Shooting Schedule/List

We wrote a shot list which simultaneously was our Shooting Schedule because it showed us what shots we needed and we could tick of which we had already done.
Always referring back to the list we had a plan and something to follow. We wanted to shoot similar shots (p.e. same position) first and then move on to the next category of shots so we did not have to pace around with the camera etc.

Institution

Fox Searchlight Pictures is a film division of 20th Century Fox , established in 1994. It specialises in indie (independant) and British films, alongside dramedy and horror, and is variously involved with the production and/or distribution of these films.
In the early-to-mid 1980s, prior to the creation of Searchlight, Fox previously released independent films under the banner of 20th Century-Fox International Classics; the most notable of the releases under this banner include Bill Cosby: Himself, Reuben, Reuben , and Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

Fox Searchlight's Slumdog Millonaire won the Acedemy Award for Best Picture at the 81st Academy Awards as well as a further 7 academy awards. Other Fox Searchlight films receiving Best Picture nominations include The Full Monty, Sideways, Little Miss Sunshine and Juno. Because all these films are clever and trying to also give the audience a message we thought our ambitious film would suit Fox Searchlight. Additionally, they produce Low Budget films that are good quality and being backed by Fox they also have the finance to successfully market, advertise and distribute films to a larger audience than the niche audience that would see a film if it was on a smaller completely independant label. Allthough our film is Horror we would like to appeal to larger target audience than just small scale fans of low budget horrorfilms.

Target Audience

The main audience for films at the cinema are 16-25 year old male/female because they have more disposable money. When you are around 40 you probably have a family and no time to go out.Due to the fact that our thriller is more sophisticated and a psychological not extremely gory it also attracts older people who like that subgenre i.e thriller/horror to get out of their houses and enjoy themselves. Therefore, a secondary audience for our film is the older horror-thriller fans who enjoy a night out in the cinema being scared. We would aim our marketing and advertising at this audience in terms of teaser trailers on the internet and in the cinema if we could get a cinema distributor like "Hammer Horror" and posters as we feel this would benefit our film financially at the box office.

Storyboarding

In order to be prepared for our shooting day we drew every single shot in a comic style on our storyboard sheets which we unfortuanetly lost after our shooting day. We also added arrows and little cmnts to clarify where the camera would move and what else would happen. And we wrote a shotlist to have our shots detailed written down and not only as images.
The shotlist and the storyboard are very important for a shooting day to be organised and to have a plan. Otherwise it would end in a chaos. Additionally, the other people (Luke etc) who were not involved in our planning got an idea of how we wanted what to be. I liked having a rough plan of what we were about to do.

Research Sources

As I said before we used the "Napoleon Dynamite Opening Credits" to get ideas how to incorperate titles in our scene even though it is not a horrorfilm. The way the opening credits are presented also tells something about the film. For Example that it is a quite light-hearted film and rather funny than serious. In our opening credits we also wanted to establish what our film is about and incorperate the titles as effectively and creative like "Napoleon Dynamite Opening Credits". Besides, the way the opening credits are presented you can tell that "Napoleon Dynamites" is a low budget film aswell
We got a lot of inspiration from the "Se7en Opening Credits" for the research. "Se7en" shows a lot of fast paced research and many words and writing which is a effect we wanted to use. It does not reveal too much about the film but it does give a rough idea what is going to happen what it is about and also what genre it is. By telling the audience what genre it is they can decide wether they want to see the film or not. I think "Se7en" and our opening scene show quite well that the genre is Horror/Thriller and the fans of this genre (mainly 16-25 year old males) are also our target audience.


We also looked at the research part of "The Ring - Part 5" (starting from 4:20 to 6:50) to get more ideas. For example typing into Google. The research in this film establishes a perfect atmosphere of looking things up in the past in an library. Obviously, we were determinded to create at least a similar environment.

Idea Developments

Felix, Elly, Leaya and me came together as a group and presented our ideas to eacht other. We talked, and decided that Leaya's film was the best idea and would have a good opening sequenceand it would be the easiest to make.
The name of her film was 'Class of '73', and the story was about a girl being given an assignment to research about her ancestors. So she decided to look into the death of her great aunt. She found out that her aunt was murdered by her football team boyfriend. She also discovered the year book of the class of 73 and found his photo, she realises that he looks a lot like the school janitor at the school now.

After a while we thought it would be a good idea to change the girl into a young woman, who is trying to make it as a journalist and this is her first real job. She is asked to research into a really interesting big story and comes across an old newspaper article about some murders in a school, and the killer was never found. We liked this idea a lot better because we wanted a more psychological thriller and not a typical American Highschool Thriller. We explored ideas on how to get a more tense, interesting opening sequence. And we also decided that we wanted to incorporate the titles as much as possible like in the Napoleon Dynamite Opening Sequence to show that we actually have thought about every single detail for our opening sequence.

My First Horrorfilm idea

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Thriller and Horrorfilms

The creator of a thriller's main objective is to pierce through the audience's layer of security and safeness, making them feel as scared or uncomfortable as possible.
Thrillers rely on fear, apprehension and suspense, and usually play upon your basic childhood worries and fears. Thrillers create tension by raising questions and presenting enigma codes to the audience, which makes us want more.
Tension is also created through the use of delay, so that there is a sense of relief when something finally happens.
There are a variety of different types of thriller.
One of the most commonly used in movies are psychological thrillers which explore people's minds, dealing with issues such as schizophrenia, getting inside the mind of the killer. At the end of these movies, the secrets are usually revealed.
Another very common type of thriller is horror. This type of movie involves a great deal of blood and gore, making the audience feel shocked and repulsed by something that they are not supposed to see. The audience indentifies itself with the fears or terrors of the narrative. Mostly the fear of the unknown (darkness) or the body being ripped apart/mutilated. From simplistic or basic messages (the virgin "good" girl surviving at the expense of her rebellious "slutty" best friend) to the more nuanced or subtle fears of stranger/hitchhikers breaking our boundaries or the condemnation of any deviant (i.e. non christian) religions. Perhaps the most lucrative genre in the film idustry horror draws in huge audiences justifying the continual re-invention, re-making and franchising of every successful horror product.
Supernatural thrillers are also used. These play on the audience's fear of ghosts and things of the paranormal. They sometimes deal with the concept of demons and the devil. A typical example of a supernatural thriller is 'The Exorcist'.

The key theme of thrillers/horrors can also be voyeurism. The word voyeurism derives from the French word 'voyeur' which translates as 'someone who watches.' (usually without their object of interest knowing that they are being watched) People who make thrillers use the idea of voyeurism to create a creepy storyline. The voyeur in these films is usually a stalker, watching the person or people he is about to kill or torture. There is a lot of irony in this as we (the audience) know the killer is there, yet the killer's victim does not. In some cases, the style of filming forces us as an audience to become the voyeur. This is when we are made to watch a character being killed, tortured or placed in an equally terrible situation. This makes us feel slightly uncomfortable as, again, we are seeing something we shouldn't be seeing.

Continuity Editing

Continuity editing is an invisible style of editing in narrative film and television. The purpose of continuity editing is to smooth over the inherent discontinuity of the editing process and to establish a logical relationship between shots. Basically, to ensure that the selected shots are put together in an order that makes sense to the audience – so that they can follow the story as clearly as possible.
In most films, cutting to continuity is, which increases smooth transition of time and space. However, some films incorporate cutting to continuity into a more complex classical cutting technique, one which also tries to show psychological continuity of shots.
The montage technique relies on symbolic association of ideas between shots rather than association of simple physical action for its continuity.Continuity editing can be divided into two categories: temporal continuity and spatial continuity – literally TIME and SPACE.

The important ways to preserve temporal continuity are avoiding the ellipsis(an apparent break in natural time) , using continuous Diegetic sound, and utilizing the match on action technique.It would also be necessary to shoot the whole film in one take in order to keep from having to edit together different shots, causing the viewer's temporal disorientation. Digetic sounds are noises that are naturally in a movie (e.g. doors, cars). Continuous diegetic sound helps to smooth temporally questionable cuts by overlapping the shots (SOUND BRIDGES, connect frames).

Match on action for example is, a shot of someone throwing a ball can be edited to show two different views, while maintaining temporal continuity by being sure that the second shot shows the arm of the subject in the same stage of its motion as it was left when cutting from the first shot.

Disolve or a fade is an smooth cut where the first frames fades out and is over layed with an other picture that fades in.

Cross-cutting is a technique which conveys an undeniable spatial discontinuity. It can be achieved by cutting back and forth between shots of spatially unrelated places.

A jump cut is a cut in film editing in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly.