Showing posts with label George Lock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George Lock. Show all posts

Thursday, 1 April 2010

Scream Anaylsis

The scene starts off with a sound of heart beats. Writing enters from the top and the bottom and meets in the middle, it reads scream, as the two join a crashing sound is made. The heartbeat speeds up, this makes it seem like the heartbeat is afraid of the crashing sound. A ringing sound is quickly added, which also makes the heartbeat increase in speed. On top of that screaming is added which increases the heartbeat even further. A red light flashes out from behind the writing, this is very similar to a warning light or emergency service light, and this lets the audience know that it isn’t safe. Similar to the white writing, red writing enters from the top and the bottom and meets in the middle turning the white writing red. The red writing is like blood. As the writing joins together a gunshot is heard. The writing zooms in to the screen making it all red.


The camera cuts to a phone ringing, all sound cuts out as we see a hand pick up the receiver, and the camera tilts up following the phone as it reaches a girls face. The only sounds that can be heard are cricket’s chirping and the two individuals talking on the phone. The man’s voice seems cold and lacking in any emotion, this makes him seem scary and makes the audience feel uncomfortable. As she put down the phone the camera stays focussed on her face. The camera cuts in on the once again ringing phone, we only see her hand. The screen returns to medium shot. Behind her the TV is giving off an ominous blue glow.

She puts the telephone down and leaves the room. However, the camera stays in the same position looking at the door. This shows that the door is going to play a big part in the scene.

The camera cuts away to the outside and is looking at the top of the tree in a high angle shot. The camera slowly tilts down and as it moves down we hear the sound of the creaky swing. Even though it is night time the sound of a creaky swing is ominous and eerie to the audience. The camera then cuts back inside with a close up shot of the cooker’s hob igniting with a powerful blast. She places popcorn on top of the hob, the label reads ‘Jiffy Pop’! This seems ironic as it appears she does not have long to live. The telephone rings again and she walks to pick it up. The camera is in a medium angle. The camera follows her as she walks around the table. During the conversation with the mysterious man she mentions that she is about to watch a scary movie. The genre of the movie is horror. This lets the audience know the genre of this film. She pulls a long shiny knife out of the holder and looks at it while she continues to talk to the mysterious caller. This action lets us know what the murder weapon will be.

As she moves through the rooms the camera tracks her. When the villain reveals that he is watching her, non digetic music plays and the camera moves into a close up shot of her face. A dog barks in the background. Animals have the ability to sense danger approaching before humans do therefore the barking further adds to the thrilling build up.

Feedback on our film:

George Myers:
It was a very interesting plot, very reminiscent of slasher films like Halloween and Scream. The camera work, I felt, was a little off key and needed refining, but overall it was easy to follow.
3/5 Stars

Corine Morgan:
I thought it was very clever how the killers face was never actually seen. It kept the suspense... Ilikethatword. Overall it was very well laid out, and I would watch that film.
4/5 Stars

Wednesday, 31 March 2010

Friday the 13th old version remake

The film starts off as a dark cloudy night sky and all we see is a full moon. In horror movies, full moons are depicted as a catalyst that makes evil come out to play! We hear the sound of frogs croaking and this lets the audience know that we are near water. We slowly hear the faint of singing voices and the camera slowly starts to move away from the sky. We hear a bird cawing. This is important as animals have the ability to sense danger before humans will.


We continue to slowly move to an establishing shot of a cabin by a lake. The words ‘Camp Crystal Lake 1958’ show up in white. The lamps appear to be producing an ominous blue glow which gives the feeling of calmness which is mirrored by the stillness of the water in the lake. This make the audience uneasy as it feels like the silence before the storm. The water perfectly reflects the land. There is not a soul outside which when combined with the singing voices contained within the cabin feels very eerie.

We then cut to a side of the cabin where there is a door and a window which is the only source of light which emphasises how dark it is outside. We are now seeing inside the cabin where there are teenagers grouped together around the fireplace playing a guitar and singing. The audience focus on the happy, singing group and are immediately aware the group are vulnerable and in danger by contrast to the build up of the scene so far. It is also ironic that they are singing songs of peace.

The camera cuts outside and we see that the wind is picking up and the leaves are rustling. This scene tells the audience that danger is approaching. The camera is now in a point of view shot showing a door with two arrows crossing. The arrows are on a red background and the way the cross is placed signifies danger. The word ‘fox’ is written below the arrows and as foxes take chickens from barns at night this too is a metaphor for danger. The door squeaks as it opens and footsteps are heard as the mysterious person enters, the singing has stopped which shows that where he is, he cannot be heard by people outside the cabin. Sinister non digetic high pitched music can be heard which builds up tension for the audience. From the perspective of the mysterious man we see he is looking at the sleeping children in their separate beds. This makes the audience nervous as they appear to be vulnerable. As the mysterious person looks around we see there are a lot of red items scattered around the room. Red can be a connotation for blood and danger. As he moves across the room, the non digetic music is building creating more tension. The mysterious man moves towards a different door, we realise then that he is not randomly killing but is selective. The door squeaks as he leaves.

The camera now cuts back to a master shot of the teenagers singing. The camera then cuts in on the teenagers allowing us to see their faces and to see their shirts showing that they are counsellors at the camp. They finish singing and the camera shows a wide shot of the group of which two of them get up and walk away into a shadow and kiss. We hear faint talking in the background.

Storyboard



Friday the 13th analysis

The scene starts off slow, an establishing shot of a rainy night in a forest, and bad weather is usually associated with horror films. The screen is in black and white, this indicates to the audience that this is happening a long time ago. In white the date June 13th 1980 appears, this backs up the suspicion that this is occurring a while ago.

The camera closes in on a close up shot of a sign with the writing ‘Crystal Lake’ on it.  This lets the audience know where the events will occur. Lightning strikes, which creates a sense of danger, the shots start to speed up. Non digetic music begins to play. The music is fast in tempo and creates great tension. There is a mid shot of a young girl limping out of the forest. Her facial expressions show she is in deep pain and is very scared. She is running towards the camera which helps engage the audience and keeps them from losing focus.

A flash of lightning takes us sharply to a name in title credits. It is white wording on a black background. This is keeping in tone with the rest of the scene.

After another flash we see the young girl limping and dragging a machete. We cannot see her face but we can hear her screaming and crying. We do not know how she acquired the weapon and this creates a sense of mystery that keeps the audience interested. The camera tilts up which allows the audience to see her face. By tilting she does not seem bigger than she is. This keeps her in her role of victim. We see a sparkle of light reflect off of her whistle. The whistle represents that she has a role of authority. Another flash of lightning shows another name and by doing this it takes us out of, then back into the action creating a sense of suspense.

This is a point of view shot from behind some trees. The camera is at a high angle which makes it looks like the person is looking down from a hill. This creates levels in the shots. It makes the young girl seem small and helpless and the mystery person seem more powerful. A point of view shot makes the person seem mysterious and takes away any humanity for the time the shot remains. A woman jumps out of the bushes and attacks the young girl. This when accompanied by thunder and lightning makes the audience really on edge as they do not know what is going to happen next but they sense terror. A flash of lightning and another name in the credits appears. The lightning flashes and freezes the scene for a few seconds allowing the audience just enough time to see the name Counsellor on the back of her shirt. This backs up the suspicion that she has a role of authority. Another flash of lightning reveals another name in the credits.

The camera is now in a wide angle point of view shot. We see a woman reaching out talking to the young girl. Her voice is cold and feeble sounding. For the audience this all adds to the suspense and terror of the scene that someone could be so scared of a woman who sounds feeble.

A cut away shot takes us to a person hidden in the trees. The audience then realise this is the person whose point of view we are seeing. His face seems distorted and he appears to have lost some human features. The lack of human features likens him to an alien which further scares the audience.

Another flash of lightning and another credit. The repetition of cut away shots helps stretch out the suspense and helps keep the audience focus for longer.

The camera is in an over shoulder shot of the young girl. We only see the woman talking. This allows us to only see her facial expressions and emotions and keeps us focussed on her. The woman appears to be wearing old fashioned clothes, once again showing it occurred a long time ago.

Another flash of lightning and another name credit.

This time we are in an over shoulder shot of the woman. This allows us to see the young girl’s terror and fear.
Another flash of lightning and another name credit.

The thunder and lightning is more frequent and this shows that we are about to reach the climax of the scene.

We are once again in the over shot of the young girl. This allows us to see every detail as the old woman draws back with her weapon about to stab the young girl.

The camera quickly cuts to the over the shoulder shot of the old woman so we can see the young girl quickly react and decapitate the old woman. As soon as this happened lightning froze the scene with the young girl standing with the machete held up to her left shoulder having swung the machette like a golf club from low down on her right side through the old woman’s neck up to her left shoulder. The scene freeze allows the audience time to process what they have just seen in a very fast moving sequence.

We then cut in on the woman’s decapitated head falling and splashing into a puddle of water in the darkness. We then close up on the head. This shot shows the head in more detail.

Equipment we used

Whilst making our film, we used a range of equipment, including software, hardware and props.

>Blogger: Set up by the school and used to show our development and planning as we moved through the project.
>Storyboard sheets: Supplied by the school and used to sketch and detail storyboards.
>Imovie: Used to edit our filming.
>School Student Resources: Used to find copyright free music for our movie.
>Retracable plastic knife: Used as the murder weapon in our movie
>Film blood: Used in our movie to create the blood effect.
>Flip HD Camera: Used to film our project.

Another Update:

It is the day before the deadline, editing of our film is finally finished, we did not quite stick to the script, or the storyboard, but we feel the effect we produced was very good.
We have yet to do an evaluation, and we are currently searching for a scanner in order to post our storyboards (all of them) to the blog.

Wednesday, 3 March 2010

Update on Progress:

Both of us went away and made our own drafts of storyboards, and when we came together compared and chose the best ideas from them. We have collaborated our final design and will now begin creating a storyboard for it.
We have also decided on a location, actors and props for our film. The location will take place in a relatives house, it has the right sort of rooms we need and is easy to get to. We have purchased stage blood and we have a "retractable dagger" as the murder weapon.

Wednesday, 10 February 2010

Analysis of Questionnaire Results

We sent a questionnaire to 9 people in our media group. Here is an analysis of the results:

1. Do you prefer "creature feature" or "slasher" movies?
Results: Of the 6 people who answered this question, The results were: 2 people chose Creature Feature, and 4 chose Slasher, showing that there is a definate market for the type of film we are doing
.


2: For this question we gave people a choice of 4 slasher movie killers, and asked them to decide which one they found scariest, and why (they were asked to decide assuming they hadn't seen any of the films)
The Results were:
Jason Voorhees: 2 people chose this, the reasons given were that he was "invincible" and had an obscured face and weapon.
Micheal Myers: 4 people chose this. the reasons given were the camera angle (showing the killer to be above) the mask, showing him to have a vacant expression, and you can see his weapon.
Scream Killer: One person chose Scream, the reason given that his face looked like it had been melted.
Freddy Kruger: 2 people chose Freddy Kruger. The main reason given was the manic expression in his eyes.




3. When asked if the audience preferred cliched films or originality, 6 people chose originality, and 3 chose cliches. Interestingly the people who chose cliched films were mainly female. I think that because of these results we will need to make a balance between originality and cliches.


4. Participants were then asked if they preferred alot of blood in a film, and the results were 1 person preferred alot of blood, 4 people preferred not too much blood, and 4 people preferred somewhere in the middle. Interestingly somebody also said that fear is not generated by the presence of blood, but by the atmosphere created in the film.



5. The Question was "name one thing you want to see in every slasher movie you watch?" The majority of answers were that the killer had to be original and very good at killing. The second most popular answer was that the characters had to be attractive, other answers included "suspense" "a twist" and "lots of blood guts sex and fire" I think it would be useul to include as many of these aspects as possible in our film.



6. When asked how important the beginning of the movie was to them, all of the answers said that the opening of the film was very important. This means that we have to make our film opening as good as possible.



7. The last question we asked was if it was important for them to get to know the main character from the start of the film. Interestingly, the majority of answers in to this question were no, meaning we do not neccessarily have to build up an in depth character portrayal in our film opening.



To conclude our results, we have discovered that there is a market for the sort of film we are creating, and we can use the results of this questionnaire to go on to create our unique selling point.


Slasher Brainstorm


Please Click

The Brief - Why We Chose it.

We decided to choose the video brief for our coursework over the print.
We chose this for several reasons:
  • When doing the print task in the preliminary, we found photoshop difficult to work with.
  • Our main interest is in film.
  • The brief for film was more flexible
  • It is easier to work in groups for a film task
  • We felt we could be more creative with the film task

For our genre of film, we chose a "slasher" movie. We chose this because we feel that a slasher movies are exciting and thrilling, and there are many easy ways to create tension, via music, costume, lighting and character acting. We also believe there is a market for "slasher" movies, there are constantly new horror films being released and the majority of them are top box office sellers. People love the thrill and excitement that they get from the built up suspence and look into fictional characters tragic lives.