Prelim Task

Camping Scene "Then there were three..."

We have created a two minute long clip called "Then there were three...", which is about a group of four teenagers going camping in the woods and one of the girls ends up going missing and the other three can't find her. This is typical of the horror genre. We have designed our clip to look like a flash back scene as it starts with the three teenagers who were left in the woods talking about there missing friend to a police officer in a police station. This part of our clip is used with a three split screen, all with each character saying one line after one another, an over head light used to make it look like an interagation.

We created our Wood-like scene in the Filiming studio where we used props such as trees, sticks, chairs and quilts to create a tent in the background. We also used bottles of alcohol which surrounded the teenagers and rugs, along with candles and lights to draw attention and focus to the teenagers faces.

At one point in the woods the teenagers are around a camp fire, when it cuts to a close up on Larissa's face as she asks the other teenagers if someone will go to the loo with her. It then cuts to the girl that goes missing alone in the woods. She is lost, and cannot find where she is going. She moves herself around the woods, shouting and calling her friends whilst making her way through the trees.

 We made this a realistic scene by using a wind machine to blow her hair, sticks and trees in front of the camera to make it look like she is actually in the middle of the woods, and also bright lights to set the look of a moon in the background with fog to add mystery. Once we filmed this we then went to the editing studio and put the two scenes both together, cutting and cropping them to make them work together. We also used lots of sound effects to create tension and make it much more realistic, whilst putting up-to-date chart music over the top of the camping scene which sets it much more to a teenage clip. As Larissa goes into the woods the music fades to add tension. We end our clip with Larissa in the woods letting out a big scream, which is also emphasised by the sound effects we added, quickly followed by a dark screen and then our clip ending. Types of shots we used when filming were, Close ups, Over the shoulder, wide shot, three split screen and medium close up. A range of shots give the clip much more range and personality which make it much more interesting to watch.

Below is our script that we used to create our scene in the policestation. The three characters all had one line each as we used a split screen:

PO: In your own words tell me what happened on Friday 8^th September, the night of Larissa McElroy’s attack.

Amy: Well… it all started when we decided to go camping…

Alex: We were in the woods and we were just sitting around the camp fire.

Hannah: Larissa needed the toilet so she asked us to go with her…

In our clip we have used examples of Mise-en-scene. One significant prop we have used in our police scene is the red folder which holds black and white images of our main character at the scene of her death. The red folder we have used indicates danger and death, and leaves the audience in suspense. The dark lights and background colours we have used make our clip look mysterious, along with the smoke machine and the fan to blow her hair which looks like the wind in the woods.

Considering the hair and make up element of mise en scene, we have curled Larissa's hair and kept her make up minimal to give her a young, vulnerable look. This makes the action more scary as the audience are scared for the girl. For costume, we have put our police officer in a suit to reinforce the idea of proffesionalism and to give him power, a contrast to the teenagers. This shows that they are dealing with something serious. We have also added blood onto Larissa's arm and face. This reinforces the idea of her murder. Another significant part of costume we have used throughout is Larissa's green coat she wears. This could represent her being camoflagued in the woods, as she pushes her way through the trees

After our wood scene, we fade back to the police station where the officer is holding the red folder which consists of photos of Larissa taken from the scene of the murder. We use the camera to zoom in on photos of her, so the audience can take a much closer look. We zoom in slowly and hold the camera on the photo for quite a while to give the audience a focus on the main scene so they can place themselves in the story. We use over the shoulder shots to capture the officer holding and turning the folder to make the folder the main focus. 

This is an identical copy of the red folder we used in the police station. We chose to use the folder in the colour red as it symbolises danger and death.

Below are two images of the girl lying on the floor in the woods surrounded in leaves, dirt and twigs with blood on her face and hands that were used in the folder the police officer showed to the rest of the teenagers:

We took these photos in the film studio where we layed out black cloth and used props such as twigs and leaves to show the setting of a forest. We used fake blood so the audience knows that something bad has happened.

Lighting is used to create a much brighter focus on the folder. We used lighting from up above, the back and the side of the table used to attract this as the main object. The background was then black. After this, we go back to the police man talking using a mid camera shot, moving to a close up of his face so the audience get a much more dramatic effect and serious feeling from the words he is saying.

Throughout our clip we use a numerous amount of sound effects, including a scream which we recorded and then increased the sound to empahsise it much further. We added the sound of wind howling, an owl and a twig breaking for a much scarier effect that is typical for our horror genre. We also laid out a set for us to film our story:

The camp scene consisted of a tent in the background which was created using four chairs and a black blanket. This was only slightly seen as a mist in the background as we didn't want it to be our main focus. We had a blanket spread out on the floor with two cushions which we used to sit on and empty alcohol bottles to create a much more teenage like scene. Also on the camp scene we used an orange torch light which we covered with an orange filter to make it look like a fire. I think this created a good effect of the camp fire and made it much more realistic. We decided to do this as it related to a scary story being read with a torch under their face, a typical feature of a horror film-

 Across all this filming we played a song called "Only girl in the world" by Rihanna, the name of the song could be symbolised to when Larissa is the only girl out of her friends wondering around the woods.

Our wood scene consisted of fog to give it a much more mystic, and scary feeling of inclosure. This went well with the dark background, and the lighting on Larissa's face. We also used grave stones in the background which we only saw the head of to create our wood scene much scarier and a fan to blow her hair as if she was surrounded by lots of trees. Other members in the group held up twigs and leaves infront of the camera so it looked like Larissa was hidden in the trees.

Before we started thinking about filming we firstly created a mood board. This was a selection of images related to our idea of a scary wood scene all put together on a page. It took us a while to think of a name for our film, starting from names such as "Four to three" which represented the four teenagers in a group, and the one going missing so then they were left with three. Eventually we still kept the idea of the number three and decided to use the name, "Then there were three..." The dots we have used at the end of this title are used as suspension marks to create tension to the reader will want to watch our story.

Below are some images which we used on our mood board:

We looked at these photos for inspiration for our film and used an orange filter for the lighting of the campfire, and a blue filter to look like the moon. We chose a woods for the girl to run around as it is a scary setting for a horror film.

We have chosen to set our British Board of Film Classifications (BBFC) for our film at aged 15. We think this is an appropriate age for a child to watch as this is the starting point of teenage levels and violence that we feel is appropriate for a fifteen year old to watch.

The British Board of Film Classification is an independent, non-governmental body which has classified cinema films since it was set up in 1912 and videos/ DVDs since the Video Recordings Act was passed in 1984.

Below are pictures of our storyboard. We drew this storyboard to help us plan out our shots and sequence of action. We used this storyboard when we were filming to show what kind of shots we needed e.g. close ups, and also when we were editing as we used it to see the order of the shots. We have changed it slightly as we were going along by adding title sequences to the start, cutting out images and putting more shots in to the camping scence.

By Alex Williams, Amy Jones, Larissa McElroy and Hannah Arthan.

Media Blog- NO

In our group of seven we created a short clip called 'NO'. Our setting was a one on one conversation set in a police station where one actress is accusing the other of a crime. We used a range of shots, from over the shoulder, where the camera was used behind one charater showing the shoulder of this person and the face of the other. We also used a shot called a mid shot, which was just foccused on the two main characters at the same time. We the did a few close ups of the characters which focused on their faces much clearer. We started our film off with a long shot of the interviewer walking in. We changed from different shots and movements, whilst editing our many clips we took on the video camera on an editing programme. Here we cropped and saved small amounts of our different videos and put the best parts all into one. We also edited the colour of the video so it looked much more proffessional. When we videod our film, our group of seven was orignally spilt into two groups. We both had different ideas and helped record and act them both together. When we played the two videos back, we found that one was much better than the other one so we all went into one group so make the main one much better. Overall, we are glad we did this because we are very happy with our final outcome. At the end of our short video, the last word that is said is "no", therefore, we decided to call it this and at the very end the word "NO" appears which ends our video. Our short video is just over 1 mintute. It includes lots of diegetic sounds in it as this is the main characters speaking, we do not have any non-diegetic sounds as no sound like background music was played. If we did this work again, a few things we change to make it better would be to use a camera stand instead of someone holding it. This would make the shots become much more steadier and clearer. Saying this though, we got the best possible shots we could and put them together. Something else we would do to improve our work next time, would be to research further into camera shots so we have lots of range of them throughout. Overall, we are very proud of our final work and liked using all the different equipment to make it. It was very exciting but very challenging at the same time, and we overcome many different things throughout as we had to re-record some of our work over.