Storyboard

The storyboard will be vital to our filming day, as it will ensure our organisation. We can use it to reference every shot that we take, to make sure that continuity is not an issue.



Written by Harry Crotty, Mel Owen, Sasha Gibson and Emili Hone

Drawn by Harry Crotty

Blog Background development

Designing our Background

(This was an example of what we could of had as our background, however, we decided that the photo of the park swings is more suited to our opening because of the importance of the location.

 It is, however, used on the Facebook and Twitter page as the cover photo)



I used one of the photos Emili took of our location and edited it using Photoshop CS6.

Here is a step by step guide to how i did it:

First i pasted the image onto a blank canvas.

I then duplicated my layer with the picture. I know have two layers, both with the picture on it. I then with my copy of the first layer, changed the Blend of the layer to Hard Light (beside the opacity percentage)

Then i went to Image, at the top left, and  to Adjustments, Desaturate. I then went to images, Adjustments a second time but headed to Shadows/Highlights

Once in Shadows/Highlights i changed the shadow amount to 40% and the Highlight amount 0%.

 i then went back to the first layer with the original photo and lowered the Fill (underneath Opacity) to 48%.

Finally i played around with the Blur, Sharpen, and Smudge tool till i was finally happy.

By Harry Crotty

Secure and Paranoid Horror

After reading an extract from Steve Neale's 'Genre and Contemporary Hollywood' it has been made clear how through time, horror has developed into two catergories, secure horror and paranoid horror.

He says that horror prior to the 1960's used secure horror because it was scary enough, and from the 70's onwards horror "presumes a world in which the monstrous threat is increasingly beyong control" in order to please an audience whose thirst for the unknown is growing.

He catergories the characteristics of secure horror and paranoid horror in this table:

Secure Horror	Paranoid Horror
Successful human intervention	Failed human intervention
Effective expertise	Ineffective expertise
Authorities as legitimate	Authorities as unreliable
Sustainable order	Escalating disorder
‘external’ threats	‘internal’ threat
Centre-periphery organisation	Victim groups organisation
Defined boundaries	Diffuse boundaries
Closed narratives	Open narratives

 We think this is going to help us to decide what kind of horror we are going to do, and keeping to the characteristics of the horror that we decide.

By Emili Hone

What is our final narrative?

 

After a lot of idea's we have concluded on a narrative that is appropriate to our setting. Our opening's storyline will be portrayed through use of camera work and editing cutting between two situations. So, here it is:

A teenage girl and boy are playing hide and seek in the park.

 The boy ventures into the woods and begins to feel another presence.

Meanwhile, the girl is counting alone in the park, with her hands covering her eyes.

 The audience understands that something has happened to the boy, whilst the girl is left alone counting.

We then see the unknown presence watching the girl, and eventually sneaking up on her.

The name of the film then comes at the end of the opening.

We have decided to call the film "TEN" as the girl counts to ten, and is inevitably counting down to her own danger. It highlights the fact that they are playing hide and seek, a mysterious and secrtive game, which reflects the qualities of the unknown presence. We have chosen a cryptic antagonist because our research shows that people are most fearful of the unknown.

 

By Emili Hone, Sasha Gibson, Melissa Owen

Location Photos

The location for filming our opening

After considering the good and bad sides to our location idea's, we settled on the idea of a park. We chose this because we wanted to set our horror in a location where people would normally feel safe. Our research showed that people felt safest when surrounded by people, and as parks are often full of people (usually innocent children), we thought that we would turn the idea on it's head and film our horror opening here. We will also use the woods that are beside the park to combine the feeling of being 'safe' in the park, with the feeling of being isolated in the forest.

The park entrance... 

A shot of the scout hut and the field that is beside the park...

A goal post, signifying the youth that we associate with parks...

The woods that are beside the park...

The park itself ...

I then took pictures of aspects of the park that I thought had a 'creepy' essence. I edited them so that they were darker, and added a blue tone to the photos, to make them look more scary.

 The fact that the swings are very dirty makes this innocent park seem much more devious. 

Close up shots like this will add a great deal of detail to our opening.

Perhaps we could take a short clip of this sign to hint at the horror that is to come... 

By Emili Hone

making of the logo

(This logo was the first one we agreed on at the beginning of the process. A new one was made later on and is the one we now use for our film production group. This post merely shows the process of picking our logo)

The idea behind the logo came from experimenting with names and then sketching out ideas. The name H.E.M.S came from putting the first letter of each of our names; Harry, Emily, Mel and Sasha. Because our theme is horror we needed to have a horror based logo, this is why we have barbed wire across the logo creating a rough, jagged and horrific look.

First group logo (was not used in the end)

Location

Initial location ideas

Within our group we have researched and discussed several locations that would best fit our horror opening. We have initially decided that we think an interesting place of setting is somewhere that people generally associate with being a safe place, as we wanted to juxtapose fear with the feeling of being in a place of sanctuary.

The four key places that we felt were associated with being safe were a church, a home, a school and a playground. All are places that in everyday life we would feel protected and away from harm, however they are common locations in horror films. For instance the film 'The Devil Inside' a film about demonic possession, and is mostly based in cathedrals, churches and hospitals - all places where people find protection, whether it be from God, or science. In the film 'Tormented' several teenagers are murdered by a bullied, dead student, all within they're school.

These locations would create tension and fear amongst and audience as unexpected places are affected by evil, subsequently making the audience feel a strong amount of unnerve.

By Alexandra Gibson