Horror Research

POSITIVES...
 
- Horror movies would be a lot of fun to make. Doing all the special effects and props would be very interesting and I would enjoy that a lot.
- The actors in it wouldn't have to be really good at acting, as horror movies focus very much on the special effects.
- Story lines for horrors aren't hard to think of, they don't have to be complicated or dynamic in such ways that social realism's have to be. Horror movies all tend to have a basic outline of what's going to happen - people are trying to protect themselves, but then most of them die and usually one or two get out alive - this would be very helpful and simple to follow. I would also be able to exaggerate more, it doesn't have to seem very realistic as the audience will believe its happening even though they do know in the back of their minds that the possibilities of whats going on in the films are really unlikely.

- If you have a good open to a horror movie, you will engage your audience straight away. In a lot of cases with horror movies it takes a while to get into and get to the 'good bits'.



for example, silent hill (not a British horror) but it takes a while to understand what's going on and takes a while to get into before you actually are interested.

NEGATIVES...

- If you get the first 2 minutes of the film wrong or boring, you will have lost a lot of your audience as they won't be interested in watching the rest of the film. It's hard to get a good balance between giving too much away and not giving out enough details in the opening sequences.
- It will be tricky and fairly expensive to make and edit. The special effects will cost a lot more than they would for a social realism film, and it will take a lot of time when editing to edit the scenes to how you want them.

- Horror films genuinely focus on the special effects area of the film, so this is much more reliant on me to create a good atmosphere with effects and props, and make the effects just right without going over the top and putting people off.

Social Realism Research

Social Realism films are films that usually focus on low-class areas, and are genuinely more realistic and relate more to everyday life than a horror movie, for example.

above images : a 'this is england' poster

POSITIVES...

- Creating a 2 minute opening sequence for a social realism film wouldn't be too hard to do, in terms of costs as these films are usually low-budget.

- My age is within the age range that social realism films are usually aimed towards, from around 15 to 30 years of age. As people this age are more interested in social realism and things that are going on around them. These films usually consists of characters of this age range too, so it is more interesting to this group of people. So I would be able to bring to the opening sequence a much more personal feel.
- The editing wouldn't be hard as social realism films don't tend to have a lot of special effects, so the first 2 minutes wouldn't be too far out of my reach to create.

- They are more realistic. I wouldn't need to think of an intense, complicated, dramatic storyline... as these films tend to be about things that could generally happen.


NEGATIVES...

- It could be hard to think of a story line to fit in with the social realism genre, as it would have to be something genuine and realistic. This could be a problem as it could be hard to keep it under control and not over-exaggerate with it.
- My experience of social realism films is very low. I don't know of many social realism films and its not something I'm greatly interested in. Therefore I would have to do extra research to find out about how the opening sequences of these films include.
- These films rely greatly on good actors. It may be hard to find people, who are really good actors, that would be willing to give up a lot of there time to act in my opening sequences.

Preliminary task final film

I think our preliminary task turned out really well considering its the FIRST FILM me and Lauren have both planned, filmed and edited. I have definitely learnt a lot from doing this.

I really liked the way we did the continuity editing, I didn't think it would turn out as well as it did. I'm pleased with how it all flows together - especially with the variety of shots. The shots could have been done better, but for a first attempt they were pretty good. We included all the shot types (180degree rule, match-action, shot/reverse shot and eye line-match) which makes the film more effective in the way that it looks more professional.

The quality of the film could be improved, e.g the lighting and effects, but with the time constraints we had, this was hard to try and manage. although for my coursework I will definitely learn from this to bring in artificial lighting and plan out a lot more time to edit.

The sound effects in the film made the whole film join together and flow a lot better, the music really suited the feel and atmosphere I was trying to create so I think this worked really well. I also added sound effects - e.g, the door opening squeak - to add more emphasis onto that movement, as the natural sound of it opening wasn't really loud or effective enough.

Animatic!

This is my animatic

Changes from the storyboard

THE CHANGES THAT WE MADE...


We had to change the genders of both our actors (to actresses), because we couldn't find people that had time when we did to film. However the actresses both did a great job and acted very professionally.

Another change we made was in the finish. instead of having the teacher pull out water guns, we had the teacher turn into a monster... This was mainly to do with the fact that we couldn't actually find water guns anywhere before filming, so we decided to change the idea to work with what we did have - monster masks.

Process of filming the preliminary task

FILMING PROCESS...


We started the filming process on Friday afternoon, it's going very successful so far.

We plan to finish filming on Monday afternoon and hopefully the editing will be done that evening! We have many film that we we can cut out and that we can use to put on the blog to show some of the filming process.

CHALLENGES...

We faced quite a few challenges during filming, mostly because we are new to media and are getting used to the equipment. We didn't realise until half way through finishing our filming for the day that we filmed all the wrong parts because we didn't stop filming one scene at the right time... this was a MAJOR set-back and we had to re-film all the bits we thought we had but hadn't!

Another challenge we faced was we couldn't get a teacher to play the teachers role on the Friday afternoon, so this is why we have to finish filming on Monday.


tuesday 4th oct:

today we had to find another person to act in our film as the original teacher was not able to do filming. this was a challenge and we had to change the gender of the 'teacher', but they acted very proffesionally so the filiming worked really well.
we were unable to film on monday, so we had to finish off filming this morning, and also do all the editing.

we have learnt from this that we need to plan our time more efficiently, and plan out enough time for us to be able to change dates.

Preliminary task

OUR SET PRELIMINARY TASK WAS TO FILM...

1. A person walking towards a door
2. Opening the door
3. Walking through the door
4. Sitting down next to someone
5. Having a conversation with the person

MY PRELIMINARY TASK BRIEF...


Our preliminary task is based on a kid at school who gets sent to a teachers office from his class, and he is getting more and more nervous on the way to getting told off as he knows what he's done wrong. However the pupil is going to look really cute so the audience like him anyway. The teacher is scary but then decides to punish the kid in a funny way.