Auditons

Last week me and my group held auditions in order to cast our short film 'Lesson Learnt', we held the auditions on Friday the 11th of December at 11:00 am, we did this in order to make the auditions avliable to as many actors as possible, so we could cast the best possible people for the parts in our film. During the audtions I told the actors what we expected from them and what they had to do during there auditions, whilst the rest of my group filmed the auditions or made notes on each actor. I am very happy with who we have cast to be in our film as I think that the chosen actors meet our character profiles well. This is the cast list for 'Lesson Learnt':

Douglas – Keegan Featherstone















Fuchsia – Emmaline Gordon














Dead Body #1- Alex Coburn














News Reporter #1- Glyn Harris











News Reporter #2- Gemma Peacock













I think that we was very fortunate with our auditions because we was able to cast our whole film all in one session, as we had a very good group of actors show up to our auditions. We decided who we was going to cast in our film as team so that everyone had their own input, but mostly we agreed with who we thought was best for each character, I think that KingsFord Production team continues to work well as a unit. I also wrote the audition information for the group blog, which involves all the details of the audition process. The video for our auditions can be found on my group blog (KingsFord Productions). Audition Video

Consent Form

Lesson Learnt Consent Form

This is the consent form that I wrote, it will have to be filled in by all the actors in our film before filming begins. The form is very important because it have to be written and filled in properly for leagal reasons. The consent form has helped us with our filming as without it, we would have been unable to film are actors.

Gantt Chart Update

Below is the gantt chart that I filled in for me and my group to follow, I have given the gantt chart a colour system so each member of the group has a different colour so it is easy for each of us to see what we have to do. I have also given the group as a whole a colour which is purple and this shows when work has been done by the entire KingsFord Production team. The deadline colour on the gantt chart is red because it clearly shows when the work needs to be done by. This is the most up to date gantt chart that we have and it has all the deadlines we have been given to meet so far on it.

When developing the gantt chart I split the work as evenly as possible between myself and the the members of my group. The gantt chart is very useful because it helps with our time management and it means that we are meeting all the deadlines we need to on time, the gantt chart also provides us with a guideline on how to divide the work between the group.

Gantt Chart

Tjsi Start Gantt

Main Character Profile and Costumes

The main character in our film will be the antagonist; the antagonist will be a male and his face will not be seen during the film other than in his school yearbook this is to make him anonymous therfore making him more feared to the audience. However there will be glimpses of the killer, showing him from far away or just his feet etc, we have decided to do this because it adds to the drama and suspense of the film and makes the audience more interested in finding out who the killer is. The antagonist will be aged around 26 years old and will be scruffy and uncouth, he will be like any normal twenty something male which makes him unassuming as the killer. The killer works in a garage so he wears heavy black boots and dark overalls and this a very normal due to his job description. The killer will have dark hair and rather pale skin we have chosen our character to have this image as the pale skin connotes death and is very ghostly, also the dark hair connotes darkness and the evilness of the killer. This type of person as a killer is often used in horror films, so this part of our film is a common horror convention.



These are the type of boots that the Antagonist will wear as we think that they are quite scary and harsh looking. In one part of out film all you see is the killer’s feet walking away and we think that this type of boot will add to the horror and suspense of the piece, also the boots will be balck because it is a harsh colour that connotes death. The tough boots of the killer also show the power that he has over his victims, making the victims seem even more powerless.

We have decided to name the main character Douglas and this is because we think it is quite an innocent and child like name which is not synonymous with murderers so with this we are going against normal horror conventions. We have gathered inspiration from horror films such as Saw and Jeepers Creepers where the antagonist is never really fully shown to the audience because it adds to the suspense and horror of the film. In Saw a mask is used and we may well use a mask in our film as it keeps the killers identity a secret, and we think that the fear of the un-known is one of the scariest things in the horror genre. We are also going to use fake blood in our piece, which is also done in Saw; the blood will denote the death of the victims, and it will show the pain that the angonist inflicted on his victims. On the killers clothing there will also be small blood marks which connotes pain, a struggle and obviously death. The antagonist in the film's face will not be seen until the very end of the peice and even then it will be covered by a large mask which would be used when using a blow torch in the garage. We have decided to use this mask because of the occupation of the killer and also because it furthers add to the suspense of the film, as the audience are unaware of the killers identity. This will happen in the garage when the killer is seen watching the news report about the murders on television, this will be the last shot or the opening of the film that we are creating because it will imprint the image into the audiences minds.

The idea for using the mask in the film to hide the killers identity was drawn from the film Saw as we feel it makes the film more dominate in the horror genre. As a group however we decided to adapt the type of mask to fit our killer and his job description, therefore using both our inspiration and imagination in order to make the opening of the film the best it can be.

Consent Form and Main Character Profile

This week in me media lessons I have been working on the consent forms that will have to be filled in by our cast members, On the consent form I had to provide all the information that our cast members need in order t be able to take part in our film. The consent form is very important because if it is not written and filled in properly it could cause legal issues. For legal reason we are not allowed to have anyone in our film that is under the age of 16. With the consent form, if we are filming anyone under the age of 18 there parents also have to sign the form. The consent film that I have written can be found above.

I have also been working on the main character profile in our film, the character profile is to help us get a better understanding of what we want our antagonist to look like and act etc. I really enjoyed writing about the main character in our film because he is a dark and mysterious character, and writing about him was very interesting. The character profile that I have written can be found above. My group has continued to work well together this week we are dividing the work as evenly as possible between us and we are also doing a lot of group in order to get the whole group's input into our work. Kingsford production team is also continuing to meet deadlines and we are doing this by following the gantt chart that I made.

The next thing that the KingsFord production team has to tackle is the audition process and we will be doing this on friday, we have put audition posters up around our school in order to attract a wider range of actors for our film. We have also personally gone around year 11 and sixth form classes to inform people of our auditions and any other details they might need. We will be filming the auditons to show how they went, and the reasons why we select the actors we do. We will also write up about the auditions and this will include pictures and will be uploaded to our group blog by the deadline date.

Similar Media Works

Similar Media Works India

This is showing the slides that I did towards my gropus similar media works presentation, I created four of the slides. The presentation was very helpful to me and my group as it involved a lot of research in to the horror genre, which provided me with many ideas of how I wanted my own piece to be. I researched in to many films such as Saw II, and some ideas that I gathered from the film I have adapted and used similar techniques in my own film. The making of the similar media works really helped me personally as it allowed me to research into the horror genre and this helped me come up with many ideas for the opening to my horror film. The similar media works took a lot of work from me and the rest of my group to complete but all it did was further help us develop our ideas of horror. I will use the similar media works project when making my film as it will give me something to refer my ideas to, to make sure that we are keeping are film within the horror genre, also we used the similar media work as a bank of ideas for our film therefore during the production we can use it as a reference point.

Update

This week me and my group have been working on our similar media works power point, our film brief and our story board. When working on the power point I think that we organised our time well and we all did around the same amount of slides in the powerpoint. I did four slides on the power poin, two of the slides where on four films of the horror genre. I also did a slide on target audience and one of the analyse of The Grudge. I think that our similar media presentation has been completed to a high standard as we all put a lot of work into it and we did a lot of research into the horror genre in order to make the presentation the best it could be.

Also this week we have been discussing our film brief and what the storyline would be if we was to make an entire film. The film brief that we wrote consisted of a lot of information about our own film such as: a brief overview of the entire film and what happens in detail in the opening of our film. As a group we discussed our ideas and we have come up with, what we feel is a very good idea for our film opening. We have now begun to develop are ideas more and this has been helped by creating our animatic and our picture storyboards. The storyboards make it easier to picture what our actually film will be like. I am really happy with the progess that me and my group are making I think we work really well together as a team. However I think that we need to make sure that we continue to meet and deadlines, and we need to make sure that the work is divided equally between us.

The Shining Clip

Mise-en-scene of The Shining

The Shining was made in 1980 it is a psychological horror and was directed by Stanley kurbrick. The film starred Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance and Shelley Duvall as Wendy Torrance. There is a lot of mise-en-scene throughout the scene, I am analysing part of one of the most memorable scenes in the film.

The first shot in the clip is of the outside of a hotel, it shows a dark and isolated area which sets the scene and denotes that it is night time which makes the whole clip more sinister. When the male character first appears he is lit from above, which emphasises the psychotic expression on his face. The lighting is hard with a lot of dark shadows which connotes that something bad is going to happen. The male character is wearing red which connotes death, blood and horror. This indicates to the audience straight away that he is the perpatrator in the film. The first speech that is spoken in the scene is the male character reciting the nursery rhyme “three little pigs” this is very strange and makes the character appear mentally disturbed and frightening.

The female character is locked in the bathroom trying to escape from the male character; she is in a room which is all white which connotes her innocence and purity. She is also wearing light colours which further emphasises this. The light in the bathroom is very bright which is in contrast to the darkness of the hall way where the male character is. The female character picks up a knife and as she does this the camera tracks her movement, this adds to the fear in the scene because she is frantic and scared it also involves the audience in the scene and makes them feel like they are there living it, which makes the scene more realistic to the viewer. The performance of the female actress is very good, her facial expression are full or anguish and terror which add to the suspense and horror of the scene. She is also crying and screaming throughout the clip which only escalates further the sheer terror the character is going through. Her screaming is shrill and loud which denotes the fear she is feeling, it is her good acting in this part of the clip that makes it all the more believable as if it could actually be happening.

When the male character uses the axe to start smashing through the door to get to the female character, there is realisation for her and audience that he is going to get to her and attack her. The extra digetic sound in the clip is a high pitched whistling noise that impacts the viewer because it is like a continuation of the females characters screams so it makes the scene all the more scary. The women is clearly terrified and she pleads with him to stop, she has the knife in her hand and she tries to protect herself by covering up her face and turning away from what is happening, this makes her acting all the more believable as if she was actually about to be attacked.

The main camera angle used throughout the clip is a mid-shot, this is used because it shows what the characters are doing but also shows their facial expressions clearly. When the male character has made a hole in the door and the camera shows him smashing through it from inside the bathroom it shows the darkness breaking through to the light which connotes the evil reaching the good.

Then the male character sticks his head through the gap in the door at first the camera angle is an over the shoulder but then it goes to a close up of his face which reveals his evil expression. He then says “here’s Johnny!” which causes the female character to become even more frightened and scream more. The male character then reaches inside the door to open it, but the female character slashes his hand with the knife. There is a good use of fake blood at this moment in the clip; the male character then screams which denotes the pain he is feeling from the wound, then the clip ends. The props in the clips are used really well, as they make the clip seem more real and they also give the audience a clear sense of what is occuring in the film.

Horror Re-make

Me and my group had to choose a classic horror film to re-make, we choose to do the opening of Saw 1 as it has the sub genre of gore, and the film we are going to create also has gore as a sub genre. I think that Saw was a good chose for my group as it has provided us with a lot of practice with the filming and editing of a horror film. The opening of Saw uses a wide range of camera angles so the filming of it has provided us with more knowledge of the sort of angles used in horrors, and therefore we can use this know how when making our own film.

The re-make has also provided us with practice with using the editing programme, Adobe Elements. I am now a lot better at using the programme and I have become very comfortable with using it. I edited about a third of the video, we worked very well as a group during the filming and editing process. With the help of the gantt chart that we made, we have all been managing our time really well and meeting the deadlines on time. Above is our re-make of the Saw 1 opening scene, I feel that overall as a group we did a really good job on both shooting and editing this short fim.

Preliminary Task Video- Did you bring it ?

Preliminary Task Evaluation

I do feel that my piece of film overall does demonstrate continuity well, for example there is a wide shot of a character picking up a drink, then it goes to a close up of this action and the drink is in the same place in the close up as it was in the wide shot. This makes the film flow smoothly and makes it a better quality finish. However there is a point in the film where you hear a door close, then a few seconds later when we have switched to a different cameras footage you hear the door close again. This does not show good continuity because the door slamming is from the character walking in to the bar which she obviously only does once, therefore you should only hear the door shut once during the film.

We have used a wide range of shots including: wide shot, close up, extreme close up and long shot. We also used a range of shots to add continuity to our film, for example we used shot reverse shot during the conversation part of the film to show which character was speaking and what they was saying. We also used the 180-degree rule, using three different cameras to get footage from a range of shots; the 180-degree rule is helpful because it helps the audience to understand where the characters are in the scene. We used match on action in our editing this was helpful because if one part of a scene was not as good as the rest we would cut it and add another clip instead.

I feel that overall we worked well as a group and we got all the shooting and editing done to a good quality within the time limits. However I worked in a very large group, so I feel that some people did more work than others. So next time I do a project like this I think it will be better to work in a smaller group.

If I was to film this piece again I would shoot it in a different location so that the film looked more real, I would also make sure that we had the best possible footage before we started editing the piece. I would also make sure that the camera is always steady when it needs to be and there are no wobbly bits of footage in the film.

If I was to do the film again I would defiantly plan the film before we did it, because we just got straight into filming it at first we was not really sure what we was doing, so we wasted time trying to work that out.

We did use transitions in are piece and I think we did this well, as we used a range and used them when they was suitable. The transitions in the film that we used gave it an overall better finish and helped with the continuity of the video.

I have learnt a lot from the editing software after doing this piece, as none of us had used the software before we all learned from scratch how to use it, so it took us some time to get used to the programme. However once we were able to use the programme we edited the film well. I learnt how to cut pieces of footage, add transitions and effects to the video. I also learnt how to add extra- digetic sound to the film and how to fade it in and out which really added to are finished piece.

From the technologies we used I learnt how to use the editing programme, I also used the video recording equipment which I had never used before, but it was easy to use so I found filming the piece was easy then I thought it would be. I also discovered that filming and editing a piece like this takes a long time.

Mind map of Intial Idea's

Intial Ideas

During recent lessons me and my group started to discuss our ideas about our film as a whole, film names, production names, the narrative and the target audience. We made a mind map as a group containing this information.

I also made my own mind map containing all my own ideas, this included some of the film name ideas that I came up with for example:

• Body Shop
• Death Report
• Police Report
• Flashback

The main idea that I put forward for the actually narrative of the film was, there are several killings that all take place in different locations and they happen to people of different ages, race and genders however it is the same person commiting all the murders. As we are only filming the opening of a film, The opening will contain three murders, and the killer taking the bodies back to his workshop hence the name 'Body Shop'. It will also involve a news report on the tv, and news paper clipping's showing that the police can find no links between the murders and the search continues to find the killer or killer's. This is my intial idea for our film. I will upload the mind map that I have produced showing all my intial ideas.

Analysing Opening Scene of the Grudge

The Grudge Opening Scene Mise-en-scene

The Grudge Opening Mise-en-scene

The Grudge is the 2004 American remake of the Japanese film Ju-on. The film was released in North America on October 22, 2004 by Columbia Pictures and it is directed by Takashi Shimizu. The Grudge describes a curse that is born when someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage or extreme sorrow, the curse then gathers in the place where that person died.

The scene starts with a camera tracking down a thin alley way, there is a fuzzy sound in the background which gives the audience a sense of unease about what is to come, Also the sound of a bird crowing is heard which further adds to this. The camera continues to track towards a house, the fuzz continues and footsteps are heard this denotes that someone is about to enter the house. The door to the house opens with an eerie squeak the camera is at a high angle looking down at the door making the person entering appear small and timid. The camera tracks around the room exposing to the audience a disheveled house, with things strewn over the floor; this makes the audience question what has happened here? The lighting is hard, with lots of dark shadows making the house appear all the more hostile.

The camera flicks to the taps of a bath a loud dripping sound is heard, the camera then moves down to reveal a mass of black hair submerged in the water, this strikes the audience with fear. The camera then zooms in quickly on the figure of a woman, the room is dimly lit by a window so the character is covered in shadows, and the darkness of the figure connotes death and danger. The use of loud, fast extra digetic sound at this point adds to the fear the audience feel. There is a loud crash of utensils and the figure is shown walking away from the window. The heavy breathing of a man is heard and then a loud bang which further adds to the suspense of the scene. The camera tracks and footsteps are heard of someone running to see what the noise was; the tracking of the character with the camera makes the audience feel more involved in the scene which makes it all the more terrifying. As the camera tracks upwards the womens figure is revealed at a window and a shrill laugh consumes the audience. The figure is lit from the left, the lighting is naturalistic, it is daylight and the house is being lit from the windows.

As the figure moves away from the window, there is a loud bang of the door next to the window slamming, this is unexpected so therefore shocks the audience which adds to the horror of the scene. The heavy breathing and footsteps return and the camera tracks up the stairs this denotes the character running up the stairs, the shot is very unclear and a lot of Dutch angles are used making the audience unaware of what is happening. A high pitched creepy extra digetic sound is then used which impacts the audience because it makes it all the more scary. A grunting begins and continues to get louder as the camera does a 180 degree spin to exposes the women figure in the plain light for the first time. The figure is wearing a flowing white dress which usually connotes innocence and purity but the female character is very sinister and mysterious so this is going against the normal horror conventions.

There is then a montage of clips faded and cross cut together very quickly, it ends with a close up of the characters haunting eye. During the montage the grunting and high pitched extra digetic sound continue to get louder and louder only adding to the terror of the clip. The montage ends suddenly when the screen goes black and the sound abruptly stops.

The darkness fades out and the camera shows the outside of the house again, and then fades to show the female character sitting at a dressing table, surrounded by pictures drawn by a child, the echoing laugh of a small child is heard. This is going against most horror conventions because it is portraying innocence of the perpetrator in the film, which is not normally done. This makes the film more appealing to young tribe wired and early adaptors audiences because it is fresh and different. The camera then zooms in on a cats face; it is a black cat which usually connotes bad luck and evilness so it is therefore adding to the scariness of the clip. The laughing of the young child continues as the camera zooms in on a child’s face, there are dark shadows surrounding the child which makes the whole thing all the more sinister.

The camera then shows a blood stained hand and a man with blood splattered over his face which connotes murder and death. The lighting remains dark and harsh creating a harrowing atmosphere. A woman’s scream is then heard which only adds to the realism of the film. The camera fades in and out and becomes blurry; this makes the audience feel more involved in the scene as it is like they are watching through characters eyes. The extra digetic sound at this point is very harsh and dark sounding and this has been used to make the scene more frightening.

There is another montage of clips which include the male character covered in blood and the body of the female character. The montage was used to show the audience what had happened in a short time and it is done really effectively, because it only adds to the horror of the scene. A lot of effects and transitions are used in the opening scene of the Grudge and they have been used to add to the overall impact of the film on the audience. The male character is then shown putting a noose around his neck so this denotes that he is killing himself and without being graphic it gives the audience an understanding.

There is a bang and the camera zooms in on the stair case to reveal the female figure struggling down the stairs, she is covered in blood. The grunting and gasping noise that she is making is bone chillingly scary and very hard hitting so therefore affects the audience deeply. The scene ends dramatically after this with an extreme close up of the male characters smile, as his distressing laugh echoes. It is a very disturbing end to a terrifying opening scene. The opening scene of the grudge is made very well and it uses such a diverse range of techniques in it, and although it goes against several horror conventions it is clear that this film is a horror.