Questionnaire Feedback

This is a copy of a document that I created which reflects a sample of our audience feedback.

http://www.bindingfilm.info/Questionnaire%20Feedback.pdf

We will consider this information when creating our teaser trailer.

Target Audience

The target audience for our teaser trailer will be 15+. As a psychological horror, our research showed that older teenagers would be the most appropriate audience for the film. Our film will have an audience rating of 15 as it deals with challenging friendship issues that teenagers experience with scenes that will - meeting the conventions of the horror genre - attempt to scare the audience, this would be inappropriate for a younger audience.

Sing a song

Music is very important to us in our group and I have had a look around to try and find some appropriate music I found two songs that we drew inspiration from, The Who - Behind Blue Eyes and Gary Jules and Michael Andrews - Mad World. We are now in the process of creating a piece of music, with music student Emily Melville. We were drawn to the emotion she conveyed in her compositions, which we felt would complement our teaser trailer.

Nat

Blog updates

I have made a few modifications to our blog which will help us with keeping track of time and gaining feedback from readers to benefit our project.

After recommending to the rest of the team to add labels to their posts, we now have a label cloud on the left of the blog where readers can chose to organise by labels.


Another module I have added is the subscription box which will allow our readers to subscribe to our posts and comments. This will be important to use the blog as a way of gaining feedback from audiences, specifically our target audience who will follow our production if the genre interests them.

I also edited the width of the blogger theme. Helena came up with the idea that we should have a countdown on the sidebar of the blog to remind us how long is left until the filming deadline is reached. She tried using the blogger modules available however they either did not work or did not record the time. So, I googled for a javascript countdown and after modifications I have created a custom section.

Jack.

Monday's filming

We had three sequences to cover on monday that have already been mentioned by Stef and Helena.
My responsiblities during there filming were mainly considering the framing of the shot, lighting and using the resources we had available to create the desired shots.

Helena had an idea of using a fan to turn the pages of a book. We discussed what we wanted to happen and the type of book was best, but when it came to filming we found that the books we had chosen were too heavy and it was not achieving the shot that we wanted. I then suggested that we used a bible because it has thinner paper pages. This also had unexpected additional connotations for the sequence of supernatural manipulation of religion or faith.

During filming I took a few pictures and also Stef filmed me doing a small video log that is in production.

WonKEY

As Stef mentioned in her previous blog Stef, Jack and I filmed three different sections of the teaser trailer. My roles in the filming were actually filming the scenes, using my idea of holding the fan at different angles to move pages in the book, lighting and moving the key when filming the stop animation sequence.

We originally were going to use a piece of thread to move the keys but when the thread was attached it was very obvious that it was there so we decided to use stop animation and I was in charge of moving the key.

I found this role challenging as I couldn't move the key to fast as it looked unrealistic or too slow as there was no point in filming the shot. Another issue that I had with the key was that when I moved it too close to the edge, it fell off and it was difficult getting it back its original position.

The door shot and the book shots were completed successfully, however when we uploaded the stop animation of the key on to the computer, we had the problem that the footage was shaky as the camera was not attached to the tripod properly so we will film it again at a later date. Next filming is Friday and we will list the scenes that we will film after the next media lesson.

Helena

Camera's rolling...

Helena, Jack and I managed to film some more shots today including the key falling off the table (which was done through stop animation), the door slamming and the pages of a book blowing over (done with a fan). We even managed to suprise ourself with the book shot as Jack managed to blow the fan so that the book shut itself which looks very scary. Helena and I shared the role of filming and I also focused on the overall placing and framing of the shot.

We have more filming to do on friday with the two actresses so we are getting along well.

Stef

Picture Perfect

The Abandoned

This poster reminds me of the loss of innocence. The porcelain doll, is a symbol of childhood, but becasue it is shattered and cracked it shows broken child hood. They have used colour to specifically draw your eye to the eye with a tear of blood. This image also connects with the title 'abandoned' becasue there is often a theme when people move out of a house there is a doll or toy left behinhd that gradually builds up dust.

Autopsy
This is a very modern film poster by keeping the backgroud white it focuses the attention on the legs and text, it also is a signifier of the clean sterile setting of the hospital. When i first looked at this poster initially i didn't notice that the legs were cut off, so it allows the audience to look closer and examine the poster more seriously. However, when looking at this poster it has a slight comedic feel which may suggest it is a spoof rather than just a horror.


Saw III
This poster is the from the third film in the Saw series. Similarly to the Autopsy poster is uses a white background, however, the bottom of this poster uses darker tones that do not give promote the idea of the setting being sterile. The saw at the top of the poster, is used to create an uncomfortable feeling in the audience, it's rusty and dirty, which is clearly nothing you want to be associated with removing teeth, which is linked at the lower third of the poster. This creators of this poster has specifically used Golden section to hint to the audience the conventions of this film.

Get your make-up on!

So here are the make-up plans for our two actresses...

This is Alice's make-up plan, whom is playing the character of Catherine (the dead girl)


- black liquid eye liner on top lip following the lash line to depict out the eyes and make them look bold on camera

- white eye shaddow on eye lashes to give a ghostly feel

- nude lips blended to skin colour, but not overly so, to give a slight ghostly appearance to the face

- black khol eye liner under the eye, slightly smudged to again outline the eyes; almost a smoky feel to the eyes


- this look should give a slight ghostly look without being blaringly obvious




This is Lexie's make up plan, whom plays Mary

- natural looking bronze eye shaddow, giving a natural glow to the face

- black mascara and natural lip gloss to give an ordinary look

- black khol eye liner a quater of the way under the eye to open the eyes

-this look gives a natural look to show the contrast between the two characters




So there you go

Stef

UPDATE: We decided to change Alice's, (aka Catherine) make-up slightly. The only difference was that we used no eye shaddow as the white eye shaddow seemed to obvious that something was not quite right with her. The black eye liner remains the same, as does the rest of the make-up plan.

Poster pictures

As Stef has said in this post we have started to consider the posters. I took some pictures, which you can see below, to experiment with the angles and so we can compare our ideas. I have also uploaded them to flickr.




More poster discussions to follow, I drew a sketch and have annotated it on what each section of a proposed poster signifies for the audience and how it is appropriate to the audience. Once we have discussed this, I will upload a scanned in version of my work.

To redo do or not to redo, that is the question!

Well, in today's lesson Stef, Jack and I uploaded the footage that Nat, Stef and I shot over the weekend with Alice and Lexie. We were really impressed with the quality of the swing shot, as we had worried about that, but once on screen it was easy to see how we could edit it and the camera wasn't as shaky as we believed it to be.

Something that will needed to be re filmed however, are the scenes with the fake blood. The blood looked effective but Lexie's hands were not as covered as they could have been. However this is not why we will have to re film that sequence. We are refilming as the general mise en scene of the area was not appropriate as for example we had a Robinson squash bottle in the background and a food colouring bottle in the corner of the scene. So when we re film we will change the area around the sink to fit in with the character.

We haven't decided when we will be filming this scene as we need to consult with Alice and Lexie.

One last thing, we are really taken with the idea of using music that you hear in jewelry boxes. By its self or edited it can sound very scary.

Helena

It's poster time

In today's media lesson we not only uploaded the film footage we have recorded, we also began thinking of potential ideas for our film poster. We firstly decided that we want both of the actresses will appear on the poster, after we recieve their permission to do of course.
We are thinking of having it set in the forest we filmed in, as there was a clearing that would be perfect for the shot. Another possible location would be the park that we previously filmed in using the swings as our main focus. Our favourite idea is this:

--> Set in the forest with Mary (Lexie) standing straight on, facing the camera looking frightened with Catherine (Alice) standing behind with her hand on Mary's shoulder. We would only show half of Catherine's face to symbolise the mystery surrounding her character. The forest would also add to a mystery of the plot. Having Catherine's hand on Mary's shoulder symbolises the relationship they share, as shown in the trailer, and also symbolises the manipulation of Mary.

We did a quick tester shot with myself and Helena, which Jack will later upload onto here.

Also, I will upload the make-up plans here tonight if I can as I am away as of tomorrow.

Stef

Fake Blood Mmmm

We created 3 pints of blood on Tuesday to be used in the production of our teaser trailer. It was great fun, and as you have previously read we had great fun. I got involved a little with stirring the mixture and the amount of the mixtures we used to create our desired effect. Another responsibility of mine was to take some picture for our blog.

As you may know, we have our own Flickr account and personal sets and photostreams for your viewing. I have found a Flickr blogger module that has been added to the side of the website.


Below is one of these pictures.





The rest can be found on our Flickr Fake blood set.


Thanks
Jack

My thoughts on the day

Filming went very well and I think we are well on the way now. We are planning to show Jack all of our footage so far to make sure he's happy with it and anything that looks a bit odd we will film again. Our two actors were absolutely brilliant and weren't afraid to get stuck in. We are going to split their train fares between the four of us and also made sure we fed them during filming. They both turned up in the costumes we asked them to.
Some of our next shots will involve close-ups of the girl's faces so make-up will have to be considered. I am going to draw up a make-up plan for each girl and hopefully put it up on here as make-up can help to promote a certain character an actor is trying to convey...

Stef

Camera, Lights and finally Action

Well we have had a very busy weekend with our first official day of filming. Stef, Nat and I filmed today's scenes (Jack was on a uni visit) We started off on Sunday morning in Kemsing which was our first location of the day. We went through with our actors what we needed for the first shots.

I've just realised that we didn't post the list of shots we were planning to do on Sunday, I think that may have been my fault sorry! So I will list those and then list the shots we actually going to do.
These were the shots that we were planning to do
2) Fade transition into establishing shot of girl swinging alone in a park
3) Straight cut to wide shot behind the swing of Mary swinging with diegetic sound of chains squeaking
4) Point-of-view shot of Mary on swing leaning back, repeated four times with Catherine not there then suddenly appearing
5) Close up of Mary’s feet digging into ground to stop swinging
6) Over-the-shoulder shot of Catherine who says “Hi. I’m Catherine.”
7) Reversal over-the-shoulder shot of Mary replying “Erm, hi, I’m Mary.”
8) Long shot of the two girls talking along with non diegetic voice-over of “Mary’s mother” saying “You’re such a lonely girl Mary, why don’t you try and make some friends?”
9) Long shot of girls leaving the park as voice-over continues (sound bridge)

Our actual first shot was one that we weren't expecting to do.
21) Long shot of Mary running
24) Long shot of Mary running part 2

We did this as when we arrived at Kemsing park there were people on the swings as we were wondering what we could do while we waited we noticed this clearing inside a forest area. As a result, we decided to film the running shot.
When we had finished our filming of this shot, the swings were clear so we started on the main shots on the swing.
We had a second problem however which was a child arrived with their grandfather and was playing on the equipment, so instead of having a reversal over the shoulder shot (shot 7) we had to have a continued over the shoulder shot from behind Catherine. This was so you could not see the boy.
Another problem we faced with filming in the playground was the noise of the boy. We have decided that we will have to mute some shots and luckily he wasn't making any noise while we were filming the talking scenes.
Having other people in the park also meant that we could not film a long shot of the girls leaving the park as it would break continuity and also mean that they were not alone as intended. So we will either return to film this at another date, or substitute this with another shot.

When we had finished this section we decided that we still had quite a lot of time so we went back to Nat's house to film some of the shots we would have done if it had been bad weather.
We decided to film the scenes involving fake blood (which Nat made some more of). We have changed the scenes from the original shot list.
- Close up of tap running and a hand turning it off.
- High angle shot of the sink filled with water and soap and 'Mary' washing a plate.
-Tracking shot of 'Mary' taking the plate out and moving it the side and taking another plate and bringing it back to the sink filled with blood.
- Side reaction shot of 'Mary' with her hands covered in blood
We may not use all of these shots but we feel it has helped us to film extra scenes.

We started on the final shot of 'Catherine' sitting on the floor surrounded by candles but decided Nat's sitting room was too bright and so are going to leave it until we film on our next date which will be after school one day and so should be darker.

Roles I played in the filming was to help adjust the tripod, film certain scenes, keep the shot list updated or work with Alice and Lexie so they knew what they were doing. Stef, Nat and I all took turns in every single job so a fair amount was done by all.

Our next filming date is the 23rd of October and then the 1st of November with our actresses. On the 1st we will be going to Hastings to film.

Helena

We've ALL got email

We are preparing for the first offical day of filming. We have decided our shots if it is a sunny day and Stef is going to blog the shots we will do if it is a rainy day.

This is the email that we sent to the girls



Helena

We are starting filming properly with our actors on Sunday and Helena will later post the e-mail we sent to the girls regarding the details for the day. This post is mainly discuss the costumes for both of the girls.

For Catherine (the girl who is actually dead), we have decided she should wear:
--> Black trousers/ black knee length skirt/ black dress
--> Black tights and shoes
--> Black shirt and cardigan
--> Hair loose and potentially slightly dark make-up with a pale face

We are going to ask the girls what they have and then build on the outfits from there, but that is a rough plan above.

For Mary (the main character) she will wear:
--> Dark blue jeans
--> Purple/black t shirt
--> Ordinary trainers/shoes
--> No specific hairstyle, as this may differ between takes, without breaking continuity
--> Naturalistic looking make up

We want Mary and Catherine's wardrobe to be contrasting to show the difference between the two girls, without making it blatently obvious. We have said to the girls that we will meet with them in a few days to discuss this in detail.

Filming on Sunday will depend on weather, which we have made clear to the girls, but we have also formed a back-up plan, which means we can do some inside shots instead. Nat lives just down the road from the park and so has offered her house in case of rain. The shots we can film as a back-up are...

10) Wide shot of two girls on the bed, laughing and chatting
12) Straight cut into two girls linking arms
13) Close up of Catherine's hand going onto Mary's shoulder
15) Long shot of two girls looking into mirror in the bathroom
16) Mid shot of Mary saying "I wish you'd stop staring at me Catherine"
17) Wide shot of Mary leaning over sink
18) Mid shot of steam rising from sink
19) Over the shoulder shot from behind Mary straightening up words "R.I.P Mary" are written in the steam
28) Close up of Mary screaming
30) Close up of tap and sink
31) Zoom out shot of sink filled with blood

Hopefully we'll have some good weather!

Stef

Post a poster

Well, during my free I thought I would do a bit of poster research. We were having a chat about this earlier and Nat suggested our poster be really subdue colours so that it could make a impact that connotes darkness.

This poster that I have uploaded below is not in black/grey/white but has dark colours and the visual image is quite striking.

However, I don't think we could do a poster like this only because we have two principal characters so the poster would have to feature both. However I did have an idea that maybe we could have one of the girls at the front of the pictures and the other blurred looking at the first girl. Its only an idea but maybe we could develop it when we start designing our poster.

Another thing that has made me think about this poster was that its quite a teaser poster as the girl's mouth is blanked out and you don't know why this is, which gives an element of mystery.

Helena

Fake blood

We and Jack have spent the evening creating fake blood. Orginally we were supposed to be filming tonight, however, we underesitmed the time it would take and we didn't follow the recipe quite as we were supposed to do so it took the majority of the evening.

We have decided that we do another day after school for the shots. And do the fake blood shots when the girls are filming with us on sunday so there are no continunity errors.

Although it took us along time to perfect the fake blood we belive it was worth it as the shot will be really effective.

Helena and Nat

Sorry for my absence!

Just a quick sorry for not being there tonight guys but will definitely be there on Sunday to continue to filming.
I have a few responses from the questionnaire on my facebook that could be used to collate our data and was thinking maybe we could come up with a titles for our teaser trailer?

Stef

Wonderland

I was looking at different teaser trailers as a bit more research and I came across this teaser trailer for Tim Burton's 'Alice in wonderland'


What struck me about this teaser trailer is that the beginning is quite similar to ours. It is a continuous scene until there is a shift in the atmosphere something changes. Fast cuts are then introduced, like ours again.

Looking at this I hope ours can be as effective as this teaser trailer. I think we will have to be very careful about the choice of music as this teaser trailer made a good choice of non-diegetic background music.

Tonight Jack, Nat and I are filming the scenes that dont invole the actors. We are going to make fake blood using a recipe we found on Wiki How


We will update on how filming went later

Helena

Research

I was just looking around and found a teaser trailer for the new Saw film (SawVI) I thought it was very interesting how very little was given away in the trailer and I know we have already done the storyboard ect. but it still may be handy to keep in mind, especially during the editing process.



Nat

Storyboards

Today I am finishing off the storyboards, just finishing some last minute details. So I will hopefully be able to scan them in and upload them either tonight or tomorrow.

Fingers are crossed for tomorrow for filming

Nat

And you're hired

Well after our really sucessful auditions that Stef blogged about we have chosen our two actors, Lexie and Alice. Their auditions were amazing and we feel that they can really potray our charecters in the way that we want them to. These are the emails we sent out. One for the sucessful students and one for the students that we didn't choose.

In other news tommorow is our first filming day. Nat, Jack and I will be filming, Stef cannot make it but we have decided as a group if someone cannot make it then everyone else should continue. This means that we can meet our deadline as other wise we would have to wait a long time for everyone to be free.

The shots we are filming tommorow are the ones that don't invole actors. This is because they were not free on such short notice.

The shots to be filmed are;

22) Close up of keys falling off table

23) Mid shot of door slaming

26) Mid shot of pages of book blowing

30) Close up of tap and sink

31) Zoom out shot of sink filled with blood

Allthough there aren't many shots it means that they are out of the way for when our actors are filming with us so we can concetrate on filming their scenes

Helena

Remember my name...

We held our year twelve auditions today that went very well. I found a short monologue from the musical "Fame" and they each read this in front of myself and Helena. I chose this monologue as it encompasses alot of different emotions in one speech and would allows the girls to act out a dramatic and highly emotional scene. Jack told the students where to find us and we held the auditions.

We had a fair few number of students turn up and have decided on our final two actors so will hopefully be ready to film by next week...We are going to e-mail the two students this afternoon hopefully and let them know they have the parts.

Nat is finishing off the storyboard currently in preparation to show on Monday and then we can officially begin filming.

Stef

Shot em quick

Well, since the last blog me and Stef have composed the shot list that we will use when we start filming. We decided that we should do this before we started entering shots into the storyboard so that they are accurate. This took a while to do and when we finished we felt that we were really happy with our shots.

One idea I came up with which I was particularly happy with was the dead girl, Catherine, is sitting cross legged surrounded with candles right at the end of the teaser trailer. She is playing with the candles and singing under breath the nursery rhyme, "Mary mary". This will be done as a wide shot. Then she finishes by blowing out the candle. And the song finishs
However Stef came up with an idea to finish it which the whole group preferred, where Catherine extingushs the flame with her fingers. This would work well as the ideas of flames and nusery rhymes are quite contrasting.

This is the shot list

Shot list
1) Fade transition into film company logo of “Hammer Film Productions”
2) Fade transition into establishing shot of girl swinging alone in a park
3) Straight cut to wide shot behind the swing of Mary swinging with diegetic sound of chains squeaking
4) Point-of-view shot of Mary on swing leaning back, repeated four times with not there then suddenly appearing
5) Close up of Mary’s feet digging into ground to stop swinging
6) Over-the-shoulder shot of Catherine who says “Hi. I’m Catherine.”
7) Reversal over-the-shoulder shot of Mary replying “Erm, hi, I’m Mary.”
8) Long shot of the two girls talking along with non diegetic voice-over of “Mary’s mother” saying “You’re such a lonely girl Mary, why don’t you try and make some friends?”
9) Long shot of girls leaving the park as voice-over continues (sound bridge)
10) Wide shot of two girls on bed, laughing and chatting with happy sounding non-diegetic background music
11) Fade transition into a mid shot of two girls walking down a high street talking
12) Straight cut into mid shot of the girls linking arms
13) Fade transition into a close-up of Catherine’s hand going slowly onto Mary’s shoulder followed by an immediate straight cut to a black screen
14) Fade transition into title “But friendships can change”
15) Fade cut into long shot of the two girls looking into a mirror in bathroom
16) Mid shot of Mary saying “I wish you’d stop staring at me Catherine”
17) Wide shot from the side of Mary leaning over sink, washing face
18) Mid shot of steam rising from the sink
19) Over-the-shoulder shot from behind of Mary straightening up and looking in mirror as “R.I.P Mary” is written in the steam on mirror with non diegetic tense background music
20) Fast cuts between the following…
21) a) Long shot of Mary running
22) b) Close up of keys falling off table
23) c) Mid shot of door slamming
24) d) Long shot of Mary running part 2
25) e) Close up of Catherine laughing and diegetic sound of laughter continues throughout rest of fast cuts
26) f) Mid shot of pages of book blowing
27) g) Long shot of Mary running part 3
28) h) Close up of Mary screaming and diegetic sound of screaming continues throughout the rest of the fast cuts
29) i) Close up of wrists tied up with chains with diegetic sound of chains squeaking
30) j) Close up of tap and sink
31) k)Zoom out shot of sink filled with “blood”
32) l) Immediate cut to black screen
33) Long shot of Mary running on beach yelling “CATHERINE!”
34) Long shot behind of Catherine, waist high in sea turning around, smiling creepily
35) Wide shot of Catherine with candles surrounding her playing with them. Singing nursery rhyme ‘Mary Mary’ to her self when dies out candles are extinguished
36) Title screen

We will film extra scenes and maybe change diffrent scenes when we actually shoot it but for now it is what we will story board.

Helena

Audition notification

Luckily we got some very enthusiastic responses from the year twelve drama students and so I comprised this email and Helena found the names of those that responded and sent them all this e-mail...





So hopefully a few will turn up and we will have our final actors by next week to start filming asap.

Today in media Helena and I wrote a formal shot list for Nat to use to draw the storyboard. The two of us took half of the storyboard each to write in the descriptions for each shot and so hopefully will have it completed by next week. Jack's now in charge of questionnaire results and data so just a note to him; people have responded to the questionnaire of my facebook so feel free to include my results to draw up a conclusion.

Stef

"Let there be light"

Here is some research on types of lighting; something we should consider when filming our teaser trailer.

Types of Lighting

Lighting must be carefully considered when filming as different lighting can create different atmospheres, as shown in the following examples…

Back Lighting

Light source is placed behind the subject
Looks like a silhouette
It adds a sense of mystery or wonder.
Shadows surrounding the subject add to the mystery
Can create fear and terror of the unknown.
Often used in horror films to conceal the villain.

Under Lighting

Light source is under the subject
Creates shadows in the subject, adding mystery
Shades of light and dark are added to the subject
Full features of subject cannot be properly seen
Gives a “ghostly” feel
Often used in horror films to create unease
Makes the subject appear domineering

Top Lighting

Light source is above subject
Face is let well, as are the surroundings
Used to create realistic settings
Looks like “everyday” light
Naturalistic feeling.
Used in TV soaps regularly.

High Key Lighting

Overall bright light is used
The overall scene appears very bright
Clearly shows the subject
No shadows in the background
Can add a clinical feel to a scene, like in a hospital
Used to highlight the subject clearly

Low Key Lighting

Shades of light and dark are created
Adds a sense of mystery
Conceals the full features of the subject
Used regularly in films such as the Harry Potter series
What is happening on screen is not shown completely
Keeps the viewers “guessing”



Hope this helps.

Stef