Certification

I am thinking of putting in an age certificate in the opening of my film. Professional producers put in these certificates for legal reasons, in order to only let those people who are of that age or higher to see that movie.

Film Directors

William Friedkin:

William Friedkin  was born on August 29th 1935 and is an American film director, producer and screenwriter, best known for directing "The French Connection" in 1971 and "The Exorcist" in 1973.Friedkin followed up with 1973's The Exorcist, based on William Peter Blatty's best-selling novel, which revolutionized the horror genre and is considered by some critics to be one of the greatest horror movies of all time. Friedkin's directorial "ethics" however, came into serious question when filming the now notorious scene where Linda Blair smacks Ellen Burstyn, causing her to fly backwards into a break-away table. Even after warning Friedkin the stuntman was "pulling her too hard," Friendkin prompted him to pull her harder, resulting in a permanent back injury for Burstyn. The Exorcist was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. It won the Best Screenplay Award.

Darren Lynn Bousman:

Darren Lynn Bousman was born on January 11th, 1979 and is an American film director and screenwriter. He is a graduate of the Film School at Full Sail University. He attended high school at Shawnee Mission North High School in Overland Park, and studied film at Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida.

Darren Lynn Bousman is most well known for directing most of the Saw movies and are now a well known movie within the horror genre.

During 2004, he was pitching an idea for a movie called The Desperate to various American studios, who complained that the screenplay was too violent, and the plot was too close to Saw. David A. Armstrong who worked on Saw asked Bousman if he could show the script to Saw producer Gregg Hoffman. Hoffman read the script and called Bousman interested in producing "The Desperate", but after showing the script to his partners Mark Burg and Oren Koules, the two decided it would be the perfect opportunity to turn "The Desperate" into Saw II. Two months later, Bousman was flown to Toronto to direct. During the production of Saw II, Bousman directed the music video for Mudvayne's single "Forget to Remember," which appeared as the lead song on the soundtrack album. Saw II was profitable and Bousman was signed on to direct Saw III, which was released on October 27, 2006.

 

Tobe Hooper:

Tobe Hoopers was born on January 25th, 1943amd is an American film director and screenwriter, best known for his work in the horror film genre. Tobe Hooper began his film career like many people in the field, working on industrial films and TV advertisements. Hooper claims to have come up with the idea for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre while standing in the hardware section of a crowded store. While thinking of a way to get through the crowd, he spotted chainsaws for sale. The highly successful film changed the horror film industry and landed Hooper in Hollywood Using studenst help, Hooper began making fictional films while an instructor at the University of Texas. He exploded onto the public scene in 1974 with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a creepy variation on the unhappy career of cannibalistic killer Ed Gein. Despite its lurid title, the film scored more on the threat of violence than its actual violent content, which was minimal. While critics either condemned the picture or simply refused to review it, the movie became a cult favorite, and within five years of its release it was being written about and analyzed by intellectual film periodicals and is now one of the horror movie classics.

In 1981, Hooper directed the film, The Funhouse. The story involved four teenage friends who decide to spend the night in the funhouse of a sleazy traveling carnival. The film opened to modest box office receipts and received mainly positive reviews. Hooper had a shooting schedule similar in length to Salem's Lot, but nowhere near the same budget. One of the most praised aspects of the film was its visually stylish cinematography.

 

Prop

This is one of the guns that I am going to use in my film. Obviously it is not a real gun, I have ordered a BB gun, but have to spray it black as for legal purposes they cant sell replicas to the general public only to licensed film companies.I am going to use the gun twice in the film, one to shoot the victim in the first half of the movie and again right.

These are other guns I may use:

Desert Eagle:                           

                        

 Glock 17:

Shot No.	Date/Time	Location	Cast	Costume/ Props	Equipment
1	9/4/2011 Start filming at - 1:00pm-1:15pm	Cuffley Woods	Georgina Nicholas	Jeans Cardigan Top Handbag High shoes/Boots	Camera Tripod Light Filter
2	9/4/2011 1:20pm – 1:35pm	Cuffley Woods	Georgina Nicholas	Jeans Cardigan Top Handbag High shoes/Boots	Camera Tripod Light Filter
3	9/4/2011 1:40pm – 2:00pm	Cuffley Woods	Georgina Nicholas Louis Watkins	Jeans Cardigan Top Handbag High shoes/Boots Killer Outfit- Black hoodie, black mask, black tracksuit bottoms and black gloves	Camera Tripod Light Filter
4	9/4/2011 2:05pm – 2:15pm	Cuffley Woods	Georgina Nicholas Louis Watkins	Jeans Cardigan Top Handbag High shoes/Boots Killer Outfit- Black hoodie, black mask, black tracksuit bottoms and black gloves	Camera Tripod Light Filter
5	9/4/2011 2:20pm – 2:40pm	Cuffley Woods	Louis Watkins	Killer Outfit- Black hoodie, black mask, black tracksuit bottoms and black gloves	Camera Tripod Light Filter Prop BB gun
6	11/4/2011 8:00am – 8:10am	Bedroom	Louis Watkins	Black tank top Shorts	Camera Tripod
7	11/4/2011 8:15am – 8:25am	Bathroom	Louis Watkins	Killer Outfit- Black hoodie, black mask, black tracksuit bottoms and black gloves	Camera Tripod

Who would be the audience for your media product?

In marketing and advertising, a target audience is a specific group of people within the target market, at which the marketing message is aimed. The main audience for my media product would be teenagers but  more specifically the ages between 13 - 19 years of age and also generally aimed at the males more than the females because according to popular belief males like to watch gruesome and horror movies compared to girls, even though girls are still able to enjoy the movie. 

What influenced me on my decision

There are 3 main movies which influenced me in making my decision on what genre I decided to do and also gave me a few ideas of which I can put into my opening credits. The 3 main movies are the two Paranormal Activty movies and the movie Se7en. I am aiming to combine those two movies by incorporating the trailer of Paranormal Activity 2 and the opening credits of Se7en.

The trailer from Paranormal Activty 2:

The idea I am planning to use is the style of which they change slides and scenes and gives a very vague outline of the story and not using much dialogue.

Music

During the begginning of the film I am going to start off with music which is relativley calm but also sinister and builds up the tension. However when the mood changes I will change the music to a more up beat song which suits the actions and scenes being shown during the film.

This is a very famous song by Evanescence and this is the song I will most probaly play when the mood changes after the calm scenes.

This is one song I may use for my film

Ideas for Movie

Horror:

An idea for a short horror movie could be set in the woods and that there is some sort of killer/killer animal that is in the woods while either walking a dog/walking with friend or girlfriend/ walking by himself. Set in the night or dusk. Slow and rock music in the background to give effect.

Murderer:

A girl is walking with a dog and then the dog suddenly hears something and runs off leaving the girl by herself. One or several hooded people start stalking/surrounding her. The girl starts running and looks back and sees no one. She is suddenly grabbed by the hair and dragged to the deep parts of the woods. She gradually becomes unconscious and falls in a ditch. Wakes up to the masked man and then he gets a knife and aims it towards her and stabs her. Someone else sees the murder and then the masked man sees that person and runs after the other person. Then the final scene is the girl dying. Just before the movie finishes it shows a quick flash image of the masked killer and then the film finishes.

The 180 Degree Rule

The 180 Degree Rule

The 180 degree rule is a basic guideline in film making that states that two characters or objects in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. The rule is most commonly used for scenes where two people are talking to each other (a dialogue scene) and along with the 180 degree another form of camera work is, the shot - reverse – shot, where the camera is focusing on the person talking/doing an action and then the camera changes its focus on the other character/s. This enables the viewer to understand what is happening more clearly and therefore getting to know and understand the film/TV programme. Also, during this, the cameramen will still have to use the 180 degree rule during a one on one conversation. The 180 degree rule is an essential element for a style of film editing called “Continuity editing”. The rule is not always obeyed. Sometimes a filmmaker will purposely break the line of action in order to create a disorientation effect on the viewer. Another example of the 180 degree rule is in The Lord of the Ring, The Two Towers, where Gollum has a conversation with his other personality whereby we are assuming he has multiple personality disorder. Because the filmmakers use the 180 degree rule, and have the "good" Gollum looking left as he speaks while the "evil" Gollum looking right, the audience perceives Gollum as two different characters talking to each other.

Another aspect of the 180 degree axis is that the closer to the axis the camera is, the more the viewer's point of view resembles the characters, and therefore the audience feels with the character. Crossing the 180 degree axis/line can be very confusing since the directions established for the viewer is changed. An example of this would be like watching a football game with the player with the ball going to the right and all of a sudden we cut to him running to the left. It would make the viewer wonder if he was running the wrong way or not and this is one reason why crossing the 180 degree line can be fatal in making a programme/film.

Types of Font

•Font - This font has a creepy and scary vibe to it and it looks a very old style of writing.

•Font – Again this font gives the impression that is very old and is ideal for my kind of film as I want a old style of writing.

•Font – I think this is a very good font as if shown in red it can symbolise blood and therefore goes well with the theme of my film

Health and Safety Issues Before Filming

Since my film is going to be filmed in the woods there could be a number of things that could damage the equipment (camera and tripod) and also the people who are participating in my film. The issues I am concerned with are as follows:

• Thorns
• Sharp pieces of wood
• Snakes or other animals
• Falling over and landing on something dangerous
• Camera falling over and hitting something hard, there by possibly damaging the equipment

Locations Of Where to Film

I got this image from Google, but this is part of Cuffley woods where I am going to film my movie. I thought of this site because of the bend trees and the small river/stream could be used well. However, I did not film my movie at this small part of the woods because it has too much of an open space and I wanted an area where there are more trees closer together, to give the effect that I want.




Again this is another image from Google but I looked at this sight and really liked it but when I went to look at it we found a snake come out and found out that there were a few more snakes under the leaves, since they have all fallen at this time of year. So for health and saftey issues I decided it would be best not to film there.

Advice from Pete's Media Blog

This excersise gave us an oppurtunity to create titles which suited certain summarys of a movie and also create a summary of our own movie. It is important to keep your title simple and that the more complicated your idea is, the higher the chance that something will go wrong.This gave us a chance to be creative and imaginary, it also shows how we percieve things. We had to summarise our movie in 25 words ( I did it in 28 words), which was the last task on the sheet.


My film summary was, "Girl walks alone in the woods, killer on loose and hides in the woods still seeking for revenge and kills the daughter of the man who framed him". I then realised that I put the main storyline of the movie and plot of it, instead of summarising it in the correct manner.

History of the genre

The modern horror genre as we know it is only around 200 years old and it begins to have form and conventions towards the end of the 18th century. Every culture has a set of stories dealing with the unknown and unexplained tales that chil, provoke and keep the listener wondering "what if..?" There are several kinds of horror movies, some which make you wander if there is something in the darkness, the ones that make you jump and scare you such as the "Paranormal Activity" movies and those which show the disgusting and agonising ways to die, for example the "Saw" series and also "The Final Destinations" movies.

Horror films are a movie genre seeking to ignite a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, therefore they may overlap with the fantasy and supernatural genre. Horror movies frequently overlap with the thriller genre.

The first depictions of supernatural events appear in several of the silent shorts created by the film pioneer Georges Méliès in the late 1890s, the best known one being "Le Manoir du diable", which is more commonly known as "The Haunted Castle", which was released in 1896 and is sometimes credited as being the first horror film. The movie only lasted two minutes, but audiences loved it, and Mèliès took pleasure in giving them even more devils and skeletons.

In the early 1900's German filmmakers created the first horror-themed feature films and director Paul Wegener enjoyed great success with his version of the old Jewish folk tale "Der Golem" in 1913. This story about an enormous clay figure, which is brought to life by an antiquarian and then fights against its forced slavery and it was a clear precursor to the many monster movies that flourished in Hollywood during the 1930's.

In the nuclear-charged atmosphere of the 1950s the tone of horror films shifted away from the gothic and towards the modern day society. A large amount of low-budget productions featured humanity overcoming threats from life and objects outside our world such as, alien invasions, deadly mutations to people, plants, and insects. The better horror films of this period, including "Howard Hawks" and "The Thing From Another World" (1951) managed to channel the paranoia of the Cold War into atmospheric creepiness without resorting to exploitation. Filmmakers would continue to merge elements of science fiction and horror, most notably in the movie "Ridley Scott's Alien" (1979).

The late 1950s and early 1960s saw the rise of studios centered specifically around horror, notably British production company Hammer Films, which specialized in bloody remakes of classic horror stories, which made a series of Edgar Allan Poe themed films starring Vincent Price. These sometimes controversial productions carved the way for more explicit violence in both horror and mainstream films.

Later in the 1960s the genre moved towards non-supernatural psychological horror, with thrillers such as Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) using all-too-human monsters rather than supernatural ones to scare the audience. Michael Powell's Peeping Tom was a notable example of this genre. Psychological horror films would continue to appear sporadically with 1991's The Silence of the Lambs a later highlight of the subgenre.

In the late 1960s and 1970s a public fascination with the occult fed and was fed by a series of serious, supernatural-themed, often explicitly gory horror movies. Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby" in 1968 was a critical and popular success and laid the groundwork for the seminal horror film "The Exorcist" in 1973. Far from exploitation, these films incorporated subtext and symbolism and had production values equal to any serious film of the time. The Exorcist spawned numerous sequels and imitators but most notably was "The Omen" (1976).

The genre fractured somewhat in the late 1970s, with mainstream Hollywood focusing on disaster movies such as "The Towering Infern"o and blockbuster thrillers such as "Jaws" while independent filmmakers upped the ante with disturbing and explicit gore-fests such as, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" in 1974. An effective and atmospheric shocker, Halloween introduced the teens threatened by superhuman evil theme that would be copied in dozens of lesser, increasingly violent movies throughout the 1980s including the well-known "Friday the 13th" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street" series, as well as other Halloween related horror movies.

Le Manoir du diable:


Due to the evolution in technology and graphics, film makes in modern day are able to create more realistic and gruesome movies. An example of this could be shown in the two posters shown and how in themselves depict the evolution of the horror genre.

Saw 1:

Posters

The Crazies was a very popular film in 2010. A poster tells the audience a very vague idea about what the movie is about and the mood it sets. The Crazies poster here shows that there is violence and killing involved as the garden folk has blood dripping of it and onto the floor. The slightly smaller print below the title which says "Fear Thy Neighbour", gives another small hint about the movie and it also goes against what Jesus said which was, "Love Thy Neighbour" which is fairly sinister. Overall, the poster looks menacing and also I have seen the movie and I can relate the layout of the poster to the film. The font used to illustrate the title is the sort of font which is shown on signs which say things like, "Do Not Enter" or "Hazardous Area".


Salt was another popular movie in 2010 it is basically about a CIA agent goes on the run after a defector accuses her of being a Russian spy. The poster has Angelina Jolie who is a very well known actor, so people will instantly know who she is and draws more attention to the poster. The question "Who is Salt?" also, gives the reader a certain degree of confusion and also idea of what the movie is about.

This piece of video shows the opening scene of the movie Se7en. This is exactly the type of opening scene I want my piece to look like because it makes me personally want to watch the whole movie but also for the people who especially like horror movies who may find the gruesome and disturbing images make the film better in a way.

Seven (stylized as Se7en) is a 1995 American thriller film, which also contains horror. The film was released in the U.S.A on September 22, 1995. Grossing $327 million at the box office internationally, Seven was a commercial success, and received very positive reviews from most critics. David Mills (Pitt) and William Somerset (Freeman) are police detectives working in a crime-filled city, who become deeply involved in a case involving a series of sadistic murders. Each murder corresponds to one of the seven deadly sins: Gluttony, Envy, Lust, Pride, Sloth, Greed and Wrath.

Paranormal Activtity is about a family experiencing what they think are a series of "break-ins", a family sets up security cameras around their home, only to realize that the events unfolding before them are more sinister than they seem. The film is a parallel prequel to the 2007 film Paranormal Activty, beginning two months before and following up with the events depicted in the original film.


The techniques used in this film such as the idea of a handheld camera effect, gives the impression that this movie a more realistic approach and little editing has been done to give it an authentic look on the audience. This is the look I am trying to use in my opening sequence of my movie but also not giving much information away at all. 

Drag me to hell is a well - known movie, where a loan officer who evicts an old woman from her home finds herself the recipient of a supernatural curse. Desperate, she turns to a seer to try and save her soul, while evil forces work to push her to a breaking point. It is one of the more popular thriller movies of modern times and there are certain points from the film such as music which adds to the suspense of the film to create a tense atmosphere.

Target Audience Questionnaire

How old are you?

0-5                   6-12                 13-15               16-20               21-25               26-30               30+

What is your favourite genre of film? (Please Circle):

  Horror            Comedy         Action             Crime/Thriller

  Sci-Fi               Romantic       Romantic/comedy

What is your favourite film?

How often do you watch films via cinema or DVD a month?

0-2                   2-4                   4-6                   6+

What kind of conventions do you expect in a horror movie?

Do you regularly use social networking sites? If so what ones?

Facebook      Twitter                      Myspace       Google                       Blogger

Do you prefer the opening to have music over it? (Please Circle)

               Yes                      No              Don’t mind