Group: Script

This is the script we are aiming to follow for question 7

Script

• We were given the following brief for our preliminary task: To include a variety of camera techniques and editing techniques. These include continuity editing, vary distances and angles, pans, steadicam, handicam, cutaways, 180’ rule to ensure correct perspective, shot reverse shot, two lines of dialogue and opening door. We also had to consider framing. The briefing for our opening called Gutted was to make a 2 minute film opening or title sequence in the genre of either horror or thriller.

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• Comparing our preliminary task with our zombie horror film Gutted, we have taken 6 techniques from the initial task to make our opening have a variety of interesting angles. One of these is a close up of a door opening. In the opening, it is more frantic as they are attempting to get out of the place whereas in the preliminary task it is more relaxed as it is a slower pace.

• Another technique used in the film opening was the use of handicam tracking shots. We felt this would give a more realistic feel as if someone was actually following them. In the preliminary task, we used this technique but we are unaware on who the antagonist is, but in contrast to Gutted, we know it is the zombies.

• We have two moments in our opening where we show a low angle shot of the protagonist being followed by the antagonists. In the preliminary task this is a still shot with the antagonist lurking in the background. In our opening however, it is much faster paced to show the panic of the protagonists trying to get away from the antagonists. We liked the use of shallow focus with the grass in focus and feet blurred in the background.

• Similar to our preliminary task, our opening had female protagonists, but we added more characters otherwise it would not have seemed plausible that a girl was exploring a house on her own. As we wanted a character to die within the opening, we needed more characters to make the plot carry on. The plot in Gutted is more complex than in our preliminary task because we had more characters doing different lines of action at the same time whereas in the preliminary task it was straight forward as there were fewer characters.

• Although in our preliminary task we used POV shots, we did not use this in our opening, but instead we used a POV from the two cameras that the girls were holding to give a more realistic feel to the piece. When our protagonist is filming herself, it breaks the fourth wall for the audience as she is talking directly to them.

• The 180 degree rule was used in both our preliminary task and film opening. We kept continuity the same by making sure our characters were on the same side each time and remembered what movements they did first time round.

•  For our location reccie, we went to Wilderness woods where we experimented with different shots and camera angles to see if there were any that seemed suitable to use in the film opening. One angle we liked was the canted angle shot. We felt this gave an obscure view for the audience to help connote fear of the unknown which is why we have used it several times in the opening.

• Another moment in Wilderness woods we liked was the rule of thirds in the playground, so we added this at the end of our opening scene as it breaks up the framing and makes it more interesting to watch. We used Photoshop to make the video show through the text, so we have used multimedia. Following on from this, we also used titles in our opening. This proved difficult at some points as we didn’t want to distract people from the action so deciding where to put them and how long to have them show for but we mainly put them in any spaces in the frame where it seemed bare.

• The final technique from wilderness woods was a high angle shot with a pan. We used this technique as our protagonists were entering the house, as high angles makes the characters look more vulnerable as the audience have a dominant view of them, making them seem exposed to danger.

• Colouring in our preliminary task was not a problem as we were only filming on one day so the lighting was consistent. But in our preliminary task, we were using several different cameras so the white balance was different for a few of them, so we changed this by altering the brightness, contrast and auto colour so the continuity was smooth. As we wanted to give a darker feel to the piece, we changed the saturation and lighting in the clips so it looked darker as when we filmed, some of the colours looked to bright to be in a horror film so we counteracted this using editing.

• When we filmed the protagonists by the door, it was too dark to make them open the door to run outside as it would have been odd for the sky to be dark and suddenly become lighter again, so to make continuity successful, we decided to have a moment where there is no video but we can hear a character shout “run”; a technique that we used at the end of our preliminary task.

• To make sure we didn’t break any copyright rules, we chose a piece of music by an original composer from YouTube to build up tension in the house and in the chase scene. During the first scene of our opening, there are diagetic sounds of birds so there wasn’t an awkward silence where you could hear the wind blowing or traffic faintly in the distance. This contrasts to our preliminary task as we kept all natural sounds.

• The use of makeup, costumes, prosthetics and props really added to the feel of our horror opening and this was a massive step up from our preliminary task. We formed makeup tests to make sure they looked alright on camera. After the first day of filming we took pictures of everyone so we could remember what their makeup look liked so continuity was smooth.

• In our opening, ‘Gutted,’ we added titles to communicate the names of our actors and production team. We created the names and roles, as obviously we ourselves were the crew, but we felt it was worth including titles as it created a realistic opening. We created the effect on the final title, “GUTTED,” by creating a stencil of the word of photoshop, and then zooming it over our footage to show the action within the letters, then fading it to red. I feel this gave a really professional looking end to our opening. This was the first time we had added text to a piece, other than a small amount of text introducing our recci footage from Wilderness Woods. In ‘Gutted’ the titles are in the font GOGOZOMBIE, and the main title in a font called Skin & Bones, both downloaded from the website dafont.