Final Draft of Film Opening- 'Past Revenge'

Here is our finished version of our film opening for AS media 'Past Revenge'. Me and Hannah shared out the roles and responsibilities equally when it came to both the filming and editing of this film, including putting in the titles and sound. We both put in the effort of the editing, which included making the cuts and making everything go together very well. We used each other's advice to go forward and this helped to create an overall more effective product. We are both fairly satisfied with this outcome and hope to continue with projects like this in the future. This opening is of a psychological horror genre, and we have tried as best as we can to fit the conventions of this narrative in order to meet audience pleasures.

Evaluation Question 7

'Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full project?'
Planning- In the preliminary film, it didn't require a lot of planning as the film was only thirty seconds long. It took around a page of story boarding and as we hadn't done it before, it didn't look professional at all. The storyboard for the film opening, however, had much more detail and was much longer. We knew the key words to use much better and this helped when it came to actually filming. We followed by the storyboard. Also, for the preliminary film we had around half an hour between the planning and filming, however, between planning for the opening and actually filming we had the space of a few weeks, which definitely helped when it came to time management and we had much more time to make detailed planning in order to make our produce as effective as possible. We had to retake many times when making the preliminary film as the bad quality camera didn't stay focused for very long and we only took a limited range of shots, and now we know how to take a much larger variety of shots and were able to name them all.
Equipment/skills- Looking at the preliminary film, there are many shaky shots which we didn't think to retake and the angles are all fairly simple and conventional, such as close-ups and mainly long shots. However, the improvement can be seen when you see the final opening because there are a larger range of shots such as worm's eye views, extra long shots, and much more. Using the better quality camera helped us to improve the film because the microphone, tripods and cameras were much better quality so the entire quality is generally better. The first film we didn't even use a tripod for most of the shots and even the change of using an iPod makes the shots much smoother and don't move awkwardly or shake.
Editing/sound- seeing as we used a much higher technology program (Premiere Pro) to edit the film opening, the editing looks much better and the sound is also much better quality. The reason for the sound being better quality was that both the camera microphone quality is much higher and we used some music online, so we didn't just have the bad quality of the microphone from the flip camera. When editing the opening, the cuts are much tighter between each one and they all run a lot smoother, and the sounds we used create a multitude of feelings for the audience, creating a more overall satisfying experience for the audience. Using the soundtrack made the film much more tense as the music helped to create suspense, and made it all tie together a lot better, compared with the preliminary film when we only used the microphone on the camera and didn't have music in the background. Also, the titles helped the film to look a lot more professional and represented the narrative very well. Most professional films you will watch contain titles that make the film fit into a specific genre and help to create tension, and I believe inserting this into the opening helps it to look much more aesthetically appealing and professional compared with the preliminary film.
Teamwork- Over making our blogs work well together and filming the opening and preliminary film together, we have learned a lot about sharing out the workload equally and making the film as good quality as possible. The only communication we had during the making of the preliminary film was in lesson, whereas we learned that using communication techniques such as facebook messaging and text messaging we found it much more effective when it came to making and editing the opening. We all shared out the responsibilities equally when it came to filming, editing, and inserting sound and titles.

Evaluation Question 6

'what have you learnt about technologies from the process of constricting this product?'
1- Blogger.
We learnt how to set up a blog account, and how to make posts both in and out of school. We completed the majority of our coursework on this, and it is highly convenient to use, because we can access it at school on the macs and out of school either on our phones or laptops, which means we can do work on it whenever. This was my first bit of work using a blog, so it was helpful to learn how it all worked.

2- Apple Macs.

Although I had previously had experience with macs, we learned how to use lots of software on it and how to navigate our way round the macs. This helped us to use OS at it's full potential. We used these to edit our films, to view what we had filmed, and to download music and also make blog posts. Without these, we wouldn't have done our work to it's full ability.

3- Premiere Pro.
We used various programs such as premiere pro and final cut in order to edit our films. I had never used software like this before so it was all new to me, so learning from scratch did initially seem fairly daunting but it was eventually easy to navigate round and use. On this, we learned how to input sounds and titles, edit the film itself and cutting and cropping out what we didn't want.

4- Live Type.
We used live type to make the titles for our film. Also having never used this type of software, we learned how to use it and create titles that fitted with the narrative of our film openings. We experimented with various titles, and this program worked well for this.

5- Websites for sound.

We used a website called 'Purple Planet', which provides royalty free soundtracks for film openings like ours. This is where we got our soundtrack from, and the rest of the sound that features in our film opening was recorded ourselves on the camera that we used, meaning all the diagetic and non-diagetic sounds were made on either purple planet or we recorded ourselves on the camera.

6- Camcorder.

We had both had previous experience having used camcorders such as the Sony one we had used, however we had never used this specific camera before so this was new to the both of us. We learned how to film on it and used this to film all of our opening, and we rested it on a tripod to make sure all the shots were steady and wouldn't need to be retaken. We also used a flip camera to film our preliminary film and the audience testing, and these were fairly easy to use as me and Hannah had both had experience using these exact cameras before this. These cameras were all fairly helpful toward filming the film opening because they were reliable cameras, and we also used the microphone on the camera to film all the diagetic sounds. I would defiantly use this technology in future because I found it very easy to get on with.

7- Facebook/messaging

Me and Hannah, because there was only the two of us in a group, found communication fairly easy as we are friends outside of this project. We used Facebook Messenger and text messaging in order to stay in touch. This allowed us to organised when and where we were going to film by communicating our schedules and sorting out when we were free, and we talked with our actors through this to sort out when we were free to film. This also helped me and Hannah to organised who was going to have the camera, who was going to keep what we had borrowed from school in order to film and when we were going to hand things in.

Evaluation Question 5

'How did you attract/address your audience?'
At the start of the opening, we used an establishing shot to show the location that the opening is filmed in, and this attracts the audience because it is conventional for this genre (psychological horror) and our ideal target audience would ideally be attracted by this initial introduction to the film's settings. Then, the titles start. This automatically attracts the audience because it is again very conventional for the film genre. The colors of the titles are red, which is archetypally presented as being the color of blood and signifies and foreshadows what happens later on in the film. The movement of some of the titles, seemingly energetic, suggests that this opening will be interesting and exciting to watch. Film openings that include these types of effects of a similar genre include the films 'Carrie', and 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre'. Also, the font is the same colour as ours because the colors is associated typically with blood, which signifies the murder that happens in our opening.
When our actress starts to call out in hysteric tones, this is what signifies the bad things that are fore coming. During our audience research, we learned that this is an effective method that attracts the film opening.
The puzzle in the opening that the audience are ending up thinking about themselves is why this woman was murdered. The element of mystery and not everything being shown in the opening keeps the audience interested, because they are shown the protagonist and automatically want to know what happens from then onward. This is another thing we learned when filming our audience testing. The type of audience has is the ones that enjoy hanging onto the edge of their seats, and we have done this by making short cuts between each shot and having music that creates suspense on in the background. This is an emotional pleasure that the audience of our target audience for this specific genre enjoy. It is also a visceral pleasure. We have also tried to fulfill the counter culture attraction in our opening that gets the audience immersed in this opening, because we want the audience to get very involved with the opening, because if they empathize for some characters it makes them more likely to carry on and watch the rest of the film.
The shots that show our actress running down into some murky woods help to connotate that something bad is going to happen, because normally this sort of location is assosciated with a murder in a film of this genre. This helps to keep the audience involved with the story.When introducing the protagonist, we also help the audience with the puzzle of why the negative music, and it keeps them on the edge of their seats and therefore still engaged with the opening. We also tried to include various shots of the antagonist go fast, so the audience have less time to visualise and more time to imagine what is going to happen. As the music begins to get louder, it becomes obvious that something bad is going to happen and this again helps to create supsense.
The reason we included many shots of the protagonist creeping up on the antagonist is that it makes the audience wander what he is going to do, why he is doing it, and we give them a lot of time to think about this whilst making the atmosphere a lot more tense. We make the audience scared of the man in black because we don't show his face through the whole opening.

Evaluation Question 4

'What would the audience be for your media product?'
Our media product has a main target audience of a mix of male and female viewers, from mid teens to mid twenties. We conducted lots of research upon who tends to view psychological horrors and what genre our narrative would fit exactly, and we found that this audience would be our primary target audience. This is because they enjoy the plot, and trying to work out what is going on. We also did research into what age would be the youngest to watch our film, and it would have been rated a 15 because it contained some elements of violence and that would not be appropriate for children to watch. The research we conducted was among teen-aged girls and boys of the age of 17-19 compared to people in their twenties and people younger than this and found that the teenagers would be most likely to watch a film like this.
 Being that the film is rated a 15, this means we can include strong language and strong violence, which is what the film would entail. The BBFC state this, and this means we would have to stick to these guidelines because if we didn't, there would be small chances of the film actually being produced.
The people watching the film would be of a similar age to those acting in it, meaning that the audience would be able to empathize with the characters better and therefore enjoy the film more. Also, a young target audience would be able to keep up with the fast pace of the film, and get adrenaline rushes from the tense scenes. We would have a fairly niche target audience, because it is a fairly niche genre: there is never really a very large target audience for psychological horrors because it only appeals to a small amount of people. We would have a fairly national audience, being british because the actors are british so the audience will again have the empathy for these characters.

Evaluation Question 3

'What kinds of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?'
Distribution companies are highly important within the industry. Large conglomerates such as Disney sometimes invest into much smaller companies, allowing them to be able to vertically integrate into different areas of the media industry, making a larger profit for them overall. Distributors advertise the film and try to create a hype, which then in turn creates fans for the film and makes a larger target audience.
Larger conglomerates occasionally like to get involved with smaller companies to distribute, for example 'Slum dog Millionaire', which was made by an interdependent film company and ended up making millions after distribution by Fox Searchlight. This is a particularly small budget film, so would only appeal to a particular group of distributors- small budget, and most likely interdependent companies. Companies such as Film 4 tend to distribute small-budget films like ours because they like to support small companies, and they have done that in the past with companies such as 'Rook Films', which had a very small budget and had to film within two weeks. Our film opening is typical of one made by a small British independent company because it was made on a very tight budget, there are no amazing special effects or anything like that because we couldn't afford it. It would not be distributed by a large conglomerate such as Lionsgate or Disney, because they tend to fund films with budgets of millions of dollars. The target audiences for our film opening is quite a local interdependent audience, compared with films that would be distributed by Disney that have a very wide, tent-pole audience.

1: Film 4 could be an ideal distributor for our film. They have distributed some films such as 'High Hopes', which made around a million in the box office. It was a very small budget film, and was made by a small interdependent company like us called 'Skouras Films'. Their budgeting is fairly low meaning they cannot reach out to very large, tent pole audiences, but they have the ability to reach small target audiences like ours, which is perfect for what we would be looking for.

2: Fox Searchlight. Fox searchlight is a subsidiary of the 20th century fox film company, and have funded many British interdependent films before. These include 'The Gods must be crazy', 12 years a slave, and bird-man, and these films have all won various awards. A company like this would be good for our film, because they tend to fund films like the one we have made, which may bring in more money for the film overall.

3: Studio Canal. Studio canal is a european distributing company. This company likes to choose slightly different films to distribute, such as ones made by very low budget companies and those that are fairly create and slightly non-conventional in ways. The narrative of our opening doesn't quite fit normal conventions for film openings so this company would be perfect for us, and also our budget is fairly small so that wouldn't be an issue for this company. This would help our film a lot because they would bring the perfect target audience for our film, then ensuring that we have a larger target audience to aim at and making more money for the film and getting a larger success rate. Also, the films this company tend to distribute usually are filmed in rural locations and the filmers don't travel far across the world, and this perfectly fits with us because we filmed the whole opening in a very rural location with a low amount of special effects. Studio Canal have distributed films such as Paddington, and the emperors new clothes, all made by small interdependent film companies such as ours.

Evaluation Question 2

'How does your media product represent particular social groups?'
Our film opening represents many social groups, and also subvert some archetypes. For example, the female in our film opening is not the typical vulnerable woman on a walk on her own in the woods- she subverts the archetype of a stereotypical woman by wearing jeans rather than a dress, and her hair is short and she is on her own on a walk.

The man in our film also subverts the archetype in some ways as well- in the area that we filmed, you would normally expect quite well-spoken individuals, who are dressed quite well. Our character has all dark clothes on including a hooded jacket, and he has overgrown hair which doesn't fit the stereotype at all. The lighting is quite low-key, which fits the archetype of our film opening quite well because most psychological horrors are filmed in a dark location.The make-up used was conventional of our genre, quite subtle and we didn't use anything over-the-top such as fake blood, which would lead our audience to think they were watching a gory horror rather than a psychological horror.

Our opening follows the stereotype of a middle-class area, because the background shows very nicely built cottages and quiet surroundings. The characters are fairly conventional- we did research into typical horror openings and they mainly consist of the antagonist (the attacker) and the protagonist (the victim). We have done this through the male being the antagonist and the female being the protagonist, which again goes along with stereotypes because females are stereotypically more vulnerable than men. Usually, the victim in a horror opening will be a female to show vulnerability and we believe we have done this quite well. This is done because teenagers are generally fairly naive and this allows the target audience to identify with the attacker. The teenager being young signifies her being more prone to be picked on and therefore fits the conventions of a typical horror opening. As me and Hannah are both teenagers, we understand the archetypal and stereotypical traits that come along with being a teenager, which therefore helped when constructing this opening and trying to make it fit with the conventions of a typical horror opening.

These characters are easily recognizable as teenagers due to what they are wearing (hoodies and jeans). Due to our female character being naive and irresponsible, the stereotypical negative stereotype towards teenagers helps to hint toward the fact that she is going to get herself in danger, and this in turn builds suspense and helps to attract a larger target audience. This then eventually helps to get more money when it comes to the final film making money in a cinema. The costumes of the characters suggest that they originate from a certain class, which is a lower class. This is because conventionally, teenagers wearing things such as hooded jackets and tracksuit bottoms are associated with those of a lower class descent. These costumes have connotations of practicality, which is what the character would have wanted if he would be in the knowledge if he is going to be running after someone he is about to kill.

Evaluation Question 1

'In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?'
Our film opening follows quite a few conventional features of a film opening of the genre (psychological horror). We named it 'past revenge' because we feel like it is quite a chilling title and fits in with being a horror. We subverted the archetype in some ways, like the costume of the character compared with the location. Usually, a location such as the one we used would be associated with middle class characters, as it is normal to have a middle class area with large houses and lot of countryside, but we subverted the archetype by going with a stereotypical lower class character, with a hoodie and mainly dark clothes, which is conventionally associated with those of a lower class. However, we fitted many conventions and went with many archetypes, such as our character having a typical middle-class dog (a westie) in the area in which we filmed. This reflects the conventional themes of the genre because there is a vulnerable young woman being victimized by a larger man, in dark clothing. This fits the conventional themes because there is normally a young, vulnerable person being chased by someone bigger and more intimidating than them. Conventionally, a film opening will open with an establishing shot, which is what we have done.  The music we have used creates an atmosphere, which makes the audience go on edge. Our area in which we filmed fits with the genre because it is a typical middle class location, and this is shown through the conventional sight of the countryside and antiquated style of houses in the background of many of the shots.
We also fitted the conventions of the openings of a horror film by using our music. When the establishing shot is shown, we have used creepy music to fit the conventions of the music used in a film opening.
A typical convention of a film opening is to have an establishing shot- an example of this is in the film Forrest Gump. They have a shot showing the place in which the whole movie is filmed, and this helps the audience to start to relate and understand the film. If this is done in the opening, it keeps the audience attached to the film and more likely to sit through the whole film. We used an establishing shot in our opening. This is read by the audience in a way to get them to connect with the film, and I believe this is what our establishing shot did. Also, the typography of our credits is fairly similar to those of similar conventions because they are quite short, which keeps the audience hooked to read the next one. Our typography was inspired by the films we researched of a similar genre beforehand, this included films such as 'Carrie' and 'Sky-fall'. They contained similar credits that appeared for the same amount of time and didn't bore the viewer.

As for the location, our opening was filmed in a very typical middle-class British surrounding, which is a Cotswold background with lots of countryside. This fitted the conventions of the openings because our actress is meant to be a typical middle-class, vulnerable young person. There was a change of plan when it came to our location, but thankfully it still all fitted with the conventions of our genre. The camera shots and edits were also conventional of an opening- it goes from shot to shot fairly quickly which keeps the audience interested, and also the sound and titles fit with conventions. We have a variety of shots, such as worms eye views, long shots and close ups, which again fit with the audience pleasures. We used a dual narrative, which keeps suspense, and also in the film opening we are setting up a crime, which means we are setting up the antagonist before the film even properly begins, and the protagonist isn't shown at the start of the film which keeps it on a cliff hanger, helping to set up the narrative.

Group Meeting

Me and hannah had a group meeting yesterday and discussed what we need to do in order to achieve the best grades possible and meet as many audience pleasures as we can. We have agreed we need titles in the film, and we need slight editing of the sound in order to make the plot more believable. However, apart from this, none of our shots need re-shooting and we have a wide range of steady shots and this is a relief. Many groups in our year had to reshoot their shots because they were shaky, but we didn't have this issue apart from a couple of shots. The shots we have done range from worms eye views, long shots, and close-ups. All of the shots are restricted to less than five seconds, which me and hannah both agree is very effective for the narrative. We also discussed what we need to do in order to find out if we are meeting audience pleasures, and we have started doing this with audience testing. We have already filmed one of these on our target audience, and will do many more over the next few days, which involves showing them the opening and asking the a range of questions about what they think should be improved and what they liked about it. Following research about audience testing, we found there are many films that were drastically changed after audience testing commenced. We made slight changes to our film after audience testing, and this is also what we discussed in our group meeting. Here is the link for films that have been drastically changed after audience testing.

https://uk.yahoo.com/movies/s/10-films-drastically-changed-after-test-screenings.html

Narrative change reasons

Me and Hannah had a group discussion about our narrative. We realised after an hour of filming our narrative of having dolls was not going to work, due to the very unrealistic qualities. We filmed a couple of scenes for the opening, including a doll.From reviewing the footage, we realised that the rest of the film would be too confusing to film, we both hadn't realised how difficult it would be to bring forward the idea of a psychological horror about two dolls, coming back to life to haunt the girl that left them in the loft. Unless our film opening was extremely scripted, we would not have been able to make our idea as obvious as we would have liked. 

Due to this, we came up with new and improved ideas that would be much easier to bring forward in the filming process, we were limited with our last idea, whereas now we can come up with new ideas on the spot while filming. 

Audience Testing: Rough Cut

Here is our video of us audience testing the first rough cut. The questions we asked included:
1: How do you feel about the narrative?
2: Do you like the range of shots we included?
3: What do you feel could be improved upon in further filming and editing?
4: What were your favourite parts of the opening?
5: Would you choose to come and watch the rest of this at the cinema?

Asking our target audience these questions helps us to see what could be improved upon, and sheds a new light onto what is good and bad about our opening. We informed them about what we already need to include from now on, such as titles and editing the sound to be consistent through the whole opening. Our feedback was fairly positive, and although they thought there were improvements to be made, we can take this as creative criticism. We asked Charlotte in this video, and she said that she enjoyed it, and outlined some things that she believes could be improved.

Rough Cut

Here is our first rough cut of the film opening. This took a number of weeks of filming and editing to get to this stage, so we are very happy with the outcome so far. At this stage, we have a few weeks left of editing to introduce better sound effects and titles and special effects, but we are very happy with this for now. We have stayed a number of times after school in order to complete this and meet the deadline, and I'm proud to say our hard work has worn off.
 We are aware there are many opportunities open where we can improve. Such as 1:27 up to 1:30. This took a number of weeks of filming and editing to get to this stage, so we are happy with the outcome so far. At this stage, we have a few weeks left of editing to introduce better sound effects and titles and special effects. We are going to re shoot specific scenes that so far are either shaky or blurry. This will only take 2 hours, which will take place on 12th March. 

Delay in posting opening

We planned to post the film on Friday evening on Hannah's laptop and upload it to you tube, where we could place a link to it in our blogs. however, since then we have realized we need an apple mac in order to upload this opening, and neither of us have one of these. As a consequence of this, we have had to delay uploading the rough cut of the film opening, including music and titles, until monday where we will have access to a mac and will be able to upload the video. This first rough cut includes the music we are going to use, the diagetic and non diagetic sounds, and the titles and credits we are going to use. We are very satisfied with this and it has taken quite a fair amount of time to get to this stage, but now we are there we are starting to recognize improvements that could be made in the editing and what we could do better. We will show some of our target audience this and film their reaction to the blog, and this will show whether our film is reaching audience pleasures or not, and we will ask the audience what they think we need to improve upon in further editing in order to be reaching the target audience better.

End of Filming

This Wednesday, we have finally finished all of our filming. We have been filming every Wednesday for about a month to get most of our work done. The first time we got some indoor scenes shot which we then decided to not use, so over the next two sessions we mainly filmed outdoors, for sessions of about two hours at a time, and we had most of the shots done and just needed re-shoots and the last scenes on Wednesday this week. Me and my group member Hannah felt that filming went very well this month, because we have got everything done and out of the way, and the people we have used as actors are experienced and so help to contribute very well to the narrative. After each bit of filming, we would review over what we had done and if something was shaky we would redo it the next week. This helped us to distinguish where we could improve, and what we were already happy with what we had done. We have now done all scenes in the Forrest, leading up to the Forrest, and everything we needed to capture with our actors.

Sound

For sound, we have used a variety of things for both the diagetic and non diagetic sound. We have used royalty free music from a website called purple planet for the soundtrack, which is meant specifically for our genre and fits in very well with the narrative. We asked some people who are in our target audience this, and they all agreed that they thought that it fitted in well with the narrative because it is fairly creepy and keeps you on edge whilst watching it. For the talking of the actors and most of the diagetic sound, we captured it whilst filming using the microphone on the actual camera itself. If we have needed any extra sound effects, we have made an account on a website called free sounds, which is again royalty free sounds that are free to download and we can use in the background of the opening. All of the sounds, both diagetic and non diagetic, have been altered slightly for the opening in the rough copy on YouTube, but they will probably be altered further from now on in order to fit with the narrative better and keep the audience happy. For example, we have used Premiere Pro to make some of the diagetic sound captured on the camera slightly lower and the background non diagetic soundtrack louder to induce more of a creepy atmosphere and this helps a lot with the opening itself. The sound has a large part to play in how good the opening is, which is why we have spent so much time researching about what we need to do in order to get the best results possible when filming.

Typography

Me and Hannah experimented with lots of different typographers whilst editing our film opening to decide on what would fit in best with our narrative and genre, and have narrowed it down to these best three. we have chosen these because we believe they fit with the narrative well, because they are all the colour of blood or very dark, and this fits in with audience pleasures because it fits in well with being creepy for the narrative. We will use these in the start of the opening to show that we made the film, and we will also use them at the ends when we make the credits for the film. These were all made on the software called live type, and we found this fairly easy to use. There is a wide range of fonts to choose from, and here are all of the ones we have narrowed it down to.

New Narrative

Our new narrative is about the young girl that is walking her dog, her dog then goes missing (near the forest) this then gives a reason for the girl to look for her dog in the forest. This is where the horror starts. 

Having more of a simple narrative opens up ideas for shots and scenes, many shots such as over the shoulder, birds eye views and long shots could be created.

We had trouble with actors the first few weeks due to work and days they cancelled, because of this, our new narrative means only one actor is officially needed, along with a dog and the killer that will just be a dark shadow. 

Narrative Change

We have decided to change the narrative for a number of reasons. Firstly, the amount of actors we would have needed if we decided to use dolls would have been unreasonable, and very difficult to arrange timings, because we attempted to but costs to all get to one place when we all lived in different places and the practicality of all being free at the same time all played a part in it. Also, it would be very difficult as first time media students to create very realistic looking dolls and manage to make a very good narrative that a wide audience could understand. All of these reasons are why we decided to simplify the plot and just use two actors, a male ans a female. We kept the idea of the main character being killed so we have the same genre as before (psychological thriller), but the narrative has changed slightly but it hasn't changed the target audience or the audience pleasures or anything like that. This will hopefully help us to get a slightly higher grade, because we can spend more time with less actors helping them to create a very realistic opening, and it will be easier to edit and sort out when there is less people acting, and also it means whilst filming we are less likely to get distracted.

Updated Call Sheet

Ellie and Alex are our actors for our film opening. They are both free on wednesdays from one thirty onwards, and the same on thursdays. They are both free on mostly saturdays, so we are going to use this as a basis for when we will film. following is the call sheet in a table, to make things more simplified.

free times to film:
ellie: saturday all day
friday 1:30pm onwards
monday 1:30pm onwards
wednesday 1:30pm onwards
thursday 1:30pm onwards

alex: saturday 12pm-6pm
friday 1:30pm onwards
monday 2pm onwards
wednesday 1:30pm onwards
thursday 2pm onwards

Me and hannah are also free in these times.

Group Meeting and Filming

Yesterday we shot all of the indoor scenes, and we feel that they fit the narrative well enough and represent the genre very well. We have shot the scenes of our actress inside the bedroom, reading out the note on the doll, and then it cuts to a scream and an image of our actor's silhouette against the yellowy curtains. This was all shot two or three times, so we can review back over all of the footage so far and choose what we think works best. We also yesterday shot the scene of the dog running off into the woods, the shot of the swings swinging on their own, and the shot of the actress on the swing, cuddling her dog then the killer walking behind her. We believe this reenforced the narrative, and should creep out the audience because the actor comes across as quite intimidating in these shots. We also shot some silent shots of the graveyard, and it makes the narrative quite scary. Next wednesday we plan to film all of the shots of the woman running in the woods, and we plan to do many angles, such as worms eye views and long shots and medium shots. When we edit some of these, we plan to do some special effects, such as fading to black and things like that, to reenforce the genre and the expectations of that. This will also help to fulfil the audience pleasures- they get what they have set out to look for- a scary film opening.

Next week- on friday and saturday, we want to finish all of the filming, and this will help us to meet all of the deadlines. On friday, we will finish all the shots then look over them all, then saturday will be the final date to reshoot anything we don't feel satisfied with at all. We have asked our actress to wear the same outfit every time we film, and this will help when we reshoot because it will keep the consistency with the story line. we shot everything on a tripod and this will help stop any potential camera shake. 

Title Ideas

Following are some of the ideas of the titles we are going to use for our film opening. I have done some research on the types of fonts that should be used on our genre- psychological horror. We could use typical fonts with blood dripping, but this fits with gory horror and that is not the kind of idea we want to send across. We want quite a simple font, so it won't take away the attention from the video itself. The photos i have embedded are all ideas of the types of fonts we will use for the titles and credits and everything that needs to be typed. these will be displayed with a black background most of the time, with the odd exception at the end with the credits, when it will fade into white and say 'the end', and this is when it will fade into black and the credits will be shown with white writing on a black background. These two title fonts, although different from each other in writing style share the feature of  having used different colours. The colours help to give a different meaning to the whole text and the image that can be associated with it by anyone viewing it.
i spoke to some people in my media group about which they felt fit the narrative better, and they felt that the first two ones with the white background fit the narrative the best. they believed the coloured ones took away attention from the narrative and the images, because they are quite prominent and it causes a lack of attention from one thing. Other people also agreed, saying that a simple idea was probably better because it portrays the image of being well thought-out, but still simplistic.

Casting Actors

We have Ellie Freshwater as our new reliable protagonist. We had a group discussion and made a time table of the days we will definitely be able to film with her. Ellie is in 3 of my lessons which means we have the same frees as her. Ellie is 17 and goes to Chenderit school, along with me and my other group member Hannah. This helps us as we are all together and can make plans easily, as sometimes social media can be difficult due to phones dying and not seeing messages, logging out of sites and other reasons that could course can issue with plan making. 

We are using Alex Cudden as our Antagonist. Alex is a tiny bit more broader than Ellie and because of this, it will be much creepier. Showing the different builds will help create an image of Ellie being timid and fragile, while Alex will look much more dominating.


Trixie is the dog we're using. She is a west highland terrier, this is a common kind of breed for a family pet, we are using Trixie to show that our protagonist is a normal girl from a normal family, living a normal life. Trixie is well trained and it will not hold back any time with using her in our filming. 

Filming Rescheduling

We planned to do most of our filming outside over the course of this week, but as it has snowed we have had to delay the outdoor filming until the snow subsides. This means we may have to film over the february half term. We would need to film all the inside shots this week, and then hopefully when the snow goes we would be able to do all of the outdoor filming over the next couple of weeks.

Filming Timetable

This is the timetable we have created for filming. We will stick to this and hopefully it means we will have filming over and done with as soon as possible, and it means we do not need to travel more than we have to in order to film.

Group meeting

We had a group meeting today, and re-organised the story board. It will be ready to go online within the next few days, and we have changed a range of the shots. We have officially changed the settings of the shots, which i have already written about on the blogs. We have written all the technical words for the shots, which range from long shots to close ups. We have also written about the settings, because there will be three different settings in this opening. These include hannah's house, the woods in adderbury and the park in this place as well. Now we have completed the storyboard, we know where we will need to film for each setting and this helps a lot for the final stages of planning. in the meeting, we arranged for the first scenes to be shot tomorrow, and then for three days next week as well. We have arranged this with our actresses as well, and they are both free to film on these dates. We have the camera booked out for these days, so hopefully if the weather holds up we will be filming from tomorrow onwards. After a couple of weeks of full on filming, hopefully we will have the filming completed and then can move onto editing.
during the editing, we will introduce the non diagetic sounds and the cuts. each time we film we plan to have three shots done, and we will film each one three times so we can choose out the best ones with the best angles etc.

Story Board

here is the completed sheet of the story board.

Changing Location

We have had to change locations to film for convenience. Since we have switched to only needing one actor, we have had to change the location in order to make it easy for all three of us to get to in order to film. The location we have changed to is a woods near Hannah's house called Lucy Placket woods. We have permission to film here as it is a public woods, and nothing on the health and safety sheet has changed because we are still filming in a similar place. This place is a lot easier for us all to get to and film at, as hannah lives there, it is a public bus route for our actor and i can easily get lifts there. This hasn;t changed anything to the call sheet, even though that has changed due to change of plans anyway.

Non-diagetic sounds

For the non-diagetic sounds when we start filming and editing, we want to include some non-diagetic sounds such as a child laughing in a creepy way, or loud footsteps when the non-diagetic music starts to go more quiet. Following are the kind of sounds we plan to include when we edit. To film these, we will either use a microphone separate or the one on the camera, and film the sounds we are going to use.

incidental music

Me and hannah had a group meeting and tried to find the right background incidental music that would fit with the narrative and genre of the opening of the film. We found various music used in the background of horror films, and we feel this is the best kind of incidental music to include to induce fear into the audience and meet the audience pleasures. the following music is the kind we plan to include in our film opening.

Final plan before storyboard

Before we make the storyboard, we wanted to make a blog post that makes the last choices of what will happen in the opening. We plan for it to start with a shot of the child playing with the dolls, then it will cut to a shot of a worms eye view of the childs feet running past. After this, we will follow the feet leaving the room and closing the door, then the camera will pan back and the doll will be stood up, then the screen will go black and then it will cross-cut to the future- ten years later, to be precise. The opening will then feature the main character filming herself, as if it were a 'video blog' to be uploaded to the internet- ironic because this video will then be up-loaded to the internet. In the background of the shot, one of the toy dolls will be in view of the camera, and it will move as the girl continues to film herself. This will be our way of reinforcing the genre of psychological horror, and this will be an attempt to creep the audience out once again. after this, we will do an extreme long shot of the woman filming herself, where some parts of the doll can be seen in the background. There will be a range of close-ups of the doll after this, which are going to be shot with the intention of creeping out the audience. After this, there will be a range of shots that show her running

Updated Call Sheet

Filming hours

We have planned the days in which we are going to start on Thursday 15th January, and we are going to film for four hours each Thursday until filming has finished, because it will take around two to three weeks. If we do not complete all filming by then, we will need to film on saturdays because we have more free time on these days and sundays and weekdays do not fit around our schedule to do with school and work. This fits in well with when we are free, and gives us lots of time to refilm if something does not come out as planned.