The Re-occurrence of The Eye

When coming up with the storyline, we thought straight away about an eye being placed, this is often seen within horror and thriller films as a spooky convention so therefore including it within our film ties in with the codes and conventions we were looking at. In the first 30 seconds of film, it is a fast cut of different moving images put together, within this there is a first show of a painting as the camera moves from the bottom of the face, upwards it slowly stops on to the eye. After some more clips and as the narrative is getting more intense, the last few clips you begin to believe that the girl is dead as she has fallen over and is not getting back up again. 

However the very last clip is a close up of the girls eye, closed! But when the voice over and the   other background noises stop, the eye suddenly opens and then fades into daytime. This could give a thought that what just happened could have been a dream and she is now waking up from it, instead of what has happened being reality. Or she may have died and then come back alive, or maybe not died at all! The idea I came up with could be that when the eye opens and it fades into the same girl during the daytime, this could be a flash back of what had happened earlier that day/ week. 

There was no real storyline of what this re-occurrence of the eye means or what it is trying to tell the audience, it was more to portray a sense of mystery and to get the audience thinking of what and why this would be shown. 

Shot Reverse Shot

When we finished our product before all of the improvements and the different storyline that was followed, we had an idea that was shot between two people 'Emma Smith and Melissa Bunyan' this was in a room with a prop which was a skeleton. The conversation between them both, focused on a shot reverse shot as well as making sure that the 180 degree rule was kept to. As you can see below this was effective and when it was cut exactly between clips it looked very professional. 

Even though we deleted this piece of film altogether I still think that it was a good standard of quality and editing and flowed well together. From our preliminary it was edited more effectively and the shot reverse shot was put more in to place. More film was used so when it came to putting the clips together there was more choice of clips to choose from unlike our prelim.

Editing Clips

There are many different ways you can edit clips and below are just a few on changing the visual way of what the clip looks like. For last minute touches for changing lighting or colours that are within the clip this is a good idea. 

You can find this pop up when you hover over the clip you wish to edit, then down the drop down list to edit clip and then you can choose from the top bar where it would be the clip, video or audio that you wish to change. This is very easy to follow and use, and I had no problems when using this, to improve clips and to lighten them up when I did not know it had been filmed with such bad lighting it came in handy!

Also you can choose an option which allows you to either crop or rotate the clip that you are focusing on, I think this is a good thing as if you have extra space or something that you do not want in your clip you can cut it out and put the main focus on what you are trying to get across. It is all about making those perfections.

As well as just changing colours of the clip you can chose different themes and tones to the clip by the automatic changes that iMovie can make with just a click of a button, these different options have many different effects and can help to make your project more professional. With the clip of the close up of the phone ringing from an unknown number, it was very dark, I chose a theme that was called 'glow' and automatically the light coming from the phone brightened as well as the rest of the clip, it matched the rest of the piece perfectly then.

Below you can see the different transitions that can put between clips to either help them flow better from one to another or to start or finish a clip at a more professional standard. In the bottom right hand corner, it gives you lots of different transitions to choose from, once one is chosen you can drag it over the the exact place it is needed. Preview this and see if it is what you are looking for, and this transition can always be edited with the time it is on for. The main use of the transitions in my film we when I cross blurred the eye opening to the girl in her bedroom, as they were two very different scenes and put next to each other normally would look very, very strange. Also I inserted a 'fade to black' at the very last clip of the sequence to show that the film has stopped there, for now anyway!

Sound

In my piece of film I did not actually manually add in a piece of sound that was already on the mac, it was either a sound from the film that had been recorded or the voice over, that I created. But in my first final piece, I actually added in a school bell noise when the eye faded out to the school. This was very easy and simple to do and was simply chosen on the tabs in the bottom right hand corner and then dragged over to where the sound wanted to be played, not only did it match my clip but sounded very realistic too!!

Sound plays a big part in film, especially within a horror/thriller genre, with it mainly being used to build up tension within one clip or a series of clips. As you can see below how when you go to edit the clips you can then chose an option to see all of the audio that you can adjust. This helped when in certain scenes we had unwanted background noises we could block out tiny pieces of sound by lowering the sound on just a small of a clip.

One, very big effective piece of sound that was used within my work was the voice over that was put over the first 30 seconds of the film at the beginning. I myself spoke for the voice over and this was a curse that was meant to be "haunting" the girl shown in the film. I used a whispering voice as it was most effective and related to the images on the screen, and I believe that it worked very well together. Below is some screen grabs on how I created the voice over and put it over the certain clips that I wanted it to feature over. I was very pleased with this part of my product and i feel that it fitted in with the codes and conventions of a horror/thriller film very well.

Adding Text to a Clip

One of the main uses of text on a clip was for the opening credits. So therefore the text would have to appear towards the beginning of the piece of film. As you can see below, it is very easy to insert a piece of text on top of a clip and edit the text to your liking. This is done by clicking the 'T' below the main image on the right. Then as you can see below a series of choices of where you would like to place the text on your clip will appear and after choosing one a text box will pop up and this is where to write the text you want on the clip. After all of this has happened you can then edit the text to perfection, with different fonts, sizes, colours etc.

Below you can see all of the different ways in which you can edit the text that you have inserted onto the clip, with the different fonts and sizes.

Character Representation

Here is our main character in the first scene who is played by Emma Smith;

We have dressed her in dark, dull, boring clothing which does not bring any kind of attention to the character on them being an individual person. It makes her to be very general and for the audience to believe that it could be anyone in her position. As well as not showing her face only of a few occasions and very quickly shows that the reality of it could be anyone. 

Here is our main character in the second scene;

We have dressed her in a fairly girly manner to go with the room which is mostly pink, and she is seen to be a friendly girl who would just be the same as any other regular teenage girl. This scene looks nothing like the girl in the first scene and you would hardly even know they were the same person. Her clothes in this scene are light and bright to show how positive the scene is and that at this point everything is okay rather than the dark scenes at the beginning with a negative attitude.

As she is the only character in the opening sequence she is our only chance of getting her personality and what you feel from her relate to the audience. I think as we have not given her a name makes her quite general and not to individual as well as not giving her an individual look. In this scene we tend to build some sort of relationship with her as we have already seen what is going to happen in the scene at the end. We see her fall into the trap of answering the phone call and walking towards the strange noise that she has heard when inside the audience should create a feeling of not wanting her to be hurt and to protect her.

Props

Here is a list of props that were used within our opening sequence;

• Mobile phone- this is shown when the main character is receiving a call from an unknown number, as well as being used in the bedroom scene when she gets a text from an unknown number repeating the curse. 

• Ipod and Headphones - This is used in the bedroom scene when she is sitting down on her bed being a 'normal teenager' there is a close up on the Ipod when she presses pause to the song that she is listening to.



• Laptop - This is used in the bedroom scene when she is sitting down on her bed being a 'normal teenager', there is a close up of her typing on the keypad showing a sense of reality.

Opening Credits

In my research I found many ways that the opening credits were usually screened but as we only had a small team of two rather than a huge team that need congratulating we did not feel it was necessary to write our name a numerous amount of times for all the different jobs that we did.

We did include a few and these are the ones below...

If we were going to list all of the opening credits that are usually screened they would be the following;

• Name of the studio - Queensbury  School
• Name of the Production Company - S&M Productions
• Producer Names - Shona McGuire and Emma Smith
• Director-Shona McGuire
• Writers -Shona McGuire and Emma Smith
• Starring - Emma Smith
• Films Title - The Worst Is Yet To Come
• Voice over(sound) - Shona McGuire
• Editor -Shona McGuire

Story Board

The Worst Is Yet To Come - Script

Title Sequence: Melancholy piano music 

Jump cuts of main character running, into a building and down a corridor. Shots shown from every angle. Heavy breathing throughout.

Voice over: Trust that the worst is yet to come, Horrors and terrors and then yet some; Be aware of the curses that await your mind; For the master is coming, Turn and face behind.

Girl gets phone call. Falls over. Scene ends on a closed eye. 

Changed scene

Girl sitting in her room listening to music and on a laptop.

Girl believe she hears a noise, stops what she is doing to listen, hears nothing so carries on and puts her head phones in.

Girl then believes she hears another noise, takes out her headphones and says 

Main Character: "Hello...?"

Girl gets no response so puts her headphones back in and carries on, then for the third time she believes she heard another noise. She takes out her headphones and says

Main Character : "Mum...?"

Girl gets up off her bed to walk towards where she believes the noise is coming from.

Her mobile phone rings so she turns to read the text, she reads it out loud

Main Character: "Trust that the worst is yet to come, Horrors and terrors and then yet some; Be aware of the curses that await your mind; For the master is coming, Turn and face behind. What does that even mean?"

Character turns to walk away and the shot is left on the message sent from an unknown number.

Distribution

Before we came up with the idea of S&M productions, JASE was created and researched into. We presented to the class about the production and distribution company that we had created, what they had to offer as a company, and what they focus on bringing to their audiences. Personally I think that this logo looks more professional that the S&M productions one, i believe it looks very amateur and rushed. However for the task that we are doing, an opening sequence for a horror/thriller genre, JASE does not look to relate back to this. This looks more happy and upbeat, not the type of logo you would expect when thinking of a horror film, however the spikes are sharp and ready but the bright pink colours would not mix well.

Therefore, even though S&M productions we created especially for this film we still included them as the producers of the film. JASE was not mentioned in the credits as we only included the bare minimum, but we would use JASE as a distribution company to help to get our film to our audiences.

Institution- S&M Productions

We created S&M Productions as the institution that we wanted to be involved with the production and distributions of our film. As you can see the horror picture in the background with a colour scheme of black and white has a spooky sense about it and makes you believe that all of the films that S&M Productions are involved in would be a film in a horror or thriller genre. The red writing of the logo stands out as it is a contrasting colour it is bold and clear to read. The name for the company was really simple to create as it would stand for Smith and McGuire Productions.

Title of the Opening Sequence

There was many different titles that i considered when choosing the title name for the opening sequence;

• 9 Missed Calls
• Unknown Number
• Turn and Face Behind
• The Curse
• The Worst Is Yet To Come

In the end the final one I went with was "The Worst Is Yet To Come", the reason for this was because personally i believed that it was the best one that we came up with to match with our short film. It is part of the saying of the curse, 'trust that the worst is yet to come, horrors and terrors and then yet some, beware of the curses that await your mind, for the master is coming turn and face behind.' This curse is repeated twice through the opening sequence so having part of the curse as the title does make sense as it relates to the storyline but does not give anything away and spoils what will happen. From the words 'the worst is yet to come' you then think, what is going to happen? this makes you think something bad WILL happen and to give an audience a phrase like this it drags them in to make them want to see the rest. 

Location

Here are some photos of the location that we used for the first 30 seconds of the film;


When we were coming up with ideas for our final piece we had to think of this in detail, so all ideas had to include the location and the key concepts of the location and if it fitted in with the story. Our first location was actually set within our school of Queensbury Upper School however in the scene it is not clear that it is set in a school ground. The colours in the location are bland and boring and nothing really is very interesting to look at. This is good as it makes the film more general so the audience can relate and imagine that it may have been somewhere they know and what is happening may also happen to them too! It was key to make sure that we were shooting our piece of film at the right time of day and when filming on different days that the location looked exactly the same as it did the previous time. This made sure that it was to a level of professionalism and looked realistic.

Here are some photos of my second location ;

The second location was my own bedroom, this was used because quite frankly we needed to use a bedroom. The last scene is meant to be the 'normal' teenager in her bedroom doing 'normal' things that teenagers do, listening to music, on the laptop etc. The room is based on pinks blacks and white colours, and is quite girly. It gives off a happy friendly environment, not something to expect that anything could go wrong. This helped us as because this is so realistic it could relate to the audience, which may spook them out and make them want to watch more and more. Showing that 'this curse' could really happen to anyone.