Progress- December

My target was to remember all the shot types by December,


I feel like I have fully reached this target and have no trouble remembering the shot types and shot angles now. 
However I would like to catch up on all outstanding work that has not yet been completed, and this will be my next target to reach. 

Screenplay- The Discovered

Draft screenplay- The discovered

Black screen- white title                                                            Heavy breathing quietly in the background

Quote appears:          

"No one ever goes undiscovered" ... - Old Hebrew Proverb

Quote fades out                                                                 

Flat angle, ground shot 

Dark forest/park, as if the camera has been dropped. We hear laboured breathing getting progressively louder and louder as-if the women is getting closer to the camera. The shot is in night vision. 

A figure of a woman distressed then appears in the camera shot, she is slowly crawling towards the camera. The scene is quiet apart from her breathing/crying. As she gets closer she reaches out as if to grab the camera, there is a pause of 3 seconds, the woman is just staring into the camera looking very fearfully.

Suddenly the woman is dragged away from the camera from an unseen person/thing. 

Diagetic screams until the scene is totally silent, slight pause for 2 seconds. 


Black screen- White title 
Title appears:                                                                         

Classical music playing in the background

                                                                    The Discovered

Long shot
The dark night fades into morning. An old man walking a dog is seen. The dog runs to the tent. Middle shot is then used to show the dog sniffing the tent. The man then walks over and realised something is wrong and pulls his phone out of his pocket. An extreme close up in then used to show him dialling 999. 

Classical music stops

  

A flash is used to transition into the next scene; into a long shot...  
Whilst we see a flash, we hear a camera shutter sound as if its a flash from a camera.                                                        

Long shot

It is the next morning and we see  a news reporter standing in front of a damaged tent covered in blood. We also see policeman, investigators in the background. 

Middle shot 

NEWS REPORTER 

Good morning, I'm here in Kent reporting live from the scene of what looks to be a brutal attack on a young group of friends. As you can see behind me the tent that the friends were planning to camp in is in a severe state. It has been predicted the attack could have taken place between 11pm- 3am, but has yet to be confirmed. Beside me I have the chief investigator PC RavWeilding. What has exactly happened here?

PC RAV

I have never seen anything like this before, absolutely nothing, it's obscene what must have been going through the person's head to commit such a crime. We have no official information yet on what happened but we are trying our best.

NEWS REPORTER

OK back to the studio!

MAN'S VOICE (O.S.)

Cut

Long shot
The investigators show the news reporter around the site.
For a moment we see drag marks across the grass where the girl had been dragged; a quick flash transition is used for a flashback. We see the girl being dragged along the floor; screaming and crying (3 seconds). Another flash transition is used to go back to present, showing the investigator looking at the ground looking pale and fearful. 

Sad, classical music plays

Flash transition into a black title screen with white text.. 

   Harris Owuseu 

(Transition- fade out)

Paige Brown 

(Transition- fade out)

Devon Pacey

(Transition- fade out)

Sean Lee

Treatment Re-write.."The Discovered"

After my group discussed our old treatment, we decided to change our initial idea completely.


We will begin our opening sequence with the end of the film, this will draw the audience in. It is going to be set in a park/forest during night, so the atmosphere will be eerie and unsettling. A flat angle, ground shot will be used suggesting that the camera has been dropped by someone that was holding it. In the shot the audience will be able to see some of the surroundings, but not fully.
The audience will then hear heavy breathing getting louder and louder as if someone is coming up to the camera, then a figure of a lady will start crawling toward the camera, she looks very fearful and distressed, covered in blood. As she gets closer she reaches out her hand as if she wants to pick up the camera, she is still crying and breathing heavily, there a pause with her just breathing. Suddenly she gets dragged away and she screams.


A 'flash' is then used as a transition to the day after. It is now early morning and there is a very different atmosphere. A new's reporter is standing in front of the bloody, damaged tent reporting a murder. The scene then cuts and goes onto an investigation of the park. Flashbacks to the night before are shown when the investigators find certain things such as, a drag mark on the grass, we then the see girl getting dragged through the grass.


We intend to focus on our key elements. Our first focus is setting. We decided to set our opening sequence in a park in the night time, so we are able to achieve the effect of eeriness. We are also going to use classical music in parts of our scene as this is a convention of horror films, and creates tension, heavy breathing also is used to build climaxed and get the audience on the edge of their seat. Our main target audience is 15-18 year old. 

Audience questionnaire result analysis

After collecting the results we received from survey monkey, the majority of the people who responded were between the age of 13-16, this shows our target audience will be teenagers between the age of 15-18.

The most preferred genre of film was comedy whilst horror only gained 20% of the votes. This is useful because it maybe suggests that we should add some comedy into our horror to make it more suitable for our audience.

60% of our target audience preferred confinement horror films, so this helps us decide a base for our story because we now know that in order to connect with our target audience and to draw them in, we need to do an opening sequence where the characters are trapped, rather than being chased.

I feel to gain more information about our target audience we need to send out more surveys to make the range of answers wider.  We need to find out in more detail what kind of confinement films our audience like.

Audience profile survey

Click here to take survey

Audience profile survey

1. How old are you ?

• 12 and below
• 13-16
• 17-21
• 22-26
• 27-31
• 32 and over

2. What gender are you?

Female      or       Male

3. Whats your favourite film genre (type of film)?

Horror

Comedy

Action

Gangster 

Romantic

4. Whats your favourite sub genre of horror? Confinement (where they're trapped) or Pursuit (where they are chased)

Confinement     Pursuit

5. How often do you watch films?

Never     Rarely      Sometimes      Frequently

6. Do you own more than 1 DVD? If yes; whats the main genre?

Yes   No

7. What was the last film you watched?

8. How much would you be willing to spend on watching a film?

£5 and under    £6-8    £9 and over

9. Whats your favourite actress and actor?

10. Whats your favourite film? and why?

The Devil's Backbone- Opening sequence analysis

The Devi's Backbone     

Released 2002

Directed by: Guillermo Del Torro 

The film is set in a remote Spanish orphanage during the Spanish civil war, it's about a spirit called 'Santi' that brutally terrorises the children. As the film builds up the children start to learn about how 'Santi' died and how they get vengeance on his murder. 

• The DVD cover immediately suggests horror from the dark image that gives off an eerie atmostphere. The picture denotes a man holding a gun with a white blurred image overlapping him, this could connote that a spirit is involved in the film and normally this means something bad is going to happen. The font used is written in red and this could connote blood, it also looks like a persons handwriting, so it could be suggesting that it is wrote by someone with blood, this connotes violence and death. The title has the word 'devil' in it, this connotes to the audience that the devil is involved, and the devil is always associated with violence and torture. 
• During the first 10 seconds of the film, a creep is used to slowly zoom in on a hallway that is dark. A voiceover then asks 'what is a ghost?'. The creep causes tension within the audience as you expect something to happen, also the use of a rhetorical question allows the audience to feel involved in the film, and to actually think about what ghosts are. 
• The scene then goes on to show a bird's eye view of a dark city with a bomb being dropped on it. The bomb that is dropped feels like it is coming from where you are sitting and this connotes you are very close to the enemy and causes tension. The fact that the city is then covered by black shutters connotes that the film is not entirely based on the war, but it is happening whilst the film is being filmed. 
• The next scene we see is a creep to a young boy laying on the floor with an injury to his head, he is blinking so is not dead, a brick is next to him, this connotes that he could have been hit with a brick by someone or something, or he could have been a victim of the war. The use of a young boy immediately causes sympathy throughout the audience as children are seen as vulnerable, and many people watching could relate to how they would feel if their child every has to die alone in the darkness. 
• As the other character picks up the injured boys head, we are still on a close up of the boy, so all we see are hands, this makes the audience question who the other character is and whether he was the one who killed him, this makes the audience feel intrigued. The camera then moves up to a close up of the other character, and we see its another child with the boys blood on his hand crying. This connotes vulnerability, and suggests to the audience the film is going to be targeted on children and may be gruesome. 
• The scene slowly fades under dirty water, and a faint image of the boy tied in rope is shown, and he is sinking. The camera then tilts up to the other young character that perhaps pushed the boy in the water. For a split second a low shot is used to connote that the boy feels power, but then it moves into a middle shot to show him crying, and the audience realises that the boy feels no power at all, he just feels vulnerable and scared, and didn't push the boy into the water for hate reasons. 
• Throughout the whole of the opening sequence a classical instrumental is used in the background. This is stereotypical in many horrors as it builds up the tension, causes an eerie atmosphere and makes the audience feel uneasy. 

Treatment Feedback- Group 2

What conventions worked well? 

During the feedback from the class they said that the way we intend to challenge the conventions of a normal horror makes it different and more interesting. They also said our story line we are thinking about doing will be really good and has a lot of potential to make a good film. 

What would make your initial idea even better? 

As we are only in the very early stages of of getting our ideas together, we still need to do a lot more research into horror, this will give us more knowledge on the genre and this will make our film better. We also need to have a discussion as a group and figure out an idea for the first 2 minutes that we will stick to, so then we can develop on this idea. 

What will you do next? 

The next thing our group aims to do is to do a lot more research on the genre horror, and hopefully this will give us a better idea of things and we will feel more confident about producing a short clip. We also need to figure out the storyboard of our first 2 minutes, and then hopefully start filming. 

Horror Movie Research Powerpoint

http://www.scribd.com/doc/42752455/Media-Horror#

Peer Assessment

I presented my idea to my coursework group, my idea was ;

To start off with a man kissing his mum goodbye, and then as he walks out of the door he lights up a cigar and walks towards a group of men on the street corner. They then share some dialogue throughout their group about "did you get it done?" They all look the bar opposite and a man walks out of the bar and gets into his car, the car blows up. All of the street goes crazy and police sirens and ambulances are heard, but the group of men calmly walk away. 

What worked well? 

My group told me that they liked my idea because it shows that gangsters have a family life, and are not completely bad like most films portray them to be. It also suggests that there may be a reason behind why they are a gangster such as money problems in the family. They said that they thought it was well thought through and would be an effective opening to a film. 

Could it be even better?

They said that to make it even better I could have added in some classic religious music whilst the man was walking to the group of men, as this would have connoted that like stereotypical gangsters, he was actually religious. Also music tends to be more effective than silence in most cases. 

How is Gender represented in this 'A clubbabble woman' episode from Dalziel and Pacoe?

Gender is represented in various ways. One way is by the use of Mise-en-scene. The first setting we see is the men on a rugby pitch playing rugby, this immediatley connotes the masculine side of the men as rugby is known as a violent sport that involves a lot of contact. Also after the rugby match and many more times during the programme we see the men drinking a 'pint' in the pub. Drinking beer is associated with men, so this connotes the sterotypical man who likes to socialise in a pub and drink beer, also the bar is mainly filled with men with the odd woman that is flirting, this maybe suggests that men are the dominating gender. 

Gender is also represented through camera, the first shot we see is a close up, low angle of the men, this really shows the aggresivness in thier facial expressions and it also connotes the power they have.

Sound is used to represent gender because when the man comes home, you can hear non-digetic music and this connotes to the audience that the man is not feeling too good, but infront of all his mates he was acting like he was okay, this portrays the sterotypical man that feels he has to act hard in front of his friends, and can't show emotion. 

Prelim Editing

What was your role in the editing process? 

My role whilst editing was adding transitions and I also I cut out a scene that wasn't really needed. i also adjusted the audio on some of the clips. 

How you met the brief and edited 180 degree rule and match-on-action; 

Our group met the brief by creating a scene that started with a character walking through the door and ending with the characters leaving the scene. We failed to stick to the 180 degree rule and we noticed this whilst filming, the only time we failed to do this was when it was a close up of me Sean was on the right side of me filming when he should have been on the left side, and this could have caused confusion within the audience. We did match-on-action by cuttting a scene of Alban walking towards me and cut straight to him approaching me, this saved time and meant that the audience didnt have to watch 10 seconds of Alban just walking. 


What worked well and what could have been even better about your groups planning, filming and editing of the prelim?


I think my group worked really well together, we all listened to each other and let each other put in ideas and would always take them into account. I think it would have worked better if the two other members of our group were in, but this was something we was able to overcome and I don't think it effected our filming much. Whilst planning the prelim I think if me and Sean had taken more time to come up with a scene, we would have been able to think of a better idea then what we did. During filming we had to rush a bit because Alban stepped in for us and had his own group to focus on, but next time this can be easily solved because hopefully all of our members will be in. I think the editing part went really well for our group, and I don't think nothing could have been improved because we all put in ideas and tried our hardest to make the short scene look good.

Prelim- group 4

Prelim Filming

We chose our location by thinking about an appropriate place for a couple to go when they wanted a serious talk. The only place I could think of was either over dinner/ lunch or in a park. We both came to a conclusion that a park would be a good idea as the playground in our school looked like a park, so we chose a bench in the school's playground to film our scene. 


We filmed the 180 degree rule by Sean always sticking to the left side unless he was filming the reverse shot. We also did the match-on action rule by cutting some parts that we not necessary, for example whilst Alban was walking towards me we cut it so it didn't take up too much time, we then made sure the shot after followed on smoothly so people were unaware we made a cut. 


We adapted our initial idea quite a bit. One main thing we had to adapt to was that two members from our groups were absent so we had to ask around for anyone to act in our piece, as there was only two of us, Alban offered to help us and became the boy in our short scene. We also added some shots in whilst we was filming because we felt they made the story more clear and more effective, for example we added a shot in of Alban throwing the ring on the floor, to make sure the audience were definitely clear that he was going to ask me to marry him. We also added a pan into a shot because it made it flow more than always stopping and starting. 

Task 2- November

I need to learn the shot types well because I tend to forget them. I aim to reach this target by December. 

Target 1- September

Give more specific examples and write in more detail. 


I think I am working towards this target and I'm almost there, I find it hard to write in more detail but I am slowly improving. 

Half Term Homework

Desperate Housewives

Who made the show?

It was created by Marc Cherry

What channel is is played on?

It is played on E4.

What time is it on?

It is on at 10 oclock, but repeats at 11.

What is the sub genre?

The sub genre is comedy.

Who is the target audience?

The target audience is mainly woman ranging from teenagers to elderly people.

What is the narrative?

It shows a group of woman living in a neighbour hood and it follows thier life through the eyes of a dead neighbour. 

Who/what is being represented?  

Woman and husbands are being represented. 

1/11/10 Prelim Task

-  Our prelim task was to create a scene that involved two people, which one would walk through a door to meet the other person. The scene would then end with a character leaving. 

- The two rules we had to demonstrate were the 180 degree rule and the match of action rule. The 180 degree rule is when the camera cannot move anywhere out of the half circle around the action, as this prevents confusion within the audience. The match of action rule is when you can cut in the middle of scene but you have to make sure it follows on and looks like one big scene. 

- A summary of my initial scene was to have a boy and a girl in a park. The boy is planning to ask the girl to marry him but the girl thinks he is about to brake up with her, so she brakes up with him first. 

Devon and Sean's script

Girl is sitting on the bench.
Boy is round the corner looking at the ring.
Extreme close up of the ring.
He smiles then and closes the box and puts it in his pocket and walks through the door to meet her.
Girl stands up and asks.


Girl: (thinking... I knew this wouldn’t last, he is finally going to brake up with me, I really thought he loved me.)
Girl looks very sad. High angle middle shot of the girl looking very sad.
Girl: What did you want to talk about?
Reverse shot 1
Boy: I think you need to sit down.
Reverse shot 2
Girl: No I think you need to sit down.
Reverse shot 3
Boy: Ok, but we really need to talk about something serious, ive given it a lot of thought Devon and I feel like today is the right day to finally get it off my chest.
Boy looking unusually awkward. Middle shot high angle to show how weak he looks.
Girl: (thinking...oh my god he is actually braking up with me)
Close up of her face.
Girl: You know what, I need to say something first (stands up) I don’t feel like this is working between us, I think its best if we brake up, I’m sorry.
Boy: Your braking up with me?
Girl: Well you obviously thought it wasn’t working. (walks away)


Boy gets ring out of his pocket and looks at it, and then slowly walks away.

Risks and Benefits of using the internet- Devon and Solomon

DVD Cover Convention

Coventions:
-Title
-Image of characters
-'DVD' logo
-Bar code
-Front and back cover and spine
-Synopsis
-Reviews/Ratings

1. The DVD cover dennotes that the genre of the film is Sci-Fi, we can connote that the sub genre of the film is action and thriller because this is dennoted through quotes and the synopsis.

2. People, places and events are represented by being dennoted on the front cover in the centre. Also small screenshots are dennoted on the back cover. We can connote from the synopsis what sort of events are going to happen and where abouts they might take place.

3. The DVD cover dennotes the names of some production companies, this connotes that they were involved in producing the film.

4. The target audience are denoted through the synopsis as it appeals to people who enjoy horror thriller genre films, however the front cover connotes an action thriller film, so it could also be appealing to people who enjoy action films.