Captured- Final Finished Opening Sequence

Typical Conventions of Horror Films

-Dark Colours and Lighting
-Male Murderer
-Female Victim
-Some sort of weapon
-Scary music/sounds
-Creepy?


As a group we have been discussing conventions of horror films and these are a few of the ideas we came up with.
In our opening, we were saying we would like to involve some of these, but to make our opening different, also challenge some of them.
For example, we will be using the dark lighting and female victim, but instead of having a male killer we also have a female one. We hope that this difference will make the reader feel like this film has never been done before and they will therefore want to see the rest of the film.

Final Few Lessons

In the last few lessons we have all been concentrating on checking our blogs to make sure we have all our links and all our labels and everything up to date. We are also uploading all of our final Opening Sequences and Evaluations so that our blogs are all ready for marking. It is really all about tying everything up and making sure it's all sorted.

Detailed Storyboard

This is a storyboard for our Opening Sequence. I took a variety of shots from all over the storyboard and went into detail with them. It consists of the shot no., duration, information on the camera, sound, titles, visual style and notes on the different shots.

This is the planning for our Opening Sequence. Answering these questions helped me understand exactly what I had to incorporate into the planning of the opening, and things we would have to consider when creating it.  

Feedback from Showcase

Feedback from Showcase Part 3

The final question on the feedback sheet, and probably the most important, in terms of ways in which we could improve our opening was
"Did you notice any serious issues such as continuity errors, strange edits - Did anything not make sense to you?"

• "Storyline was a tad confusing but knew roughly what was going on. Maybe sharpen some of the shots a bit."
• "Sound needs a bit of work. Didn't get the bit with the train."
• "Some bits are too dark, can't see as well."
• "Camera shots are slightly jumpy."

From this feedback we now know the things in our opening to go over. We will take these away and go through each one individually and discuss ways in which we can make these better for the audience.

Rough Version of Our Opening Sequence

This is a rough version of our opening. This is the version we showed to our audience to get our feedback and this is where we got all our ideas to enhance our opening and make it better for our audience.
This version only has diegetic sound and it needs to be edited more.

Final Editing Progress

Today we met up as a group to talk about all the things we need to improve on our Opening Sequence. Miss spoke to us about how the dialogue in our piece took away for the genre and in some ways ruined it. So today we are going to concentrate on re-recording the dialogue, and making sure all our sound is good and works with our genre and action that is happening in the film. We realised that Jade's voice wasn't right for our opening so we are going to try mine and Jess' and see which one works best.

Feedback

Yesterday, we created a showcase for all of our Opening Sequences and got feedback for each others by filling in evaluation sheets which included things we thought were good about the opening, things they could improve and how well they showed the genre and audience for the film. Everyone's films weren't quite finished, this exercise was simply to help us understand ways in which we could improve our films and make them as good as we possibly could.

We had to stand up in front of our audience and say our films name, and our personal group had to explain that we hadn't yet added our sound to the movie as it is still being made.

After the audience had watched our opening everyone gave us our feedback. Most of it was generally positive, but a lot of people gave us really helpful constructive criticism which will help us vastly improve and make our opening more interesting to watch. For example someone said that they thought it was a little over edited that made it difficult to concentrate on the actual story line so we can change that and make our opening better.

The exercise was extremely helpful and we are now able to improve our work in the way in which the audience would like it. I would recommend this exercise, as it has helped us to see how other people view our opening and how we can improve it.

Recent Progress

In the past few lessons we have mainly been concentrating on getting all our work ready from our Media booklets to be scanned and put onto all of our blogs. We have also whilst doing this been editing our opening sequence. Efosa is the most skilled out of our group on Final Cut so he is taking control of editing but we are all putting our ideas in as to how the final edit looks. We are making quite good progress now and are working very well as a team so we are ready to show our opening sequence when it is asked for.

Cleaner Opening Analysis

Firstly with characters we hear the voice over of a man who we obviously assume to be a main character who is telling us the story of how a woman found her mother dead. We don't actually see the man's face until the end of the opening which keeps the viewer intrigued and wanting to find out who the character is. The sound used in the opening is contrapuntal as the lyrics of the song say 'tell me something good', when the actual action in the scene isn't 'good'. The colour used in the opening is mostly quite dark and dull which matches the mood which is about death. Even the blood that you would expect to be quite bright is dull and congealed on the floor.  

The credits are shown throughout the opening on the images so we can read the credits without it being boring (on a plain background). 

My role in the organisational aspects of planning and shooting

As I am not going to be starring in the opening I have taken on the role of filming the actual production. Because of this I have been planning angles and types of ways I will film the shots. As Jessica is my good friend I have been to her house many times so I know where we will be filming which makes it easier for me to understand how I can film the shots. Also this will make the whole filming experience a lot smoother and easier for us as a group.