Story for our main task

For our main production, the plot will revolve around a schoolboy who is in detention, however there is also a psycho killer loose in the school. We decided that this plot was suitable for our film because we are able to film in the school, which we have full access to. This is also suitable for our target audience so this what our final product is going to be about. I am now going to start the script and storyboard for our production. We will use many close ups in our film because this will create an atmosphere of confusion, since other things in the background aren't visible. We will also need to focus on the pace for our production since it is a horror film. The pace will need to increase when one of the characters in our film in danger. This means many more cuts to increase tension and suspense. Creating an atmosphere of danger.

Media production : discussion

Last media lesson we had a long discussion about our production. We discussed our plot for our 2 minute horror film opening. We haven't fully confirmed what our film opening will be about so we had this discussion to focus on the plot for our film. We are still divided about how we should put together our main production, so we need to talk more as a group to decide what are production is going to be about.

Audio question session

Last lesson we recorded a question and answer session about the target audience for our product. We asked questions such as, “What is a horror films target audience” and “Where do you watch your films?” We asked these questions because we wanted to find out what was suitable for our target audience. We wanted our target audience to recognize our product and to be familiar with it, so we asked these questions to gain their feedback. In this session we talked about topics such as 3D films and if the film industry was changing through illegal downloads.

These questions helped us because we found out that 3D filming isn’t really necessary to make a film a success, and also that the film industry doesn’t suffer as much from illegal downloads as we think. This made us think that our production didn’t need to rely on modern technology because our audience finds that a good plot in a film makes the film worth watching. From our first question we found out that the people who tend to watch high school horror films are teenagers because they themselves can be scared by our genre. We also knew that the horror genre has a mainstream audience, so our production would have to be suitable for many more viewers, so we might need to include popular elements in horror films into our production, so our audience would understand the genre.

For our third question, we asked our audience to name films that they enjoy. This feedback would give us a good idea of what types of films teenagers like, films such as Machete and Gran Torino were mentioned during this question. Now we can watch these films and take notes on what makes these films successful, whether it is the films camerawork, story and/or editing. We could focus on these elements and maybe even add them to our production; we can gain many ideas for making our film effective from these films.  Even though most the films mentioned weren’t strictly horror films, we could still research these titles because we could implement different effects found in that film into our own, but with our own unique style. Using this type of research will help our production to become in tune with the audience; our production would look professional and would be suitable for our target audience to watch. Se7en was also a film that was mentioned from our audience. I have previously done research into the opening of this film. It is effective since there are loads of close ups, which creates confusion. There are close ups of book pages turning and skin being cut by a knife and overall this creates a creepy feeling for the audience. Even though Se7en isn’t a horror film, it still manages to scare the audience during its opening sequence. We can maybe use this technique in our film to create the same effect.

Weapons in our film

The killer in our film has to have some sort of weapon otherwise he would have no danger factor associated with him. We are thinking of using props such as a knife or gun. We will most probrable use a bladed weapon because then we could emphasise more on the chase scene. We could also use close-up shots to show the power of the weapon and what it can do. We will obviously use fake weaponry because we don't plan to kill eachother while filming. Props such as these will be a good idea for our film:

Scream costume idea

For our main task we want our main villain to look threatrening and dangerous. We also want his identity to be unknown beacuse this will make his identity secret. We can do this with a suitable costume and mask, something that is dark will make the audience associate the villain with death.
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1175821337/
The costume used in Scream is a good idea of what we want our costume to be like. It is important that the killer has a good costume otherwise our film may lose its scare factor.

The Cabin in the Woods

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi660971033/

I have recently been browsing through upcoming horror titles on IMDb. I decided to look at a horror trailer to have an idea of what effects are used to make the trailer look appealing. In this trailer I noticed loads of slow camera movements and slow cuts during the beginning, but throughout the trailer the pace starts to speed up and there are many more fast cuts. This gave me an idea of how we can use fast cuts to increase tension with our film. This trailer also seems like a typical teen horror movie, until further on we see many twists and elements that relate to other genres such as sci-fi. This was most probrably used to make the film seem less typical and suprising for the audience. It subverts their expectations. It would be good if we could add a twist to our film, but we only have two minutes of opening, but we will still be sure to create something that our audience would enjoy.

Summary of lesson

This lesson, we continued our editing and finally finished. We encountered many more problems in our film such as with mise en scene and with audio. There were unwanted objects in the background, and the audio wasn't loud enough. These were amateur mistakes that we should've clearly avoided. These mistakes were mainly due to the fact that we were filming in an active classroom. In our main task we will be sure to be patient and to take more time in filming so that we can creat a better product.

Costume for killer

We plan to have the killer in our film dressed in dark clothing with a mask. This would hide his identity, and the black clothing makes the villain look more fearful. We will film while it is dark to make the killer harder to spot, and to create a dark atmosphere.

Chase scene

In our film opening we plan to film a chase seen between the psychopath killer and the schoolboy victim. This would be a good opportunity to use a variety of shots, and using editing skills such as juxtaposition and match on action.
we can use this clip for ideas:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmbvdeG49MI

One of our ideas for production

We were planning to use a CCTV shot of our victim walking through the corridoors but being watched by his killer. As he cannot see his killer, he has the fear of being 'watched'. Much like, George Orwell's, 1984 novel showing a society where you are always being watched. This shot would make our victim look vunerable and secluded, which is often seen in many horror films.

Film review

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dawn_of_the_dead/

Continuity errors

While we were editing our film we noticed many continuity errrors in the film. This was mainly because we were filming in a classroom with other students, and also because we had to start filming again to fill in the lost clips. We will be sure to look out for continuity errors in the future so our film opening will look professional with minimal mistakes. We will also film in locations that won't be interrupted so we can reduce continuity errors in our film.

Editing our film

We finally started editing our clips together this lesson. It was interesting to see how our film would look once we cut different segments and rearragned them in the correct order. We used Adobe Premier Elements to edit our film, we didn't encounter any problems with the tools in the program. We all had some editing experience in the past so the editing wasn't particularly difficult.

Problems with our editing

Last lesson we started editing our clips, however, we encountered a problem when we found out that some segments of footage were deleted from the camera. We then discovered that a few important segments for our preliminary exercise were overwritten while we were recording. This is a common mistake that can happen, but this can greatly slow down production, so it is important that we are careful when filming our main task. So in our next lesson we had to continue filming in order to fill in the important segments that were cut out.