Monday 31 January 2011

All - Acts of Repulsion Discussed Changes

  • More extreme establishing shot
  • Low angle through gate *sound of footsteps* - hand reaching for door. Dialogue: Shhhhh keep it down
  • Adds narrative enigma
  • Use a match on Action
  • Use close-ups for when characters are talking (180 degree rule)
  • Vary shot angles
  • For Sound – use a boom-microphone, voice recorder or re-record dialogue in future
  • Don’t pan or zoom with the camera
  • Build on the haunted house image
  • Use fade ins and outs to show time has passed – use a bottle full before fade out and in. After effect bottle empty
  • Same with sleeping bags. Before effect sleeping bags are rolled up. After bags are rolled out  
  • Shot of outside – night – owl cooing?
  • No violence on screen – isn’t as effective  
  • 4 people (2 male, 2 female)
  • A couple consisting of a scream queen and her boy friend who is very masculine
  • A final girl
  • Another male

 

 

 

Thursday 27 January 2011

Production Schedule

Film Date: 22nd January

All of the film will be shot on the day with most, if not all, of it will be filmed mid-morning (No specific time yet – we will be able to confirm it if the next few days)

Location: An empty property on Ashlands Road, Ilkley, West Yorkshire.
We have obtained permission from the owner and the estate agent to use the house for the production of our film.

Cast:
Friend 1 - Ben Braithwaite
Friend 2 - Kyle Meeson
Friend 3 – Josh Spence
Attacker – Patrick Godden

Crew:
Richard McLachlan and Oli Preston

All The Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006 - Jonathon Levine) - Deconstruction

    all_the_boys_love_mandy_lane_movie_poster4.jpg
  • Mise-en-scene - pool party, sets scene in urban/ wealthy are of USA.
  • Girls in shorts and top or bikinis, guys in swim shorts and topless.
  • Alcohol being consumed & drug smoking devices spotted.
  • Sexual activity - people seen kissing in public.
  • All good looking people - Skinny, pritty girls & and tall muscular guys.
  • Night time setting - shows that the drink has been flowing for quite a long time, and they are all drunk.
  • Mandy (male) best friend, and the person who likes her are sitting on the roof of the house after a small scuffle.
  • Her best friend tells the other guy to jump into the pool, and obviously being drunk he believes its a good idea.
  • As he enters the pool, he his heard hitting something and there is a BEV shot on his body in the pool and a large amount of blood.
  • Screen goes blank after a high angle over the shoulder shot of Mandy's friend looking down and everyone staring back up at him.              

Wednesday 26 January 2011

Babysitter Wanted (2008 - Jonas Barnes & Michael Manassen) - Deconstruction

    poster_Babysitter_Wanted_poster.jpg
  • Music at start builds tension.
  • POV-ECU at bare flesh - has marker pen lines on it as if in plastic surgery.
  • Camera wobbling and flesh is moving.
  • 'Baby like' music is played to give a sick sense of horror and tension.
  • Door seen opening at foot level which a 'freaky' squeak into a room with a blue tint to show coldness and scariness.
  • Shot goes back to the ECU of flesh then pans to the right and up to a female face to confirm it's a body.
  • They're gagged and a muffled scream is heard from them then  footsteps coming towards them in the background.
  • Shot under his arm focused on a table with sharp and blunt. rusty and bloodied metal impliments on it.
  • CU of victim showing them sweating maniacally and crying - their face is covered in dirt and blood.
  • Still shot of an overhead hook.
  • Medium shot, pans down her body to show the lines that have been drawn on her - lines that 'show where to cut'.
  • Hammer is raised in background of the shot and placed in the centre of her forehead - signifies where he is aiming at.
  • He raises the hammer and brings is down towards her forehead quickly, the shot 'turns away' as it hits her head - signifies that it's 'too gruesome to watch'.
  • Music turns into one long drawn out note to increase tension.
  • The note ends as the hammer hits her head and a crunching noise is heard to 'shock audience'. 

Chuckie - Deconstruction



    chuckie.jpg
  • Font of opening credits signifies horror.
  • Mask & chainsaw in 'evidence area' (at police station) increases fear.
  • Darkness with lightning adds connotes horror.
  • American flag - signifies that the creators are trying to say "this is what America is about".
  • Mise-en-scene is a policeman stealing evidence from a locker.
  • Close up of a doll he takes from the locker.
  • Shot of the policeman from inside the bag to connote that the doll is 'watching him'.
  • Foreshadowing of his demise - whilst he's driving a car he almost crashes head on into a dump truck.
  • His phone is cut off in the middle of conversation - gives a sense of a life line being cut off.
  • Sitting in a car in warehouse waiting for someone?
  • High angle shot of him in his car in the middle of the warehouse - connotes that he is isolated and alone.
  • Lights a cigarette with a lighter inscribed with the words 'to Bailey' - signifies an importance of the name Bailey.
  • Keeps looking inside the bag which he stole from the police station.
  • Looks into the bag again then is killed by a mysterious female attacker who slits his throat.
  • As his throat is cut, there is excessive use of lightning.
  • The attacker is a Femme Fatade - Signifies danger!

Audience

As previously blogged, my film idea came from watching Hostel and Friday the 13th remake. Due to the fact that my very original idea would be impossible to shoot without high-tec lighting equipment, I had to tweak it so that it could be filmed inside a house. Due to the fact that my film opening is the opening to a slasher, the target audience would be people in their late teens (18), to people in late 20s. This is the primary target audience for slasher films, and is therefore my target audience. Hostel (2005) - which I obviously relate to film - had a budget of $4,500,000 and made a box office of $19,556,099, and also made a gross profit of $47,277,326. This film is aimed at (and quote) "young adults" - this constitutes of people in the age band which I gave and therefore means that due to the fact that my film has influences from that film, if I sent my film for cinema screenings it would have a similar box office to that of hostel (assuming I had a similar budget).

Film Update

As planned, we went ahead with the filming on saturday the 22nd January. The filming went as well as planned, and the house we filmed in was better suited to our film than expected. At the moment, we are currently making a rough edit of the film, which has brought up a problem with the uploading. However, when we get past this problem with either re-uploading the films, or if forced to; re-filming (this would only be a last resort though).

Script - Myself & Richard McLachlan

Here is a copy of the script I wrote for the film. This is what we provided the actors we used with, but we allowed them to change words that they weren't happy with using, or thought would allow them to get character better with.

Script

Deconstruction Of Friday The 13th (Re-Make) - Richard McLachlan

Friday the 13th (remake) (Marcus Nisthul, 2009)
Budget: $19,000,000US Takings: $64,900,000UK Takings: £1,960,000
Titles red – signify blood 
White writing on black background – binary opposites 
Variation of shot types – PoV, Handheld, Shot-reaction-shot ect. 
Different angles used 
Main character – not wearing much clothing binary opposite to mother 
Pendant - silver? – Key part? 
Trees obstructing shots 
Credits cut through opening scene – starts and stops violence – makes audience more scared 
Both characters have weapons 
Head falling into puddle – iconicThunder and Lightning – jumps – controls heartbeat 
Older woman talks a lot more than the other character. Also talks when dead. 
Non-diagectic sound used – eerie music

Decostruction of Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Richard McLachlan



Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Toby Hooper, 1974)                 3 min 21 sec
Budget: $83,000
US Takings: $31,000,000
August 18, 1973 – anchorage of date
Documentary style – Verisimilitude (Realism)
Audio bridge linking date to film
Sounds of digging – diagetic?
Music – no diagetic underlining 
Bones being hit and seen in the flashes when photographs are being taken 
1 min 22 seconds until first shot – different approach to the genre.
   
Horror – best in the mind of the audience- off screen
Flash photography
Narrative enigma (Barthes) mystery – intentional, unsettles audience
Radio playing over the top – exposition
Not met any main characters,
One shot used – different approach, lack of money, plays on audience’s minds.
Equilibrium – killer on the lose

Tuesday 18 January 2011

Podcast 1 - Myself & Richard

Idents

Distributors: $lash Films
Production Company: 'OliRic'
After playing around with ideas for idents. We decided that we should try and make a play on words with a combination of out names. We came up with the production company name, which could be used as a play on words for Oilrig. The 'logo' for our name would be an oil barrel tipping over and spilling oil, which form the name 'OliRic'.

Acts Of Repulsion Update 2

Date of Filming:  Saturday 22nd January
 
Location: Un-inhabited house in local area.

Characters:
Friend 1 - 
Ben Braithwaite

Friend 2 - UNKNOWN (at the moment)
First victim - Josh Spence
Attacker - 
Patrick Godden

(If no final friend is found to take the final part, I have agreed to take part in the filming as one of the friends that finds the body).


Props: Casual, clothes
           Axe (Or any suitable weapon)
           Beer bottles or cans filled with suitable liquid - beer bottles filled with yellow coloured liquid.
           Sleeping bags

Monday 17 January 2011

Acts of Repulsion Update

In the original film idea our initial thought was that the film would be set at night in (local) bluebell woods. Due to weather conditions in January we decided it would be almost impossible to organise a trip to the woods as it would be too dark too early, and the snowy weather would make it a lot harder. The lighting meant that with just the equipment available to us, it would be impossible for us to shoot the desired shots.

The original idea started with a shot of inside the tent where one of the characters is trying to get to sleep, and as the character rolls in there sleep to face towards the camera, a silhouette of a figure dragging a body moves past the tent, casting the eery shadow. In an attempt to test this difficult shot, on the 5th January we experimented with the shot idea in daylight, but it wasn’t successful. Due to the failure in the testing of this shot, we scrapped the idea and due to the fact that 3 of our main shots also would probably be unlikely to be able to shoot in the dark, we scrapped the whole idea.

As the result of the failure of that original idea we came up with another idea that could be alternated, depending on the nature of the location available to us.

Instead of camping outside in the local woods, we could move production of the film into a house. Ideally an empty property e.g. a property for sale. If we can't find an un-inhabited house available for us to shoot in, we will use one of either Richard's or my own houses. This however would mean that the first victim would have to found outside on the street, because this would add more suspense as a pose to finding a body in a house that is blatantly inhabited by a family.
 
Un-inhabited house idea;
with this idea, the group of friends would be filmed entering the house together (they find a front door open). They sit around in a circle on the floor of one of the rooms, with their sleeping bags next to the walls of the room. They sit drinking, messing about having fun etc. It begins to get late, so they all get in there sleeping bags and one by one drop off to sleep. When they are asleep, a dark, hooded figure walks into the room and drags one of the group out. The figure drags the person out of the room, the rest hear the door slam shut with the wind from an open window. The figure is heard fleeing and they go outside and down the corridor to find the body of their friend laying on the floor. They ponder over what the best thing is to do, and while they are deciding what to do they hear a noise behind them,  and see the figure walking towards them with a large axe (or other weapon) in his grasp, which is swinging towards them. The opening ends as the screen goes black.

Thursday 6 January 2011

Filming preparation

During yesterdays lesson myself and Richard decided it would be a good idea to do some practice filming for some of the shots in our proposed film idea. These included an POV shot from inside a tent. This shot proved impossible to do because there wasn't enough light to see a shadow on the tent during the day, therefore it wouldn't be enough light to film in the night. We can work around the setback, but would probably mean some of the tension build up would be lost without this shot. The actual filming will be taking place over an upcoming weekend, but the specific date is not yet set.