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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
