Planning - Mind map

Today in the lesson we have been focusing on our planning. This includes making a mind map for our film and thinking about the aspects of a stereotypical horror film, which includes; Camera shots, Setting, Audience, Purpose, Sound, Costume, Lighting, Props and examples of horror films. This will shortly be uploaded to my blog once it is completed with all of our planning to show everything that will be included in our film.

Opening of Halloween

• I have chosen the opening of halloween as I like how they have shown the 'knife' in the first few seconds of the film. 
• This gives off tension to the audience, giving them a feeling as if something bad is about to happen. 
• In my film I am going to include a knife in the opening scene, with the killer walking towards a house holding it in one hand with blood dripping from it to make it look more realistic, as if the killer has just stabbed someone with it.
• I also like the fact the bad guy is hiding in the house, to give the audience a feeling as if the bad guy is about to creep up or jump out at someone. 
• Another feature that i like that this film has used, is the non-digetic music, which is used to give off a scary and tension vibe to the audience. I hope to use something like that in my own film.

Examples of horror films

My group and I have researched the type of horror films that we are going to base our film on. These being;
- Paranormal Activity 1 & 2
- Strangers
- Taken

- When a stranger calls

- Night of the living dead
- Halloween
- The haunting

We have chosen these types of films as they are targeted to a similar audience as our own and can help us get some good ideas for props, costume and lighting.

     

Group Work

Over October half-term my group and I have decided to meet up over a few of the days to watch and take detailed notes on the opening of films from our chosen genre (horror). We have decided to go round to Kates house as that is where our film is going to be taking place. It is the perfect location for the setting of our film and we can start to think about how we may want to set out our film because of the way the layout of Kates house is and the access to alley ways, woods and the motorway which will be useful for a horror film to make it look more realistic.

Research and Planning - Change of idea

My group and I have had a big think about the type of film we are wanting to do. Our first option was to do an opening of the first two minutes of a skins type film but we have decided to change it and do an opening two minutes of a horror. We think that doing a horror would be easier and more enjoyable as we would be able to find better props, actors etc for it and lastly the setting will be alot easier to film, than it would be to do a skins type opening.

Further editing/Preliminary Video

• Today my group and I looked over our preliminary task and decided to change a few things. We have decided to include shot-reverse-shot between the two characters Sarah and Kate. 
• We edited more on the scenes we had, cutting the scenes so there was no jumps to make the overall effect realistic. We will have one more lesson on filiming our preliminary task tomorrow and then our task will be finished.
  
• Unfortunately one of our group members has decided to leave school, so there is now just Kate, Sarah and myself. We are having to get use to the group as just being the three of us, and completing the task without yaz.
  
• Overall the lesson went well and my group and I decided on what to change and what else we needed to include, below is our finalised preliminary task.

Preliminary task completion

• Today in the lesson, my group and I had finally finished our preliminary task. This task had taken us five lessons to complete, two being used for filming and 2 for the editing. 
• I found the editing quite difficult to get the hang of, especially cutting bits of the scene as I have never used any software like that before so it is all new to me. 

• For our preliminary task my group and I decided to go to the library to film our scene, as we felt that it would be a quiter place to film. This worked out well as we managed to find useful props to use to make our scene look more realistic for example, Newspapers, paper, pens etc. 

• For the last filming and editing lessson, I had to step in and take the leading role of filming, as that was yasmines part in the task and as the last bit of filimg of the shot-reverse-shot I did not need to be included in the filming.

• We used different camera angle shots such as, over the sholder shot when the characters are talking, A close up of the character opening the door, which would also be used as an establishing shot to show that the character is about to enter a room and is where the scene is taking place. A long shot to show the character walking over to her friends and finally shot-reverse-shot of two characters having a conversation.

• Throughout the whole scene there was diegetic sound which was visible from the voices of the characters. From the first few seconds that you see in the scene is the character opening the door, the use of synchronous sound is used from the opening of the door.

• Overall I feel that my group and I worked hard on our preliminary task, as we felt that we all worked well together and enjoyed filming the scene and editing it, and adding in non-digetic sound such as, music in the background to give the scene a more realistic vibe.