Name: Robert N. Wilcock
Age: 17
Gender: Male
Robbie is currently at 6th from studying Maths, Product Design and BTEC sport. He plays football for Baldock Town, he is outgoing, very sociable and has a lot of free time. I think he fits the character for who I am aiming my horror film at.
The fact he is sociable and outgoing means he would be willing to go to the cinema with friends to watch films and therefore my horror film. He doesn’t have to pay any bills so would have spare money to go to the cinema.
The age of the target audience for my film is 15 – 25 and Robbie is 17 so would be suitable to watch it. Also at this age he would be able to relate to a lot that features in the film as the characters are a similar age.
Robbie enjoys horror films and in particular horror films with action in them. He doesn’t mind gore in horror films and likes them to have a bit of mystery in them. Although our opening lacks a lot of action, I think other than that he would enjoy it. Overall I think Robbie is the perfect mach to my target audience.

First Ideas and Story Board for mian task

A little while into planning our main task we found out that we had too many people in our group and would have to split. There were five of us but you were only aloud four. We decide that me and Dom would go into a group of two and the girls would stay together. We decided this because me and Dom were more likely to see each other and arrange things outside of school. We were also joined by Connor Thompson from the other class, this meant we could split the roles up better and work more efficiently.

The three of us came up with this as our idea for the main task:

To sum it up, a young girl leaves early from a party with her friends because she has had an argument. She walks home alone until she hears a scream, she follows the noise as she thinks somebody might be in trouble. She finds herself in a strange building were a masked man appears and kills her. She then wakes up in a panic to discover it was a dream and goes back to sleep. However once she has turned away the camera reveals the same masked man from the dream to be just outside her bedroom. The storyboard goes into more detail about camera angles and movement etc.

Preliminary Task

For our preliminary task we were given a rough storyline that we had to follow:

Subject A entering a room from a corridor and opening the door. Inside the room subject B is sitting down without saying anything, A gives a piece of paper to B. B reads it and reacts. A displays some kind of emotion and leaves. This task must demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule.

Apart from this we had a lot of freedom to make what we wanted. We could do any genre but as we already knew our main task would be a horror film we choose to do this so we gained some experience and learned what could be done and what couldn't.

I worked in a group with Harri, Harri, Becky and Dom. This was our storyboard.

Location

In our group we discussed the conventional locations of horror films. We thought places like graveyards, forests/woods, old or abandoned houses in isolated locations are most common in horror. An abandoned house seemed difficult because we didn't have one and we ruled out graveyards because it was almost too stereotypical. We decided to film our prelim at the springs in a village near our school called Ashwell. This was in the middle of the village but when filming we could make it seem very isolated, which would give it a good effect and create more tension.

Time of day

When we discussed this in our group we decided that during the night would be best. It is the more conventional way for horror films as it gives the film a sense of unknown and can be quite scary. We thought doing it in daylight wouldn't be as effective.

Props

We had to use a package as one of the props in our prelim, so we decided to use an old tape as we thought it would give the clip more mystery and add to the tension. Apart from this we didn't use any other props because we tried to keep it simple.

Camera Angles/Movement

In the picture of our storyboard you can see the camera angles we plan to use. We've done a bit in camera angles in class and we tried to use the ones that will help to create tension and make the audience uncomfortable. For example we thought it would be good to use a canted angle shot at some point as it can make the audience feel a little disorientated, which would be ideal for our prelim.


This is a link to our finished preliminary task.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aCKQQ-baVt0

Production Companies - New Line Cinema

New Line Cinema is an American film company that was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne as a film distributor. It became a subsidiary of Time Warner in 1996 and was merged with the larger studio Warner Bros in 2008.

Before it merged with Warner Bros, New Line Cinema produced successful films such as the 'Lord the of Rings' sequel. They've made horror/thriller films such as 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre', 'Final Destination', 'Friday the 13th' and 'A Nightmare on Elm Street'. These films have similar story lines and aspects as to what we hope to achieve when we make our horror film opening. Therefore I think a company like this would be suitable for our film.

Production Companies - Universal Studios

Universal Studios was founded in 1912 by Carl Laemmle, it is currently the oldest American film still producing films. It is celebrating it's 100th anniversary this year.

Universal have produced popular films such as 'American Gangster', 'Role Models' and 'Hot Fuzz' and continue to produce other popular films. They've made many horror films including 'Frankenstein', 'Dracula' and 'The Mummy'. These horror films were some of the earliest made and have been remade multiple times, showing that they were also very popular. This could suggest that Universal had a big impact on today's horror films and influenced other production companies.

Production Companies - Paramount

Paramount Pictures is an American film production and distribution company. It was founded in 1912 by Adolph Zukor and is currently celebrating its 100th anniversary. Its America’s second oldest film company after Universal Studios and also the only major film company to still be located in Hollywood. It is a worldwide company and is continually ranked as one of the top grossing film companies.
Paramount has produced horror films such as ‘Psycho’, ‘Friday the 13th’, ‘Paranormal Activity’ and ‘The Haunting’. Films that are continually given positive feedback and regarded as some of the best in the genre.

Silence of the Lambs opening analysis

This is a link to our analysis of the opening few minutes of Silence of the Lambs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoqtmb24E10