Planning: Casting for out opening

For our opening 2 minutes of our Horror film, we currently have 4 actors which are needed but we have considered a range of different people who can play these roles. The roles which are needed to be acted are the victim, the mysterious killer, Jordan and Jordan's friend.

The most important role in the opening 2 minutes will be Jordan as he is the main character and the camera is mostly on him, we are hoping we get an actor which can show fear and can stay serious throughout filming. The least important role is the part of Jordan's friend, his/her part will be around 5 seconds long and consists of making Jordan scared. This role can be practically played by anyone but we will make sure we pick a person who can act professionally through filming.the other two characters who we will need to find is a killer whose face wont be shown but his movements will be needed to be shown also a victim will need a lot of facial features as they need to put off a scared image.


The following people are those which we are considering to play these roles...

Jordan Bignell 
Sex - Male

Age - 17

Acting history - Small part in christmas play 2005.

He is most likely to get of Jordan as not a lot of skills to do with acting will be needed as he will just be walking home he will just need to give of facial expressions and hardly any speech is needed, and he will most likely have a lot of free time which would be useful and he is easily accessible 

Josh Luthayi
Sex: Male

Age; 16

Acting history: Played in small play at primary schools also took Drama as one of his GCSE options.


Josh is most likely to get the victim role as he has had drama experiences and they will defiantly be needed especially facial features as he will be bound and something around his face to stop him speaking also he is also easily accessible 

George Hopkins

Sex: Male

Age:  17

Acting history:   Studied Drama in GCSE and currently studies it for A-Level.
George is possibly available for the friend role as it is a very short part also he is not that accessible also he has acting experience. 












Mariella Ralph

Sex: Female

Age: 16
Acting history:None

Mariella does't have any acting history but is also very accessible and could be the role for Jordan friend also as there is basically no experience needed

Thomas Bates
Sex:  Male

Age: 16

Acting history: Studied Drama in GCSE and currently studies it for A-Level.
Tom would be available for the role of the killer or the victim because of his acting experience also he is quite accessible  

Lisa Eady
sex: female 

Age: 17

Acting history: Studied Drama in GCSE and currently studies it for A-Level.
Lisa would be good for either the victims role because of her acting experience also she could be jordans friend as its a small role for anyone really plus she is easily accessible 

Becca Jane Payne

sex: female 

Age: 16

Acting history: None.

Becca would be good for Jordan's friend as its a small role for anyone really plus she is easily accessible.

Planning - Mise-en-scene

Costumes 

Jordan (school wear) -

• Smart leather shoes
• Plain black trousers
• Plain white shirt
• Black skinny tie
• Jacket / Hoody 
• School bag
• belt

Jordans Friend

•  Jeans
• T-Shirt
• Jacket
• Trainers
• Headphones

Victim

• Dirty and sweaty vest top
• Jeans roughed up e.g. rips, dirty
• No shoes no socks
• Blooded up close

Killer

• Black boots
• Dirty Black trousers
• Big black waist coat
• Black apron bloody and dirty 
• Black gloves  

Props

Garage scene

• Rough, half broken chair
• Warn out rope
• Old wooden table
• A range of different tools on table e.g. Pliers, Saw, Hammer etc 
• A noose 
• Knife
• Fake blood

Walking home scene

• Jordans Phone

Planning : Location Planning

As a group, we decided on the two locations which we will use in our opening 2 minutes. We have chose these locations as they are easily accessable to ours and our casts demands.  The 2 locations we have chose are a garage which is owned by myself and the school in which we currently attend. 

We have chose the Garage as we initially based our film around it so the victims can be killed in it, thankfully we have the access of a large garage in which we can use and it has the right equipment we can use which will make the opening 2 minutes much more realistic.
(picture of garage)

We chose the school as again our plot was based around Jordan walking home from school and the school which we currently attend is flexible enough for us to film their as it doesn't close til around 5pm, it is also flexible as all our casts also currently attend the school which makes it easier for us to film.

Planning : Writing a screenplay

1) Exterior, School, Day

The final bell for school goes off, Jordan appears walking home by himself. 

2) Interior, Garage, Night

Shows a range of different equipment spread across and old wooden table. A title appears in the bottom saying "Produced by Hungry films"

3) Exterior, School, Day

Jordan receives a phone call from an unknown number, he answers however no one says anything apart from deep breathing, Jordan hangs up.

Jordan - "hello...?"

4) Interior, Garage, Night

Shows the garage door slowly opening where there is a close-up of someone wearing boots slowly walking in You can hear the footsteps, Titles appear saying "Directed by Josh Thorley and Deet Bains"

 

5) Exterior, School, Day

Jordan is still conscious about the fact someone rang him not speaking, close up on his face to show his facial expression. Then there is a panning shot to see if there is anyone behind him.

6) Interior, Garage, Night

shows and over the shoulder shot of a man strapped in a chair. shows the back of feet of the murder and then shows the back off the killer as he unstraps the man tied to chair. titles in left corner appear saying  filmed by Deet Bains and Josh Thorley

Victim - "makes struggling noises" because of his mouth being bound

7) Exterior, School, Day

Close up shot of Jordans face, he looks around then there is an Over the shoulder shot showing Jordans phone being rung and an unknown number appears and he hangs up without answering.

8)  Interior, Garage, Night

the victim is now stood on the table with his legs tied to the chair so there's no escape also his hands are bound. The killer is adjusting the rope around the victims neck. Titles will be scattered saying the cast names

victim - "*constantly making grunting noises*"

9) Exterior, School, Day

A side view of jordan walking then a quick close up on his face

10)  Interior, Garage, Night

The killer pulls out a knife to unbind his legs, as soon as he kicks the chair it goes back to jordan

11) Exterior, School, Day

Jordan would be walking when his friend runs up behind him making a fake scare, then they both walk off

Jordans friemd - Boooo!
Jordan - Oh my god! you scared the life out of me

12) Interior, Garage, Night

shows a pair of legs dangling from the air shaking then "Hung-Over" would appear

Planning: A Treatment for the Opening 2 Minutes (including titles) of Hung-over

The opening scene will be the school bell ringing whilst Jordan walks out of school.

The first flashback would happen after around 8-10 seconds, the flashback would be in a dark garage, camera would have a close-up shot of different torture equipment. This would last for around 5 seconds. Titles In the bottom right corner saying ‘Produced by Hungry Films’

It will go back to Jordan walking home from school, Jordan receives a phone call and answers, there was no answer and the viewer would hear just breathing, Jordan puts down the phone.

A flashback in the garage again, you see the door close and a close shot of a pair of feet walking in slowly, Titles come up in bottom left corner saying ‘Directed by Josh Thorley and Deet Bains’ 

The camera goes back to Jordan, who seems very conscious at the fact he was rang but there was no answer, he keeps looking around to see if anybody is following him. Close up of Jordan’s face as he looks around.

Flashback again and the camera is behind a man strapped into the chair, a dark character walks up to the man and starts to unstrap him from the chair. Title in the bottom left corner saying ‘Filmed by…’ 

Tension is rising and close up of Jordan's face walking so there is no looking space, he keeps looking behind him and his phone rings again, he leaves it. 

The camera starts to switch from flashback to jordan quicker which would build up the tension, another flashback happens again and the character which was strapped in the chair is standing up on the chair with a bag on his head , the mysterious man is adjusting a rope which is attached from the roof. Titles in this clip would be the cast which would be scattered across the screen. 

Another quick clip of Jordan becoming scared and no looking space, this clip would be around 5 seconds long.

Goes back to the garage in which the man standing on the chair has the rope around his neck and the mysterious man is about to push him off the chair. Just about as the man is going to be hung, it flashes back to Jordan.

When it flashes back to Jordan, a fake scare would occur as Jordan is made to jump by a friend which has ran up from behind. The title of the movie ‘The Hung-Over’ would then appear.

Research : The importance of sound in horror films

The importance and why it makes the audience scared.
Sound is an aspect in horror films that is most over looked but just as important as actual footage. Without sound the scenes would not be as distinct for example in a scene where someone is going to be killed the sound would build up with the scene and then there would be a loud noise to go with the scene to make it better. The reasons why sound scares the audience, "Scientists have found that many of the emotionally-evocative moments in some of the most popular films are enhanced with a sound score that exploits the human brain’s natural aversion to the non-linear sounds widely used in the animal kingdom to express fear and distress." A way that anyone can see the importance of sound when trying to show a scary scene is to turn off the volume whilst it is on and it would not create no where near the same effect.

The sound within horror movies can be so important for example most horror films have there own theme tunes and specific played when the victim usual dies, these is very helpful and when played audiences can usually link them to the film in which it was originally played in.

When sound is shown well in films

Psycho
Sound is shown very well in films such as Psycho. the scene where they are in the shower and the curtains open and a lady gets stabbed is a great scene where it shows how powerful the sound can be. the reason why it is so powerful is because there is basically all sound that makes it scary for example, as the shower curtain is drawn and the man is standing there with a knife and the woman's scream is very powerful and has a great impact on the audience. Also the build up music and the drop of the music works very well also to build tension and then scare them as the killing starts. The build up was so good that the music has become very popular and common to people. The video of the scene in Psycho which shows this all is just below.

Jaws
Another film in which sound is shown to be very powerful and has a huge impact on the type of message it is trying to get across to the audience. the reason why it is so good in jaws is because the build up music to the killing scenes are very good because they have deep bass sounds which gradually gets louder and faster as the shark begins to get closer it sounds as if it resembling a heart beat of the victim or the audience. This is also another film in which the music has become very popular. The soundtrack of the theme tune of jaws is below.

The Auditory symbol

In most horror films, a certain melody or sounds serves as a symbol for the main threat in the film. This is achieved by a extracting a small portion of the films characteristic sounds and assigning it to the main threat by playing the sound whenever the threat is back into focus. The use of the auditory symbol helps the producers of the film by adding the threat without actually using any visual representation.

Over all i have found from my research that sound is just as or more important than the actual visual footage that is shown. Without it music or sound in the clip it would not get across the type of message it wanted to its audience. Therefor it is very important and when creating a film sound is probably concentrated on more than the clips as this probably creates the most tension which is key in horror films.

Research - Target Audience Feedback Regarding Your Possible Openings

These are some of the responses that we got from our research, we gave them a copy of the synopsis and asked them how they thought the film should start. from this we also got a bases of the two different opening so it was helpful.

Research: The art of the title

During the lesson we were asked to look at the openings of a teen horror of our choice. The film which i chose to do was called The Ward by John Carpenter. the plot of the film is centered on an institutionalized young woman who becomes terrorized by a ghost. The picture below is where i analysed the opening, i created a timeline from 0:00 - 2:28 as that was how long the opening was and had three other headings Titles, Audio and Visuals. In the titles section i had to pause the video and write down on the timeline for each title that appeared. The visuals section was the longest as it was what i could see and it was constantly changing. The audio was what i could hear this was also a hard section as sometimes the sounds would overlap and i sometimes could not make out what noise was being made. overall from doing this i have found out the great detail that is put into films as i got so much information from just two minutes. This was also helpful as i will know how the standard of detail must be in my opening.

Planning: Two possible opening for our film

After looking at the responses we got back from our target audience we have been discussing and came up with different openings to out movie Hungover.

The first one is it starts of with a quick flash back and shows a random victim inside of the garage in which Jordan will be held and then the killer comes in (no face shown) and kills the victim. it then skips to Jordan and his friends leaving school and being happy. The titles will then appear.

The film would start with Jordan and his friends walking home from school, but tension would start to rise as the camera notices somebody following them, as the unknown person getting closer we would use a fake scare, for example one of there other friends jumps out at them as a joke. whilst They are being followed it could every now and then come up with another title as his journey comes to an end.