Final Idea

For our final horror film opening we decided upon having a stalker character who has a young, female captured in an abandoned flat. We thought this storyline suited that of a typical horror film and we felt this would accurately engage our target audience. For the opening few shots we liked the idea of having a photo wall, which the stalker had made himself, and did extreme close ups and midshots to show these photos. Whilst we had story-boards and pre-conceived ideas concerning the way we wanted our film to look, we did sometimes alter particular parts if we felt they would look better. When coming up with ideas we liked the idea of incorporating newspaper cuttings, (as shown in the board of cuttings and photos the stalker has made), so we came up with using newspaper cuttings for the titles and having them blow away, at the end. This proved to be a effective way to show the name of our film and actor names.

Another way we felt we could adhere to the codes and conventions of the typical horror opening was by using high angled shots which made the female character look vulnerable and helpless. We also used a CCTV effect, to make it seem like she was being watched, also we liked the way we could cut between the CCTV shots and our villian coming up the stairs.

Group Roles

We decided to allocate roles for each member of the group so that we all were responsible for a certain aspect of the project. By sharing the roles equally we could be sure that we all worked to our full potential.

Here are roles for each member of the team:

Josh: Filming, editing

Dani: Editing, filming, costume

Lizi (me): story-boarding, costumes, acting

Mike: acting, story-boarding, acting

If we had disputes throughout the project we made sure that we let everyone have their say, to ensure that we were all able to contribute to the final product. Overall, I felt we worked well as a group, as we stuck to our time plan, and created a film opening to be proud of.

Locations + Final Ideas

Locations and Ideas

Here I have mind-mapped ideas regarding where we could set our film, and other general ideas.

Questionnaire + Results

I decided to create questionnaire which would help me determine what my target audience where interested in. We had already decided that we wanted to do our film opening as a horror, so we just wanted to see what features our audience would enjoy.

Questionnaire

Analysis

I have concluded here, what I found whilst researching film openings to horror films:

Analysis

Research-Film Openings

Research

Research

We looked at a number of horror film opening to gain some inspiration for our own one, including Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Hannibal, Saw, When a Stranger Calls, Donkey Punch and Scream. Not all the film openings we viewed were typical of the genre. For example, we’d expect from your typical horror opening that the pace would be slow, with a gradual build up, to something scary and frightening. However, horror/thrillers like ‘When Stranger calls’ and the Saw films all have an interesting and engaging title sequence which grab the audience’s attention straight away, this is a feature we were interested in using. We have decided that we will incorporate various elements from the typical blockbuster horror we have watched, but not focus entirely on certain features. We watched the film ‘Gone in 60 Seconds’. Even though it wasn’t a conventional horror opening, we liked the way the opening sequence was shot, as it featured various different shot types. Also the way it was edited, made it seem urgent and exciting, we were also interested in using photo’s to tell a like ‘Gone in 60 Seconds’.

Saw Opening

Planning

Planning

Target Audience

Here is a slide that I made using Microsoft Powerpoint, which I have uploaded using Scribd.com, a useful website which enables you to upload documents and present them in a interesting and interactive format.

Presentation 1

Time Plan

Here we have created a simple time plan of specific things we must do. We aim to stick to the time plan as best we can, as this will mean that we will have enough time to finish the overall project in time. A time plan is an essential when aiming to finish off a big project, in this case a opening sequence to a film.

Time Plan