Final Cut

animatic storyboard

company logo

Shooting Schedule

pitch

Pitch of Ideas

The story line for our sequence is that there is a group of lads coming home from the pub after a night out. Upon the journey home an unknown killer who follows them picks each of the lads off. Being in a drunken state none of the lads believe what is happening. We will use a variety of shots and the killer will remain anonymous through the use of point of view shots. We will have to film our sequence outside of college time, as it will need to be dark in order to get the effect we want. It will start with the lads walking along a dimly lit path. When each one of them stops to pee in a bush or something of that nature. That is the first person to be killed. The second person splits off to walk in the direction he needs to. And that is him gone. There are two lads left and they go back to look for the guy who stopped for a pee when they find his body in the bushes. Horrified they run and call the police, but when one of them stumbles and falls his time is up. That leaves one of them who managed to escape. The final shot will be the survivor sat on his bed at home crying. 
Our sequence will appeal to over 18s who enjoy horror/thriller films. It will hopefully be quite a jumpy sequence which we leave people wanting more.
A lot of our camera shots will be a hand cam in order to give the point of view shots for the killer. We will also be using high and low angles to represent who have power in certain situations. This will be an effective method and will hopefully add depth and atmosphere to the sequence. The combination of camera shots will be linked together using a number of appropriate transitions and effects.
For our soundtrack we may use the pre-recorded samples we have available to us on the IMAC soundtrack program. Or we may record our own composition. We are unsure at the minute on what the rules are on recreating a copywriten piece of music so we will do research into that. 
The lighting in our sequence will be low key and dim in order to create an “eerie” mood.
We hope that the combination of all these elements together help to create our idea of a horror/thriller.

assessment 2 opening sequence analysis

A Nightmare On Elm Street: Part 2 Freddy’s Revenge

Opening Sequence

 

I have chosen to analyse A Nightmare On Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge. The opening sequence begins with the distributer ‘ from New Line Cinema ‘ appearing on the screen and it turning black and fading out to a bright sunny day, this is this the establishing shot showing for the first time Elm Street to the audience, a yellow school bus drives around the corner and faces the camera, there is an extreme long shot on the bus on the street. There is non diegetic sound which introduces in with the establishing shot, the music is long ominous tones which is quite disturbing and doesn’t fit in with the sunny day, and yellow school bus, this makes the audience realize something cant be right. The music carries on with mysterious sense about it. On the screen ‘New Line Cinema, Heron Communications, INC. & Smart Egg Pictures present’ then appears, followed by ‘A Robert Shaye Production’, with these titles appearing the music seems to become louder and the title of the film then appears as if it is being scratched onto the screen, this is relative to the murderer in the movie as he has a metal claw hand, the writing of the title is red and glowing which can show a symbolism to blood. A reverse zoom technique is taking place with the yellow school bus driving towards the camera with the camera pulling away. The Main actors now are appearing ‘starring Mark Patton, Kim Myers and Robert Rusler’. As the bus pulls over the camera pans round to the bus doors and as the doors open the students start to get off the bus. The bus then pulls away and a cut to inside the bus shows the remaining students. It then cuts between different groups on the bus talking and then shows a medium long shot of a boy sitting by himself and a point of view shot at the back of the bus drivers head. The bus then pulls over again letting more people of and gradually the bus is left with just the boy who was sat by him self and two other girls sat together chatting. There is then a medium close up of the two girls chatting and looking round towards the direction of the boy sat by himself. You can hear the girls laughing as it shows a medium long shot of the boy then as it looks as if he’s panicking he then try’s to open a window. You can hear non synchronous sound of the busses engine speeding up with the remaining students not appearing to realize the change in the busses speed. As there is then a tracking shot from inside the bus showing it as it speeds past the stop where one of the girls claims that it was her stop. By this point the audience can now see that something cant be right as the busses speed increases further holding the audience in suspense to see where they are being taken. As the girls begin to panic a pan from outside on the street shows the bus as it passes and as it pans round shows the bus head off road. Cuts from outside and inside the bus reveal the panic that the students are in, a close up of the boy showing him not showing his panic as blatant as the girls but looking about as if he is looking for an escape searching the bus with his eyes. The music is carried on through the scene building up to what will be the climax to the scene. A close up of the dashboard on the bus shows smoke coming out of it. A cut from the boy now gripping his seat and the girls screaming, back to the front of the bus where the bus driver was originally sat but who’s identity was unknown, it then cuts to a medium close up of the gear leavers and you see a man with a glove with sharp knives on holding the gear leavers, and the memorable black and red stripy jumper which the killer wore in the first film. This now reveals that the person driving the bus is not in fact the school bus driver but the films murderer ‘Freddy Krugar’. A shot of out side shows the sunny day turn to black and synchronous sound of thunder and lightning as you see the bolts hit the desert like surface. As the bus then crashes the bus is then filled with smoke and is pitch black. There is then a medium close up of the boy on the bus; he is banging on the window trying to get out.  A cut to outside the bus showing the ground caving in and the girls in the bus screaming looking outside in panic and a shot reverse shot shows them screaming to outside with the ground crumbling back to the girls. A low angle from outside the bus as if it was from the ground looking up showing the boy looking out the window with a shocked look on his face. As the ground finishes crumbling away it reveals then balancing on a single point, which could fall any minute. A lightening bolt then hits the bus. A cut back into the bus reveals a dark shadow of Freddy appearing showing him to the people on the bus for the first time. The bus is rocking back and forth and with the girls retreating to the back of the bus the boy is then joined with them as they are trying to escape Freddy’s clutches, a close up of his famous glove is then shown as it scrapes along the seats of the bus. Synchronous sound of the glove is an important aspect as it is exaggerated to give the affect of how dangerous he is. A low angle looking up to Freddy shows his power in the scene as a high angle shows the students cowering together in the corner of the bus. From the low angle looking up at Freddy it shows him now scraping the roof of the bus and a cut back to the students showing there expressions as they are about to approach there inevitable doom. A shot reverse shot back to Freddy then shows him slashing away with his claw, this is shown from the low angle and then cuts to the next scene 

Ratings Research

For our opening sequence, we have chosen horror and in order to do this it must be rated either 15 or 18. Rating the scene 15 would limit us to what content we could include. Whereas if it were an 18 then we have a much broader spectrum as to what we can show. I think we will rate our scene an 18 as it means that we can use more realistic props which means that we can base shots around them. In turn this could increase our grade by having a wider variety of shots. There are a lot of good horror films which are rated 18 such as Nightmare on Elm Street and The original Amityville horror. But that is not to say that 15 rated horrors are bad. The body which rates films and games are called the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) They state that 18 rated films are more sexually explicit and violent. They rate films 18 so as to protect children with impressionable minds from violence.

Conventions of Horror and Film Noir

Horror films have a lot of characteristics some of which include, blood, tense music, and low-key lighting. The lighting and tense incidental music help add to the atmosphere of the film which creates a better horror effect. A lot of horror films today feature fictional creatures such as zombies and post apocalyptic creatures, but these films are nearly all big budget. We will attempt create this effect with next to no budget at all. Our other option was film Noir which features characteristics such as, a femme fatal, corrupt cops and violence. Below are mind maps which show the typical forms and conventions of film noir and horror.

Assessment 1, Film Noir Mindmap

Assessment 1, Horror Mind Map,