After receiving our feedback from the class we revised our treatment and finalised it. The main thing that we changed was that we added a news report at the end to complete our circular narrative for the fact that there was a news report of a missing girl at the start and then there was a news report of a death of another victim at the end suggesting that gregg was responsible for the first girls disappearance.
Sunday, 24 October 2010
Feedback on final treatment idea.
After our group had presented our final treatment idea's the other group's had to comment and give us constructive critism and feedback. After we recieved the feedback we had to decide if we were going to change our idea regarding the other group's comments.
By recieving feedback we are able to obtain an outside perspective on our idea, we get to know what other people think, whether it's good or bad etc what they think works and what doesn't.
Saturday, 23 October 2010
Target Audience
The audience that will probably watch our film will be 15-20 year olds. There will be a range of ages due to the hybrid of genres that we have included, mystical and thriller, so because of this hybrid genre it will appeal to two or three different sets of audiences who like the particular genres.
Our film would have a 12A rating as there is a death scene and some scary stalking which some parents may not want their children watching but other than those scenes there is nothing totally disturbing, there are no sexual scenes or bad language so a higher rating is not needed. I have looked on the IMDB (International Movie DataBase) to support our rating and many of our similar films ahve the same rating depending on their content. Twilight has the same rating and it has more scenes of a violent nature and some sexual scenes whereas ours contains none. By setting a age rating to a film you are effectively saving your own skin in case someone too young watches it and is seriously harmed either physiologically or psychologically by what they have seen.
A problem with rating your film though is that if it does indeed include 18 rated scenes and language then there is less of an audience to come and see your film rather than a 12A film, as even though your ideal/target audience would be from 15-19 older people may also be interested and come to watch it too giving you a greater audience and a greater profit.
Our film would have a 12A rating as there is a death scene and some scary stalking which some parents may not want their children watching but other than those scenes there is nothing totally disturbing, there are no sexual scenes or bad language so a higher rating is not needed. I have looked on the IMDB (International Movie DataBase) to support our rating and many of our similar films ahve the same rating depending on their content. Twilight has the same rating and it has more scenes of a violent nature and some sexual scenes whereas ours contains none. By setting a age rating to a film you are effectively saving your own skin in case someone too young watches it and is seriously harmed either physiologically or psychologically by what they have seen.
A problem with rating your film though is that if it does indeed include 18 rated scenes and language then there is less of an audience to come and see your film rather than a 12A film, as even though your ideal/target audience would be from 15-19 older people may also be interested and come to watch it too giving you a greater audience and a greater profit.
Friday, 22 October 2010
similar films - van helsing
Van Helsing is one of the most bizarre and mystical thriller/adventure's around. You have Frankenstein's monster, Jekyll and Hyde, Vampire's, Werewolves and much more.Our similarity is simply for the fact that both films contain werewolves. The difference is that in van Helsing the werewolves are hunted and in our film they are the hunter.
Thursday, 21 October 2010
similar films - Twilight
Again Twilight is a similar film due to the werewolves theme. Although we are going to challenge a lot of films conventions by having Will (the werewolf) live alone and hunt alone. Films like Twilight and Dog Soldiers show a pack of werewolves living and hunting together. I think by showing a pack and not a solitary wolf, the werewolf character will not be as alienated by the audience which will change the feel of the film.
Similar films - Dog soldiers
The similarity between this film Dog Soldiers and ours is that the werewolves hunt people for food. In this film any humans who enter through the forest are eaten, in our film Will (the werewolf) hunts girls off the internet for food. By using the internet as his hunting ground we bring in a real problem that people can understand and empathise with, you never really know who you are talking to on the internet, it shows the real dangers you can encounter on the internet.
Similar Films - Gingersnaps II
This film is called Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed. This film is very similar to our film as they use the same conventions. The fact that Gingersnaps uses a werewolf is the main link between the films. Another convention that is similar is that the girl who is the antagonist is a victim of the werewolf. But the difference is that the girl also acts as a sort of heroine!
similar films
there are many films that use the same conventions as we will be using for example:
dog soldiers
underworld
blade
aliens/predator
jason
freddy kruger
halloween
sleepy hollow
dog soldiers
underworld
blade
aliens/predator
jason
freddy kruger
halloween
sleepy hollow
Wednesday, 20 October 2010
Conventions
Conventions are used to add visual meaning and depth to a film, for example romantic genres are obviously about love and will include conventions such as a niaeve girl and a haphazard boy. They will have to overcome an obstacle to fall in love. These are common conventions found in most love stories and romantic films. The same applies to all other films.
Our film this year is a mystical horror, so to create this genre of film we need to know what different conventions are used in similar films of this genre so we can either use them or challenge them.
Common elements in psychological thrillers are mind games, psychological themes, stalking, confinement/deathtraps, horror-of-personality, and obsession.
Common elements in mystical films usually involve magic, supernatural events, make-believe creatures, or exotic fantasy worlds. The genre is considered to be distinct from science fiction film and horror film, although the genres do overlap.
So some other conventions we may consider for our film would be:
A damsel in distress
A hero/heroine
A mystical creature (this is normally evil)
Fear
Gore (Overlap with the horror genre)
A twisty plotline (you have to guess what's coming next)
So by exploring the conventions of our genre we are able to understand how to involve and entertain the audience while keeping the narrative within the specific genre.
Our film this year is a mystical horror, so to create this genre of film we need to know what different conventions are used in similar films of this genre so we can either use them or challenge them.
Common elements in psychological thrillers are mind games, psychological themes, stalking, confinement/deathtraps, horror-of-personality, and obsession.
Common elements in mystical films usually involve magic, supernatural events, make-believe creatures, or exotic fantasy worlds. The genre is considered to be distinct from science fiction film and horror film, although the genres do overlap.
So some other conventions we may consider for our film would be:
A damsel in distress
A hero/heroine
A mystical creature (this is normally evil)
Fear
Gore (Overlap with the horror genre)
A twisty plotline (you have to guess what's coming next)
So by exploring the conventions of our genre we are able to understand how to involve and entertain the audience while keeping the narrative within the specific genre.
First draft treatment
Neck of the Woods Treatment
This is our first draft of our treatment. We wrote these after our group treatments were presented to the class so improvements could be made. (In audio file below)
This is our first draft of our treatment. We wrote these after our group treatments were presented to the class so improvements could be made. (In audio file below)
Tuesday, 19 October 2010
Treatment presentation
Here is an audio of our group presenting our treatment idea to the rest of the class, after the class had the opportunity to ask questions if they did not understand or had queries to how feasable our treatment was. After this if any major problems had occured, for example they did not understand our treatement we could change it and improve it.
Examples of Short's
Here are a couple of famous shorts that helped inspire us. All of these examples are from Youtube. As with most shorts these have a surprise ending wich makes the viewer think ''ahhh''. This seems to be a very common ending which is popular. We particularly loved the titles in the short 'Bitch' as they move along the conveyor belt on the items of shopping, we tried to incorportae this onto our film by putting our titles on the news report.
The Black Hole
Bitch
Desire. A Love Story
The Black Hole
Bitch
Desire. A Love Story
Short's
Since the 1980s, the term "short subject" has come to be used interchangeably with "short film," an international, academic term used to mean a contemporary non-commercial motion picture that is substantially shorter than the average commercial feature film. There is no clear definition of the maximum length of a short film, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences classify it as 40 minutes, while the Internet Movie Database refers to any film lasting less than 45 minutes as a short subject. The short-film form is to the full-length film what the short story is to a full-fledged novel.
Short filmmaking is massively growing in popularity among amateurs and enthusiasts, who are taking advantage of affordable equipment and with certain websites which encourage the submission of user-created short films, such as YouTube, Openfilm, BritFilms and Newgrounds have attracted large communities of artists and viewers, which increases their short's popularity giving them the chance that they may be recognised and be asked to work on paid projects with different companies.
Short filmmaking is massively growing in popularity among amateurs and enthusiasts, who are taking advantage of affordable equipment and with certain websites which encourage the submission of user-created short films, such as YouTube, Openfilm, BritFilms and Newgrounds have attracted large communities of artists and viewers, which increases their short's popularity giving them the chance that they may be recognised and be asked to work on paid projects with different companies.
Monday, 18 October 2010
Our Group's Original Idea's
At the start of the course all of the class had to individually come up with an idea for a short film. We then had to present our idea's to the class. Our idea's were marked under things like practicality and originality.
My original idea was about an older brother who turns into a werewolf with the transition lasting over a couple of days, on the last fatal morning he kills his younger brother who takes a photo of him in his werewolf state on his poloaroid camera. This polaroid picture idea let's us have a werewolf in the film without having an actual werewolf (e.g someone dressed up or trying to afford CGI)
Phoebe's idea was about a loner boy who arrives home to hear a news report about a killer murdering young girls. The murderer's clothes are the main focus of the news report and as the boy goes upstairs he then puts on the killer's outfit.
My original idea was about an older brother who turns into a werewolf with the transition lasting over a couple of days, on the last fatal morning he kills his younger brother who takes a photo of him in his werewolf state on his poloaroid camera. This polaroid picture idea let's us have a werewolf in the film without having an actual werewolf (e.g someone dressed up or trying to afford CGI)
Phoebe's idea was about a loner boy who arrives home to hear a news report about a killer murdering young girls. The murderer's clothes are the main focus of the news report and as the boy goes upstairs he then puts on the killer's outfit.
Sunday, 17 October 2010
Our Group!!
This year we have been put into groups. My group consists of Phoebe Smith and Lucy Cluely. I am very happy in my group as we are all very creative and we can work well together.
Lucy is a very happy person who will take the lead when she feels she must and can put a very good argument together.
Phoebe is brilliant at putting idea's across and can work out how to bridge our idea's together. She can also think of idea's to link all our other idea's together.
We gel very well together as we all have basic technology skills which enable us to work on the programs and software that we need to bring our idea's to life.
Lucy is a very happy person who will take the lead when she feels she must and can put a very good argument together.
Phoebe is brilliant at putting idea's across and can work out how to bridge our idea's together. She can also think of idea's to link all our other idea's together.
We gel very well together as we all have basic technology skills which enable us to work on the programs and software that we need to bring our idea's to life.
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