Role allocation

 

We as a group had to take into consideration what roles we should each take on in the production team.                                                                                                                                                                           

Director:  We decided that we all should direct the filming process as we were all actors in the film so needed input into the filming processes when we didn’t have to be in the scenes to create the best film.

Writer: We all decided that we would write the script and plot because they were both a combination all our ideas so we felt if we all wrote it together then we would be able to expand on them together to create the plot and script.

Cameraperson: We decided as a group that we could all shoot some shots of the film to get a diverse range of camera styles which could actually benefit our horror as it creates the a different and edgy camera shots. However, I was chosen to shoot most of the shots as I didn’t act in many of them.

Editor: We all decided we would edit the film together so all of our inputs can be heard and decide which editing styles would be best for each section in the film.

When deciding role allocations for the film we felt that it should be shared out equally in each role as we all wanted input in different sections.

Storyboard

 

These four images above are the storyboards that I and my group created for our horror opening sequence. We created these once we had decided on our script and plot so we could make an accurate storyline of events.

Scripts

 

 Real Script:

 At the park during the evening

 Group of friends- Josh why are you standing there come in you idiot

 Josh – I can’t

 Cuts to flashback of lifeless body (screaming) then a cut back to a medium close up of Josh’s face

 Group of friends – like what

 Josh – Bad things have happened in my child hood

Group of friends – What happened (they all heckle and made jokes)

 Flashback of park at twilight with distant ambient sound of families walking way.

 Lucy– Josh, it’s time to go home now

 Josh- No, I don’t want to go home yet. Let me go and play on the swings

 Lucy– all of the other families are leaving

 Josh – only because it’s getting dark

 Lucy– that’s not the only reason

 Josh – what do you mean?

 Lucy– have you ever heard of the child collector?

 Josh – who?

 Lucy – There is a legend about a man called the child collector who haunts this park seeking and kidnapping children like you who don’t leave the park by nightfall

(fade out dialogue)

Child collector – little did they know I was watching them

(Fade in)

 Josh runs off to play on swings 

 Lucy – (frustrated) Fine, let the child collector catch you

 (Lucy gets up to leave)

 (Cut to Josh going up to a man on the swing)

 Josh – can I have a go on the swing?

 (Man starts to turn, then a cut to close up of josh’s face he then screams and cuts back to his sister Lucy walking away)

 (Lucy hears a scream and runs over to where he heard the scream to see a man on the swing facing towards him with his head down but no josh in sight)

 Lucy - where’s my brother?

 (Slow zoom which speeds up rapidly to the child collector looking up towards him)

 (Lucy turns to run away but child collector is faster than him so he grabs him by the neck)

 Child collector – I told you so

 (Makes his way over to the slide, laughter going down the slide)

Child Collector - it’s time for round two josh (laughter)

  This is the script me and my group created once we had settled on the plot of our horror opening. Creating a script would be beneficial to us as it gave us an outline of what we wanted the characters to say and how it would flow.

Old Script:

At the park during the evening

 Adult Josh – (to wife) c’mon, let’s get the kids and go home (anxiously)

 Sally – don’t be silly Josh, the kids are having fun don’t ruin it for them.  What’s wrong with you?  Why are you always anxious here?

 Cut to flashback of lifeless body (screaming) then a cut back to a medium close up of Josh’s face

 Adult Josh – you know I don’t like to talk about my childhood

 Flashback of park at twilight with distant ambient sound of families walking way.

 Tom (older brother) – Josh, it’s time to go home now

 Josh - No, I don’t want to go home yet. Let me go and play on the swings

 Tom – all of the other families are leaving

 Josh – only because it’s getting dark

 Tom – that’s not the only reason

 Josh – what do you mean?

 Tom – have you ever heard of the child collector?

 Josh – who?

 Tom – There is a legend about a man called the child collector who haunts this park seeking and kidnapping children like you who don’t leave the park by nightfall (fade out dialogue)

 Child collector – little did they know I was watching them

 (Fade in)

 Tom – that’s why we should go

 Josh – no, I don’t believe you (runs off to play on swings)

 Tom – (frustrated) Fine, let the child collector catch you

(Ambient sound of mobile phone)

 (Exaggerated loud breathing)

 (Extreme close up of phone saying ‘I will’)

 (Cut to Josh going up to a man on the swing)

 Josh – can I have a go on the swing?

 (Man starts to turn before a cut back to Tom)

 (Tom hears a scream and runs over to where he heard the scream to see a man on the swing facing towards him with his head down but no josh in sight)

 (Slow zoom which speeds up rapidly to the child catcher looking up towards him)

 (Tom turns to run away but child collector grabs him by the neck)

 Child catcher – I told you so

 

  This script is the old version we created that involves a similar plot. However, it has a brother siblings instead of a sister sibling. We had to change our script as we couldn’t find the right actors to cast as the bother and old older version of josh during the present day scenes.

Opening sequence plot

  

 

  The opening sequence of our film shows an establishing shot of pans of park, we can see group of teenagers walking towards the park grounds. Then a horizontal tracking of them entering the park but the older version of 'Josh' is still standing outside the park. Then shot reverse shots are used between the group of friends and 'Josh'. They say to him “where’s Josh going”

  There is then a medium close up of his face showing a shocked and fearful expression and 'Josh' replies “I’m not coming in guys” 

   It then cuts to a flash back night time long shot of an average 17 year old girl called 'Lucy' who is being dragged away by an unidentified figure. 

(It then cuts back to a two shot of Josh and his group of friends to show the distance between them)

(Shot revers shots are used while the conversations between the group and josh continue as they interrogate him)

“Why”

“Bad things have happened in my child hood”

   The film then cuts rapidly to a black flash of twilight pans of a park where a close up shot is then shown of a 10 year old boy and his sister. A shot is show of other families leaving the park, the older brother then talks about an urban legend of 'The Child Collector' who was brutally murdered at Littlefield playground where they are now. He continues to say that if they don’t leave the park by nightfall then the child collector will appear and collect any wondering children and kill any adults with them.

   The dialogue then fades out where a voiceover saying “little did they know I was already there watching them”. The dialogue then fades in to 'Josh' the younger brother saying he rejects this story and thinks his brother has made this plea to get him to leave.  Josh then runs off to carry on playing. 'Lucy' looks frustrated and shots “fine let 'The Child Collector' get you” there is then a voice over of 'The Child Collector' saying “I will”

   It then a cut to a shot of someone’s back who is swinging on the swing, 'Josh' reaches up to tap him on the shoulder and says “can I have a go on the swing” then 'The Child Collector' lifts his head towards the front wide shot of the camera that shows 'Josh' behind the figure on the swing. The figure turns and we see joshes shocked expression and he runs off.

   It then cuts to a shot of 'Lucy' who has got off the seesaw and is walking towards the park exit but we zoom in on her shocked expression as she hears her brother scream. It is then a wide shot to show 'Lucy' running towards the location where she heard the scream which is the swings. Its cuts to a hand held shot by 'Lucy' where you can see the ground as she is running and it’s accompanied by her heavy breathing. 'Lucy' runs to the scream expecting to see Josh but sees a man who is 'The Child Collector' on the swings looking down at the floor with his hood up. There is a slow zoom in and becomes rapid when the male looks to reveal he is wearing a baby mask. 'Lucy' screams and then turns to run however 'The Child Collector' stands up and grabs 'Lucy' by the neck and pulls him to the ground before saying “I told you so”. There is then a close up that moves into an extreme close up to show 'The Child Collector' cutting 'Lucy' and removes his hand away and reveals that she is bleeding the shot is then zoomed out as 'THE Child Collector' drags 'Lucy' away by her shoulders while the camera pans in the opposite direction of where he is dragging her.

   Then a shot is shown of 'The Child Collector' making his way over to the slide he then goes down the slide laughing creepily. A shot is shown which reveals Josh is hiding within shrubbery with a shocked face, with this an over the shoulder shot is revealed of 'The Child Collector' which then zooms in to show Josh runs away and 'The Child Collector' turns his head.

Fade out back to a close up of the older 'Josh's' face and a voice over of the child collector saying “Time for round two Josh”.

 

 

The plot made helped our group with setting the themes and ideas we had from the mind mapping session into stone and decide the order in which the scenes flow. It also would act as a plan our group could go from as it helped us go onto produce a script as we knew what scenes needed dialogue and what the dialogue should consist of. It also allowed us to create a storyboard as creating the plot made the order of events much clear. It enabled us to go into further detail of dialogue for the script and also decide what camera shots we were going to use for each scene.

 

   

 

Image of mind map of ideas for horror opening

 

 

 

 

 

 

  This image is of the mind map me and my group created before deciding on what themes and storyline to incorporate into the opening sequence of our horror film. The image shows all the ideas we had such as the setting of a residential area or in a park and have a twilight setting. We also suggested a baby mask should be used and a baby laugh to act as two common characteristics you could associate with the killer. The image of the mind map is useful as we could always refer back to the mind map if we were struggling with ideas. In addition, it helped us link different themes together to create a better horror. The mind mapping technique was a success as we could see how all our ideas from each member of the group could be grouped together so the horror could be a mixture of them all. It also meant we could exclude the ideas we did not like. We concluded from this this mind map that we wanted to include a mask as a prop as we felt it would provide fear factor for our horror opening sequence.



 



  

Pitch ideas

Pitch

Newspaper articles:

Once we had researched and explored certain genre areas we felt horror was the genre of film we would be best at producing. We then decided to pitch our ideas on horror themes by mind mapping.  

However, we also thought it would be useful to look through newspaper articles for inspiration on storylines. In addition we felt we could try and produce three storylines one each for horror, a rom-com, and a thriller as we felt it would help us when decided what genre we wanted to produce.

The images above are screen shots I took of what one of our group members tweeted our sixth forms twitter page of the three different genre film storylines.

We made up these storylines from ideas we got from different newspaper articles about a variety of stories. We felt that by looking at newspaper articles we could expand on some of the storylines which could actually result in us producing a faint storyline of our horror production.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Mind mapping for the horror:

 

-          As a group we participated in a mind mapping session to write down all our ideas for our horror.

-          All three members of the group provided different ideas for the horror, so we had a wide range of ideas which was helpful when deciding what genre of horror it should be.

-          In the half an hour session we came up with various ideas and discussed what we felt were the best ideas to use and why.

-           Once all our ideas were down we could see which locations linked with the certain themes we had thought of for our horror.

-          We ranked each idea in ascending order to decide which ideas we felt were best and which ones we felt were not.

-          Once we had some feel for which ideas we felt were best we could then start to expand on them. For instances, thinking what kind of actors we would need to suit the horror and what non-diegetic music would suit the theme.  

-          By creating a mind map we could see all of our ideas on paper which really helped getting all our thoughts down as we were able to organise them and see which we could link to one another to maybe combine some together.

-          We then had discussion and voted which ideas we thought was best and if there were disagreements we could try and link the two ideas together, so the mind map was useful as we could set out all our ideas grouped together.

-          We decided on the idea of the mask in our horror as we found it to be the most scariest prop from our questionnaire and we felt from our mind mapping session that we all wanted to include a mask.

    

Box office bar charts

Bar charts for film statistics at the Box Office

This bar chart represents the total box office earnings for three main genres of film horror, rom-com, and superhero. (Source-boxofficemojo, please note these statistics are said to as accurate as possible however could be missing some sums) horror is shown to have made the highest in box office making $12,748,816,047 compared to the genre of superhero making $9,975,959,898. This figure suggests the successfulness of horrors which indicates that there is a big market for horrors.  This backs up my questionnaire where the majority do enjoy watching horrors implying that if I made a horror there is a wide audience and demand for them.

This bar chart represents the money made in Box Office for the different genres of horror. I gathered this data (source-boxofficemojo, please note these statistics are said to as accurate as possible however could be missing some sums) as I felt it would give me a clear indication of how successful horror films are and more precisely what genres of horror which has earned the most.  Supernatural has made the most at box office making $4,130,975,121 whereas, Anthology made the least making $145,545,342. This implies that I should maybe make a horror which supernatural aspects as opposed to anthology as there seems to be more of a market for supernatural as there are more films with this in, whereas,  anthology have relatively few. This data expands my knowledge on the horror genre as it goes more in-depth about the successes of horrors.