Final Film Opening - Demise

Here is our final film opening....

For better (HD) Quality... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISnmyWYG1Cw

The Music in our Film

When thinking about the music in our film we decided that we wanted to have music in the background that added suspense to the film but didn't overpower what was going on in the actual film.

We decided to go with a number of clips that were sample sounds on iMovie and then our main music was sourced by Charlotte. We made sure that none of the music we used had copyright on it so therefore were able to use it.

We really liked the way that the music added tension to our film, without the music it was simply a few clips but the sounds brought it together and made it look like an actual film, which we were very happy with.

Editing Process

Here are some screenshots from the editing process from our film.

We were really pleased with how the editing went as everything went pretty smoothly. We only had a few problems but they were sorted out fairly easily.

As you can see we used iMovie in our editing and had a range of clips and transitions.

For the titles we used one of the default fonts that was included in iMovie and then w added music over the top and used a fade so the background was blurred.

Audience Research

Our intention when doing audience research was to find out what people really wanted to see in a thriller/horror film and if our ideas would conform to what they expected of one. As you can see the average age our research was carried out on was between 16-18 and the majority were female.

As you can see from the data above, 80% of the people that we asked said that they did enjoy thrillers, however when asked to tick the ones form the common list, the films that were chosen were the less creepy ones or more popular for our age range.

Most people that we asked said that they liked tension and jump scared, so we tried to incorporate this in with the music and the hooded figure appearing. They also said that they thought a conventional thriller should have suspense, dark humour and some death.

This was one of the most important sections of questions out of them all because we were really struggling with weather people would like a flashback or not. Although most people said they preferred present day thriller, we actually thought about it and decided to do flashback and flash-forward in out opening. Due to the storyline that we had we knew that we needed to include this or it would make no sense.

We also went against the fast-passed/slow-paced question and decided to do fast-paced instead, this was primarily because our character was supposed to be urgently running away from the killer and so using a slow paced wouldn't have helped us achieve what we wanted to.

Storyboard

Here is the storyboard that we used to make our film.

Although this was the initial plan for our film, we actually changed a lot of ideas after making the storyboard. We changed our ideas about the flashbacks being of people and decided to just use the knife prop instead.

Character Factfile.

Main Character: Beth

Age:16

Race: White British

Class: Working-Middle Class

When we had decided that we wanted a female protagonist we decided that we wanted her to be our age, so naturally we thought that one of us in the group should do it.

After we picked Beth to do it we thought about the kind of person we wanted our character to be and how they would have reacted to the situation we were going to put her in.

We wanted Beth to be a strong character who was athletic and able to get away but someone who also deep down was actually quite scared although she didn't show it. This is why we decided that the ending scene was going to be of the killer finally reaching her and the scared expression on her face. Because of the age that we wanted her to be we thought about costume and decided that she should be wearing all black but also something that would be in fashion for a 16 year old. Beth wore a pair of plain black jeans and a black hoodie with a white Nike hat and a pair of Converse-like trainers.

 

Killer: Charlotte K

Age: Unknown

Race: Unknown

Class: Unknown

For the murderer we decided that we wanted them to be hidden and unknown, so we decided that having them wearing dark clothing and not being able to see their face would be an effective way to do it. If it came to the real film I think we would probably have a male killer however for the film opening purposes we decided that Charlotte K could do it as she had a black coat and she was quite tall. Looking back on this character I realised that there are some similarities with the programme Pretty Little Liars and their masked killer 'A' who is a hooded figure. We also took this idea from Alfred Hitchcock's 'Psycho' and the masked killer that murders the female character in the bath.

Image of 'A' from Pretty Little Liars

Researching our Characters

When thinking about the characters that we wanted in our film we decided that we wanted a female protagonist that was scared but also quite a strong character.
I looked at a number of strong female characters from some famous films and decided to use them as examples.

Katniss Everdeen is the main character in the Hunger Games Trilogy of films. She is played by Jennifer Lawrence and is presented as a very strong female who volunteers as tribute (to replace) her sister in a lethal game which is a fight to the death.

Princess Leia is one of the main female characters in the Star Wars Franchise. She is the daughter of Anakin and Padme and is considered an extremely strong character because of her whit and sarcasm.

Obviously from the opening of our film we don't see much of the main characters personality coming out however if we made the whole film she would resemble the characteristics of the two women above.