Task 1.

Jenny wrote: Kim and I are doing our main task as the opening two minutes of a horror movie. We had to watch the opening couple of minutes of a few horror movies. We watched the openings of "Seven", "The Blair Witch Project" and also the opening of "The Ring", this was to help us get an idea of what effects to use to make our opening two minutes scary and to creep people out. 

In both the opening of "Seven" and "The Ring" the footage was shot not in black and white or in a normal colour, but in a grey dark colour which almost looked a bit grey which gave a mysterious feeling to the film. 

This genre appeals to me because I believe that it would be interesting to shoot with lots of different angles on one thing, which I think will add to the effect.

Even though we are only aloud to shoot on school grounds for people like us who are doing horror films, there are many places to get a good scary shot. Kim and I have decided to shoot our film in black and white, either in Dead dogs or Silent walk, both of these are wooded areas but also  are quite spacious.  This will help with lighting, because of the shadows from the trees, which again will add to the  scary atmosphere.  

Task 1; Horror - research

Kim wrote: Jenny and I have decided to do our opening two minutes for a horror film. We were inspired to do a horror film by the opening trailers of the ones from last years' Year 12 AS coursework. Once we had decided to use this genre, we watched the opening two minutes of 'The Blair Witch Project' and 'The Ring' in order to see what techniques work and what we should do to make our opening exciting and scary for the viewers.
The opening of 'The Ring' made everyone watching it feel edgy, because the director cleverly used different shots, angles and dialogue to engage the audience. In the first minute of it, one of the characters had talked about the video tape, and what happens when you watch it. Then the phone rings and the TV turns itself on, and personally I was quite scared after this bit.


We have discussed what we can do to make our film scary for the audience, and have decided to shoot our clips in a wooded part of the school, possibly Dead Dogs or Silent Walk, so that there is still some light but at the same time its dark and mysterious. We have also decided that after we've got all of the footage we need that we're going to turn it black and white, inorder to progress the idea of horror.

Recording the Preliminary task

Jenny Wrote: Today we recorded the Preliminary Task. To do this before we actually recorded the actors, we went through what shots we were going to use, and the angle of the clips to get a clean shot of the actors. We practiced this first using each other in order to become accustom to the camera. We had to take each shot a few times to get the right timing and the lines right.
Then we took the clips off of the video camera and onto the computer hard drive. Now we have started to edit the film.

AS Media Studies Coursework

Name of people in group: Kim Paxton and Jenny Brown

Kim wrote: We are AS media students and this is part of our coursework. Our preliminary task is to create a short video that includes;

• Continuity Task - make the clips look like they've all been filmed in the same day/time of day.
• Match on Action - make sure that the actors look exactly the same in every different shot.
• Shot Reverse Shot - repeat the conversation more than once so that we can select the best shots and get the full conversation in.
• 180 degree rule - only take shots from one side of the room and not the other

In our task, we have to include shots of;

• Two people exchanging words of dialogue which will give us the shot reaction shot
• Somebody crossing a room
• Somebody opening a door

Today we have decided that our clip should invlove a conversation between a student who has forgotten their prep and their teacher. As the teacher, we are using Vidur Bharatram and as the student we are using Gabriella Paterson. The diologue will be something along the lines of;

Student: 'Sir I'm sorry but I've forgotten my prep'

Teacher: 'Why?'

Student: 'Because my laptop is broken'

Teacher: 'Ok, write it up for tomorrow then'

Student: 'Thank you sir'.

When the student is walking to the door and opening the door, we are going to use a close up tracking shot on their feet. When the student crosses the room we're going to use a low angle tracking shot. When the dialogue is happening we will use an over shoulder mid shot. And when the student leaves the room again we'll use a tracking shot. We have decided to use two different cameras.