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