Blog feedback

We met with our teacher to discuss our work so far on our blog. We identified which area’s of our blog are successful and where we could improve our blog. This is what we found:

Actors

Actors required & Where we will source them

We require one main actress for our sequence. She should have a playing age of 6-9 years old.  Since the mother only speaks twice and is seen for only a few seconds we will use one of our own mothers for this. For the voice of the bear we plan to use a drama student from our school.

Why we chose not to use Casting Call

To find the actress who will play the role of the child in our opening sequence we created a casting call account and began to look at profile to search for our actress. However there were several implications, that we discovered upon signing up to this website, that lead us to change our mind about using this website:

• To work with/ hire a child actress through this site, we would have to be CRB checked. Although this would not be an issue to be checked, the process of this would be time consuming, and given the fact we must begin filming soon, we may not have been checked in time.
• In order to increase the credibility of our profile, casting call recommended that we sign up to several of their agreements to make employee’s more likely to want to be hired by us. These agreement’s although a good idea, proved to be impossible for us to sign as many of them required things we could not offer, such as a guarantee that the location of our film would be health and safety regulated, or that we could provide a subsidy for travel costs of our actors. This impossibility also extended to the general agreement’s that casting call required us to sign, and so if  we had signed them and then hired an actor from this website, we would have been deceptive and potentially breaking the law.
• Even when searching through profiles on casting call of females aged between 6-9, we found it difficult to find a child that matched what we wanted for our clip, and even more difficult to find one who lived in close proximity to us.

Evidence of the casting call profile we made.

What we will do now

We now have 2 choices:

Esther/Willow – A friend’s niece may be appropriate for the role. She is 9 years old and attends a drama school so is a confident actor.

Megan/Emma – A friend’s sister could also be appropriate for our protagonist. She is 10 years of age but could pass for the age we are aiming for; 6-9. She also attends a drama school.

The parents of both of these children are happy for them to act in our sequence so we will decide the child based on how well they suit the role and their avaliability at the time of filming.

Inspiration for Actress

Outnumbered clip:

This is an example of a child giving their toys a personality. Although, obviously the child in this clip is playing innocently it helped to inspire us with the kind of playtime scene we would like to initially create and also gave us ideas about authentic location and props to ensure that our sequence is believable.

Documentary with a Schizophrenic Girl in:

This extended our understanding of schizophrenia among children. The child in this real life case has developed our own ideas of how a schizophrenic child may behave and the extent of this mental disorder. It also aided our understanding of the differences between a child giving their toy a personality or having an ‘imaginary friend’ and a schizophrenic child believing in illusions.

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Final decision

We did a trail run with the two children we were considering for our sequence in which we asked them to say a few of the lines from our clip in front of a camera. We have chosen Willow for the role of Sasha in our film. We selected Willow as we felt she looked younger than Emma and her acting experience aided her in appearing more natural and comfortable infront of a camera. We discussed the project with Willow’s parents who are happy for her to take part.

We have selected Declan Caramba-Coker for the role of the bear in our sequence. We auditioned the four male drama students in our year who were all happy and willing to participate by asking them to speak one line from the script. We found that Declan had a particularly low yet whispy tone that suited the role and we both felt was best out of the four.

Shooting Script

This is our shooting script giving information on each shot. We have highlighted in which shots our actresses and different props appear to save us time in the filming process.

Making our first Rush

Here are some pictures of us filming clips for our first rush film. This Rush was supposed to be a mock of our film opening, including several close ups of the toys we would use in our final piece. As well as sticking to our storyboard and replicating the first few shots in our opening, we filmed several other close-ups of the toys, from different angles. In total we shot 89 separate clips, which we then uploaded to a computer and edited on Adobe Premier Pro. we added sound and titles to make our rush more realistic, selecting only a small fraction of the shots we filmed to use in the final edited version.

The equipment we used to film this rush include, a Panasonic HX-WA10 HD video camera, and a mini tripod.

The props we used to film our rush, are some of the toys that we we will use in our final piece. They can be seen below:

Location

Location: As previously established the location we have chosen to use is my house.

Camera: The camera we will use to film our clip is a digital SLR camera.The SLR camera, will give us a clear and high quality image, and can be lent to us from the school, as long as we book its usage in advance. Alongside this we will use several types of equipment, such as a tripod. If need be, we also have a steady cam available to us.

Lighting: We have, available to us a lighting kit, which we may decide to use for our opening. Whether or not we use this kit will become clear to us when we begin to film our preliminary clips. If the lighting in these needs alteration, (particularly if it is too dark) we will then use the kit to change it. Having said all of this, we do need to learn how to set up the lighting kit, something we can do with the aid of a video like the one below:

Risk Assessment

Storyboarding

We began our storyboard in class and this will later contribute to the making of our animatics. In the process of making our storyboard we have begun to think more about how camera angles and movement will contribute to creating the atmosphere we want to achieve and support the horror genre. On the front of each shot we have drawn a still image and any camera movement, on the back we have written the duration of the shot, any movement, any dialogue, the angle and actors or props involved which will help us later with organisation in the filming process.

Pitch

We had to pitch our idea to the rest of the class to get feedback and understand what our target audience think of our idea.

http://prezi.com/zf6qyvnjt4cf/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

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This is the script we used to present our idea:

Esther – We want to create a psychological horror opening title sequence. We have carried out research such as analysis of past student examples of horror sequences, existing horror title sequences, horror film posters and the conventions of the horror genre to ensure that our sequences supports the features of the this genre. Our target market is teenagers and our sequences should appeal to this audience. As teenagers ourselves we should be able to understand what this audience will enjoy. For the storyline we are developing we need a small cast of four and we would like to find an original soundtrack for the sequence, either from copyright free websites or contact with an unsigned artist.

Megan – We have carried out market research in preparation for the creation of this sequence. We made an online questionnaire which contained questions about favourite genres of film and other similar topics. From the results of this questionnaire we chose our target audience and genre. We also found a pre –existing online poll which contained a list of popular film title sequences. We analysed these sequences to try and see what it was that made them so popular and we hope to incorporate some of these features in our sequence.

Esther – The storyline we are developing at the moment is about a seemingly normal family. The sequence would begin with our main character, a teenage girl waking up in the morning. Using convention of the genre we would hint at something not quite normal, jump cuts and eerie music or cut away’s to letters from a psychiatrist. The character would interact briefly with her sister and mother but at the end of the sequence, when mentioning her sister to the mother, her mother would reveal that she has no sister and a cut to her sister covered in blood would end the sequence. We want to titles to appear subtly and superimpose the shots throughout.

Megan – Our idea is loosely based on the psychological disorder Schizophrenia- which we may suggest that the main character has/shows symptoms of. We have done some research into Schizophrenia for our opening sequence. Symptoms include hallucination -in this case it will be her sister, behaviour changes, delusions and the inability to distinguish between their imaginings and reality. The idea of imaginary friends or personas is not something that is uncommon within horror films and by including this within our film opening, we will be conforming to the Horror genre. Other horror films that feature imagined personas are ‘The Shining’, ‘Don’t look under the bed’ and ‘The Exorcist’.

Esther – The theme of Schizophrenia and furthermore the idea of imagining a persona also exists in the psychological thriller/horror ‘Psycho’. In which Norman Bates, believes his dead mother is still alive and even goes as far as taking on her own personality. This story is based on events within the life of Ed Gein, an infamous murderer, whose life has also influenced other horror films such as ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, ‘Leatherface’, ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ and the character of ‘Bloody Face’ from the second series of ‘American Horror Story’.

Megan – Here is a list of the minimum requirements that we know we will need to make the sequence we have planned. This should cover all elements of the production of our sequence.

Esther – This is how we will get all of our requirements needed to make our sequence, most of which are already available to us excluding cast and music which we will find online.

Megan – So what now? From here we plan to create a story board, shooting script and script. We will then practice the horror make up and lighting. Then we will use casting call to cast our sequence and contact the actors we will choose. From there we plan to shoot the sequence, find copyright free music and edit the sequence. Thank you.