Detailed Research.

Now that our storyline is progressing and we know what type of film we want to create, I thought that it would be a good idea to have a closer look at some other short films which a hold a similar style to inspire us. Our film is going to be a mix of the Thriller/documentary hand held genre. Below is some of the films that I have researched and I have noted the parts that I especially like. This research will really become useful when creating our storyboards, as we can incorporate and adapt the parts we like from other films into ours.

This website offered me a lot of help, it listed lots of hand held movies to inspire us. http://www.imdb.com/list/G3azusUlYd4/

Lake Mungo

 Watching this film clip, there were several things I found that really worked well. The first thing I really liked was the black screen at the beginning with the writing, instantly telling people that the story is based on true events. The voice over in the background explaining this, was also very effective and instantly engaged me. I think that in our short film we will use a similar beginning, also using a voice over. Perhaps our voice over could be the young student filmmaker from our story explaining that the following events are true.

The second part I liked was the initial opening sequence to the film. The soundtrack was upbeat and everything appeared to be normal in the characters life. It wasn't until later as the story unfolded that the eerie soundtrack started. I think that this happy beginning made the film seem more realistic but also gave the audience an emotional attachment to the character. Then when something bad was revealed it had an even bigger shock as it was unexpected. In our short film, I think that the beginning part could do the same type of thing. We could show clips of people visiting the cinema happily, along with an upbeat soundtrack before we reveal that the cinema was responsible for 15 people going missing.

Chernobyl Diaries

Between 0:30 and 0:40 the clip shows old styled footage and news clippings of what happened at Chernobyl Diaries years ago. I loved the way they created a tense, vintage vibe. They have used a grainy camera effect to create an old fashioned feel, as if the footage was just discovered. This builds tension and mystery. We could easily create a similar style when it comes to our film. During the beginning when we are telling the story of what happened in the cinema during the 1950's, we could use similar types of grainy footage to convey the past. By using an old fashioned soundtrack, perhaps a slow piano ballad subtly fading through in the background would help convey an older time period. 




Typical shots used in handheld camera films:

The Blair Witch Project:



I found that whenever there was a character talking intensely to their hand-held camera, the angle would always be unflattering, extremely close up and wonky. This creates an uncomfortable feeling for the audience and instantly makes them feel on edge. We will use this type of unusual shot in our film to create the same emotions and make our audience feel uneasy along with the characters.



I also found that when characters were being interviewed, they never looked directly into the lens of the camera. This is a really important tip because it adds realism to the film. If the actor was to look directly into the lens during a conversation then I think that it would kill the mood and ruin the affect. The idea is that the hand held camera captures the mood of what is happening and the audience should almost forget that they are looking through a camera. They should feel like they are just a fly on the wall, experiencing the same situation as the characters.

Mise en Scene- Most of the Blair Witch is filmed in a dark, eerie forest and it made me realise that the location of the film plays a key part in building tension and setting the scene ready for something unusual and scary to happen. From this shot I like how she is talking to the camera and all you can see in the background is dull, grey broken sticks. It looks very cold and uninviting, making whatever she is saying seem 10 times more scary. The location almost replicates her emotions. In our film I think what would be really effective is having the last scene, where Michelle talks to the camera about everything that happened on location, set in a cold, forest, where there are lots of trees. I think that this would really convey to the audience how cold, scared and lost she is feeling in herself by placing her in an unusual, un-welcoming setting. 

From this photo of the female character I also noticed that her costume is very bland and tatty. It shows how she is a typical student with little money and adds realism to the film. She is not dressed to stand out and I believe that the producers purposely did this to make it seem like she really is a student and not an 'actress.' 
This is an important aspect to think about when it comes to choosing Michelle's costume. I deliberately casted Michelle because of her unique student look so we need to keep this look consistent by dressing her in something quite bland and un-expensive. This could be a pair of jeans and a denim jacket, something that fits in with what a typical student would wear but also sets her a part from them all because after all she is supposed to be different. Not every student would willingly want to create a documentary about a cinema. Her character is unique and therefore we need to convey that through her costume, whilst still making her look like she is a student and fits in with them. 


The filming style we want to create:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWk9K4JXfpQ

This clip of the TV programme 'Supernatural' shows a very good example of how we would like to film our movie. The way this episode was filmed was very clever. They had somebody filming a character filming. The shots were then mixed, the audience get to watch the young girl filming with her camera but then they also get to see her footage from her camera. From the very beginning myself and Michelle were passionate about this way of filming and this Supernatural episode seemed like a great example to help our ideas develop. We realise that this way of filming will be very challenging, however, we think that it will work extremely well and make our film stand out for the right reasons!

Audience Feedback.

Before creating our storyboards and final narrative, Michelle and I decided to carefully look at the feedback we recieved from our questionnaires. After all, the film is aimed for them, so it only makes sense to build our film around their ideas and what seems to scare them the most. We created some tables showing the results and then made a comment below explaining how we are going to use what our audience has said when creating our film.

1.        Which one of the below are you most scared of?

Options	Responses
The dark	4
The Supernatural	1
Aliens	0
Criminals (Murderer etc.)	5

    

 

Response:

This question showed that the majority of people are most scared of criminals and their reasoning behind it was mainly because it happens in real life and it’s the only thing on the list that could do them any harm. The fear that received the least amount of votes was Aliens and to me this wasn't very surprising. Aliens don’t post a real threat to humans as most people don’t even believe they exist. This question has proven that more realistic things are scarier.

How we will use this feedback in our short film:

Since realistic and true events seem to cause the most fear in people, we will make our short film seem like a real documentary and use real facts relating to the history of the cinema to scare people, as they know that the information they are being told holds truth. Despite the supernatural not receiving many votes, we are still going to incorporate a spooky factor into our short film. Howeve, we will do this in a clever way, we want to just give the audience questions, leaving them unanswered and left for the imagination to decide. Making something seem as real as possible and not giving much away can sometimes be much scarier than an obvious ghost story.

3.        In a dark situation what is the main thing you would be scared of happening?

Response:

We found that most people are scared of the unknown when in a dark situation. The idea of one of your main senses being taken away seems to leave people with the fear of not being able to identify who or what is near them and the threat that this may cause to them. Another aspect that people said would scare them, is the fear of being hurt and something attacking them unexpectedly.
These fears are all very irrational but that is sometimes what drives them, the idea that it is probably never going to happen but there will always be that small doubt.  

How we will use this feedback in our short film:

In our short film we are going to play on the idea of having that small doubt in the back of your mind. The results showed that people do feel fear in the dark for the same reasons and since we are filming in a dark cinema this is great, as we can use their fear to our advantage. We could incorporate unusual noises in a dark scene, perhaps a subtle rustling behind the seats, homing in on that feeling of the unknown and what danger it could bring. We also want to challenge this idea and the stereotype that comes along with horror films being filmed in the dark. We will be filming some of the scenes in the cinema foyer, where there will be natural sunlight. It may not look like a conventional scary scene but we will use this to our advantage and still make it scary. We want to create a new view on thriller films and what makes the build-up scary. The darkness actually plays a small part in that build up and we want to use other aspects to create that scary vibe, such as sound effects, lighting and Mise en Scene.

4.        Are you more likely to watch a horror film that is, (Please write  yes beside your choice)

a)       Based on a real life event

or

b)       A work of fiction

Options	Responses
Based on a real life event	5
A work of Fiction	5

 

How we will use this feedback in our short film:

The results showed that people equally enjoyed horror films based on real life events and works of fiction. Using this result, we have decided that our film will combine the both. Some parts will be made up and use actors to play our characters but our storyline will hold some levels of truth using the history. Hopefully we will be able to include real members of staff from the cinema to play a small part in our film. I think that this feedback has been very helpfull, sometimes when a horror is completely based on fact it can scare people away and turn them off watching it. However with the question of ‘Is this real or not?’ that our film will bring, it will give people that peace of mind to believe what they want. I think that this will draw in a wider audience and not scare people away completely.

5. Do you find yourself more jumpy in?

a)       The day

                  or

b)       The night

Options	Responses
The day	0
The night	10

 

How we will use this feedback in our short film:

This question seems quite obvious and Michelle and I undoubtedly predicted that the night would recieve the most votes but we want to challenge this response. Most of our footage is going to be shot in the day where it will be light out, apart from the specific parts we film in the dark cinema. We want to challenge this stereotypical view of being scared just in the night. We believe that in the day it can also be very scary and sometimes the sunny atmosphere contrasted with an unusual setting, uncomfortable characters and feeling on edge can actually be more frightening. The audience would not be expecting it, giving them the same blind feeling they get in the darkness. To see if our challenging idea works, after filming out short film we will show it to our same questionnaire audience and ask this question again, to see if we get at least one person change their mind.

6.        Before something jumpy happens in a film do you find yourself more scared when there is a soundtrack building the tension or complete silence?

a)       Soundtrack

b)       Silence

Options	Responses
Soundtrack	6
Silence	4

 

How we will use this feedback in our short film:

The results showed that most people find themselves more scared in a film when there is a soundtrack building the tension. We do agree with this as it has worked in many great horror films before, but because we want to make our short film seem very realistic like a documentary, it may not work so well to use a soundtrack this time. I think that sometimes silence can be the scariest thing. We have found that most people don’t like the sensation of being in the dark, so we think that if we take away their hearing too, by including no sound effects or soundtrack for a long pause before something happens, it will make our audience feel extremely on edge. When producing our film, we almost want to adapt our audience’s conventional way of thinking. Hopefully with our challenging ideas we can achieve this.

Location Research.

Last week I took a visit to my local cinema during a viewing time, to pitch to them our film idea and ask them whether or not it would be possible to film in their cinema. The staff directed me to the manager and I explained my idea to him, at first he was a little unsure, as it would mean  opening the cinema for us out of his work hours. After further explaining our idea to create a short thriller/documentary film on the history of his cinema, he began to really love the idea and became very enthusiastic. He gave me his contact details and asked me to send him an email with the dates of when we want to film. He also started to tell me some of his own ghostly experiences he had, whilst working in the cinema, which we could definitely incorporate into our film!

I later went home and wrote a very long email explaining the details of what we wanted to do. Below is a copy of the email I sent:

Hello,

My name is Laura Johnson and I am currently studying Media at.... I visited...cinema last week and was told to address the email to Rob, regarding filming in your cinema to create a short film. You seemed very keen and gave me this email to let you know dates etc.

Myself and my media partner Michelle want to Create a documentary styled film about the history of your cinema. We plan on the documentary being partly fiction but holding some truth regarding the cinema being an old Gaol in the past. We will use actors to play most characters but if any of your staff are willing to appear in our film, that would be great to add a realistic sense to our documentary.

Would it be possible to film for two days in your cinema? Perhaps the 14th and 15th of September which is a Saturday and Sunday?

Myself and Michelle really appreciate this opportunity and are extremely excited to create this film. We would like to know if we are able to use the name of your cinema for our film as we are planning on creating a hype before it's released? Our plan is to create a 'Blair Witch' buzz with the locals asking themselves' 'is this real?' I currently write for the local newspaper and I hope to write an article regarding the film for the paper. We think that this would not only be a great opportunity for ourselves but also for your business.

I hope you are as enthusiastic about this as we are and we really appreciate your time. Please don't hesitate to ask any more questions and I would love to know if you or any of your staff have had any paranormal experiences in the cinema, or if you know any more about the history.

I hope those dates will be okay for you but if not could you suggest two different days please for the beginning of september. I look forward to hearing from you shortly. Thanks.

Laura.

Very shortly after, I had a reply:

Hi Laura, That's fine I will be happy to help you ,give me a ring a few days before, the dates are fine ,Regards ...

I am extremely happy we have secured our location for filming. I will call him a few days before we go in to film and I will ask again for their permission to use the name of the cinema. We need to be professional and considerate with what they are happy for us to do. After this good news, myself and Michelle decided to start planning where we're going to get our filming equipment from. We both have connections with our local Media studio in town, so we decided to give them an email and ask if we could use one of their professional cameras for the 14th and 15th of September. The studio responded very quickly and is happy to help! They have booked the camera ready for us to collect on the Friday before filming.

I feel that in the past week we have got lots organised and now we need to work on our storyboards and scripts, making sure they are very accurate. We now need to start thinking about casting and our ancillary tasks. We would like to release our poster and newspaper article before the film is released to create a buzz, therefore we need to begin our research into film posters, so that we are ready to start producing them very soon.

Storyline for our Short Film!

For a while now myself and the group have been discussing narrative for our short film. We are still waiting for a response from the cinema but will hopefully be arranging a meeting with the cinema owners shortly, ideally in the next week to discuss further plans and times etc. However, in the meantime we have been brainstorming different ideas to present to them so that we appear more professional and I think that we have finally created a strong narrative. Below are some of the notes we brainstormed in class...

Start:

The start of our short film could begin with old styled black and white footage of the cinema in the 50's, showing a group of teenagers going in there to enjoy a film. News paper clippings could then come flying onto the screen showing how the group of young teens never came out of the cinema and went missing ever since. A black screen could then appear saying that the case was suspiciously closed and now in 2013 it marks the 50th Anniversary.

Middle:

Back to the present day, a young girl becomes very interested in the case and wants to find out more. She decides to go to the cinema with her friend with her hand-held camera to question the cinema owner and find out more. Everything looks normal and she meets a man who claims to own the cinema. After asking the cinema owner what happened the day the teens went missing he begins to tell stories about the old Gaol that once stood there before his cinema. He thinks that the prisoners of the Gaol still walk the screening room and he believes that the paranormal were responsible for the missing teens. The young girl begins to believe what he is saying especially after unusual things happening during her tour around the cinema.

End:

The young girl begins to explore on her own and finds a golden watch with one of the teenagers names carved into the back of it lying in the owners office. She immediately begins to panic and finds herself running out of the cinema. She contacts the police and urges them to come back to the cinema with her and arrest this owner for being responsible for the missing teens. When they arrive at the cinema there is nothing there but an abandoned building. Nobody was in there. Including the 'owner.' She couldn't understand what had happened and it wasn't until later that night when she was searching for answers on the Internet she stumbles across a website with the history of the cinema. There she sees the cinema owners face but there he wasn't a cinema owner. He was a prisoner of the Gaol who had killed himself in his cell before the teens even went missing. The last shot could show the young girls face staring blankly at the screen. The audience are left with many questions and it's up to them to form their own answers.

Audience Theorists.

Today I have been looking deeply into Audiences relating to what scares them and why. This led me onto researching some theorists on Audience. Here is what I have found...

The Hypodermic Needle Model

This sounded very complicated to me but it is actually very simple. Basically, it suggests that an audience passively receives information transmitted via a media text, without any attempt on their part to challenge the data that they have been given.

The theory suggests that as an audience, we are passive and are manipulated by the creators of media texts and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by media makers.

My opinions: In my previous Blog I posted a video of a thriller film being watched by a large audience in the cinema, when you watch each individual carefully you can see that they all have very similar reactions to each other of the movie, for example, they all shriek at the exact same time, pull their bodies back  simultaneously when they believe something is about to happen. Why is this? They look as if these reactions have been programmed into them and I believe that the media have almost trained them to be scared at the parts in the movie that they say they should be scared at. It is quite a scary thing in itself when you think about it.

However, another thing  that I noticed when watching their reactions, is that some individuals would turn to their friend or partner to see what their reactions are. Could this mean that, yes, we are influenced by the media and what they inject into us but could the power of our peers opinions have a stronger influence? Then I found this theory...

The Two-step Flow of Communication Theory

This theory believes that even though the media had power to change people's minds, this could be
re-affected by the way in which this information was discussed by influential people, such as Party Leaders.

I think that this theory talks a lot of sense, however I believe that it doesn't just have to be high, influential people to change your opinion on the media, it could be whoever is influential to you. That could be your parents, family, friend's etc..

I also believe that in this day and age where social media and voicing your opinions online is a huge thing, the media doesn't necessarily shape our opinions anymore and were not as passive as we once possibly were. We are now heavily influenced by our friends comments on Facebook and celebrities Tweets, basically we all shape each others opinions now. There is no longer a selected group of people (the media) that single handedly have control.

This is also quite a shocking realisation but this could be used to our advantage when creating our short film. Especially because we want to take the post-modernism, viral route to creating our film, we can use the concept that society influences each other through the Internet to our advantage. For example, we can try and make people believe what we want, this could be through posting different facts about the cinema, making out that new information has just been released, to even creating our own newspaper articles pretending that a  story relating to the cinema has just been discovered. The possibilities are endless, we now need to take action and put these ideas to use and hopefully make at least one person believe in what we are saying! This would then disprove both of the theories and help people realise that we are now all influential people, who have control over not only our own opinions but others too!

Film ideas.

Whilst doing some research today I found a clip on YouTube. The clip showed an audience at the cinema watching Paranormal Activity 2 and filmed their reactions to the scary parts in the film. The clip was shot in night time vision which instantly made it creepy to watch! They have even managed to make their reactions to the film very tense to watch and very scary. I thought that this was extremely clever and made me want to go and watch the film myself!

 

 

 

This could be a great idea to promote our short film and we could even use some of the shots of the audience's reactions on our ancillary tasks, such as the poster or the magazine article, to make people want to go and experience the thrill of the film themselves...

 

The glow in the dark effect is very easy to create and instantly makes footage have more tension and ambiguity. I will show this clip to the group and get their opinions, I hope we can use this research and idea and develop it ourselves to make something extremely scary but exciting! 

Our Target Audience.

Our group has been thinking carefully about what type of people we will be aiming our media product to. After researching different Thriller/Mocumentary (Fake Documentary) style films and their target audience, here is what we found:

Cloverfield: 15-25 students

The Blair Witch Project: Both male and female 17-30 years old

Paranormal Activity: 15-30 years old both male and female

So, after this research we came to a conclusion that our audience would be quite wide but mainly start at the age of 15. We found that the reasoning behind this is that most of these films used viral marketing, especially social media to build the hype and the age that most use the internet is the younger generation, starting from 15 years old. We definitely want to build hype with our short film and use sites such as Facebook and Twitter to build parody profiles etc. to create an exciting buzz leading up to our release. We decided that our Target Audience should be both male and female from 15-40 years old. We think that a slight older age group would still enjoy our short film because of the history of the cinema that we will incorporate into the story line; I think that they would be intrigued by this and the younger generation would be most interested in the hype of the film and the scare factor.

Age Classification

All of the films above are obviously suitable for a 15- year old to watch, meaning that there is no gore or severe explicit content. They have still manged to create a scare without this and that is what we also aim to do. Sometimes the less obvious and smaller the event the scarier it becomes. Below is a link to the BBFC website for film classification, this is so that we can make sure what we can and can't include in our film and further our understanding of what age we should classify our film at. At the moment I believe we will use a 15 certificate.

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/what-classification/15




after making our decision on our target audience, we wanted to start to reach out to them and find out their opinions and most importantly what makes them scared! I created a short questionnaire on fears and emailed it out to our target audience so that we could get a better understanding of what to include in our film. Below are the questions we asked in the questionnaire:

Age:                Gender:

1.      Which one of the below are you most scared of? (Please write Yes beside your choice)

a)      The dark

b)      The Supernatural (ghosts)

c)      Aliens

d)      Criminals (Murderer etc)

2.      Could you explain the reason you are scared of the option you chose?

3.      In a dark situation what is the main thing you would be scared of happening?

4.      Are you more likely to watch a horror film that is, (Please write  yes beside your choice)

a)      Based on a real life event

or

b)      A work of fiction

 

5.      Do you find yourself more jumpy in,

a)      The day

or

b)      The night

 

6.      Before something jumpy happens in a film do you find yourself more scared when there is a soundtrack building the tension or complete silence?

a)      Soundtrack

b)      Silence

We have already received a few replies but we are still collecting the information. Once we have the information (ideally the end of next week) we can organise the results into a table and analyse our findings. :)