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.