Reflection on my Blog so far...

In today's lesson, we looked at each others blogs and gave each other positive and negative feedback. I recieved comments about many aspects of my blog posts.

The positive comments that I recieved stated that I have good use of images whether it is images of inspirations and/or style models or images of props or locations which will be used for filming the project and that I have evidence of planning throughout my project so far.

Some of the nagative feedback I recieved involved going into detail on my blog postsand providing evidence for posts such as images or videos to back up ideas about props or certain camera angles.

To improve upon all of the nagative comments I shall do the following;

• Go into much more detail in blog posts such as stating specific aspects of project/filming e.g specific locations, props, speech, diegetic/non-diegetic music or sound effects.
• Always produce evidence of points stated in blog posts such as if a specific location or costume etc. is stated, an image or video will be shown of it if available.

From now on I will attempt to produce detailed blog posts more often (approx. 3-5 per week).

Brief and Narrative

Which brief are you pursuing?

A promotion package for a new film, to include a trailer, together with a teaser poster and a film magazine cover.

Group project List roles and responsibilities if you are working in a group?

Ryan Willis – Actor/Editor Reece Beveridge – Cameraman Sarah Watson – Actress/Director

Write a brief summary of your concept for the main task (Narrative)

Jamie is reflecting on her childhood to her therapist. She talks about the times her grandfather would tell her stories about how he was a medic in the war, and the story of how he was attending to a man who was bleeding to death, but had to leave him and deal with a group of men dying on the field – so the man bled to death. Before she was institutionalised, she researched and discovered that the man’s body was never found. These are what led to the night terrors that made her hallucinate and drove her insane. Now she still has to be tied to the bed because these dreams of the man coming back for her are causing her to have violent fits in her sleep. She eventually begins to believe that the man is coming back for her because she is finding it difficult to differentiate between her dreams and reality. List any ideas for locations. (Mise en scene) Woods, car, bedroom, empty street List any ideas for costume and props (Mise en scene) White mask with zip for a mouth Gas mask Sounds Non diegetic to build up tension; tracks selected from a number of different horror films that could link well to our trailer. This is yet to be researched. Silence to keep the audience in anticipation. Drum beats during the build-up of the title sequence.

Main Characters

The Victim

Taking influence from a number of female victims in well known horror films such as A Nightmare On Elm Street, Halloween and The Ring.

Main Characters

The Killer

Taking influence from characters such as Slender Man using the plain black and white suit and also characters such as Jason, Michael Myers and Leatherface using the mask to cover the killer's indentity.

Killer Influences!

Slender Man

The final influence of our killer is the Urban Myth which is Slender Man; although this character is not from any film franchise we still believe he is an important aspect as he brings a realistic fear factor to our killer.

Killer Influences!

Freddie Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street)

The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise was just as much of an influence but more for the storyline rather than physical features of the killer, the idea of Freddie Krueger is that he lives in the victims minds and is really a dream which is the idea of our killer.

Killer Influences!

Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th)

The Friday the 13th franchise was one of the main influences of our killer because of a few aspects such as the concealed facial features which dehumanise the character and add a fear factor and a sense of the unknown. In many ways our chosen mask (gas mask) is very similar to the classic Jason hockey mask as it covers almost everything but the eyes keeping a feature of the face to create a sense of reality in the character.

Planning Ideas for a Horror Trailer

Horror Trailer Marking and Analysis

Horror Trailer Marking and Analysis from ryanwillis21

Track Down Evaluation

Acting – The three characters in the sequence were played by myself, Adam Bennett and Jan Labro, although we were very limited for time while filming the sequence I believe we were able to work well in the short space of time that we had. What made filming difficult was the fact that we needed to keep continuity throughout the sequence meaning that all of the characters should look the same and be dressed the same all the way through the sequence, one thing which could not be helped was the change in the weather therefore we tried to avoid shooting outside as much as possible to avoid any continuity issues. As much as the actors tried to make sure they stayed in character at all times, there is one criticism about the sequence and that is at the end where the teacher has the pupil pinned against a fence as the actor playing the pupil is smiling at the teacher, this could be taken as out of character but could also be taken as part of the sequence as the pupil could be pulling a sinister face.

Filming – Reece Beveridge and I filmed the chase scene. We used a variety of different shot types and angles so that we had many different clips that we could use for the editing process. Again, there were time constraints on how long we had to film, so we needed to be quick in recording each of the individual scenes. If I was to do this again I would try to film as many different shot angles as possible and redo the scenes to make sure everything was perfect. We did not have access to a steady cam, so we needed to use a normal cam when filming the POV and running shots, which made some takes very jumpy and we couldn’t use some of the clips

Edits – Almost all of the editing of the sequence was done by Scott Barrass on Sony Vegas on his home computer, many different shots were used to create a sense of pace and to show many different points of view throughout the sequence. For the start of the film up until the outside scene there is an eclipse effect added to the film to make everything seem darker and to set the mood of the film. Scott mainly used cuts to switch from scene to scene, but at some points you can see he used a fade to black effect to shop a time change, for example at the point outside to back inside running through the corridor. Another time he used that effect was right at the very end for less than a second from the teacher grabbing the rebel to the rebel being against the fence.

Sound – All of the song clips we used throughout the sequence were copyright free. The speech parts in the film could have been acted out better as it seemed to be forced and it didn’t seem genuine. At the part where the teacher is first introduced into the scene, it would have been better if the teacher shouted at the rebel to try and make him stop, instead of staying silent the whole time. Again at the end of the clip where the teacher and rebel were at the fence, it would have made more sense for something to have been said. If I was to do this again, I would create some sort of script beforehand that the actors would need to follow, instead of thinking of things on the spot like we did this time.