Quick group meeting 7

This meeting was held to clarify which messages Mila would be waking up to in the film. We decided it will be these messages (shown below). However, there may be the problem of glitching on the scream or fuzzy lines if we record the actual phone screen. In order to avoid this, we would have to enter text on the screen in post production whilst editing.

Our Equipment Contract Template

Film equipment rental agreement from NoshinJahan

Our Location Contract Template

 

Improvements from initial 'ABE' analysis under research.

Through the planning and production of my coursework, I have decided to add additional analysis to the short horror film 'ABE' which I had analysed at the beginning of my coursework under research.

The short film follows many of it's genre's codes and conventions such as having low lit lighting, eerie music, death and blood.

The film starts off with a continuing sound of something that sounds like a wheel / car travelling in an empty hall. This sound is echoed whilst the opening titles appear on the screen. The opening titles follow conventionally of most horror films as they are on a black screen and slowly fade the texts in and out. The production company is shown at first, followed by the director and title of the film. How this can apply to my product is that we can start our horror film with a fade in from black and ambient sound of the atmosphere Mila (our main character) is in. For example, it would be a flashback of Mila stabbing one of her bullies, then it could fade into black and say 'A Dark Arts Production".
The opening titles in 'ABE' followed the 3 words per second rule as there were enough words to read in teh space of 3 seconds. The texts of the titles followed after each other after 3 seconds of display.

The eerie sound of the echoing builds up to a climax and sounds orchestrated. As the handheld shot of the footage of the blooded chains cut from one moving image to another, there are other instruments that enter the scene. For example, at 0.42 seconds, it sounds like an instrument similar to chimes. There are continuous cuts from the chain scenes which we used similar editing techniques in our production too. For example, the daily routine of Mila getting ready in the morning was full of continuous cuts and jump cuts show show that mentally, she is not steady and to connote that she is not a normal person. After the chime type of sound in ABE, it is then followed by the flutter of the moth as soon as the woman's eyes flutter open. 

This links with the scene where there is a high angle shot of the moth being sliced by the robot, it connotes that he will do this to the woman he has kidnapped. Additionally the sound links to the scene when he says human desires can all end in the "blink of an eye", with the diegetic sound of a slice in the air as he cut the butterfly without looking. This foreshadows the woman's death as she is being represented like a beautiful butterfly. There is also intertextuality in this scene as this may represent the same as 'The Silence of the Lambs', another horror movie but on a larger scale in all costs, timing and production.

Going back to when the woman wakes up, she sees that her mouth is taped and her arms and legs are strapped down to operation type of bed. She tries to scream but the scream is muffled. This is similar to our production as we have a scene of one of the bullies on an operating bed with tape on her mouth, and she cries, tries to scream and struggles. The wide and long shots used in ABE to show the angles of the woman trapped are similar to our use of camera work as we have had close up's of the bully's face to show her struggle and the blood on her forehead is visible like the blood coming down the woman's nose in ABE. We also sued the idea of chains to chain the bully up so that she doesn't move instead of strapping her down to the bed like the woman is in ABE. Here we have applied a convention as there are usually the props of chains in horror movies. For example in 'ABE', and in the movie 'SAW' which is visible when the main character is chained in a room with three other people and has to cut his leg free from the chain.


Although, in the shots in ABE the woman's hair was straight and neat but in our film we wanted to adjust her hairstyle and make is messy as we wanted to show that she had been kidnapped and stabbed / operated in the stomach. We used a white sheet to put on top of the 'stab wound' in which the blood leaked through to create realism.

There are clear narrative codes throughout 'ABE'. For example the clear binary opposites between human and robots. Normally, humans are the ones experimenting on robots but this film took a twist and made the robot end up experimenting on humans and their happiness. There are also binary opposites in my product as there are two identities of Mila, one good and one bad. Also, the victim of bullying is killing the bullies whereas in reality, the bullies would be hurting the victims. Although this is seen as a type of revenge in our narrative. 

ABE, like ours has a non-linear narrative. This is because there are flashbacks included at the end of the film of the robot looking at the woman with ginger hair that he has fallen in love with. In our narrative, there it is non-linear as there are flashbacks of Mila stabbing her bullies, and they come in forms of nightmares in order to confuse the audience. 

I believe both ABE and our film SENSELESS aim to confuse our target audience, as in ABE we do not know if the ginger haired woman is his next victim or previous victim, and in our film, we do not know if they are flashbacks or actual nightmares, but this is clarified at the end as the audience realise that they were flashbacks from when the evil identity took over Mila's mind and body.

Both are films also challenge Todorov's equilibrium theory as we start and end in a disequilibrium and there is never an equilibrium.

Research: SCORE: A FILM MUSIC DOCUMENTARY (2017)

Director: Matt Schrader
Cast: Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, John Williams
Release year: 2017.

I came across this documentary about the significance of sound and music used in films which was released in 2017.

What I learned from the documentary:

-In the earlier days, when film was first invented, music was seen as something to cover up the noise of the projector.
-Orchestra music was used for 'King Kong' which was one of the major scores that made the film successful. The sound was what made the film scary.
-David Arnold - using a room for sounds and instruments. They use a solar roof to allow them to have a certain amount of sound that they want. They also have over 200 mics in this acoustic room so they can choose which sound of how close or far away they want the sound from the instrument.
-There are different jobs in the sound and music art of the film industry, such as composers. These are the people who are mainly close with the director, as they have to sit with the director, listen to the director and the director has to listen to what the composer makes, as it it has to get across something that is in one person's ind but not in the other's. The example they use in this documentary is that of telling someone to imagine a forest, but people have different types of forests in their heads and not just one specific one.
-Action movies have a lot more music than others.
-The sound and music added in horror movies creates a sense of seeing more violence and horror than what you actually saw.
-Hans Zimmer took strings from a cello and made it sound like a guitar. On 'The Dark Knight' he tried to have a 'constant pulse' going on throughout to make it exciting.
-People are are song artists can also try to do the job of composers for some directors.
-"All your other work on film can come to nothing if you don't get the music right" - James Cameron, a director (includes Titanic).
-Not all music is orchestrated - the sketching scene in titanic was made by just a piano to create the emotional effect.

How does this help me with my coursework?

This documentary was useful in realising how important music is in creating a film, as it can determine how your audience thinks and can change moods in different ways. For example if you intend to create a funny scene in a comedy film and do not use the right music, the audience may not find the joke funny. For our horror film, it is crucial to get right what sounds and music we want to flow with our narrative and what instruments we should use in order to create these sounds. We may also need to consider how to orchestrate it on a low budget since we are low-budget producers as students.
When recording sounds, we may need to record more than one time and use different mics to get the sound just how we want it, but we can also use different editing software in case they don't sound right so that we can match it up with our footage.

The trailer of the documentary is shown below.

Update on props & filming

Instead of using ropes for our second flashback scene we used chains which we borrowed from the Art Department in our school. This relates to our horror genre more because it connotes that Mila has psychological problems to be changing a person up to a bed. It also shows that there is no way for bully2 to escape and foreshadows her death.

Group meeting 6

Whilst preparing for our second flashback scene, we decided to use ropes to tie down the bully to the bed. This would make it look more like a horror movie as she would be trapped and wouldn't be able to move.Preparing for our second flashback scene

Audience feedback on final poster layout

What I learnt: (in audio below)

How I will apply it to my final product: (in audio below)

Sourcing of Imagery

Sourcing of imagery from m_xch
Click the arrows pointing opposite ways on the bottom right to enlarge or click on "in" and then the arrows.
The initial idea of our poster was to show that there are two main characters and that they are the same person but with mental problems. We didn't want to reveal too much of the answers of the killer but we also wanted to portray the horror genre. The reason why we chose these photos is that it is of both the identities that our main character has, and the killer's face is shown at the end f the film but the audience do not know who the killer is until the end, and so we have kept this as an enigma code for our target audience.
The camera we used to take these photos was a Canon EOS 100D.

Trip to the Cinema to Watch the BBFC in Action

On the 11th of December 2017 we went on a trip to Genesis cinema to listen to the presentation from the BBFC and watch Justice League.
The BBFC presentation helped us to understand film classification better as we learned the differences between 15 rated, 12 rated and 12A rated films (show in in previous blog post under research).
How the BBFC presentation helped us determine the classification of our film:
There are scenes in our film which are rated an 18 simply because of the content shown, whereas the rest of the film can be rated a 15 like we had originally planned. For example, in our film we have a scene where the audience can see the knife being inserted into the body and out again - the whole process of the stabbing. This makes it an 18 rating as there is explicit violence.

How effective is the synergy between the poster, trailer and film for DC's 'Justice League'?

The poster is very colourful and optimistic. In this sense it's shown that nobody is left out and everyone can help to save the world which fits with their tagline, 'you can't save the world alone'. What also gets their target audience on the edge of their seats and full of anticipation is that the poster includes all the superhero's logos and signs, and in a clever way spells out the tagline with their symbols. This links with the trailer as all the heroes and main characters are shown in action at the beginning of the trailer. This grabs the audiences' attention and keeps them watching as fans would see their favourite heroes. The background in the poster matches with the beginning of the trailer after the industry and company logos are shown, where there is a pink sky and a big field. This connotes that the setting is somewhere that can be destroyed but then saved, and as it looks like a peaceful setting then this may be where the equilibrium is (Todorov). The trailer however doesn't go in the same sequence as the film which shows that Superman is alive at first (in the trailer) but in the film, he is already dead and then they find a way to bring him back alive. The movie shocks he audience as the trailer doesn't give away that Superman will come back alive and help the other superheroes to save the world.

 In our product and ancillary products, we can do a similar thing by not revealing that our main character is the killer of her two bullies. In our poster we could show this by not not including the faces of our two bullies as this would give away that they were murdered by the main character, if she was there too. In the Justice League poster, they didn't include Superman and the shock of him returning in the film made it a success. In our poster, we could show our main character but not the others so that it creates an enigma code and makes our audience want to watch the movie to find out what happens in it.
In our radio trailer we could start off with the beginning of a newscast to make it seem realistic but not give away any names, again creating an enigma code.
 

Final Poster Layout

Last draft poster:

Good	Improve
The concept
The blue hoodie being different from a conventional binary opposition of black and white. The two hoodies show the contrast in characters.
The tagline is catchy and the positioning of the title is good as it stands out
The background relates to the genre and plot.IT helps to recognise it as a horror genre.
We can see the faces
Easy to understand and it is clear.	Add a background image related to the genre and the plot of the film.
	Maybe insert an image of a knife into the eye of the killer using PhotoShop.

 

THE FINAL POSTER CONSIDERING ALL FEEDBACK:

Final Script & camera shots

Final script from m_xch

Draft Poster 2 & Feedback

What I changed about the poster based on the feedback from the 1st draft:
I added the age rating at the top right corner. I changed the font of the title and the tagline. I added out institutional information and logo. I tried to add a brick border.
Feedback for this draft:

Good	Improve
The concept and the binary oppositions
The two identities represented as one person	Doesn’t tell us who made the film
The tagline is catchy	Doesn’t tell us enough information of the film
Simple	No review comments
We can see the faces	The faces should have a bit more emotion to it, maybe to show how the two identities have opposing views and feelings.
Easy to understand	Add a background image related to the genre and the plot of the film.
	Maybe insert an image of a knife into the eye of the killer using PhotoShop.

Draft poster 1 & Feedback

This is our first draft poster for our short horror film. I asked a few of my target audience what they thought of it and many people gave us a variety of feedback. This poster has a plain red background with two of the same people, one with a black hoodie and one with a white hoodie.

Good	Improve
The concept and the binary oppositions	Show faces
The two identities represented as one person	Doesn’t tell us who made the film
The tagline is catchy	Doesn’t tell us enough information of the film
Simple	No review comments
Simple font, easy to understand	Add a background image instead of plain red background

Potential draft poster?

I tried to create a potential draft poster (without all the details such as the company name and logos, credits) using PicMonkey.com and using the photos I took at the photo shoot with our actress.
I merged three photos together to try and make it look like our protagonists life is going downhill. I used Snapchat to send a video of the poster and explain why I positioned the faces the way there were (so that it her mental state could be represented and so that it shows her mind is distorted). A couple of my target audience replied unexpectedly and gave me feedback on this potentially draft poster and they helped me recognise some faults in the poster and gave me advice on how to make it look more like a psychological horror movie poster.

The reason why this potential poster couldn't have worked is because we could have included one faded picture of her smiling in the background instead to show that she suffers from manic depression and DID. The font also does not suit our genre as it looks more technical or like a sci-fi movie font.

Lighting Plan

Lighting plan for film 

Risk Assessments

Final risk assessment from m_xch
Press the enlarge icon to get a better view or click on the button next to it (in) to go to the page and zoom in

Typography Sheet

Dark arts productions typography for ‘senseless’ from m_xch

Group meeting 5

Planning our poster

 

Animatic Storyboard

This is our animatic storyboard for out horror film. (Turn up the volume).
The process:
We divided the drawings into three parts: The beginning, middle and end. Mariam drew the beginning, I drew the middle and Noshin the end. As there is three of us in the group it was easier to divide and allocate parts.
We then took pictures of the drawings and used the Notes App to convert them into PDF files, then uploaded them to iMovie as we wanted to has an experience of how it would be if we were to edit real footage.
We want the audience to understand the significance the past has on Mila's (main character) Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and how it developed from being bullied so we included various shots of her taking anti depressant pills.
In the future we will use Final Cut Pro for our final product as it has more tools and effects, is well advanced from iMovie and I can develop my editing skills more.

Group meeting 4

Planning our route to our first filming location and bringing the equipment we need

Recces

Click the arrows pointing opposite ways on the bottom right to enlarge or click on "in" and then the arrows.

Recces 

Our company logo

I created this logo for our production company. This was made using fonts influenced by the fonts on Dafont.com. The reason why I chose them was because when they are put together, it would look like this production company makes horror films or mysterious types of films which suits the aim of our project.

Draft Radio Trailer Script 2 with feedback

Edit: The Devil is in the detail - a similar tune that we will create to add in our trailer, as we cannot use the actual tune because of copyright*

Edit:
The Devil is in the detail - a similar tune that we will create to add in our trailer, as we cannot use the actual tune because of copyright*

Props and Costmes list

Costumes and props list from m_xch

Radio Trailer script draft

Radio script draft:

 

Short sting fades in

Short sting fades out

News reporter:

Breaking news just in…

Bully 2:

(Screams)

Mila:

(Heavy breathing)
Young Mila (sings):
Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water
Jack fell down and broke his crown
And jill came tumbling after

New reporter:

Two girls were brutally murdered.

Mila:

(Grunting and heavy breathing)

(Ambient sounds, BULLY 1 falls onto leaves on the floor. At this point Mila has pushed her and is about to stab her).

(Police sirens sound)

Young Mila (sings):
Up Jack got and fell once more
And straight to hell he went
Jill got up and took the kill
And joined Jack on his descent

New reporter:

Police are asking for help in identifying who the murderer is.

Bully 1:

“Please don’t hurt me, I’m sorry!”

Mila:

"Everybody has a bad and a good..."

Narrator:

"Senseless...

In cinemas November 16th..."

(Screams)

Auditions

We held auditions for our characters’ roles for people who were interested to volunteer and be part of our production. We stuck these posters around the school and many people came at the selected times and auditioned  

StickDraw - Animation Maker

I found this app on the App Store and thought I'd try to create a rough moving image of one of the scenes from my short horror film. I chose to recreate the scene where Mila finds out that she is the killer, and the CCTV footage of Mila running displays on the screen (which is all grainy and grey). This then suddenly dissolves into a coloured version of her running with nor frae from the television, which gives a sense of reality.  (Click the play button)

Final Script (without camera shots)

Script (final) from MariamAlim00

Feedback on script

Feedback for our script:
What went well:                                                               Improvements:

Good range of camera shots and angles	-          Give flashes of the murder at various points throughout the play instead of having a complete flashback to begin with. Flashes can show glint of the knife; bloodied outfit; part of a victim’s face in horror, etc.
-          Effective use of Social Media messages to build tension and establish character’s state of mind.	-          Show the full murder in the newscast – CCTV from different angles. Perhaps Mila looks up into camera wildly at the end of the story and this is when off-camera Mila reacts with full realisation.
-          The simplicity of the narrative – not too many characters and twists and turns – suitable for a5-minute  project.

Draft Script

Script from m_xch

Group meeting 3

Planning and confirmation of the costumes for our bullying scene.
Bushrah = our main actress, the killer.
We confirmed the costumes of our actresses, the location and the equipment we needed to bring.

Quick group meeting 2

We held this meeting to clarify a few things for our narrative.
Things we clarified:
How are we going to portray her manic depression? We decided to have a shot of pills each time when she wakes up from her sleep to show that what she has seen (or what she thinks she has seen in her dream) is just nightmares and doesn't help her sleep. The pills should calm her down.
Our narrative is both restricted and omniscient as the audience know some things that the character does not, and also they think they know other things that the character does not but then in the end, both the characters and target audience find out the same thing at the end, which is that our main character is teh killer of her two bullies.

Our production name

My group couldn't decide on a production group name so we took the two that we couldn't decide on and conducted a survey on our target audience, and saw what they preferred. Our target audience helped us to decide as the results were 'Dark Arts Productions', and so this is our new production group name.

Group meeting 1

Setting out and sharing group tasks for planning.

This allowed everyone to have an equal share of tasks to do.

Treatment plan

Name of Film: Senseless

Tagline of Film: Everybody has a good and a bad side. Unfortunately, Mila's bullies discover both

Production Name: To be confirmed                                                                      

Medium: Short Film

Format: Audio/visual

Certification: 15+

Target Audience:  We aim to target people over the age 15 this is because the film involves the character being mentally unstable with manic depression and identity disorder, it also involves blood and gore which may distress some younger viewers. The demographics is of category D and E, this is an audience that have the appropriate income and have enough money to go cinema to watch films and are of the appropriate age to watch horror films. As a production team, we decided to on category D and E as we did research on survey monkey and found that mostly teenagers like to watch horror films. We also aim to all genders to include everyone. Our short film is mainly targeted to people who enjoy the psychological horror genre and the crime genre, as the short film includes murders and discovery of murders and a double identity. The psychographic of the audience would fit the ‘explorer’ (people who seek adventure, thrills and like to try something different), and ‘reformer’ (people who believe in seek personal growth, are socially aware and curious). We also aim to reach an audience who enjoys reading horror novels such as ‘The American Psycho’, ‘Coraline’ and ‘Carrion Comfort’.

Synopsis the film:

Sam is a timid girl who keeps to herself. Sam’s pent up frustration from keeping quiet from her bullies’ results her in having Dissociative Identity Disorder where she develops a pseudo identity that desires to avenge Sam’s broken-self and torture the bullies to death. Although, Sam doesn’t remember any of these murders taking place.

Character list/profiles:

Sam (Main character): A shy college student who ruthlessly gets bullied by students in her fellow college peers. She suffers from manic depression and has a rare mental disorder known as Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Bully 1: One of Mila’s college peer who emotionally abuses Mila and drives her to madness, Mila murders in an abandoned place.

Bully 2: Mila’s bully who torments Mila, and Mila eventually kills the bully in discreteness.

Key Scenes:

1.       (Day 1) Flashback of a dark figure stabbing an already dead body ruthlessly. The camera is at canted low angle to make it seem as if the murder is being watched secretly.

2.      Mila the main character wakes up from a ‘nightmare’ (flashback) and is out of breath from the vivid imagery. The camera: mid shot of her in bed distraught.

3.      Mila walks into her Kitchen and makes breakfast, cleans and continues doing her normal daily routine.

4.      Sits down to eat. The camera shifts from mid-shot to close-up of her.

5.      Flashback: Mila getting teased and getting emotionally torn and physically beat up from her ruthless bullies.

6.      Mila picks up her bag to go to work. The camera is positioned as a long shot where the door can be seen

7.      Later that day Mila comes back, the camera is still at the same position

8.      (Day 2) Mila walk into her room to sleep, camera from behind Mila following Mila’s movements

9.      Mila struggling, groaning in her sleep (camera is canted to show her reaction when she is struggling)

10.  Flashback/nightmare of Mila in a operation theatre, watching an almost-dead cadaver covered in blood, the camera pans to Mila’s face of her distraught reaction to the dead body. (Diegetic sound of Mila’s phone dinging continuously)

11.  The dinging sting continues into next scene of Mila waking up from her nightmare due to the sound of her phone, Mila sees an article of the person being operated on ‘Dead’ on her social media.

12.  Mila walks into her sitting room in utter confusion to clear her head thinking she might go psycho, when the sound of news is playing in the background, camera pans to TV, Mila hears her name and slowly and uncertainly turns around she feigns shock at what she sees.

13.  CCTV footage of Mila caught dragging a body and stabbing the body repeatedly and ruthlessly. She looks up into the camera and smiles of finally avenging her past self.

14.  The camera zooms out and pans to Mila’s face: she’s smiling back. Close up shot of her face.

Unique Selling Point:

Our unique selling point is that our main character develops this unique character that we don’t get to see in real everyday life. Our character has DID, DID is a rare identity disorder and it forms form having a very abusive childhood. Our production group presents the audience the consequences of emotional and psychical bullying. Also, our main character is unaware of being the murderer of her bullies which isn’t conventional for horror films as there is always one protagonist and antagonist, whereas our main character is both the protagonist and antagonist. This would be shocking to the audience because in most horror films there are conventions that the audience expect from these horror films, however because the audience settle into expectations when watching horror films, this is a shocking revelation to the audience.

Competitive market:

Our competition are movies with the psychological horror genre. An example would be of M. Night Shyamalan’s Split, Split is a psychological horror film and its main narrative is about the DID, however our film largely differentiates from Split as Split involves a number of personalities, and our character tries to discover what’s wrong with her. Moreover, Split is made by BlumHouse productions, who have made well-known films such as Paranormal Activity, Anabelle, Insidious, this means they are able to provide Split enough budget money to add CGI effects and to have a good location for filming whereas we did not have a budget and tried to improvise with what we have access to such as a green screen.