Black Hat Final Project

Click here to see film opening.

Black Hat CCR

Click here to see Black Hat CCR.

Reflection

Hi! My name is Julia Fuentes and I worked with Amanda Cortex to create the film opening “Black Hat”. Black hat follows the events of how an innocent citizen gets a virus implanted in their brain. This film falls into both the horror and thriller genre and uses conventions of both to its advantage. One of the most prominent conventions is the use of lighting. Throughout the opening, it is evident that lighting is going to help shape the events that are about to unfold. This is often used in horror movies before a jump scare or in thrillers to add suspense. We used this convention to add suspense and urge the viewer to almost try to look for what could be past the darkness. Another genre convention used was the sense of isolation. There are only 2 people in the film- the hacker and the innocent person and they never directly interact or have a conversation. The opening also lacks music or sounds of others making the viewer aware that the main character is in fact alone. The last convention i’m going to discuss is mise en scene or setting. A huge part of my inspiration for Black hat was colors. My living room happened to really nicely align with what my partner and I were going for. This is where we decided to break conventions and use a brighter setting to contrast with the darker tone of the film. This allows the viewer to believe that nothing as bad as what’s going to happen, can happen in a place as nice as this. Our target audience is between the ages of 13-65. with the target audience being so broad we must use several types of methods to engage with audiences. Social media will definitely help spread the word with the younger crowd and radio commercials will help with the adults since adults often listen to the radio in the car. In addition there will be coming soon signs outside theatres and strategically places billboards and stickers with an ominous QR code which will lead future audiences to the film’s website. I would choose Lionsgate to distribute with since they have distributed many other hit films. This project furthered my understanding of production by: helping my production develop, taught me how to use editing softwares like premier pro and photoshop, taught me how to properly film, taught me the importance of shots and angles and how to manage time.