Planning - Considering Mise-en-Scene For Your Opening

By planning ahead mise-en-scene we will know what props to bring on the day if props are needed. We will then know exactly what we want the characters to wear, what the lighting will be like and equipment that we need if any is required.

We will use this set up in our film opening as it looks like a typical classroom, it has basic tables and chairs as a normal classroom. We have chosen this room as the props in the room is suitable for our opening. This room is suitable as we don't have to bring anything in.

Our casting member will wear casual clothing of our choice to show they are normal teenage students in their school in sixth form. We have chosen casual clothing as we feel that if our characters are wearing smart clothes it will be much less believable.

We will rely on natural lighting and also classroom lighting for our film opening as we do not have specific equipment to use for our opening. This will mean we have to rely on the timing we film as we will need to know what times it gets dark so we can plan ahead and avoid filming in the dark.

Costumes

Each member of our cast will wear the clothing of our choice to show they are normal teenage students in their school's sixth form. We have chosen casual clothing as we feel that if our characters are wearing smart suits and like it would be much less believable for our target audience.

For Kai (Craig Burton), we felt that it was vital to illustrate that he is a sixth form student and is just another stereotypical teenager. We will express this through what the character will wear as his costume; which will consist of a white t-shirt, black jacket, black jeans and black trainers; thus suggesting that, along with the character's actions in the intro, that he is defiant and is usually up to no good.

Jermaine (George Hales) we felt that it would suit the character if he wore a costume consisting of jeans, t-shirt and a black jacket, which were items that were easily available to us for use. The reason for this is to illustrate that he and Kai are part of the same social group.

Alisha (Evie Lewis) will wear a costume consisting of a hoodie, white shirt and jeans. The reason for this is that she is a tomboy, which contrasts the costume that Ellie's character wears in the intro.

Sarah (Ellie Allday) will wear a chequered dress with a white long-sleeved shirt underneath and tights. This was to illustrate the idea that she is quite studious; thus contrasting Alisha's costume and actions during the intro for our horror film.

Props
The props will include books, pens, tables, chairs, folders, bags, warning sign, interactive white board, lights, revolving doors and lockers

Planning - Casting For Your Opening

Before deciding what person suited each role the best in our opening, we felt it was best to interview a few people for each role to see who would suit it best. These are the people we thought suited the role and people who didn't suit it.

The part of Kai will be played by Craig Burton, Craig is a good choice for this role as he is confident in front of camera and is able to follow instruction without any problems.

Kai plays the part of a 17 year old student. He enjoys sports and spends most of his spare time on social media. Kai is main character in our film opening, Kai is a very confident up to no good character that gets into trouble but never gets caught.

The Part of Jermaine will be played by George Hales, George is a good choice for this role as he looks natural in front of camera as he is very confident. He will be able to follow instructions without any hassle.

Jermaine is a good friends of everyone in the film opening, unlike Kai, Jermaine is almost always studying at his hardest

The part of Jermaine could have been played by Jamie Butler, Jamie would of been a good choice for this role as he is confident in front of camera, however he is not able to follow instruction properly which makes its unsuitable to use Jamie in our cast

Evie is suitable for the part of Alisha as she has plenty of experience behind the camera and performing as she achieved a C grade in drama in her GCSE's. Evie is a good choice for this role as she is confident in front of the camera and is more than capable of following instructions.

Alisha is the part of a good working girl who just wants to help and assist people, a very thoughtful and genuine nice person

Ellie will be playing the part of Sarah as she is assertive In front of the camera and is more than able to follow instructions. Ellie is also a good choice for this role as she is very reliable in terms of doing the right job and being on time.

Sarah is the role of the good girl in the group of friends, she is effectively the brains and sense of the group. Sarah hates to get into trouble as she is an A grade student.

Planning - Location Planning For Your Opening

Before moving onto location planning we had to consider several factors on the places we decide to film, these factors consist of level of accessibility, space provided, appearance on the locations and if they were close to other buildings used in the upcoming shots.

After a group discussion we decided that our opening school building was the most suitable location for use to film our opening, reason being is that it allowed everyone participating in our film to access the location with ease and it looked professional enough to be called a college in our film.

This shot shows the front of the school which will be used to give the audience a good look at what the college looks like from the outside, we chose this location as it was suitable in many ways such as, it was easily accessible by our group and actors, we had permission to film on the premises even at night and fits in well with all our planning.

If we were to choose a different school we would either not have permission as most of our actors don't attend the school or it would simply be harder to access in their spare time. The first shot of the school will be shot 1 from our storyboard.

We have chosen this location to be where all of our filming will be inside, as it is very secluded from the rest of the school, we felt that this would fit perfect with our storyboard as we would eventually need a location that contains less people and space, as it gives off a sense of being alone and far from help. We also felt that this location was more suited than others because it was the building that was furthest away from others.

This location was better than the buccleuch suite because it was better equipped in terms of props for certain scenes and had a larger area for us to film.

We have chosen this corridor to be in our film because we felt that this gave a calm atmosphere to the school building and gave off the impression that everything was fine and no danger was in sight, this was also the best choice for us due to tight small space that other corridors had to offer and it was the connected to the same room that the majority of the opening will take place.

Another reason that this a good choice is because the area is not particularly used a lot, leaving our group the freedom of time to record more.

Regardless of this being the best corridor to record in we had no other choice as if we tried to use another corridor, match on action would lost due to the different locations that were used. This location will use shots numbers 4 to 6 and a few bits of dialogue are exchanged in this location.

The two pictures below show the rooms in the sports pavilion, this is where the main event of the opening will take place. We felt that this was a great place to have as the mystery room as it as it had revolving doors for our character to open which has more suspense than opening a casual door, it was also one of the only rooms that looked like a professional classroom.

We think that this will be perfect for our film as it meets all our requirements. Other rooms still look professional but didn't have the equipment needed to make our opening have the same effect on the audience.

Using this would also give us a chance to include match on action at the corridor and this room were connected. This location will feature every shot from 7 and onwards as the main part of the film takes place here and will end in the last room.

Planning - Producing A Storyboard For Your Opening

Before moving on further with our planning we thought it was necessary to make a storyboard to illustrate the shots we are going to use in our 2 minute horror movie opening, this is because it would give us a clear idea of what shot would take place next including all the important information such as dialogue, angle and location. In addition to this we could visually see what would need to happen in the shot with a brief drawing of the moment, giving the directors and the actors a better understanding of what should take place. Overall it was important we did this to keep our work organised and make the recording process easier for our group allowing us to move forward with our main task with ease.

  

Planning - Writing A Treatment For Your Chosen Opening

The film opens with alternating cuts of various establishing shots and opening Titles excluding the characters involved in bold sharp white font. After the final titles has been shot it will fade into to sky from a white screen; this then pans down into an establishing shot of west coast high school and when the school is in frame, non-diegetic sound of a school bell ringing will come in to the scene.

This cuts to a long shot of the corridor, cuts to a long shot of Kai in the corridor by his locker, then it cuts to a mid-shot of Kai by his locker pulling out books, then this cuts to a mid-shot of Kai closing a locker then a tracking out shot of him and his three friends walking through the corridor to their classroom.

After this they enter the classroom with a mid-shot of them going to sit down in their free period. As half an hour passes by Alisha, Sarah and Jermaine decide to go the canteen while Kai carries on to study, Kai then notices something mysterious about the room he is working in, the lights tend to flicker continuously and the screen turns on automatically. This cuts a close up shot of Kai’s face getting worried and non- diegetic sound slowing coming in. both odd occurrences stop for a while and Kai gets back to work as he thinks it was just a faulty with electricity.

Suddenly a very loud bang is heard from behind him. He turns his head and as he turns it cuts to the other direction to show him looking at what the noise was from the other side. All Kai sees is a door with a sign saying “Do Not Enter” Eerie music now starts to play as he looks at the mysterious door. Kai looks around the room to find anything else that could have possibly made the bang but he found nothing, reassuring him it came from the door. Kai is not slightly afraid, but his curiosity got the best of him leading him to walk towards the door slowly with a tracking in shot.

Kai then slowly reaches to open the door, this leads to a long shot of him opening the door from inside the room the very dark room, Kai is very surprised of what he sees inside and shouts as the eerie music comes to a sudden halt. This then goes to a black screen showing the characters acting in the film while the walking dead theme tune plays throughout to the end where it will subtly fade out.

Planning : Target Audience Feedback

Before moving any further forwards with our ideas, we felt that it was necessary to consult with members of our target audience in order to get their opinions about our film.

This was a stage that we felt to be vital as we wanted to ensure that our idea was one that appealed to the demographic to whom we were targeting our film.

There were various ways that we could have conducted this audience research, including video and audio interviews or paper questionnaires. However, we decided that the use of a web-based survey, such as those provided by Survey Monkey, would be the best option for us as it would allow us to share the survey with a wider sample of our target audience. This is because our audience is more used with technology and social media allowing us share our survey easily, for example the people that took part in the survey were reached by using Facebook to inform them.

We chose that our target audience would be teens and above, so the ages of 12 to 20 because we felt it would be most suitable for our initials ideas of a horror movie opening.

We created an online survey on Survey Monkey which allowed us to send to everyone easily. When choosing the questions our aim was the receive information that would give an idea of how our horror movie should start.

We first asked the audience what age group they were in to make us better understand what ages tend to watch horror movies more and we found that people aged 15 to 19 watch horror movies more with the outlier of people ages 20 and above.

We then asked the audience if they were a fan of horror movies to see if it was a popular genre, from this questionnaire we had found that 4 out of 5 people that participated agreed that they enjoyed horror films with the exception of the 1 that did said they do not.

Moreover we added our 60 second pitch to the question and asked them if they thought that someone should end up dying in the opening, we then discovered that 60 percent of our audience agreed they would expect someone to die in the opening and 40 percent said no one should die in the opening. This gave us a better understanding of seeing the target audiences' expectations towards horror openings, although we took this information into consideration we still decided that no one will die in the opening for a more suspensive start to the movie.

Lastly we specifically asked for 5 people that were either young men or women to answer our final question, this is so we can get a true opinion on how you movie should start, this would valuable to use as it fits our target audience and make the movie appeal more to the age group. after receiving the feedback we took the 2nd and 3rd comments and implemented into our own script/treatment as we found the idea of a danger behind closed doors very fitting for our pitch, on the other hand we thought 1st comment would show too much of the movie and speed up the opening exploiting too much, although the last 2 comments were very good but we thought we wouldn't be able to fit into our 2 minute opening.

Research and Planning Self Assessment

I think that my blog is a high level 3 or a low level 4, this is because I have followed every step of the tasks set properly and made sure that each research task was detailed.  I provided images and other sources of evidence to clearly evaluate my point and I showed full understanding of my task by describing it in further details whilst giving examples.

• My research into horror movies are very detailed and I started my research from 1990 all the way up to 2010 to give a better understanding of how the horror genre drastically changed over the years
• My research into potential target audience is also very detailed explaining the process very well and giving explanations of why we didn't use certain responses. I also gave a clear introduction to this task to show exactly what we did
• My time management is very good as I know when to do each of my tasks appropriately making sure I do the right thing at the right moment. Also they are always handed in on time
• My use of digital technology and ICT is excellent and I am very familiar with IT, I take it as an A-level and received an A grade in GCSE
• My communication skills are very good but I am better at listening than speaking to people, especially groups. within my blog my grammar is mainly ok, although I will make simple mistakes now and then
• My level of care taken in my work is very high as I like everything to be neat, aligned, organised and has the correct font. I personally try my best to keep my blog looking professional