Let Me In (2010) IMDb research and facts.. AM

'A bullied young boy befriends a young female vampire who lives in secrecy with her guardian'

Director: Matt Reeves

Taglines: Innocence dies. Abbey doesn't

Motion Picture Rating (MPAA): Rated R for strong bloody horror violence, language and breif sexual situation
UK: 15

Production Co: EFTI, Goldcrest Post Production London, Hammer Film Productions

Runtime: 116 minutes

The Blair Witch Project..IMDb research and facts.. AM

'In October of 1994, three student film makers disappeared in the woods, near Burkittesville, Maryland. One year later, their footage was found'

Directors: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez

Synopsis: Three film students travel to Maryland to make a student film about urban legend.. The Blair Witch. The three went into the woods on a two day hike to find the Blair Witch and never came back. One year later, the students film and video was found in the woods. The footage was compiled and made into a movie. The Blair Witch Project.

Taglines: Everything you've heard is true

Motion Picture Rating (MPAA): Rated R for language
UK: 15

Production Co: Haxan Films

Runtime: 81 minutes
Soundmix: Dolby SR

Friday the 13th (2009) IMDb research and facts.. AM

'A group of young adults discover a boarded up Camp Crystal Lake, where they soon encounter Jason Voorhees and his deadly intentions'

Director: Marcus Nispel

Synopsis: Young friends Whitney, Mike, Richie, Amanda and Wade, end up missing in the woods near the abandoned Camp Crystal Lake, after allowing their curosity to get the better of them and visiting the site where a psychopathic killer resides. Meanwhile Trent, invites friends Jenna, Bree, Chewie, Chelsea, Lawrence and Nolan to his cabin on the lake for a weekend of sex, booze and drugs. However, this seemingly fun weekend soon escalates into a nightmare after lone traveler Clay shows up looking for his missing sister Whitney and the young adults soon find themselves face to face with evil reborn, reimagined and rebooted, and his name is Jason Vorhees.

Taglines: 'Jason lives. Many will die.'
'Prepare for the day everyone fears'
'You know his name. You know the story. On Friday the 13th, witness his ressurection'

Genre: Horror

Motion Picture Rating (MPAA) - Rated R for some strong bloody violence, some graphic sexual content, language and drug material



UK: 18

Ireland: 18



Company Credits

Production Co: New Line Cinema, Paramount Pictures, Platinum Dunes

Technical Specs

Runtime: 97 min
Sound Mix: Dolby Digital

Online resources.. AM

http://www.bfi.org.uk/education/teaching/pdfonlyresource/doing_media_research2.pdf

Whist doing research on the British Film Institute website, I have come across this website which is a 36 page booklet for students on how to complete their media research. I feel that this is really useful and by working with tips from this booklet, it can complement our research and help us along the way.

Tips for Better Film Editing...AM

1. Cut Tight - taking out unnecessary pauses between actors' delivery of dialogue lines. This may mean having to tighten the gaps within dialogue sentences or losing redundant lines of dialogue
2. Temp music - people tend to fall in love with the temp score and then it is hard to get real music that feels good and temp music thus becomes a crutch. If a scene can stasnd on its own, the addition of sound effects and a score will make it better - expectation is a visual montage set to music.
3. No 'Dragnet' edits - original Dragnet television series used a certain approach to cutting dialogue scenes - audio and video edits tended to be made as straight cuts betwen actors without overlaps as they delivered their lines. Our brains react better to edits where the change in picture and sound is not always together - split edits 'Lcuts/Jcuts'. Editing in a style where images often precede or follow the dialogue edit feel more natural to our minds and make the scene flow more smoothly.
4. Matching action - Important = matching actors' hand positions, use of props, eyeline and stage position. The greatest weight is given to whether that cut drives out the emotion of the scene or moves the story along. The audience will often ignore many minor continuity differences from one shot to the next if they stay totally engrossed in the story - job as the editor is to cut in ways that they do.
5. Moving camera shots - In an action scene, moving the camera around is a stape of action sequences. This is designed to create a level of tension.
6. Don't cut back to the exact same angle - If you have a choice of several camera angles, do not automatically cut back to the same angle which was used in the previous shot.
7. Cut for the eyes - When cutting an intense dialogue scene, look at how the actor's eyes play in the scene. Do they convey the proper emotion? What is the reaction of the other actors in the scene?
8. Shaping story - It is said that there are 3 films: the one that's scripted, the one that's been filmed and the one that's edited. When editing, pay close attention to the story chronology and don't be afraid to veer from what was written or filmed if it makes sense to do so. Notecards on a story board help create a visual representation of the storyline. This helps to ensure that you reveal things to the audience in the most logical order and that nothing is inadvertently edited out of place.
9. Make your choices, but be prepard for others - The choices you make in cutting tightly or altering an actor's performance all factor into the look and feel of the film. E.g. you can heighten the tension between characters in a scene by cutting their dialogue in a way that one actor overlaps or steps on, the other actos lines. When you make such a choice, it alters the emotion of the scene and should be done only if that serves the story.

Glossary of camera and editing techniques...HT

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/gramtv.html

^^^ we should refer to these when we come to editing our teaser trailer and use them to create the tension and suspense our teaser trailer is wanting to achieve.

How to create tension within a scene...HT

This website gives a good insight into how we can shoot a scene with creating the most suspense as our main focus. This website gives a step by step guide to help organise a group into filming a supsense filled scene and also what to do and what NOT to do, when wanting to create a film full of suspense and tension. One thing which this website makes very clear we will be doing when we film and edit our teaser trailer is NOT to show the 'scary thing'. This will help to make tension rise dramatically. Another thing to take into account in the editing stages of things is to try and portray all sights, music and feelings through sound effects.

This website also reflects the view and thought our group had which was to make the 'scary thing' visisble but not easy to see, this will leave the audience guessing who or what is around involving them in the story. An example of this can be seen in the strangers when the girl is in the kitchen and you can see in the background the stranger walk in building supsens of what he might do next.

Another thing which makes strangers such a tension filled piece is the use of masks this leaves the audience having to guess who the 'strangers' are, involving them in the piece and therefore capturing and keeping their attention.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KkOMxTFUFaoJ:www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Suspenseful-Scene+how+to+edit+to+create+tension%23&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

How to Make a Horror Movie With a Low Budget... HT

How to Make a Horror Movie With Low Budget Special Effects: Filmmaking Basics eHow.com

^^^ This would be good for inspiration into what we can do to create our film and how to try and do the best with what we have got.

Importance of Lighting...HT

Importance of Lighting in Movies: Filmmaking Basics eHow.com

^^^ This link shows the importance of lighting in films and why it is cruicial to pay alot of attention when deciding what light to use. We should watch this together to make sure we are all sure on what will work for our film, and to make it a priority in order to create a realistic and affective look to our teaser trailer.

Three point lighting...HT

Lighting Techniques in Film & Television: Filmmaking Basics eHow.com

^^^ This tutorial will help us create the effect of three point lighting in order to create a 3 dimmensional shape of the subject matter or to illumiate the subject matter. In our case this will be the facial expressions of our characters and their reactions to the 'killer' this will help to create tension and will be a good introduction of the characters for the rest of the film.

Production Lighting: 6 tips for filming at night... AM

As there is very little guidance in 'textbooks' about how to produce the best footage at night, I decided to research websites online. This website provides useful, simple tips to make the quality of our film as good as possible. As we are filming at around 4ish-6ish, at this time of year the sky will be dark, so it is important to better our understanding of filming in nightime before we actually shoot our film piece.

http://www.steves-digicams.com/knowledge-center/how-tos/camcorder-operation/production-lighting-6-tips-for-filming-at-night.html

Art of foley... HT

This would be good in order to create natural sounds which we want to capture from movements and reactions from our characters, this will help give the film a sense of realism. Obviously in our case this is abit extreme as we don't have the resources to recreate all the sounds but we could take inspiration from the techniques used to help enhance the natural sounds created by our characters at the time of filming.

Foley also says how everyday noises such as airplanes, trains and cars cant be stopped just because we are filming so techniques can be used to either overshadow with a controlled layer of sound or block them out completely in order to create a realistic movie.

Foley also makes apparent the fact that if any dialogue was to be used within filming; in our case non or very little can be lost through noises of the location however this can be replaced in the time of editing through different microphones.

Filming can also create dips in sound as each scene is taken over different takes and at different angles in order to create the best look and performance. And how when this is put together although all the shots flow nicely together sound can however become choppy, distorted and overlapped they say how it is possible to create bridges in order to blank out these gaps.

Weather forecast for day of filming...AM

Having the correct weather on the day of filming is crucial to gaining the best images and picture. Therefore, I have checked the BBC weather website in order to gain a rough idea of whether it will be a good day to film. As our film is based on going on a camping trip weekend, clear weather is vital. We are planning to film on Tuesday 23rd November, which has 'sunny intervals'. If we experienced wet weather conditions, this would inevitabely create problems on location and with mise en scene. The field that we are planning to film the majority in often floods, so wet conditions would not be practical. We will make sure that we test our the film looks in the dark and what different types of lighting can be used to exert the right amount of tension for the audience.

Synopsis CA

A synopsis is a brief summary of a novel, film or play.

In the case of our film this would be that there is a group of friends that decide to go camping. Whilst on this camping trip people start to go missing and the audience get the feeling that someone or something is watching them. As the film develops on the more and more clues that there is in fact someone or something out there to get them. Slowly they all separate and start to disappear. When the opportunity to flee arises they take it. But will this 'thing' let them leave?

Our teaser trailer doesn't specifically show the killer but as the film goes on the audience are given more of an idea to who or what the killer is.

Rough storyboard by AM, HT, SE, CA.... Presentation done by AM

Rough storyboard for our a2 coursework piece

View more presentations from htuckwell.

Tips for filming outdoors in low lighting - SE

Filming outdoors in the evening or at night is difficult due to the lack of natural light and the sparse splattering of bright interference. As we are aiming to film our piece late in the afternoon and continuing into the evening, I researched filming techniques that would produce a successful result when filming outdoors in a low lit area.

• Position the camera closer to objects you are trying to capture, this will assist in depth of field as well as image clarity in the patchy vision of night light.
• Avoid zooming in too much.
• Auto-focus will not be able to cope with sharp light spots that occur against a dark landscape, therefore it is better to manually focus on each image specifically.
• Focus needs to be adjusted carefully between each frame as although darkness appears to be one concrete element, in reality each outdoor night situation will be slightly different in terms of saturation and light.
• Try lighting small areas rather than trying to capture the entire region.
• Focusing the filming on smaller areas enables you to highlight the partial nature of the light.
• White balance in a correctly lit area where you will be filming - play with this to alter the colour of the night light by white balancing on slightly different coloured pieces of paper.
• Keep the image natural - night scenes contain mystery, do not allow you to see everything clearly and have certain amounts of distraction to them.

Pictures for our film CA, AM, HT, SE

We thought that this area would be perfect to film the main part of our trailer. It has an area which already has had a fire in so we can use that to our advantage and also the area is in a cirle shape which can be where all the main charcters sit. we have a lot of wood land around where the horror can be set. We think that using this area around dusk would really set an atmosphere as it would look quite dark and mysterious.

Marxist Media Theory.. AM

Media as means of production

• 'Means of production' which in a capitalist society are in the ownership of the ruling class
• The mass media simply disseminate the ideas and world views of the ruling class and deny or defuse alternative ideas
• The mass media functioned to produce 'false consciousness' in the working classes
• Leads to an extreme stance whereby media products are seen as monolithic expressions of ruling class values, which ignores any diversity of values within the ruling class and within the media, and the possibility of oppositional readings by media audiences

Marxist theories and Media - HT

Dialetical Materialism a theory started off by Karl Marx and Engles which Kumpar a critic of whom evaluates this marxist theory. She describes the theory as being more relevant to cultural and media studies of today. She also says how this work has come about due to the contradictory ways of media, just like the contradictory ways of reality. She then goes on to say how this contradiction allows for change within the whole of society, and how this change can be due people realising and resiting their oppression and exploitation.

She follows on to say how this contradictory nature of media is due to the modern media culture. How modern media pieces infuse all types and products of culture. These are categorized in to many factors;

• systems of ownership
• proccess of cultural production
• level of sruggle
• state of consciousness

All these things are put togeteher to create cultural depictions of society at one given time. Also how social actors in new forms of media mediate and navigate these contradictory forces of history, the material world and culture is the key to the problem of mediation in Marxist theory.

Day and Night Lighting Techniques - SE

Tony Reale describes and shows how to film and light the same scene during the same time of day to appear either in the day or night time. As a group we can apply these techniques to our project as we have a limited time period in which to cast and film our trailer.

The Cloverfield method of filming.. AM

http://www.cinemaadvanced.com/producing/the-cloverfield-method-of-film-marketing

As we are making a 'thriller' movie trailer, I have found that this personal blog is very useful in the marketing of our proposed trailer. It gives very useful tips on how to make our thriller into a universal movie.

HT- Demographics

The definition of demographic is a measurable characteristics of media consumers such as age, gender, race, education and income level. To find these characteristics social media channels such as Facebook can help define and isolate our target audience for our movie.

Like newspapers film producers and directors use demographics to target their film at one particular audience, however unlike newspapers where The Sun tends to target C1,C2 and D classes in film wealth is less of an importance. However should be consider when marketing a film for example where will your specific target audience see the adverts. Different classes tend to watch different genres of TV and TV programmes so in order to address the correct target audience for the film the teaser trailers would need to be played at the correct time and in between the correct programmes in order to capture the right type of audience for your film.

Other things to consider when releasing the teaser trailer is the age group it is targeting towards and when are they most likely to see this trailer. In the evening? When prime time tele is? or during the day? These would be important questions to consider when discussing the release of a teaser trailer.

How to make a movie trailer... AM

Instructions

1. Watch lots of movie trailers and take notes. The best movie trailers pull in the viewers to the movie plot and characters without giving away too much. For drama's/indies look at haunting images and music in the trailer 'Requiem for a Dream'

2. Master the use of popular editing software like iMovie or Ulead movie studio. These packages contain storyboard, trimming and title functions, and provide access to quick and easy frame transitions.

3. Sketch a storyboard for your trailer. You can use editing software or do it the old fashioned way, with pen and paper. If you're clear with the concept at the outset, it'll save you time and fustration at the computer later.

4. Set a budget to make your movie trailer. Decide whether you can use existing footage and music. If you need original music or edited scenes for use in the movie trailer, figure the cost and stick to it.

HT- let me in trailer

When I saw this trailer I thought it would be good to analyse the text used to create tension in this teaser trailer. It seems to narrate the audience through and is used to create a tone of the piece. Also the shots at the beginning of the trailer reflects the idea of what our group wants to do. It addresses that the protagonist is a school child similar to our film however the age difference is apparent.
In particular I think that the font at the end of the trailer showing the film title really fits the genre of 'horror' I think that we as a group could take inspiration of font and style of this title and put it into practice for our film. I also think this font style would be achieveable and leave our trailer with a good effect and would address the genre, leaving the audience with a clear idea of what to expect from the film.