Hello there, welcome to my blog. feel free to leave any comments! You will find a variety of posts on the background research and planning into my slasher film opening, High Royds, being co-produced with GeorgeH and CurtisT. This blog is mainly influenced by the work of John carpenter and his franchise, Halloween.

Tuesday, 26 March 2013

Original storyboards for our trailer


Trailer Storyboard


Sheet 1

Sheet 2

Soundtrack in one slasher opening

Saw III (2006)

Director:

 


Man scurraging for gun

At the start of SAW 3 The mans shouting is key for the music to go quieter, and starts to build the suspense up from there. there is a man on the flaw scurraging for his gun, the non diegetic music is slow, piano/orchestra type music, it tends to build up the tension very well. The music slowly starts to get louder and long drawn out notes its building up and up. Alot of diegetic sound is mixed in with this; like drips of water.

The cut off foot the man sees

When the man in the picture sees a dead body and a sawn of foot the music starts to come to life and the notes become more apparent and loud, get quicker and quicker. the piano notes seem to change and become much more noticable.

The saw

When the man shines the light on the saw, loud horrible sounding screaches start to play in the background as the suspense builds up. It sends chills down your spine.




The music ends then enters the title when the Man has or what appears to have cut his ffot off.




Monday, 25 March 2013

Our Trailer




For our trailer shoot we didn't find anything to difficult whilst we were filming. As we had planned previously on what we needed for the trailer (the lab coat) all we had to do was get a number of different shots of the patient walking through the corridor. Though there is little we knew that we were going to include alot of
editing e.g the newspapers and sound to add tension to our trailer.


We used shots like this to provide the mise en scene that the film is set in a mental hospital






Well also used medium shots to provide narrative enigma to hide the patient. We sustained this narrative enigma through out our trailer




As we followed our storyboard it wasn't difficult to film all the shots as we got all the filming done in under an hour.




Sunday, 24 March 2013

Re-Shoot


After shooting our first rough cut, we decided we needed more footage to make our final piece great. so in school we arranged to meet at my house for the shoot, with the following characters:

Heather: scream queen
Jake: The Dr
Curtis: The killer
Psycho shower scene
George:Camera Man/Director

We did our shoot after school, planning our shoot within my house. Preparing the scenes we had to do during the week. We had 2 Killing scenes, one of the final girl and one of the Dr.

 We arranged the first murder scene in the bathroom, using a kitchen knife and ketchup as blood. We used strategies that many films use, probably the most famous, the Psycho shower scene, where they used fast pace editing. Used to make it look much more realistic when special effects arn't available.
Like the attic stairs we used

The second murder Took place in my bedroom which is up some stairs in the attic. we thought it would be very effective to us this as the stairs are very effective. We did one continuous take with a false scare and a real scare.


Friday, 22 March 2013

4th rough cut




  • this was our 4th rough cut, 
  • we sat down and analysed, asking other people how we could improve the film. 
  • We then come to the conclusion that alot needed to be changed
  • went about changing alot about the film.
  •  We tried cutting scenes down etc.

Wednesday, 6 March 2013

Tuesday, 5 March 2013

Warp Vs. WT

The two films me and Curtis are comparing are Four lions 

and Green Zone both from different production 

companies below i will list the questions with the 

appropriate analysis.
 

Green zone trailer



Four lions trailer






Four Lions


Four Lions DVD Cover

2010 FilmFour Lions is a British dark comedy film. It is the feature film debut of director Chris Morris, written by Morris, Sam Bain, and Jesse Armstrong. WikipediaRelease date: January 23, 2010 (initial release)

Director: Chris Morris
Production company: Warp Films
Awards: BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer
Screenplay: Jesse Armstrong, Sam Bain, Simon Blackwell, Chris Morris


Green Zone

Green Zone DVD Cover
2010 FilmGreen Zone is a 2010 British-French-American war thriller film directed by Paul Greengrass. The storyline was conceived from a screenplay written by Brian Helgeland, based on a 2006 non-fiction book ... WikipediaRelease date: February 26, 2010 (initial release)

Director: Paul Greengrass
DVD release date: June 22, 2010
Screenplay: Brian Helgeland
Story by: Rajiv Chandrasekaran 



Budgets


Four lions budget: £2.5m

A small budget compared to the working title kind of budgets. Never-the-less the biggest budget that Warp have ever had, the film made alot of money and profited greatly, making abit of money in america and £600,000 in the british box office, making the real money on DVD release. it was a very controversial topic to risk the largest Warp budget ever, however a risk that payed off.



Green zone budget: $100m

A large budget by any standards even by the big 6 standards. Working titles biggest ever budget. Using the director of the bourne films, as what you would call a safe bet using a big A-list star also. However this film was a major flop US box office.

Distribution+Marketing

Green zone Distributors:

DVD: Universal home entertainment
Theatre:Universal pictures


A prime example of vertical integration as universal own the production side that is working titleas WT is a subsidiary, they then do the box office part of it as they get the film into cinema.They also can advertise these films by using things like universal studios in orlando, make rdes etc. universalis such a big company that there is such a variety of marketing that can be used for exampleon their other films they advertised green zone in the adverts before thefilm



Four lions distributors:



Optimum Releasing (2010) (UK) (theatrical)

Optimum releasing was the main distributor for four lions and has an ident at the benginning of the film.it isnt a big company compared to universalstandards as Warp dont have the vertical integration advantage that Green Zone had. Film four payed for the rights to this film and advertised it aswell.



Critical Reception

Four lions ratings:

Rotton tomatoes 'tomatometer'-81%

IMDB rating:7.3

Doesnt get a bad rating, a risky subject yet the risk payed off and made warp alot of money

Green zone ratings:

Rotten tomatoes 'tomatometer'-53%

IMDB rating:6.9

Regarded as a massive 'flop' Working titles biggest budget and maybe the biggest failure.


Box Office + other expedition figures

Four lions:

£2,686,096 (UK) (13 June 2010)

Weekend gross:

£608,608 (UK) (9 May 2010) (115 Screens)

USA box office:

$301,527 (USA) (13 February 2011)



Green zone:

UK box office:

£5,429,903 (UK) (4 April 2010)

USA box office:

$35,024,475 (USA) (2 May 2010)



6. Media Language (A) Genre + Audience:
Four Lions:
The film makes comedy out of terrorism - a social issue, which is typical of a British comedy especially in particular because of the production company, Warp, who mainly produce social realist films which is the genre that Four lions falls into.

The target audince for Four Lions would be for an older audience as a result of the mature humour exploited. However, the audience doesn't have to be too old to understand the humour. Giving the director, Chris Morris is known for his controversial comedy, a liberal audience i needed as he does mock terrorism, which some people may find offensive as it could be interperated as stereotypical. Therefore the target audience for Four Lions would be 18-25 and 26 onwards.

Green Zone:
The film is an action, thriller, war film, drama. These can be good genre films, whileGreen Zone is not—and the reasons for its failure are political and Working title has seemed to stray away from political interpretations in their other movies such as Bridget Jones Diary. Its Warp who concertrate on using political refferences as apparent in Four Lions. Its not neccessarily used alot in Working title films anymore. However The Daily Mail called it "a preachy political thriller disguised as an action flick" and  gave its reasoning for failure as "the air of being aimed at ignorant american teenagers" and this is the area they are trying to sell to - America. Which they have basically snubbed in this movie.
The target audience for this film is teenagers as a result of the action and the war image it portrays. 15+ and for adults.

7. Media Language (B) 'British'?

Language plays a key role in Four Lions. It’s true that the film is not formally experimental or imitative – it adopts the kind of furtive handheld camera style that seems to be the default setting for this kind of quasi-neo-realist thing these days.
This is usually what we would find in Warp films, as this is a social realist comedy almost its not suprising that a film like this has coem from the same production company that produced films such as This Is England & Dead Mans Shoes 

8. A typical Working Title/Warp film?:

It is arguable wether the two films i have analysed are typical movies according to their production companies. One could argue that Four Lions is a typical film for Warp as it is a social realist film and does contain political interest. It is also a relatively low budget film compared to films in the big 6 (However, it was the highest budgeted film Warp had produced at £2.5m) so this isn't unsuall that its a low budget movie. In addition to this, it doesn't feature any stars in the movie which is also typical for Warp productions.
Green Zone on the other hand is not a typical Working Title film this is based on the account with comparing it to previous films such as Bridgets Jones Diary and Notting Hill the media language used is completely different as its a much more realistic film and contains political content which Working Title previously strayed away from as they expanded. However, The budget for Green Zone (£100m) was the highest budget they have ever had although its not suprising that the film contains an A list star (Matt Damon) which is most likely the reason as to why the budget was so high.

9. Summary, Including your personal views as uk audience memebers:
I think that Working Title should leave Warp to making realistic movies and icluding political content as Green Zone for Working Title was an absolute flop. Therefore, Working Title should stick to making Hybrid movies as they have done so in the past, they should stick to what they are good at in the future continuing to make there money this way. Also, warp should copntinue making the movies they do to keep british cinema alive.


 10. Bibliography
http://mayadykes.wordpress.com/2010/09/26/genre-codes-and-conventions-target-audience-for-four-lions/
http://www.cineaste.com/articles/webtakesemgreen-zoneem
http://drnorth.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/four-lions-war-goes-bang/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Zone_(film)
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDUQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imdb.com%2Ftitle%2Ftt0947810%2F&ei=jMM9UYrLJsmN7AbciYDwCQ&usg=AFQjCNHN84HoHHTQZQmoddFgribuEQgeww&sig2=ALfc4NMIzNmOWzQc2dOK9w
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/four_lions/










Monday, 4 March 2013

Our 2nd Shoot

our white lab coa

We carried out our 2nd shoot on monday the 25th of february, we first got the train to Menston. Which is where we filmed our opening,  at Menston High Royds mental asylum. This is the perfect location for our film as its similar to the film we are basing it on, Mad House. At around 3o'clock in the afternoon when it was still light. We then filmed outside of High Royds, in which we acted out a chase scene in which the patient is escaping from High Royds. Curtis our patient got into his costume which was a white lab coat. The other actor - Jake, also got into his costume which consisted of doctors trousers, a doctor shirt and a doctors a ID which is a key piece of mise en scene in our opening because it provides realism to the audience.


The fig rig we used
After filming at High Royds we then went to my house to film the res of opening. We filmed Outside and inside of my house. Inside we filmed in my bathroom and landing. The bathroom was ideal because of the mirror above the toilet, this was used to create our false scare. When we were outside we filmed on my drive, using the car as part of the mise on scene to represent his social class being a doctor so quite rich and powerfull.

We were lucky with the time that we went because it wasn't dark yet, which was ideal because we hadn't previously planned on taking a light with the rest of our equipment. The fig rig proved to be a key piece of equipment that we used as it provided a stable camera shot which proved handy when filming POV shot when we changed the setting of our opening.


Saturday, 2 March 2013

Asylum storyboard


Story Board: The Asylum

The Story Board for The Asylum on Location 1


This is our story board for our scene on location 1, obviously we aren't going to stick to what we have originally, but we are going to use this as a guideline for our first scene. No doubt our director will want to change a few things, but this is fine as this was just a rough sketch of the shots. Personally i think more shots shot be added just for the fact that in the editing process we will have more to work with and this will reduce the chances of having to re-shoot.

Shot list


These are our shot list sheets to provide information to the director (george holmes) About which shot type is used for which part of the opening. We have drawn pictures and labelled the specific shot and why the shot is used:



sheet 1




Sheet 2