For my final piece of media, in a group of 2 I created a 2 minute piece to show the start of a film. My group was just myself and
Lucy Ballance, we decided on the genre of a tense and exciting thriller, with a twist of lust and murder as we thought this would
be the most fun and easier to conduct the Mise-En-Scene. Our plot was of a young man who is a serial killer, and his victims being
his helpless girlfriends. He preys on his victims, moving in with them treating them as any other boyfriend would then all of a
sudden on a 'dark eery night', he brutally murders them.
To start the whole process we firstly came up with the genre, and mind maped it to come up with every possible story or type of
direction we wanted to go with, once having the brief idea in our heads we made a story board, wrote up a plot, a pitch and a
synopsis ready to present to Miss Cate and Mrs Parish in a 15 minute briefing, and once we had the go ahead we was given
permission to have a camera and tripod. We filmed the majority of the piece at Lucy's house, as she had the classic village-
looking house with a huge wooden door and ivy all over the face of the house with is great connotations of a mystery murder type
setting we was hoping to go for. So we had our set, our camera, actors and idea, we was set to go. We used just 3 actors, Lucy -
one of Dave's victims and Thom who was to play 'Dave' our serial killer and Alice who was to play our 'Innocent Outsider', on the
day of filming we started quite late into the evening as we wanted it to be dark outside to go along with the plot, and to make it
feel as extra eery for the viewers.The first problem that occurred to us on the day of filming was that the camera was out of battery so out came extension lead after
extension lead so we could plug the camera into the mains to keep it going. After that we did have a few problems with filming,
we knew the camera angles we wanted to use, and what we wanted to film, but when it came to actually filming we found that the
camera angles and the way we wanted to make it look didn't really come out as expected so the scene where thom attacks Lucy
had to be changed, instead of Thom's character 'Dave' coming up behind Lucy and attacking her, with the camera shot being a
close up of him with the mobile in his hand, we made it so the mobile was on the side board and Thom simply walked closer into
the frame, instead of us zooming in on him. But apart from that small scene we were able to do as we wanted. It was just the matter
of getting it looking as professional and smooth as we could make it, it all lasted a couple of hours, and done take after take so
we had lots to work with when editing. The type of camera shots we used were, long shot along with panning for when we had
Lucy cycling into the drive way, and from in the kitchen looking out of the window to see her walking past. Over the shoulder for
when Lucy is walking through the door of the garden and also when she's walking from the kitchen into the living room. Medium
shot, extreme close-up and close-up - for these shots we used the close-up and extreme close-up to exaggerate certain
conventions within a scene such as the mobile phone, and Lucy's expression to make it more tense and keep the timing of it as
paced as we could so we built up the tension leading to the attack scene. To show this more accurately we marked on a
storyboard Lucy and I drew to show the different shots and sections of the short film, there were 24 in all, which can be seen on
my blog. Although the filming went okay, when it came down to editing we found that some of the shots (even after being edited) just
didn't work, the plot of the film was very confusing and was hard to understand. So we had to make some big changes. Our
original idea was to have the killer walking out of the house, pretending to be Lucy to trick the watching 'Outsider' but when we
saw this it was too unclear so we had to cut that whole part out and we ended up with cutting the last scene into the attack in a
sort of freeze frame shot. We also wanted an ending where we would have subtitles after the action, just like they did in the James
Bond films, and our original idea was to have the titles in newspaper format, but we decided against this and had them just as a
plain black background with music which gave a great effect to add to the tension of the start of the film.
Over all the look we wanted for the film, was a typical horror/thriller which would be aimed at adults or older teenagers so
definitely the 15 certificate. We wanted it to be that typical movie, that young adults go on for first dates, or something the lads
could go and see or the girls could go and squeal to their hearts content at, its most definitely not aimed at smaller children. So
that's what kind of audience we wanted the film to be aimed at, nothing to be taken too seriously but also scary enough so you
don't sleep in the dark for a few days, and watch your back. Something to give you a chill. Although in those type of films, they
are about teenagers themselves, like the typical 'I know what you did last summer' but our film was based around characters
slightly older, and in relationships ready to settle down maybe, which can be seen as a juxtaposition. The piece is a post
modernist piece also, because you wouldn't say imagine your Grandma or Grandad going to see a film, about their physco
boyfriend hacking the life out of his girlfriend. The kind of institution that would probably distribute our film, would be a institution that does very over-the-top, very publicized,
big up the movie that probably isn't as great as the trailer you see, it looks great from out side the box but once you get in, it isn't
as great..and has been done a hundred times before. It's just a bit of freaky fun. So fairly big institutions which don't mind
spending a bit of money on a profitless, not awarding winning films like 'The Outsider' would probably distribute the film. I think
its like this with a lot horror films, such as The Ring, Disturbia, The Haunting In Connecticut, every year at least a chilling horror
comes out, but never really gets much recognition, and hardly has any major film stars set as the cast. We used the idea of having the action right at the beginning of the film to draw the audience in straight away, if the audience
know its going to be a horror movie then, with an action piece right from the start should have them hooked. Unlike a lot of horror
movies which build up, we had our action right from the beginning, not only to create tension but to get them wondering what was
going to happen in the rest of the film, and to get them asking the question why?.Looking back at my preliminary task, I think I've learnt with my partner Lucy is to take it all more seriously, and to take it slowly
and not to rush just to get it finished. With a bit of tender loving care we changed our rubbish piece into something actually
watchable, after editing and some worth while critique from our peers such as fixing some scene layout and a inevitable plot.
Lucy Ballance, we decided on the genre of a tense and exciting thriller, with a twist of lust and murder as we thought this would
be the most fun and easier to conduct the Mise-En-Scene. Our plot was of a young man who is a serial killer, and his victims being
his helpless girlfriends. He preys on his victims, moving in with them treating them as any other boyfriend would then all of a
sudden on a 'dark eery night', he brutally murders them.
To start the whole process we firstly came up with the genre, and mind maped it to come up with every possible story or type of
direction we wanted to go with, once having the brief idea in our heads we made a story board, wrote up a plot, a pitch and a
synopsis ready to present to Miss Cate and Mrs Parish in a 15 minute briefing, and once we had the go ahead we was given
permission to have a camera and tripod. We filmed the majority of the piece at Lucy's house, as she had the classic village-
looking house with a huge wooden door and ivy all over the face of the house with is great connotations of a mystery murder type
setting we was hoping to go for. So we had our set, our camera, actors and idea, we was set to go. We used just 3 actors, Lucy -
one of Dave's victims and Thom who was to play 'Dave' our serial killer and Alice who was to play our 'Innocent Outsider', on the
day of filming we started quite late into the evening as we wanted it to be dark outside to go along with the plot, and to make it
feel as extra eery for the viewers.The first problem that occurred to us on the day of filming was that the camera was out of battery so out came extension lead after
extension lead so we could plug the camera into the mains to keep it going. After that we did have a few problems with filming,
we knew the camera angles we wanted to use, and what we wanted to film, but when it came to actually filming we found that the
camera angles and the way we wanted to make it look didn't really come out as expected so the scene where thom attacks Lucy
had to be changed, instead of Thom's character 'Dave' coming up behind Lucy and attacking her, with the camera shot being a
close up of him with the mobile in his hand, we made it so the mobile was on the side board and Thom simply walked closer into
the frame, instead of us zooming in on him. But apart from that small scene we were able to do as we wanted. It was just the matter
of getting it looking as professional and smooth as we could make it, it all lasted a couple of hours, and done take after take so
we had lots to work with when editing. The type of camera shots we used were, long shot along with panning for when we had
Lucy cycling into the drive way, and from in the kitchen looking out of the window to see her walking past. Over the shoulder for
when Lucy is walking through the door of the garden and also when she's walking from the kitchen into the living room. Medium
shot, extreme close-up and close-up - for these shots we used the close-up and extreme close-up to exaggerate certain
conventions within a scene such as the mobile phone, and Lucy's expression to make it more tense and keep the timing of it as
paced as we could so we built up the tension leading to the attack scene. To show this more accurately we marked on a
storyboard Lucy and I drew to show the different shots and sections of the short film, there were 24 in all, which can be seen on
my blog. Although the filming went okay, when it came down to editing we found that some of the shots (even after being edited) just
didn't work, the plot of the film was very confusing and was hard to understand. So we had to make some big changes. Our
original idea was to have the killer walking out of the house, pretending to be Lucy to trick the watching 'Outsider' but when we
saw this it was too unclear so we had to cut that whole part out and we ended up with cutting the last scene into the attack in a
sort of freeze frame shot. We also wanted an ending where we would have subtitles after the action, just like they did in the James
Bond films, and our original idea was to have the titles in newspaper format, but we decided against this and had them just as a
plain black background with music which gave a great effect to add to the tension of the start of the film.
Over all the look we wanted for the film, was a typical horror/thriller which would be aimed at adults or older teenagers so
definitely the 15 certificate. We wanted it to be that typical movie, that young adults go on for first dates, or something the lads
could go and see or the girls could go and squeal to their hearts content at, its most definitely not aimed at smaller children. So
that's what kind of audience we wanted the film to be aimed at, nothing to be taken too seriously but also scary enough so you
don't sleep in the dark for a few days, and watch your back. Something to give you a chill. Although in those type of films, they
are about teenagers themselves, like the typical 'I know what you did last summer' but our film was based around characters
slightly older, and in relationships ready to settle down maybe, which can be seen as a juxtaposition. The piece is a post
modernist piece also, because you wouldn't say imagine your Grandma or Grandad going to see a film, about their physco
boyfriend hacking the life out of his girlfriend. The kind of institution that would probably distribute our film, would be a institution that does very over-the-top, very publicized,
big up the movie that probably isn't as great as the trailer you see, it looks great from out side the box but once you get in, it isn't
as great..and has been done a hundred times before. It's just a bit of freaky fun. So fairly big institutions which don't mind
spending a bit of money on a profitless, not awarding winning films like 'The Outsider' would probably distribute the film. I think
its like this with a lot horror films, such as The Ring, Disturbia, The Haunting In Connecticut, every year at least a chilling horror
comes out, but never really gets much recognition, and hardly has any major film stars set as the cast. We used the idea of having the action right at the beginning of the film to draw the audience in straight away, if the audience
know its going to be a horror movie then, with an action piece right from the start should have them hooked. Unlike a lot of horror
movies which build up, we had our action right from the beginning, not only to create tension but to get them wondering what was
going to happen in the rest of the film, and to get them asking the question why?.Looking back at my preliminary task, I think I've learnt with my partner Lucy is to take it all more seriously, and to take it slowly
and not to rush just to get it finished. With a bit of tender loving care we changed our rubbish piece into something actually
watchable, after editing and some worth while critique from our peers such as fixing some scene layout and a inevitable plot.
