The characters

Rebecca: (main character)

She is an only child who was living with her mum before. Her father left the family at a young age but left inheritance money. She has grown up living a rich lifestyle. She has now come to university to study grand art and French. While living at home she was on medication to control her illness that she has had from young age. However, since coming to university, to feel more like herself she has stopped taking the medication which has made her paranoid and obsessed with making new friends, especially with one girl, her flatmate, Sarah. 

Sarah: (the other main character)

Innocent, young girl, who has come from an average family, has come to university to study Journalism. She has quite a big family and is seeking freedom while away and make new friends. Sarah and Rebecca form a girly friendship that reminds her of home, so she takes to Rebecca  as her sister. When finding out about her medication she becomes a little more way of Rebecca but still remains friends with her. Even when her new friend, Alison, warns her she doesn’t want to believe it because she actually likes Rebecca. 

Alison: (the friend)

Friend of Sarahs, who Rebecca becomes increasingly jealous of. She is the character that Rebecca chases when she see’s her walking back from a lecture late at night. She is also a party girl

Shot Storyboard

We first created our shot storyboards on paper using pencil, we did this because any mistakes or errors that we wanted to cut and erase could be done. We then developed it further by writing underneath the type of shot we wanted to be shown on that particular scene. It is also done in chronological order so we don't confuse ourselves when shooting for our trailer. 

Shot Storyboard on Prezi

Practise filming #blur focus - outside

Today we got given the task of recording a short clip of ourselves using a Cannon SLR camera and a Zoom Handy Recorder. We were taught the practical features on the camera, zooming in and out of focus, recording at different angles and using different lenses for a certain effect. The recorder we also experimented with, we saw how far the sound can travel and how clear the voices can be heard. We practiced inside and outside, because our script has certain scenes inside locations. From this exercise I have taken away with me more knowledge how a camera and microphone work in conjunction with each other. This is mainly done in the editing process, where we match each scene to the voice clip given from the recorder. 

Here is the clip below (outside location):

In this clip, we were experimenting the blur and focus on a character. At first it starts with a long shot where you can see the background by me, then the camera gradually gets closer and it turns into a midshot. From this point the camera man (Chelsea) started to play around with the effects and pick which one was suitable. This is definitely what we will have to consider for our own horror trailer. 




In this second clip, it was more about becoming comfortable with the camera and trying to keep a steady hand. Because we never had the support of tri-pod, we figured that using the handheld effect would also be good practise, because from our research we knew that this was a common convention used in horror movies and trailers. 


What we took away from this filming was different to when filming the #scary door. We chose not to do an acting scene, but instead get the character to stand still and act natural, this was so you could identify the blur and focus of the character and background. 

Adorno theory - culture industry

Adorno (1903-69) argued that capitalism fed people with the products of a 'culture industry' - the opposite of 'true' art - to keep them passively satisfied. Popular culture was identified as the reason for people's passive satisfaction and lack of interest in overthrowing the capitalist system. Theodor W. Adorno states 3 points to his argument.

Theodor W. Adorno

The first: 
"Adorno suggested that culture industries churn out a debased mass of unsophisticated, sentimental products which have replaced the more 'difficult' and critical art forms which might lead people to actually question social life."
This means that he argued that society should appreciate much more high class culture and the things that contain it, such as, fine art, opera and theatre shows,  instead of society accepting that basic things in life, such as mass/popular culture. 
Adorno could possibly argue this point to my horror trailer by saying that the genre is not the stereotypical genre included in high culture. 


Second: 
"False needs are cultivated in people by the culture industries. These are needs which can be both created and satisfied by the capitalist system, and which replace people's 'true' needs - freedom, full expression of human potential and creativity, genuine creative happiness"
What Adorno means by this, is that by society creating a culture where people believe that materialistic items. For example, using the example of my horror trailer; Adorno would say that the message I am presenting in my trailer does not give the audience much advantage to explore there own needs, they are just consuming the message that I am giving to them in my trailer.  


Third: 

"Commodity fetishism (promoted by the marketing, advertising and media industries) means that social relations and cultural experiences are objectified in terms of money. We are delighted by something because of how much it cost."
Adorno's final point he makes is that the culture that we now live in, is surrounded with the idea that we need spend money to gain the finest things. What he would say about my trailer is that I am using this advantage to get more of a profit rather than creating a genuine horror trailer. 

Planning stock characters

On the Celtx programme, once completing our first draft of the script we then planned more detail to the characters
On this program we can put all our ideas into one place without no information getting lost or deleted. When asked about our characters we were asked to write a detailed description of their personality, what their role in the trailer is and personal background information. Here is an example of a character profile:

Rebecca:

Sarah:

Alison:

Receptionist:

Practise filming #scary door

The aim of the task was to create a short film clip of someone approaching a 'scary door' which is usually seen in horror films to create tension of what might be behind it. Below is the 'Scary Door' clip that my group and I constructed. We filmed this short clip in college with one of the actors first seen running through a door, approach a corner and then slowly open a door. We did about 5 to 6 takes when creating the scene, and mixed some of the different take shots together in our editing. 


When filming this short clip I believe that there are many strengths that are recognisable. Firstly, from the actions of the character, it is obvious to the audience  what is happening. They can begin to establish an idea that the character is maybe running away from something or she lost and unaware of her surroundings. This is important for when we make our own trailer we want to get our message and type of genre across to the audience efficiently. Another strength I believe, is that we attempted to use different shots for the first time on a camera. We used close-ups of the character from behind and some long shots from the front. The attempts of using this show how we are trying to become more confident in the way we film and hopefully this will develop in time for the real filming.


Although, we did use two different shots, I think it would have been much more effective if we added elements to the shots such as panning or tracking. This could have been done at the moment where the character is coming through the door and when the camera is aimed her the feet. Another considered improvement is in the editing; we could have added a soundtrack to make the scene seem much more dramatic, however, the  silence used, I think adds some intense to the scene itself.


Overall, I enjoyed practising with the camera a possible scene that is used in horror films. It also made me plan much more into my own trailer, in the things that I should and shouldn't do and to consider the audience much more and how they might interpret things.