Chosen typography and name

Typography and Name

Name:
We found that the best name was 'Child's Play' which symbolised the fact that the two sisters had grown up together and were very close.

Typography:
After evaluating all the fonts we have come to the decision that the most suitable font for our movie opening would either be the font used in Sherlock Holmes as it suits the period or the font in the Woman in Black as it is rather gothic and suits our opening.We decided that the colours red, black and white would suit our opening the most after the colour research blog which outlined the best colours for a horror movie. The second title has a darker red which has more of an impact as it looks like splattered blood linking into the plot of our opening.


Changing Ideas: 
Although this was our original idea after research on IMDb we discovered that the name 'Childs Play' was too common, so common in fact that there was a movie in 2011 and there will be one coming out in 2014 so we could not use it.

This therefore caused a problem for us so we came up with a list of names drawing from the original list and from more recent ideas the main names involved were: 

- Her Darling Demon 

- Guilt 

- Sibling Rivalry 

We decided in the end that Her Darling Demon would be more suitable as it portrayed the plot of a girl killing her own sister out of love because her sister was possessed. This would be shown as the 'darling' suggests affection but 'demon' is more evil and suggests demonic forces. 

We also changed our font again as the first two didn't look very old fashioned, so we searched on dafont for more suitable fonts and found one that matched our opening, here it is: 

We finally decided that this would be our final product but either on black on white depending on what is more visible. We decided this because it is more classic and suits the time period as we don't want the don't to be too modern and then not match the Victorian time period it is set in.

Stop Motion Editing

This week, I decided to work on our stop motion part of our film opening. We decided to use stop motion for this part as it would make it quite disorientating for the viewer and also would make use of our skills. I used windows movie maker for this, but we will be importing it into iMovie shortly. On a previous filming day I took many pictures of Anna, our actress, dressed in costume with her wound applied. I took pictures from a 360 degree angle around her, and stop motion allows it to look slightly jerky without being bad.
Here are some examples of the pictures taken:

I took a close up shot from directly in front of her to show a sinister, demonic smile, and the hint of a wound.

This shot shows the wound fully and by Anna looking directly at the camera makes the viewer/character feel they are unable to escape from her sight.

This shot makes Anna look slightly vulnerable  lulling the audience and character into a false sense of security.










Then in Windows Movie Maker, I played around with the different timings, I could either choose to make the clips run for around 7 seconds each, giving the viewer a detailed look at Anna's character each picture, however this meant the pictures didn't look like they flowed very well when played, so I kept making the timings shorter and shorter to see what looked best. In the end, the final footage only lasts 1 second, however this looks much better, as the photographs flow, but are slightly jerky adding to the disorientation. Also, this means it won't take up a long time in our actual opening, meaning we won't bore the audience with 22 seconds of effectively a slideshow. By speeding it up, it also gives the opportunity to use some kind of sound on this 1 second part of footage, such as 'woosh' kind of sound, to bring suspense to one of the first times we see Anna's face properly. Now I have sped the footage up, in iMovie we can add visual effects such as filters so that it blends nicely with the other footage and fits with the time period.

When experimenting with the footage  found that changing the hue on some pictures, gives and interesting effect when played quickly, so I have published that too, to see if i could be used on whether we decide the original is best.

Diegetic Sound Recording

Diegetic Sound Recording

When filming our coursework we noticed that the diegetic sound was unable to be heard clearly, therefore taking away from a lot of the tension that we want to build. In order to overcome this, we would have to record the sound of footsteps/twigs snapping etc. separately to the scene itself. 

This would be proven effective especially at the end as we are planning to include a scream.
 I needed to record the following, a scream and a twig snapping. To do this i used a field recorder although when recording i had to bare in mind the surrounding noises such as cars or aeroplanes.

When recording the scream we thought that using a large area would be more beneficial therefore allowing the sound to travel whereas if we were in a tight space the scream may have been too over powering and therefore distorted on the recording. This is good as it means we may not have to record it separately to the scene, dependant on the surrounding noise. 

Additionally, we had to record the rustling of leaves and the sound of a twig snapping to create a feeling of a second presence in the scene as well as well as building tension up to an anti climactic point in which only a twig will snap.

Overall, the recording process was really easy and can be edited into our footage without a problem, however it's necessary to bare in mind the clarity of the sounds that we are using as it's easy to pick up the sound of traffic and other noises. I also found that by finding a secluded small area the sound is picked up better and clearer as the sound is able to bounce off its surroundings creating a nice clear acoustic.

Shooting Script 3rd February 2013

Shooting Script: 3rd February 2013

RebNatDanClo,shooting script,eden,anna,Rebecca,3rd Febrary 2013,Location,genre,horror

Attending:
Natasha ~ Filming
Rebecca ~ Filming
Danielle ~ Filming
Cloé ~ Filming
Eden ~ Actor
Anna ~ Actor

Meeting Time: 10am
Location: Rebecca and Danielle: Bexleyheath Station
Everyone else: Victoria Station

Filming begins: 11:30-12pm

Establishing shots of the area
End scene with Eden in shots
- over the shoulder shots
- high/low angle shots from Eden/Anna's POV
-Extreme close ups
-Close ups
Redo Anna's medium running shots (previously stopped running too early)

Leave Location: 4pm

Shots to be used:
Establishing shots
Medium shots
POV shots
Low Angle Shots

Making of non diegetic sound

Production of Non Diegetic Sound

In terms of making the non diegetic sound for our course work i had to bare in mind the type of horror film we are filming and what would sound the most effective. In terms of production Logic Pro would have been easier to use however when it came to linking my microphone to Logic the sound became distorted therefore having to use Garage Band.

I started off  by listing all the scenes in
which non diegetic sound will be needed.
The longest scene would be the chase
scene between the antagonist and
protagonist. The screen shot above shows the making of the non diegetic sound for this scene. Once the microphone i was using worked well with GarageBand i recorded straight to it. However, because i am unable to play every single instrument, i used what GarageBand was able to offer me to help create ambient sound. When watching a horror movie the sound contributes significantly providing peaks of tension in the film. The screen shot shows the textures separating as each instrument is added therefore highlighting the peaks at which the music builds the most tension.

Although in terms of the non diegetic sound we do not need for it to peak to an extent that it will scare our audience. Sometimes non diegetic sound needs to establish a feeling and mood rather than build any tension. The scene this sound is for is when the protagonist senses another presence within the cemetery. In contrast to the screen shot above, the textures are not as segregated as it develops yet it's still able to build tension.

Upon creating the sounds in GarageBand i was convinced that it wouldn't be as successful as using Logic ( i was unable to use Logic as my mic was incompatible with it) however, i was rather surprised. At first i was rather unsure of how we needed our non diegetic sound to sound. I started off by using the templates and loops that GarageBand offered creating rather mysterious motifs but soon realising that they wouldn't be too sufficient for our coursework; which is when i decided to use my own instruments to create the non diegetic sound. 

Theory of Equilibrium

Theory of Equilibrium

The theory of Equilibrium was introduced by Tzvetan Todorov in which he simplified the idea of narrative theory while also allowing a more complex interpretation of film texts. The state of equilibrium is when everything is as it should be in a state of equal balance between powers of any kind, where equality of importance or effect exists among the various parts of any complex unity. Disequilibrium refers to a disruption of that order by an event. 

The Orphan

The Orphans narrative is similar to our own as it also incorporates the idea of a "child" antagonist. Throughout the narrative there are many red herrings as well as shock factors, the graph below indicates some of the peaks throughout the clip above.  As you can see from the graph the disequilibrium remains high throughout, and it also ends on a cliff hanger, leaving the audience in suspense, this is rather similar to ours in the sense that the opening will hopefully leave the audience in wonder. 

Funny Games

Funny Games is also very similar to our opening as well as The Orphan as it also incorporates a child antagonist however there are two antagonists. Throughout this scene, the younger child is manipulated to believe that murder is the only way out of this situation although he's unaware of the idea that the gun is unloaded, putting his morals through questioning achieving a rather cruel torture. In terms of the theory of equilibrium this is rather gradual and does not carry as much shock factor as The Orphan does. Therefore there's an extremely gradual build up.

RebNatDanClo
As mentioned above, our opening uses a child antagonist therefore playing with the psychological features within a horror and subverting the conformities of an antagonist. In a sense, out of the two films above our narrative is similar to Funny Games as it gradually builds yet we have still incorporated peaks through the use of the non diegetic sound. 

Evaluation of the Day - 03/02/13

Tasks to be done

• Film end scene - completed 
• Film chase scene - completed 
• Film graveyard scene - completed

Filming the end scene:
This scene was with both actors (Anna & Eden) and had the death of Eden and the possession/face morph (which we will achieve later through editing) of Anna. Here we had shots of Eden in the foreground without realising that Anna was walking down the stairs towards her, we had the sudden appearance of Anna in the background up on the stone platform after Eden's searching for her and included the final bit with the face morph before the blackout and the scream.
Filming this was rather successful as we knew exactly what we were doing that there weren't many problems with that, it was also less cold which made this more bearable and extended the time that we were able to stay. We also had both our actors today therefore making it much easier to complete the filming.

Filming the chase scene:
In this scene we had multiple positioning and angles of Eden chasing Anna down a path towards where the final scene would be. This was also rather successful as we managed to film it all apart from filming Eden's feet and her POV shot with the prop as we did not have the prop today. We were able to redo the scenes where Anna did not go far enough down the path and had them chase from the gravestone with Eden's realisation that Anna was next to her.

Filming the graveyard scene:
In this scene we had Anna haunting Eden as she looked at the grave, here we managed to get multiple places where Anna was looking at her creating a supernatural feel and building suspense. We also filmed the sound of a twig snapping and Eden gasping as she looked up to find that no one was there. This was rather successful as well and there weren't any difficulties that we had to deal with.

Overall:
To conclude today was a successful day, we managed to get all the filming with Anna completed and now only need to film the final scenes with the prop, therefore we are nearly finished and will soon be moving onto only editing.