Equipment

Camera

The camera that we used to film our opening two minutes is a Canon EOS 500D. It is my camera and I am also a photography student so I know how to work the camera. I also taught the others in my group how to use the filming setting so that they knew how to use it if i was not there or if i was in a scene and couldn't be behind the camera. Recording a clip is very simple as you just turn the dial on the top of the camera on the top of the camera to the movie setting and by the screen on the back of the camera is a small button that is clearly labelled as the record button.

Tripod

Another piece of equipment that I have is a Miranda 500 tripod. Its legs extend twice and the total height of the tripod with the camera on top is about 5 foot off the ground. The tripod allows the camera to capture smooth and steady shots which you can do for taking images and also video. It is not hard to understand how to use the tripod so it wasn't hard for the others to understand.

Adobe Premier Elements 10

The final piece of equipment that we used in our film was Adobe Premier Elements 10. It wasn't majorly difficult to use but we had a few complications along the way of editing our film. Billy was our chief editor. Before we edited our movie we had never used this software. Before we edited the movie we had to learn the basics of the software. Billy did a very good job of editing the movie and it looks professional even though there is a lot more that we could learn about Adobe Premier Elements for the future.

Screen Grabs.

    

The title of the film

The title of our film is pure white text against a black background. This is conventional to the genre of horror. The title is bold and all in capitals which draws the viewers in because it stands out.

Setting/ location

The location that we films in was actually one of our actors homes. The exterior of the house looks creepy and abandoned which is the perfect setting for our movie.

 

Costumes

The costumes that we had for our characters are stereotypical teenager clothing as the group of friends are aged sixteen to seventeen. 

Props (Candles and Ouija board)

The main props we had for our movie was the candles and the Ouija board as the candles illuminate the characters and the room and the Ouija board helps to tell the story. We also use matches after the Ouija board scene.

How characters are introduced

The characters are introduced by having a shot of them walking past the camera. The guy at the front is seen as the leader as he is first in to the abandoned house followed by the geek, the girl, the jock and the dark one.

Camerawork and editing

We used a range of camera work in our opening two minutes. The shots that we have used the most in our opening two minutes are the two shot, a type of shot that has the view of two people, and a medium shot, a camera angle that is shot from a medium distance. 

Title font and style

We have used a  basic white font for our opening two minutes as we didn't want it to look too cheesy. We wanted the text to look quite sinister and also a little sophisticated. The white also stands out against the dark scenery that we have created.

Story and how the opening sets it up

The story is about a group of friends who go to an abandoned house to use a Ouija board. What they don't expect is that they would release an evil spirit by using the Ouija board which kills all of the friends but one who the demon preys on last. The opening sets that up by using the codes and conventions of a horror movie to tell you what happens to the characters. 

Genre and how the opening suggests it

The opening shows that it is part of the horror genre through the scenes like the Ouija board scene as using a Ouija board can be quite dangerous if you summon an unkind spirit. Also the last scene represents the horror genre as we can clearly see the monster that attacks the leader of the group last but has clearly killed or kidnapped the rest of the group.

Special effects

We used very minimal lighting as we wanted to keep a dark scenery which would represent the horror genre also. We used matches and candles to create the eerie glow throughout the whole opening scene. We didn't use any advanced special effects as we didn't need to use them because horror movies can have a very low rate of special effects due to the wonders of imagination, for example: the film Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock is all down to imagination as you don't really see anything.

Presentation

This is the presentation we made of our film.

This is the feedback that we received from our presentation. 

The comments that we have gotten about our film were very useful and the improvements that were stated have been taken in to mind for our upcoming projects.

All of the comments made had a positive response which we are very pleased about as we had worked very hard on our opening two minutes.

How are social groups represented in your production?

In our film, a group of young friends decide to try out a Ouija board. This can be interpreted as naïve. They walk in to a seemingly abandoned house and continue to use Ouija board. They proceed to talk to the supposed demon inside the house…

The stereotypes that we initially wanted to portray in our film were: The jock, the nerd, the average guy, the ‘dark’ guy and the girl. Each character wears the appropriate clothing to fit their characters, e.g. the nerd wears skinny jeans and a superman shirt and the girl was wearing ‘girly’ type clothing to suit the character.

We also included a monster in our film that is used to scare the group of friends. The look of the monster is loosely based off of the demon, Pazuzu, in The Exorcist. Our look can be found here: http://zoejennerg321.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/monster-makeup.html

We used a range of shots in our film, the shots that we have used are listed here: http://zoejennerg321.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/shot-list-of-our-movie.html . The shot that we have used the most is a medium shot.

The target audience would expect an early death or moment of suspense because that’s a convention for the opening of a thriller or horror film.  Our film lives up to this, but because our audience expects an early death or killing we decided not to share much of the back-story of the characters.  The only thing the audience comes to realise about the characters in our opening scene is that they are a group of naïve teenagers that want to take the risk of playing with a Ouija board and become very unfortunate.

The Summoning

How we changed the film whilst filming

At the start of the film we set out with a very complicated idea and had little idea of how we were going to be able to achieve our goal, we did not realize how long it would actually take to film the film and we didn't take into account the actual setting of the film.
We had lots of problems with the setting of the movie, this was because our preliminary idea of filming in the morgue in Chertsey had to be stopped because the day before we filmed there we found out that the morgue was closed for renovations and that no-one was allowed inside or it would be a criminal offence and a fine.
This meant we had to re-think our whole scene as the morgue was very spacious and therefore it would be hard to replicate the space inside the building. Seeing the morgue was shut down we had to look elsewhere to film, this proved to be difficult as all the creepy looking locations we found were either unreachable or un-achievable.
Therefore we decided to film at my house seeing it is an old cottage and therefore it retains some of the creepy factor. It also has lots of cracks and a relatively big dining room where we could do the Ouija scene and it would look quite ominous and creepy with the idea of the candles and the match bringing creepy lighting to the forefront.
The change of scenery definitely impacted onto to our preliminary idea of what shots we would implement into our film. however we tried to work around it and involve the shots we first wanted just at different intervals or different positions. This was especially important when considering the 180 degree rule seeing we don't want to disorientate the audience on where about the characters are in the scene.
The end of the film stayed the same as what we previously wanted with the candles getting blown out, everyone disappearing  and then the match scene where it gets blown out at the end with the monster coming into shot and blowing out the match. However it didn't all go to plan with shot types, we can see this because our initial ideas had lots of birds eye views of the group, we realized shortly into filming that this would be nearly impossible to film as we do not have the correct equipment to do it outside, on the inside however we could get high angle shots but not a birds eye view as the ceiling was 8 foot high and we wouldn't be able to see the screen whilst filming.

Sound Effect research

 Music isn't the only copyright free sound we will need for our film; we will also need sound effects. Like the music, we want the sound effects to be subtle and not immediately noticeable.

  The first sound effect we want is a quiet ambient noise that plays during the 'IFM Studios' image.This is simply to add sound to an otherwise needlessly silent part, and also makes it seem more professional.

Breathing sound.

  We also need a sound that would come from a ghost (i.e Luke). This noise will appear when the characters are in the hallway, to draw their attention towards the door. Ideally, the sound is a low pitched, echo-y breath.