Actors, Locations, Props and Costumes for "SIXSIXSIX". MISE- EN -SCENE

Mise- en- scene
When choosing our location, actors and props for our film we have to think carefully about their whether each thing would be suitable for a horror film. as to make sure that we have our mise-en-scene correct. For example, all of our characters are teenage girls, therefore, if we had chosen to use rooms with childish posters of cartoons around the room, or even used a boys room, this would not be suitable mise-en-scene, because the things found in a boys room wouldnt usually be found in a girls room too.
Actors

Ria Harrison - The victim who gets attacked. We chose Ria to do this as we have seen her acting before when she has done work for other people and she plays evil characters really well. Also she is easy to make look scary because of her long dark black hair that can drape over her face.

Hannah Smith - One of the victims friends. Hannah will be good for our film opening as she was really interested in taking part, and has acting experience from doing GCSE and A level drama.

Alice Fews - One of the victims friends. Alice was also really interested in taking part of our task as simililary, she was doing a horror film and it would inspire her for ideas for her own task.

Locations

'Woodside House'
Woodland Road
Portishead.
We used this house as our main location for our film opening because we particlaly the old-fashioned traits it had to it as it made it look big and almost haunted. Also the way it was surrounded by tree's and forests made it seem deserted - a particulary good location for a horror film! 

2 rooms to represent girls bedrooms. We made sure that the rooms we picked looked particulary femine in order to stick with our mise-en-scene by having flowerly pictures up with teddies on the bed and flowery bed covers.

Hallway in 'Woodside House' with big stair case to film end scene
Because the owners of this house had only recently moved in, they havent had the chance to modernise the hallway. We took this oppertunity to film our task here, because the dullness of it and the huge stair case helped add to the scary effect of it and was suitable mise-en scene for a horror film.

Props

2 mobile phones (2 bedroom scenes) - We Will use and Iphone 4s and a blackberry as our mobile phones, because it shows a reflection of the time our film is set in (present day)

Make up Brush (Ria putting on make up during the P.O.V scene in her bedroom) We will use Ria's own make- up for this, as it will be easy to get hold of seeing as we are filming in her room.

Revision Books (after putting down the phone to other two girls, Ria tidies away books) Biology text books and a note pad.

Other objects to help set the scene of a girls bedroom, e.g hair straighteners, mirror, handbag etc.

To shoot our fim opening, we will use a Nikon Coolpix HD Camera, as it is good quality and will produce a clear image for our film.

Costumes 

Hannah and Alice (Victims friends) 

Clothes that are typically seen on girls: fur coats for when they are outside, for indoor scenes coloured blouses and Jeans. Nothing that stands out too much as the attention of appearance is supposed to be mainly on Ria. 

Ria 

Patterned leggings and a plain top to make her stand out more from other characters as she is the main focus. When she has been attacked, the costumes are the same, however it will be accompanied by white make up to make her face pale, red eye liner around her eyes accompanied by dark black make up. This will give the look of having been attacked, and now being possessed. 

Storyboard - "SIXSIXSIX" and Filming Plan

This is the storyboard that we are using for our Film opening, showing the shots and camera angles we will be using. We have also shown a rough indication of how long each shot will last, however all of these may be edited when it comes to actually filming, and other shots could be added if other ideas come up as these shots are only basic.

Our film is going to be called "SIXSIXSIX" as we think this is suitable for the storyline we have, because the main character is a devil-like character, which posesses everyone it attacks. We got the inspiration for this title after seeing another title for a film that has a lot in common with ours called 'The Devil Inside'. This title suggests that a devil has taken over another persons soul, just like the girl in the opening of of film. Therefore we took 'SIXSIXSIX' from this, as it is the sign of the devil.

Our film opening is going to use typical conventions of horror films with the characters being teenage girls. We got the idea of teenagers by watching the opening of the 'Scream' films, especially the 1st one as the first character we are introduced to is a vulnerable, teenage girl, a conventional character in a horror film that also appeared at the beginning of the first 'Scream' film.

Our horror film we tell a story about a girl, sat at home alone, who calls her friends over to come and keep her company. While they are on their way to her house, something attacks the girl who is home alone, but we dont see what it is. We just are guided through its path using a Point Of View shot, not allowing us to see the character.  When the friends arrive to the girls house, they get no reply when knocking on the door, or calling her. When they decide to open the door themselves, they are greeted by the girl staring blankly at them from the top of the stairs, covered in blood with piercing red eyes. The girl runs full speed towards them bringing the shot into an extra close up of her gory face. Then a blackout ends the opening, leaving the audience in suspense to guess what has happened to all of the characters.

Here I have made a plan that I need to stick to in order to get all of the shooting, and editing done by my deadline.
1. We need to start planning our shooting before we get any of the actual filming done. This will be mean making sure we are able to get hold of the tripod and camera in time, and making contact with the owner of the house we are using and making sure it is ok to use the house on the day we want. We intend to get all of this done by 18th January.
2.We will start our shooting on January 22nd, and aim to get it finished by the 25th/, as this allows us plenty of time for editing, and possible reshoots.

3. As soon as we have all of our footage, we have made sure that we have well over a week to edit our footage, and make the decision as to whether we need our reshoot or not.

4. On February 4th, we have left a slot free just incase we need to reshoot anything, however this may not be neccessary.

5. On February  6th, we will do any final bits of editing and add in anything extra that we filmed in our reshoot.

6.February 10th - deadline.

Audience Research - Questionaires

Film Questionnaire

Age: …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Gender: …………………….………………………………………………………………………………………………….

What is your favourite Horror Film?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

What did you like about it?

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

What sub-genre of Horror do you prefer?

Comedy Horror         (   )

Slasher Horror           (   )

Psychological Horror  (   )

Demonic Horror         (   )

Other:

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

What genre of music would you expect in a Horror Film?

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

What characters do you prefer featured in a Horror Film?

Zombies                         (   )

Murderers/Serial Killers   (   )

Vampires                       (   )

Ghosts                           (   )

Monsters                        (   )

Demons                         (   )

Other:

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

We gave this questionaire out to 30 people, ranging from the ages 0f 15 - 40. We found that the most popular  type of Horror film was 'Psychological Horror', although it was closely followed by Slasher:

These results show that the most popular genre of film that came out of the questionaires was psychological  horror. 24 out of the 30 people who took the questionaire were between the ages of 15 and 20, and there were only six people who didnt choose Psychological horror. Seeing in there is a big diffference between the number of people who picked the second most popular genre, we have create a Psychological horror film, aimed at people ages 15 to 25, but could also be enjoyable for people over that age.

Film Task Research

Genre's of films
 Comedy
Action
Horror/thriller
Rom Com
Science Fiction


One of the genre's that we were the most interesting in doing for our film task Horror, because after watching a number of Horror films, the opening of them have always managed to grab my attention within the first 2 minutes. Some ot the common things that we noticed from watching a number of Film openings were:

-Lots of close ups (we dont tend to get the full images, just small parts of them)
-dark colours/ often black and white, sometimes hints of red (representing the gore in some films)
- Lack of speech (often none at all)
- Powerful, but slow and mysterious much, often orchestra music e.g violins.
-  Images fading into eachother slowly.
We noticed this is films such a Se7en, The Dead Zone, 30 Days of Night and Silent Hill- all horror films.



Conventions of Horror Films

Lighting
Dark/showdy lighting
Dim - often used to hide what characters look like. e.g in 'Signs' (2002) the aliens are only revealed at the very end of the film, because they are constantly covered by shadowy/dark lights.

Locations
Isolated locations - often houses out in the middle of no where. e.g In the strangers (2008) the house where it is set is right in the middle of no where in a big house (meaning if something happens to the characters in the house there is no one to help them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY_1911aUUw <---- Trailer for The Strangers. At the beggining of the clip we see a shot of the house surrounded by tree's. This inspires us for our own film opening.


Woods/ Forests e.g In the Blair Witch Project (1999)

Characters
Zombies - 28 days later, Dawn of the dead, Walking Dead.
Monsters -  Monsters, Boogey Man.
Vampires -  Dracula, 30 days of night, Fright Night.
Ghosts/Sprits - Paranormal Activity, Polterguist, Sixth Sense.
Serial Killers/Murders - Scream, Saw, From Hell, The Boston Strangler.

Victim - In every horror film there is always at least on Victim, who the main 'Scary' character is trying to get. e.g  Above, it shows the victims in 'The Stangers',  a couple who are targeted by the murderes throughout the film. 

Comedy Horror - Shaun of the dead

I watched the opening and the titles of Shaun of the dead, a comedy about zombies. Although Shaun of the dead typically falls into the 'comdey' category, it also has some typical conventions of a horror movie. For example; during the titles, it shows people doing everyday jobs such as working at a supermarket checkout, and a man pushing trollys in a car park, however they appear in a 'zombie-like' way. Although they arent Zombies yet, we can see that zombies will appear later on in the film.

This made me think that in our film task, we could use an idea like this in the opening; we could give hints of what may happen, but not actually show it. For example, if the film was about people people killed with knives, the opening of it could just focus on knives themselves, but not neccessarly associated with death at this early stage.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZmjsWAfn14 <---------- Click on this link to see the opening scene from Shaun of the Dead.

Typical Horror
We then decided to look at a typical Horror film that we would expect to see typical horror conventions in, 30 days of night. It was released in 2007, directed by David Slade, where an Alaskan town prepares for their anual '30 days of night' - a period in which there is no sun. In this time period vampires attack the town.

Vampires are typically associated with horror, and are featured in 'Dracula', 'Fright Night' and 'An interview with a vampire. They are known for their pale skin, fangs are glowing red eyes, so this could be something that we would be able to feature in our opening for a  Horror film.
One thing about the opening titles to this film is that it doesnt actually give away any information that the film may include vampires; it shows images of the destruction that the vampires have caused, but you would not know this unless you had researched the film.
Although I like the idea of using Vampires in our horror trailor, I think it would be important to show part of them in the opening to give the audience an idea of what is going to happen, so they can see whether it would appeal to them or not.

The lighting in the opening titles of 30 days of night is completley dark all the way through, and the music is very shocking with piercing sounds. This is suitable for thistype of film (horror) because if it had started with bright lighting and happy music, it would not match with the gore, blood and death that was later to come in the film. It is made of a serious of close ups, which links back to what I said about this being effective due to the fact that is doesnt give too much away, but the lighting, music and eery sense we get tells us that it is going to be scary.

Analysis of Other School Magazines



'The School Magazine' and 'College Lifestyle'

To help me make my own magazine cover, I researched some other covers to give me and idea of how to lay it out. The magazine on the top shows a cover made my another school student, where as the one below has been made proffesionally.

Both of these show and image of a school/college student as their main cover image, and both have bold Mastheads to grab peoples attention; one in a bold black, the other in vibrant green. They have both stuck to a particular colour scheme aswell :



'The School Magazine' - Black and White.

'College lifestylfe'- Green and Black.

All of these colours are used to make the magazines stand out, so I decided to stick with this idea aswell by using Red and Black.

Story Board - 'The Boy Who Forgot His Book'

The Boy Who Forgot His Book
In this storyboard I practised using different camera shots to create a story.

This Shot is a High Shot of Frankie, Rosie and Alice, showing two girls who have their books out already, and one girl panicking as she realises she has lost it.

(cut to)

This is another high, medium shot that focuses more on the girl looking for her books. It's more effective than using a shot of all 3 of them because it focuses more on her frustration!

(cut to)

A Close up shot of the Teacher shouting at the girl for not having her book.

"DETENTION!"