Research of Similar Media Texts

I watched some horror/thriller films before we began the process to get an idea of how I wanted our movie to be. This also gave me a greater understanding of how editing techniques can be used to manipulate the feelings of the audience.

Final Destination
From reasearching some youtube footage of this film I gained a deeper understanding of how to display the action scenes in a horror movie. Some fast shot-reverse-shots build tension for the viewer and make it a more intense viewing experiance.

Paranormal Activity
We used a technique from this movie and many other horror movies like it by not showing the culprit until the very end of our film. This helps to build suspense and makes the film more frighting because of the fear of the unknown. It makes the audience try and imagine who or what maight becausing these actions and makes them use their imagination trying to figure it out.
From this film and some like it such as Blair Witch Project we used a hand held camera for some of the shots whihc give the audience an idea that someone is watching yet does not want to be seen.

Seven
 The disturbing mise-enscene of Seven helped to bring fear to the audience during their viewong and that is something we wanted to incorporate into our film. We also use their lighting effects of a dark setting which was very successful in Seven

Target Audience

"Welcome Home" has a taget audience for anyone who like horror/ thriller movies. The range of ages who would see our film would be from about fifteen to forty-five.
Our target audience would probably be the same as films such as Paranormal Activity, The Strangers, Blair Witch Project and Scream.

The group of people who would most likely see our film would be teenagers, still in education who could realte to the main charecter. They would enjoy films that were intended to scare the audience while at the same time give them an adreniline rush.

Preliminary Task



Before we began the filming of our actual film we did a small project so we could gain a deeper understanding of different techniques and rules of filming. From this I learned a lot more about aspects of editing and camera techniques. This allowed me to get more comfortable with editing which also allowed me to make diiferent scenes flow together and to make quick edits. I also learned a lot more about different camera techniques such as the 180 degree rule, POV shots and reaction shots. Below are some pictures of these rules.

180 degree rule from Preliminary



POV shot from film opening



Reaction shot from our film opening

The 180 degree rule is in place so that the shots makes sense to the audience as it does not appear as if the charecter(s) have suddenly changed position

The POV shot allows us to create the idea that somebody is watching. This was very useful in our film as it allowed us to create tension.

The reaction shot lets the audience know how the protaginist feels at the moment.





Changes decided to make in film.

• We got rid of our original idea of a film due to it being far too complex for the resouces we had at our disposal. We wanted to have him in an apartment building and a lot of strange things happening such as chairs being lain on the fllor when he was in the other room creating a satanic symbol. However we could not of possibly got an aerial shot of the scene so we decided to srcap it.
• We also had the idea of the unknown intruder of being somewhat supernatural such as a ghost or a demon. After a short period of planning and discussion we decided against this as we did not have the skills to create something like that in our movie and it would be ebtter to have a human intruder than a dissapointing or fake looking demon.
• We scraped a scene where our charecter came into the house and texted for a while. The original purpose was to display this was his own home and that he felt comfortable in the setting. However, we decided this was already accomplished by having him know where the keys were to the front door and how at ease he was when making food and watching the television.
• During the editing we added a time at the beggining of two scenes to illistrate that we had done cross cutting and the first scene was actually at the end of the film.
• We had a black out inbetween some scenes as we wanted to portray that some time had passed inbetween each scene. It would have been dull if we had shown every activity that contributed very little to the story.

The changes we made to the film were, in my opnion, positive. It made the entire story more realtable and believable to an audience which made ours more frightening.

Risk Assesment

Before me and Ross began filming we had to think of all the things that may go wrong during the filming and how we could resolve these problems. We came up with the following points:

• We wanted a natural light to be in the scenes as it seemed more realistic as our charecter had just come home from school. However we needed it to be dark so it was clear that there had been a power failure. We resolved this by drawing the curtains whihc allowed the room to be pitch dark when the lights went off.
• We were unsure of how much of the scene we should have before our charecter enetered his home. We filmed a minute of him walking home and then when we had finished we cut some of it out of our film was in the time limit.

Cating Shot

This was the one and only charecter in our
film. Ross Campbell played an average teenager
when there was an intruder in his home.

Location Shots

We used this position to shoot a POV shot
near the start of the film.
Next shot we used here was when the charecter
goes to pick up books that mysteriously fell.
Also used in the last shot of the movie when we
see a mysterious charecter walking downstairs.


Next shot in the sequence when our charecter
investigates a noise heard on the stairs.


Our charecter was sitting here when there
was a mysterious power cut.