3.7 Analysis of opening sequence

"The Last Season" is an opening sequence under the genre of horror. The sequence is about a young boy who is paranoid and hearing things that are not actually there. The main character is home alone when he hears a crash outside the door, which he goes to inspect. He finds out that he was only being paranoid but cannot forget about the sound he heard. The main character finds out that he is not the only one in the house!


Lighting-The lighting in our opening sequence reflects upon the nature of the film actually being a horror, whereas there is a lot of dim light, which could connote the idea of mystery and danger, in which our film is based on. The way in which having darkness could leave the protagonist potentially in danger is a major factor in which our film is based upon. We tried to connote the genre of the film using the lighting as a key element. In our sequence we used yellow tinted lamps to promote the effect of horror and we also used it to create a fearful atmosphere. The color yellow carries connotations of both happiness and fear, which helps to build tension in our film and leaves the audience guessing to whether the next scene is going to be happy or fear. We were influenced from the yellow lighting from Saw as they use it as a key element in their film.


Sound- Sound in our film is well established as being used mainly in parts of our opening sequence that are aimed at being horrific. The use of diegetic sound in our extract is used extensively to create a sense of fear towards our audience and to make the audience hear more of what is being shown in each extract. The use of the television sounds is used to show more of what a teenagers lifestyle would be like as we have stereotypically shown teenagers in various ways. We used sqeeking floorboards, which is used in a variety of horror films to create tension. We also used a enhanced saw 'shing' noise at the end of the film where the screen fades black, which is also used in a variety of film trailers/films.


Mise en scene- The use of mise en scene in our opening sequence is used in many different shots. As we have set the film in a house that is rather old, this is an already large use of mise en scene. The use of old objects and lighting equipment is also used to connote to the audience the sense of horror in our film. The major use of mise en scene though is the use of the hooded figure/hooded clothing which the villian wore, which was used to represent fear and to establish to the audience the genre of the film. The idea of using the hoodie was a group decision and was used as the mask in V for Vendetta is used to conceal identity and also create fear amongst the audience. In V for Vendetta the audience do not know if the man behind the mask is a hero or villian and we tried to use this technique throughout our opening sequence.


Editing- We used quick cuts in our opening sequence after the living room scene, as our aim was to keep the audience interested in what was going on in the film. This was done to give the text a fast pace, which helps the genre because it leaves the audience anticipating what is going to happen next. An example of a good use of this quick cut was in the scene where the protagonist sees a slight shadow behind the window in the bathroom and does not see the figure through the window. The use of editing in this scene connotes the idea that the protagonist is mentally unstable at this moment in time. Therefore heightening the tension element and reminding the audience about the horror/thriller genre.

January February and March 2010 Problems and Successes

08/01/10
One of the main problems that we encountered for today is that the transfer of equipment to our filming location. This is because we had a variety of equipment such as the Cannon XM2 Camera, External, Boom Mic and Lighting Kits. This was time consuming because the car had to go back and forth twice, as the boot was fit to carry things. Therefore everything had to go in the back seat. Resultantly we started filming later than expected but managed to get all our shots recorded.
09/01/10
Toady’s main problem was the fact that the weather had an impact on our filming because it captured a lot of ambient sound from the heavy snow fall. Therefore we had to wait until the snow calmed before continuing. In addition, the house that we are filming at was occupied due to the Christmas period. This also effected the scheduled times for our filming.
10/01/10
filming for our third day became increasingly difficult as the weather affected transportation for the actors. However by the end of today, all the footage was finally captured. One of the difficulties that we encountered was trying to find a suitable film for the protagonist to watch because there were not many films with the genre of Horror available. As a result, we chose to use Harry Potter, as it contains some thriller elements such as The Dementors, which mirrors the clothing of the killer in the opening sequence.

Editing:

During the editing process, there was a variety of factors that had an impact on the time we had to edit. Firstly, we had to upload our captured footage to an IMac that should have easily uploaded our footage as it has 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processer and 4GB of RAM. However as our school has signed a contract with RM, the schools system has been effected in terms of certain privileges, which lengthened the amount of time it took to upload. In addition we asl had to look for Non Diegetic sound that would act as the music in the background, which would be suitable for our target audience.

Building upon experience from the previous year, we knew that many things is likely to go wrong during the editing process, therefore we created backups on several Iomega hard drives as we progressed in the editing. As we came to the end of our first edit, we showed our media teacher and she said that it was a big improvement on the previous year's coursework, however certain things would bring our grade up further. Below is a list of suggested improvements:

• Opening Title Sequence needed to be improved
• The lengths of some shots were too long and was rather 'boring', for a Horror genre opening sequence.
• Correcting the positing of the actors name.

As a result, this gave us a couple of days in which to make this improvement that would help us achieve our target grade. We took out most of the living room scene and parallel edited the killer’s scenes walking scene throughout. In addition we also removed the montage that showed the actions of the killer in one continuous sequence because it did not achieve the intended effect.

We added a title sequence made of a red blood type text which was created in Photoshop. Along with this text, we also created a misty animation to accompany the text, as it seemed to glide of the screen, at the same time with the sound of dripping blood being heard.

Call Sheets

Below is the first call sheet that was given to all the participants involved in the making of "The Last Season":

Target Audience Questionnaire

Below is the questionnaire that enabled us to get a better understanding of the audience's film interests:

Pages: 1-2


Pages: 3-4:

Storyboards

http://lucaascoursework.blogspot.com/2009/05/storyboards.html

Screen Play

Characters:

Jodie Quinn, Harry Hammick

Cameraman: Luca Pellicci

Soundman: Mohammed Moossun

Lighting Co-ordinator: Mohammed Moossun

Location Shot 1: Monteagle Way

ü Shot of the sun moving from dawn to dusk

Shot Two: Medium Shot

Protagonist putting a DVD into the DVD player

Character 1 Dialogue: “I hope he actually turns up this time”

Shot Three:

Eyeline match of him picking up the DVD

Shot Three:

Over the shoulder shot of his friend pressing the door bell (wearing a black hoody to build tension)

Shot Four:

Hand held shot of the protagonist going to the door

SCENE FIVE: Long shot of both characters sitting down and turning on the film

Character 1: “Yo Harry why you late?”

Character 2: “Sorry man, got caught up”

Character “Ahh, okok go in”

Character 2: “Cool”

Character 1: “Sorry about the mess”

Character 2: “It’s alright”

Character 1: “I paused it where we left off, so we don’t have to start again”

Character 1: “WHAT WAS THAT?”

Character 2: “What, I didn’t hear anything”

Character 1: “One sec, gonna check this”

SCENE EIGHT:

Hand held shot following the character back to the living room

Character 2: “You find anything?”

Character 1: “ No Nothing”

Character 2: “Your just being paranoid”

Character 1: “How can I be paranoid, I swear I heard something”

SCENE NINE:

Mid two shot of both characters finishing watching the film

Character 1: “That was scary boy!”

Character 2: “Yeah its gonna give me nightmares”

Character 1:”Raa, look at the time, its getting late”

Character 1: “You got college tomorrow?”

Character 1: “Yeah you”

Character 2: “Yeah man”

Character 2: “Cool then, im gonna get going”

Character 1: “see ya later, take care”

SCENE TEN:

Long shot from the edge of the window of one of the characters going home

(Sound Bridge of the conversation)

Shot eleven:

Mid shot of protagonist in the bathroom, looking in the bathroom, before he sees a mysterious figure

Shot twelve:

Steady cam shot of protagonist getting into bed

Shot thirteen:

Cuts to a shot of the protagonist in bed from outside the window

Shot fourteen:

Lights turn off, hears shuffling footsteps, scream

Character 1: “WHOS IN HERE!, AHHHHHRGHHH”

(fades into black, with a white title)

Opening Sequence Shot List

1. Medium shot of the protagonist walking towards he’s/her DVD player
2. Eye line match of him picking up the CD
3. Over the shoulder shot of his friend pressing the door bell (wearing a black hoody, to create tension)
4. Hand held/ steady cam of the protagonist going to open the door
5. Long shot of both characters sitting down and turns on the film
6. Montage edit to pass time of them watching the film
7. Cuts to the protagonist looking back (in slow motion) suddenly because of hearing a crash somewhere in the house
8. Hand held shot following the character to build tension
9. Steady cam following the character back
10. Mid two shot of both characters finished watching the film
11. Long shot from the edge of a window of one character going how
12. Mid shot of protagonist in bathroom, looking in the mirror, before he sees a mysterious figure
13. Steady cam shot of protagonist getting into bed
14. Cuts to a shot of protagonist in bed from outside the window
15. Lights turn off, shuffling footsteps, scream
16. Extreme close up on the eyes of the protagonist as he/she wakes up
17. Fades into white, with red title (title yet to be decided)