Research into titles

Title sequence

Motif films presents,

Starring Kelly Balson,

Joe Phillips,

The Site,

Written by Joe Phillips,

Camera operators United,

Music by (getting name from the website we use),

Produced and Directed by Jodie Heath.

We created the titles by using DAFONT.com which uses unique fonts and innovative decorations to then result in the perfect logo and name for our production companies.

Research into title sequences

Me and my group looked at relevant horror film opening credits to get general ideas for our own film opening and when to incorporate our own credits. The options are to either have the credits rolling during the footage or on a blank screen in between bits of film.
Some examples of the films that we have looked at are:
Insidious

From the inspiration of original horror movie openings, we have created our own logos and company names to incorporate into our title sequences. We have also decided to have our titles fading in and out to make the audience feel more suspense. We have got this idea from certain films like Insidious, Carrie and more horror films that use the fading technique.

Our own titles:

Risk assessment

What is a risk assessment?

A risk assessment is a process of evaluating the potential risks that may be involved in a projected activity or undertaking. It’s a big step in protecting workers and business as well as following the law. For most, this means simple, cheap and effective measures to ensure your workforce is protected. Risk assessment in the film industry complies with their legal duties to eliminate or reduce risk from their work. These include:

·      Defining responsibilities and duties,

·      Have a system for managing health and safety,

·      Assess and manage risks,

·      Regularly review the process and procedures for managing risk.

What a risk assessment looks like:

Why have a risk assessment?

If an incident should occur on set of making your film that leaves someone that you have working for you injured mentally or physically it can mean that you could personally be fined or even potentially go to prison because of it! Where as if you have a risk assessment in means that you have taken into consideration everything that could go wrong and write up how you would plan to resolve them so that no one got injured.

What risks we may come across

Hazards:

·     Slips and Trips

·     Fall down the stairs

Who might be harmed and how?

·     Actors and crew  may be injured if they trip over objects or slip on spillages

·     Actors and crew might fall down stairs as filmng is in low key lighting – may not see where they  are going

What to do to manage the risk?

·     Be careful with spillages and keep wires and objects out of the way to reduce the risk of tripping over.

·     Have a handrail on the stairs, or use a extra light so you can see where your going.

Producing and planning our film opening

Roles

·     Director - controls a film’s artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the script while guiding the camera crew and actors.

·     Camera Person – responsible for operating the camera and maintaining composition and camera angles through each scene and shot

·     Editor – connect shots to form a sequence and prepares the sound mixing a film

We are all going to share the jobs for example filming but me and Joe are the actors. I am Becky Jones and Joe is the psychopath killer.

Production Schedule

The definition of a production schedule is the timetable for the use of resources and processes required by a business to produce or provide services. A typical business will change it’s production schedule in response to what customers want, to accommodate resource charges, to reduce costs and to increase the overall efficiency.

            It is mainly big businesses, companies or factories that use production schedules. They include:

·      Process change-over reduction,

·      Inventory reduction, levelling,

·      Reduced scheduling effort,

·      Increased production efficiency

·      Labour load levelling,

·      Accurate delivery date quotes,

·      Real time information.

It is not just big businesses that use production scheduling, in the film industry, production scheduling is extremely important. This doesn’t just include creating schedules but also reading, interpreting and following various scheduling devices, boards and memo’s. The directors and their assistants normally create these but the production manager and coordinator are in charge if making sure the scheduling is feasible so they must be knowledgeable and updated within the practices of the film industry.

            An example of a production schedule:

Our own production schedule  

Sound	Costume and Props	Actors Needed	Group Personality
The camera will pick up natural sound, ambient sounds and diegetic sounds.	Casual clothing – darkest clothing for evil character – non branded. Computer and phone.	Kelly – girl/victim. Joe - Man/Stalker.	Joe – actor, cameraperson Kelly – actress, camera person Jodie – camera person All – directors and editors

Date	Act & Shot	Location	Holding the Camera	Lighting
19th December 2013	Opening 2-3 mins.	76 Queens Way, Tamoworth.	Handheld: Jodie and joe	Low key lighting -interior: Lamps, TV, Laptop. Exterior -  dark, night time: Lampposts, Cars, Other houses.

Why plan for a film?

Avoiding problems:

By planning you will not run into any unexpected errors within the process of making your film so everything will flow a lot smoother and quicker as you will not have to focus on resolving any problems.

Knowing your shots:

It means that you will know what positions you will have to get into to film certain shots so that you are not thinking what would be the best shot at the time and potentially disagreeing resulting in wasting time.

Budget:

As well as planning your time you could also be planning your money as you may find that you could run over your budget but planning ahead could mean that you avoid the situation.

Casting:

Give each person their role ahead of the day of filming so that they are prepared for what role they are playing, getting all their lines learnt and being able to act on the day.

Common needs:

Is there a toilet available? Will you be able to get lunch? Make sure you have everyone’s needs looked to.

Film Pitches

My pitch idea-Dreamer

This film would be classed as a psychological horror. It's about a little boy, Nathaniel, and he is 7 years old. He belongs to the perfect family. His parents are attractive and have very high paid jobs meaning they have a desired lifestyle and are envied by others. However, Nathaniel has extremely vivid dreams every night about a dark figure who performs increasingly worse and worse tasks. Each time that he has these dreams, he sleep walks. When he sleep walks, he performs these tasks and each task will prepare him for a huge event that he will be responsible for. One knife, help from the other side and a mentally possessed child, equals to an incident that could change humanity forever.

Characters

Nathaniel- 7 year old boy with blue eyes and blonde hair. He has just started primary school but he is no ordinary child, he has vivid dreams that change his perspective on life.

Mother- She is about 37 years of age, very pretty and physically fit. She works as a reporter and is going to be covering the 2012 London Olympic games.

Father- He is 40 years of age and like the mother, is very attractive. He works as a security guard for the 2012 London Olympic games meaning he is very muscular and tall.

Dark figure- We never see it's face so we are unaware whether the being is male or female. All we understand is that it is a supernatural being and its very tall and intimidating compared to Nathaniel and his parents.
Target audience
My target audience would be about 15-35. This is because the younger audience (for example teens, young adults and adults) would prefer to see horrors as compared to children or old people. This is thought to be because of language or violence or just because of the nature of horror films.

Final film idea-The Site

The story of ‘The Site’ is a group of teenagers who hear about a social networking site that is the best site yet so when they are all together round one of the teenagers house, talking about the site they agree that one of them should sign up for it, the teenagers are confused to find themselves on a page that says “Now I’ve got you.” They all joke about it saying how stupid it is until they hear the phone ring, scarcely the girl who owns the house approaches the phone and answers it saying “hello?” there is a pause on the other end of the line, and then a mysterious voice on the other end says “Now I’ve got you.” In shock the girl slams down the phone, she then tells her friends about what just happened. By this point the teenagers are quite hesitant on what they have just heard. They decide to look deeper into this website, they couldn’t find anything, apart from one news story which talked about how a young boy went missing from his home after signing up to this website. One of the teenagers warns the others that they should go home but one of the teenage boys accuses them of being scared and starts making fun of him and saying that he/she needs to grow up. So they all decide to stay in the house.

As time passes later in the night they realise that one of them has gone missing (the boy who was making fun of the other teenager for saying they should go home) they look all around the house for him calling his name, looking in every room until they hear the disturbing sound of one of the teenage girl screaming, they all run to her to find the boy that went missing on the floor with his neck cut open. Written behind the body on the wall are the words “Now I’ve got you.” The story carry’s on with the teenagers doing whatever they can to not be found by this mysterious psycho killer that has now managed to find his way into their home and is trying to kill them off one by one.

Out of panic two of the teenagers split up from the others throughout different areas off the house, one of the other teenagers decides to text one of the two that split up from the others after being warned by the others that she shouldn’t because it might draw attention to them, she texts “where are you to one of the two” she then gets a reply from them saying “were underneath the bed in the bedroom” she says she’s going to find them, all the others say she’s crazy and that she shouldn’t go but she dismisses them as she wants to find her friends, the others say there’s no way that they’re going out there but she goes on her own anyway… Cautiously moving towards the bedroom she opens the door slowly she then peers under the bed (at this point the angle would be the camera under the bed showing her looking under the bed and also the doorway behind her) the girl is confused as she finds there is no one under the bed, then behind her we see the legs and feet of an unknown character in the doorway, she receives another text from the person she text before, it reads “Now I’ve got you.” The camera then goes to the teenagers the girl was with before showing them safe in the place they were and then we hear a scream of a girl.

Being as scared as they are the teenagers that are safe plan to run out of the house to try and get the police, however there plan is diverted as when they try to escape they see the killer just outside the door, they are forced to use the back entrance and end up heading into the woods. They have to be as quite as possible as the killer is also being very stealthy at this point as he is trying to catch them, the two teenagers (boy and girl) see a house in the distance they see it as the only saviour they have so they sprint towards the house banging on the doors, after getting no response they have to kick in the door, as they enter the house they find written on the walls a series of house addresses next to a big map, they try and find where they are on the map however where they are on the map is circled with an arrow pointing towards it going from the map onto the wall as they follow the arrow they come to another wall, written on the wall is “Now I’ve got you.” they then realise where they were, everything starts too make sense, they were in the house of the killer who was in fact the owner of the website the teenagers singed up to. While they are concentrating on this they hear the door slam shut, both characters quickly look in the doors direction. It will then be edited into darkness and come up with “To be continued…”

Characters

Creepy man- He wears unbranded, simple clothing like a tracksuit. He is middle aged and we can tell this by the way he sits (slouching slightly), his height and his greying short hair. We never see his face making his profile all the more mysterious and foreign to the audience scaring them even more.

Becky Jones- Quite a pretty girl with short brown hair. Her clothes are modern and branded but not expensive. She is of average height with a petite frame and lives in an ordinary house on an ordinary street.

Friends- Just one friend who we don't see but contacts Becky Jones about The Site.

Target audience

This would be about 15-30. This genre of film would be inappropriate for children younger than 10 and the older audience would find this type of film too scary and uninteresting so we are directing our film clip to teenagers and young adults. The age of the cast would be better for the audience to relate to if they are adolescents.