FINAL OPENING SEQUENCE

EVALUATION Q7

Evaluation Question 7

Preliminary task and how it benefitted my final from charlotte crewe

EVALUATION Q6

Evaluation Question 6

EVALUATION Q5

EVALUATION 5

EVALUATION Q4

Evaluation 4

EVALUATION Q3

EVALUATION 3

EVALUATION Q2

Evaluation Question 2

Social Group representation

EVALUATION Q1

EVALUATION 1

Conventions of our media product

Our product in some ways replicates any other typical horror movie opening sequence if you fail to acknowledge the subtleties in which we have utilised to create our unique idea. Despite this, the majority of our research into psychological-horror films was into the typical and famous films such as Insidious and Blair Witch Project. We gathered inspiration from these films' conventions such as the music and the lighting, as well as costume and setting. All factors were considered and acknowledged throughout our research. Once completing all of our research and re-evaluating our initial opening sequence idea we set out to ask ourselves how we could make our film different from the films we have gathered inspiration from, such as Insidious and The Blair Witch Project. We knew we had to challenge the conventions to create a never-been-done-before idea that would be credible to our research also. 

Within our research towards the Final Girl Theory, our opening sequence challenges this as the main character, who reflects the 'final girl', isn't at all the hero or the strong independent female who saves everyone, but she is in fact the twisted evil one who kills nurses at every hospital she goes to, due to a grudge she holds from her childhood. despite this, the audience will feel conflicted as we learn a lot about her abusive childhood which makes them like her as well as fear her; this is why our opening sequence challenges typical horror movies.

The conventions of a Horror film typically consist of the generic creepy soundtrack as well as a female character who appears to be insane of deceased. Despite other factors of our opening sequence being unique, these two famous conventions are utilised in our final product. We use the soundtrack from ‘Candy man’ in our opening sequence as well as our main character being a female whose appearance is frightening and also is mentally insane. The lighting inspiration was not really from a specific film, as when you think of the lighting in a typical horror film you do immediately think of darkness and low-key lighting, which is why we predominantly use a darkly saturated filter for the majority of our final product. We also use a 60’s inspired filter for the scenes shot in the ‘hospital’ which we took inspiration from ‘Girl, Interrupted’.

The costume was actually again our way of sticking to the traditions of a typical ‘dead girl’ outfit, with dark eye make-up, messy hair, a long hospital gown. We used this ‘typical look’ as our main character wore a white hospital gown which we dishevelled for the outdoor scenes to make look more realistic and over-worn. She also had messy hair and pale skin to appear as if she was ill and malnourished. Many of the close up shots showed her with dark and ‘hollow’ looking eyes which is also a convention of a horror film.  We knew that we could maintain the most common conventions of horror films whilst also twisting the features of the opening sequence subtly to make the audience confused further. We have challenged the fact that in most opening sequences in horror films they wouldn’t reveal that much in the opening sequence, however we have chosen to reveal a lot about the main character’s life: the audience will believe that all has been revealed however I know that if our film was to continue they would be confused and find the plot difficult to understand due to its complexity in order to reflect the main character’s psychological trauma. 

Additionally, most horror films wouldn’t reveal its actually a horror film until the title sequence is over and the film has actually begun. We challenge this as in our opening sequence, from its onset we make it clear to the audience that it is a horror. Also, the structure of our opening sequence also challenges typical horrors. Usually we see horror films with flowing plots which just pan out and lead to a final climax, however ours never really has a beginning, middle or end, yet a complete mixture of past and present throughout, so the audience will struggle to know what is happening and when.  

EDITING 7

Editing 7: Finishing touches...

When it came to adding in the finishing touches of our final product we knew that we would have to perfect it as much as we could. We had gotten some feedback from our peers and they advised us on what we could alter in order to make it look professional and fitted to the genre. 


I spent a lot of time on the sound, listening closely for when to use the blade tool and crop the audio and end the background music, ect. This was extremely time consuming and I can say that I found this bit particularly challenging as it was so difficult to get wrong as well as very noticeable when watching it back, so it had to be fixed...

As a group we decided that the use of the song we were initially using was too commonly known and associated with Horror genre and deleted it completely. We kept the Candy Man theme song as well as the Blumhouse production theme tune, but added in a heartbeat sound to reflect and build up the anxiety from the main character and reflect her own heart beat. 

I had an idea to change the fonts of the credits to a type writer font to reflect the use of type writers in hospitals in the 60's and also added in a rather quiet typewriter sound which I layered over the credits to make it sound as if the credits were being typed as they appeared. 
I felt that this was a clever touch to the opening sequence as it was subtle but also had a very 60's vibe to it. 

We finally felt happy with our final product.

EDITING 6

Editing 6: Almost there...

Myself and Kate went after school had finished and spent a few hours re-watching and altering parts of our opening sequence which we felt could be improved.

We spent a lot of time on the colour match tools as we continued to edit the shots and add filters to them so each filter matched and flowed, otherwise it just looked extremely unprofessional. 
We decided on altering the brightness, saturation and exposure of each shot to make it slightly darker, as well as adding on the 'Old Film' filter twice to create the 60's film vibe of our opening sequence. 

Initially we decided to keep the shots in the hospital without a filter but we realised it didn't fit in with the theme what so ever and so I proposed that we changed all shots to have a similar filter so it was obvious it was set in the same time period just with a different camera. 

EDITING 5

Editing- Day 5

As we come to an end of editing our opening sequence to its final product, it came to the stages of editing the subtleties and final perfections of our footage in order to appear as professional as possible.
As we had completed the narrative structure, or so we thought, we spent time after the school day had finished on editing in the sound and adjusting the audio of the product. 
The sound adjustments is probably what I found the most challenging to edit as it was trying to get certain parts of the opening sequence with lower volume and some dialogues enhanced; in short, the sound of our opening sequence was just extremely complicated and challenging. 

To overcome this, we spent a lot of time cutting the audio up using the blade tool, so that we could make the volume of the music featured louder in some places and quieter in others. Additionally,  we had to take in to account our non-diagetic sound and dialogue and make sure that this was easier to hear than the soundtrack over laying it in the background. Finally, we were able to come to a compromise with our audio in general and decided to have the theme song from 'Candy man' throughout the majority of the opening sequence in order to improve the opening sequences continuity as before this we realised the two songs we tried to use together over-complicated things and didn't flow enough. We were much happier with how things were when we simplified the soundtrack and it made it appear much more professional than it was before. 


We also added in the credits, such as 'Directed by', and we immediately were happy with the positioning of them but it did take us some deliberation as a group to decide on a font as we decided that a simple one would be best for the credits, due to our lack of variation on the software we had to go with the safest choice. 

EDITING 4

Editing Day 4

On our 4th editing session it was my turn to edit again and I made a chunk of our opening sequence improve by the help of my group. We realised that we wanted to change the order of our opening sequence so had to make a new project and copy and paste half of it into the new event. This allowed us to adjust the order of the clips and audios without any complications, as well as saving us a lot of time finding an alternative way to rearrange the clips. 

Once I had done this, we began carefully cutting and selecting smaller clips and editing them so they fit perfectly into a match on action, a reverse shot and the 180 degree rule. Splitting the clips up like this allowed us to see where things would fit best and allowed us to do it easily and efficiently. 

Also, we decided to have the title come up before the end of the opening sequence and slightly begin the actual film and have that as the interview so it seemed as if the film was actually starting. This would improve our opening sequence as it will now appear much more professional and will mirror many other horror films, how after the title appears it goes straight into the plot of the film. It will also improve the structure of the film and make the audience aware when the present day is. 

This editing session allowed us to clearly rearrange and order the clip properly once we had gotten used to using final cut pro. The more we have used the software the easier it has been for us to edit it successfully and exactly how we wanted our Opening sequence to be when we first came up with our initial ideas. 

FILMING 3

Re- filming part of our Opening Sequence

Whilst editing we realised that we didn't have enough footage to make our opening sequence as long and as scary as we first set out for it to be. We decided to set a new filming date at Sophie's house on the 28th of March, and we carried this out successfully. 

We got our actors to act out an interview scene between Chayce (the subject) and Kate (the interviewer). Kate asked Chayce a series of mental illness related questions before finally confirming there would be no further interviews on "the Subject". This allowed us to include dialogue in our opening sequence as well as giving us enough footage to make our opening sequence better. 

We have now put the newly filmed footage onto final cut pro and will continue to edit it in with our opening sequence to complete our final product by our deadline. 

UPDATED IDEAS

Changes to our Opening Sequence: Updated Ideas

As a group we decided that it would be a good idea to take a step back and watch the opening sequence through and be critical in what changes we think we could make. We all wrote a number of potential ideas to change the opening sequence and then share and discuss them as a group.

Kate decided that our opening sequence lacked shot type and camera angle variety and after we all agreed we decided to set a date to re-film in the forest in order to get more camera angles, such as an ariel shot/ birds eye view shot, over the shoulder shot, extreme close up. We also decided it was necessary to edit in more match-on-actions in order to show that we understand it fully and can use this skill to make our product look professional. 


Also, Lucy then came up with the idea of an interview scene, after we decided that more dialogue was necessary, between the main female character and a nurse character. We would use a camcorder as a prop in order to show the 60's theme and make it look more old as if the film was filmed by an old camera. We were to film this in Sophie's House just like the other indoors shots. 

EDITING 3

Editing Day 3

We added in more footage and continued to build up the opening sequence and to make it flow and all fit together I utilized the blade tool to  precisely cut the footage as I knew that it needed to be as fine tuned as possible. 

I then layered two clips on final cut pro so the transition was a fade and not a fast cut. We did this on purpose because this part of  our  opening sequence was a scene which was meant to be portrayed as blurred and delirious and is meant to reflect the mood and feelings of the character.

Once we realized as a group that our initial idea for the background music wouldn't work, we  took a break from editing and I went to find another song which would fit our opening sequence better. I came across the theme song from 'Candy man' and as a group we decided it would work much better. We added the music in to the opening sequence  for the scenes when she's in the hospital but again used  the blade  tool to stop the music when the scene switches to the forest. We then used the volume fade tool to make the sound gradually die out so  it sounded more professional.

EDITING 2

Editing: Day 2

On our second day of editing, we made sure that everybody in the group was given a chance to use the software and edit a section themselves, so for the majority of this session I advised what my team members could edit but had less of a direct impact to the editing. 

We began by re-watching what we had already done, and immediately saw faults in it. I noticed that we needed to make the transitions fade slightly more, so we used the transition tool to improve this, which made the opening sequence look massively more professional, just by improving that subtlety alone. 

As a group we selected and uploaded all of the footage from day 2 of filming and discovered that we needed to alter the colour scheme of these clips. Because we wanted it to represent a 60's style camera and theme, we played around with the colour board until we found that we would lower the saturation slightly in order to create a warm and rose tinted filter, which we think portrays a 60's camera film. 

I also discovered how to use the reverse tool, and we swapped a clip and made it backwards so it fit better with its previous clip. When it came to adding in the flashbacks of the opening sequence I realised we would have to find a transition which made it clear that a flashback was happening, so we discovered the 'flash' transition which appeared as if a white light was what was switching between past and present. 

Lucy utilised the title sequences, by adding in a location, date and time to further emphasise that it was a flashback and not set in the same time so the audience don't get confused. Our fonts we have gone with for now are quite simple as we have realised we don't want our opening sequence to look cheap and unprofessional which is why we have gone with simple fonts for now until we find something more suitable and fitting to our research. 

Overall from this day of editing I have realised that we might need to re-film some footage as we have a lack of dialogue and shot types compared to what we set out to have initially. We, as a group, plan to get footage with some more dialogue and a range of shot types to improve our final product and make our editing much easier. 

EDITING 1

Editing: Attempt 1

After we finally had uploaded our footage onto Final Cut Pro, myself and Kate found ourselves just playing around with the software in order to get a feel for how it worked properly. 
We discovered the blade tool, the zoom tool and the Ken Burns tool; all which was useful to our first attempt at Editing. 
The clip below shows what we did on our first day of editing, despite it only lasting a few seconds and still requiring a lot of work, we did successfully use the colour board where we altered our saturation and colour contrast to make the footage appear darker and have a more low-key lighting. We also used a fast- cut transition to make the film appear to be fast paced and to build tension quickly. We overlapped the footage with a wind noise, as well as a composition which we found on final cut pro which happened to fit perfectly on top of our footage. I discovered the title sequence tool where you were able to get the film title to appear at any point of your opening seqence, however I was disappointed with the range of fonts which Final Cut Pro had to offer which meant we couldn't use a font which we had originally wanted to use. By the end of our editing we will hopefully be happy with our font and also have added in credits and more subtitles, etc. 
Overall we were really happy of how our first editing session panned out, and we now know what to do next time and how

to use the software effectively. 

FILMING 2

Filming Day 2: Sophie's House

On the 18th of February we filmed the rest of the footage at Sophie's house in an empty room. We had Chayce back in the costume but this time with a more neat and tidy appearance. 
Because I directed and filmed the previous scenes, the other girls took charge when it came to filming this footage and directing it.
I made sure that we were roughly going off the shot lists and story boards which we had produced to ensure that we would have all the footage and shot lists we would need so we didn't have to re-film it and waste time. 
On the day of filming the window in the room had natural lighting coming through which was suitable for our footage and meant that we wouldn't need to spend as much time editing as we thought. 

Here is some of our raw footage from filming DAY 2. 

FILMING 1

Filming Day 1: 
On the 8th of February our group set out to Alderley Edge to film some of the scenes for our opening sequence. We had our actor, Chayce Smith get into costume and one of the group members did her hair and make up, inspired from the research I did into horror film mise en scene. 
Both myself and Kate hand held a camera and stood at different angles to what we were filming; we decided to not use a tripod to film as we believed that  a hand-held camera would make the scenes in the woods much more realistic with a horror-vibe to it.
I directed this part as I knew that I had creative ideas about the camera angles and shot types which would really make our opening sequence spooky and startling. 
The reason that myself and Kate filmed the scenes at the same time but using two different angles was so we could match the action of the footage easily without having to re-film the footage. 
I did a long shot to capture the main characters body and costume and this came from a pan in order to establish the setting. I also did a close up of a side profile of Chayce's face which we took 3 times. The footage I shot was utilized in editing.

Here is just one clip of our raw footage of filming day 1 which I directed and filmed which shows a long shot of the main character from the side. 

FILMING PRACTISE

Filming Practise

This is just a small clip from our filming footage when we went to Alderley Edge to film shots for our first scene of the opening sequence.

This shot is overall what our second scene is going to be like: you see a distressed and ill mental patient in a hospital gown alone in the woods.

Obviously we plan to add music, screams and other surround sounds to make the opening sequence more realistic. 

FILMING SCHEDUAL

Filming Schedule for Opening Sequence

Date: 8th February

Location: Alderley Edge Forrest

Scene: On this date we will film the second scene and alternate setting which will be the girls flash backs in the opening sequence. We plan to go at about 4:30pm so the sun is going down therefor the lighting is low key but not too dark. We hope for the weather to be cold and white foggy to add to the spooky look however if this isn't the case then we will just add filters to our footage when it comes to editing to make it look more like this. We will probably need a couple of hours to complete filming here as we plan to film each shot 2-3 times each despite only having 2 scenes in this location. We will only need our main character to film at this location.

Date: 18th February

Location: Sophie's House

Scene: On this date we will film the main footage of our opening sequence. We plan to spend the full day here filming to make sure it is all to perfection and is of the best quality. We have a lot of shots at this location therefore require a large amount of time. We are using a room that is empty and putting in a chair and a bed and a few other props. This will be our mental institute patient bedroom. We will have all 3 characters needed to film at this location. Obviously the weather doesn't matter at this location but we still plan to have natural lighting and a 60s filter on the footage when it comes to editing.

SHOT LISTS+TALENT RELEASE

Opening Sequence: Shot Lists& Talent Release

Our story board sketches allowed us to create a detailed and specific shot list for each setting so we know exactly what to do on the day of filming.

We also got permission for our actors to be in our opening sequence including parental signatures, this is important for filming as in the real world, talent releases are required.

CREDITS AND TYPOGRAPHY

Credits and Typography

The title, 'The Subject',  will appear a few seconds after the ending of our opening sequence finishes as seen in our story board. This is purely for effect as we know it will startle the audience and this is entirely our aim. It is common for this technique to happen as seen in many horror films.

We plan to utilise fast cut transitions when doing this in order for all the focus to be on the title of the film. I feel like the fast cut is a very convential way to enter the title and in some terms is seen to prepare the audience for the rest of the film. The inspiration for such an enterance is from the film 'Insidious'.



I personally find this clip helpful to showing us how we plan to edit in our title into our footage and as Insidious has already inspired many of our ideas for our opening sequence, it only seems fitting to use its title and credits as inspiration also.
We will include all of the necessary credits in our opening sequence as the opening sequence happens such as actors names, director, producer, costume designer, make up artist, ect.

Our focus groups allowed us to find the right font to use for our Opening sequences title and credits and the one we chose fits perfectly with the conventions of our film as it appears scratched and this implies that the character could be psychologically troubled.

PLANNING

Opening Sequence: PLANNING

 Despite the poor quality of these images they are infact reflecting our specific plan for filming our opening sequence, including a sketch of each scene briefly, shot types and mise en scene.

These story boards have helped us as a group visualise what our opening sequence is going to be like in the actual final product. We now fully understand how it is going to play out, and by using these detailed story boards we are able to apply all of the camera angles and shot types so we wont have to focus on figuring out what to do when it actually comes to filming day. Having all of this planned will allow us to get filming done much quicker.

UPDATED OPENING SEQUENCE IDEA

Updated Opening Sequence Idea 

After finishing all of our research and planning for our opening sequence we realised that our initial ideas had changed slightly. We felt that we needed to establish the specific plan for our project. This video clarifys our idea entirely and has helped us understand more thoroughly what exactly we are going to be doing. It also allowed us to begin making our story boards and shot lists. 

LIGHTING RESEARCH

Lighting Research: Our Inspiration

We plan for our opening sequence to mainly be shot in a dim, low-key light with natural sun light so it appears to be the sunrise, but also some evening shots included to show the amount of time our character spent in the woods away from civilisation. Obviously our other setting is in a mental institution which is going to be lit with artificial lighting but edited with a slight colour sepia filter on it to reflect the time period of the 70's which it is set in.

We have looked at a few ideas which we can take inspiration from when filming our opening sequence from other psychological horror movies which are set in similar places.

I also adore the film footage filter from the decade of the 60's-70's because i believe that this decade is a huge convention of psychological horrors alone and it reflects a time period of superstision and insanity, which is vastly reflected in my opening sequence also if all goes to plan. These photographs are unrelated to our opening sequence however they have been taken with the timeless filter which reflects our desired time period:

 

Sound Research: music inspiration

Typical horror film music is quite always the conventional spooky and haunting melody which sets the mood of the film. My group and I have been looking into films which use the scariest and most haunting music soundtracks to find inspiration for our opening sequence.
Almost immediately, we came across quite a few peices of music which would be fitting to our ideas.

The film Insidious uses a song called "Tip Toe"

The high pitched vocals featured in this song are a convention of music which is usually featured in horror movies because it connotes a supernatural presence or alternatively a spooky old fashioned vibe around the film.

With a lot of thinking we decided that this song would be perfect for our opening sequence because like our idea, Insidious is a psychological horror film full of enigma which is exactly which we want to inject into our editing, so our final product is as thought provokingly frightening as possible.

However we want to experiment with layering sounds: having this song playing with the noises of screams and violins dubbed in to make it sound more twisted and scary. We also plan to speed the song up and slow it down as the opening sequence progresses to show the climatic points and the more sinister, haunting parts.

I personally believe that the soundtrack of a movies title sequence is extremely important because it can either reveal the films mood or deter the audience away from what they think it actually could be. For this opening sequence in particular I believe that this song with editing is perfect for our opening sequence.

 

Preliminary Task

Here is our footage from our preliminary task where the filming requirements were to include the following techniques:  * 180 degree rule; * match on action. As this was our second attempt at filming, we did struggle with filming from the right angles in order to create a realistic scene. We decided that we should have shot another angle of footage inbetween the transition of 11 seconds and 12 seconds to show another angle of perspective from where Kate is walking towards. This mistake has made me ensure that I wont allow it happening in my opening sequence.

 

Despite this minor self-criticism, I believe that we successfully edited the 180 degree rule and the match on action.

 

* Match on action transition @ 5 seconds

* 180 degree rule transition @ 15 seconds... for example these screenshots of our footage show how we have gone about utilising the 180 degree rule by filming from one persons left shoulder to the other persons right shoulder, to ensure the camera is kept along the imaginary 180 degree line.

Filming this preliminary task has really helped me grasp the rules and allowed me to apply them instead of just reading about what they meant which has given me a much fuller understanding of their necessity. I have picked up skills and knowledge which I can now apply when it comes to filming my opening sequence.

Location Research

As we have always been clear on our film being set in two locations: a spooky looking Forrest and an old fashioned, 60's style mental asylum, we decided on Alderley Edge Woods for the spooky looking Forrest. 

Many horror films also feature the typical derelict and dark woods, such as Mama, The Blair Witch project and Cabin in the woods.

The shots taken here by myself, include a range of ideas where we plan to shoot, although that may change due to the difficulty of approaching that area.

We plan to film in dim/sundown lighting so it's not fully dark and we can use the camera to the best of its abilty. 

The natural lighting here is perfect however we may require editing and filters when it comes to the actual film footage as we can't depend on the weather being the same when it comes to filming.

 

Psychological Horror movies also set in the woods: Inspiration