Film Opening Final Cut

This is our finished product for our film opening task.

Film Opening Second Rough Cut and Feedback

This is our group's second rough cut of our film opening. After doing a lot of work on our film opening we decided to get some more feedback from others, including our target audience (over 15's) to see if we can improve our film more in different ways to suit our target audience's demands. We still need to do a lot more work in order to get our film opening to match our shot list, however our final cut of our film opening will show this.

Feedback from Year 11; 15-16 years old (our target audience):
- They really liked the storyline and our ideas for the film that are apparent in the film opening.
- They didn't understand the park scene at the end as the swing was a child's swing and not a swing for an older teenager like the sort that are being murdered in the film opening. It goes from being dark to too bright, confused them.
- The pictures on the wall shots go on for too long and can distract the audience's attention.
- In the film opening the television gets switched off and then all of a sudden we can hear the news report go over the top of other clips.
- They recognised the genre straight away.
- 10/25 of our audience want to watch the rest of the film.

We gathered from this feedback that we needed to either try and turn down the brightness even more in the park scene or discuss as a group and get rid of this scene altogether. We needed to shorten down the part where the pictures are being shown on the wall. Stick to the shot list and sort out which scenes go where to avoid confusion with the scene where the television turns off, by doing this we hope that more of our audience will want to watch the rest of our film.

Feedback from Year 13; 17-18 years old (also around our target audience as it's 15+)
- Really liked the part of the title where it gets typewritten, however the whole title should have that type of transition.
- Liked the scream, the evil laugh at the end of the film opening and the layering of sound.
- Titles and institutional logos are needed in order to know that the whole piece is a film opening and not just a part of the film.
- The photos of the girls on the wall go on for way too long and need to be shortened.

We took this feedback into consideration and decided as a group that we would have the whole title at the beginning in the same transition, we had thought of doing this before but would leave those ideas till the end as they were very time consuming; this being as we didn't have a transition for this title and had to each letter separately. We would add titles to the piece and the right amount in the correct order and institutional logos as well as the first lot of feedback we got from our second rough cut, we will need to shorten down the picture scene to avoid distraction.

Post by: Jess Wilding

Film Opening First Rough Cut and Feedback

This is our group's first rough cut of our film, everything is not in the right order and has not got the right time limit on each frame to match our shot list, this is from the time of our editing process.

We did get quite a bit of feedback from our first rough cut just to see what our audience was roughly thinking about our film opening, this was the feedback we received:

Positives received:
The storyline seems quite clear in ways that the audience know what is happening, can tell by the film opening that the film is a horror, like the sounds over the top of the film opening.

Improvements:
Pictures on the wall shots are a great idea, however, they go on for too long, there are no titles in our film opening which is confusing, there are no starting logos and at the end the swing doesn't make sense at it's a child's swing and it seems to the audience that he is after teenagers/young women? Goes from dark to really light as well can be confusing.

As a group we have decided that we need to improve a great deal on our film opening. We need to: Shorten the scene with the pictures on the wall, add titles and logos to our piece and in the right order as well as, either adjusting brightness and contrast of the park scene or to decide not keep it at all.

Post by: Jess Wilding

Final Shotlist

This our final shot list which we will be going by.

Post by: Jess Wilding

Initial Shotlist

This is our first initial shot list.

Post by: Jess Wilding

Titles in our Opening

In order to save time when editing we decided to organise in what order our titles will go and what they will say..

1. Our first title will be Studio Pictures

2. In association with Orange Productions

3. Main Actor/Actress: Amy Wilding

4. Actor: Robert Ransom

5. Film Title: The Case of Kate Young

Actor : Glen Harries

Actress: Yasmin Young

Actress: Roxanne Ransom

Casting by Aaron Evans

Co Producer Will Howlett

Titles by Paige Lyons

Music by Millie Stone

Costume Designer Jessica Foster

Film Editor Emily Wallace

Production Designer Amy Welsh

Director of Photography Lauren Dinnes

Co-Executive Joanna Hyde

Excutive Producer Kat Ransom

Produced by Alex Cockburn

Screenplay by Charley Boughen

Directed by Jessica Wilding

These are the order in which our titles will run during our film opening.

Post by: Jess Wilding

Reconsideration of Costume

When casting the actors for our specific roles we have to consider what the actor looks like and the type of costume they would wear. As we have already decided on costumes we just have to reconsider the costumes and see if we have to change anything to suit the actor if any problems occur.

News Reporter: We did not have to reconsider the costume or make-up for the news reporter as their clothing considering their profession are usually suits/smart wear. Our initial ideas still work and will be kept the same for this actor.

Victim in the bath: We did not reconsider the colour of clothing for this character however we did decide to change the top slightly, instead of wearing a plain top we decided to wear a top provided from one of our group members  just in case it looked as too planned, we decided to get the actor to wear a top that is casual/everyday clothing. We also ripped the leggings to make the murder more realistic. We changed the clothing according to our cast to make it look more like a real murder crime scene. Additionally, the make-up stayed the same by pouring fake blood on the actor/victim as said in our initial ideas.

Post by: Jessica Wilding
Costumes by: Kat Ransom

Final Locations

Putting into consideration the film opening and how to catch the audience's eye and make them want to watch the whole film we have to find the best and most convenient room. Watching the opening to a film is like listening to a song for the first 30 seconds, if the opening isn't excellent and doesn't set the rest of the film up, the audience won't want to watch the rest. We have decided on a final location which was our second idea:

We have decided on this location as if we take the bed out, the room will be big which is good for all the equipment and people we'll need to fit in the room for filming. The first wall (shown on the left) will be the wall in which the television will sit and there will be pictures on the wall.

The second picture shows that we will have naturalistic lighting in the room which is good as we don't want to edit the lighting to make it look too dark. We can use the long windowsill to put objects on to give it more a realistic effect. As a result of this, this room was the best room to use as the main room for the film opening.

Victim Final Locations

This is the final location of the swing scene and the victim murdered in a park. This is well suited to the film and we could film both of the scenes at once, additionally this would be suited considering time wise and we'd only have a short amount of time to film. Also if any problems occur this is only a short walk from the school where we could re-film if needed. As there is only a child's swing we may have to re-think this scene but we will do so in the editing process.

 

We chose this bathroom to be the final location of the victim murdered as it is the biggest bathroom that we found, it has just been decorated so it is in nice keeping and it doesn't have anything to get in the way. The glass door can be folded outwards so that we do not see it in whilst filming/taking photos. Strengths and Weaknesses are explained in the video above.

Post by: Jess Wilding

Re-filming TV sequence

The video above is the our first take of the TV sequence in the Serial killer's room, which would also be used as a voiceover. When looking over our filming in the editing sessions we decided that the TV scene of the News Reporter and found that the lighting had been too dark. We tried to set the contrast and brightness higher however as shown it was too pixelated. We thought it would look better if there were more light in the room so that we could see the outline of the television. Therefore, we have decided to re-film on Wednesday 23rd March, we will carry on using the previous film at this moment in time as a guide track in our rough cut to avoid confusion.

Post by: Jess Wilding

Music Soundtrack Final Ideas

As a group we have decided that we will be using certain soundtracks in our film opening that is suited to the frame at the time and to our genre of horror.

We have decided on using the following soundtracks (can also be heard in the video below):



1. Typewriter; this sound was used when editing the titles that said ' What you are about to see is based on true events' we had to do each title separately as there was not a transition that did this for us, it was time consuming but we wanted to make our film opening better. We decided to have this soundtrack placed over the top of the writing to make it more realistic, we have noticed that other films have used this before during films to create more effect.

2. Evil Laugh Sound Effect; this would be used at the end of our film opening where we have the scene with the swing swaying back and forth. This would not be overused just enough to let the audience have a rough idea of what was to come.

3. Very Low Note; this would be used as a way of layering sound to give the film opening a bit more of a scary edge to our horror.

4. The Hive; this would be used over the top as it is very scary and would selected in places to give some background noise, without this type of soundtrack it would just be silence in the background and very bland.

5. Static TV; this would be used just before and just after a jump cut of the victim in the bath. This was to scare the audience and create a sense of tension to the storyline. When comparing other films as a group we decided that the films that are a lot more effective on the audience were the ones that had this type of soundtrack in.

6. House of Leaves; just like 'The Hive' this soundtrack would be used to give a sense of background to our opening, with this our film opening is more exciting, as well as having the 'Static TV' noise this soundtrack breaks out from it and scares the audience more.

7. Take the Lead; this would be used for the Orange Productions association logo, with the dead tree in the background and the one apple left on it. We thought it would sound better being a rock/pop soundtrack with a horror genre than having a classical, we thought that having a classical tune over an institutional logo would more likely be seen on a romantic genre based film.

8. Thunder Sound Effect; this would be used for our institutional logo, it seems more as though it is a logo, we thought it looks better on the film opening. We thought this was similar to the MGM logo with the lion, the voice over sounds louder and more realistic. 

Post by: Jess Wilding

Institutional Logo

In our first initial stages of thinking about what logo would represent our film company we thought of images and idea's to do with our production company which was 'Orange productions'. Through the brain storming process we came up with an idea surrounding an orange tree as this links in with our production name. We had to come up with a type of logo.


We decided to draw out a picture of what we wanted our logo to look like so that we all had a rough idea on what to go from. This was the type of logo that we came up with:

For our Orange Productions logo we decided on having a withered tree in the background with one orange on a branch to capture the audience's eyes. By searching on google we got the perfect picture of a withered tree, the only problem that occurred was that it did not have anything on it. We decided on getting a different picture of an orange off of google and editing the picture in 'Paint'. We finally got a picture from the Internet and successfully placed the orange onto the tree without it looking edited.

This was our final product of our 'in associations with Orange Productions':

Then we had to come up with a different logo to make our film opening a bit more professional. We needed to decide on a name for our first institutional logo, which was 'Studio Pictures' we had to come up with a logo. When we were searching on the Internet we came up with a picture of a road with a streak of lightning in the background. We decided that this was a great idea for our film opening and that with this we would put a sound effect of thunder in the background of the lightning to give more of a professional feel to our piece.

This was our final product of our 'Studio Pictures':

Post by: Jess Wilding & Kat Ransom

Logo Designed by: Kat Ransom