Research into Titles - Lucy Clark Re-sit 4124

I have been researching how titles and credits are used in films, and in particular in the horror genre. To do this I have watched the openings of several films and then listed the order in which people are acknowledged. This is a copy of my basic notes I made after watching the opening of "Catch Me if you Can". I have found that the institution and production company's names come first, followed by the main cast members or the most well known. The title of the film would be next and then the remaining cast members. After all of those would be the casting director and co-producer and then the rest is shown in my photograph of the list I made.

The reason it is important to research how titles and credits are presented is because it helps to make a film look professional and polished, because it is complying with expectations. When editing our horror film opening, we will ensure that we take this into consideration and follow these guidelines.

In "Catch Me if you Can" the plot of the film itself is hinted at throughout the title sequence, and shown to a certain degree. Whilst the order in which the titles are shown comply with typical film title sequences, it is done in quite an original way through animation. This is something we will try to replicate; a title sequence that conforms with the correct layout but also is something a little bit different.

Location Scouting Re-Sit

The reason we do location scouting is so that when it comes to filming and making a filming schedule, we can be almost certain on exactly where each scene is filmed. Most of the scenes where the female character is walking will be along Court Road in Broomfield but shown from different angles and view points to connote to the audience that there is more than one stalker, and that they are working together. The flashes of video inside the house will be filmed in Emmaline's house because it is close to the other locations we are looking at filming in, and therefore means we can get more filmed each day because there will less travelling to do. For the flashes of video where you just see the six victims laying dead, we will use various parks and alleyways around the Broomfield area, which is again down to trying to fit in as much filming as possible in the short amount of time that we have. I think that this will work well and look effective because it is obviously in the same area, and so the audience will begin to suspect that the woman seen in the first two minutes will be reaching the same fate, and begin to fear for her.


This is Court Road, shown from two different angles and times. The second photo is more representative of the time we would actually film the scenes where the female protaganist is walking down it, because traditionally the dark is scarier than the light, and is when bad things happen in horror films, for example, the film "Scream" the telephone call between the victim and the male antagonist takes place at night when she is on her own.



This is one of the places we are looking at fiming in, because is looks very quiet and secluded, and therefore when it is slightly darker, will look foreboding to the audience. In fairytales, traditionally villains hide or are banished to forests or woods, and so that idea fits in well with the idea of people following her through there. Also, it provides us with interesting shots through tree branches which again adds to the sense of someone watching her.

Film Brief Re-sit

I rewrote and updated our film brief, which can be found here on the group blog. The reason we created a film brief is so that we have a basic storyline to follow, and even though we don't make the entire film, it enables us to have something to work from, ensuring that hints are given in the trailer to help the audience work out what is happening. It also shows that we understand the conventions of horror films and are able to apply these to our own work.

Our brief is to create the two minute opening of a horror movie, including a title sequence and the institution logo. We will need to make a film production company name and the logo to go with it.

Horror films in particular use their openings very effectively; normally within the first few minutes, the over all plot is hinted at and the viewer is aware of what is to come later on. Another way the openings attract viewers is that, especially in thrillers, the audience is given a series of clues which help them reach the overall conclusion of what will happen. In "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" the ending on the film is shown first, which captivates the audience because they want to know how and why that ending was reached.

The over all plot of our film revolves around stalking. The film would see six young women being stalked in various places and ways by hooded or masked men. The women would be seemingly unconnected, apart from the fact that they are being stalked by presumably the same men.

All the women, once caught, would be taken to the same remote location in the countryside, which is down long and winding roads, creating a sense of foreboding for the audience. The exact location is never shown for the same reasons. It can also be seen as mirroring the anonimousity of the stalkers themselves.

The idea behind the plot is that each member of the "stalking group" are targeting their victims not only for a slightly erotic reason but are sycophantic; all females own something they require/desire. i.e a body part (such as limbs, eyes, hair). The antagonists are a group of psychotic scientists aiming to create their perfect being and relentlessly killing any object of their desire along the way. As the film itself progresses, the women will be seen together, laying unconscious with big, bold, black crosses marking various aspects of their body. This will highlight to the audience the body parts the scientists require from that particular person, and reiterate their final goal of creating the perfect person from various bodies. This idea is reminiscent of the novel "Frankenstein" and although the idea of creating the perfect person from different bodies is explored in the novel, the method and the over all production is entirely different.

Our opening 2 minutes shows an example of one of the characters attack on her way home from an unknown destination. The audience are made aware during her journey that she is being followed although she is not. We view her walk away and every so often the camera flicks forward in time for a short loud burst of the attack on her that is yet to take place. The camera will then switch back to her journey home. The flashes will become more regular throughout the two minute opening, becoming shorter and quicker to give a flickering film reel effect, detailing exactly how the woman was caught and subsequently tortured. The film flashes show her with the antagonists inside her house and eventually attacking her. The forward flashes become quicker until the present time zone catches up with the beginning of the flashes as the female goes to let herself in her house.

We hope this will leave our audience in suspense, questioning what the marks on the bodies mean. We plan to give no clear indication of the state of the females and how many there are to keep the audience questioning the scene. It will not become apparent until right at the end that one of the women survives, and which woman it is. The audience becomes aware of this when she is telling her story in a court room after she escapes. The antagonists will be seen for the first time unmasked, where they look completely normal and unassuming, making the audience feel unease because this highlights that stalkers and murderers could be anyone, and you can never tell. The sharp frames we hope will shock the audience but also indicate whats in store throughout the rest of the film. The main idea of our opening is not a clear cut version of events but clues and hints that firstly may make little sense but as they come together create more answers, yet more anticipation.

First Draft Script Re-Sit

Me and Emmaline have been working on writing a script for our film recently. The only real dialogue is right at the very start of our film when the screen is blank and so the script itself has to be very believable and able to stand alone without video to go with it. Even though there is very little dialogue, we created a script so that the actors could see how we wanted the trailer to come across. The girl we cast as our female protagonist in particular needs to know how we want her to act during the title sequence, which is when this script will be used.

I looked into how scripts are set out as well, in order to make our production as professional as possible. This is the website I used.

http://interceptfilm.co.nz/pdfs/short_intercept_correct_script.pdf
Script

Storyboard Re-Sit

We've been taking photos recently for our story board, showing stills of each part of our opening. We're doing this because it then gives us something to refer back to when we start filming, and it means we can get a good idea to start with as to how the over-all piece will look. These initial photos weren't taken exactly where we would film but are pretty close to what we imagined each shot to look like. The photographs in the house are a definate location choice, as are the shots in the wooded area, although we may change the type of shots depending on what works best for us during filming, in regards to lighting and weather. By including the type of shot we imagine in the storyboard, it makes it easier for us to visualise how the piece will look, and also makes filming quicker because we have already determined what most of the shots will be.

These are the storyboards I have created.
Storyboard 1


Storyboard 2


Storyboard 3

G321 January Re-sit

I will be re-sitting my G321 coursework and so will be posting and amending previous work on this blog from now on. Additions to previous work will be highlighted in bold and in blue.

22nd April update

Having looked back over our planning, I found that our finished film differs slightly from the initial ideas we had; we originally planned to use six different girls in our film, with the ending resulting in six quick short clips of each of them with a body part marked with a "X". However, during the filming and editing process, we decided against that, instead using fewer girls and more quick clips, to disorientate the viewer, because we felt this was more effective than showing them within the first two minutes what happens in the rest of the film. This shows that whilst we did try to stick to preconceived filming schedules and ideas, we were also able to think on the spot and decide what worked and what didn't. If we were to make the rest of the film, we would have introduced the five other female characters throughout, creating suspense because the audience never knows who else is to become a victim.
Although we changed our idea during filming, I don't think this hindered us in the slightest; audience feedback has been positive for our final piece, especially those who are in the age range we were aiming it at, which I think shows we were successful.

Similar Media Works

Near the start of our planning, we made a Similar Media Works presentation. This aided us in researching typical conventions of horror film s, such as signifiers, storylines and characters. This was useful when actually making our own film, because we had ideas as to what people expect from a horror film, therefore making our own piece more appealing to the audience we wanted it to be. This is our presentation. After the initial presentation was completed, I went back over it, adding more information and detail to make it easier still to create our film.

Final Film

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This is our final copy of our film. Over all, i'm very happy with the finished result; the finished result complies with the planning we did before starting and the idea I had in my head as to how I wanted it to look. After asking for audience responses, we got positive feedback, although some people said parts needed to be clearer. I think the last 20seconds with the quick clips of film looked very effective, putting the audience on edge and hinting at what else is to come.

01/04/2010 update

For the past two weeks, I have been making improvements to my work on blogger.com and have uploaded updated version of Similar Media Works, added photos to the costume lists and uploaded the Filming Schedule we used. The group blog has our work for the Target Audience profile uploaded to it now, which was very useful for when writing our evaluations, because it made us really think about things such as the age certificate we were going to give our film, and why we did certain things in a certain way.
Story Board
The story board we created towards the start of the project in on the group blog. We all went out and took photos around the locations we were considering using for our film to try and create the right order we would need. Since we created it, we have added annotations to explain what kind of shot it is and why we used this.

Similar Media Works
I went back over this presentation and added extra information, more photos and links to films and trailers on YouTube that were beneficial to us while we were planning and researching for our own film.

Casting
The casting videos are on the group blog also, although we only videoed Louise Chick, because neither Matt or Keegan had lines to speak. I created a rough script which Louise then improvised with to create our audition piece.

Filming schedule
I created the filming schedule which we used to loosely base our days around. However, due to weather and lighting conditions, we were unable to follow this completely, more use it as a rough guide.

Evaluation question 7

Question 7

Evaluation question 5+6

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Evaluation question 3+4

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Evaluation Question 1 + 2

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Question 1

Filming schedule

Before we filmed our final piece, we created a filming schedule, to enable us to work quickly and efficiently. This was useful because it meant that we had a rough idea of what we needed to do on each day to ensure that all the footage was the right light conditions and fitted together well, inkeeping with continuity.
Filming Schedule

Partial save of film

Due to problems with saving and exporting our final edit of our horror film, we have only got a partially saved copy at the moment, minus the sound effects, institutional logo and the film title. However, it manages to convey our ideas and shows how we've editted our footage and put the film together. I like the overall product, because I think that having filmed it from several different perspectives and locations, it gives the impression of being followed by more than one person and it being a constant thing.

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Final credits

We really liked the look of our initial credits, and so when we re filmed them, we tried to stick to the original idea as much as possible, cutting down on the time it took to film, so as to fit into our two minute long movie. I think that our credits are good because it's quite an unusual and original idea, and looks effective once paired with the music and sound effects in our finished film. The reason we chose this as our final film credits is because it gives the impression of someone having gathered photographs of several different young women, circling and pin pointing those they're looking at and following, linking in with our idea of stalkers following several victims.

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Filming diary February 11th

When we were editing our film, we found that we didn't have quite as much footage as we though we did, and so ended up filming a little bit more to be used as flashes towards the end of the piece. We went back to Emmaline's house to film, where we used makeup to create a bruised effect on our arms and faces. We filmed in the loft to create a new environment, and because it is a bit more unusual, and we filmed ourselves taped to the beams and unconscious on the floor. I think that these bits of film look very effective when they're cut down and made into flashes within the main film, because they're shocking to the audience and keep them interested.

First draft Credits

This is our first draft credits/titles sequence; although we all really liked this and think it looks effective, we will have to re film it and cut down on the time it takes because it is too long to use in a 2 minute long film. We liked this because it's original and unexpected, and gives the idea that the stalker is looking over photos of the girls he's watching, and because some people are crossed out, it gives the impression that they are people he's stalked in the past.

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Filming Diary 4th February

This was our second day of filming, and this time we only had Matt and Louise, due to Keegan having prior arrangements. However, this wasn't a problem, because the scenes we were filming only needed to have one stalker in them at a time. We waiting until around 4.30pm to start filming, so that the lighting conditions would be the same as the previous week, which means that when editing, it will look like the same time of day, and follow onto each other more effectively. We started filming down by some old garages in Broomfield, choosing this location because of the desolate feel to the area, and because there were lots of places we could place the stalker where they would be hidden from the eyes of the protagonist. We did quite a lot of filming here, often filming the same shot twice, one of them having the Matt in the background, and one of them not. We tried to include various different techniques here, to make the film more interesting, including panning and tracking. We had a few problems initially with the tracking especially, because of damaged equipment, but managed it in the end. We filmed down Court Road too, although there wasn't as much time as we had hoped to spend on this because of the light again. However, we filmed everything we needed to at least once, and managed to also film the final shot of Louise putting her key into the door lock.

Filming Diary - January 29th & Shot List

This was our first day of filming, and for this we had all three of our cast members involved; unfortunately, due to various reasons, Alex Cockburn was unable to take part in our film in the end. The first bit we filmed was the walking part and flashes in the wooded area, where Louise had to make her way along the path cutting between the trees. The flashes in this part were filmed with either Keegan or Matt stood or walking behind her, and will be cut very short and inserted into main part. We filmed this from several different angles and a few different times, to ensure we had the footage we needed. We then moved onto filming in and around Emmaline's house. We needed several different shots from this; one of Louise opening the front door and walking up the stairs, with the silhouette of one of the stalkers stood behind her. This looked quite effective, because as she ran up the stairs, she switched on the lights, making the figure behind her come to attention. We filmed one more scene here, which was in a bedroom, with one of the stalkers hidden behind the door. We filmed this from two different angles and will be used as part of an extended flash. We intended to film the final part, walking down Court Road as well that afternoon, but due to how long it took to film in the other two locations, it got too dark to do so, and the cameras couldn't pick up on the actors. Because of this, we will need to film again on another day, making sure that the three of them look the same as before, to aid continuity.

This is our shot list we prepared before filming. We used this as a guideline as to what we needed to film and when, but due to various weather conditions and previous commitments of cast members, we were not always able to stick to it. However, it was useful in that it gave us an idea of exactly how much footage we would need.

Shot List

Location scouting

Tonight each of us will be taking photos of various locations we think we will be using in our final production. Most of the scenes where the female character is walking will be along the same road in Broomfield, but shown from different angles and perspectives to highlight how there's is more than one stalker. The flashes of video inside the house will probably be filmed in Emmaline's house, with a few parts filmed in a garage at mine. For the flashes of video where you just see the six victims laying dead, we will use various parks and alleyways around the Broomfield area, because we're keeping in mind the fact that some of the people in our film have exams and so by keeping it all in one area, we're saving time. I think that this will be effective too, because you'll be able to see the path the main character takes in each, which builds up on the fear the viewer feels because they begin to realise that the girl will be reaching the same fate too.

Costume List

Our main female character will be dressed in smart/ casual clothing, as if making her journey home from work or school. Although initially we were against the idea of having her wear white - a regular occurrence in horror films - we eventually decided that this would add the idea of innocence and foreshadowing what is to come.



Each of the antagonists will wear hooded garments to obscure their identity and create a feel of animosity, which will emphasise the idea that no particular hooded figure has any significance or importance over another. This can also show that they they work together, highlighting the link between them.

The five other female characters will only be glimpsed briefly, but will be in a variety of costumes, showing that no particular lifestyle or background is targeted and to highlight each different character, and to increase the understanding of the viewer, in that anyone could be targeted.

Although each costume is simple, each one holds great significance in helping the viewer understand what is happening, and which character is which.