Final production design

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NOTE: Every time we re-filmed certain shots, these props and designs were reviewed to ensure continuity and consistency were remained constant. 

Initial Idea

Idea for movie:

A character has just watched a horror movie, something very gory and unpleasant that has really messed around his mind and caused him to be paranoid. Later on that night, when the character starts to fall asleep the camera goes blurry and cuts to a scene which is his dream which results in him being a part of that horrifying movie. Some action should be included in this because it would make the sequence look more unique, and action has been very highly preferred too. The movie can have a psychotic villain whom the person must kill, so that would mean there would be a hero and a villain which must die. The villain can be an incredibly messed up serial killer who likes to feast human organs.

Professional job roles – Cameraperson

A camera person is responsible for filming a movie or television show. They must always try to get the shot sizes and angles right for the benefit of the audience. A camera person works with digital, electronic and film cameras. They usually have assistants to help them when filming so they can get the work done faster with an extra pair of hands at help.

A camera assistant has many jobs in helping their boss out such as repairing camera equipment, planning camera shots, studying scripts and so much more. The camera person is responsible for operating the camera physically and maintaining composition throughout a scene or shot. In filmmaking, the camera person will talk with the director/actors/film crew to decide how to film certain parts of a scene so the right decision would be made in the end.

Important camera operator skills include choreographing and framing shots, knowledge of and the ability to select appropriate photographic lenses, and other equipment (dollies, camera cranes, etc.) to portray dramatic scenes. If someone was looking to be a camera person they would need to have an interest in lighting/video/film/theatre, excellent hand-eye co-ordination, knowledge of editing and so on. A fan of camerawork is a must if it is expected of you to work in this type of job.

Funding & Distribution

The main priority for film makers is finding someone to fund their movie. Funding is the most complicated issue when it comes to film making because the company who is financing your movie has to agree with your script and may need to make changes to it so they can fund it. Hollywood has many film studios that directors can pitch their movie to for funding. Warner Bros, Paramount Studios and Walt Disney are a few examples of huge film funding studios. The British film industry is not as big as the likes of Hollywood. Most directors within the UK have to rely on small places for loans to fund their movie, such as banks or different companies. For example, I met the producer of Kidulthood, he had mentioned that he had gone to Costa coffee Inc for funding his movie. There are certain film studios within the UK that are partnered with a US film studio such as Working Title who is partnered with Universal Pictures. Universal Pictures have been one of the big film studios that distribute British films worldwide.

In 1989, British cinema hit its all time low, however, since 2000; British cinema has become quite successful. BBC Films and Film 4 are known to have funded many British films, and independent companies such as Working Title which has been mentioned above have secured financing and distribution deals with major American studios. Working Title had mainly produced worldwide international hits with its rom-coms such as Love Actually which grossed $239 million. Mama Mia had been the most successful in 2008, when it grossed $601 million. Many Hollywood film directors have been influenced by British culture and history. This can be seen in many of the Disney animated films such as Robin Hood and Alice In Wonderland. Although Hollywood is way ahead of the British film industry, the British film industry has produced many successful actors in its time such as the likes of Sir Alfred Hitchcock who directed one of the most successful films of all time, Psycho (1960). The future looks good for the British film industry as many British films released are successful from the likes of Harry potter to James Bond which are US funded but played by British actors. However, at the same time many UK film productions are never released.

Film directors need to rely on good film distribution companies because they are responsible for releasing the films to many cinema companies. If a good distribution company is selected for the film, then there is more chance of the movie making lots of money because it will be shown in lots of cinemas. Distribution also describes all the things that happen when making the film and then the sales of the movie when it goes on DVD. It is basically responsible with getting the film promoted and shown to a large audience. Promoting the film means advertising it so the audience are notified of it. Advertising the film is very complicated, because there are so many different ways in doing it. Some distributors promote their product by the use of action figures. This is mostly done for movies based on superheroes from magazines.

Clothing is also a way to advertise, by putting the film pictures on clothing items such as shirts. Fast food adverts such as Burger King and McDonald’s are used to advertise the films within their meals by giving the advert a theme of the film. Toys are also used in children meals in certain fast food restaurants if the distributor is promoting a children movie.

Subject Matter

From our questionnaires and interviews, we have gained a lot of information for our 2 minute opening sequence. We had asked the target audience all the questions that we thought would help us decide what to do for our 2 minute sequence. From these bits of information, we had learned that all of the target audience had watched a thriller so this was very helpful because we would be able to get different opinions on different types of thriller movies.

In regard to the sub-genre categories, we asked the target audience which had been their favourite. Horror had been the most preferred sub-genre of a thriller movie, with action and psychological behind by a few votes. So this has helped us in thinking different types of ideas for the thriller movie and what should be included.

The results from the questionnaires also showed us what movies are liked by the target audience, with Paranormal Activity, Inception, The Ring, Bad Boys and Scream as the most liked. This can be understandable as they are all the highly preferred sub-genres of thrillers chosen. The ratings of thrillers the target audience has preferred watching was 18 movies, and this was picked mostly by the 13-16 year olds. This information we got from the interviews and questionnaires have really given us a wide range of ideas in creating the thriller sequence and making it as good as possible.

Research doc:
From all our research findings, our sub genre was concluded to be a Horror and Action. Our target audience will also be 18; therefore the certificate of this film would be 18. We chose to have a psychotic killer in our thriller, as from our research our target audience prefer that in a thriller. This will appeal to them even more. Also for my initial idea I have given a complex story line where she has a different background to others and she doesn’t have any friends or family, which makes her even more psycho. Also we added tension and suspense on how the 3 bullies think she is dead but she isn’t. As our sub genre consists on action, during the killing parts, there would be a lot of adrenaline and exaggeration which keeps the audience gripped to the screen. The Thriller would end with a cliff hanger as most of our audience prefer it to end that way other than it being resolved.


Initial Idea:
A girl called Raegan was adopted and she is very different to everyone else, she has never fitted in with anyone and a loner. At the age of 16 she is at school where 3 girls Katie, Lisa, and Blair have always bullied her. There then is a school camping trip for geography and they start making fun of her and hurt her physically without anyone knowing and threaten her not to tell anyone. Raegan has had enough and she punches Blair, but she doesn’t know how big of a mistake that was. After when everyone is sleeping, the 3 bullies go to her tent and grab her and drag her to the inner woods. After they start punching, kicking her, calling her names such as "Raegan the Retard" (they call her that because she is weird and psycho). The 3 girls then get carried away and push her down a steep hill as she lands into a rocky river, thinking she died. They act like nothing ever happened. No one notices she is missing as she is never noticed by anyone. She ends up in a mental hospital because people think she is mad talking about how girls can kill her like that. Whilst she is in the mental hospital she becomes a lot more psycho and hunts the girls down to kill them one by one. 2 years later the girls are at college, and things start to heat up where they think they are seeing Raegan everywhere they go. What they don’t know is that she is still alive. She stalks them all the time. One day when they are walking home, she stops in front of the girls they start to run, as they chase them into a forest. Then Lisa trips over a log and Raegan grabs her leg and starts to pull her until they see a car drive and stop. Raegan disappears and then the car stops and drives off,
Lisa runs after the car, sits and puts the belt on she turns her head to the right and see’s Reagan sitting in the driver’s seat with a bomb. Raegan locks the door as she lets herself out. She triggers the bomb watching and taking a video on how Lisa is burnt alive suffering.


Blair and Katie are the two that are left in the forest alone. They see a small house in which Katie thinks they should go in. Blair thinks it’s a bad idea and runs off. Raegan then gets boiling water from the house and burns Katie’s face whilst taking a video of it. She then gets a sharp knife slaughtering each body part to watch her suffer and strangles her with a tight rope. Still the video is rolling of Katie suffering.


Blair is the last of the girls, as she is trying to find her way out, and Raegan chases her into the graveyard as she punches and hurts and kicks and cuts her face with a knife. As Blair is suffering in pain Reagan buries Blair alive. The camera then turns to Reagan’s face as she starts to laughs in a psycho way and says "now we can all be together”. The camera then cuts to a blank screen.

Production design final

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0.00

BLACK SCREEN

VO ETHAN’S MOTHER (Cathy):

Now, Ethan, we want you to go back to sleep ... Mummy and Daddy won’t be long ... Nanny’s going to be all right.

VO ETHAN’S DAD (Brian):

Cathy, come on. I’m pissed off hanging about like this!

VO CATHY:

Now promise, straight to bed?

VO ETHAN:

Yes, mummy.

FADE UP:

1. EXT. ISOLATED STREET (NIGHT)

a) ELS street. In the distance a car (headlights on main beam) comes rapidly towards camera ... As it passes the camera, rapid pan to LS semi-detached house. Another car pulls out of the drive into the road, and away, with a man and a women inside.

b) MS of an 8 year old boy (Ethan) looking out of an open bedroom window.

2. INT. HOUSE

a) POV shot Ethan looking out of window at the again empty street.

b) MLS Ethan as he closes the window firmly shut. He turns to camera looking worried (his mother has suddenly left him alone at home to attend an urgent business meeting.

c) CU Ethan’s panic-stricken, sweaty face as he glances up at a clock on the wall.

d) CU clock at 11.50 pm.

e) BCU TV remote “play” button pressed.

f) CU TV screen moving from pause to play, showing that a DVD of Saw 3

is being viewed.

Several SRS to intercut film sequence with:

g) CU Ethan watching the movie, but very soon becoming too frightened to continue, frantically running up to turn the TV itself off.

h) BCU hand turning off TV.

0.45

h) LS Ethan sitting on his bed, with a vacant / motionless expression, slowly falling into a strange trance, as if he is being hypnotized.

We can hear something bizarre fading in and out, in the background, a muffled soundtrack of Saw 3 is somehow continuing to play out the scene....

Slow dissolve to:

3. (Dream sequence) INT. DIM FOREST

a) LS canted angle Ethan discovering that he is chained to a tree.

b) CU hand movements, restrained.

c) CU feet slipping on damp floor as he tries to sit up more.

d) MS father chained to tree, staring into the distance.

e) MS Ethan looking across at the next tree...

f) MS of Ethan’s mum, chained and trance-like.

g) MCU Ethan.

1.00

VO GAMES MISTRESS (THREATENING / MYSTERIOUS):

Ethan, you were told to go to bed, not to watch as you did. You must now reap what you sow.... The game has already started ... and all of you must play.

h) Top shot LS room.

ETHAN:

No wait, what did I do?

Wake Up! Wake up!! WAKE UP!!!

VO GAMES MISTRESS:

Evil laughter (echoed).

Visual FX: The forest area starts to spin.

You chose your own fate, there is no waking up from this nightmare my friend. Not for any of you.

Sound FX: An over-powering drilling noise is emanated into the forest.

i) (Visual fx) CU Ethan spinning around, hyperventilating.

j) (Visual fx) CU Cathy spinning around, hyperventilating.

k) (Visual fx) CU Brian spinning around, hyperventilating.

ETHAN:

Scream!

Jump to black.

Silence.

Slow dissolve to:

4. INT. BEDROOM

a) CU Ethan suddenly waking up, sweating and gasping for breath.

He slowly comes to his senses to realise what is happening, thinking he had just dreamt the most terrifying nightmare ever; he gradually looks across to the TV screen.

b) MS TV blank screen

c) CU Ethan, a chilled wind blowing across him, causing him to shiver.

d) CU of open window, where curtains are wafting in the wind.

Slowly getting up, he groggily approaches the window and shuts it.

Sitting back down on the bed, he begins groaning in agony, finding something on his wrists.

e) BCU clamped impressions on both his wrists

f) MS Ethan falls to the floor, shocked.

g) LS of Ethan on floor, with his feet towards camera.

h) CU of foot showing a red triangle on the sole. Ethan’s hand starts to rub the foot, not knowing that there is a mark causing the discomfort.

i) LS of Ethan fainting.

Fade up title:

Living Nightmare

Fade to black.

NOTE: This script has been immensely changed, the main basis still applys, however as the filming progressed, dialogue was adlibbed and improvised, but remained consistent, therefore we were unable to record the final dialogue as we went along. The actors were given these scripts, knowing the approach they would need to take, they managed to use their iniative to present the storyline appropriately and efficiently.

Briefly summarizing this storyline, the film is titled 'Living Nightmare', under the genre of horror and sub-genre of action, also with the rating of 18. It is starring one main actor named Sai, an 8-9 year old boy, two sub actors acting as the mother and father, and two extras (father and daughter) as means of setting the scene at the beginning.
The story begins with the mother and father having to leave the house suddenly during the night, around 10:55pm, due to their grandmother being admitted in the hospital following a heart attack. However they leave behind their young son, and the mother makes a verbal agreement with him to go straight to bed, as he was sitting in the living room at the current time. As the parents leave, he switches on the TV to continue watching, what apparently happens to be 'The Living Dead', a classic horror. He happens to have been watching from a particularly gruesome scene, where eventually he turns it off, as the scene becomes too graphically horrible for him. Sai begins to fall into a trance, once he had slowed down hyperventilating, where he finds himself awake in an unknown/abandoned place tied to a chair, to also find his father and dad unconscious on the sides of him, obviously harmed, considering the blood stains. In this frantic situation, he finds himself conversing with a voice he can't seem to locate, who seems to be the cause behind everything, The Evil Master. Then the most surreal event occurs, where a chainsaw noise is emanating into the surroundings, before he screams and wakes up back into his supposed reality. Sai is convinced he had just dozed off before waking into his nightmare, however he begins regaining consciousness slowly, and all his senses gradually heighten. At that moment, he manages to take a look at the painful areas, to find the chain impressions on his wrist to be bloody from his struggle on the chair, extremely confused, he limps across the room to trip to another pain barrier on the  insole of his foot. Without realizing, he removes his sock and begins massaging this area, where only the viewers are able to see that there is a fresh burn mark of a triangle shape, burnt into his foot - symbolising the presence of the Devil. At that moment, all the commotion and pain becomes too overwhelming for the young boy, where he immediately faints and drops to the ground.

The whole story is based on the Protagonist personality within Sai, who is generally seen to be very shy, scared and weak. However his strength his shines through once he is determined to save his parents, and also amend this peculiar way of possessing human nature, as he finds many are being abducted this way. In that case, he finds himself revisiting having to fall asleep, everytime he needs to encounter the Evil Master to save everyone. there is much action to come, where hidden traits become showing within Sai, to be a true Superhero to all the victims. 

Final Idea

The group has drawn to a conclusion about the final idea. In a brief summary: the characters involved would mainly consist of two main actors, who is a young 8 year old boy, called Ethan, who is seen to be the protagonist of this film, and a replication of jigsaw (a psycho), who takes the role as the maniac villain. There will be supporting ‘actors/actresses’, who wouldn’t necessary take up a key role, as they will be acting as if they are in a trance set by the villain; however they will be associated to Ethan, as part of his family and friends.

The clip will begin with the viewers acknowledging that Ethan lives in a cottage style house, which seems to be located in a very secluded environment, which supposedly already foreshadows, an unsettling event to come. He seems to be alone in his house, very late at night, and so we clearly are able to see how young he is; this sets worrisome mood amongst the viewers, as we wonder how irresponsible the parent could have been. But reportedly, as the mother had gone out for their anniversary dinner, insisting they ask a babysitter to come in for Ethan. He refused, which at the moment, he regretted. It happens to be due to the fact he has been very psychologically shaken by the film he had been watching, which was certified horror movie; Saw 3. He decides to give into his curiosity and realised why the film was rated 18, and wished time had turned back.

Suddenly, he falls into a surreal trance, where seconds later there is a cut to a cold, dim isolated place which seems to be unknown. As Ethan comes to his senses, he realises in each corner of the room, his parents and best friends are sitting upright staring at him in an expressionless manner. In mass confusion, he slowly approaches the corner his mother is in, before he is immediately halted short as if someone had grabbed him by the hand. He then looks down to see his arms chained to the wall, before noticing the rest of his loved ones are chained too. Panic stricken, he frantically looks around the room in distraught, before the almighty voice of ‘Jigsaw’ appears. There is a short conversation taking place regarding the situation between them. A drilling noise of some sort had started emanating into the room, getting louder and louder. He wonders whether he’s dreaming and keeps exclaiming to himself to wake up, before the chains on his wrist gradually tightens, where he shuts his eyes in discomfort and when he opens his eyes again.

He finds himself in the living room again. He looks at the blank TV screen. It seems to be really cold as the window is opening gushing in a waft of cold air. He then slightly relaxes when he find himself in the comfort of his home as he thinks its may have been a slight nightmare regarding the film he had just watched before he had a nap. He gets up from the sofa feeling quite wary and approaches the window to close it, to find the TV screen plug connection had been out. He stands there for a spilt second wondering how he even managed row watch the film and remembers that he didn’t even leave the window open. Slowly he looks to his wrist to find the chain imprints, trembling he falls to his feet, to find the reason behind his loss of balance where he sees a burnt in impression of a triangular mark. At this moment, Ethan immediately faints, unable to handle the current situation.

A boy, who seemingly has got himself into this terror, somehow is the only key to get himself and everyone involved, out of this, so he has to be become the hero. But the mystery behind this bizarre and dreadful turn of event still remains unknown, just the same way we may speculate how he even managed to get a copy of the movie, ‘Saw 3’. Until then, it is up to the 8 yr old Ethan to decide whether he will stand and fight till the end, or keep running and hiding forever.

NOTE: This idea was initially drawn by the whole group, however during script development, slight changes were made, considering the situations involving the actors, settings and such minor issues which arose. Ultimately, the storyline reflects and vaguely bases upon this idea stated above, however vast alterations were made. 

Final initial ideas ninthuja

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Useful Video Editing Techniques

Applying Transitions

A video transition defines how a movie moves from one clip to another therefore giving the viewer a sense of continuity. There are many types of transitions. For example: the cross fade moves smoothly between two video clips, without grating the viewer. Also creating title slides is beneficial for beginnings, endings and credits of videos, for a similar outcome.

Adding Effects

An effect produces results that cannot be achieved by normal techniques. For instance, one substantial effect is the brightness/contrast effect. This can be used to correct images that appear too bright, dark or dull.

Removing noise and adding music or narration

Optionally a narration can be added in using a voice. This can be a great insertion to types of films based on a home video genre, that usually tend to contain a lot of distracting audio, where you can delete the original audio completely, or replace some parts with narration or a music track.

Final Cut Pro Properties

Final Cut Pro provides non-linear, non-destructive editing of any QuickTime compatible video format including DV, HDV, P2 MXF (DVCProHD), XDCAM, and 2K film formats. It supports a number of simultaneously composited video tracks (limited mainly by video format and hardware capability); up to 99 audio tracks; multi-camera editing for combining video from multiple camera sources; as well as standard ripple, roll, slip, slide, scrub, razor blade and time remapping edit functions. It comes with a range of video transitions and a range of video and audio filters such as keying tools, mattes and vocal de-poppers and de-essers. It also has a manual 3-way colour correction filter, videoscopes and a selection of generators, such as slugs, test cards and noise.

To progress efficiently in post production, editors need accurate shot lists of all the recorded material (rushes). Therefore, each shot needs to be carefully logged during the shooting process, as valuable time will be wasted writing up everything from scratch in the edit suite. Each tape must be clearly labelled up during/immediately after recording, protecting form accidental erasure.

1) Logging the material

• Go through material carefully, making sure that an accurate description of each shot is given, adding the precise time codings.

• While progressing, marking the particular takes/shots that is desired to be used in the final edit is vital.

• Establish whether or not the timing of each scene is going to correspond to script timings to ensure the programme will not be too short/long for the brief. If there is not enough material, flagging this up with the director as soon as possible will be required, as it may be possible to shoot the necessary material (known as pick ups).

2) The paper edit

To complete this stage, all shots should be written down in the order which is going to be used. This is called the edit decision list (EDL). This list is extremely crucial and should be approved by a professional before allowing editing.

• Construct EDL, by listing all the shots/takes which is wished to use, in order, from the very beginning of the programme to the end. List each shot/take alongside the corresponding source tape number and the correct time counter numbers.

• During the creation of the EDL, it may be voluntary to insert notes on where you plan to have shot transitions, cuts, fades, music, sound effects, graphics, and voice over etc.

3) The actual edit

This step includes physically assembling the edit.

• Load up all the EDL material, using separate bins as required, ensuring a methodical structure is used, and a lot of time is pent on this part, which will save time trying to find shots later on.

• It may be wanted to do a simply assembly (all the shots, slightly over-length, bolted together in sequence), before moving into a full blown rough cut (the first attempt at making a final edit, including any special effects and transitions).

• Once the necessary approval for this rough cut is delivered, procession to the fine cut can be made (the final version of the programme for copying onto DVD).

Sound recording

Technical features

Sound recording is an electrical/mechanical inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording. Acoustic analog recording is achieved by a small microphone diaphragm that can detect changes in atmospheric pressure (acoustic sound waves) and record them as a graphic representation of the sound waves on a medium such as a phonograph (in which a stylus senses grooves on a record). Analog sound reproduction is the reverse process, with a bigger loudspeaker diaphragm causing changes to atmospheric pressure to form acoustic sound waves.

Digital recording and reproduction converts the analog sound signal picked up by the microphone to a digital form by a process of digitization, allowing it to be stored and transmitted by a wider variety of media. Digital recordings are considered higher quality than analog recordings not necessarily because they have higher fidelity (wider frequency response or dynamic range), but because the digital format can prevent much loss of quality found in analog recording due to noise and electromagnetic interference in playback, and mechanical deterioration or damage to the storage medium. A digital audio signal must be reconverted to analog form during playback before it is applied to a loudspeaker or earphones etc.

The Equipment & Properties

Before beginning filming, the decision whether audio is required to be recorded onto the video tape or not needs to be made. Features such as, MiniDV, HDV, DVCPro or even the new tapeless systems, you get the choice of recording onto the camera, or onto an external device like a hard disk recorder or a laptop. Both methods has their advantages, as the mic (amps) on digital video cameras doesn’t usually give the best possible results, however the sync can be mostly reliable. But with an external device you can achieve as many channels of audio as you like.

In regards to the type of mic used, a decent shotgun condenser is considerably useful. Also a wireless tie-clip mic can be exceptionally versatile as they can be hidden on the actors and capture a very clean sound. A boom pole would be vital for the mic, and the most important device is the suspension mount for the mic, as these prevent any physical knocks and such which can affect the recording.

Also a fluffy cover for the mic would be essential to stop the wind from causing any practical problems.

Finally, a significant prop would be an adequate set of headphones, which are bound to be useful when shooting in noisy environments. Therefore the frequency and closed design would need to be taken into account.