Timeline

I chose ' The Lost Boys' opening sequence to make a timeline of because I find its a very powerful sequence. The contrast between light and dark foreshadows the plot. I think the use of location, especially the fairground and it's noises, really contrasts against the first group of characters we see as they are dresses in black leather and fit the stereotype of a roughen or thug.

Q+A

http://youtu.be/PqKsEpo9vLM

I found that most of the answers to the questions asked were very similar. This genre was portrayed through the answers as quite dark or containing contrasting/bold colours (I.E. Black and white or White and Red).
It was seen that a Psychological Thriller would be more effective as it would make the audience think more and would add more suspense where as having and action, say with a monster, it would be very predictable.

Two of the three people interviewed thought that a female protagonist would be more effective as they are very underrepresented in the film industry and by using a female it would challenge their stereotypes. The third person felt like it didn't matter, the storyline would depend on the character. In a way I agree with the last person, it does depend on the storyline and which would be more effective as in some films it is more effective to have a certain gender as the protagonist (For example The Woman in Black- as obvious as it is that a woman in needed to play the part if it was possible for either gender to play in my opinion it works better with a female, in some way I find that females in genres like this seem more intimidating and mysterious).

Most people preferred the film to contain a human rather than something inhuman as they felt it was more effective and they weren't able to say " this doesn't exist". I also agree, I think having a human makes you think more especially In a Psychological Thriller due to the fact that there people out their classed as insane and those kind of people are usually the basis of characters in films, I feel intrigued to know more about the character if it's a person rather than an 'alien' from another world or a monster.

Both slow and aery music and fast and powerful pieces were seen as effective in Thrillers. The slow and aery music was said to be good when used in a build up to add suspense before a big powerful moment. The Fast and powerful music was also liked when used in a thrille, I feel like powerful music would be effective in a very action packed scene maybe when the victim is running away from something.

All in all most of the answers were the same, many put the Thriller genre next to the Horror as both were seen as quite similar.

Title sequences

Intruders
A Paranormal Thriller.
The paranormal aspect was shown throughout the title sequence through the grey colours and the specific images used, an example of this is the child's face cracking to show a mans face with his eyes closed and a small amount of blood on his cheek this can be read into many ways. The child may represent the 'paranormal' side to it and they may have effected the man or the other way round as it showed the child breaking and blood on the man.
The dark and mysterious colouring is very intriguing especially when paired with the establishing shot of the foggy city and the stone angle image.
The music is suspenseful and aery which adds mystery to the whole series.
I like the specifically chosen images, especially the eye at the very beginning. The way it open's quickly and widely is very striking along side the cracking of the image it portrays a very hurtful and sad side to the program.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4g1Y870h8M






The Exorcist
A Horror
The opening titles to this film are very simple and give no clues away to the film. Warner Brothers have made their logo in black and white to link in with the theme of horrors being dark and scary. We fist see a house and a single light leave a window but nothing else, this gives me as a viewer the feeling that something is happening in the house for it to be focused on in the opening of a film but then again it may be a red herring. There is then a panning motion onto the street all seem normal there, I feel like this is to show that it literally is a normal neighbourhood.
The image of Virgin Mary that is then faded into has connotations of innocence and youth portraying that the film may be centred around or involve a young child.
Throughout the sequence we have a low mysterious tone that then gets louder as the sequence progresses, once the Virgin Mary fades out and we see the name of the film and the film company there is a high pitch, almost violin like sound which is very suspenseful and creepy.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LYBaRtOrBg



The Maze Runner 

It is clear from these opening titles that the film will be about a maze, this is shown as we follow a paths journey. The moving path is a very good effect on the sequence as it drawn our attention around the screen. The colours in this are very plain, very stoney colours which portrays the rock walls of of the maze. 

I like how we get to see each of the main characters in the title sequence, this gets the ball rolling and helps up start to presume what the characters are going to be like. 


http://youtu.be/9I_ZkS7XYUE

Each of these openings have quite a similar style, all have quite a dark/ plain colour scheme and only show what it needed, some things shown may give clues like the maze we follow in The Maze Runner and the vigin Mary coll we see in The Exorcist.

Pen Portrate

https://prezi.com/wdqznnnisaxa/edit/#4_95982358

Film logo ideas

After doing some research into the look and names of other film companies me and Charlotte started to snowball ideas of names for our own film company.
○BK studios
○Brinnard Entertainment
○Bad Apple
○Poison Apple

We decided to go with the name Poison Apple and now it was time to decide an actual logo.
A few different drawings and forms of making the logo. These resulted in us deciding to do a Stop motion animation of an apple being carved with the words Poison Apple .

By using photo-shop we managed to pull together our logo. The dark back ground being black with a small shine from one side it gave a very aery dramatic effect which was enhanced further by the slight redness of the decaying apple centred in the middle of the room. By using stop motion Charlotte portrayed a flickering light by changing the brightness and contrast many times then layering the images on top of each other. 

The flickering light in my eyes was very creepy yet perfect for our genre of horror.

Hostage

Me and Charlotte finally decided on the name "Hostage " as it was one name that kept appearing in discussions. It was the name that fit the best with the context of our film opening.

Staring Rosie Walker , Kai Price-Goodfellow and Ben Walters.

Assistance( some makeup and set management) Hannah Richardson and Emily Hampton.

Special thanks to all the people mentioned above plus Dawn and David Hearson ( house).

http://youtu.be/Ev5bl0ujqWQ


( Youtube changed a few things during the uploading process )

I felt that Charlotte and I worked well as a team and were also able to work effectively together during the filming and editing process. During the filming the first day went a little slow, it took us all (Me, Charlotte and the actors) quite a while to actually get into the feel of the filming and the feel of the camera. after a while of organizing the set and props we were using and readjusting the lighting in the main room we were ready. 

The actors were very cooperative and listened very well to both me and Charlotte. Two and a half hours later and we were half - three quarters of the way through our filming. 

The second day we filmed went much more fluently as the actors knew exactly what they were doing and we had an extra set of hands helping with set management. Once Rosie's makeup was finished which took a while with Charlotte and Hannah working on the fake Chelsea smile but the result was amazing.

If I had to do anything differently i would make sure we were 100% sure on everything, for example the lighting and what angles would be where. I learned that you need to film a lot more than you think you really need, the extra footage really comes in handy in the editing process. If you look at something and come to the conclusion that it doesn't work you have extra film to fall back on.

 

Film logos

Most of the logos I found included very intense colours along side a very neutral background. I think this gave a very dramatic effect to the logos.
Warner brothers for example change the style of their logo depending on what kind of film they are producing, an example of this is Harry Potter. As the films progress, the beginning title sequence with the logo becomes gradually darker. I think they have done this to help portray the gradual darkness of the films and also the growth of the films. Stereotypically people see the teen years as quite a dark time in a persons life involving lots of bad things like teenage rebellion, this is reflected in the growth from the shiny golden logo with the soft welcoming blue background to the more intense silver with a moody background .  

http://youtu.be/RkDiA5ea2KQ

Actors/ Characters

We had three Actors : Rosie Walker ( the Hostage and ghoul ), Kai Price-Goodfellow ( left guard ) and Ben Walters ( right guard) .



For Kai and Ben we dressed them in black jeans, with a white shirt and blazer. This gave the 'bad ass' look and helped the audience understand their characters more and who they were.



Rosie as the hostage had black leggings on and a white top that was ripped on the shoulder and had fake blood down the front to add to her ' beaten up' makeup which Charlotte and Hannah did. Her curly hair was very helpful when it came to making her look more scruffy as it was easy to mess up and gave her a real ragged edge.


As the ghoul we had the same clothing, as she was supposed to be the same person, but had different make up to show the change in her. If we had no change in her at all it would be quite confusing for the audience to watch the sequence and work out how she got untied and out the door without the guards realizing.  Charlotte and Hannah again, crafted a Chelsea smile from tissue paper and glue. Giving Rosie a pale face it contrasted with the redness of the blood.

Location and Set

We both had a few ideas for the location of our task, including:
                                                                                                     Drama studio in school
                                                                                                      Dawns house ( my mums boss' house)
                                                                                                      Jenny's outhouse ( my auntie)

After asking my mums boss for her permission to use one of the rooms in her house we set up what the room would look like. After toying around with a few different ideas of where to place certain things and lighting we finally decided on a set.

 It was a large room with cream carpet and red walls with wooden furniture. The room was perfect for our piece as it had two big wooden doors painted white which were essential for our sequence, the red walls also gave quite a dramatic effect along side our lighting as they made the room quite dark.. The main light was able to be swung so it added a whole new dimension to the atmosphere of the room.
The chair we used was originally a Chinese torcher chair, so in actual fact we couldn't have gotten anything better.

The benefits of filming in a house is that we were able to look after our actors better than anywhere else as there was food and drink supplied by Dawn ( the owner of the house ) and there was a toilet so the actors were happy to come back for a second day of filming. We used a total of 4 and a half hours to film all the shots we needed.

The peach two seat couch was not used in the sequence but the large round table to the left was put in the dead centre of the background.

Finalising out outline

When we had decided on the genre of the sequence we got to work writing up the outline. For us mixing an Action film and a Horror film seemed to work very well.
The ideas flowed quickly and we had many floating about which in a way was a slight problem when it came to actually narrowing it down to one specific story line. Once we had explored each idea into a little more detail we were able to get a solid outline down.


Outline 

Close up on hostages face (lights on )
Zoom out slightly to see hostage tied up
Zoom out medium long shot- see hostage and guards
Sfx of door slamming
Guards become alert- pointing guns towards door
Footsteps - shot reverse shot ( guard , guard 1 , door , hostage , door , guard 2 , outside door)
Door opens
Silhouette
Dialog
Torches make way through smoke, up ghouls 'body' to just before the face.





Script
 We didn't have a lot of dialog therefore didn't write a script. We in actual fact give the actors a little room to get the feel of their character and what they were likely to say. As we did this it ended up that Kai was the more dominant guard and said everything, this was due to the nature of Kai and Ben's acting on camera. As Ben is a little more shy when it comes to being filmed he wasn't as outgoing as Kai but this gave a great new level to the characters and made it easier to tell them apart and what they are actually like (really helped read into the character and piece together their back story).

Preliminary task ideas

In the preliminary task i chose to work with my friend and class mate Charlotte as i felt i would work better with someone than i would by myself and the fact that we both work well together was a bonus.

The first thing we did was draw up a mind map of ideas we could possibly do for this task.

Romantic - Car door, soldier in car (looking sad/worried). Kids playing outside in the front garden.

  Noticing him and call out as they run up to the car

 Camera in kitchen- focused on mother washing up, she turns around hearing the children and begins running to the front door. Opens door, fade out to sunlight.

Horror - Shaking door. Character opens door to find no-one there. closes door and turns around to see other character stood behind her. 

Action- Hostage in middle of two agents in chair. Zoom out from eyes of hostage. Sfx door slamming and footsteps.

These were the possible genres we wanted to explore, these seemed the most realistic for me and Charlotte to be able to do. After putting our pens to paper and actually writing up the ideas we both agreed that the Horror and Action ideas were better than the Romantic but there was a small problem that we encountered, they wouldn't be very interesting or entertaining by them selves so we decided to merge them together and create an Action-Horror.