Evaluation Activity 1
This scene perfectly fits our opening two minutes title and the storyline of our opening two minutes, We mainly got our inspiration from this scene, Our opening two minutes is called 'Insanity' you can clearly see why as in this scene the mother looks like she's going insane from pressure from dealing with a new baby by herself without any support from her husband or family, This is the scene where she ultimately crumbles and murders her baby. The title 'Insanity' is short and snappy like other supernatural horrors such as 'Insidious' and 'Sinister' we thought that this could help the audience after viewing the film remember the name and it fits our storyline so perfectly we couldn't of chosen a better title. The short title is becoming a new 'thing' for supernatural horrors now as they are easily remembered by the audience, With a shorter title like 'Insanity' more is left to the viewers' imagination as the film could be about anything, Take 'The Cabin in the Woods' for example, People already have an image of a cabin in the woods in their head and so won't be shocked by it whereas our title implies that there is a lot of surprises as we're not giving anything away by title at all. 'Insanity' means
the condition of being insane
; a derangement of the mind. Synonyms: Dementia, Lunacy, Madness, Craziness, Mania and Aberration. As you can see a majority of these words do link back to our storyline and the scene we have chosen.
This is a typical convention of an opening for a horror film, we chose to use this particular shot because in most typical horror films you see a house standing alone, Just from this particular shot the audience gets the feeling that something scary/horrifying is going to happen inside the house, We originally got the idea from watching The Ring, With the big house all alone in the dark, I personally got ready to be scared and I was thinking of all the things that could be inside. Hopefully our opening scene will have the same effect as this film. The location we have chosen is a quiet suburban road which is so typical for a house of horrors to be placed, The house itself is well kept on the outside as well as the inside so it really is like the saying goes 'No one knows what really happens behind closed doors' which I think could add more mystery as to why Shanie's character is the way she is.
We have chosen the scene where Shanie's character comes back as a ghost and is stood in the living room staring at the baby girl Harriet, We have chosen this scene as you can see both Shanie's character in full costume as well as Harriet in her main prop that we used for her: The play centre. We chose this scene for this particular evaluation activity because it showed a major prop for Harriet and also Shanie's costume for her character all in one shot. Shanie's costume we had to think about quite a lot as her character was struggling with everything we had to communicate that with her appearance so a simple white nightdress which is what some horror films have women wearing when being a ghost or mentally unstable like Sidney's mother in Scream III when she was a figment of Sidney's imagination, it created a very eerie and disturbing ethos to that scene, So to include an item of clothing similar just seemed right as she is a ghost and having had a baby recently she could be in a nightgown, Everything linked together really nicely.
The scene where Shanie's character kills herself we see Shanie's character in her nightgown so linking to further on into the two minutes, Shanie's character also has a pill bottle in her hand with the lid separate from the bottle implying that she collapsed after taking an overdose, we thought carefully about how Shanie's character actually killed herself as the topic we were doing is a sensitive one as things like this do happen, we were going to try and make it look like Shanie's character hung herself but we weren't sure how to accomplish this without actually harming Shanie and putting her at a potential risk, We also didn't want something that graphic in our opening two minutes, We settled for Shanie's character overdosing on medication for depression as we had an empty medicine bottle which was the perfect prop for this scene. I thought that this scene worked out amazingly and hopefully our audience do too, We put a lot of consideration into this topic also and worked sensitively towards it.
We have chosen the death scene of Shanie's character for camera work as we really like how the camera is angled, the slow motion of the camera and how it's perfectly timed with the lullaby in the background. This particular scene did take a while to capture as I was filming I had to try and move the camera steadily, slowly and to also capture Shanie's character fully as well as the pill bottle all while fitting it into the lullaby's rhythm Once we got the shot we were ecstatic as it was everything we had imagined it to be and more, It really did do Shanie's characters death justice. The problems we had with this scene were similar to other scenes that we had problems with e.g. Timing, Steadiness and background noise.
We have chosen the death scene of the baby for editing as we added a 'Ghosting' effect onto it which gave Shanie's character a more edgy look about her and really made her look crazy which is what we were looking for in this scene, Shanie and I had previously used this effect in our preliminary task and loved it then so deciding whether to put it into this scene or not was easy, it looked jumpy at first and we weren't keen at all but after we rendered it and saw it in better quality it made the scene look 100% better by a long shot.We also looked at other effects but they either distorted the quality or made it look really bad, We think that adding this effect it improved not only the quality of this scene but also it made an impact on the whole opening two minutes.
We chose these six screenshots as these were the six main frames where they had titles cleverly in place, The first title that you see is 'Starring Shanie Bradbury, Natasha Allwood and Harriet Allwood' these are fading in and out while Shanie's character is walking up the stairs which is what we like about them as they aren't taking your mind off the film at all they look like they belong in the film. The second title you see is '2006' which appears just as a scene is beginning so your focus is on the writing but it fades out in time for your focus to be averted away to look at the scene that's beginning, We placed it in the corner as we wanted it to be in the same place as the very first title on the first scene which reads '1996' so then the audience subconsciencely links them together. The last title is 'Directed by Shanie Bradbury' we weren't really sure where to place this title at first but then we found the perfect location- on the back of the front door whilst it's opening, This title then fades out as the door is opening to yet again not distract the audience from the opening two minutes itself but convey information about our opening two minutes quickly and professionally. All of our titles are very subtle within our opening two minutes as we didn't want the audience to focus all their attention just on the titles but to notice them.
Our story is a supernatural horror story about a mother who cannot cope with a new baby when she crumbles she sadly ends her child's life and hers, A new family then move in ten years later to find out that their house has some dark secrets, This is where things get paranormal, weird and scary. We chose 'Miramax' to be the opening institution of our opening two minutes as you often see 'Miramax' before well known old horrors like 'Halloween: The Curse of Michael Meyers'(1995) and 'Don't Be Afraid of the Dark'(2011) which is why we chose it, The beginning of the two minutes should look like it's old so having a well known old institution would benefit the film and also the audiences reaction while watching it. We also know that many people will associate 'Miramax' with another film institution 'Dimension' which are the producers of the 'Scream' films and also the 'Scary Movie' films which are all very well known within the younger generation as well as people in their early 20's.
The genre of our opening two minutes is supernatural horror, The opening doesn't necessarily suggest that it's a supernatural horror but definitely a horror story, The opening scene is a house in the dark with only the lights on the inside gleaming through, we thought that the lights from the inside would create an eerie ominous glow, however you could argue that if there were no lights then it could be more scary but as the next scene has lighting on in the house the scenes wouldn't flow together.We are hoping that the house in the dark would create a link in the audience's mind to 'The Ring' as the first scene is a house alone in the dark. I don't think that the audience will know if it's a supernatural horror or not until later on but it definitely looks like just like your typical horror film opening, we've try to make it sound like an eerie supernatural horror film by using the piano to our best advantage and adding the baby's lullaby but slowly and distorted within the two minutes would make anyone's hair on the back of their neck stand up. We incorporated a more happier tune also when the new family were present on the screen, so now the audience can associate the distorted lullaby to the ghost and the happy tune to the new family.
Only one main character is actually introduced as we only see Shanie's character for the time being, she is writing a letter to her unsupportive husband and family members about how much she's struggling with the new baby and how no one is offering to help at all, in the voice over you can tell by the tone of her voice that the mother is clearly distressed about the whole situation, the baby's face/body is never seen but the sound of her crying is included so people know that the baby is in the house, this is when we are technically introduced to the baby. The main reason Shanie and I decided not to show a real baby then to have her murdered by her mother is that we both felt uncomfortable with the thought of it and it could distress some viewers, we also wanted it to be very brief as it's not about the baby that's murdered, it's about the post natal mother. The second half of the two minutes is when we are introduced to the new family, with them finally moving into the house, we only briefly see the new mother as we aren't focusing on what she's doing, we are focusing on the child Harriet, however the mother will still be one of the major characters throughout the film.
In our opening two minutes we used a range of effects, but as we are not computer whizz kids we didn't add any really amazing effects but we felt like they weren't needed for this particular film. The effect we did use however was the 'Ghosting' effect, which we used on the death scene of the baby where Shanie's head was moving then had a delayed reaction soon after it, We also made the beginning scenes black and white to emphasize the fact that it was based on the past, We sharpened a couple of the frames as they weren't as clear as we had hoped and we auto coloured the door scene, the scene with Harriet in her play centre and the scene where her mother comes rushing into the room so that they weren't so orange as the lighting gave everything an orange tint. Shanie and I did try several special effects on different scenes but they just didn't help the scenes flow or they made it look too busy and not professional enough. Trial and error is mostly the motto we used for this part as we didn't know whether to add some effects, take some effects out or even change the whole scene. I personally think that if we were to add more effects onto what we already have we could run the risk of ruining the effect that we want on the audience.
