Animatic and Animatic Evaluation

Filming - 4/2/11

Our filming session went well but was much harder than we have anticipated. Stephanie and myself organised ourselves well but it took a lot longer than we though it would take to film everything which eventually took around 8 hours to film. Firstly, it took us a while to decide where to film in the room and which would be the best location to create a good setting. Eventually, we chose the far end of the room which had the best lighting so as it got darker, the filming would maintain the same quality. Choosing shot angles was also harder than we had orginially thought but we overcame this issue by filming using a variety of different shot angles and each angle repeatedly so we could pick the best shots to use in our final sequence.
If we need to do any reshoots, I feel we have learnt what Stephanie and myself need to organise before filming. I also think that we need to use a better camera so that the quality of our sequence. Now that we both know the locations of each shot and what different camera angles work best, reshooting will be a lot easier to complete.

Idea Development and Changes

We have decided, as a group, to change our idea. This is because we felt our idea was too cliche and wasn't unique enough for us to develop without getting caught into films that have already been produced. Now, we have decided that the plot will be about a man getting a little girl ready for their wedding day. The little girl will have all her body parts. ie. head, legs and arms in different locations around the playroom we are going to shoot in. 
We have chosen this idea because it is unique and still fits into the horror/thriller genre of film. Stephanie and myself have put the idea into a storyboard which we feel is unique and easy to develop into the opening sequence. 

Research - Make-up

To make our film sequence, we researched a variety of different styles of how we can portray mise-en-scene and costume and make-up would be vital to create a good opening. From our research we found that blood and ripped, dirty clothing is common in these types of films which has helped us try and link mise-en-scene into our sequence. 
Websites such as http://horrorgenre.com/Special_Effects_Make-up_and_Animatronics/ and
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/02/19/makeup-secrets-of-movie-horror-pictures/ have shown that make-up is a key concept in the opening and we will have to try and link it into the sequence. 
Costume is also key because it will be vital to create a realistic environment to film. We were thinking of making our 'murderer' dress casually and the little girl in the sequence to wear a floral dress; this can continue to create a realistic feel as we want the sequence to look as effective as possible. 

Task Management

As a group, we sat down and discussed what roles we each would have to make the task run as quickly and smoothly as possible. 
This is our plan for research and planning :


Storyboard - Alexandra and Stephanie 
Location Research - Alexandra 
Make-up/Costume Research - Stephanie
Lighting Research - Sareena


We have also decided we would like to start filming before the end of the year so that we can be in line with tasks and try and create a filming schedule which will get the task done as soon as possible. We have aimed to try and complete all the filming by the beginning of february so that we have plenty of time to edit and in case we need to reshoot or re-edit anything. Our storyboard is the next thing we will need to discuss and plan so that our group can carry on with their tasks as normal and try to stick to our plan. 
My role of location research is to look into cliche locations that horror thriller films use and try to come up with a suitable location to base our opening film sequence on. I am finding this a challenge because I keep falling into cliche location places which are not unique. I will have to research into more obscure films to think of a more unique idea to locate our filming in. 

Our idea

We are going to go with the horror thrillier genre of film; we decided that we would go with this as we can fit the typical thriller conventions but also put in elements of horror so that we can add gore into the opening to make it seem scary as well as thrilling.

Our idea is to start with a typical opening of a thrillier with pictures of a girl all over a wall - we decided that we would go with this as the starting frame as it is expected of a thrillier to have a stalker/a phyco kind of character.
We then decided that to fit in with the horror genre the majority of our opening will go to a girl lying dead on the floor simply showing different parts of her body this will keep the opening ery and will leave the audience wanting to know what happened to her. Even though there will not be more to the film it will be a good opening and will leave the audience geussing and also by keeping an opening like this we wont have to have much of a story line which I believe works best within a thriller opening because it leaves room for anticipation and suspence.

We have decided on the setting of our opening: we are going to use a kitchen as the setting for our opening, by using a setting like a kitchen it will hopefully add a little to the suspence as a kitchen is not somehwere were you usally expect murder to take place. We have also decided on the gender of the murder and the victim, we have decided to stick to the original style of have the male as the stronger character whilst the female is the weaker character. We decided on have this as we believe that this will fit the conventions of both a thriller and a horror. We may however change the idea about gender and the way in which we represent the characters depending on how we wish to portry them.

Location Research

Horror/Thriller films are known to be cliche and over used, in my research, locations are a main cliche that directors fit to. 


Some of these locations are - 
Houses - (The Clockwork Orange)
Forests - (The Last House On The Left)
Empty rooms - (Saw)
Main city locations - (Panic Room)
Castles - (Van Helsing)
Lakes - (Friday The 13th)
Hotels - (The Shining)
Schools - (Tormented)
Countryside - fields, trees etc - (The Crazies)
Graveyards - (Cemetery Man)
Churchs - (The Unborn)
Asylums - (Shutter Island)
Hospitals - (28 Days Later)
Deserts - (The Hills Have Eyes)
Theme Parks - rollercoasters etc (Final Destination 3)


From this research, I have discovered that location is key to make a good horror thriller film and that my group and I will need to look into our ideas with location as a key theme.