Location ideas

We have been researching ideal locations for our film opening, we have looked around several places such as cheney school buildings, we feel that this location creates the right atmosphere for our film. There are some useful places around the school that fits in with our ideas. For example the school corridors are long and have the effect of a hotel corridor, which is the kind of location we are looking for. Also we found a ict classroom suitable for our office scene.  These locations are not definate, just ideas for our research into locations.

Script draft 1...

Scene one: (screaming, killer trying to drown thw women in bath, killer silent, splashing)

Scene two: (black, gun shot, silence)

Scene three: (dead woman in the bath, silence apart from water dripping from tap)

Scene four: (outline of murderer in coridoor, walking away holding the gun, sound of footsteps)

Scene five: (panning shot of building looking up. Outside noise such as traffic etc.)

Scene six: (in detectives office, mid-shot starring at him. Only noise is radio, clock ticking?)

Scene seven: (knock at the door, radio still on in background)

Detective: Come in
Secutary Sally: I have the file on the hotel murder
Detective: Thank you Sally, does this have the suspects details in it?
Secutary Sally: It should have everything you need, Detective
Dectective: Thank you very much

(Secutary walks out of the room, closing door behind her)

Scene eight: (detective reads through the files, scatters pictures on the table around him, radio still playing in background.)

Scene nine: (mug shots of each suspect zooming out onto the filming scene)


Credits running through beginning, after shot of killer walking away, down coridoor (don't want to loose any focus by showing credits whilst murder taking place)

An overview of our film

Our film is a murder mystery. In the first 2 minutes, a lady - Emily Saunders* is shot dead and it takes the rest of the film to unfold who is responsible. We start by seeing the mugshots of 5 possible murderer's. We then follow each of them for their proof it was not them who comitted the murder. They all have various connections to her which even if they have a good alibi, makes them suspicious. Unexpected twists occur to mix things up a bit but in the end, we do find out who it was. Characters other than the 5 suspects become involved and maybe the wrong people are being accused...

* - the name may change

Final storyboard

Target Audience

I have been looking into who I feel our target audience will be regarding our opening scene of a murder mystery film. I think the social group we will be targetting is late teenagers and young adults. This is simply because, I think younger children may find the concept confusing and perhaps freightning and in contrast to this, adults in their late 20s - early 30s may want something more spooky, constantly keeping you on the edge of your seat, alternatviely, they may feel it is slightly too young for them. This said, I think the age is more ranged than the specific target audience... Children can be surprising and grow up quick in their film choice and older adults can still want to see films aimed at a younger audience.

Also I have briefly looked into characters, props, location scouting, scripting and the choice of camera shots and durations. Notes on some of these aspects have been included in our final storyboard which will be scanned in at a later date. We have chosen who will be our characters, based on looks similar to what we picture with the characters trates. We then chose locations where we will film which we feel will be right. We didn't really feel it was necessary to go into massive detail and decision making with our locations as with what we are doing in each scene, where it is located won't have much impact on the viewers opinion of the scene.

Inital storyboard

Analysis and evaluation of preliminary task

My preliminary task consisted of a 45 second piece of film footage which involved dialogue between 2 characters. We were instructed to include various camera angles which we had previously been taught about.
The end product is uploaded on the blog but due to organisation errors, it isn't the final film we had planned to upload. Therefore, some of the editing and added sound effects are slighty wrong!
It was planned out well, as a mini version of the main task we have just began. By this I mean, we each had to come up with seperate concepts and ideas for the piece and show this on a storyboard. We then in our groups, decided on who's work worked best and went ahead and a long time later had finished the filming and were ready to edit and include special effects and add sound. We are currently at the planning and researching stage of our main task. We are spending much longer on each stage and have to make sure it is all completed by the time we move on to the next bit, as they all fit together so without one part, nothing works.
I feel our preliminary piece is good, it just could of done which a bit more work and attention to detail. From it I have learnt, we need to leave more time for the editing than the filming. (Initally, I thought the filming would be the tricker, more time consuming task but after the preliminary, I am very sure this is not the case!) And that staying focused is key to finishing the task in the time advised.

Research: Analysing Psycho

Last week, my group made the decision the opening part of our film is going to be inspired by the murder mystery genre. Therefore, we need to research films from this genre to see how the most effective films have started...
I have started by looking at the opening credits and opening scene of the film Psycho. It was a 1960 American phychological thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock, inspired by the book 'Psycho' from 1959.
The film recieved very positive reviews and made record-breaking box office sales, it has inspired 2 sequels, a remake and a T.V. spin-off programme. The film is categorised as a drama, horror, mystery and thriller, so it appeals to a wide audience.

The opening credits go on for 2 minutes with a simple grey and black stripe animation background. Luckily, it also includes fast paced, loud music which draws your attention in. Without the music, I feel the first impression would be almost entirely dull. The piano music sounds spooky, giving you a feel for the movie.

Then we see the opening scene, which consists of a man walking up steps into a house at night. There are no street lights, cars lights or people nearby so at first it is hard to work out what is going on and though a street of semi-detatched houses, it feels quite isolated. It then gets slighty lighter, so shadows begin to appear and low pitched violin and piano music begins to play. Since the beginning, it has all been a long shot, so we can see the surroundings and make an immediate judgement of what he is doing and whats going on. It then zooms into a medium shot of the upper part of the man, at the top of steps and walking into a door of the house. We see this from behind him, focusing on the bottom of his legs and feet. Gradually, the music has got higher pitched, faster and fainter. From this we feel as it is graudaully building for something big to happen... There has been no digetic noise and we have only seen this one character, that we are following.
The man then enters the house, there are stairs to the right of the door which he begins to go up, as he does this we see a long shot of his whole body slowly moving up each individual step. At the top of the stairs is a corridor with numerous doors, one opens slighty and we see a shadow in the gap but not yet a body. The man is not quite at the top of the stairs but our view of him has changed so we are now looking down on him, maybe to show the powerful position changing? Just as he reaches the top step, a person who we don't get a glimpse of comes running out of the partially open door, down the corridor and straight at our original character, holding a large knife, stabs him right in the heart. During this, the sound effect is a 'dun dun dun' getting more expressive with each 'dun' and then a loud, high pitched (very fake) scream. The shot changes to an extreme close up of our stabbed man's face as he falls down the stairs in slow-ish motion, seeing his facial expressions. They range from shocked to scared and then quite pale and dead looking! Somehow, he has blood coming out of his forehead and cheek which doesn't really calculate as he got stabbed in the heart..? He eventually falls to the bottom and is happily dead on the floor, the stabber quickly follows down the stairs and the scene ends with them again stabbing character 1 in the heart and we simply see a close up of their hand with the bloody knife in. The lighting throughout this in-house scene has been quite dark but, light enough to cleary see body language and facial expressions of the first character. You can see the surrounding area without difficulty but as it was set at night time it is going to be dark which i suppose adds to the tension and atmosphere they are trying to get across to the audience.

Preliminary task