Rough Cut 5

31/03/2013

Audience feedback:

Our response:
Our responses were varied some positive and some negative, the problems we had on our feedback with the 5th rough cut were that people would tell us that they had enjoyed it, but they had not been specific to certain parts so we were unsure of what parts some of our target audience would like to see more of.
On the other hand we were sure of what our audience wanted to see less of, this was the takes as we had been told many times previously that long takes needed to be shortened this is something we have taken into consideration and will apply shorter takes where appropriate.

Rough Cut 4

30/03/2013

Rough Cut 3

29/03/2013

BBFC Ratings for our film opening

BBFC Ratings:

Below are the Certificate pictures for age ratings in Britain.

	Universal	Suitable for all
	Parental Guidance	General viewing, but some scenes may be unsuitable for young children
	12 Accompanied/Advisory	Suitable for those aged 12 and older (cinema only); under 12s admitted, but only if accompanied by an adult
	12	Suitable for those aged 12 and older (VHS and DVD only)
	15	Suitable for those aged 15 and older
	18	Suitable for those aged 18 and older
	Restricted 18	Restricted to those aged 18 and older and only available at licensed cinemas and sex shops. The latter will not require a licence to sell R18 films

The BBFC guidelines for a 15 classification allows the following to appear in films:

• strong violence
• frequent strong language
• portrayals of sexual activity
• strong verbal references to sex
• sexual nudity
• brief scenees of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence
• discriminatory language or behaviour
• drug taking

Here are a few examples of recent slasher films with the 15 rating:

Detention (Joseph Khan, 2011) 

Detention DVD cover

Scream 4 (Wes Craven, 2011)

Scream 4 DVD cover

Prom Night (Nelson McCormick, 2008)

Prom Night DVD cover

We have rated our film as a 15 due to the fact that our film doesn't contain any explicit nudity, however it does contain sexual references and violence form the outset and throughout. Taking into consideration our full film we feel that it will stick to the guidelines for a 15 classification.

Rough Cut 2

28/03/2013

The Asylum Re-Shoot

Re-Shoot 

After shooting our first rough cut, we decided we needed more footage to make our final piece great. so in school we arranged to meet at my house for the shoot, with the following characters:

Heather: scream queen
Jake: The Dr
Curtis: The killer
George:Camera Man/Director

This was a key re-shoot as all of our characters were needed and we were all available we had planned previously on what we were planning on doing and including this time round. Therefore, we would not have to come back and re-shoot for a second time

Psycho shower scene

We did our shoot after school, we planned to shoot at our second location as it was the only day when we could arrange Heather to act for us. We prepared the scenes we had to do during the week. We had 2 Killing scenes, one of the final girl and one of the Dr.

 We organised the first murder scene in the bathroom, using a kitchen knife and ketchup as blood. We used strategies that many films use, probably the most famous, the Psycho shower scene, where they used fast pace editing. Used to make it look much more realistic when special effects aren't available. 

Like the attic stairs we used

The second murder Took place in my bedroom which is up some stairs in the attic. we thought it would be very effective to us this as the stairs are very effective. We did one continuous take with a false scare and a real scare.

Rough Cut 1

27/03/2013

The Asylum shoot

Our Shoot

our white lab coat

We carried out our shoot on monday the 25th of february, we first got the train to Menston. Which is where we filmed our opening,  at Menston High Royds mental asylum. This is the perfect location for our film as its similar to the film we are basing it on, Mad House. At around 3o'clock in the afternoon when it was still light. We then filmed outside of High Royds, in which we acted out a chase scene in which the patient is escaping from High Royds. Curtis our patient got into his costume which was a white lab coat. The other actor - Jake, also got into his costume which consisted of doctors trousers, a doctor shirt and a doctors a ID which is a key piece of mise en scene in our opening because it provides realism to the audience.

After filming at High Royds we then went toour second location to film the rest of opening. We filmed Outside and inside of the location. Inside we filmed in the bathroom and landing. The bathroom was ideal because of the mirror above the toilet, this was used to create our false scare. When we were outside we filmed the drive, using the car as part of the mise on scene to represent his working social class. This was also a gender representation as the male being a working character. 

The fig rig we used

We were lucky with the time that we went because it wasn't dark yet, which was ideal because we hadn't previously planned on taking a light with the rest of our equipment. The fig rig proved to be a key piece of equipment that we used as it provided a stable camera shot which proved handy when filming POV shot when we changed the location of our opening.

I feel that the quality of the footage was good but there are major improvements to be made and to do this we need to re-shoot. Firstly we tried to get as many shots as we could however, this did prove to be difficult, we encountered problems such as our match on action being out of sync once we had edited our first rough cut, also we had extremely long takes.

In our re-shoot we plan on getting alot more shots but of many different view points and camera angles. Therefore, we will have more to work with when we are editing and we will not have to re-shoot for a second time.

Story Board 2: The Asylum

The Story Board for The Asylum on Location 1

This is our story board for our scene on location 1, obviously we aren't going to stick to what we have originally, but we are going to use this as a guideline for our first scene. No doubt our director will want to change a few things, but this is fine as this was just a rough sketch of the shots. Personally i think more shots shot be added just for the fact that in the editing process we will have more to work with and this will reduce the chances of having to re-shoot.

Story boards: The Asylum

Story boards for The Asylum

Sheet 1

Sheet 2

These are our storyboards, this is part of our time management for the shoot, we wanted to shoot efficiently before it got dark. This is why we drew up a shot list for our opening this way we didn't waste any time organising and planning whilst we were on location. As we know all of the shots we need to shoot hopefully we will be on schedule for our shoot.

Screenplay for The Asylum

The Asylum Screenplay:

The Asylum

By Curtis Tiplady, Jake Wilson

Location 1: The Asylum

The Doctor: (Running down the stairs) (Shouting, exhausted) "Catch him he's escaped" 

-Jakes facial expression suggests that he's worried.

The shot fades out

Location 2: The House

The Doctor: (Startled)

The Scream Queen: (Coming into the bathroom) (Relaxed) "Hey babe its only me"

The Doctor: "Oh, sorry i've had a bad day at work"

Halloween Soundtrack


Slasher Soundtrack: Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)

Halloween Cover

As Halloween opens there is a high pitched faint piano keys being played as well as a pattering on a drum or symbol to provide an nervous feel for the audience. then at 17 seconds when the pumpkin is shown with the opening titles, much deeper notes are introduced layered on top to create a deeper sound and to create tension. At this point, these deep piano notes turn to longer drawn out notes. At 49 seconds into the opening synths are then added which are much higher notes but are also long notes as well to go with the other instruments and to not sound out of sync. Then at 1.05 the deep piano notes and the high pitched synths are taken out and what was originally there in the beginning is only two instrumental sounds - the piano and the tapping. At 1.14 the long drawn out piano notes return to create tension - this gets gradually louder untill 2.00 when the first two instruments are back again as the dennotation (Haddonfield, Illinois) and (Halloween Night, 1963) is shown. The volume of the piano is lowered and the digetic sound of children's voices are introduced.

At 2.20 the iconic house POV shot is shown and all instruments draw to silence. The only sound is the digetic sound of nature and the sound of the couples voices inside. Inside the house the digetic sound continues until 3.14 when a high pitched long drawn out keyboard note is added to build suspense as the POV stalks the two in the house.





The Original Story Board For The Trailer

Trailer Storyboard

Sheet 1

Sheet 2

These are the original copies of our storyboard for the trailer of our film. We used these as a guideline to what we had to film. However, we didn't stick to what we had down on our storyboard, we changed things that we thought didn't seem right. Such as the desk shot, we thought our trailer would be much more effective if we didn't include it

Group Work: Warp Vs Working Title Presentation

The two films me and Jake are comparing are Four lions and Green Zone both from different production companies below i will list the questions with the appropriate analysis.

Four Lions

Four Lions DVD Cover

2010 FilmFour Lions is a British dark comedy film. It is the feature film debut of director Chris Morris, written by Morris, Sam Bain, and Jesse Armstrong.

WikipediaRelease date: January 23, 2010 (initial release)

Director: Chris Morris

Production company: Warp Films

Awards: BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer

Screenplay: Jesse Armstrong, Sam Bain, Simon Blackwell, Chris Morris

Green Zone

Green Zone DVD Cover

2010 FilmGreen Zone is a 2010 British-French-American war thriller film directed by Paul Greengrass. The storyline was conceived from a screenplay

Written by: Brian Helgeland, based on a 2006 non-fiction book WikipediaRelease date: February 26, 2010 (initial release)

Director: Paul Greengrass

DVD release date: June 22, 2010

Screenplay: Brian Helgeland
Story by: Rajiv Chandrasekaran

1.Budgets

Four lions budget: £2.5m
A small budget compared to the working title kind of budgets. Never-the-less the biggest budget that Warp have ever had, the film made alot of money and profited greatly, making abit of money in america and £600,000 in the british box office, making the real money on DVD release. it was a very controversial topic to risk the largest Warp budget ever, however a risk that payed off.

Green zone budget: $100m
A large budget by any standards even by the big 6 standards. Working titles biggest ever budget. Using the director of the bourne films, as what you would call a safe bet using a big A-list star also. However this film was a major flop US box office.

2.Distribution+Marketing

Green zone Distributors:
DVD: Universal home entertainment
Theatre:Universal pictures

A prime example of vertical integration as universal own the production side that is working titleas WT is a subsidiary, they then do the box office part of it as they get the film into cinema.They also can advertise these films by using things like universal studios in orlando, make rdes etc. universalis such a big company that there is such a variety of marketing that can be used for exampleon their other films they advertised green zone in the adverts before thefilm


Four lions distributors:

Optimum Releasing (2010) (UK) (theatrical)
Optimum releasing was the main distributor for four lions and has an ident at the beginning of the film, it isn't a big company compared to universal standards as Warp don't have the vertical integration advantage that Green Zone had. Film four payed for the rights to this film and advertised it as well.


3.Critical Reception:

Four lions ratings:
Rotton tomatoes 'tomatometer'-81%
IMDB rating:7.3

Doesnt get a bad rating, a risky subject yet the risk payed off and made warp alot of money

Green zone ratings:
Rotten tomatoes 'tomatometer'-53%
IMDB rating:6.9
Regarded as a massive 'flop' Working titles biggest budget and maybe the biggest failure.


4.Box Office + other expeditional figures

Four lions:
£2,686,096 (UK) (13 June 2010)

Weekend gross:
£608,608 (UK) (9 May 2010) (115 Screens)

USA box office:
$301,527 (USA) (13 February 2011)

Green zone:

UK box office:
£5,429,903 (UK) (4 April 2010)

USA box office:
$35,024,475 (USA) (2 May 2010)


6. Media Language (A) Genre + Audience:

Four Lions:
The film makes comedy out of terrorism - a social issue, which is typical of a British comedy especially in particular because of the production company, Warp, who mainly produce social realist films which is the genre that Four lions falls into.

The target audience for Four Lions would be for an older audience as a result of the mature humor exploited. However, the audience doesn't have to be too old to understand the humor  Giving the director, Chris Morris is known for his controversial comedy, a liberal audience i needed as he does mock terrorism, which some people may find offensive as it could be interpreted as stereotypical. Therefore the target audience for Four Lions would be 18-25 and 26 on wards.

Green Zone:
The film is an action, thriller, war film, drama. These can be good genre films, while Green Zone is not—and the reasons for its failure are political and Working title has seemed to stray away from political interpretations in their other movies such as Bridget Jones Diary. Its Warp who concentrate on using political references as apparent in Four Lions. Its not necessarily used a lot in Working title films anymore. However The Daily Mail called it "a preachy political thriller disguised as an action flick" and  gave its reasoning for failure as "the air of being aimed at ignorant american teenagers" and this is the area they are trying to sell to - America. Which they have basically snubbed in this movie.
The target audience for this film is teenagers as a result of the action and the war image it portrays. 15+ and for adults.

7. Media Language (B) 'British'?

Language plays a key role in Four Lions. It’s true that the film is not formally experimental or imitative – it adopts the kind of furtive handheld camera style that seems to be the default setting for this kind of quasi-neo-realist thing these days.
This is usually what we would find in Warp films, as this is a social realist comedy almost its not surprising that a film like this has come from the same production company that produced films such as This Is England and Dead Mans Shoes

8. A typical Working Title/Warp film?:

It is arguable whether the two films i have analysed are typical movies according to their production companies. One could argue that Four Lions is a typical film for Warp as it is a social realist film and does contain political interest. It is also a relatively low budget film compared to films in the big 6 (However, it was the highest budgeted film Warp had produced at £2.5m) so this isn't unusuall that its a low budget movie. In addition to this, it doesn't feature any stars in the movie which is also typical for Warp productions.
Green Zone on the other hand is not a typical Working Title film this is based on the account with comparing it to previous films such as Bridgets Jones Diary and Notting Hill the media language used is completely different as its a much more realistic film and contains political content which Working Title previously strayed away from as they expanded. However, The budget for Green Zone (£100m) was the highest budget they have ever had although its not surprising that the film contains an A list star (Matt Damon) which is most likely the reason as to why the budget was so high.

9. Summary
I think that Working Title should leave Warp to making realistic movies and including political content as Green Zone for Working Title was an absolute flop. Therefore, Working Title should stick to making Hybrid movies as they have done so in the past, they should stick to what they are good at in the future continuing to make there money this way. Also, warp should continue making the movies they do to keep British cinema alive.


 10. Bibliography
http://mayadykes.wordpress.com/2010/09/26/genre-codes-and-conventions-target-audience-for-four-lions/
http://www.cineaste.com/articles/webtakesemgreen-zoneem
http://drnorth.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/four-lions-war-goes-bang/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Zone_(film)
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDUQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imdb.com%2Ftitle%2Ftt0947810%2F&ei=jMM9UYrLJsmN7AbciYDwCQ&usg=AFQjCNHN84HoHHTQZQmoddFgribuEQgeww&sig2=ALfc4NMIzNmOWzQc2dOK9w
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/four_lions/