Shot Types

 In our production, we plan to use many shot types, I'll mention a few of these and explain why they are effective.

Close-Up:

The close-up is used to show emotion on the characters face, this is especially effective in a horror film as the emotion of the characters (usually the victims) is shown frequently.












Low angle shot:

We have a shot idea for this angle that we feel will be hugely effective in our production, it will be used as almost a POV shot from a characters perspective, looking up at someone, almost as if they are inferior to them. From watching other horror films we see this as a really good shot type which wee want to use in our film.








Extreme Close-Up:

The extreme close-up is a show which shows a face really close-up. It usually shows an eye, or a mouth, but most commonly an eye. Eyes portray many emotions, they dilate in fear, get tears when the character is sad etc. We are thinking about using an eye dilating in our film, however this is merely a contemplation.

Psycho shower scene

This is one of the most famous scenes from a horror film, i wanted to do some research of this. I have found that this iconic scene has many stereotypical horror conventions that we plan to use in our film. Some examples being

- Eerie music
  - We want music to be our strongest point in the film, the use of music in horror films is key to sucess, this is an ideal example; with the fast paced, scary music giving an ominous feel to the entire scene, even before anything happens it is obvious that it will, this is because of the music.
- Screaming
  - When people are asked about screams in a horror film they usually remember the scream in this scene.We have many screams planned in our production as they were very effective in  other horror films like this one, both Michael and Rowen have showed us how they scream and we feel it could be a stand out feature in our opening.
- 'Fear factor'
  - The fear factor is a common feature in all horror films, especially in this scene. We want our film to have a similar effect on the audience to this film and this scene in particular, we class our production as a slasher, however it could be considered psychological as n the introduction no-one is seen being killed. However, it is implied.
  - With the use of music and the screams mentioned above i feel this will give our film the fear factor, i already have some ideas for music and we hope that this we be a strong point of our production.
- Stereotypical victim
  - In this scene there is a stereotypical horror victim; this being a defenceless, attractive girl. Through casting, we have found a suitable character in Rowen, we thought as a group that she matched the criteria of a horror victim. We also have Michael, who will play the younger brother, however he is the weaker of the two, possibly challenging the conventions of a horror movie; our roles of the cast may change and we may keep Michael as a weak child who gets killed almost instantly.

Preliminary Task Video

Location Photos

The image shown in this post are the initial ideas for our horror film opening scene  location, the selected scenes are subject to change. However, we expect that we will use a majority of the areas shown below. We decided upon this location after much research and saw this area as an ideal location to fit our storyline and also the stereotypical setting of a horror opening. We film be filming when the area is darker to add suspence and a more realistic scene. The location is named pocket park, a local nature reserve, when the area is dark, it is a scary place which makes you feel uneasy.

The image above shows our initial idea for where the two victims will be introduced playing with the symbolic ball, this area will be a key scene, with the bridge showing the cross from safety to death, this is also backed up in the title sequence when a dead body is shown on the other side of the river.  



The image above shows the crossing of the bridge, this does not occur as such in film but is insinuated by the flight of the ball.

This area was set to be the main area of our opening, however through looking around the area we found a better location, the reasons we were going to use this was to link with our title, 'The River', which is to the right of the camera and would have always been in shot.

With the above scene we initially thought we could use this for Michaels death, but later discovered a different area which suited the scene better and allowed a most conventional camera angle to be used.

In the initial plan, this was the location of the two children playing catch, however, we decided to directly link the initial scene to the river and panned to a location close to the river itself.

The tree in the above image was used for Michaels hanging sene, the space around the tree and the river in the background made this an ideal location.

The above image shows where the majority of the final scene was filmed, behind the cameras location is the tree Michael was hanging from and shows the reval of the last masked man from a good perspective.

This was teh initial plan for the second murder scene, but after some delegation we decided it was too open and bright, which doesn't suit our film or a conventional horror.

this tree was used when the scenes cut from Michaels scream to the forest. The use of first person benefited this shot as it showed the masked man hiding and watching secretively with some obstruction of the view rather than in the open.

This shows the scene where Michael picks up the ball, just to the right of the cameras location was the bush which had a masked man hidden within.

This shot shows the location in the forest where Rowen was being watched from a better angle.

This concludes this post, this post showed the many different ideas we had before filming, many of which have stuck and been used within the final cut. We chose the best locations which fitted the convential horror genre, the loation i feel, was one of our videos strong points.



Character Research

Within our production, we hope to have two main characters who are identifiable and relatable to the target audience. I have researched films of similar genre and have a cast specification for the two speaking caharacters.

Character 1:

Gender: Female
Age: 16-20 (will be playing a 17 year old.)


Character 2:

Gender: Male
Age: 15-18 (Will be playing a 15 year old, younger brother of character 1)

We want the actor and actress to look similar as they will be brother and sister in the production, they need to have some on screen chemistry and this will be judged the two actors/ actresses practising a script together. We want the girl to be the more dominant of the characters and she pushes her little brother around, getting him to do things he is unhappy doing, which will eventually lead to his demise.

*Update*

We have now found two people to act in our production, these being Rowen Elliot and Michael Walters, they matched our character specification, in the practise script, Rowen was also the more dominant of the two, we hope this occurs within our production. They also look quite similar making their acting as brother and sister believable.