Film Poster (Revamped and added detail)

For our film poster, I had the idea of using an image from our actual footage which will signify that the poster relates to this film. The idea I had was to use the same clip of our main protagonist, but have one of these clips in the light and one of these clips in the dark, then drop each one in half and put them together. This will relate to our film and the idea that everybody has a dark side.

Soundtrack

We are currently putting together the final touches for our second rough cut screen, which this time will include our soundtrack.

We are making the soundtrack in GarageBand, which will include varied instruments to fit with different parts of the film opening. For example before any action takes place, we will have a slow paced instrument to build up momentum for when the main protagonist screams. After that, we will switch to a fast pace when the boy is running to find her, which can build desperation to get there in time. It will slow down once he finds the girl with the body lying next to her, then suddenly stops and that is when she turns around.

This idea follows a lot of other horror film soundtracks, as it builds up momentum and the shock of whatever happens when there is no music is greater than if there was music.

Audience Feedback

From screening our first rough cut to our peers, we have general feedback that the shot variation is good, although the narrative needs altering as it very confusing, in-particular the coffin scene at the end, which anchors down the genre, yet the audience didn't understand why it was there.

From this feedback, we know that we need to re-shoot the coffin seen, but also add a narrative voiceover in places, ready for the second rough cut screen. This time we will also add our soundtrack into it, so the audience feel it is more like a film than before. So after all this feedback, we are thinking of how best to incorporate all of the points into our film.

Editing

Now that we have all of the footage we need, we are putting together our rough cut ready to be viewed for thursdays lesson on April 4th. In that lesson, we hope to get good feedback on our rough cut telling us what is good about our production, and what needs to be improved. From this we can arrange any re-shoots that need doing during the easter holiday, and also sort out the sound and music to go with our production.

From looking at our audience feedback, to anchor down our narrative we have decided that a voiceover from the main protagonist will help, instead of only having a voice over at parts. With this voiceover it will describe what is happening on screen, why it is happening and what happened next, so there should be no reason to why people misinterpret the narrative.

Our first time shooting our film

Well to sum it up, it was a disaster. This was mainly due to the fact that by the time we started filming, it was very late and therefore pitch black. This caused us many problems because with our location, it was very hard to get a good light source. To add to this disaster of our footage, it started raining just when we had started, so because we had not planned for it to be raining, we did not bring the necessary equipment to deal with it.

The good points were that we managed to get a crucial scene filmed without a problem because we did this in a different location, but hopefully the rest will be finished very soon.

We found no problems with our casting and acting, but more importantly shot variation, it was just the problem that we started filming very late, therefore we could not see anything.

To deal with this in the future, we are going to start filming earlier because this will mean we can just edit it to make it darker, which is a lot easier than to make it lighter.

Horror Film Openings

Generally, they all start at night, so the audience knows that this is unlikely to be a cartoon film. The anchor into the Horror genre, a blue lens is usually put over the camera, because it gives a scary lighting effect. At the opening it is unlikely that you see the main protagonist, as usually you see the victim which is generally an attractive blonde.

Halloween starts with a point of view shot of the main protagonist going up to a house at night. A blue filter is used over the camera, and later on in the opening the main protagonist puts a clown mask on the camera, which is quite unusual in horror films.

Shaun of the dead starts off with main protagonist shown then opens out onto mise en scene, but this is done by the protagonist watching TV and it being on the news, which is quite unsual.

Prom Night starts with a flashback from how the main protagonist knew the killer, and how even though he has been in prison this now comes to play in the film.

Strangers starts with a wedding and is set in a rural location which signifies vulnrability aswell as being isolated.

Saw 1 starts by showing its a slasher straight away with the chains around the victims ankle, and you can guess by the name of the film and the objects in the film he will have to cut himself free.

Friday the 13th changes the production logo of paramount, and uses a red glow effect to suit the genre of the film better

Texas chainsaw massacre starts with the mise on scene at a party, and it is set at night and you dont see the main protagonist until later on, which follows the general horror film opening.

Creep starts off with the mise on scene in the train station at night, which links back to the general codes and conventions for this genre, but this time is shows the main protagonist at the start of the film as the victim and not the killer.

Our revised narrative ( Revamped with more detail into our actual revised narrative

We know that were going to have the protagonist having having a gothic horror nightmare or vision. It will be either a vampire or a werewolf chasing the protagonist.  The protagonist will wake up and the audience will find out that this vision is real from a bite or a scratch.

We will make it appeal to our teenage audience by having a teenage protagonist, we will appeal to a female audience by suggesting romance with the villain by having a photograph before the chase that shows the protagonist possibly a  female holding the hand of  a male the identity of this person will be signified by a watch which wee will see the villain having to signify the villain is the person in the photograph. The outcome of the chase will have lots of polysemy to create narrative enigma. The chase will be signified as a dream by unusual lighting or echoed sound. The protagonists bedroom will depend on the gender of the protagonist it will need a mirror so that they can find the bite or scratch to signify the dream really happened. The bedroom may also signify the protagonist as a romantic perhaps the romance was lost when the villain became either a vampire or a werewolf.

Our age-group are used to high budget films with lots of special effects so to appeal to our audience we would need to signify as much gore without spending much. Also on a site such as Youtube the most viewed hits are ones of stunts, humor, animals, babies, pranks and music. We may film some animals in the forrest if we can find them it may be insects or birds or a pet cat within the house. The chase may include lots of jumping,  hiding and tripping over. We may record a  non diagetic rock band as this appeals to teenagers too. Our genre appeals to predominantly males so to appeal to females to we have included a female protagonist and romance. Our audience of our original anamatic did not connote the preferred reading of the film as seriously as we hoped therefore we have made ours not silly but not  too dark.