Wednesday, 2 December 2009
Questionnaire to target audience and evaluation of results
ResultsQuestionnaire Results
Male- 14
Female- 26
1-9 10-20 21-30 31-40 41-50 51+
0 28 3 2 6 1
Once a month- 16
Twice a month- 10
Once a week- 2
Other- 12
Horror- 10
Comedy- 12
Romance- 3
Sci-fi- 2
Adventure- 7
Fantasy- 1
Rom-com- 2
Action- 2
War- 1
What is your favourite genre and why?
A lot of people voted for horror films and the reason for this was because they like the thought of being scared. There were also a number of people who voted for comedy because they like being entertained and they like a laugh. Adventure films are popular as they are interesting to watch and grab the audience’s attention. However the majority of the questionnaires were from the females.
Who would you go to the cinema with? Does it change what genre of film you see?
Out of the males, some went with friends, however it was common for them to go with close family members. This reflects their ages because they’re family like wives and children. Where as half of females mostly go with friends. As an overall most questionnaires said that whoever people go with has an effect of what they see.
What is your favourite horror and why?
The results show that most people have stated that they enjoy films that have an interesting solid story line, because they are not just about death or gore yet they keep the audience interested. The majority also like films that give the sense that it could really happen to you.
Describe what you look for in an opening scene of a horror film and why?
There were many different views about what people look for but an idea about what the film is going to be about, but without giving too much away, was the most apparent. There was also popularity in being introduced to charters as well as the actors playing them. Background knowledge also came up a lot. In the editing scene scary music was well-liked as was flashbacks.
Textual of opening sequences from the Horror Genre
Within the first few seconds of the opening sequence of the strangers there is a black screen with super imposed writing. Shortly after this is shown a non-diegetic voice appears and begins to read out what the super imposed writing says. As the super imposed visual continues the writing changes and gives the viewer a brief description about the year this happened where, but still with a non-diegetic voice over. Just after the first minute of the film has gone the viewer begins to hear a diegetic sound of an engine being turned on and the medium long shot fades in from black and begins to reveal a street with a row of houses. This shot is establishing the location but it is not yet clear where this is. Once again the shot fades out and then back in from black and begins to reveal some more houses. Each shot within this opening sequence is shot with natural light and as the shots carry on it starts to reveal to the viewer that the sun is slowly setting and is slowly becoming dark. This carries on for another 30 seconds and we then begin to hear a diegetic sound of a police scanner. The screen slowly fades to black as we hear a woman crying down the scanner but once again the shot fades in from black revealing a car with a smashed in window and two children standing in between the hole, this appears to be a long shot and this shot is establishing something that has happened. This is now where to film begins to start.
Recent films from the horror Genre
Directed by
Oren Peli
Produced by
Steven Schneider, Jason Blum
Written by
Oren Peli
Starring
Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat
Editing by
Oren Peli
Distributed by
Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures
Release date(s)
United StatesOctober 14, 2007 (Screamfest Film Festival) January 18, 2008 (Slamdance Film Festival) September 25, 2009 (limited) October 16, 2009 (wide)
Running time
86 min.
Country
United States
Language
English
Budget
$15,000
Gross revenue
$107,255,151
Paranormal Activity is a 2007 American independent horror film written and directed by Oren Peli. It premiered at the Screamfest Film Festival in the US on October 14, 2007, and was shown at the Slamdance Film Festival on January 18, 2008. The film received a limited release in several US cities on October 9, 2009, and had a nationwide release on October 16, 2009.
The movie centers on a young couple, Katie and Micah, who are haunted by a supernatural presence in their home. The movie is presented using "found footage" from the camera set up by the couple to capture what is haunting them.
Directed by
Peter Cornwell
Produced by
Scott Niemeyer, Norm Waitt, Steve Whitney, Paul Brooks, Daniel Farrands, Phyllis Laing, Wendy Rhoads and Andrew Trapani
Written by
Adam Simon and Tim Metcalfe
Starring
Virginia Madsen, Kyle Gallner, Martin Donovan, Amanda Crew, and Elias Koteas
Studio
Gold Circle Films
Distributed by
LIONSGATE
Release date(s)
March 27, 2009
Running time
92 min.
Country
United States
Language
English
Gross revenue
$76,501,870
Followed by
The Haunting in New York
Set in 1987, the story centers on Matthew Campbell, who is being treated for Hodgkins lymphoma in a hospital in Upstate Connecticut. After seeing the effect the long commute has on Matt, his family rents a nearby house, which they learn was previously a funeral home. They discover a mortuary room in the basement and the family begins experiencing violent and supernatural events that the parents initially blame on stress and hallucinations from Matt's treatment. Matt also experiences visions from the perspective of a young man named Jonah. Matt contacts a minister he met at the hospital for assistance with his paranormal experiences. The minister informs Matt that the visions and supernatural encounters are likely a result of the previous occupant's occult activities. The Jonah character is discovered to be the ghost of a psychic medium involved in the previous owner's activities and presently bound to control the "spirits" within the house.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Haunting_in_Connecticut
History of the Horror genre
Horror Films are unsettling films designed to frighten and panic, cause dread and alarm, and to invoke our hidden worst fears, often in a terrifying, shocking finale, while captivating and entertaining us at the same time in a cathartic experience. Horror films effectively center on the dark side of life, the forbidden, and strange and alarming events. They deal with our most primal nature and its fears: our nightmares, our vulnerability, our alienation, our revulsions, our terror of the unknown, our fear of death and dismemberment, loss of identity, or fear of sexuality.
Whatever dark, primitive, and revolting traits that simultaneously attract and repel us are featured in the horror genre. Horror films are often combined with science fiction when the menace or monster is related to a corruption of technology, or when Earth is threatened by aliens. The fantasy and supernatural film genres are not synonymous with the horror genre, although thriller films may have some relation when they focus on the revolting and horrible acts of the killer/madman. Horror films are also known as chillers, scary movies, spook fests, and the macabre.
http://www.filmsite.org/horrorfilms.html
The reason our group decided to choose the horror genre is because, the majority of our target audience (which is teenagers) sees this genre of film the most. We also thought to do this because this is the type of film that we know the most about so we thought we would know what would make a gripping opening sequence but also we know what would scare us.
Group Meeting 1
Three girls are moving into a new flat, whilst they are walking in with all the boxes, a strange man is watching them- they don’t realise. When they get inside, they celebrate the move and listen to music. (Superimposed images) One of the girls walks back down the stairs to collect another box, she sees an old lady and she stops and talks to her about the flat that the girls are moving in to. The lady seems worried and makes a quick exit. The girl is left wondering. (At this point we will see superimposed image of the man standing over a girl at the bottom of the stairs) Back in the flat, the other two girls are still celebrating, one looks outside to see a man looking up at her, she alarms the other girl and they ignore him. The one who was by herself walks back into the flat to find the door left ajar, and the other two girls not there. She starts to worry and rings the two girls to find that they are not answering, it goes to answer machine. She hears the doorbell go and is reluctant to open it. When she does, it is the other two girls at the door then the door closes and the titles come up on a black screen.
Reasons for choosing the Horror Genre
As a group we choose to create an opening scene to the horror genre as we thought that what we knew the most about, the reason we think we know the most about this is because we know what would scare us and how it would so we decided to do this instead of a comedy. The reason for this is that everybody has a different type of humour and what our group might find funny other people might not.
We all like to watch horror films such as 'the strangers' and 'saw', they interest us as they are entertaining to watch and all have gripping yet scarey story lines.
Conventions of an opening sequence
Within the first few seconds of the opening sequence of the strangers there is a black screen with super imposed writing. Shortly after this is shown a non-diegetic voice appears and begins to read out what the super imposed writing says. As the super imposed visual continues the writing changes and gives the viewer a brief description about the year this happened where, but still with a non-diegetic voice over. Just after the first minute of the film has gone the viewer begins to hear a diegetic sound of an engine being turned on and the medium long shot fades in from black and begins to reveal a street with a row of houses. This shot is establishing the location but it is not yet clear where this is. Once again the shot fades out and then back in from black and begins to reveal some more houses. Each shot within this opening sequence is shot with natural light and as the shots carry on it starts to reveal to the viewer that the sun is slowly setting and is slowly becoming dark. This carries on for another 30 seconds and we then begin to hear a diegetic sound of a police scanner. The screen slowly fades to black as we hear a woman crying down the scanner but once again the shot fades in from black revealing a car with a smashed in window and two children standing in between the hole, this appears to be a long shot and this shot is establishing something that has happened. This is now where to film begins to start.
Sunday, 13 September 2009
AS Media Preliminary Task
Preliminary Exercise Brief:continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing the room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialog . this task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.
Continuity Definition:
Most productions have a script supervisor on hand whose job is to pay attention to and attempt to maintain continuity across the chaotic and typically non-linear production shoot. This takes the form of a large amount of paperwork, photographs, and attention to and memory of large quantities of detail, some of which is sometimes assembled into the story bible for the production. It usually regards factors both within the scene and often even technical details including meticulous records of camera positioning and equipment settings. The use of a Polaroid camera was standard but has since been replaced by the advent of digital cameras. All of this is done so that ideally all related shots can match, despite perhaps parts being shot thousands of miles and several months apart. It is a less conspicuous job, though, because if done perfectly, no one will ever notice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuity_(fiction)
Continuity Production Techniques:
Crossing the 180 degree axis can be very confusing since the directions established for the viewer is changed. An example of this would be like watching a football game with the runner going to the right and all of a sudden we cut to him running to the left. It would make the viewer wonder if he was running the wrong way or not.
Another aspect of the 180 degree axis is that the closer to the axis the camera is, the more the viewer's point of view resembles the characters, and thus he feels WITH the character. This encourages the important identification with the characters which viewers should feel.
Proper coverage close to the 180 Degree axis is this from THE MALTESE FALCON:
1) Show the character looking
2) Show what the character is looking at and;
3) Show the character's reaction to what he is seeing.
This is sometimes referred to as the "Kuleshov Effect" since Kuleshov was an early Russian film theorist who suggested that what the character saw would affect what the audience thinks the character is feeling. His example is showing someone looking at some FOOD would suggest he was hungry, or a BABY that he is loving. Thus the director puts emotion into the actor's expressions. Buster Keaton films are full of this, and Keaton could show with a blink an entire range of emotion.
A classic SHOT/REVERSE/SHOT is seen in the Wonderful film SHERLOCK JUNIOR.
Date: 07 September 2009
A match on action, a technique used in film editing, is a cut that connects two different views of the same action at the same moment in the movement. By carefully matching the movement across the two shots, filmmakers make it seem that the motion continues uninterrupted. For a real match on action, the action should begin in the first shot and end in the second shot.
It's difficult to visualize this without a real film in front of you, but a diagram may still be useful (sorry about the crude ASCII art). In the situation illustrated below, a person stands up from a sitting position.
Overhead: This overhead diagram illustrates the camera positions for the two shots (the cameras are denoted by the bracketed numbers; the person is the lozenge on the left; the dashed line is the axis of action). When the person begins to stand up, we see the action from the vantage point of camera 1. When the person has stood up quite a bit, we see the action from camera 2.
3 Point Lighting
Three lights: the Key Light, Fill Light, and Rim Light (also called Back Light), are adjusted to achieve the classic Hollywood lighting scheme called three-point lighting.
This GIF Animation shows the role of the 3 lights.
Here's how to set them up in your 3D scenes:
1. Start in Darkness. Make sure there are no default lights, and there's no global ambience. When you add your first light, there should be no other light in the scene.
2. Add your Key Light. The Key Light creates the subject's main illumination, and defines the most visible lighting and shadows. Your Key Light represents the dominant light source, such as the sun, a window, or ceiling light - although the Key does not have to be positioned exactly at this source.
Create a spot light to serve as the Key. From the top view, offset the Key Light 15 to 45 degrees to the side (to the left or right) of the camera. From a side view, raise the Key Light above the camera, so that it hits your subject from about 15 to 45 degrees higher than the camera angle.
The key light is brighter than any other light illuminating the front of the subject, is the main shadow-caster in your scene, and casts the darkest shadows. Specular highlights are triggered by the Key Light.
NOTE: Be sure to stop and do test-renders here. Your "one light" scene (with just the key light) should have a nice balance and contrast between light and dark, and shading that uses all of the grays in between. Your "one light" should look almost like the final rendering, except that the shadows are pitch black and it has very harsh contrast - see the GIF animation at the top of this page, while it only has the Key light visible.
3. Add your Fill Light(s). The Fill Light softens and extends the illumination provided by the key light, and makes more of the subject visible. Fill Light can simulate light from the sky (other than the sun), secondary light sources such as table lamps, or reflected and bounced light in your scene. With several functions for Fill Lights, you may add several of them to a scene. Spot lights are the most useful, but point lights may be used.
From the top view, a Fill Light should come from a generally opposite angle than the Key - if the Key is on the left, the Fill should be on the right - but don't make all of your lighting 100% symmetrical! The Fill can be raised to the subject's height, but should be lower than the Key.
At most, Fill Lights can be about half as bright as your Key (a Key-to-Fill ratio of 2:1). For more shadowy environments, use only 1/8th the Key's brightness (a Key-to-Fill ratio of 8:1). If multiple Fills overlap, their sum still shouldn't compete with the Key.
Shadows from a Fill Light are optional, and often skipped. To simulate reflected light, tint the Fill color to match colors from the environment. Fill Lights are sometimes set to be Diffuse-only (set not to cast specular highlights.)
4th November 2009
http://www.3drender.com/light/3point.html
Following this research on shot reverse shot, match on action and the 180' degree rule, i have learnt how to use this information to help with the filming of our 2 minute clip. I have learnt that there is a line through a room that you are filming in and that you should never cross it because it would make the viewer look like the actors are sitting in different seats. The shot reverse shot is where you film one person speaking and then switch to the character that is being spoken to with the same shot.
Shot List:
StoryBoard:
Location Recce:
Risk Assessment:
Mise-en-Scene:
Lighting- We will only be using the natural sunlight that comes through the big window, so we will have to film in the morning, possibly on a sunny day. If it is too dark we’ll use a small lamp.
Make-up and hair- Messy hair and no make up, as both characters will just have woken up.
Costume- Because the scene is set early in the morning, EMMA will be wearing pyjamas and TOM will of slept in his clothes.
Props- Around the flat will messy so we’ll need beer bottles, wine bottles; cigarette packets, lighters, bin liner, rubbish, a quilt cover.
Character Movement- At the beginning of the scene TOM has just woken up so he will be tired, EMMA is angry when she walks in but then at the end of the conversation TOM is frustrated.
Set design- The room will be a mess (Props) and TOM is asleep on the sofa. EMMA is sat on the other sofa and the rest of the furniture is as normal.
When we were designing the storyboard, location Recce and the shot list, it all went well, but as we were scanning everything in it was all faded so we had to go back to the sheets of paper and go over them again to make it bold and so that it can be seen easily. I think that the continuity worked well in our filming because our costumes were the same through every scene, also all of the props were never moved so it all flows well. The pre production documents helped us in our filming as we knew what sort of shots we needed to do and also our lines once we were filming, the script also gave us a good idea about how long to wait for the other people to speak and with the movement of each character.
During editing, we had to change the order of our original shots slightly due to our camera footage. We had to switch the shots around from where 'Tom' burys his head under the pillow, to the end once 'Emma' has stormed out of the room.
Once the editing for the post production was complete, we watched the short film through a few times and found some improvements that we could have made but also found some things that worked well. One of the improvements we had to make was that we had to create a new shot of the door when 'Emma' was speaking from out side the door, as we had made a cut shot in on 'Tom's' face. Also at the end of the film we had switch the shots around of 'Emma' leaving the room with 'Tom' burying his head under the duvet as the shot of 'Emma' leaving the room was cut off as she was in mid-air standing up.
The good things about the short film was that it all flowed and we kept to the 180 degree rule, also we kept to the match on action rule, we did this by doing a extreme close up on 'Tom' and then the same shot onto 'Emma's' face. While we were filming we used natural lighting as it was set in the morning and the sun is coming through the window lighting up everything in the room. If we had to shoot again and it was in the afternoon we would have had to use lamps, but if they were not bright enough we would have to use ceiling lights. The skills I personally have developed have been in how to set out a script properly but also how to set up a Storyboard. The one thing I don't understand what to use is the camera and how to set it all up as I was in the framing and not behind the camera.
As a team the whole group worked well together as we all did a equal amount of work and didn't leave it all down to one person. Also in the filming side of things Hannah and Natalie work quickly together and picked up the filming movements well. As me and Charley were acting
Over all the whole experience of creating the short film and the plans for the films went well, there were no major errors in the planning or the filming stage. So overall i enjoyed the filming and the planning stages as it was all reasonably simple and fun.
1940's Pictures
