Choice dilemma

Today when editing I came across three shots of the stalker looking at the girls, It was not a hard decision to choose one, a shot of the stalker looking at the girl and the video moving perfectly to the the left without any jolts or zoom (thanks to Ashleigh) which was the perfect shot, until I noticed one of the carrier bags that we had left on the other side of path were Jessica was walking, we had previously moved our bag when we were changing the angle of the shooting but we must have forgotten the carrier bag lying next to the rock. The mise-en-scene was not correct, and it did look odd amongst the rock but I liked this filming more than the other one:

Filming #1 - Camera on stalkers head, filmed for too long before we can see the girl walking past, when this happens camera moves to the left but the zooms into the girl losing focus of her.

Filming #2 - Camera showing the stalker looking out of the tree, good enough distance to show the girl walking past whilst the camera moves to the left neatly, long enough to see the girl until she is out of the shot.

Filming #3 - Stalker tilts their head to the left when girl walks past, the girl walks very slowly and turns around to see if someone is stalking her but accidently smiles when she notices the camera.


Filming 2 is the best shot, so I decided to grab a couple of people around me who were not in my group because they already knew. I asked Laura to see their reaction then I asked Ashleigh and Jessica to see if anybody had noticed it. When we showed them, I told them that there was something wrong with the shot and if anybody could notice it. They all said no, when explaining it they had realised but they had simply replied
'It looks like litter to me, they're common in the woods because people are always walking past throwing things'
we decided then to keep the shot, it was not a drastic change to the filming and the carrier bag did fit into the mise-en-scene, to us it did not because we knew it contained our school books in them.

Too much editing makes Rebecca wrinkly

Doing a lot of editing today with my group, it's going good but it's complicating! The hardest part of editing is deciding which parts of the filming that we have to delete, we have finally done this and now we're concentrating in maximising the voice over which was recorded by Jessica and Laura. We have saved every stage of what I am doing just in case I want to get back to the work that I had previously done. Have to finish some of the filming so we can finish everything. Already started the editing and we have finally downloaded the institution we have chosen which is paramount. Going to finish filming with Jessica, just the minor scenes which are still important, Should be finished soon so we can get feed back from my target audience. My group will be using a social networking site to find my feedback. Using Imovie and then going back to final cut express. Cutting scenes carefully so we can get the match on action right. There is a handy tool in final cut express to do that. Have to pad lock the visual scene so we do not have to delete any parts of that. Leaving spaces for the other filming to be done and carefully choosing the animation that we have to do. Having a lot of help from the group, Laura makes me delete the scene that we do not need and when I can't cope with it she takes over the job because she know what she is doing. Jessica is helping me know which part of the music is relevant in the scene and how to use the over voice. Ashleigh is helping me get the filming by getting the card out and downloading it. You can tell by the grammatical errors that I'm not concentrating on the post.
Need to get the title in, and the animation, will have to talk to the group about the animation. Editing is very hard, but is worthwhile. I will add print screens of the work I have done, but for now you can see the wrinkles I have gotten from the amount of time I have worked on the editing!

Having the time of my life, Should be worthwhile though.

Filming

Today we are going to go out shooting, Jess has picked a great location as to where we can do it which fits into our storyboard. We have decided to take two cameras out today as it will give us a range of shots. I will have one of the cameras to take close up shots and distances shots while Ashleigh will use the other camera to take establishing shots. Our leading lady, Jessica Seaney will get ready before we take the shot. Jessicas costume will be simple as she will play a part of a generic teenager who is being 'followed' but in the story she is seen as paranoid. Our other character, the stalker, played by Laura Wynne, will be wearing a plain black hoodie. We do not want to give the gender away so we picked a unisex colour but the dark hoodie will also symbolize the danger. We will not shoot Lauras face as we want it to be suspensful however another reason as to why we will not film her face is because we found that the make-up was over the top and did not fit into the convention of our psychological genre.

Title Ideas

In order to get our creative thinking flowing we had wanted to come up with a title idea, we did not want something to extravagant as it may put off the view, such as technical words that they may not understand, it has to make sense to our genre, for example- We have chosen a psychological thriller so we are not going it choose a title that would not make sense to the genre because it could be misleading, such as Love Stories, it's not a love story, nothing relatable so it should not be a title. It is these key details that are sometimes forgotten but are just as equally important. It will be the beginning of our opening so immediately we want out viewer to be hooked onto the opening that we are making.
We have all decided to make ideas of our title, the following ideas of title we have chosen to choose from are:
- Forgotten
- Unhinged
- Forget me not
- I do believe

We have immediately ruled out 'I do believe' as it seems like a fanatical title and would not fit into the genre as much, we have also got rid of the 'Forget me not' as it seems like a rom com, it can be put into a title but it depends on how the audience will take this into context, some may be confused by the title choice. So our final decisions that we have chosen is:

- Forgotten
- Unhinged

These seem like a good choice as it brings the audiences attention immediately and it relates to the ideas of our opening which I will explain in the next blog. I wanted the title simple, just a one worded title because it's eye catching and interesting. Our group have decided that these were the best title. In order to choose our final choice we have asked our target audience which they had preferred. The location to find the result was in school, we have asked 40 people, both gender in which title they had preferred.
The results of these were:
- Forgotten - 15    
- Unhinged - 25

Unhinged was the most popular, the feedback I had received were positive to a title that seemed like a negative one. These were the feedback:

"Unhinged seems like a interesting title choice, if I walked past it, I'd see it because I want to know what it is about."

"Forgotten seems mediocre, Unhinged seems different."

"I love the title forgotten, it's interesting and I would want to know what it is about."

"Unhinged is definitely my favourite."

Headings and Subheadings

When editing I have to make sure that these crucial titles are in our opening as it is in most of the opening that we have researched on, not just the psychological thriller but all of the different genre opening that we have looked at:

- Insitution, sound and picture
- Video transition, fade to black (optional)
- Insitution presents
- Production related to the insitution
- Cast names
- Music by
- Costume designer
- Production designer
- Editor
- Produced by
- Story by
- Directed by
- Titles of film

Under strict instructions we are not going to put 'Starring' this is because it is not modern, starring was used in very old films but they are not seen regularaly in movies. Starring can also effect and confuse the audience for the genre of the film. The word seems too upbeat for a psychological thriller and when I told my group this they did not agree and responded with 'you take analytical thinking too far'.

Clothing

 

For our clothing we have decided that we wanted to clothe the characters that would symbolise them, we do not have many characters in our play because for our 2 minute opening we did not want to overcomplicate however that does not mean we kept our opening simple, still using the convetions of a psychological thriller we decided to change parts in order to make our opening tense:

The Girl, SCENE 1- The girl in this scene will be washing her hands, we have not named the girl as we wanted her to be annoymous, the only clue is that she was bestfriends with a girl called Amy. We had wanted the girl not be dressed up but look like she is in the comforts of her own home. This scene is where the girl is having the daydream, our daydreamer will be played by Jessica. We did not want Jessica in her pyjamas as we will be shooting in the daytime, so we have decided to have her in an evening wear, just before the night but still links into the right time to be attacked. Instead of wearing her pyjamas, Jessica will be wearing her normal type of clothing or what a generic teenager will wear. We had decided she would wear a top with her favourite band on it. She will not be wearing any footwear and be barefoot because she's in the bathroom. However to show she is in the comfort of her own home her hair will be in a mess and she will have no make-up because she is cleaning her face. We will show the back bit of her body including her legs, she will be wearing legging/jeans, to represent the fact the she has been out and has come back in. However what we do not know is the time period between the daydream and the bathroom scene. We will keep this optional for the audience to decide on.
The clothing Jessica will wear will look like this:

Clothing that seems like she has come back from an outing.

The Girl, Daydream scene - In this scene we want to show that she is cold whilst being outside, which is the distraction and reasons she used for being paranoid, because she is not thinking straight due to the tempreture outside. Jessica will be wearing a coat, jeans and boots. She will also have a bag on her, a schoolbag but not a recognisable one. Just a simple satchel type of bag. We want to show the audience how vulnerable the teenage girl looks when walking back home. The coat will show that it is cold outside but will not have the hood up because we want the audience aware of the face. The jeans will be the same from the previous shot and the footwear will be boots because she is walking during the winter season, not heavy boots because there is no snow but black boots.
This is the clothing Jessica will be wearing for the filiming:

The Stalker- Our stalker will be played by Laura, during the shoot we had dressed her up in a black jacket with her hoodie up, this allows the target audience to wonder what gender the stalker will be, if it is a girl or boy. We decided to have a black hoodie because our scene will be in the wood amongst green leaves and bushes, trees and gates, the black hoodie will stand out as it is an unnatural colour in the woods, we could have chosen other colours but we did not want the clothing to be too bright as this could have made the target audience aware that the stalker would have been obviously seen by the girl if she was going to be wearing a bright red hoodie. We wanted the stalker to blend in but not to much, such as a camouflage. Also the colour black represents darkness which we thought was a good idea, if the stalker was to wear pink it would not fit the conventions of a psychological thriller unless there was a meaning behind the pink that the director had wanted to show. When filming Laura we wanted to only show the back of her body but just the top body build, we did not shoot the legs as that would have been a long distanst shot and we wanted the girl walking pass to be focus as well, I think this was for the better as we can see the movement of the stalker swiftly instead of a getting a large shot of the scene the target audience can just the stalker and the girl during the daydream. The hoodie will look like this:

A simple black hoodie, no patterns or logo. Only the back of the hoodie will be shown on the stalker. 

Makeover

This is a video that shows  how we are going to use the make up on the stalker, we have discussed as a group but this is a optional choice as to whether we are going to show the stalkers face. We want to keep the element of surprise but if we do change our idea of showing the stalkers face we want to make it creepy. It is a psychological thriller so there will be a reason behind the make-up we use, a story as to why the talker uses it. We may not shoot the face but if we do we have a back up as to what the stalker is going to look like:
The makeover is being done on Laura Wynne as she will be our stalker in our video. We have chosen Laura to be our stalker as she is a good actress and is willing to play the part of the stalker as she can focus on the scene.
Our make-up artist will be Ashleigh Fearne and Jessica Seaney, they are capable of doing the make- up and they came up with the idea of what the make up should be like.
I have recorded this process and edited it in final cut express to form it into a movie and took out any unnecessary scenes that did not need to be shown. I also enhanced the level of the voice so we can hear it clearer.

Enjoy the video!

Camera Shots

The types of shots we are going to use when we are filiming are the following:

A close up shot, this is will be used in our opening when the girl believes that someone is following her and she turns around, the close up shot allows us to see her facial reaction during this moment which is essential because it shows the emotion she is expressing during that terrifying time, a close up version is when the head and shoulder is only being shot, it can also be used in an object if there is significance towards the object that is relatable to our openings, an extreme close shot would look out of place in a psychological thriller as the background in our opening is just as important, however we may use the extreme close up during the scene where the girl is washing her hands to show the cause of the washing of the hand.
We will also use an establishing shot to show where the scene is being held, our group have decided we will do it in a near by park in Twydall where it is only surrounded by trees, mud, a path however we will not show the entrance because we will only shoot the distance of the girl running. We will use a lot of the medium shots and reaction shots because the audience has to be aware of who the main character is, the expression gives us a clear information of what is happening to her without the need of the target market being confused or not getting the point of the opening.
We have used a POV, a point of view shot of where the stalker is trying to catch the girl. One of us will be holding the camera and running after her so it looks like it is the stalkers point of view that is trying to catch the main character. We will be using the over the shoulder shot when the stalker is look at the girl from behind the tree, there will be no interaction between the two people as there is a tense element towards this scene where the character does not know she is being followed by the stalker but the stalker is aware of what she is doing. So we will film over the stalkers shoulder, we will not be able to see their face but the character who is walking in the distance over the shoulders stalker.

The camera movement we will be using:
We will use a pan to show the establishing shot so we know where the scene of our opening is taking place. We use the track movement to include smooth movement such as when we are following the character around when she is walking on the path. We will use a zoom lens so we can create the reaction shot. There will be no camera movement to make it look obvious that it is being zoomed in such as running up to her, we will use zoom with the camera or pause it to get a clear view of the character that is being stalked. We cannot use a crane or steadicam as we do not have the right equipment for this however we will change our angles regularly to make it seem different and interesting.

The camera angles we are going to use:
We will use the low angle to take shots of the trail and the path and the tree, however it would look odd if we used the low angle on the person it may object the fact that she is vulnerable if the shot makes her seem tall or big, It is also not a flattering angle for the character and you cannot see her face. We will use the camera angle to take the angle of the the character. We will use the eye level a lot, but use a mix of high angle and low angle to make it interesting and different such as the openings of other movies.

Music

As the music director and a music fanatic we decided that Jessica would be in charge of the music as she is the only one with the musical bone in her body. When discussing music ideas as a group we had decided that we would make our own music using garage band. A programme that can let us make our own music without the need of playing it. As a group we wanted the music to be relevant to the opening. We did not like the popular choice of a eerie musical box in the background as it did not fit into the opening. We wanted a climatic yet subtle music. So when our character has a recurring dream then we know she will have one by how the tempo of the music changed. We may split both parts of the music for the different change of scenes in our opening. We decided the instruments that would work well in garage band but Jay is going to change the volume so it does not over ride the voice over when we put it on. The pitch will be changed, when researching different opening most of the volume of the music had been changed, a dramatic scene would have the volume turned up whilst on another scene the volume will be turned down if the character was talking.
I will shortly upload a video of Jay showing us what her ideas and thoughts were to the idea, how she overcame her difficulties when making the music and how she did the final piece.

Our animated story board.

We had decided to do an animated story board as it would help us understand the sequence of events that we are going to shoot, now we have realised what the opening is going to be about we started to make sketches of what our overall opening will be. My group wants to make sure that the storyboard is clear so, Laura, the artistic flair in our group will draw the girl and the stalker, however because we are all participating in making the story board Ashleigh will draw the background of each story board. I will be drawing the title and transition whilst Jess writes and draws down the other labels such as the productions, editor and the actresses/actor.

However when completing the storyboard we had felt like there was something missing, when looking at the pictures we knew what the story was about but we were afraid of the fact that our target audience may not understand the events that are happening here so we sat down as a group and discussed the possibilities of changing the storyboard. Before, our story board was mediocre, it had just showed the girl washing her hands and having flashbacks which we thought as a opening it was not as gripping enough even though it did not have to. Jessica then decided that the audience will understand the daydream even more if we put an effect on it. Ashleigh then decided that a voice over would be a good idea too, we did not want the voice over to be overpowering as it can be annoying to look at what is happening in the scene whilst listening too it. So we will use little clips of the voice over to understand the story, this meant we had another character into the opening, we will not see the bestfriend but hear her voice over explaining the paranoia her bestfriend was having. Yet when the day dream comes we will not hear the voice over as we want the audience to focus on the visual side, so in our animated story board we added what parts would have the voice over by adding a symbol on the side. I then decided to finish the opening off I wanted a scream, a suspense to build out the tension as this is what most psychological movies do before they open a establishing shot afterwards. Our storyboard was in a chronological order but we decided that we would put the title last when the scream appears, although most titles appear in the beginning we did our research and found out that sometimes the opening can happen and then end with a title after all the productions have been shown.

The storyboard allowed us to come up with other ideas to improve our opening but now we have finished it will allow us to remember the sequence of events and act as a guideline towards our shoot because if we do decided to shoot different scene but not in the same order as the story board then we will know what scene we will have to go back too.

We will show both videos of our story board, the original one and then the better one:

Psychological thriller research

We have been researching psychological thriller opening as it is our chosen genres. I liked the idea of choosing a psychological thriller opening as it's interesting and would attract the target audience immediatly. When researching Psychological thrillers I came across a website as to why this genre was the most successful and popular to teenagers. It is because the genre is unisex so both boys and girls could watch this at their own pace and they would both enjoy watching it, it's suspensful which then wants the teenager to view the film to the end in order to know the twist or the ending of the psychological thriller and also allows teenagers to feel old enough to watch genres such as these. When we came to the decision of doing our opening to a psychological thriller we had many ideas to put forward too but we were clueless as to how we were going to show the viewer that our genre was a psychological thriller if we only had two minutes to show it. Our group decided to talk to our media teacher Miss Mayo, who explained to us that as a opening our genre did not have to come across as strong but if we did want our genre to come across then we should use conventions of a PT* to get it across or use a voice over which relates to the story we have chosen. After a brief discussions we decided to research on the movies that have come out which are PT.

What we were looking for was:

- The font of the title

- The transition

- Conventions

- Institutions

- Voice overs

-  Ideas and set out of the opening

-  Effectiveness

and anything else that would relate to our opening too.

We did watch it on a DVD, however we could not get the opening up on youtube, so we have decided to put the trailer up. These are the openings that will help us when expanding our ideas for the opening.

 

 

'Hide and Seek'

 

 

As a widower tries to piece together his life in the wake of his wife's suicide, his daughter finds solace, at first, in her imaginary friend. Hide and Seek is a 2005 American thriller film starring Robert De Niro, Famke Janssen and Dakota Fanning. It was directed by John Polson. The film opened in the United States in January 2005 and was top of the box office.

 

 



'Kiss the Girls'



 

Forensic detective Alex Cross (Morgan Freeman) is shaken by the sudden disappearance of his niece, Naomi (Gina Ravera), and heads to her North Carolina college campus to investigate. There, Alex meets Kate McTiernan (Ashley Judd), a young woman who managed to escape from the same man who kidnapped Naomi. With seven women missing and two already found dead, Alex and Kate must work quickly if they are to save Naomi and the other girls before this sick, self-described; takes their lives.

 

 

'Cassadaga'

 



 

A young mans past leads to the death of several innocent girls, kidnapping, turning them into puppets and leaving them to die. Thriller staring Kelen Coleman (The Office), Kevin Alejandro (True Blood, SouthLAnd) and Oscar Award winner Louise Fletcher (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and Lucius Baston (Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans). Directed by Anthony DiBlasi (Dread, Midnight Meat Train). 

 

 

'The Butterfly Effect'

 

The Butterfly Effect is a 2004 American science  psychological thriller film that was written and directed by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, starring Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart. The title refers to the butterfly effect, a popular hypothetical example of chaos theory which illustrates how small initial differences may lead to large unforeseen consequences over time.A young man blocks out harmful memories of significant events of his life. As he grows up, he finds a way to remember these lost memories and a supernatural way to alter his life.





Target Audience for our opening

In our group the target market we have chosen is teenagers, the reason we have chosen this target audience is because:

AGE- 15 TO 18

• They will understand the opening and give us feedback as it is hard when you ask a child for a feedback to your opening.
• Teenagers are a large target market, they are also reliable because they can go to the cinema with their friends without the need of parental consent and talk about the film itself.
• The genre we have chosen is psychological thriller so it is not appropriate for little children to watch and also adults may not enjoy it as much because of the ideas behind it and may prefer other genres instead of a psychological thriller.
• A psychological thriller is confusing so you need to understand what is happening, a child would not be mature enough to understand the opening and movie itself and we could use wider range of ideas in our opening without the need to make it innocent.

Teenagers

I have given out a questionnaire to the target audience so I can get the feedback and base our initial idea of our opening with the results we have got. I will also research online too so I can have a wider range of results instead of the questionnaire itself. With all the work behind our target audience I can relate the ideas we will have in our group to the ideas of our opening.

Film Institutions

'20th Century Fox'

20th Century fox is one of the six biggest institutions in American film studios. The dramatic music and animation leaves the audience anticipated before the movie has begun. The company was found in May 1931, so it is more modern than the other institutions below. The movies that are involved in 20th century fox are:
- Cheaper by the Dozen
- Family Guy
- Die Hard
- Home Alone
- Alvin and the Chipmunks
As you can see this institutions is mostly relatable to comedy movies which would not be the right choice with the genre we have chosen as both would not connect with each other. Although 20th century fox is a popular institutions, I believe that it is not relatable to the opening of our movie,

'Paramount'

Paramount pictures is a large and very recognisable institution. It is a television and movie production company and has been around since the 1912. It is the best existing studio and is still commonly used today even though it is considered to be the oldest institution around. Paramount has been used for successful and famous movies such as:
- Forrest Gump
- Paranormal Activity 4
- Katy Perry- Part of me
- The Devil Inside
- Hugo
- Thor
This institution seems like a good choice because when I was researching psychological thrillers, which is what our opening is based on, I had realised that paramount was a popular choice as all the other institutions were mostly based on animated and happy films, it did not create the mood that you would hope for in an opening of a horror psychological film. There has been a discussions amongst our group. I and Laura have decided that paramount was the best institution for our opening however Ashleigh disagreed and believed Universal was the best choice as it is professional and popular. We will reflect on this and come to a decisions.

'Universal Studios'

Universal Studios (which is also known as universal pictures) is an American motion pictures. It was founded in 1912 and is the oldest institution in America. It is the most popular institution amongst all the other institutions. This was a favourite in our group as this institution seemed like the most recognisable and most professional in our opening. The following films that Universal is connected with is:

- Bring it on

- The mummy

- The skills

- The things

- Nanny McPhee

- Despicable Me

However we have a split decision on why we should Universal and looked at the Pros and Cons, we did our research on Universal and had realised what partnership Universal had with other institutions and what genre it was common with.

Target Audience

'Monster Inc.'

The age group for Monster Inc is a universal age, most children and adults can watch it together because it is a family orientated movie. This movie is perfect for the universal target market because the plot is understandable for people underage but it is also interesting for adults who would like to watch the movie with their children. The film is not confusing and there are loveable characters that everyone can relate too. However with a large target market we have to be careful when producing a movie that is universal, such as the language or the plot of the movie itself. Monster Inc is a loveable movie that everyone can watch and repeatedly watch, elderly people that often cannot watch movies can watch it with their grandkids because it is loud enough in places and they will understand it.

'High School Musical 3'

'High School Musical 3' is target at a unisex group for '6 to 14' year olds, there are loveable characters that the children can pick and choose and because it is a musical so they can sing and dance along to it. The plot is understandable and simple and has the elements of romance amongst the character. It is also relatable to the target audience as it is based around school and the events that happen in it. There is still the elements of Antagonist and Protagonist but in a friendly way. They shared the journey with these group of teens when watching their previous movies so they would still watch it. The genre allows the target audience to go along with the movie and the plot is interesting too.

'It's a boy girl thing'

The age group for this would be 15 to 18, 'It's a boy girl thing' is a humorous film that can relate to teenagers, as it is a rom com film it would attract more girls than boys however there are elements of boy humour in this movie so the movie is unisex. People under and over the age rate would not understand the humour or would not be able to watch it because of the sexual references or the plot may not interest other people under or over the age range. The plot is interesting and funny and the romantic element can be understandable for teenagers in this age range.

'Easy A'

'Easy A' is a relatable movie for teenagers that are 14 to 19, it is mostly targeted at girls because it is relatable to them as it is a teen flick but also a rom com. This movie can be associated with girls as it is set in a school and the genre allows it for girls to understand the plot along it as there is voice overs. It is a funny & action packed movie but holds the basis of every day school life such as bully, rumours, fights etc. Boys may find this interesting but not as interesting as girls would because of the inside jokes that boys may not understand. It has a loveable character such as Emma Stones who projects a serious issue but in a humorous manner which makes the movie itself loveable to this age range.

'The Ring'

This movie is in the horror genre so it is 15 to 23, Anyone under the age would not be able to watch because of the violent elements and the language in this movie also because it is a horror movie so it can create nightmares for young children and they would not understand the plot either. It is a fear gripping movie and intense which leaves the target audience fearful and jumping in their seats. The plot is simple and interesting and not to complicated for 15 year old to understand as it is not a psychological thriller. The age group does not want a film that will make them bored but an interesting and twisted plot in the horror movie so that is why it is related to the target audience.