List of Shooting Equipment

Here is a list of shooting equipment in relevance to question 6 of my evaluation:

• Mini DV Canon Camera
• Camera Batteries
• Tripod
• Microphone
• Headphones
• White Board
• White Board Pen
• Mains Power Supply Lead

The Conventions of an Opening Sequence

Here is a list of all the conventions of an opening sequence in reference to question 1:

• Grab the audiences attention
• Introduce the audience to the storyline
• Introduce the audience to the genre
• Contain credits/titles 
• Title of the film
• Create an enigma
• Set the scene
• Contain music that is relevant the the action that is occuring
• Introduce the audience to the characters
• Make the audience want to watch on
• Establish the key iconography
• Set up the pace of the film
• Introduce the audience to the key themes of the film
• Set up the target audience

Horror Movie Conventions

Here is a list of all the horror movie conventions as mentioned in question 1 of my evaluation:

• Create suspense
• Darkness
• Contrast (characters and mise-en-scene)
• Ambiguous shots
• Silence
• Creaking
• Screams
• Wind
• Shadows
• Hidden features
• Gory and gruesome
• Death
• Victims
• Murderer
• Scary
• Make you jump
• Get your heart beating faster
• Shock the audience
• Fear
• Stalking
• Old buildings
• Deserted locations
• Sense of claustrophobia (no escape)
• Running away

Information About My Final Opening Sequence

When we were first introduced to the brief, we were told we could make an opening sequence of any particular genre. As a group we decided to go for the horror genre as we thought it would be the easiest to portray on such a low budget. 

Our opening sequence is about a girl coming home late at night drunk and then falling asleep. When she wakes up, strange things start to occur so therefore she begins to investigate. Eventually she ends up upstairs looking out the window and we see the door open behind her, telling the audience that there was somebody else in the house with her when she thought she was alone. The rest of the film expands upon the concept of the murderer praying on girls in a vulnerable state. It is about a taxi driver who picks up girls from parties and clubs and drops them off home. He then returns to their house later in the evening to torment them and eventually kill them. 

When shooting our opening sequence we shot it in a large Victorian House in Whetstone with creaky wooden floor and dim lighting. 

Our cast consisted of Charlotte Cooper playing the teenage girl victim and myself, Loren Dodi, playing the shadow/killer that opens the door at the end. 

As Charlotte was being filmed, this left most of the camera and crew work down to me, Loren Dodi and Nisha Shah. 

Audience Feedback

On Friday 23rd January we did an audience screening to get some views from an audience about what they thought about our final opening sequence. In order for their feedback to be as focused and organized as possible we created a questionnaire for them to fill in. We held the screening in the Latymer Media block and roughly about 30 students turned up, all aged between 14 and 17, so our target audience. 

When looking over the filled in questionnaires most of the feedback we recieved was positive and backed up what we had hoped to achieve. For example many people recognised that the girl had been out drinking the previous night, and they instantly picked up on the horror genre. They all felt the sequence created suspense and tension and would mainly target teenagers. This feedback is what we were hoping to get and therefore i think our audience feedback session went very well. 

FINISHED EDITING

We finally finished editing our project on 14th January. We met our deadline and handed in our finished edited piece ready for marking.
Overall i think it went very well, we managed to do everything that we had set out to do and our sequence has turned out the way we would have hoped. Towards the end of the deadline there was a lot of rushing around to try and get everything finished and looking perfect but we managed to do everything on time without a huge major panic and once it was handed in we could breath a huge sigh of relief.
Now we are concentrating on getting our audience feedback from our opening sequences by creating a questionaire and getting various people to fill it out during sceenings. After we have achieved this we will begin to write our evaluations and tidy up our blog, sadly bringing this project to a close.

Back to School

We have just gone back to school after the christmas break. I had a lot of fun over christmas and new year but now that we are back it means that our deadlines are close...

I will be blogging as much as possible from now until our deadline but as our editing deadline is only a week a way i will obviously be concentrating more on that as it is more important at the moment.

Looking forward to finally seeing the finished product even though it is quite a tight deadline...!