Tuesday 31 March 2009
director's cut
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOhJ19fpmGs&feature=channel
director's commentary of finished film
(apolagies for choppy editing)
director's commentary of finished film
(apolagies for choppy editing)
Super Death Blood Kill Chain-Saw Ice-Cream Monster the movie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU81IdAZHdg&feature=channel_page
S.D.B.K.C.S.M !!! the movie! ...( our film on YOUTUBE )
S.D.B.K.C.S.M !!! the movie! ...( our film on YOUTUBE )
research - The Blair Witch Project
ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzyMQEtIpGA
Blair Witch Project (1999)
Blair Witch Project (1999)
Sunday 29 March 2009
Evaluation media studies.
Evaluation media studies.
Brief
To research create and develop the opening to a film in the horror genre
Planning
We wanted our movie be popular with the fan base, horror movie connoisseurs tend to have specific tastes. Our research questionnaire showed that our target audience (teenage girls) preferred psychological thrillers and monster movies to the less traditional slasher and psyco-slasher sub-genre movies such as ‘SAW’ and ‘Child’s Play’. As a result of this we decided to model our film on movies such as ‘ALIEN’ and ‘THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT’.
Our Idea Our idea for our horror film is the classic walking thought the woods. These scenes can be changed in different ways. We have not decided on a clear idea yet. Here is some ideas what we have came up with-In a town centre-Walking down streets-Different costumes/60's/70's/80's -For the character to watch a horror film before they went out, the props they have seen in the from the film. The film is imaged the props in the setting when they are walking.
We decided that the movie should take place in a wood like the one found in ‘T.B.W.P’ (THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT) as it would make inputting intertextual references easier to facilitate and make them more relevant to the story. We also wanted two characters, one male and one female; this is a classic format for a film and is always a good place to start. With this format we can deal with both feminine and masculine qualities in both characters. We used a scene from ‘Alien’ (1979) to base our scene on, the sequence in alien is dark and gloomy, perfect horror territory. In essence it is very simple a guy goes looking for his cat in the condenser room of the space craft and is killed and eaten by the eponymous lead.
It starts with some mid shots to get a feel for the scene; these could be called the establishing shots. As in many horror films we see an over the shoulder shot of what is behind the character. The entity is partially obscured and is in almost complete darkness, the black silhouette on the metallic background prevents the audience from seeing the entire creature. Close ups on the cat show it is watching this scene as well anthropomorphising it, from this point on the rest of the scene is from the cats’ point of view. We see more over the shoulder shots of the silhouetted creature. dissident music is used to signify the danger and builds the tension. The close ups on the aliens head and face show us just enough of it to see how grotesque it is, one half of it’s face is shadowed, a lighting technique used in many action movies on villains and anti-heroes.
The ‘kill scene’ itself is all implied, the aliens tail move up his back then we the aliens mouth open the we hear a scream followed by a shot of blood running down his face, then some more close ups of the cat ending the point of section of these shots the sequence ends with two more characters running in a long shot show that they are to late. This is exactly the kind of scene we want,
Our opening should be as or more terrifying to fit the profile.
Evaluation
The filming itself went as planned for the most part, minor delays put a strain on time but it wasn’t until the editing stage that certain aspects of the film came to my attention. The start is eerie enough, numerous voyeuristic shots (long shots, obscured shots, ect) which are essential to the atmosphere of the scene and theme of the sequence. The opening shot of the car and the feet walking in front of it was an early idea, it was designed to raise questions such as “who is she”, “where is she going” and most importantly “what is going to happen next”.
These shots are all building to the “scary door” shot (what a dreadful ham). Dialogue excluded, this ran pretty smoothly. It was important to insure that the door closed smoothly as it was filmed from multiple angles. The close ups on the handle provided the necessary clips for this sequence. The shots from outside of the door as it’s closing also help give an air of voyeurism which is essential to the theme and maintaining the atmosphere of the scene and indeed following scenes. We used the same skills in the preliminary task.
The infamous “scary sofa” scene was PERFICT. The pan over and zoom in worked like a charm. Up-lighting is one of my favourite effects to do, it makes your actor look fearsome and menacing. As he speaks we added a deep heart beat to signify the fear and unease linked with his intimidating and awe inspiring words, that coupled with the zoom in and refocus gives a feeling of terror. Up-lighting is a good technique for enhancing your actors’ performance, this technique was used in both ‘Nosferatu’, ‘Alien1-2and3’, ‘Scindlers List’ and ‘The Godfather’. Our sequence mirrors several shots of these and everyone who has watched it has said it made them feel genuinely uncomfortable orb at least startled.
In the horrifying “scary YOUTUBE” scene we an over the shoulder shot from the front, an usual but very effective ploy. We used numerous intertextual references. The first is the male character’s “JAWS” t-shirt originally we were going to have a ‘jaws shot of the JAWS shirt’ but this did not have any relevance to the story and was summarily cut before filming had even started. The name jaws is synonymous with horror and it’s sub-genres. The most obvious reference is that of ‘THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT’ as seen on youtube, both youtube and ‘TBWP’ are relevant to a teenage audience and easily recognisable consequently both on the screen together draw in our target audience.
There is a soft cut to the next scene this is designed to show that some time has past, the zoom in on the youtube screen fades to black and the following scene fades in from black implying that the characters have finished watching the movie and left the house .The zoom combined with the character moving forward allows the audience to see the actress’s face and expression, it was important to give a performance that mirrored that seen in ‘The Blair Witch Project’ and ‘Scream’.
This brings us nicely to THE BONE GRINDING SCARY-WOOD scene, the darkest scene in the sequence … ‘No literally’. The stark contrast between the light character and her black background is crosscut with scenes ripped from ‘The Blair Witch Project’ setting up an eerie tension. This sequence was the heaviest influenced by any outside source, primarily ‘TBWP’ and the first ‘ALIEN’ movie. They used a lot of hand held first person obscured shots to fuel the audiences own imagination to generate fear and mystery where as ALIEN used silhouetted shots and dark scenes to ensure that the audience does not see allow the creature but still enough to get a general idea of what it should look like and still fill in the blanks with their own imagination. A mixture of both techniques was called for, extra shots of a creature in the woods were filmed but the were incompatible with the live action movie software and never added to the finished piece, instead we returned to ‘Blair Witch Project’ style editing, numerous obscured shots and first person angles build voyeurism, hand held shots from behind trees make the audience think they are seeing first person shots from whoever or whatever is following her. This kind of shot is used in ‘JAWS’, ‘SCREAM’, ‘PREDATOR1, 2AND3’ and ‘SAW’. A disodent diegetic sound is heard (a twig snap) this shows she is definitely being followed. When she begins to run we see more fist person and hand-held shots that made our focus group literally jump in their seats! The house scene is shot in complete darkness light only by the window. The sequence ends with implied violence, we never show whether or not she survives. The close up on the torch is designed to be mysterious
Questionnaire
After we completed our film, we showed it to our target audience. A questionnaire was created for our audience to gives us feedback after they have watched the film. We asked questions on different techniques such as sound, editing, costumes, setting and camera angles. Also we asked after watching our sequence would they continue watching.
The first question was; do you like the sound effects?
The feedback we were given was that they liked sound effects and thought it made an eerie atmosphere.
They thought it went well with the sequence.
They thought it kept you guessing on what was going to happen.
Then we asked about camera angle and were they effective?
Our general feedback said that they were effective.
One comment said that yes it was effective; the camera angles added the impression of a stalker.
Another comment was that ‘the camera angles were good but they could be change to make it more dramatic.’
The third question we asked was about editing to see it worked well together.
When we received feedback they said it was fluent and the shot went together well. They liked the blur out and fade out. We have received some good feedback from my target audience. To improve the sequence I would suggest more eerie first person shots from the villain’s point of view, and this could increase pace in the sequence. Another question we asked was do like the costumes and setting. With the feedback they said that they like the costumers. They said it is typical of teenagers by wearing normal clothes makes you feel that it can happen to anyone because it is realistic. Lastly, we asked would you like to watch on. Asking all of our target audience they all wanted to watch on because they want to know what happened to the character, also they said that it was gripping. In our film the characters are represented as everyday teenagers their costumers are typical of modern day teenagers. Our characters are carrying out stereotypical teenager life by watching a horror film together. They are portraying to be going about their everyday life and this makes it really effective because it is really realistic. We have successfully met the need of my audience and my group has created a film using conventions of the horror genre
Brief
To research create and develop the opening to a film in the horror genre
Planning
We wanted our movie be popular with the fan base, horror movie connoisseurs tend to have specific tastes. Our research questionnaire showed that our target audience (teenage girls) preferred psychological thrillers and monster movies to the less traditional slasher and psyco-slasher sub-genre movies such as ‘SAW’ and ‘Child’s Play’. As a result of this we decided to model our film on movies such as ‘ALIEN’ and ‘THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT’.
Our Idea Our idea for our horror film is the classic walking thought the woods. These scenes can be changed in different ways. We have not decided on a clear idea yet. Here is some ideas what we have came up with-In a town centre-Walking down streets-Different costumes/60's/70's/80's -For the character to watch a horror film before they went out, the props they have seen in the from the film. The film is imaged the props in the setting when they are walking.
We decided that the movie should take place in a wood like the one found in ‘T.B.W.P’ (THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT) as it would make inputting intertextual references easier to facilitate and make them more relevant to the story. We also wanted two characters, one male and one female; this is a classic format for a film and is always a good place to start. With this format we can deal with both feminine and masculine qualities in both characters. We used a scene from ‘Alien’ (1979) to base our scene on, the sequence in alien is dark and gloomy, perfect horror territory. In essence it is very simple a guy goes looking for his cat in the condenser room of the space craft and is killed and eaten by the eponymous lead.
It starts with some mid shots to get a feel for the scene; these could be called the establishing shots. As in many horror films we see an over the shoulder shot of what is behind the character. The entity is partially obscured and is in almost complete darkness, the black silhouette on the metallic background prevents the audience from seeing the entire creature. Close ups on the cat show it is watching this scene as well anthropomorphising it, from this point on the rest of the scene is from the cats’ point of view. We see more over the shoulder shots of the silhouetted creature. dissident music is used to signify the danger and builds the tension. The close ups on the aliens head and face show us just enough of it to see how grotesque it is, one half of it’s face is shadowed, a lighting technique used in many action movies on villains and anti-heroes.
The ‘kill scene’ itself is all implied, the aliens tail move up his back then we the aliens mouth open the we hear a scream followed by a shot of blood running down his face, then some more close ups of the cat ending the point of section of these shots the sequence ends with two more characters running in a long shot show that they are to late. This is exactly the kind of scene we want,
Our opening should be as or more terrifying to fit the profile.
Evaluation
The filming itself went as planned for the most part, minor delays put a strain on time but it wasn’t until the editing stage that certain aspects of the film came to my attention. The start is eerie enough, numerous voyeuristic shots (long shots, obscured shots, ect) which are essential to the atmosphere of the scene and theme of the sequence. The opening shot of the car and the feet walking in front of it was an early idea, it was designed to raise questions such as “who is she”, “where is she going” and most importantly “what is going to happen next”.
These shots are all building to the “scary door” shot (what a dreadful ham). Dialogue excluded, this ran pretty smoothly. It was important to insure that the door closed smoothly as it was filmed from multiple angles. The close ups on the handle provided the necessary clips for this sequence. The shots from outside of the door as it’s closing also help give an air of voyeurism which is essential to the theme and maintaining the atmosphere of the scene and indeed following scenes. We used the same skills in the preliminary task.
The infamous “scary sofa” scene was PERFICT. The pan over and zoom in worked like a charm. Up-lighting is one of my favourite effects to do, it makes your actor look fearsome and menacing. As he speaks we added a deep heart beat to signify the fear and unease linked with his intimidating and awe inspiring words, that coupled with the zoom in and refocus gives a feeling of terror. Up-lighting is a good technique for enhancing your actors’ performance, this technique was used in both ‘Nosferatu’, ‘Alien1-2and3’, ‘Scindlers List’ and ‘The Godfather’. Our sequence mirrors several shots of these and everyone who has watched it has said it made them feel genuinely uncomfortable orb at least startled.
In the horrifying “scary YOUTUBE” scene we an over the shoulder shot from the front, an usual but very effective ploy. We used numerous intertextual references. The first is the male character’s “JAWS” t-shirt originally we were going to have a ‘jaws shot of the JAWS shirt’ but this did not have any relevance to the story and was summarily cut before filming had even started. The name jaws is synonymous with horror and it’s sub-genres. The most obvious reference is that of ‘THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT’ as seen on youtube, both youtube and ‘TBWP’ are relevant to a teenage audience and easily recognisable consequently both on the screen together draw in our target audience.
There is a soft cut to the next scene this is designed to show that some time has past, the zoom in on the youtube screen fades to black and the following scene fades in from black implying that the characters have finished watching the movie and left the house .The zoom combined with the character moving forward allows the audience to see the actress’s face and expression, it was important to give a performance that mirrored that seen in ‘The Blair Witch Project’ and ‘Scream’.
This brings us nicely to THE BONE GRINDING SCARY-WOOD scene, the darkest scene in the sequence … ‘No literally’. The stark contrast between the light character and her black background is crosscut with scenes ripped from ‘The Blair Witch Project’ setting up an eerie tension. This sequence was the heaviest influenced by any outside source, primarily ‘TBWP’ and the first ‘ALIEN’ movie. They used a lot of hand held first person obscured shots to fuel the audiences own imagination to generate fear and mystery where as ALIEN used silhouetted shots and dark scenes to ensure that the audience does not see allow the creature but still enough to get a general idea of what it should look like and still fill in the blanks with their own imagination. A mixture of both techniques was called for, extra shots of a creature in the woods were filmed but the were incompatible with the live action movie software and never added to the finished piece, instead we returned to ‘Blair Witch Project’ style editing, numerous obscured shots and first person angles build voyeurism, hand held shots from behind trees make the audience think they are seeing first person shots from whoever or whatever is following her. This kind of shot is used in ‘JAWS’, ‘SCREAM’, ‘PREDATOR1, 2AND3’ and ‘SAW’. A disodent diegetic sound is heard (a twig snap) this shows she is definitely being followed. When she begins to run we see more fist person and hand-held shots that made our focus group literally jump in their seats! The house scene is shot in complete darkness light only by the window. The sequence ends with implied violence, we never show whether or not she survives. The close up on the torch is designed to be mysterious
Questionnaire
After we completed our film, we showed it to our target audience. A questionnaire was created for our audience to gives us feedback after they have watched the film. We asked questions on different techniques such as sound, editing, costumes, setting and camera angles. Also we asked after watching our sequence would they continue watching.
The first question was; do you like the sound effects?
The feedback we were given was that they liked sound effects and thought it made an eerie atmosphere.
They thought it went well with the sequence.
They thought it kept you guessing on what was going to happen.
Then we asked about camera angle and were they effective?
Our general feedback said that they were effective.
One comment said that yes it was effective; the camera angles added the impression of a stalker.
Another comment was that ‘the camera angles were good but they could be change to make it more dramatic.’
The third question we asked was about editing to see it worked well together.
When we received feedback they said it was fluent and the shot went together well. They liked the blur out and fade out. We have received some good feedback from my target audience. To improve the sequence I would suggest more eerie first person shots from the villain’s point of view, and this could increase pace in the sequence. Another question we asked was do like the costumes and setting. With the feedback they said that they like the costumers. They said it is typical of teenagers by wearing normal clothes makes you feel that it can happen to anyone because it is realistic. Lastly, we asked would you like to watch on. Asking all of our target audience they all wanted to watch on because they want to know what happened to the character, also they said that it was gripping. In our film the characters are represented as everyday teenagers their costumers are typical of modern day teenagers. Our characters are carrying out stereotypical teenager life by watching a horror film together. They are portraying to be going about their everyday life and this makes it really effective because it is really realistic. We have successfully met the need of my audience and my group has created a film using conventions of the horror genre
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