Why Did we choose

Lily and Gareth?

 We chose Lily because she is what anyone is willing to accept as a normal teenage girl. This makes her relateable to the main audience of horror films (16-21ish), and will therefore make the audience feel more involved in her story.

We chose Gareth for similar reasons. His height, frame, and maturity is what the audience would expect of a teenage boy. Furthermore, we needed an actor who would commit to his part, and as Gareth is a dedicated theatre student, we trusted him to do this.

By Emili Hone

Why Did We Choose a Park and Woods?

         

        Why did we choose park and woods?

Why did we decide against the school? 

Despite the fact that school was where a lot of our interviewee's felt the most safe, there are problems with filming in a school. The hours when we would film would disrupt the cleaners at our school. We also considered the fact that there might be a lot of extra noise in our shots, due to other students being around. We also did not want to be seen to be taking the 'easy option' of filming in the place that we are most familiar.

Why not film in a home?

Despite following many of the conventions, we didn't want to make our opening too much like your typical horror. We also think that a park would contain much more interesting colour and textures.

Why didn't we choose a church?

To film in a church we would have to gain special permission from the council and the people involved with the church. Upon hearing this, we realised that it may be disrespectful to film a horror in such a sensetive location. 

So yes, we chose our location idea of a park. It fits best with our idea, which is a secret for the moment! It is also an interesting place to film in terms of mise-en-scene, as well as being simple to organise.

By Emili Hone 

Recording of the music

                    Recording Our Music 

When the time came to add sound to our movie opening, we began by discussing the kind of sound that would fit well with our piece. Sound is key for building tension, however in our piece our climax is built more from the fast pace of the action, rather than intricate soundtrack. Therefore we decided our sound shouldn't be too complex. I played around with the keyboard settings on Garage Band, this allowed us access to a range of sounds that we could use to create our suitable musical score. Our inspiration had mainly come from musical scores using striking strings such as the theme tunes of 'Psycho' and 'Jaws'. Both pieces of music use single notes at fast tempo's to build tension. Using single, repetitive notes would prove effective in our piece, it wasn't too complex seeing as we were beginners using Garage Band. 

Our particular piece of music consisted of Orchestral Strings, repetitive C note in a low octave, that progressed to a repetitive D. We chose to change the note halfway through so that it wasn't noticeably tedious. We also increased the intensity of the track and layered another string sound when the lead male, discovers the hooded figure, as it is a climatic moment in our film opening. 

Garage Band - The recording process using the keyboard and Orchestral Strings.



By Alexandra Gibson

Editing

Editing Process In 10 Steps

1) We started by importing all of our footage into iMovie.
2) We ordered the raw footage into chronological order according to our storyboard.
3) We began editing the footage into order. We cropped and cut each clip to make sure that the continuity was correct, and was pleasing to watch and added a blue/green tinge colour over-lay.
4) We removed all sound from every clip as we wanted to record our own foley sounds and dialogue to get the best quality possible in our finished piece.
4) Once the footage was roughly edited together we began adding titles, including our production name and logo.
5) We began refining the footage, and cropping down clips in order to improve the fast pace of the piece.
6) We imported the foley sounds that we had recorded (See 'Foley Sound' post) and layered them over the top of our footage.
7) We then began recording our music using Garage Band (See 'Recording Our Music' post).
8) Once the soundtrack was done we recorded the separate dialogue with our actress, Lily, and layered that in sync with the footage.
9) We showed our rough cut to a group of our peers for feedback, and uploaded it to various social media sites. (See 'What Have We Learned About Technology?' post)
10) Finally we took into consideration the feedback we had from our first cut and made final improvements which included, more titling, refining clips, and adjusting sound levels.

Emili and Alexandra editing

By Alexandra Gibson

Foley Sound Recording

Foley Sound Experiment

We decided that the wind on our footage was too harsh, therefore we needed to rerecord some natural outdoor noise including slight wind, birds ect in order to fill in the gaps with no dialogue. As we stripped all clips of their sound, we needed to film Foley sounds that sounded like swings, as well as rerecord our actress’s dialogue. Here is a video montage of the Foley sounds that we recorded:

We intend on using the sounds we recorded in our film opening.

By Emili Hone and Alexandra Gibson

 

Bringing Flick Trick Productions to the social media

Connecting to our Audience

We decided to make a Facebook page and Twitter account for Flick Trick Productions to increase its publicity and to connect to our audience

• http://www.facebook.com/FlicktrickProductions

• https://twitter.com/Flick_Trick

FACEBOOK

By making ourselves available to our audience we can get feedback and support on our opening. We then know what they audience like about our opening and what they think could be improved on.

We can also see who appreciates our work in general

 

TWITTER

Twitter helps to get our opening noticed and publicised. People then make comments and some suggest how to improve the opening.

The day we filmed

The day we filmed our Horror Opening

We arrived at our chosen destination to film our horror opening, this was a park close to Emili and seemed suitable for what we wanted to achieve. It had a playground, a set of football pitches and most importantly some woods beside it. Luckily within the woods there was a hollow tree which we decided to use as the hiding spot for our character jack. The weather was perfect, cloudy and almost gloomy; the only downside was that it was freezing.

It took us about 3 hours to film until we were content with the footage. We took turns to film and had agreed before hand who would do what scene by writing the name of the chosen one next to the storyboard pictures. We filmed everything at least 3 times over and did shots in different positions so we'd have a good amount to choose from when it came to editing.

After we finished filming the main shots we took some short clips of things such as the swings and a gate into the playground. These came useful later on when it came to editing because we could put them in-between shots to break up them up, also adding much need tension to the final opening.

Pictures from the day of production

Here are some of the pictures that we have taken while we were filming the film opening to show the equipment that we have used and the process of the filming day.

Filming the first shot of the horror film opening

Using a crane to create the effect that we wanted just before Lily says number '10'

By Melissa Owen, Alexandra Gibson, Emili Hone and Harry Crotty

Detailed Editing Schedule

We often have free periods together as well as lessons to edit (although not all of the lessons will be available for editing). I will add particular events onto our editing schedule as and when we do them. Below are all the opportunities that we have to edit after we film on the 3^rd February, until our first draft deadline set by our teacher on the 1^st March:

Date and time available to edit	Anything that we got done
Monday 4th February between 10:10am and 11:15am	All footage uploaded to the computer and imported into imovie. We ordered all the footage in the order of our storyboard.
Wednesday 6th February between 10:10am and 11:15am	We slightly re-ordered the footage so that it did not completely follow the original storyboard as we thought that it fitted better.
Thursday 7th February between 11:30am and 12:30pm AND 14:30pm and and 15:40pm	Cutting clips.
Friday 8th February between 11:30am and 12:30pm	Cutting clips. We also took all sound off as we realised the wind was too loud. We decided that we would need to add the sound separately, which means re-recording our actress’s dialogue.
Monday 11th February between 10:10am and 11:15am	Edited saturation and added a blue tinge to the clips to add a ‘creepy’ feel.
Tuesday 12th February between 11:30am and 12:30pm
Wednesday 13th February between 13:30pm and 14:30pm	Emili and Sasha went to a park to film white noise for the background as well as monotone sounds by banging the slide. We also recorded foley sound for the swing by rattling a chain against a fence.
Friday 15th between 14:30pm and 15:40pm HALF TERM WEEK WHERE WE ARE UNABLE TO EDIT AS ALL DATA IS ON SCHOOL COMPUTERS	All sound clips taken yesterday were imported and added to the opening.
Monday 25th February between 10:10am and 11:15am	All sound clips were put into place on the opening and the opening was complete for the first screening on the 1st March.
Wednesday 27th February between 10:10am and 11:15am
Thursday 28th February between 11:30am and 12:30pm AND 14:30pm and and 15:40pm

by Emili Hone

Script

The script

Bonnie-   ONE...

                TWO...

                    THREE...

                  FOUR...

                FIVE...

              SIX...

                    SEVEN...

                   EIGHT...

                 NINE...

               TEN.

We decided to only have a small amount of dialogue. This is because we want to use diegetic sound from the environment to build the tension and atmosphere of the scene and to pull the audience into the woods with Bonnie, Jack and the antagonist - making the opening seem even more genuine.

By Harry Crotty

Logo

The making of our FLICKTRICK logo

THIS IS OUR FINAL LOGO

By Harry Crotty

Health and Safety

Health and Safety Planning and Precautions 

When planning the production of our film opening, we had to consider the safety precautions of filming on our location, as we had young actors involved. We visited http://www.hse.gov.uk/entertainment/theatre-tv/film.htm and looked at the health and safety guidlines for Film, TV and Broadcasting. They outlined that we must have assigned roles to prevent chance of risk, so we all had jobs that we would rotate. For instance:

 Filming: Alexandra    Monitor: Harry   Directing: Emili    Director of Movement: Melissa

Director of movement was an important role in ensuring that Health and Safety was reinforced, as it was about controlling how and where the actors moved. Specifically in our piece where they ran.

Emili visited the location: A park and forest. She checked the ground that our actors would be running on, by testing out running as well. On the filming day we mapped out the paths that we wanted our actors to move in, so that there was no risk of them falling over bumps or obstacles. We assessed the risks of what we asked our actors to do, and decided it was safe on our amateur film to keep the stunts and action to a minimum.

The HSE website

By Alexandra Gibson

The HSE Website

Blurb

                   DVD Blurb of 'ten'.

The film opening is key to the main events that happen further on in the film. It sets up the general narrative for the film, and initially entices a viewer. To think of creative ways to draw in an audience I thought of different ways that a film appeals to a viewer, including a DVD blurb. Aside from the front cover, the blurb on the back of a DVD is supposed to attract someone to the film, as make it appear as endearing.

"A teenage girl, Bonnie, is seen playing hide and seek in the park with her boyfriend Jack. When Jack runs off into a nearby forest things go awry when he is stalked by an unknown 'predator' like villain. As Bonnie is left innocently counting in the park, little does she know she is counting down the seconds left of Jack's life, as he is killed by the hooded villain. Unaware, Bonnie is left counting, vulnerable and solitary. More importanly, left in reach of the killer. As Bonnie is about to reach the number '10' the villain pinpoints her as his next victim, and her fate is left unknown as the title rolls."

                                                       By Alexandra Gibson

Weather forecast for the 3^rd February

 

The 3rd February is the day that we will film our opening. We have to make sure that the weather is consistent on the day, to avoid continuity problems. We plan to meet at the park at 10:30 am, so I looked up the weather forecast for Sunday for this time and into the early afternoon.

 

It looks like it could rain at some point, but it seems that it will only be momentary.

 

By Emili Hone

 

 

Our Schedule

Week beginning…	What we need to get done…
Monday 7th January	1)      Decide on our location. 2)      Take location pictures and upload them to the blog.
Monday 14th January	1)      Finalise our opening synopsis. 2)       Begin storyboard.
Monday 21st January	1)      Decide on whom to cast for the boy and girl characters. 2)      Finish storyboard
Monday 28th January	1)      Film on Sunday 3rd February.
Monday 4th February	1)      Begin to edit footage together to form our opening. 2)      As we go along make decisions on the background music.
Monday 11th February	1)      Continue editing 2)      Continue adding music
HALF TERM	1)      Individually add anything to the blog that we feel needs to be added.
Monday 25th February	1)      Continue editing until it is complete.
Monday 4th March	1)      Burn the opening to disks for each of us to present and hand in.