Our responses to our film.

Lauren: Over all I am very pleased with the outcome of our opening sequence! a few weeks back our video file got deleted, therefore we had limited time and still managed to creative something pretty good/catchy. Although, it's a shame we didn't have that much time to focus on the sound and editing as I wish we had. The sound had to be done very quickly, but it still flows pretty well with the sequence and the shots. I think that there are a few things, in which we could have made our project more successful, but nevermind. We have had many people say they like our opening sequence, which is also great news. Our project "The Slayer" matches well with other horror films, which is exactly what our group planned to do!


~Posted by Lauren 

Our Final Film

Here is our final film that has been uploaded to YouTube. There is also a URL direct link below if you do not wish to watch it through Blogger and want to watch through YouTube directly.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkcSvzKN0Uk&list=PLCE0D39A5C0005A47&feature=plcp

Why we chose our idea?

We wanted to make something that would scare and freak our audience out. We wanted to be able to go extreme with our given brief. We are aware of how hard it is to attract an audience and to frighten them, but this is a challenge our group wants to take on board. When we had a thought about it , we realised that many horror films seem to love blonde young beautiful victims, so we decided to try this out in our story, so people get the idea straight away that she is a victim with no hope. Our group became inspired by "Halloween" the idea of POV shots and having the killer as the main character of the story. Along with that we were also inspired by inspired some of the earlier crime films where there are important detectives to the story, who are the good people in the film, as in most horror films there is a mixture of good/bad as contrasting can be more exciting.


~Posted by Lauren 

Our decided title

THE SLAYER 

• Gives the genre away.
• Gives the audience the idea that there is a killer or something
• When you hear the word "slayer" the theme of violence and blood may get into the viewers mind
• Tells the audience that it's most likely focused on one a main character: shows that it's the type of film where the bad guy/girl is possibly the main character of the film.
• Sounds scary.

~Posted by Laurenn =D

Finished filming. =DDD

~Posted by Lauren

Script

Throughout our opening sequence, we didn't really want much of a script as we thought it would be more thought provoking, so instead we focused on more action happening rather than people talking.
The only piece of dialogue in our sequence is from detective 2 saying "we gotta go now", this was to show that they have a big problem to deal with and it has to be done quickly.


~Posted by Lauren

Inspiration to our music

Although Hitman may be a shooting game we think that the Hitman
Contracts Theme. The same kind of ambient sounds, techno,
string sounds are used like in our sound for our horror opening
sequence. We created our music on garage band using similar
sounds as the ones in Hitman, because we got inspired.
In Hitman, there is a main tune played throughout it, and then
there are added in sounds which are either at a higher or
lower pitch, making the sound often rise and fall, just like our
sound for our opening sequence.


The sounds we got inspired from in this game are the electric
sounds, and the high key sounds , as you can see the variety
of high and low pitch scratchy sounds make a very
scary mix.

~Posted by Lauren and Daniel

Location #3 Office

~Posted by all

A incident that happened while filming.

After we had finished shooting in the forest, we started packing up and clearing up our things/props.
We then decided to film something for our blooper video, so I was laying down on the floor dead with
red food colouring around me and on my t-shirt. Daniel was putting the fake knife away, that was when the incident happened. Daniel had not yet taken off his balaclava, so something unexpected occurred. A guy walked past Daniel, looked across the forest seeing me on the floor (meant to be dead for our filming) and the guy saw Daniel and then me on the floor with fake blood, he  then ran for his life down the pathway. We did not expect to come across an incident like this, and we just want people to know that they should be careful when it comes to using props, and they should make sure people don't get the wrong impression. It was funny at the time, but we will use this as a message to other people to take good care of how things look when they are filming, especially horror/scary shots. We didn't know our filming looked so realistic =D

~Posted by Lauren

Editing Schedule.

~Posted by Lauren

Shooting Schedule (now complete)

                                   

~Posted by Lauren 

Classroom's feedback.

This is the other AS media group's responses to our opening sequence so far. When reading through the feedback, we realised almost every person commented on the storyline not making sense. Of course, this is perfectly understandable and nothing to worry about for our group because we haven't put everything together yet, the classroom only saw two scenes. We are very glad that people commented on our shots and said they liked the variety because that is what we aimed to do. Also, people mentioned the sound a lot, and how it was hard to hear, our group have planned to sort this out by using voice overs and ADR. Our group have not started creating our sound/credits yet, which was also brought up a lot, so we definitely know that we have to get this done anyway. Overall I am pleased with our feedback, as it's all the areas we already knew needed working on, we are very impressed that people like our close-ups and shots though.

~Posted by Lauren

Meeting #8 Shooting the first scene

Here is an image of one of the props that were used in the opening sequence. As you can see in the image, it is a white top that is covered in "blood". Of course the blood is not real. The way we made the 'blood' look alike colour on the white t-shirt was by the use of red food colouring. The red food colouring was very cheap at a cost of 60 pence and the outcome of the colouring on the white shirt was very pleasing and better than we had expected! The shirt was used in the scene where Olivia (Lauren) was up against the tree after she had be brutally stabbed in the chest by the killer (Daniel). Us as a group thought that the prop of the bloody shirt worked really well in the opening sequence because it look realistic. If we were to use something more basic such as ketchup for the blood, we don't think the results would have been as good as the red food colouring.




 Here is another image of the white t-shirt close up. In the morning we went to Alex's mum's office to shoot the office scene. We are very lucky to have a proper office to shoot in, and this was very successful as we were very well organised etc. Later on in the evening we went straight to the forest to shoot the first scene to our opening sequence. The lighting at the park near the forest was very good and bright which gave our film quite a weary atmosphere to the scene. This scene was definitely the most challenging scene as it was important to grab the audience's attention and engage them.
We made sure to film when nobody was around, to make it more lonesome and creepy like. I am very proud of the amount of teamwork there was at this meeting, and I am glad our group pulled off a tough part of our course.

~Posted by Daniel and Lauren

Character profiles! =D

Name:Olivia Watson
Age: 16
Played by: Lauren Elaine Vlahos
Personality: fun, outgoing, confident, dumb, 
Hobbies: films,going out with mates, telling jokes
Occupation:Just started her college course 
Other Information: Olivia is just like any other normal teenage girl. She likes spending late nights out with her friends but she isn't too bothered about life at home. Her dad left her and she prioritises her relationship with her mother, as she lives with her mother and that is all she has. Her mother is an important person to the town, and loves her daughter an unexplainable amount, and if her daughter was to ever go missing, she would do as much as she could to get the people to find her,  losing her daughter would break her heart. Olivia's life at home isn't that great, so she prefers spending time outdoors having fun with her mates. 
Part:Victim


Name: Aran Wong (Asian detective)
Age:  27
Played by:     Daniel Walter 
Personality:  Serious,hard working,intelligent,professional,neat,logical 
Hobbies:solving mysteries, working with crime problems,chess,mechanics
Occupation: Detective
Other Information: Aran Wong is a little less trained and has only been working for a couple of years, he is the type of guy to just get on with things, but often complains and has to prove that he is right. He lives with his mother and father and is more of an independent learner/worker. He has had many jobs and a very good education, he is pretty rich but lives away from his older sister who lives in China. 



Name: Michael Smith (British Detective)
Age:  34
Played by:     Alex Griffith 
Personality:  Demanding,smart, joke able,understandable,helpful,organised.
Hobbies:solving mysteries,investigating,finding out new things, joking about while serious
Occupation: Detective Chief
Other Information: A very upper class detective who has been solving all kinds of crimes/murders since his early twenties. He is good at giving advice and guiding others right away, but he doesn't like messing around and gets straight to things. He is married and has children but he rarely gets to see them and when he does he spoils them, he is the richest out of the two, and can often take a joke too far. 



Name: Unknown
Age:   Unknown
Played by: Daniel Walter 
Personality:  cold hearted,emotionless,careless,horrible,selfish & is easily thrilled.
Hobbies: killing,having a thrill, more killing and being able to get away with it
Occupation: Unknown
Other Information: Bad past, badly influenced as a kid, never felt love. The rest is unknown.

Part:  Killer 

~Posted by Lauren and Daniel

Props/Costumes.

The victim's shirt after her death.

Props                                                                                                                                                                            

1. Map for background.
2. Article
3. bag
4. phone/mobile
5. guns/knives
6. Computers
7. food colouring on white shirt
8. Coffee cup

Costumes      

Killer:                                                                                           

Gloves

Balaclava

Black hoody

Black baggy trousers

Leather boots

Victim:  

Blonde wig(not visible)                                                                    

Slight bit of make-up but not strong

Grey cardigan

White sleeved shirt

shorts

Brown boots

Grey thick tights

Shoulder bag me2you

to suit her friendly personality

Detective 1: 

Glasses

Long black coat

Suit

Tie

Smart shoes

Shoulder length hair

Detective 2: 

Hat

Glasses

Grey suit

smart shoes

Leather jacket

Short hair

~Posted by lauren

      

Problem with Final Cut and School Network.

Today, there was a problem with our Final Cut project for editing some of the clips that we had filmed for our opening sequence task. Our project did not get backed up onto the schools hard drives and the clips that we had imported ended up getting deleted so there forth, all of the editing that we had done was gone completely without any backup to recover our project that we had been working on. This has cut as back quiet some time and has made us fall behind on the work now.

~Posted by Daniel

Film Feedback From Other Groups.

During one of the lessons in Media, other groups in our class that was doing the same task were given a sheet of paper that had to be filled out with feedback. Here are some examples of the feedback and comments that we received:

1. "Difficult to tell what it's about"
2. "Good use of camera shots an editing between shots in some places"
3. "Zoom was nice at the start, but perhaps don't overuse zoom?"
4. "Loved the POV shot with the knife"
5. "Bad lighting at times - can't see what's going on"
6. "Don't really understand the storyline"
7. "Can't hear the dialogue at the start"
8. "Needs sound and credits"

As a part of the feedback, us as group are going to take the comments into account and improve on our work and make the necessary changes. Also, we now understand where our weak points in our group, when it comes to filming and editing and where we can make improvements to our opening sequence.

~Posted by Daniel and Lauren

Editing Meeting #7

Editing our sequence we found was probably the hardest part of it all. Whilst editing we found that a few shots were way too long and that our scenes had to be cut down a huge amount. After editing, our sequence was 5 minutes long, this was absolutely no good so therefore we had to take away a scene to make it shorter. The scene we decided to cut out of our opening sequence was the daytime forest scene where the detectives investigate the missing girl and find her dead body.



The reason why we cut out the forest scene is because it was the least important part of our main story, and the only scene that would make sense not
putting into the opening. We also decided to speed some shots of the killer's house scene up, as we wanted that to be the fastest scene, using fast cuts into the action.

When editing we have had to move shots around god knows how many times just to make it look ten times better. We learnt how rearranging can really make a good impact while editing.

We used a cross fade, and a fade to black effect to show time has passed between certain shots so the audience don't get confused.

We also found a way to edit the lighting in certain areas that were too dark or too light, by using the colour balance wheel and adjusting it until it was just right and matched well.

We also had to mute certain shots because of unwanted background noises: such as wind, talking,breathing,dogs barking etc.

After our editing I think our opening sequence looks much different to what we thought the outcome would be. It was tough, but it really is amazing the difference
editing can make to a film.    

~Posted by Lauren

Our final Idea- Everything

Genre: Horror/Thriller

Title: The Slayer

Narrative:

Starts off with a sound bridge of the train(tracking) and then there's the shot of the typical "dumb blonde" partying girl, who wakes up uncomfortably on a bench after falling asleep. She looks around very slowly, taking her time to realise that she had fallen asleep,and now is alone in the dark. She then quite a while after "realising" the time, and that she should be home, reaches into her pocket to find a text from her mother (close-up of phone), the text from her mother worries her, and she rushes to her feet instantly to get "home". What she doesn't know is that someone has been watching this attractive girl for quite some time.

As she walks across the pathway, she hears the sound of the swings moving, so decides to turn back to see what it could back to see what it could be. As she turns forward the killer appears in front of her , charging instantly at her with a knife, so she screams and runs off into the dark forest, when she could have just rushed down the local pathway in front of her. The killer manages to catch up with her and stab her brutally in the stomach multiple times. He then places her against the tree, but we don't see this happen, we just see the shot of the girl dead against the tree.

Then it changes to the detectives in the office, where the detective chief takes off his hat and walks in to sit at the computer desk, at the same time the detective assistant is there printing out the article of the missing girl. Where he then highlights her name, and then the phone rings telling them they've found a location for them to go to, so the detective chief puts down the phone fast, and they begin to get ready fast. Detective assistant then places the article on the board by pinning it up, before walking out the door, and you hear the sound bridge of the door close.

Then it goes to the killer entering his house, switching off the light, and then rushing up the stairs.




Costumes:
Suits
Black hoody for the killer
Articles
Knife – for the killer
Black leather boots
Balaclava
Victim – white top,shorts – makes the blood stand out and the darkness contrasts
Blood make up
Black gloves – for the killers/the detectives

Props:
Knife
Balaclava
shoulder-bag
gloves
article
map
phone
computer
mobile
wig
pin board
printer
hat

Language/Accents:
Detectives use British Accents
- although the Asian detective has another accent, but he doesn't speak in the opening.

Sound:
Scary/ eerie music for the start before lauren gets kidnapped
When it change to the detectives, the motion of the music speeds up like action
The music suddenly stops and thumps when lauren is found
And then it changes back to slow when the killer gets ready again, DEFINITELY get sound of the killer breathing.
When watching the victim from the killers pov, use breathing noise.
a bang at the end with the title
The music from garageband rises with the fast bits of action

Camera movement:
Pov – point of view
Closeup of lauren against the tree – camera facing the torch light
Slow-mo of some cuts, of the stabbing
Tracking the train, and the girl's footsteps. POV of the girl dying
Pov of the killer taking out the knife.
close ups of facebook convo, the light switch, and killer walking up stairs.
Mid shots of the detectives. Long shots of victim and killer
so on.

Locations:
Forest – where the victim is brutally stabbed
Office-This belongs to the detectives, and it is where they will work.
House – where the killer is getting ready/lives.

• Themes: 
• Death
• Murder
• Crime
• Violence
• Danger
• Sadness
• Fear
• Mystery

Genre: 
Crime/horror

Cast:
Killer – Daniel
Detective 1Chief – Alex
Detective 2 - Daniel
Victim – Lauren


Audience:
Our target audience 15-30 year olds, this is because all the product placement that are placed in there for the advertisment which is aimed for that age range. From our research we found out that horror/crime genres are aimed at teenagers and adults, because the story plot may appeal more around that age range, as well as some materials might be inapropriate and too complex. Younger audiences may also be encouraged to do bad things and this would be because of their lack of understanding. On the other hand, adults are more trustworthy and sensible, aswell as older teenagers.

Shooting Schedule Forest scene detectives

~Posted by Lauren

Meeting #6 Filming in the forest; Detective Scene

Alex walking over the bridge practising the shot that was
going to be taken on the bridge.

Daniel walking through the underground getting his
bearings for another shot that was going to be taken.

~Posted by Lauren and Daniel

Daniel again looking for areas in the forest where shots can
be taken.

Here is Daniel and Alex looking for shot locations within the
forest that could relate to the story board that we created.

An image of Daniel attaching the camcorder to the tripod, 

getting ready to shoot another scene for the opening sequence.

Shooting Schedule

~Posted by Lauren

Our map for our film that we made.

A video of the map :)

Here is an image of the map that we've created for our opening sequence. It was made from maps from a atlas and tape that stuck more than one page together. This map is going to be used in the office scene where Daniel and Alex will be investigating further into the case that is in our opening sequence.

~Posted by Lauren and Daniel

First practice with Final cut meeting #5

In our first first final cut meeting we were creating a title text for our opening sequence, it was only just a practice and we are not yet familiar with the software.

~Posted by all

Top 5 Horror Movies

1. “Paranormal Activity” (2007). This low budget “mockumentary” broke box office records while scaring the pants off people. It's subtle scares build as the movie goes on, requiring that you keep the rewind button close. It might seem like there's little going on but the ending is sure to leave you guessing.
2. “Saw” (2004). From the opening till the very end this horror movie keeps you on the edge of your seat. Claustrophobic and clever, it is one of the most original horror movies of the digital age. You know a movie is popular when it spawns five sequels in as many years and gives rise to "Jigsaw," the popular culture killer from the franchise.
3. “Scream” (1996). Made during the heyday of the pop teen renaissance and packed with a who's who of then TV stars, Scream reinvigorated a sagging horror movie genre. Both scary and fun, the film uses every great horror film before it for reference. The killer’s mask from this movie remains a popular Halloween favorite.  
4. “Halloween” (1978). John Carpenter’s masterpiece about a masked killer stalking small town babysitters has become a modern classic. Michael Myers is a pop culture icon. The movies haunting score is infamous in its own right.  This popular horror movie was once the highest-grossing independent movie of all time.
5. “Friday the Thirteenth” (1980).  With over twelve sequels and a Freddy Kruger mash-up flick, this is clearly one of the most popular horror movies ever.  Jason Voorhees has immortalized the hockey mask as a symbol of intimidation.

~Posted by Lauren

Top 5 Crime Movies

The Godfather (1972)
Language: English Genre: Drama/Crime MPAA rating: R Director: Francis Ford Coppola Goodfellas (1990) Language: English Genre: Crime/Drama MPAA rating: R Director: Martin Scorsese Pulp Fiction (1994) Language: English Genre: Crime/Drama MPAA rating: R Director: Quentin Tarantino The Departed (2006) Language: English Genre: Crime/Drama MPAA rating: R Director: Martin Scorsese Actors: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson Reservoir Dogs (1992) Language: English Genre: Crime/Drama MPAA rating: R Director: Quentin Tarantino Actors: Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, Steve Buscemi ~Posted by Lauren

Our article for the film.

~Posted by Lauren

Location #4 House

 

 

~Posted by Lauren and Daniel

Analysis of our Sound/Credits for our opening.

Initial storyboard on post it notes. Meeting #4

Detailed Storyboard for Scribd[1]

~Posted by all

Group meeting #3 Detailed initial storyboarding on post it notes

Alex drawing out the story board

Putting the story board in order and planning it out,

Daniel sorting out the storyboard order.

Drawing for the storyboard.

~Posted by Lauren and Daniel

Our Inital Storyboards

Alex's

~Posted by all

How our planned opening fits with our Research

Codes/Conventions

• In our opening sequence we have set up many exciting blood rushing enigma's. The killer in our opening sequence is up to no good and is very mysterious, we wanted to end our sequence with the audience unsure of what is going to happen next in the story. We give them clues throughout but they don't actually get to see where the killer is off to next, but they are left with ideas. This is how our opening sequence connects with other horror and crime movies.
• We have many technical codes to relate to our genre throughout our sequence. For example we use POV shots for the killer, giving the audience a sense of insecurity. We also use many close ups and long shots for the detectives which is like other crime films because it's important to be able to know what they are investigating. We also use fast cuts near the end, which many horror movies use in their films. The use of sound bridges attract the audience and create a optimistic "3D" world.
• Also in our sequence there is a variety of lighting. We have filmed some daytime scenes, and some nightime scenes. This is because of the hybrid genre we have chosen. The nightimes scenes show the audience that it is party "horror" and the daytimes show it is party "crime. So we decided to have some jumpy scenes that attract the audience, but also some normal daytime ones to make it less boring and to introduce the good and more "hero" like characters, just like other horror or crime movies.
• The props used in our sequence relate to our genre and props theory. They include a knife, guns, map,article,gloves,glasses,hats,bag,mobiles,magnifine glass,body bag,coats. These relate to our characters and genre. The knife,guns and gloves relate to our chosen horror/crime genre and represent the ideologies within the opening sequence. The map,mobiles,hats,glasses and magnifine glass show that there is also crime within our sequence and are props used in most crime/horror movies. We tried our best to give off conventions and use many codes.
• The settings also are related to our genre. The forest,office,alley and house all give off different atmospheres and introduce key themes of our opening sequence. The forest gives off the theme of danger and relates to other horror films, as well as the alley with graffiti, relating to crime, our setting shows that our film is a crime and not just a horror. The house is a good opertunity to show the killer's personality and gives the audience a good idea of the things he gets up to in his everyday life. However, the office shows there is business within the opening sequence, and allow the audience to get to know the detectives. Also in our chosen location there is a train that goes by every 15 minutes, so therefore we will film that to show it is a slight busy area which juxsaposes with the quiet area that the girl wakes up in.
• We have used dark and light clothing, a variety really. The dark clothing used to show evil and a dark personality, however the lighter the cloth wear the more innocent the character, just like most horror movies do.
• Also the colour of the girl's hair as well as her age shows she is a typical dumb blonde victimised in the situation.
• We are going to show our title of the film at the end with credits running on black throughout.This creates interesting pauses throughout the sequence.
• We have used a written code by making an article. The article is about a missing girl which are used in many horror or crime movies, there is always some kind of unexpected written code within a film, so we decided to include this so the audience aren't sure if the girl has gone missing or dead.
• Throughout our opening we have titles running through it telling you who the producer, editor,sound producer, and director are. 

~Posted by Lauren

Treatment/Pitch

Treatment/Pitch:  The basic plot line to our opening sequence is based around how a certain person's upbringing can shape the person they are for the rest of their life.It is set in the 1990's, the same time the scary movie named "Scream" was set. The killer however,is the main character but you don't get to see his childhood, the detectives only find out clues about him, and data on him later on in the story, but you don't get to see this in our opening. We hope our movie will sell, because of the typical codes and conventions we used for our genre. We could advertise our movie with posters, and DVD film covers etc to increase a selling rate. Using the Todorov theory, our films selling rate is very high, as a lot of films who use that narrative structure are well known and popular.


~Posted by Lauren

Reasons to our specific idea.

Why Crime/Horror?


Our group thought that using the genre crime or horror would be most interesting and luckily enough, all of us agreed with the same genre very easily with no argue.  Us as a group thought that crime and horror is a great genre for the opening sequence that we are going to create because we thought that it would be nice to engage the audience with something interesting which would attract the audience and impress them.

Another reason for why we chose crime/horror because of the available props that we had already. For example, Daniel and Alex already had suits and we thought as a group that it worked well in our preliminary task so therefore we decided to include those props in our opening sequence. Not only did we have props like suits, but we also had simple props such as electronic devices that could be used (i.e. laptops, phones etc) and fake weapons.

• We found that it would be an easier genre to do, instead of a comedy or romantic opening sequence. 
• We found that if we did crime and horror it would be easier to create an enigma effect within the narrative of the opening sequence.
• Crime/Horror is a not the most popular hybrid, therefore we thought it would be interesting to combine.
• Our ideas fitted best with these two genres, rather than just the one of them, and we want to make our audience satisfied.
• We like the idea that crime/horror use fast cuts and we wanted to experiment this idea as it creates questions in the audiences mind. 
• The fact that horror is not an easy genre in some ways such as filming at night and in unusual places that we are not familiar with, meant that we had to set ourselves a challenge to get a good film. 

What we are hoping as our main outcome?

We are honestly hoping to create an amazing, eye-catching, adrenaline film/production, that will make our audiences blood rush with thrill and excitement. We want the audience to leave wondering what will happen next in our story, and we want them to be able to get involved. We hope to tackle codes/conventions well, and to learn more about the whole filming process.

~Posted by all

Filming Schedule and Plan

Here are some images of the filming schedule that us as a group created so we could be organised when we were going to shoot our scenes for our opening sequence. We thought as a group that this would be a good idea because it kept us organised and made sure that we were producing some practical work for our opening sequence (e.g filming etc).

An image of the filming schedule sheet that we were given,
as you can see we added the date of when we were going
to film, the number of scenes that were going to be filmed that
day, what parts of the opening sequence that we were filming
and the time that we were filming at.

Even though we had a filming schedule, to be sure that we had more time to film, we decided as a group to meet up at an earlier time, instead of the times shown on the filming schedule sheets. We thought it would be a lot better as we would be able to produce a lot more work and go over and play back some of the shots that we took to make corrections to our work and to make any adjustments if needed.

~Posted by Lauren and Daniel