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

Conversation Discussing Points that should be added to our project

My E-mail to Adam

Analysis of the previous graphs

The following things can be taken from our results:

Question 1
As the questionnaire was based on a 16-25 year old audience our theory was proved correct as most in this age group would go to the cinema. Just under three quarters would attended the cinema more than 10 times a year.

Question 2
Another theory of our was proved correct as we thought that most people in this age group would prefer to watch a horror than a comedy in the cinema. The results showed again that just under three quarters would watch a horror. Only an eigth said they wouldn't.

Question 3
Although there was a huge range of results. A few turned out to have a number of votes for them. It is clear to use that we need to either use a pitchfork or a spade as the killer weapon. Adam and I will discuss this soon.

Question 4
In this question fast-paced music and lullaby music stood out. In some responses they suggested a mix between these two and this is a definite part we will take into consideration.

Question 5
In the results of question 5 there was a definite correlation between the results as the top three results were an ordinary person, a farmer and a groundskeeper. I think a combined of these three would please a lot of people in the style of killer there may be.

Question 6
The Saw Series were the only people to receive multiple votes. This may be because of the sheer amount of them there are although it has been a very successful film series.

Question 7

Adam and I felt it was unnecessary to have a graph to show these results. We felt it better to just to them into consideration. The point of not having too special effects may not apply to us as we will not be able to use many special effects packages due to the sheer cost of them. Quite a few of the comments suggested we used dark lighting to build effects and as this is stereotypical of a horror this is definitely something that we will do. Another point that arose was about keeping the style of music the same throughout. I personally feel this is a good point as lots of chopping and changing of music can lead the viewer to just concentrate on the soundtrack rather than the movie.

Audience Research - Questionnaire Graphs

The results from my questionnaire have been combined with my partners results and these following graphs have been produced.

Audience Research on what should be included in our film

Questionnaire Age Group: 18-25 (please only fill in if you are in this age group)

Q1) How often do you attend the cinema in year?
 None 1-3 4-9 10-19 20+

Q2) Do you see many horror movies?
 Yes  No  Not Often

Q3) If you had to see a different type of killer weapon other than knife or gun what would it be? _______________________

Q4) What type of music best suits horrors? (Tick more than one if preferable)
 Lullaby  Rock  Fast Paced  Hip Hop  Other
Other: ________________

Q5) What type of person do you think would be the scariest as the killer and why? ____________________________________

Q6) What is your favourite horror movie of all time?
__________________________________________________


Q7) If you could have anything you could add to a horror what would it be? ________________________________________

Ideas from the previous 'Product Research' post

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaVcJ9sAqqY
From the above link we are looking to incorporate the voices heard in the background. We will use a strange voice for the horror figure and a voice sounding senior for the authorative role. The slide transitions are quick flashy cuts which are good for building tension. We see viewings of newspaper cut-outs of killings at 36 seconds which Adam and I feel we should incorporate. Fast paced music that quiets when speaking also helps to build tension.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDlNH1c9XBU
The man goes mad and then we flash back to his history. During the trailer at 45seconds we see flashes of words that are relavent to the footage. A way of us adapting this idea is doing the same but with famous quotations. There is hardly any music in fast paced action then when taking a step back looking distant. Goes to more of a harmonic music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gwcg18UduKg
Adam and I would like to include the lullaby music from this trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbdY3_vLc2k
This link has a weapon, wheel brace, that is used throughout as the weapon that killed someone and then the weapon used by the person killed to kill others.


Questionnaire
To find out what the audience will want to watch Adam and I have created a questionnaire which will be on our posting. We have decided to target the 18-25 year old audience as this age group has been proven to be the most likely to attend the cinema. As we are hopefully going to be producing this for the cinema then it would be sensible to get the ideas from people of this age group.

Product Research

First Youtube Links

These are the first Youtube links that we have found to use for ideas.
The genre that we are going to do is Horror/Thriller.
Me and my partner Adam Rustom agreed that filming a Horror would have most exciting prospects. A Horror would allow us to use different costumes, use darker locations and use any special effects that could be needed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaVcJ9sAqqY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDlNH1c9XBU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gwcg18UduKg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBcoo8i33L0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbdY3_vLc2k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qacXgLYhi0

Things we would not include from these videos:

·        Scary killing at the start

·        There is no background

·        Flying shot (looking from helicopter)

·        Public field game – lots of extras

·        Too long between each shot

·        The use of computers in our movie

·        Ghostly dead people

·        Partying teenagers

Specification

    Due to working with Adam Rustom last year and knowing he has quite a few strengths I asked him to partner me in making this film. These are discussed in the comments section.
    The two bold bullets points below are the two that we will pursue. This decision was a toss up between this and making a music video. We felt that both of these would stretch our filming and scripting skills added to the fact that we had already made a film production in the previous year for our coursework. The only problem with making a music video was the lack of original music that we have to hand and the problem with acquiring some.

This is the part of the specification that I have decided to follow:
Specification
A promotion package for a new film, to include a teaser trailer, together with two of the following three options:

• a website homepage for the film;
• a film magazine front cover, featuring the film;
• a poster for the film.

Ancillary Choices
Website homepage - no real knowledge of HTML, hard to maintain
Film Magazine front cover - doesn't require huge computer knowledge of programs, easy to research good ones, easier to keep a common theme between main tasks and ancillary tasks
Poster for the film - same reasons as Film Magazine front cover