Our Original Film Opening

This is our original incomplete film opening before we scrapped the idea;


0:00-0:36 - This scene is much too slow and did not give the creepy effect that we wanted. It was also much too dark and is based too much on the character and not the surroundings. I do like how the camera began in pitch black and focused and brightened when he switched on the red light, aswell as the creek of the door. The shot of the collage of girls was also not long enough for the audience to understand what it was. The pan from the collage to the stalker is not very smooth either which looks very uneffective. I think that there is not enough clear movement after he drops the glass on the floor to when he sticks up the photographs, it is also not clear what he is even doing.
This was not the original beginning as we would have filmed more footage if we had carried on with this idea.

0:36-0:48 - Again, the shot is very dull and long. I do like the wide shot though as it shows that the stalker appears to look like a normal man walking down the road up until he looks up at the girls house and waits at her alleyway. On this part of footage we practised with iMovies "Day to Night" effect which gives it the blue tint, personally I do not like this effect as it does not look realistic. The problem we had with light and brightness from the sun is also obvious from this shot. We did not use various angles as we wanted to keep the stalkers face hidden, however this did not work well as it makes the shot very boring.

0:48-0:55 - I like this shot from inside the house as it is a bit of a break from the outside shots. I like the editing of the sound also as it is silent except from the door slamming shut.

0:55-1:03 - I like this shot but the transition from the previous is not smooth enough. This shot almost creates a barrier between the two characters through their opposite sides of the wall and when the girl steps out the drive, leaving the 'barrier' she is leaving her 'safety zone'. I think the shot should end once the girl has stepped out the shot rather than watching the man continue walking because it needlessly longs out the shot making it dull again.

1:03-1:07 - I do not like this shot mainly because the transition was not perfect as we had not edited correctly so the shots jumped from one to another.

1:07-1:12 + 1:18-1:22 - I really like these shots as it is a point of view of the stalker. We kept the same effects as the other outside shots but added on a black fade to the corners which focused on the girl who was in very light colours. I also like when the girl turns around and the stalker looks away as this provides us with a medium shot of the girls face to show the confusion on her face.

1:12-1:18 + 1:22-1:24 - These shots were improvised on the day of filming and they did look good until we edited the point of view shots, so now they look very jumpy and odd as the shots skip from one effect to another. They also aren't muted like most of the other shots as we were midway through editing.

1:24-1:26 - I am undecided on this shot. I like the effects and that when the hand reaches out it goes white and this focuses the viewer well. I also like that it is slow motion to add tension. However I dislike the point of the shot, I do not like the reaching out at all. I think it would have been more effective if there was a close up from infront of the girl with either the man placing his hand on her shoulder and they had both stop walking to show the fear on her face or the man putting his hand over her mouth and her eyes widening to show panic.

1:26-1:52 - Alot is missing for the last scene returning to the darkroom. The photographs came out too dark so that you could not see what they were of. The mobile light would not stay on and continued to flash which could have looked creepy - but it seems not. Also our names were on the pictures of ourselves to be used as credits with a pan shot, however after reading the marking criteria we discovered we must have our credits on made on iMovie.

Discussion about Film Opening

While editing our film we have often had trouble with the amount and quality of footage so as a group we decided to discuss our options; whether to carry on or start again.
We decided to start again as we believe after researching film openings we have a broader knowledge on them meaning we can make a much better film opening.
One of our problems was our opening had a resolution rather than beginning a story, which is something we will not do this second time.
We will have the filming equipment over Christmas break so that we have two weeks to film in.

We began to look at film openings and types of horror/thriller genres. A particular film opening that caught my attention was Donnie Darko

We spoke about a psychological thriller similar to that of Donnie Darko or The Sixth Sense. We liked the idea of someone either waking up in a strange place like Donnie Darko, or having strange flashback-like dreams.

Continuing Editing

We were given a lesson to continue editing which is very hard when all 6 groups are trying to work at once however we began to try and sort out our lighting problems but we could not find a resolution even with changing all the effects.
Also we believed our scenes were too slow and dragged on rather than increasing tension and building up to something.
As a group we discussed our alternatives as we did not believe our film opening was effective enough. In my opinion, I believe we should re-film as we are now much more educated in film openings, in the horror/thriller genre and at filming and editing aswell as storylines.

Uploading and Editing

When we uploaded our footage from the two day's of filming we were slightly disappointed due to the lighting, especially in the dark room although we edited it on iMovie and it looks alot better meaning we will not need to refilm the scene. Also the weather during the house scene did cause a problem as we thought, we did attempt to edit this also and it created a nice effect, similar to that in Sin City however instead of bright red, all of the white colours were very bright.
We did this by changing the contrast, brightness, saturation and colour balance.

Filming Part 1 and 2

First Day of Filming - Sarah's Road
We began filming our film opening over half term when we were given our filming equipment.
We began by filming the establishing shot of the house and the alleyway's.
We shot many different angles of each movement several times for continuity and to make sure it was perfect.
We began by having an establishing shot of the house with Sarah's Dad entering the shot from different sides and walking up the alleyway next to my characters house. We then continued to film me leaving the house, we filmed it from the beginning establishing shot aswell as from inside the house to see the me leaving the house. We also filmed from the upstairs bedroom through the window which was slightly awkward however was managed, this helped us have a further variety of angles.
When all these shots were finished we began to film the walk down the alleyway where Sarah's Dad was to follow me. We began with Sarahs Dad holding the camera to film my back as he caught up with me. On our storyboard we said I would turn around to see him and he would put his hood down and look away, we filmed this quite easily; as I turned around he would quickly move the camera down and we would edit this also. Then when the camera went back up to focus back on me Sarahs Dad would be alot closer and would then reach out to my shoulder to imply my kidnap. We then decided on filming the alleyway from the opposite angle to help us when editing.

Our main concern however was the weather conditions as it frequently changed from sunny to cloudy as we were filming, hopefully we can edit this so it looks continuous.

Second Day of Filming - Dark Room

After seeing our schools old dark room we decided to definatley use it for its creepiness as it has not been used for many years unlike the new darkroom which we originally planned to use. During our free periods the previous weeks we had all taken photographs like our stalker supposedly has been, we stuck these down on ripped scraps of paper and wrote facts next to them similar to facts that a stalker would know. We then went to the old darkroom and stuck the paper and photos up to make a creepy collage of girls the stalker has recently been following. We also cleared the room of any unnecessary objects which would confuse the filming.
Once the room was set up we began to film, we filmed Sarah's Dad opening the door of the darkroom which created a high-pitched creak in pitch black. He then turned on the red lights which created a gloomy effect and made the camera focus in an effective way as it casted a silhouette of Sarahs Dad.

We filmed the same shot again from inside the darkroom this time for continuity. We also panned across the room to show all the pictures and facts of girls, we filmed this many times until it was perfect, we also had to use a phone light which is very creepy as it still keeps the gloomy effect.

We zoomed into all the pictures of the girls to focus the audience, however on the other side of the camera Sarah's Dad dropped a measuring tube on the floor to create a loud noise and we quickly panned to show what Sarah's Dad was doing. We then moved to an over the shoulder shot of Sarah's Dad developing a 'recent' picture of me 'gagged' similar to another two of Molly and Aimie which had just been shown before this. We then panned along to show a photo of Sarah being pinned up which the stalker had supposedly taken to imply that she would be the next victim.

We created credits by sticking our names on our photographs in 'scratchy' handwriting also so it looks as though the stalker had written our names on our photo's.

Our Final Film Idea and Storyboard

Our final idea is going to be based on our stalker (played by Sarah's Dad) who follows young girls and takes photos of them and develops them in his creepy old darkroom. Our actual film will begin with a few shots of myself walking somewhere and we will edit this long shot into stills with a camera shutter noise on top to make it appear as though the stalker is taking photographs of myself.
We will then fade to black and we will then change to a shot of the darkroom door in the dark with the stalker walking into the darkroom, however when he enters the darkroom he will turn on the redlights when he is in the doorway and as there is a redlight outside the darkroom, it will create the sudden effect from darkness to creepy redlights. Once he is in the darkroom we will pan around and show all the surroundings of the room which will include photographs of girls with notes about them next to them. Then the stalker will drop something, making a sharp loud noise and the camera will move quickly around from the photographs to the stalker developing his new photographs of me.
We will then have a new bright establishing shot of my characters house, after a second the stalker will walk past the house, looking up at it and then down an alley next to it and wait. We will then show my character leaving the house and walking down the drive and in the direction the stalker came from, however as I am leaving the drive, the stalker will begin to follow. Then there will be a shot of him following me from behind down another alleyway.

Thriller/Horror Film Research

Prom Night
I recently watched Prom Night (2008) which is based on Richard Fenton, an obsessed ex-teacher of Donna Keppel who killed Donna's father and brother and when Donna hid after finding the dead bodies, killed her mother infront of her. 3 years later, he escapes from prison to return to finish the job. He checks into a hotel where Donnas prom is being held and silently kills a maid, he then kills 2 of Donna's friends, next he kills a hotel employee when he is looking for the missing maid. He then kills Donna's best friend and manages to escape in the uniform when the building is being evacuated by Chief Detective Winn. By now Donna has returned home with her boyfriend. Donna returns from the bathroom at home to see that her boyfriends throat has been slit. She hides in her wardrobe when she hears footsteps, however Fenton is already hiding in the wardrobe. Donna bites Fenton and tries to run however she falls, Fenton is then stood above Donna ready to kill, but in his psychotic, obsessive way looks at her for a while and admires her. In the nick of time Winn comes in and shoots Fenton to death before he kills Donna. Donna is still traumatised but is relieved it is "all over".

This film has shown how stalkers and killers are stereotypically represented in films, giving us ideas for our own film's plot. I think we are going to use the same sort of body movements that Fenton does, such as putting his hand out slowly in a possesive way with our stalker to his victim.

Genre Research

Horror films are movies that strive to elicit the emotions of fear, horror and terror from viewers. Their purpose is to frighten the viewer and invoke our deepest fears whilst making them seem realistic, often leaving the viewer frightened even days after watching. Their plots frequently involve themes of death, the supernatural or mental illness.
Early horror movies are largely based on classic literature of the gothic/horror genre, such as Dracula and Frankenstein. Sometimes horror films have been dismissed as violent, low budget exploitation films despite often having well respected directors. In recent years many old horror films have been remade and modernized making them much scarier and realistic than ever before.
Some horror films incorporate elements of other genres such as science fiction, fantasy, mockumentary, black comedy, slasher, teen terror, serial killers and thrillers.
Some popular horror films are; Scream, The Ring, Prom Night, Hostel, Saw, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Psycho, A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Exorcist.

After researching the horror genre, I would like to do our film opening on it as I think it is the most interesting and creative genre out of the ones we discussed.