Research: Seven intro sequence

Seven has an incredible introduction, in the short space of two minutes, eight seconds, we see many, many images related to forensic science and detective work, giving an early insight to the film's atmosphere; a gritty murder mystery story.

Below is my timeline:
0:01, we see a book in a dark atmosphere, "New line cinema presents" dashing across a small space in the scene, a page is turned.
0:06, director's name "An Arnold Kopelson production", no background emphasises his importance in this film.
0:08, a diagram of two hands are shown on screen, at 0:11, "a film by David Fincher" appears on top of the image.
0:12, a metal device is turned, we then cut to a razor, slicing some paper.
0:13 "Brad Pitt", written in a blackboard style font to emphasize the autopsy atmosphere.
0:15 the razor slices some skin off from a finger
0:17 "Morgan Freeman"
0:20, a teabag is dipped into a mug
0:21, autopsy photograph of a murder victim
0:22, teabag is shown mixing in with the water
0:23, "Se7en" dashes across the screen, at 0:26 a stack of books appear.
0:28, a photo album is opened
0:29, the pages in the book shown at 0:01 are being turned again
0:30, many cast names are shown against a black backdrop
0:32, a document is being written out
0:33, "Richard Roundtree"
0:36, a photograph is shown developing in a darkroom
0:38, "R. Lee Ermy"
0:39, a film strip of photographs being cut by a pair of scissors
0:40, scissors cut another photo by a book
0:41, John C McGinley
0:43, sellotape being sliced by a metal blade and a photo over a document
0:45, extreme close up of a dollar bill, "In God we trust"
0:46, more staff names appear
0:48, another autopsy photograph is shown
0:50, a document with lots of writing on it is turned over
0:53, staff member names
1:00, a small amount of writing is smudged by a finger
1:02, a document is censored by a black marker
1:03, another document is turned over
1:04, staff names
1:07, more censoring on a document
1:10, a photograph is censored by a marker and crew names are shown
1:16, a document is written up by a darkroom pool
1:19, a strip of photographs is held over a document.
1:24, Staff names
1:26, a document is stuck together with more staff names appearing at the bottom.
1:29, a page is turned revealing another document
1:31, an autopsy photo is shown
1:35, a page is turned and more names are shown
1:37, a needle is being pulled out from in between a finger and a thumb
1:39, producer and co producer names
1:42, string is threaded through the eye of a needle
1:43, another autopsy photo is shown with producer names shown
1:47, needle is threaded through two pages of documents
1:51, cast names
1:54, book shelf with cast names
1:58, producer names shown against a dark background
2:01, the word "God" being removed from the bill from 45 seconds in, implying the atmosphere of the film
2:05, "Directed by David Fincher"

From the sheer length of this timeline, you can see without reading that this sequence is packed with information.

Planning: Storyboards

In our class we've been working on our storyboards, these will act as our guide to the filming as it shows the script we will follow, timing and the settings. It can also help to keep our place in the filming to keep things linear.

The filming shall take place in the church walk and proceed with Craig departing from his friend (still needing to be identified) and walk through the woods:

 The first frame shows our title scene, or rather the original concept of it's appearence. I do not know if we will use it yet or not, but at the planning session, it did not seem correct.



 The first frame shows where Craig starts running from the villain, and then he trips. We did not know if this would be a good idea because it is so horribly stereotypical, but in the end we decided to use it regardless.

Finally in these frames, Craig is crawling away after being wounded in the leg, but he is picked up by the villain and stabbed.

The villain takes his mask off and we zoom into Craigs face and then out of the mask, this is where the second proposition for the title to appear takes place.

Research: Psycho shower analysis

In our classes we have been studying the psycho shower scene in which the Hotel owned, dressed as his mother, attacks and kills the victim as shown below:


This is to show us how to film a scene with multiple angles, and also use props cleverly, as in this scene, they used chocolate sauce in place of blood, and the stabbing sound effects were made by stabbing a melon.
Psycho is widely considered a classic, and while I doubt our movie will be considered a classic, we hope to do well nonetheless.

Research and planning: Sound and music.

Sounds and music are crucial in atmospheric movies such as the horror genre, as they add an atmosphere and can foreshadow events adding to the suspense in horror.

As of such, planning the sounds and music was quite difficult, as we needed to get everything right in order to make this film seem like a horror.

The first thing I needed was a main theme, I was quite reluctant to use some of the internet's royalty free music as most of it was either terrible or not fitting to the theme of the film. Luckily however, I listen to Orchestrations from ZREO music, which takes soundtracks from Zelda games and orchestrates them into different music altogether.
Although this sounds like an odd source of music, ZREO Music was happy to provide music to people who puts special thanks in where due and also informing the staff, which I did both of.

Below is the email I sent

Sensitive information such as names and emails have been blacked out.

Unfortunately I did not get a reply but luckily I did not require one to use the theme, all I needed was to let them know of the project and with that completed I was able to use the theme I was looking at.

The sounds however, were luckily already installed to the system. At first I was reluctant to use predefined sounds but there was a lot of good sounds there, including the winds sound at the title and my first appearance, and also the stabbing sounds at the end.

Research and planning: Fonts.

Deciding what fonts we were going to use was a lengthy and arduous process; especially with the large variety of fonts at our disposal, and then even more so with the layer blending properties afterwards. It was not an easy task, but given the settings, forests and desolate areas, we figured we would need something narrow and threatening, and so I watched various films set in similar areas and took note of those fonts.
The first film I watched, was Blair Witch Project; infamously set in the forest where we as an audience felt completely lost alongside the students in the film, the theme suited ours perfectly, so naturally I figured that the font would also fit our purpose.

However, the context of the film in itself was the wrong genre, and even though the title suited the theme of the Blair Witch Project, it ultimately would be underwhelming in our film.

The second film I looked at was Scream. Although not set in a forest, the genre of the film was the same; slasher, so I decided that would be my next film to watch.

The title is distorted and so I decided that our title should ultimately be distorted also, but I thought that it wasn't enough, so I took this type of font and narrowed it down into the title font we have now.

It took a little while for the font to look just right, and I decided to use the shadow under the font from scream to make the film work.

I believe that despite all of the work put into finding this font, I find that it suits the film well and I am rather proud of it. I believe that it would be difficult to improve it much more.

Horror movie preperation: Settings and locations.

Ever since my initial idea way back in October, we have always had our settings cast on the woods in town by the cemetary.
Below are some photos of our location.

This first shot will be where Craig and his friend are walking from town to the church yard, this is where Craig bids fairwell to his friend and walks away.

This second shot is where Craig will walk past, this is going to be in the opening title sequence.

This is the shot we will see Craig entering the woods, this will also be in a lower lighting as this shot seems too inviting.

 The next few shots are of the pathway Craig will take in the rest of the film.

Horror movie preperation: Film title.

The film title was always a discussion in our group for the horror movie, however we had to split the group in half when we learned it was too large. In the new group (Craig and myself) we decided upon a title, "The dead woods" as it was foreboding and the setting for the intro was the woods. This title may not be permanant, however, as we are still considering other options.

Research: Dracula intros

In our media class, our next task is to plan and prepare for the intro scene to a horror movie. After watching 3 movie intros of our own during the autumn holiday, we watched 3 dracula intros:

The first film we watched was the intro to the 1922 horror film Nosferatu, by F. W. Murnau, this film was bright and cheerful in the intro, but the opening credits were dark and had a loud low key tune playing.

The second film we watched was the 1958 Dracula, starring Christopher Lee, by Terence Fisher, this film like Nosferatu was bright in the intro but the shot zoomed into a coffin which then had blood thrown on it to show a foreboding tone.

The third and final film we used to research was the 1992 Dracula, by Francis Ford Coppola, Starring Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder, this film opened on a narrative providing the audience with Dracula's story on how he became a vampire. The film intro used low key lighting and used plenty of iconography such as maps with the muslim religion symbol dominating it to connote an invasion.

The conventions we picked up on in these activities provided us with invaluable conventions to use in our coursework once filming begins.

Planning: Filming schedule

The filming is being done around sunset so we need to be careful with the timing and the transportation or equipment.
Below is our schedule:
Tuesday: Leave School at 3:20, walk to Navigation Wharf, film sequence 1; Ed & Craig dialogue and Craig's journey into the forest leave at 4:30 before it gets too dark.
Wednesday: Leave School at 3:20, walk to the forest and film sequence 2; Craig walking through wood, running away and falling. Possibly death, if we have time.
Thursday (Possible) Leave School at 2:20 and film anything that is outstanding.

Horror intro research; Three films

During some spare time I started researching and looking into the key factors of the intros of three great horror movies, below is my analysis:

Dawn of the dead – 2004 remake
Camera Shots: The first shot is a long shot of a crowd of Muslims praying simultaneously, which is a normal everyday occurrence, the next shot is a close up of a zombie, there isn’t any fluent movement but the audience can tell it is attacking. Many of the shots are close up, they are mainly unfocused and depict scenarios such as military police preparing, news reports that are largely unorganized which is chaotic in its own right, and people getting attacked by the zombies.
Sound: The sound in the opening few seconds are diegetic, and show the audience that there is no understanding of the zombies, and there is also lots of screaming that shows the terror of the outbreak. Then the sound becomes non diegetic to a song called “When the man comes around” by Johnny Cash. The sound becomes diegetic in the clips of news conferences or attacks.
Cuts: The cuts are frequent and numerous, the scene doesn’t stick with one clip for anything over 10 seconds to show the true chaos in the situation.
Mise en Scene: The lighting is mostly normal daylight to emphasize that this can happen in any  time of the day, the costumes are formal for the people who aren’t infected, and people who are infected are in normal everyday clothes, implying that the vast population of normal working class people are the first to be infected.

Scream
Camera shots: The first shot is a mid shot of a woman picking up a phone, there is confusion as to whom she is talking, but the caller makes no attempt to answer her questions, she then hangs up on him, only the be called a second time, in which he says that he wants to talk to her. She hangs up, the next shot is an establishing shot of her house with a swing rocking in the wind. She then starts making popcorn to be called a third time this shot is a  mid shot, the camera tracks her through the house as she talks to the mysterious caller. The caller then reveals that he is looking at her, and the camera zooms closer to the woman’s face, she hangs up. The man calls twice more and on the second time he threatens to gut her like a fish if she hangs up again, this shot uses panning and close up to emphasize her fear. The shots continue to be close up until she finds her boyfriend on the patio when it has a long shot of her boyfriend tied up.
Sound: The sound is diegetic mostly, of popcorn cooking and the phone conversations, the only non diegetic sound is where the killer reveals what he’ll do and then it has low key music.
Cuts: The shots cut frequently to keep pace and to keep suspense, the cuts normally only happen after the phone call takes a twist for the worst.
Mise en scene: the costumes are normal clothing for high school students, the killer is in a black robe and has a white ghost face mask, and the lighting is low key.

Dracula
Camera shots: we open on an establishing shot of a dome, a crucifix falls to the floor from an aerial shot as it smashes on the floor. We cut to a map with the muslim holy symbol surrounding Romania, then we cut to a close up of Dracula in armour kissing his bride. We then cut to fire, as we see the battle silhouetted against the crimson sky. The battle is won but we cut to a long shot of Dracula’s bride jumping out of the castle window after hearing false news of his death. We cut to a mid shot of Dracula walking into a chapel, as his bride lay dead below a crucifix, Dracula in a fit of rage renounces God, thus making him  a vampire.
Sound: the sound for the opening credits is low key non diegetic, a narrator explains the story,
Cuts: The cuts are frequent, especially in the battle, to show the pace of the film.
Mise en scene: the lighting is low throughout the intro, the costumes are normal for that time period.

Preliminary task video and conclusion.

Around mid October we finished filming our preliminary task, after 3 weeks of planning and preparing. Using the photos and plans describe in the preliminary task overview blog I wrote in late October (You can find the blog in this link), the raw video lasted over 2 minutes, but was full of shots that weren't quite correct, or were ruined by laughing. After editing these shots out of the clip, and editing various other things, we finally completed the video, with the video lasting just over 30 seconds. Below is our video:

From the preparations shown in the previous blog, you can see the similarities between the preparation, and the finished product. These are the shots.
During the filming, I constantly referred to these photographs so that I could ensure the shots were correctly angled, and that nothing was left out of the film that we prepared for beforehand.
The first seven seconds worked to the plan in my opinion, they took 5 minutes to shoot, and the first shot took at least 4 takes before we got it correct. The second shot was well clipped to the first shot so it remained fluent and consistent. The next shot required us to cut ahead fluently to later on in the clip, so we used this as he sat down, unfortunately I believe it was too sudden, and feels more like a jump rather than a cut. However, we edited this, and the final in the video above was as close as we could get to it being fluent.
The dialogue made use of the 180 degree rule and also the shot reverse shot. The dialogue was intended to be an interrogation, with a criminal (portrayed by Jonathan), irritated by the belief that he is innocent, and later describes that he was only protecting his child, we do not fully explain what happened, this is because we thought it would add suspense and a little bit of mystery. The interrogator (portrayed by Josh) describes that there were many reasons why the criminal was being held, but again, we do not explain why, for the same effect as before. We fade to black as the criminal finishes explaining how he only protected his child, as required by the task.
Credits, in order of appearance:
Interrogator - Josh Spoelstra
Criminal - Jonathan Fromant
Lawyer - Craig Robson
Policeman - Edward Tyrell
Director - Michael Walters.
In conclusion I believe that this video worked well according to the plans, even though not everything worked as fluently as we had hoped, all in all, I'm rather happy about the final product, we used all of the shots required and kept a consistency and suspense, and as this was the main idea behind the filming and the task, I believe that, even though it's not bafta award winning material, that we did a good job on this and I'm satisfied with the finished product.
Thanks for reading my blog.
Michael.

Preliminary Task overview and preparation

In our A Level media courses we have been focusing on camera shots, the uses of editing, techniques and the like.
After we had been working on this we were set the preliminary task; our task was to shoot a short film that made use of the jump cut, 180 degree rule, shot reverse shot and tracking.
The preperation work was covered in two classes, one class focused on how to use the shots, we covered all of the shots, especially the shot reverse shot and the 180 degree rule, and also discussed their uses, and purposes. The second class was on planning the task by filling out a storyboard on our work and then photographing photos to gain a better understanding on the shots and locations we would be using in our tasks, this covered the mise en scene (Props, Costumes, Shots Lighting etc.).
The photos are also in sequence of how the video plays out, these are our photos:

This first shot is a long shot to show our main character entering the building, we used this shot to show who he is, but without giving too much away, in the hopes of adding suspense to the film. I the actual film, the main character played by Josh Spoelstra enters through the green door on the left, and the camera tracks him walking through to the brown door shown in the picture.

This second shot is a close up of Josh's hand as he begins to open the door. We decided to use a shot a shot like this to keep a consistency with the film and also to add effect. We also wanted to make the audience begin to wonder where he's going and why. The camera doesn't track or pan with this shot.

The third shot we used is a long shot of Josh entering the room after pushing the door open. Much the same as the close up shot in the second photo, we decided to use this clip to keep the consistency and to keep suspense, to keep the audience guessing.

This shot uses tracking to emphasize him walking from the door to the left hand side of the shot, this shot is used to keep the consistency and to keep the suspense, we will cut from the door opening in  the third shot to then cut to this shot of him opening the door and walking to keep a realism.

Our next shot jump cuts from the previous to Josh sitting down at a table opposite a convict, portrayed by Johnny. This shot is intended to releive the suspense and show what Josh has been walking towards the whole time. This shot is filmed in a medium shot and is a run up to dialogue.

These three pictures are each individual shots, the dialogue scenes were shot using the 180 degree rule and the shot reverse shot technique to show the emotion and emphasize the dialogue. These last three shots are intended to releive any remaining suspense and to show the entire point of the film.
Since posting this blog we have filmed and edited this film perfectly and I shall upload it in my next blog, and evaluate it.