Feedback from second edit

During todays lesson the class got to see our main brief again. The edit we were showing would have been a improvement on the first one and should have made the improvements the other members of the class put forward. 

Here is the feedback I got back.

As the feedback suggests I changed all of my sound from my first edit as it obviously didn't fit with my opening. From the feedback I got after watching the second edit, was that my music and sound effects went perfectly with the message I was trying to put across. Although I will have to change one sound effect which would be the swing sound effect as some people thought it sounded metal and the swing was clearly rope, so I will have to search for a rope swing sound effect.

Feedback of first edit

Today, during our lesson we watched the first edit of our main brief. Whilst the brief was playing the members of the class were making notes on what they thought went well and how my piece could be improved below is the feedback they gave me.

The feedback I received back was that my sound effects weren't matching with what was on the screen, and the music in the background wasn't the right type of music. However, they did say that my opening was strong the credits were well placed. 

After I received my feedback I went back to editing and start to look for more appropriate music and sound effects. 

Background Music

The background music in our main brief, is downloaded from youtube.To ensure that when we publish it onto youtube it doesn't get taken down. Wes sent messages to the people who had uploaded the songs onto youtube.

They both agreed to let us use there song in our piece and one even wanted to see our final piece.

Budget of Horror Films

Movie budgets have exploded over the past few years, although horror movie budgets haven't risen, it could be argued that they have decreased. The average budget calculated every 5 years based on the 20 most popular horror movies between those 5 years has decreased in recent years a peak of $36 million in 2000-2005 to just $13 million from 2015 to the present.
More recently released horror films have a budget 35%lower than those released in previous years. Most horror films these days use found-footage style of films and they have had a major impact on the budget of horror films.
In 1999 'The Blair Witch Project' made $250 million on a cost of just $60 million, in the newly released 'Blair Witch Project' has used some very similar footage as the original and it only had a budget of $4 million.
Blumhouse had their first hit in 2009 with Paranormal Activity it made $190 million in the box offices and it only had a $50,000 budget.

From my research I have found out that the smaller the budget the larger the box office sales, when it comes to the horror genre.

Woman in Black Textual Analysis

We start the film with a close-up shot of three little girls playing with a tea set. There is some eerie music playing in the background whilst the children play. You can tell that the film is set in England due to the use of the tea set, tea is usually associated with England so this is very stereotypical. The tea set gives away the setting of the film. In addition, the type of cups used and the clothes on the dolls suggest the era that the films is set in, so the mise-en-scene reveals a lot about the films, as we find out within the first 30 seconds.

The music used in the background of the opening is very eerie and creepy. It is quite slow and calm, it makes the audience feel on edge and they are expecting something to happen. From the background music the audience is given notions of death and they are left with an uncomfortable feeling. This foreshadows the feelings of the audience throughout the film and also could foreshadow what is going to happen during the film.

We then see a medium long-shot of the three little girls sitting on the floor and playing, they are still looking in the same direction. They all stop playing with their toys at the exact same time which suggest that the presences of something powerful made them all stop at the same time. This could then make the audience think their is a character that holds this power, possibly the Woman in Black. When the little girls start turning their heads, it as if a ghost like figure as taken over control of their bodies, this suggests a possible narrative. The music begins to get louder at this point, this could be to build tension, and make the audience more anxious about what is going to happen, the loud sound connotes danger.

Once the three little girls have seen this character. they turn their heads and look in the direction of the window,the audience are unaware that the girls are looking at the window as we haven't seen the window yet. We then get a medium long shot of the windows,and how there are three large windows. The music also changes at this point and gets louder,to convey to the viewers that the windows has a lot significance in this opening.

Before the girls were controlled by this unknown narrative they were playing with their toys, and illustrating to the audience that they were friends, like young girls would normally act with their toys, but as soon as they have no control they start to disregard their toys and this is very strange as before they loved their toys. When the girls begin to walk towards the window the camera is on their feet the entire time and you see them stepping on the toys. They have edited some diegetic sound of the teapot being crushed and the doll's face being stood on.

We then get a medium shot of the girls walking towards the window,the camera moves with the girls towards the window and you see the girls from outside of the window. As the girls step up onto the window seal,the camera cuts to the back of the three girls and you see them in front of the window. A zoomed in shot of the girls turning the window lock ephmasises, that they are going to jump out, and you see them turning the handle at the exact same time, this shows that they are still possessed.One by one they then step higher onto the window ledge and then they step out of the window.

The camera then zoomes out, back through the room, and you hear a non-diegetic sound of a women screaming and you assume as the audience that someone had found the girls.As the line 'my babies' is screamed the camera cuts to the close up of a dolls face and it has a scratch above the eye, the doll looks possessed and very sad. The camera continues to zoom out and in the right hand corner of the screen you see a vale which is black and the camera continues to zoom out and then the sree fades to black.

Production Schedule

Contacting Actor

To arrange with the actor when we were film we contacted her via texts below are the texts we sent to organise a date for filming:

Filming Diary

On the day of filming we took some photos on the set of our film.

These three photos were taken during the first scene we filmed. This scene is where the audience see that a twin has died, they get this information from the newspaper. This scene is about Sarah the youngest twin, looking at family photos both before her twin died and after, she then picks up the photo of her and her twin sister on their first day of school, she puts it back onto the shelf, however she doesn't put it back on probably and as she walks away the photo falls onto the floor and smashes. As a result of the photo smashing Sarah starts to act strange. 

The above image is from the second scene we filmed, this was of Ms Hobbs she was in the kitchen, watching Sarah pay in the garden.

We then went to filimg the scenes in the garden, were Sarah would be talking to the swing as her and Hannah (her sister) used to play on it, so its like she is talking to her dead sister.

We then had to make it look like Sarah had killed someone or something has she had blood on her hands. You can see we put her hand in the fake blood and then placed her hand onto her own face to make it look like she hd wiped it onto her self. We decided in the end that it looked to un-realistic so we didn't have her covered in blood.

Planning Sheet

Brief Storyboard

Target Audience profile

I made a target audience profile to get a better understanding of what kind of people we want watching our opening.

Props and Costumes

Props: 

• Swing 

• Family Photo's 

• Newspaper 

• Knives 

• Phone 

• Saucepan

• Potatoes 

Costume:

SARAH- Wearing a little white dress with black tights and black shoes.  

Ms Hobbs- Wearing her casual attire, brown sleeveless jumper, black jeans and smart black shoes

Pitch

Feedback

Whilst we were giving our presentation, the other members in the class, were able to ask us questions using a google app feature. 

Response to EOR Media- We are only going to show one or two things that Sarah is doing, so the audience gets an idea that she is possessed. As the films goes on we will show how bad she has got compared to the opening. 

Response to Mia Simpson- We won't need a twin as she dies before the film starts, so we will only need a picture and our idea was to take a photo of our actress and put into Photoshop and duplicate so it looks like they are twins. 

Response to Owen Taylor- The photo being knocked over is an accident but we don't want the audience to know at the start that, the photo is the reason she is possessed, and at the end of the film it will become apparent that the twin has possessed her. 

Main-Brief Recce

These are the photos we took on the recce for our main-brief

Scream Analysis

How is gender represented in this opening?

The protagonist in the opening of blade is in a cream jumper, she has blonde hair and wears minimal make-up the fact that she has a cream jumper on represents that she is innocent, her hair also ads to the look of innocence. The representation of her at first glance is that she is vulnerable. Although she is wearing minimal makeup her lips stick out, as she has lipstick on this sexualises her, as lips are a very sexual part of the face. In addition, when we see the house it's adds to her look of innocence as it is a very big, white house. The fact that her house is white represents the fact that she is innocent, we also see that the house is in the middle of nowhere and this tells the audience that she is isolated from the outside world, and she is vulnerable as she is by herself.

In addition, Drew Barrymore is represented by being very desirous of her security has we often see her locking her doors, however her doors  are glass and so the audience can therefore the audience can take pleasure in her lack of intelligence as if someone was to break in they would simply smash the glass. Once she has locked her back doors, we have a shot of her from outside the doors and in the background is a picture of what looks to be castle, this may represent a damsel in distressed as she needs saving from the unknown. This is also shown again when she looks out of her front door, it looks like she is caged in, like a prison, and she can’t get out, this represents her to be weak and she can’t escape, she is also very emotion at this point and has been crying seconds before.

Furthermore, the first piece of non-diegetic sound we hear after the titles is a scream, it sounds like a women screaming and she seems very distressed. This conveys to the audience that, the main character in the film will most properly be a women. From stereotypes we understand from the scream sound that, she is very emotional women. This scream sound foreshadows what is going to happen in the film, after the scream you hear a sharp knife sound, this also foreshadows what will happen in the film. So the two piece’s of non-diegetic both hint what is going to happen throughout the film.  

Furthermore, dialogue drives the narrative of the opening of scream. At the start of the opening, Drew Barrymore is very flirtatious over the phone with a man she has never met before and she is very talkative, this soon changes as the man over the phone becomes very strange, and starts to scare Drew Barrymore. When he starts getting aggressive, she becomes very weak and starts getting emotional, as a stereotypical women would,she goes from being very confident at the start of the phone call to becoming very pathetic and weak when the man on the phone gets angry with her.

The first shot we see is a tilted angle of the phone ringing it then pans up Drew Barrymore, the camera stop on a tilted shot of Drew Barrymore's face, in the background you can see glass doors, this is conveying to the audience that she is weak, as glass is easy to smash and you can see straight through it, so it makes her weak in the situation. This happens a lot throughout the opening of the film.

Moreover, when Drew Barrymore is talking on the phone with this man, at the starts it tracks her and isn’t zoomed in, but at as soon as he begins to get angry and aggressive it zooms into her face to show her reaction, as her facial expressions change and that's when the opening starts to build tension and it starts with her reaction to what he said to her.

Additionally, the beginning of the film starts with red titles this foreshadows that something bad it going to happen. Dimension is working in synergy with Miramax, and they both start with a black screen. When the title of the film comes onto screen it starts of in white, and the flashes to red, as the viewer you see, this red flash on your screen and then  the films starts, thi is to show that someone will die in the film or something bad is going to happen.

Throughout, the opening of ‘Scream’ they are lots of long- length shots and they are slowed paces, they are edited to be slow and long as that builds tension throughout the opening so the audience is getting more and more agitated watching the tension build and then the tension ends and face paced editing, makes it seem more frantic.  

Screenplay

FADE IN:

VHS VIDEOS PLAYED OF TWO GIRLS

FADE TO: LIVING ROOM - DAY

A living room setting with an arrangement of family photos on shelves with a chair beside the shelf with a stack of newspapers and the top one headlined ‘Twin Girl Found Dead’ with more information below and a photo of her and her twin

DISSOLVE TO:

The same picture but in a photo frame held by a young girl, SARAH, who is wearing a dress and tights.

SARAH is looking at the photo in the frame.

MOTHER, a fairly tall woman with medium brown hair in her 30s, walks over to SARAH and rests her colourless hand on her daughters shoulder.

MOTHER

She’s in a better place

Her MOTHER leaves whilst SARAH doesn’t keep her eyes off of the photo

SARAH places the photo frame back on the shelf. She goes to walk away and the photo frame falls unassisted from the shelf onto the floor.

FADES TO BLACK

FADES IN: KITCHEN – DAY

MOTHER is boiling potatoes and it is clear that she has used sharp knives to do this as they are out on the counter.

SARAH is outside in the garden.

CONSERVATORY

MOTHER sits down in the conservatory with her cup of tea leaving the potatoes boiling.

SARAH is facing a swing that is swinging by on its own while SARAH talks to it

The MOTHER then picks up her phone to text her husband STEVE

‘I’m worried about SARAH’

MOTHER looks up from her phone and SARAH has suddenly appeared in front of the window of the conservatory the MOTHER is sat at.

END OF OPENING

Mise-en-scene in Horror Films

Audience Research- Questionaire

To gain knowledge about what people like to see in horror film we created a questionnaire this is the link to show the questionnaire-












We got a total of 28 responses below is the data;

As majority of the people who responding to our questionaire were female we wanted to aim our product at women.   

The age group 16-21 was the popular with the people who answered our questionaire. As a result of this we want to aim our product at people between the ages of 16-21

Out of Paranormal, Slasher, Teen Scream and Psychological most of the people who answered the questionaire liked the sub-genre of Paranormal so that is the type of horror that we would be interested in pursing. 

As the responses to this question were very close together, we were unsure whether to drop hints of the narrative into our piece. We decided to drop hints as to what the narrative is so the narrative was easier to understand but we didn't want to give to much away.

We asked this question to find out what the reason was for people watching horror films, so we could fulfil these ideas in our product. 

As to the location of our product, this questionaire helped choose what location would be scariest for a horror movie. Although the most popular was an asylum, we didn't have any access to one so we went for second scariest which was a garden. 

Using the questionaire, we wanted two characters in our opening.

Due to the majority of people thinking children add to the horror we wanted a child actor or actress to be in our piece 

As possession was found scariest in our questionaire we wanted to have the child actor or actress possessed as these were two things that public thought added to the horror of the film. 

As these responses were very close together we choose to use the static tv sound in our logo for Picka Pictures. 

We asked this question to see what horror films were most popular to the public so we could see what these films include and try to use these ideas, to make our product as successful.