Production Treatment for Main Task: Zara, Francesca, Amy and Zeenat

The name of our film will be called 'The Spirit' and the genre is horror/psychological thriller.

The duration of our film opening will be two minutes, however we may film slightly over in order to not cut out any important bits that will make our film opening successful.

The intended audience for our film opening is males and females aged between 15-35 who form the main target audience for our genre which is horror/psychological thriller.

The opening of the film will start of with showing the production company which is called Popcorn Productions and have the logo along with some sound that we will decide on. The film will then start off with a young girl in a room with low-key lighting and the camera will do a high-angle shot of her looking through old photographs, the camera isn't on the girl it will be on her hands flicking through the photographs. However, she stops on one specific photograph which is a picture of her sister who died. The camera zooms into the photo and then does a close-up of her face looking at the photograph. The girl blows the candle and as soon as she does this this there is then an establishing shot of a local, public park (Alexandra Park) and then the camera films from behind her so allow the audience to see what she is looking at. There is then a close-up of her hands as she opens the gates, then there are a number of different shots as she walks down the path towards the grave. Then she just sits at the grave looking at the photograph and the camera is looking down on her then there is a close-up of her lifting her face up and the props used will show how she has become possessed. When she is looking through the photographs at the start, the credits will begin to appear on the screen coming in from the sides, these will include 'Directed by', 'Cinematography', 'Cast', 'Editing' and then the title of the film which is The Spirit. However, throughout the filming/editing we may change certain elements which we think would work better for our opening.

The Props will include contact lenses, photographs and burnt paper.

Recording Days:
For our filming we intend to spend about 2-3 days in the week for approximately 2 hours starting from the 2nd March until the 25th March.

For our post production we intend to spend approximately 2-3 weeks of which these sessions will last for 2 hours.

Also during lessons we will use this time to complete our blog and amend any errors.

Scream-Opening Scene (only analysed the first 2 minutes as that will be the duration of our film)

Saw 1-Opening Scene (only analysed the first 2 mins as that will be the duration of our film)

Analysis and Comparison of the opening 2 minutes of Scream and Saw 1

We have chosen to analyse the opening 2 minutes of 'Scream' and 'Saw 1' to help us to create and produce our own horror opening scene as it is the same genre. We are only analysing the first 2 minutes as that is the duration of our film.

Scream starts off with showing us the production company which is Miramax International and Dimensions. The film starts off with the title which is in bold in white-however, it changes to the colour red to symbolise blood and gore which are the elements of horror films. Also, there is non-diegetic sound of screaming to match the title and drama and create anticipation. The scene opens up with a close-up of a telephone which automatically draws the audience's attention to the significance of the telephone because this is how the storyline begins. The telephone keeps ringing and the woman keeps answering, this makes the audience familiar with the sound of the telephone and also makes the audience more likely to know what's going to happen next because of the 'scary' voice of the man on the telephone. It creates suspense. It then has an establishing shot of the where this is taking place and the surroundings of the house which is a dark, isolated forest and we can see it is night which are generally the typical elements of a horror film.

Saw 1 also starts off with the name of the production company (Twisted pictures) which is quite graphic e.g it has barbed wire around it and connotes gore and horror. It also has the sounds of the barbed wire and chains as if they're locking something in and it also has the sounds of the sword dropping. It then shows the opening credits whereas in Scream they didn't and skipped straight to the title of the film. Then the title comes out with mysterious music alongside it. The title had the same graphics as the production company. When the film starts, it shows the audience what is going on then shows a black screen then goes back to showing the audience what is going on which creates suspense as the audience want to know what's happening. Then, the screen is completely blank for a number of seconds and all the audience can hear is dialogue between two people which again creates suspense. It also makes the audience more intrigued as they want to know what's going on as they can't see anything.

Compared to 'Scream', this film doesn't give a lot away, it keeps the audience wanting to know more and starts off straight away with drama and action whereas in 'Scream' it was quite calm but suspenseful at the same time.

Shot List

High angle shot of young girl looking through old photographs

Close up of girl’s hands flicking through photographs , can see black painted finger nails-the audience can see what the girl sees, can also see the house/room setting-dark, with the dim light of a candle

Close up of photos from right

Over the shoulder shot of girl looking at photos (For a variety of view points)

Camera zooms in on a particular photo of sister

Medium close up of girl looking down at photo,

Medium side shot of girl looking up, and then leaning towards flickering candle on table about to blow out

Close up of girl blowing out candle

Establishing shot of girl looking into the cemetery gates (can only see back of her, but audience can see the cemetery as she would)

Close up of girl’s hands as she opens the gates

Medium shot of girl opening gates from inside cemetery

Wide side shot of girl walking into cemetery (into the frame) then stops

POV shot of girl looking left then right

Long shot of girl walking towards camera -walking slowly-builds tension

Tracking close up of girl’s feet as she walks

Medium shot of girl continuing to walk from one side,

Medium shot from other side, can now see photo still in girl’s hand

Wide shot of girl stood up, then about to sit down-can see the cemetery setting around her

Medium shot of the girl sat down with head facing down

Over the shoulder shot of photo-can tell the girl is looking at it, can see the gravestone in foreground

Low angle shot looking up at girl, from next to grave stone

Slow zoom as girl lifts head up

Close up of girl’s face-serious expression

Extreme close up of girl’s eyes-see the ‘possessed’ look

Preliminary Task Analysis and Evaluation (Foundation Portfolio Evaluation)

In this analysis, we have covered the following topics/questions:

• What we learnt about the cameras and editing software during the preliminary task


• A specific, detailed example of how we used the shot reverse shot combination in our film


• What worked well and what could've been improved in the filming and editing of our project


• What we learnt about or incontinuous transitions and failing to achieve entire continuity

What we learnt about the cameras and editing software during the preliminary task

In this task, we learnt about how to use a different variety of shots with the camera, how to view shots we'd took, how to delete any we didn't want, how to do a close-up, zoom, medium shot, long shot, low-angle shot, shot-reverse shot and a two-shot with the camera. When we started editing, we learnt how to "mark in" and "mark out" bits of the shot that we wanted in our film, for example if we only wanted two people talking we would press the "mark in" key from where the first person starts talking and then press the "mark out" key from when they finish their conversation. By doing this, we could take what we wanted from the shot without having to put up with anything we didn't want. We also learnt about how to block out any sound we didn't want in our film and how to override shots.

A specific, detailed example of how we used the shot reverse shot combination in our film

We didn't use a shot-reverse-shot combination in our film, however, we have learnt that when two people are having a converation, it would be more effective to use the shot-reverse-shot.

What worked well and what could've been improved in the filming and editing of our project and what we learnt about our incontinuous transitions and failing to achieve entire continuity

Originally, we had made the film about a girl who goes for a job interview. When we started editing the film, we noticed that we had missed out a lot of variety of shots, e.g we only had two types (close-up and two-shot) and the film was only 13 seconds long instead of thirty so we had to film again. We changed the location and and storyline. We decided to change the story from a job interview to a girl going to get her eyebrows done by a beautician situated in college. This was much easier as less dialogue was needed and it was easier to use a variety of different shots. We started off by filming the girl walking and we did this by using a low-angle shot starting from her feet and filming up to her face as she walked. Then we did a close-up of the sign on the door so that the audience could see where she is going and what she is about to do. This could also be seen as point-of-view shot as we did a close-up of the girl's hand turning the door handle after she looked at the sign. We then filmed the beautician greeting her and asking her questions, this was an over-the-shoulder shot and when the beautician gave her reply to the girl we filmed over the beautician's shoulder which was another over-the-shoulder shot and kept in mind the 180 degree rule. We then filmed the girl getting her eyebrows done by the beatician and this was filmed in seperate shots. These shots included close-ups of her eyebrows getting done, zooms on her eyebrows, close-ups of the beautican and medium shots of the beautician and the girl. The final shots were of the beautician going to her desk, the girl paying her and walking towards the door, a close-up of the girl's hand turning the handle on the door and a medium shot of her walking out. When we went to edit the film, we again noticed that we had only used a very small variety of shots and the shots weren't continuous so there was a lot of jump-cutting between shots when we put the film together. We also realised that the film was one minute long when it was supposed to be only 30 seconds long, however we couldn't cut anything out otherwise the film wouldn't have made sense. If we were to do this again, we would make sure we used a much wider variety of shots, make sure the film wasn't too long by cutting dialogue and use more continuous shots for example film longer so that the film can be continous and have no jump-cutting when it comes to editing.

PRELIMINARY TASK SHOT LIST

These are the shots that we used in the Preliminary Task:

Long shots e.g when the girl was walking to the door

Medium shots e.g when the beautician was talking to the girl

Close ups e.g when the beautician was doing the girl's eyebrows (close-up on the eyebrows)

Zooms e.g when the beautician was doing the girl's eyebrows

These were only a small variety and we learnt that from not using these shots our film wasn't continuous.

Preliminary Task Video