Planning- Setting.

For our setting, we have decided to have our film located within a woods. This will either be Ashtead Woods, or Tesco Woods in Leatherhead. This would be a good setting for our horror genre, as it is very secluded for the outside world.
This adds to the genre, as no one will be there to help to victim as they are being attacked, and this is the type of thing that we are aiming for. Also the psyco/murderer will get away with it, as no one will be around, there will be no witnesses, and it gives them a chance to hide all evidence.

Planning- Costume.

The ideal costume that we are going to wear will be dark hooded clothing, or masks. This adds to the effect of creepy, and fearful, and the masking/dark clothing will make these certain characters anonymous; by this we won't know what they look like and we do not know anything about their personal background, or as to whether they have some disorder or not.
We think that this is an ideal costume as the identity of most murders/psycos is mostly always anonymous.

Sci-Fi Cliches

'There is always something out there in the classic science fiction film.'
In science fiction films, nobody knows what is out there, or what it wants, or where it comes from. It stays like this for a long time during the film, as it makes it a lot scarier than it actually is. What is usually out there is a 'generic, off-the-rack alien.'
When an alien death ship first makes its appearance, it will be hundreds of times bigger, than the vessel first sent over to destroy Earth. It makes no difference as the ship always has some weakness that will result it it's destruction  for the final scenes. Women play an important roll in this type of movie. Because women are far less visible in conventional films, it suggests that women who are armed get more dangerous as they 'gravitate away from our galaxy.'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMQQpmm5u3w

This is the final scene for 'The Blair Witch Project.' The camera shot used in this adds to the tense, and petrifiying atmosphere. You can only see what the camera is showing, and the lighting is very dull which makes things more difficult to see.
This can cause your eyes to play tricks on you, which can add to the scare factor of the scene. This shot will be good to use in our scene.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D51QgOHrCj0

This is the trailer for 'The Blair Witch Project.' This is filmed using only a Point of View shot, with a hand held camera. As you can see from this, you cannot see everything that is going on around them; it focuses on the characters reactions, and the action that takes place.

This is a Point of View shot, and this is the shot that will be used through out most of our filming. It gives the effect that the audience will be seeing what the characters see. By doing this, it will show a very little amount of what is going on through out the shot, and adds the effect that some bad may happen, as you cannot fully see around you when you are looking around in a darkened area.

This is hopefully what our location we choose will look like, as it will set the scene and it will give the task an eerie effect. We have discoved that most horror films either take place in a house in the middle of no where, or within the woods themselves.

Our Genre- Horror

For our final piece, we are going to be focusing on the genre 'horror'. 
We have started to think about how we are going to film it, and we have thought about filiming it like 'The Blair Witch Project.'
We think that this would add to a good effect, and it will show the audience what the 'characters' see, and how they are feeling as it will be a 'Point of View' shot through out the majority of the task.

The filming will take place within the woods, the location yet still undecided, however we do have some rough ideas  in our area of where the filming will take place.
The people who will be acting will be our group; Sophie, Emma, Charlotte and myself.

Crime Cliches

The essential parts to a crime film are - the police are as bad as the gangters.  Gangster films  pretty much always show tough guys off the hardscrabble streets of blighted metropolises who turn to crime life because: it's the only way forward,  they were wronged by authorities at a young age or they realised that Credit Suisse and Bank of America never higher people from their ethic background, so they might as well become leg breakers.

Gangster movies always have an amorphous code of behaviour whether it's omerta or hounour amoung thieves or "let's keep it in the family". This code is vaguely defined, it cannot be violated.
Crime movies usually always have a rat, sometimes several rats. The rat can either be an undercover cop, a member of the gang or even the gang leader himself/herself. Gangters have a hard time indentifying the rat, although the rat is usually alwqays the newest and best looking member of the gang, and they never seem to belong to the same ethnic group as the rest of the members of the gang. Gangster moves often include scenes set within a  night club or a resaurant where somebody will say the wrong thing to the wrong guy, and later on will regret it.
In crime movies, there is usually one 'straight arrow' whom the gangsters have respect for because he is not completely crooked like them.

Action Cliches

Often in actions films, they feature a group of 'world-weary assassins or Green Berets or Navy Seals or mercenaries' who will pull together to do one last suicidal mission.
It is common that at least two men will not want to go on the assignment; at the end of the film one of the men will end up saving the men that originially went out on the mission, to which this man will die.
During the film, the leader will tell his men 'This is my fight. You guys have no skin in this game. You're free to go.' but the men will never leave and abandon their mission.

Several large men possess a preposterouos level of upper body musculature, and these are the men that will often be betrayed by someone who does not possess upper body musculature, but who employs lots of people that do. These men are often a lot smaller as well, so the muscular men get betrayed by weedy men.
There is a group often referred to as 'the firm' and muscular men will often be stabbed in the back by bitter rivals, mostly weasel-like politicians or somebody who is an ex member of staff from the CIA.
For example, in the film '300' the Spartans are betrayed by a hunchback drawf.

Contemporary action films often have a villian who are heavily accented Russians, Serbs or unidentified, all-purpose easten Europeans sociopaths, cigar-smoking thugs from south of the bored or untrustworthy Arabs, or villainous bureaucrats from Washington or London.
Women are tend to be shown as promiscuous femmes fatales or crusading journalists or medical support staff or happles rebels or victims or miscats.

Good action films feature some form of emergency surgey; a fall from a great height, a reasonable amount of toture and a lot of rappelling. An action film without rappelling, is like a horror film without disembowelment. In action films, men often rappell down high-rises, mountains and into holds of ships.
'The prinipals should have a lot of scars, and each scar should come with a story.'  A good example is a psyco with an eye-patch and a machete. The hero should have lost his soul and is struggling to regain even the smallest amount of dignity that will help remind him of a time he did not want to wake up and puke his guts out.

No one drives a car in action films, ever. Off-road vehicles only. This also means no mules, no ponies, no biofuel vehicles. At some point, a woman [especially the lead woman] will get punched in the face, an arrow or bullet will fire through the villians skull, and a blade or piston will trip through a mans chest from behind. 

Within the martial arts genre, the hereo should run up the wall to attack somebody violently, and ninjas should fly through the air [on invisible wire of course] to which one ninja should turn out the be a woman. Ninjas often do aerial battle in the bamboo forest.
Ninjas often descend from the ceiling which is common in this genre, however the villians never expect this, and the hero often picks them off one by one.

Horror Cliches

Today we have found out that in the different catergories of horror, each one has it's own way to create the creepy atmosphere.
The different catergories for horror are: slasher, zombie, vampire, mainstream horro, Asian horro and revolting Eli Roth films. Without an absence of cliches, the entire horror film would be ruined.

Often, Japanese horros revolve around little girls coming back from the dead to get revenge for an event that happened to them at a certain age. If this was not the case for Japanese films, nobody would watch them.

Preliminary Task

Filming our preliminary task was relativley easy. We found a location to start out filiming, and talked about what type of filiming we would do. We decided to do a case of bullying. We started filiming but didn't get much done.
The next lesson we went to film again, only three of us were not wearing the same clothes. We then decided to do it over a 'two day' showing. Meaning we see the characters one day, and see how they act the next day. The second day of filming was more successful as we had more ideas of what to do, and more understanding of the different angles, as well as learning how to use the camera properly.

We filmed each part from several differnt angles, and from different shots, to give the film a wider variety of shots. The idea of this would let the audience know how the victim of the bullys would be feeling, as we used mainly close-ups to show her facial expressions.

Mise-en-Scene

Mise-en-Scene means nothing in the film is there by accident. Mise-en-Scene covers everything you see in the shot: colours, props, set, costumes, lighting etc

Sound

Diagetic- Music or sound affects that comes from the scene of the film. For example, music playing on the radio in the shot.

Non-diagetic- Music or sound that has been added into the film during editing. For example, the music from battle scenes in films such as Lord Of The Rings.

Camera shots, movements

In these lessons we've learnt about the different camera angles, movement and shots.

Close Up- A shot showing the character from the neck up. This shot is often used to show facial expressions.

Medium Shot- A shot showing the character from the waist up. It allows other characters to be in view and        allows character interaction. It is often used for more sociable shots.

Long Shot- A shot showing a character or setting from a distance.

High angle shot- A shot taken from above looking down. This makes the audience feel powerful and superior and the actors seem small and vulnerable.

Low angle shot- A shot taken from below. It is as if the audience are being looked down on. It may make us feel small and vulnerable and actors seem powerful.

Panning- When the camera moves from left to right about a central axis [fixed point]

Tracking- The camera is on a track and follows the action. This is often used in character interaction when walking.

Zoom- The camera moves into a close-up, often used to focus attention on a relevant detail or emphasises a characters reaction.

Tilt- A tilt is a vertical camera movement, in which the camera points up or down from a stationary position. For example in 'Greece' when Sandy appears in the leather outfit towards the end of the movie.

Arc- An arc movement is moving the camera around the subject to keep it in the shot/frame.

Crane- A camera is used on a crane to create a birds eye view and the camera moves vertically.

Dolly- A dolling is a cart that moves along tracks. The camera records the shot as it moves.

Steadicam- This is a stabilizing mount for the camera.

Zoom/Reverse Zoom- This movement opens in an out in one shit. For example; the zoom in focuses on the facial expression, then zooms out the show the surroundings.

Handheld- Gives an effect of real life documentary, like a point of view shot.