched our first idea for the film opening
• Scrapped that idea and pitched the second one
• We did a moodboard and showed the primary and secondary target audience.
• We researched the conventions of different genres then specifically on the zom-rom-com hybrid genre.
• We look at different theories, including Carrol Clover's final girl and the opposing Laura Mulvey's male gaze
• We went location scouting
• We made a call sheet
• We gathered props
• We did awesome makeup!
• We began filming, and re-shooting many times so we didn't miss anything
• We used different equipment
• We began editing
• We experimented with different editing styles
• We got audience feedback and carried on editing to fit the feedback
• We found some issues with the sound
• We re-recorded sound
• We experimented with fonts and FCPX effects
• We created idents
• We produced out film opening!

EVAL Q2

How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

This blog post covers:

• Our target audience
• BBFC - Big 5 vs Indie
• How it would be distributed as a real media text

How does your product engage with audiences?

In this powerpoint, we discuss the range of audiences we expect our film opening to attract.  We discuss age, gender, economic grouping, nationality/region and sexuality.  We also take a look at the difference between the contrasting Warp and Working Title in regards to the size of audiences they get and for which reasons.

Our target audience from LouisHodges3

In this powerpoint, we have a moodboard of what we expect our male and female audience members to look like, and what they're into.

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Moodboard done from westhamwindows

TARGET AUDIENCE SURVEY RESULTS

We made a short video with clips, pics and audio from 3 movies/TV shows.  This was to see if our predictions of a 15-24 year old audience was correct.  We used SurveyMonkey to collect the data and our results are below the video.
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Target audience survey from LouisHodges3

In this powerpoint, I've discussed the differences in BBFC ratings in Big 5 movies vs indie movies.
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Bbfc - big 5 vs indie from westhamwindows

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As audience feedback goes, I have made sure I've received the most I can by asking for some feedback after every sample scene and rough cut.  This is shown in my SAMPLE SCENES post and my ROUGH CUTS post.

How would it be distributed as a real media text?

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Transcript

TYPES OF DISTRIBUTION

• What are different types of distribution?
• First to understand the different types of distribution, we need to know what distribution is.  Distribution is in the middle of the production, distribution, exhibition film cycle.  Production is the making of the movie and exhibition is the public screening of the movie.  To get exhibition, a production company will need their movie to be distributed by a distribution company.  Theatrical, television, personal home viewing and self distribution are all types of distribution.  Theatrical distribution is when the movie is screened in cinemas, television distribution is when the movie is screened on TV, personal home viewing distribution is when the movie is on DVD or Blu-ray, and self-distribution is when the production company takes distribution into their own hands, through social media for example.

CONGLOMERATES VS INDIES

• What is the difference between the big5 and indie companies when it comes to distribution?
• Indie companies have a much lower chance at getting distributors than a big 5 production company.  The big 5 conglomerate NBC Universal has a first-look deal meaning that if Working Title, the junior production company, produces a film, the NBC Universal distribution company will have the first look at the movie to decide if they want to distribute it.  If they decide they don't want to, they will have to find another distributor.  Indies rarely have the chance to be theatrically distributed unless it is in an arthouse cinema.  The main reason an Indie movie will have a much smaller release is because their budget is much smaller than a commercial movie.  Another thing that stops Indies getting a wide release is that Indies usually cover more sensitive topic, like the social realist movie Tyrannosaur directed by Paddy Considine and released in 2011, with the protagonist kicking his dog to death.  They also show much less commonly shown representations and both of these factors appeal to a niche audience.  

DIGITISATION/DISRUPTION/CONVERGENCE

• Please explain what digitisation, disruption and convergence are!!
• Sure so digitisation is the process of change that is moving away from analogue to digital.  A good example of this is older media being cassette tapes and new media is steaming.  Disruption is the consequence of digitisation and the impact of it on media industries.  Monetisation is a lot more complicated now as a lot of movies are now on streaming sites such as Netflix and Amazon Prime so there isn't such an easy way to monetise it which has a large impact on the film industry.  Convergence is the barrier between things disappearing, for example, a phone is no longer something just to call people on, we can now watch movies through netflix or other streaming sites on here, making it less necessary to go to the cinema, which is another example of disruption.

HOW WE WOULD DISTRIBUTE

• How are you distributing Donnie of the Dead?
• As our movie has a micro-budget, we're taking inspiration from Hinterland, which was directed by Harry Macqueen and released in 2014.  Hinterland has a budget of £8k which is a substantial difference to some of the Big 5 movies, such as the tentpole, meaning a budget of $100m, movie Green Zone.  Harry Macqueen managed to self-distribute by providing a QnA session at 5 arthouse cinemas for a week of screening.  He also had the movie simultaneously viewable on demand.  We will self-distribute our movie, through social media and getting in contact with distributors and having a QnA session deal.  

GANT RULE

• What is the gant rule?
• The Gant Rule is an observation that a movie will make approximately 10 times more box office in the US than the UK as there are around 10 times more cinemas and screens in the US.  However this would only really work for a big 5 company.  If a movie is set in England, the representation is usually a southern english accent, which is universally recognised.  A northern english, scottish or irish accent isn't understood as universally.  Indie movies usually show these different representations so they would rarely do well in America.  

DYER'S STAR THEORY

• What Dyer's star theory?
• Richard Dyer's star theory is that a media text will entice a larger audience if a well-known person or "star" is in it.  A lot of the time, big 5 companies will use Star-billing as a form of advertisement, so they could put the actor's name in big bold letters on a poster, or get the actors to do press conferences.  Indies don't have the budget to be able to hire an a-lister and use them for advertisement, which is another reason why distribution is a lot harder for them.

FRANCHISE

• Are there any franchises in Warp or is it only Working Title?
• Yes. Working Title can afford the IP or Intellectual Property for a franchise, such as Bridget Jones's Diary which was originally a novel and is now 2 movies.  Warp can't afford this as much, however, they have done in the past.  Submarine was a novel before Warp bough the IP and turned it into a movie.  Another example if a Warp franchise is This is England which became a short TV show.

CHINA

• What is the deal with China and the film industry?
• China is the second biggest film market in the world, however, the Chinese government has put a quota on the amount of non-Chinese films that can be shown a year, being 34 movies.  As this number is so low, Indie companies like Warp could never be screened in China especially with the niche social realist genre.  

COZ GREENOP

• Who is Coz Greenop?
• Coz Greenop self-financed and self-produced a horror movie named Wandering Rose which was filmed in Scotland for £30k in just 12 days.  With this micro-budget, Coz took a gamble and attended the Cannes film festival and also arranged a London screening.  Fortunately, Greenop's hard work and faith led him to getting distribution deals for DVD and VOD releases.  He also managed to get a US distributor, however, they did change the name of his movie from Wandering Rose to Demon Baby.

EVAL Q1

How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

This blog post covers:

• Conventions
• Titles, Idents and Media language for both general and genre conventions
• Social groups

CONVENTIONS
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I took inspiration from James Corden's Carpool Karaoke series on YouTube.
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Transcript

• What conventions did you look at?
• We looked at 7 different conventions in film openings, being titles, idents, companies and production context, sound, opening shots, central protagonist and narrative, mise-en-scene and the transition to the main film
• Which genre of movies did you look at when researching conventions?
• We looked at all different genres from indie production companies, like Warp and production companies like Working Title, the subsidiary of NBC Universal, one of the Big 5, ranging from social realists like Tyrannosaur, directed by Paddy Considine and released in 2011, slashers like the Friday the 13th remake, directed by Marcus Nispel and released in 2009, rom-coms like Bridget Jones's Diary, directed by Sharon Maguire and released in 2001 and of course the zombie sub-genre to horror like Dawn of the Dead, directed by George A. Romero and released in 1978.  It's important to have a range of research as a lot of conventions are shown across different genres so we made sure that that was one of our first tasks.  Then we of course started to look at some zombie movies more in depth, especially the zom-rom-com hybrid genre.
• Can you talk to me about the use of font or style in titles?
• Sure, so titles have a big effect in anchoring the preferred reading.  For example, in a social realist, we would expect to see a serif black or white font as it connotes seriousness.  If we flip that and look at, let's say a rom-com, we would expect to see a sans-serif handwriting or bubble font as it stereotypically appeals to a female audience.  
• So what did you do for Donnie of the Dead?
• As Donnie of the Dead is a zom-rom-com hybrid genre, we wanted to have a mix of conventional fonts for the zombie and the rom-com genres.  To do this, we decided to have a distressed, sans-serif, bubble font.  We took a great deal of inspiration from Anna and the Apocalypse.  The distressed aspect signifies the zombie aspects and the bubble, sans-serif part signifies a rom-com.  Besides the font we used, we also created an order for our titles which was inspired from a large range of genres as they are very similar throughout.  However, I will say, quite a few Warp movies we looked at had a different approach.  For example, Four Lions, a comedy about a suicide bomber, didn't have any titles besides the main ones.  We also followed the auteur theory, where the director's name is mentioned twice, like Paddy Considine's This is England, even though our film doesn't tackle social issues.
• Talk to me about idents and the production context.
• So there are typically around 3-4 idents before the movie which last for around a total of 30s-1m but it does vary.  There are some occasions where we would only see 1 ident or maybe even none.  The more production companies there are involved in the making of the movie, the more the risks are spread, so if unfortunately there is a loss, it won't be as detrimental.  We wanted to have 3 idents which applies to the common convention.  Idents can be tweaked to connote the genre, like in the Friday the 13th remake, directed by Marcus Nispel and released in 2009, the idents have a red tint on the signifying blood as it is a Slasher movie which we didn't follow.  As production context goes, we've taken inspiration from indie movies, as we saw The UK Film Council, which is now known as BFI or British Film Institution.  These help fund the movie, so we put Luxembourg Film Fund in our titles.
• What about sound?
• Sound is largely involved in anchoring the target audience and signifying the genre.  Diegetic and non-diegetic music can connote the age, gender and social class.  A common example of this would be heavy metal signifying a younger male downmarket target audience and classical or jazz music signifying an older, upmarket target audience.  Some movies we looked at had pre-existing music whereas others had music made specifically for the movie, like Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee.  We took inspiration from This is England which has pre-existing music in the film opening.  We also wanted to intertextualise Shaun of the Dead as it was our main inspiration for our film opening by having Ghost Town by the Specials playing as that was also in the Shaun of the Dead opening.  This song would also be a way to widen our target audience as it was released in 1981 and so an older audience would know it.  Ghost Town is also quite an ironic song to use which adds to the comedic effect.  For foley sound, we took inspiration from Hot Fuzz as it has exaggerated SFX which connotes comedy.  When researching sound, we also noticed that good ambient sound is what created verisimilitude which we wanted to achieve in our opening.
• Do you think you've been successful when it comes to your first shots?
• Yes I do think we've been successful.  A convention in all genres is having the narrative enigma.  There are obviously exceptions, such as ..........., but we definitely didn't want to follow that.  In About a Boy, directed by Chris and Paul Weitz and released in 2002, there is a large amount of narrative enigma by not showing the central protagonist immediately, however it does provide exposition through the mise-en-scene.  A different way of creating narrative enigma is providing a lack of exposition, for example, in Shaun of the Dead directed by Edgar Wright and released in 2004, we see Shaun the central protagonist, immediately, however we slowly gain more exposition by finding out more characters are in the scene.  We decided to follow About a Boy's approach to narrative enigma rather than Shaun of the Dead's.
• So you mentioned the central protagonist, talk to me about that.
• Sure, so, we took a lot of inspiration from Shaun and Ed in Shaun of the Dead as they're the stereotypical slob and we wanted our protagonist to be like that.  We tried to create this through the mise-en-scene and the costume.  To anchor who the central protagonist, there are a few techniques which we have seen in many films, such as being centrally framed according to the rule of thirds, and tracking shots on the central protagonist.  We used both of these techniques as well as many others.  We also looked at Proppian archetypes, Campbell's hero's journey and Todorov's narrative structure which is apparent in many films.  When it comes to Proppian archetypes, in a rom-com, we typically see a Princess/Prize archetype as well as a Hero archetype.  We included both of these in our film opening.  In the zombie genre we see the Villain archetype, which in our movie are the zombies.  We also included Campbell's hero's journey, showing the shift from equilibrium to the call to adventure, and Todorov's narrative structure, the shift from equilibrium to disequilibrium, in our opening.
• What about mise-en-scene, you've been mentioning it a lot.
• Mise-en-scene is what is shown on screen at any time and this is vital in providing exposition about your character and their interests.  We took a great deal of inspiration when it came to Shaun of the Dead as you can tell they're slobs from their coffee table in the living room.  We practically copied that by putting empty beer cans, pizza boxes and an ash tray on the coffee table in the living room, where our opening starts.  A really great example of mise-en-scene providing a large amount of exposition is About a Boy as we get to see what type of person the central protagonist is without even seeing him.  
• How did you transition into the main film?
• We found a lot of title sequences which separated the opening from the movie, which we didn't want to follow.  We wanted to have the titles over the opening, then have the main titles which then would fade to black before starting the main movie.
• Thank you so much for being here and answering my questions.  You can check out Donnie of the Dead.  It's out now.  
• Thank you so much!

VODCASTS

When we were researching conventions, we made vodcasts for each aspect.  We also did a genre specific research. Here are the links to the actual posts:

GENERAL CONVENTIONS – TITLES, IDENTS, PRODUCTION CONTEXT

GENERAL CONVENTIONS – MEDIA LANGUAGE

GENRE CONVENTIONS – TITLES, IDENTS, PRODUCTION CONTEXT

GENRE CONVENTIONS – MEDIA LANGUAGE

CONVENTIONS RESEARCH: KEY INFLUENCES

TITLES, IDENTS AND PRODUCTION CONTEXT - GENERAL

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MEDIA LANGUAGE - GENERAL

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TITLES, IDENTS AND PRODUCTION CONTEXT - GENRE

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MEDIA LANGUAGE - GENRE

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A SUMMARY ON ALL CONVENTIONS WORK AND KEY INFLUENCES WE HAVE TAKEN
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Conventions research key influences from westhamwindows

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SOCIAL GROUPS

In this powerpoint, we discuss the range of audiences we expect our film opening to attract.  We discuss age, gender, economic grouping, nationality/region and sexuality.  We also take a look at the difference between the contrasting Warp and Working Title in regards to the size of audiences they get and for which reasons.

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Our target audience from LouisHodges3

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In this powerpoint, we have a moodboard of what we expect our male and female audience members to look like, and what they're into.

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Moodboard done from westhamwindows

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In this powerpoint, we combine the results of our survey we did to test what our target audience was.  We did this by showing a video and asking everyone for their age and nationality and if they knew the 3 movies/TV shows we showed.

Target audience survey from LouisHodges3

SOUNDTRACK

This blog post covers:

• Our original ideas
• The cover
• How it went in our first rough cut

Our original idea for the soundtrack was to have pre-existing music.  However, we didn't know how to go about it.  Louis made a short piece for when the central protagonist is outside, on Garageband.
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We then realised we wanted to intertexualise Shaun of the Dead and in the opening, there is Ghost Town by The Specials playing in the bar so we scrapped Louis' music.
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The song itself works really well with a horror comedy hybrid genre, as the song is quite ominous but the lyrics are very ironic to the oblivious character and foreshadow later events.  We decided to ask a music teacher and her family if they could recreate an instrumental version of this song and this is what they produced.  Although a more "rock-y" version of this song would be a lot better, we realised that was on our part for not providing as much denotation as we should have.  I still think this version works quite well though.
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We won't be using this over the entire opening but rather in smaller parts.  Our first rough cut had a little too much of this playing over parts where it is unnecessary:

The music comes in at quite an awkward time so we will start it a little earlier
We want to use it over the part where the protagonist is singing in the shower and when he is wearing his headphones outside.  The instrumental works as the protagonist can sing over it.  We took the headphones inspiration from Baby Driver (Wright, 2017) with the inner diegetic music.
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