The House 2nd Intro

This was our second idea, this match the criteria of how we imagined our opening title to look like. We took away the wiggle and included a 'blur' effect to the text. This blur carried on  as if the text was jumping forward before it quickly fades out into the background. However with this intro i felt that it didn't flow very well with the text coming back out, i also thought that we should have the scene fading in through the 'O'.

The House 1st Intro

At first we thought of the idea of the title zooming out with the 'wiggle' effect. We thought this effect would distort the audience, however we thought that this title as a whole looked fake and changed the tone of the film. Our film is quite flowing and ominous. This title represents a quick jumpy opening. As we do want a moving title we will have to further improve this and look more into titles.

Productions Intro

We decided that we needed a production company logo animatic to be at the start of our film. When researching we found that the production company was always present first so we felt that this was important for our short opening.

Sound in Horror films

Se7en

Within this opening the director has used parallel sound to create a tense nervy atmosphere for the audience as it shows sharp knife blades scratching away at skin which is represented by the sound of an eery chalk board scratching sound. For our thriller horror i think that if we could use parallel sound to rein-act the action of what happens with in it would create the nervy feel for the audience, which is what we are trying to do. Further more it uses thunderous sounds, which connotes danger and darkness. In our thriller horror opening, we could use sounds like this to show something bad is going to happen.

The conjuring

The first sounds i hear in the clip are deep drowning sounds like a trumpet. This again creates a dark tense atmosphere. The director has also used non-diegetic sound which sounds computerized which helps to add a scary atmosphere. In our opening i think by adding in sound effects it will help build up the tensions the the audience when watching, such a dramatic noises which you wouldn't expect.

Our Title

We got together and discussed the ten fonts I previously posted of the possible title typographys that we might use for our title. We then settled on the following font: Optimus Princeps. The image below is an example of what our title would look like with this font:

We felt this was the ideal typography four our film opening due to it being a very traditional looking font and not sticking biasedly to one side of the genres. For example if we had a bold, sans serif capitlised font like the following of an action genre:

We wouldn't use the text above because it is a typical font of a action thriller with bold, sans serif and capitalised text. However the smoke kind of rubbed out affect on the text looks good and make it seem distorted and more of a horror. This is something we could use in our own text over the top it to give it the same effect.

Furthermore this is a science-fiction/psychological thriller that uses the same bold, sans serif, capitalised text as the skyfall text above. Furthermore the colour red would represent danger and make it stand out more because it is an eye catching colour. This is not what we want to go for as a look as we want a more mysterious, classic and old fashioned serif font.

The reason why we wanted to choose a font such as 'Optimus Princeps' was because we had looked at previous fonts in horrors and thriller-horrors that had this similar style of old fashioned, classic styled text. 

For example these are some similar horror typography fonts:

Then here are some examples of some more specific horror thriller typography fonts that are very similar to ours which we have based it on:

This is why we wanted this classic, serif, old fashioned style similar to times new roman because it is very reoccurring in horrors and thriller horrors.

Evaluation

I think looking at horror and thriller film titles helped us decide on our final title. We feel that most of the titles of these films had a very classic, serif style font, this is then heightened with a dramatic and eye catching background. I like the text for our title because i feel that it is quite plain but effect because it doesn't give to much away in a sense of being a horror movie. The writing also symbolises a typical house number and seeing as the the title is 'THE HOUSE' it fitted with our theme.

Actress

Emma Thomas

For our actress we have chosen Emma Thomas, we feel that she would be right for the part as she looks like stero-typical protagonist within a horror-thriller film; young, slim female with  long hair. In most horror and thriller films they use young naive teenagers or young adults, by using Emma Thomas i feel it will bring a more tense and nervy feel to our opening. I feel by having Emma it stereo typically fits the idea of a baby sitter as she is a student trying to earn some money, within our opening she will be wear a white jumper and her hair down representing her innocence as in most horror movies. I also think by using a teenager within our opening will help us meet out target audience, as more teenagers are likely to watch a film with their age group in as they can relate to it. 

Costume

When looking at costume we wanted a costume that was very typical of a modern teenager as well as something you could maybe expect within a horror-thriller film. Therefore we wanted our protagonist to be wearing something basic and plain. For example leggings, jeans, jumpers, t shirts etc. Furthermore  we also wanted casual plain colours. For example we decided we wanted some kind of white upper garment - like a white jumper or top.

The white jumper below is like the jumper our protagonist wears throughout the opening. We chose this as  jumper can seem 'home'ly' as well as it being a casual piece of wear that is communal worn by teenage girls and women of all ages in modern society. Furthermore we decided we wanted it to be a white jumper as this would represent purity and innocence because of the social connotations and general associations with the colour white. We thought the white would represent innocence and angelic like almost like an angel or a dove.

Furthermore these are the type and style of jeans that our protagonist will be wearing throughout also. We thought this was fitting as she is meant to be represented as just typical female teenager of a modern society and jeans are the most ideal, casual and normal trousers for them to wear. Therefore we also thought this was better than leggings and any pyjamas as pyjamas would show its her house whereas we want to show she is a babysitter and this isn't her own house therefore wearing clothes to go out but as if it is her own household as she is used to babysitting there. Furthermore leggings are associated with more lower class and are too casual. Moreover typical leggings are black and in some low key lighting it is then harder to see her legs and what she is doing. Therefore making us decide that navy blue jeans are the most ideal.

These white jumper and navy blue jeans are what we decided on.

Evaluation

When looking at the clothing for our opening we wanted to go for a casual look. We found that the white jumper with the blue jeans looks casual and also looks young and stylish. This works for our opening as our character is a teenage baby sitter. By having a simple causal costume it doesn't effect the realism with the piece either. This is a big part of our film as it is set in an ordinary middle class home. Having a white jumper helps portray our character as innocent and shows she is venerable. We chose the jeans because we feel that most teenagers in toady's society would were jeans as it is seen as 'the norm'. I felt that having these clothes would be more suitable than having pyjamas or jogging bottoms this is because she is a baby sitter in somebody else's home therefor she wouldn't be in those type of clothes. 

Post-Production Realisations

As a group we took the shots from the previous shoots and imported them all onto premier pro where we will edit them. We started going through them decided on which ones we could use and which ones we couldn't. By doing this it narrowed down the shots massively, and already realised that we would have to reshoot lots of scenes. After we sorted through them we took the shots that we thought were good enough and put them into our premier pro timeline. By doing this we could place them inorder as well as edit them to fit with each other consecutively on after another. When we done this we then began to realise that some of these shots had very small jolts and were not acceptable to be in our opening, we also found that not all the shots flowed together meaning we would need to think of new shots to put in between the ones we had.
Therefore we know we have to shoot more shots and maybe shoot a variety of other things that could be used as fillers to also create mysteriousness withing the opening as it is a horror/thriller which tend just to imply themes rather than actual show and consequently fit into our genre as well as making the opening more natural and flow better overall.

second shoot

I believe our second shoot was a lot more successful compared to the first shoot, i feel as a group we are now able to come together and be more serious about doing the work. As a group we came together before the shoot a discussed what needed to be done in order to get something good out of our shooting sessions. Within this shoot we managed to get a lot more that was needed done in order to progress well and get ahead. Because of this we was able to put shots into our Premiere Pro timeline, watch them and evaluate them and decided what needed to be done next. From this shoot we was able to get a lot of good shots which we are able to use. furthermore we also noticed small things when filming such as the position of props, the Mis-en-scene etc that we did not notice before that needed to be removed or positioned differently.
Even though we got some good shoots within this shoot i feel like we still didn't have enough concentration within our group, which did slow us down so as a group we talked and decided we need to be more focused and determined if we want to get more filming done in order to reach our deadlines. However now we do have a good opening that we do not need to re-shoot, and i feel we have became more experience as a group on our filming and editing skills allowing us to create a better opening. 

first shoot

First Shoot Evaluation

From our first shoot we realized a lot of problems with our shots and this was a big awakening for us. For example we had no shots that were usable for our actual final opening sequence and it was seen as a waste of time. However this was actually a good learning curve for us as we realized a lot of faults and things we need to change/do better next time.

For example we had terrible lighting and didn't realize this. It was extremely low key lighting and we couldn't see much of the scenery or what was actually happening.

Furthermore the lighting being like this made all of our scenes worthless and not usable which was a shame, because if it wasn't for this then  we would of been able to maybe use some of the shots.

We also realized that we had to make sure everything was set with our location. For example on our first shoot day Lauren's house was very busy and therefore other things were happening in the house which the microphone on the camera picked up. Consequently we now know that we need a completely free house for our shooting days to be successful.

We also tried to experiment with POV shots, however this was harder than we thought it would be and cause us to have a lot of un-still and off balanced shots. Furthermore a few of our other shots were off balance due to a bad tripod. Therefore we now know that we need to make sure all our equipment is okay before as well as practicing POV shots more.

As well as this a lot of our group kept laughing and not staying focused and this was hard as the film we need it to be completely silent and everything to happen perfectly otherwise it can ruin the entire piece. We now know that we can't laugh and make noise on camera because sometimes we might not be able to edit it out.

Evaluation

From our first shoot i feel that now we can progress, obviously as a new group of people being put together we weren't as focused as we should of been. As none of us has had any proper training with camera and tripods we found that none of our shots were good enough to be put into our two minute opening. Because of this we will have to re film, we also faced other problems such as lighting. When we was shooting it was light outside so we tried covering up the windows with sheets, this then made it two dark to film. Now we have done one session we are all more focused and determined to get our opening done, we know how we can improve from this and make our work better.