Planning - Producing A Storyboard For Your Opening

Before moving on further with our planning we thought it was necessary to make a storyboard to illustrate the shots we are going to use in our 2 minute horror movie opening, this is because it would give us a clear idea of what shot would take place next including all the important information such as dialogue, angle and location. in addition to this we could visually see what would need to happen in the shot with a brief drawing of the moment, giving the directors and the actors a better understanding of what should take place. Overall it was important we did this to keep our work organised and make the recording process easier for our group allowing us to move forward with our main task with ease.

Planning - Writing A Treatment For Your Chosen Opening

Treatment for the opening 2 minutes (including titles) of ‘The Unknown’ by Alpha Productions

The film opens with alternating cuts of various establishing shots and opening Titles excluding the characters involved in bold sharp white font. After the final titles has been shot it will fade into to sky from a white screen; this then pans down into an establishing shot of west coast high school and when the school is in frame, non-diegetic sound of a school bell ringing will come in to the scene.

This cuts to a long shot of the corridor, cuts to a long shot of Kai in the corridor by his locker, then it cuts to a mid shot of Kai by his locker pulling out books, then this cuts to a mid shot of Kai closing a locker then a tracking out shot of him and his three friends walking through the corridor to their classroom.

After this they enter the classroom with a mid shot of them going to sit down in their free period. As half an hour passes by Alisha, Sarah and Jermaine decide to go the canteen while Kai carries on to study, Kai then notices something mysterious about the room he is working in, the lights tend to flicker continuously and the screen turns on automatically. This cuts a close up shot of Kai’s face getting worried and non- diegetic sound slowing coming in. both odd occurrences stop for a while and Kai gets back to work as he thinks it was just a faulty with electricity.

Suddenly a very loud bang is heard from behind him. He turns his head and as he turns it cuts to the other direction to show him looking at what the noise was from the other side. All Kai sees is a door with a sign saying “Do Not Enter” Eerie music now starts to play as he looks at the mysterious door. Kai looks around the room to find anything else that could have possibly made the bang but he found nothing, reassuring him it came from the door. Kai is not slightly afraid, but his curiosity got the best of him leading him to walk towards the door slowly with a tracking in shot.

Kai then slowly reaches to open the door, this leads to a long shot of him opening the door from inside the room the very dark room, Kai is very surprised of what he sees inside and shouts as the eerie music comes to a sudden halt. This then goes to a black screen showing the characters acting in the film while the walking dead theme tune plays throughout to the end where it will subtly fade out.

Planning : Target Audience Feedback

Before moving any further forwards with our ideas, we felt that it was necessary to consult with members of our target audience in order to get their opinions about our film.

This was a stage that we felt to be vital as we wanted to ensure that our idea was one that appealed to the demographic to whom we were targeting our film.

There were various ways that we could have conducted this audience research, including video and audio interviews or paper questionnaires. However, we decided that the use of a web-based survey, such as those provided by Survey Monkey, would be the best option for us as it would allow us to share the survey with a wider sample of our target audience. This is because our audience is more used with technology and social media allowing us share our survey easily, for example the people that took part in the survey were reached by using Facebook to inform them.

We chose that our target audience would be teens and above, so the ages between 12 to 20 because we felt it would be most suitable for our initials ideas of a horror movie opening.

We created an online survey on Survey Monkey which allowed us to send to everyone easily. When choosing the questions our aim was the receive information that would give an idea of how our horror movie should start.

We first asked the audience what age group they were in to make us better understand what ages tend to watch horror movies more and we found that people aged 15 to 19 watch horror movies more with the outlier of people ages 20 and above.

We then asked the audience if they were a fan of horror movies to see if it was a popular genre, from this questionnaire we had found that 4 out of 5 people that participated agreed that they enjoyed horror films with the exception of the 1 that did said they do not.

Moreover we added our 60 second pitch to the question and asked them if they thought that someone should end up dying in the opening, we then discovered that 60 percent of our audience agreed they would expect someone to die in the opening and 40 percent said no one should die in the opening. This gave us a better understanding of seeing the target audiences expectations towards horror openings, although we took this information into consideration we still decided that no one will die in the opening for a more suspensive start to the movie.

Lastly we specifically asked for 5 people that were either young men or women to answer our final question,this is so we can get a true opinion on how you movie should start, this would valuable to use as it fits our target audience and make the movie appeal more to the age group. after receiving the feedback we took the 2nd and 3rd comments and implemented into our own script/treatment as we found the idea of a danger behind closed doors very fitting for our pitch, on the other hand we thought 1st comment would show too much of the movie and speed up the opening exploiting too much, although the last 2 comments were very good but we thought we wouldn't be able to fit into our 2 minute opening.

Planning : Initial Ideas To A 60 Second Pitch

This is all of the year 12's 60 second pitch, to find my group, start at 0:50 and finish at 1:37

To arrange and complete our 60 second pitch we initially began with a mind map guide and we also wrote down different characters, landscapes, plots, working titles and so on this would permit us to plainly see the choices we had and settle on a choice on the best thought to be exhibited for our 60 second pitch.

After we had finished our thought to pitch we assembled and considered how to word it so we have a clear ideas as we were going to watch it and like giving a brief clarification of what the film will bring. After we had deal with this I would read the script and check whether it near 60 seconds. After a few changes to and adjustments to the script it was near 60 seconds. We split the pitch script into four areas and selected individually a fraction.

Research and planning self-assesment

Level 4
16-20 marks

When i go through my blog I feel  like that my research is in good detail such as my essay on horror films. i believe i added a lot of detail to that particular task as well as my work on codes and conventions. The importance of sound and opening titles i believe it went rather well with the depth i went into the key points. I have used a variety of key terminology in general throughout my blog.

My work has minimal information of the target audience in my blog which i could improve on.

I have added great detail in shots, layouts with drafting, scripting and also in my storyboard.

I have good organising skills as shown with the actors, locations and costumes with props.

My time management is fairly good as i have enough time to complete my work during the lesson and rarely have to do it at home unless its set as homework. which can helps me take more time on what tasks i am currently completing.

I have shown that i have good knowledge of it skills to import and export videos and with using embedded codes.

I have good communications skill shown by the feedback comments that i replied too. I also try to have great care in my presentation.

Research : The Importance Of Sound In Horror Films

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• Scientist have proved that the sound in horror films help create the atmosphere during the suspense before a jump scare they also help by warning the audience when danger is nearby. A study that looked at a class of noises called ‘non-linear' sounds. These range from the sort of distorted notes that come from a sci-fi cranked up too high, to the squeal produced by blowing too hard into a trumpet. They done this by studied the soundtracks of 102 of the world's most popular movies - from war films and dramas, to horror movies and adventure romps.
  The study involved composer Peter Kaye at Kingston University, London - looked at the music in films, as well as special effects and screams. The analysis had showed that horror films have the loudest female screams to show vulnerability as a girl is screaming for her life. While adventure films had the most screams from men as men do not normally scream to show humor and fun.
  The horror films also had a higher than expected number of abrupt shifts up and down in pitch. Dramatic films had fewer than expected screams and lower pitched sounds than other genre of movie.
  The study found that the use of these non-linear sounds was not random however it was used to 'enhance the emotional impact of scenes'. The Non-linearity’s are commonly produced when animals are under duress, such as the fear screams produced when animals are attacked by predators which is commonly used in horror films.
  Jaws
  Jaw is a classic way to illustrate how sound in horror film help create a horrifying atmosphere. As you know it starts by be a subtle sound full of low notes that picks up speed and volume as the predator gets closer to its pray and there is background music that show vulnerability of the child on a lilo who has no clue what is coming as they are completely oblivious.

Research : The Importance Of Opening Titles

Before considering what our opening titles would include and how it would be displayed in our short film, we felt it was necessary to do some extensive research on it . Doing this would allow us to understand how certain features of the titles will affect the overall outcome and atmosphere given to audience. When we acquire this knowledge it will tell give us a good idea of what to add to give a scary and horror like opening title.

When researching the importance of opening titles I first went onto the website http://www.artofthetitle.com then i looked at opening titles of several movies to get an idea of how they are presented and in which order they show the names of the people that were involved in the making of the film. This would give us an idea of what common opening titles are like which would help us to know what names should go first, how long, what font, colour and what size to make it.

I then went on watch the opening titles of the movie Se7en to do some further research on horror opening titles and learn how they are significant in films. This movie in particular would a clear idea and better understanding of how horror movies portray their opening titles in terms of font, size and colour, which would directly help us as that is the genre we are using for our opening.

I then took sheets of A4 paper to do my research

Next I wrote down every timestamp of when an opening title appeared on the movie Se7en. From this I learned how frequently the opening titles would appear in a horror movie's opening titles. I found that there were on average 1 title every 4 to 5 seconds and that all the main people involved in the movie were shown towards the beginning.

Next I explored the typography of opening titles in the movie Se7en by talking about the background, font colour, font type and size. From this I had learned that the style, colour and size of the font really makes a difference to the atmosphere of the movie.

Next I turned off the sound, watched the opening titles of Se7en again and with detailed described all the visual elements I saw excluding the titles themselves. From this I had learned that the things shown in between each title give a deeper meaning to the movie and gives you a brief idea of what the movie is like.

Next I watched the opening titles of Se7en without displaying the actual video and described everything I heard. From this I had learned that the sounds within a opening scene adds to the sense of movie, give an emotion to the audience and create a clear atmosphere of the movie to set the scene for the film ahead.