Friday 1 April 2011

Our Media Film!!


This is the final completed film, editing done, special effects on, music on and fully completed!

Enjoy!

The script of our film-Written by Rabbi

Voices: Script
Key: 
 (.) - pause (however many seconds)
 ** - stage directions and camera movements
# - any sounds made e.g. muffling or mumbling
A little video flash of faces of everybody involved.

Scene 1
*beep, beep, beep, beep* alarm clock goes off (5.59am)

*Joe’s (killer) hand reaches out to turn alarm off*

*camera screen opens up as if an eye is opening from darkness to light*

Joe: # light grunting and yawn #

*Two feet come down on floor and slide into slippers*

*Pan up to show the Joes body as he is walking but we don’t show his face (tracking shot used)*

*Camera is showing Joe’s point of view*

*camera turns and moves towards bathroom whilst grabbing a hoodie and putting it on, covering half his face*

*now camera moves into audiences view and shows half his face with expressionless ‘evil’ grin in the mirror*

*Walks up to cork board (in bathroom) and crosses one more photo out with a big ‘X’*

RedXProductions.

Scene 2

*Jenny and Olivia walk into living room of Olivia’s house*

Olivia: Well, this is my house, make yourself comfortable

Jenny: Thanks, where are your parents?

Olivia: They’re out for a while

Jenny: Oh, I see (2) wow you really have some kind view in the back garden don’t you?

*Jenny looks out the window and glares at the gloomy forest area behind the house, and a close up on the locket around her neck*

Olivia: Huh? (1) Yeah, I guess so; don’t really notice to be honest

Jenny: You’re brave, living here and not being frightened of something coming to get you (2) *does uneasy laugh* I wouldn’t have the guts, ha

Olivia: Oh come on, I don’t believe in all that rubbish

*Jenny cannot help herself but to look out the window as her mind wanders off into the forest*
Olivia: Jenny? (2) Jenny? Hello? What are you looking at?

Jenny: Oh (1) uh, nothing

Olivia: Oh, well I’m very tired so I’ll snooze for a while, there’s food in the kitchen, so you know help yourself

Jenny: Oh, Um, Ok I guess? *now has a concerned face, but just sits down as she watches Olivia gently nod off into a deep sleep*

*Jenny is bored and wonders what she could do as her friend sleeps, she walks into the kitchen and notices the back door is open. She goes to close it, as she does she hears some voices calling her, she looks back thinking it could be Olivia but realises Olivia is still asleep (quick shot showing Olivia asleep). She looks in front of her again, now the door is open fully but as far as she remembers she didn’t even touch the handle.  Again Jenny hears voices calling; she steps outside to see who or what it is. Jenny follows the voices continuously without realising that she is walking deeper and deeper into the forest.*

Jenny: Olivia is that you?

Jenny: Who’s there? *in a restless and scared voice*

Voices: Jenny... Jenny... Jenny... *whispers carry on and drag her more into the forest*

Jenny: Seriously, whoever is playing a joke just stop because I will find you!

#twig snaps#

*jenny turns in horror*

*camera shows close up on Jenny’s eyes and speedily zooms out*

*Jenny’s eyes wide open, not blinking, she is speechless*

Jenny: who...who *barely getting a word out, she is so terrified*

Joe: Hello Jenny I’ve waiting for you

*camera shows a shot of Joe, he is stood there with a mirror shard in his hand*

Jenny: *screams*

*jenny runs as fast as possible while the killer is running after her*

*Jenny runs into the house, screams start to take over any other sound, this is when a flash of Olivia’s face is shown, close up, she is fidgeting, restless, flash of Jenny running upstairs, flash of Olivia, flash of Jenny and then continuing like this for a while*

Jenny: *screams for her life* please, please, don’t kill me, I beg of you, please! *cries*

Joe (Killer): It’s too late for begging now Jenifer! *does hysterical laugh*

Jenny: But, but, I don’t...aaaaa no! *cries* Olivia wake up! Wake up Olivia! Somebody help me!

*Killer gets of Jenny, Olivia’s face is flashed, then back to close up of killers face as he brutally cuts parts of jenny’s body*

*Olivia is now shown very restless and uncomfortable and she is wanting to break away from this dream but it's as if something is holding her down and forcing her to see all this*

*flashing back to Jenny’s body as it is being pulled into the mirror that stands against a wall, Jenny’s hand clawing against the floor*

*Olivia hears a very loud smash of glass; this breaks her out of her dream. Olivia is in a state of shock, she is panting and gasping for breath, until she realise jenny is gone. Olivia pounces up and starts frantically looking around for Jenny, this is when she starts hearing those same whispering voices, they force Olivia to walk upstairs.*

Olivia: Jenny? *nearly starting to cry* Jenny? Oh God Jenny where are you? Please tell me this is some kind of  a joke.

*Olivia is starting to get really worried now*

*She slowly steps up the stairs, eyes alert for anything suspicious, although still all she can her are those eerie voices taunting her and calling her name*

*Olivia then walks into her parents bedroom and to her terror she sees the most unexpected thing*

*Blood and pieces of mirror glass is spread everywhere in the room, the walls, the floor, the bed covers*

Olivia: *screams, drops to the floor and just stares at what is in front of her, she breaks down and cries 
constantly*

*Her eyes follow the trail of blood and smashed pieces of glass (P.O.V shot)that is leading towards the mirror, which also to her surprise is completely fine, not even a scratch on it*

*Olivia then notices something shining on the floor near the mirror, she stands and walks to it, as she gets closer she realises what it is and picks it up. It’s Jenny’s locket. Olivia stares at it while her eyes fill up with tears, then she looks up at the mirror and sees a horrifying reflection of  Jenny, all covered in cuts and blood, eyes trying to tell her something but Olivia can’t really make it out. Olivia looks back and sees nothing and when she turns back to look at the mirror she screams.....*

The End.

Voices. 

Brief notes on the music in our film


This is notes that Naomi made on the music that is going to be in our film, the music was done by her brother Matt Lewis, that means that we don't have to worry about copyrighted musci, because everything in our film is original and by Matt

Thursday 31 March 2011

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (I.e. of film openings)

There are a lot of forms and conventions of horror films, such as:
-Ghosts
-Darkness
-loud/creepy noises
-Murder
-blood
-haunted houses
-Vampires


I have mentioned other horror conventions in previous posts, some of them being the same to what i have mentioned above, but there are many others that i haven't mentioned, but i have picked out some that i think are most obvious when you think of horror movies and what you would expect to find in them. 

During the process of making our film i have had to watch clips and trailers of horror movies, which is something i didn't really enjoy because i don't like horror movies, because of the simple and obvois fact that they are scary and they stick in my mind for a long time after i have watched them, so i don't let myself get into that situation, but for this i managed to watch a few clips and one horror movie right the way through.
I have watched:
-A clip of the movie Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock
-The beginning of the remake of Psycho by Gus Van Sant
-The opening scene to Scream by Wes Craven
-The horror film, The Grudge 3

The clip from Psycho-


The trailer for the 1998 remake of Psycho that I watched the beginning of-


The opening scene to scream that I watched-


The trailer for the Grudge 3, which I have watched all of-

Psycho and scream are definitely two movies that are either based around or have an element of psychological factors, in terms of playing with the mind, which is a convention of horror films that we wanted to have in our film. In our film 'voices' the character Jenny starts hearing the voices when she is walking around Olivia's house, this is similar to when the main character in 'Scream' is on the phone and the voice on the other end is talking to her and threatening her but she doesn't know who he is, this is the same with Jenny, she doesn't know where these voices are coming from or who is saying them. 





Relating to the film 'Psycho' Our killer is similar to Norman Bates, in terms of his psychological state of mind, Norman Bates character has taken a split personality and acts out as his own Mother, who he in fact killed in a fit of jealously, which is found out during the movie. Our Killer, Joe is a normal person who is taken over by the voices, and they make him kill people, this is similar to him having another personality, except the only difference is, he isn't aware that he has been possessed by the voices, whereas Norman Bates knows what he is doing. 


Although i haven't watched the whole movie Psycho (the original or the re-make) i will add the trailer for the original as well:


7. Looking back at the preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

During the process of this media project i think that every member of our group has come a long way in terms of experience and knowledge in the field of film making, and this all started when we had a media lesson with Micheal Schillinger in which we were given a tape, a video camera and a scene in which to film creating a story and making the audience really interested in the action, by using different camera techniques. I will talk about how that went below

Our first attempt at filming:
After being given a basic scene to film, we went away and thought about how to use the camera to get different reactions from the audience, and how to communicate clearly what emotions were being felt by the characters. After filming this we got feedback and then were told how to improve it and what we needed to change in order to do this.

Our second attempt at filming:
This time we took on board what Mr.Schillinger had said to us and we tried our best to add that into our little scene, we had a few moments that made the scene look like it was moving to quickly, and we had others when it was moving to slowly, but overall we were told that it had in fact improved from our first attempt because we managed to get right into the action and emotion of the characters.

Our preliminary Task:
For this we had to demonstrate:
-Match on action
-shot reverse shot
- 180 degree rule

Earlier on in my blog i added some videos off YouTube that we watched in the classroom to help us to understand what these techniques were, as it is difficult to verbalize what they all are and how they are achieved. I will put these videos up again to make it easier for you to see what we watched rather than having to look back at previous posts to find them.

Match on action-
This 2 second long video is a good example of what match on action is

Shot reverse shot-
This video shows many different camera techniques but we watched it mainly to see some shot reverse shots between the two characters

180 Degree Rule-
The 180 degree rule was probably the technique that most people in the class found it hard to understand, but this video shows clearly what it is, and after watching it we all felt confident that we knew how to add it into our preliminary task


Continuity is something that all movie makers and directors have to be aware of, and when filming our preliminary task, we had moments where we had to re-do a certain part and as i was acting in it i tried to not move my body dramatically, to avoid my hand being on one part of the table in one shot, and at another point in a next shot after that, that would take away the reality of the action and make the editing stand out, so i concentrated on making sure that didn't happen. 

When doing the editing, Naomi learnt various techniques such as using a green screen to change the background in a scene, we used this in our film when Jenny is looking out of the window in Olivia's house. For the story of our film Olivia's house is right next to a forest which is where she encounters the killer, but obviously my actual house isn't next to a forest so we had to film Attenborough nature reserve first and then edit it into the scene to make it look as if there was a forest outside the house. When i first saw this in our film i thought it looked really good and i was happy with what Naomi had achieved.





2. How does our media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product represents the teenage youth culture, all of the characters included in the horror opening are the same age as what our intended target audience are, which is the age of around 16-20. There is nobody in the film that isn't within these ages. This makes sure that the target audience (of the same age) are able to relate to the characters that they see, because they are the same age they know roughly what the person has been through in thier life so far. Having the audience being able to relate to the characters means that the audience can immediatly sympathize with the characters and then they don't want anything bad to happen to them. We also have a characters reacting in a way that we think our target audience would react if they were in same situation as the characters; adults would react differently to teenagers, and so would small children or old people, and so for the audience again to relate to what is going on we have the charcaters reacting in a particular way so that when watching the film the target audience will be thinking "That is how i would react aswell!" because if we had the characters reacting the way and old person would then the audience would think "You wouldn't do that if you're being chased by a killer!! i wouldn't do that!!" and they then would think that the representation of teenagers was inaccurate, whcih would cause them to dislike the film.

What fonts did we use?

Naomi chose a range of fonts that she thought would be good to use for our film, taking into consideration the horror genre, and which fonts would best suit that. Then she bought them in to show us and we all said which one we liked best and then chose the one which had the most votes.

Font for subtitles and credits-






In the end we chose:
Dotum Che


We all agreed that the simplicity of this one made it perfect for putting it into our film, it is very plain, and has slight gaps between the letters, which to me brings a sense of mystery and for some reason reminds me of ghosts and the paranormal, which is a good thing considering that both those things are associated with horror and horror movies.

Fonts for the title: 


This font is similar to that of the font that we chose to have for our subtitles and credits. The similarity being that it is very simple and the letters are spaced out. I do like this font, but in a way it is a bit too similar to the other one to have it for the main title, it might look as if we actually used the same one, therefore looking as if we didn't look into other fonts. 
This font wasn't one that we looked at and thought 'yes that would be good to use' because it doesn't immediately scream out 'use me in a horror film' it says 'use me in a sci-fi film' but it would relate to the clock that we have at the beginning of the film, because this font is the same as what is shown on a digital clock, but for the overall film it just wasn't right.

When we saw this one we instantly thought how good it looked! the letters vary in size and the detail on them resembles a decaying house in a way, falling to pieces, maybe a bit old and dusty. as opposed to the previous font, this one does leap out as a font that would be used in a horror film, but Naomi thought that the font had too much going on and that it might be better if we had something a little simpler, and we agreed with what she thought, and i then added the comment of "Less is more" which pretty much sums up the effect we were looking for, which means that this font also wasn't right despite it being a very good font for horror, just not for ours.
This is the font that we decided to use in the end! after seeing it in the finished product it looked right and fit in perfectly with the action and the overall mood of the film. i like how the letters are quite tall and very close together, it isn't as simple as the font we used for our subtitles and credits, but it hasn't got lots going on either, it is just right, which is why we used it. I am really happy that we ended up using this font!