Detailed Video Planner

SCENE NO.	LOCATION	ACTION	SOUND	SECONDS
1	-	Title sequence. Introduction of who made the production	Background music with build up	1
2	Polo Ground	Playing football, go over to see the groundskeeper, push him over and hurt him	Sound effects: Eerie wind, squirting stab sound Once scene ends.  Sound stops.	30
3	Harvey Building	Long shot of Harvey building to set the scene. Zoom in on classroom	Change of background music: piano style	3
4	Classroom	Teacher speaking	“	3
5	Dan’s house	Newspaper pinned against wall. Cuts and flashes this scene several times	“	2
6	Police Station	Long shot of police station showing crest. Police car driving in.	“	4
7	Dan’s road	Inside car looking at Antonio Fernandez. Pulls up. Gets out car. Locks car. Turns round	“	4
8	Dan’s House (Conservatory)	Girl and boy talking on the chairs	“	6
9	Dan’s House (Front room)	Boy sees groundskeeper outside. Boy walks upstairs thinking he’s paranoid.	Change of background music: music with pulse effect	20
10	Street	Boy running towards the camera	“	1
11	Any scene	Flashes of shocked faces	“	2
12	Martello Tower	Dirty hands rubbing down a white wall	“	2
13	Street	Boy running towards the camera	“	1
14	Dan’s House (Bedroom)	Hand opening door. Pitchfork shadow. Girl runs towards camera into cupboard. Killer hits cupboard	Sound effects: heavy breathing, bang. Voiceover: Amy scream	8
15	-	Title of the production	N/A	1
16	Street	Blurred pan of pitchfork being scraped	N/A	1
17	-	Out date, you tube link, website, sponsors)	N/A	2

Product Preparation

Poor Weather Conditions



Snowy Weather
As you can see on this day we started to film when it unexpectedly started to snow.
This is something that you cannot prepare for so if such a time happens again we need to be able to know what else we can film. This will reduce the amount of time we waste.
To rectify this problem Adam and I are going to prepare a shooting scheduele so we can do all the filming in one location at one time. Also we will be able to see any indoor filming we need to do if the weather is bad again.

Planning: Filming Locations

Polo Ground

• Long shots of green grass
• Trees in the background
• Opportunity for football goals to be filmed
• Mud/grass goes not go against what a groundsman would be in the scene for

Police Station

• Having the Police Station close up establishes where we are
• Longshot just to emphasise
• Will fit in with detective scene as Antonio is part of the police force
• It looks a modern police station so there is no need for the viewers to think in any detail about why it may be old

Brown Seats (Sofa Conversation Scene)

• Seats aren't old
• There is no need to pay any attention to the seats as the aren't a vibrant colour
• No paint is vibrant so again it should not distrant viewers away from the scene

Orange Seats (Conservatory Scene)

• Just the seat will  be in the scene so its will be pretty plain

Hiding Scene

• The bedding will need to be change for the real filming as the duvet looks very bright in this scene
• The cupboard that is panned to has sliding doors so it gives the opportunity to stand in the cupboard
• The contrast between the white door and the dark background works well

Watching Scene

• This scene will need to be darker and toys removed but once it has been it will look fine
• The bright wallpaper will look dark with a slightly darker lighting

Stairs

• The stairs aren't specifically modern so they look pretty original
• It doesn't look like it would draw the attention away from the tension

School

• Old look to school
• Historical feel
• Elete look to the school

Main Product Research: Clothing

We want all of our clothing to look stereotypical. In this post I will go through the clothes that they will wear and give stereotypical examples.

Danny, Cockerz, Shawn, Simsey, Amy
Rude Boy

Adulthood Movie

• Hooded clothes
• Tracksuit bottoms
• Trainers

Adam Rustom
Groundskeeper

The Face at the Window

• Dark face
• Dirty
• Most features can't been seen

Mr Aherne
Teacher

• Suit
• Shirt
• Tie
• Shoes (probably)

Brian Harris
Special Agent

Hitman

• Suit
• Shirt
• Tie
• Shoes 

Practice Shots to give analysis

Advantages vs. Disadvantages

Tilt
Free hand tilt looked shaky whereas with the tripod it all looked alot smoother. It will not be a point of view shot so we will want it to be smooth. For this we will need the tripod.

Pan
As in the previous one and for the same reasons, we will be using the tripod as it is not a point of view shot.

Death Sequence
We plan to have the groundsman die but we are undecided about how he shall die. Originally we was going to have him fall onto his pitchfork. This is hard to make it look good as not all actors can fall to the floor well and as we aren't real actors we will find this hard (shown by me falling onto my bag). As you can see from this clip even the shortest fall doesn't really look all that authentic.
The other idea we had was to throw the pitchfork into the air and have it fall into the groundsman. The pitchfork should be seen spinning in the air (as shown by a glove) with a seperate shot for it falling into him. By slowing down the shot we can emphasise it being in the air.

Viewing School
We have had mixed ideas about viewing the school. Whether or not to zoom into the window or have a shot of the window. By reviewing the video and taking into account other trailers, we can see that no decent standard trailer has a zoom shot anymore. To get around this problem we are going to take a short clip of the building of the school and then a short clip of the school window. This will have no zoom and will look a lot more professional.

Change of Actor - Antonio Fernandez

As mentioned in previous blogs Mr Marsh was set to act in our film but due to unforcene circumstances he is unavailable when we are set to film. We were unable to contact him via email as an error message appeared "Recipients inbox is full". Adam and I contacted him in person and after a discussion he explained to us that he could not be in the film, although we was more than welcome to use his room for filming if necessary.

Due to the actors name being Antonio Fernandez (which we feel fitting for a special detective) Adam and I wanted a man with a slight tan to him. This was to give the feeling he was fitting for the name Antonio. After a conversation with my dad (Brian Harris) he agreed to be in our film as the detective.

Permission from Mr Aherne to use his camera and him as an actor

Flowchart of the Brainstorm

This flowchart has been created using the brainstorm in the previous post.
We intend to follow the flow chart starting from the "Write Script" box.
This planning will help the flow of the filming and preparation.

Brainstorm (Pre Production Filming)

This is brainstorm that Adam and I produced together discussing which things are key in our production to help with planning. You can see this clearer by clicking the picture.

Addition to Basic Outline of Film (Adams Emails)

First Email Starts from the bottom

Ancillary Research - Poster

This whole posting will be bullet points on things we like about the pictures on the right

• The person is in the distance
• The person has no distink face
• The wall have a slight face
• Plain
• No vast changes of colour screen
• A slightly eery message on the cover 
• The title follows the corridor

• Very dark colour scheme
• Same colour scheme for front and back
• Tidy layout of barcode/logos etc.
• Same title font/colour on the spine and front cover

• The child is holding an iconic item
• Child is bright but has no face
• Set in the woods
• The faded face in the middle of the trees
• Light in the middle
• Dark for the outsides
• The main actor name are in the top corners
• The title is plain and in the middle of the screen

• Whole screen image
• Dark schemes
• Red eye
• Reviews at the side
• Title big and bold in the middle
• Play on words with REC

• Full screen picture
• Title and names on the plain side unimportant side of the picture 
• Small scary wording to get you thinking

A Basic Outline of our Production

Location: Football pitch

• A group of people will be shown and then start shouting
• They push over the old man who is pitchforking the ground
• Hits his head and falls over and hurts himself
• They scream and leave him there

Voiceover of the killer.
Location: school with a teacher explaining people have died.

Location: Office
Voiceover introduction of special agent/cop
Viewing of special agent/cop

Location: School corridor
One of the people that terrorised the man is seen walking up the stairs
Looks down the corridor and sees something move in the shadows
Runs back the same way and knocks over a pitchfork

Location: House
A conversation between a boy and a girl (both seen annoying the old man)
The boy has cuts on him
Girl asks what happened

Music speeds up

Quick scenes of the fork stabbing with squirt sound effect

All stops

Sounds of pitchfork scraping
The title

Product Research - Successful types of Horror

On imdb (Internet Movie Data-Base) there is a voting system whereby you can vote your favourtite film. The online horror movie list shows us, essentially, what the are the most influential horror films.

The films number 1 and number 3 in the listing above, Phsyco and The Shining, are classic 'slasher' horror films, similair to what we are portraying.  They each earnt $32million and $22million respectively.

Below is the opening line from the article on Wikipedia entitled 'Slasher Film':

Slasher film is a sub-genre of the horror film genre typically involving a psychopathic killer stalking and killing a sequence of victims in a graphically violent manner, often with a cutting tool such as a chainsaw or scythe.

What can we not include - Further Product Research

    Some of the aspects that we would like to have included would have most noticeably been the extensive use of special effects. I would have been interested in trying out the gore effects of many films, but we unfortunately do not have the resources to make this possible. To substitute for this, we have decided to make a high tension, darkened, horror film as therefore special effects will not be needed, as the darkness would cover up these needs.

    A track we was looking to include in our production (Muse - Look in) starts off with a good, slow build up, which creates tension, that would have been ideal for our production – as seen here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GoGXdInTu0.
    However, due to copyright, I am unable to use it, as gaining permission is extremely difficult and in most cases would be declined. I found this out by researching copyright laws, which lead me to a fellow blogger @ http://www.school-video-news.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=306:copyright-issues-when-using-music-in-videos&catid=33:copyright&Itemid=51.

    To get around this we will have to use copyright-free music which we can purchase from various websites such as http://www.nvmdigital.com/nvmusic/library/mp3frameset.html

Comparison between the two trailers

Old	New
No adverts at the start	Introduction includes who made the production
Long scenes	Quick short clips
Title repeated 3 times throughout the trailer	At the end
No quote	Quote
Purely scenes of the film	Part of a home video, mix with the film
2minutes 33seconds	1minute 30seconds
No special effect	Partial but many special effects

Obviously we would want to copy the conventions of the newer trailer so we will include our production name and logo at the start of the trailer. Our film will not have scenes that are too long but clips on the same scene but keep changing the viewers view of the situation. We will have a viewing of a quote. I feel a famous quote that most people could associate with would be ideal. Our trailer will contain part of a home video as a number of notable films. We will also not have too long a trailer and not many special effects.

Secondary Audience and Product Research

Adam and I have been doing some research into what the audience would like to see in the horror other than what we have gathered from doing our own research.

We found the website AccessScience on the 19th September via Google and this is the link we used:

http://www.accessscience.com/studycenter.aspx?main=18&questionID=5338

The following ideas have been quoted from this page:

• "Horror films are designed to elicit strong emotional reactions from viewers, including fear and dread"
• "Violent entertainment appeals primarily to males"
• "People rarely view horror films alone"
• "When humor accompanies the film, emotional reactions are milder"
• "When the violence is too real, when cues to its unreality, like music or film editing, are removed, violent entertainment loses much of its appeal."

Conclusions from the questionnaire

The following conclusions can be drawn from the questionnaire and from Adam and my conversation:

·        Our target audience is 18-25

·        The target audience is likely to go to the cinema once a month

·        The horror genre is likely to have the most people turn up

·        Our killing weapon will be a pitchfork

·        Our soundtrack will contain some fast paced music and contain some small amount of lullaby music

·        The style of killer we will have will be a grounds man. This being because he will be an ordinary man and grounds men use pitchforks.

·        Dark lighting will be used to build tension.

Adam Rustoms reply to my email in the post below