Own Film Treatment

The opening scene starts with two of the characters waiting for two other boys. They then start to walk into the woods. We have used the low key lighting to our advantage as it is a main code for a horror genre. The characters start to talk about a girl that went missing in the woods so they have decided to stay where this incident happened. When they are walking through the woods they reach a pit, this interests the boys and they start to talk about what the pit is used for. In the camera shot we can see a half buried boot but the characters are unaware of this so they keep on moving. The next shot is match on action of Elliot helping Joe out of the pit. When they reach the shack, we started to use close ups to show the audience how serious the story being told. The last shot is of the antagonists staring at the shack whilst holding deadly weapons.

Chosen institution from 'The Big Six'

We have chosen to use Paramount, from 'The Big Six' to use in our opening two minutes due to the fact that the institution Paramount has been used by horror films before such as Friday the Thirteenth and My Bloody Valentine. It was because of Paramount's previous experiences with filming horror movies that we decided to include it in the opening of our horror movie. Because of the style of the horror movies they have previously made we decided it would be a good idea to choose them, as My Bloody Valentine is quite similar to our film.

Elka Productions Test Intro

This is a test intro i made for the beginning of any bmx edits i made for friends in the future. We were thinking of using this for the opening of our film however the colour scene i used doesn't match up with those traditionally used by film companies that specialise in the Horror genre. Based on previous analysis of institutions specialising in the Horror genre Ive realised that black backgrounds with either a white or red font overlayed. Meaning i'm either going to have to change the colour sceme of this currant clip, sawpping the blue for a redish colour, or i'm going to have to start from scratch,in order to make an opening more suited to our horror movie.

Opening two minutes of American Beauty

A character based opening with narration is the 1999 Best Picture American Beauty. The entire opening is narrated by the character himself after his death. We know this as he says 'by the end of this year I will be dead'. This shows an element of foreshadowing. This leaves the audience solely in the hands of the narrator, realising that he knows what is going to happen at the end, showing him as an omniscient force, and as if he's looking down on us. With this in mind, the narrator is able to lead the audience through his day and the audience believes him. The impact this has is again one of intrigue and mystery. The narrator claims he will die within a year, yet his life seems so absurdly ordinary that his imminent death seems out of place. The audience are presented with where the character is at the beginning, and where he is at the end, but not the middle, and this is the main ploy to drag the audience in: they want to know what the middle is, and they want to know how so much changed so quickly.

In 'American Beauty' the narrator tells the audience their opinion, this 'forces' the audience to see the characters and the goings on in a certain light instead of allowing them to have their own opinion. 'American Beauty' is a fictional drama, this approach is taken in order to invite the audience into the films setting. It establishes the characters and the community very quickly. The voice in American Beauty talks from personal experience making the audience able to relate to his character and sympathise with him.

The film has a very strong opening, which establishes characters and setting through a narrator, it makes good use of mystery and intrigue. The audience hooks onto this mystery and it is what pulls them in, causing the strong opening.

Basic Editing Tutorial

Sony Vegas Pro 12 Beginners guide.

 

This is just a basic tutorial i found on YouTube, teaching me some basic techniques about how to use the software. This tutorial made it so much easier to edit our film, as it taught me things such as importing media, cutting and trimming, adding video fx, saving your project and exporting/rendering the clip.
 

Time Management

On the 14th of December we had panned to film our media but when it came to the day one of our actors dropped out. This caused us to stop the filming and then find a replacement actor. When we had found our replacement we then planned to film on the 28th and the 29th of December. we had arrived at the location for our filming then it started raining, so we had decided to go home and arrange to film another day.We arranged to film on the 2nd of January, this went well and we successfully filmed our media work.

Date	Time
14th December 2013	6pm – 10pm	Actor dropped out
28th December 2013	5pm – 10pm	Rained
29th December 2013	3pm – 7pm	Rained
2nd January 2014	4pm – 10pm	Filmed successfully

Mood Board

A small Mood Board showing a few things from our film idea.

This mood board shows several things that we want to include in our film. The first image is of the Blair Witch Project, we have got inspiration from this film in several ways. At first we thought we could use the idea of filming it like a 'home movie', we would have needed a camera with less good quality in order to show the differences between the cameras. Another aspect of inspiration we got from the Blair Witch Project was the location, it is situated in a dense forest. This location denotes darkness and mystery as you can't see much due to the trees obscuring the light.
The weapons (axe, hammer and hand held scythe) are on this to show that the antagonists are gruesome and far from professional killers. This brings an aspect of reality to the film because no ordinary person will expect to be killed by a professional killer. This brings it closer to home and people will expect that it is a possibility it will happen to them.
There are several masks on the story board because we thought we would dress the antagonists all in black and find masks to hide their faces. This would hide their emotions and expressions making it more scary because you can't predict what they will do if you can't see their face. Both masks are from the horror movie Saw, they are used very effectively in this film so it inspired us to use a similar idea.
We have put the picture of the road on the mood board because the film starts with the group of teenagers driving towards the woods on a road, they then walk away from it for a while, this shows how far away from civilisation they are and even if help comes, it will take a while to get to them.
The final two pictures show a wooden shack and woods in the dark. After watching The Blair Witch Project, we were inspired to film in the woods because it is easy to be selective over what the audience see's. It also allows the audience to see lots of silhouettes of trees and this creates tension because they think any silhouette could be the antagonist. We also chose to film in a wooden shack because it looks isolated and far from any help. It also shows that the protagonists wouldn't be comfortable in this location whereas the antagonist may be.