Key Information

Just like any other film, we had to decide on the audience, genre, narrative and the representations that it will portray. Below is each category with more detail and why we have chosen it.

Audience

The audience for our film is going to be for both sexes - males and females. we thought we'd target it for both genders as everyone has different tastes and have different opinions on each genre. We are putting the age range as 12-50 as it would not be suitable for young children due to the nature and content of the film and it may scare or frighten them. We put the age range up to 50 as we feel that people over this age may not favour or enjoy watching this genre.

Genre

Due to the content of our film, the genre would possibly be a drama/thriller. The Lovely Bones (the film we are basing our short film on) is a drama/fantasy however we are looking to create more of a tense and creepier setting and content to make our film more distinctive and different comparing it to The Lovely Bones. By doing this it will put our own stamp on it. The Lovely Bones also has a lot dream-like thoughts of heaven and the after life whereas we are focusing more on the killing of the girl therefore it will be more thriller rather than fantasy.

Narrative
The young girls mother dies before the film so she is now being looked after by her aunty as her father abandoned her and her mother when Sophie, the young girl, was a baby. A serial killer is on the loose, yet to be caught. Sophie goes to visit her mothers grave everyday at 4:00pm after school as she misses her greatly and feels alone. The serial killer  has been stalking the girl for months plotting and planning his attempt to kill her.

Representations 

The representations that we wish to convey through our film is negative thoughts as bad things occur throughout. The only positive sign that we would heighten are the messages that the audience should take into consideration. These are to be wary of your surroundings and think about your safety first, to think about your actions and where to travel alone to and to contact people so they know where you are at all times.
We want to represent the main character, Sophie, as quite naive and vulnerable to what can happen in real life and not to trust anyone. Besides this we want to represent the serial killer as dangerous. 

Our Idea

Our idea was inspired by the film 'The Lovely Bones'. Sophie and myself previously watched this film and we loved it. We liked how unexpected it all seemed and the way it was produced. This gave us the idea of doing a similar plot however giving it our own twist. The link below provides a lot of detail on this film and a description on the plot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lovely_Bones

Below are some shots we especially liked as they portray the feeling of unease and mystery. I like these images of George Harvey, who kills Susie Salmon in the film because he has a very focused and creepy expression on his face. In each of these pictures he has someone in his sight (possibly Susie) and he remains in the correct character all the way through which I think is crucial for this role.

Possible Sounds for the Film

Before we started recording, we thought it was a good idea to go through on Imovie sounds to see which ones would be suitable and sounds good which our film. This allowed us to have an idea on the moods that the film will create and help pair it with the sounds more. The list below is all of the ones we are thinking about coorperating into our film.

• Alien impact
• Borealis
• Dogma
• Farewell 
• Mystery accents
• Suspense accent

Also during the selection of sounds there were many sounds that could be used as ambient ones which could occur in the background of the setting/actions/location. This will also help to create the eery sounds and could portray certain feelings and ideas to the audience. 

• Cave Water drops
• Dog barking
• Door metal squeak
• Elysium
• Footstep
• Flurry
• Grandfather clock strike
• Police car siren
• Pursuit 
• Radio station 
• Clock wind-up

Research Methods

There are 4 different kinds of research methods which all have different advantages and disadvantages.

PRIMARY

This research method is done by the individual who wants to find out the information. This can be done by interviews, surveys or questionnaires.

Advantages: You will know where the source of information has come from and the topic of information is more focused and specific to what you want to know. 

Disadvantages: It may be time consuming and  quite expensive and the data may be out of date when you come to use it.

SECONDARY

This research method is done by an individual researching from other information resources such as the internet, newspapers and libraries.

Advantages: The process of finding information is done quickly - you only have to search for it and it isn't expensive. 

Disadvantages: You may not have any access to these sources of information. You don't know where the information has come from so may be unreliable. 

QUALITATIVE

This research method focuses on the reasoning of collecting information and finds more information out about people including age, interests, religion etc. 

Advantages: This can be very detailed and precise. 

Disadvantages: It could be time consuming as you would have to analyse peoples responses.

QUANTITIVE

This research method focuses on the numerical side of research collection like statistics and data.

Advantages: It is good for finalising results and making them more conclusive.

Disadvantages: This could take a lot of time and a lot of effort is involved.

I think that the best research methods to use during the process of creating and finalising the short film would be primary, secondary and quantitive data. I think that qualitative data would mainly be used in the evaluation process of this task. This is because they all provide good and fairly reliable results which would allow summarised conclusions about specific topics. Throughout the task I will be commenting on the research carried out is either primary, secondary, qualitative or quantitive.

Recce pictures

To get an idea of the possible locations for our short film, we took some pictures of the areas which we were looking to film in. As you can see in the pictures below, we thought the entrance of the school would be good to use as it would set the scene for the opening - informing the audience of the location and setting.
By filming the 'student' getting out of the car in the car park, it could suggest that they weren't actually a student but could be some sort of teacher.
Also having the office in the opening of the film could also create the impression that this student is new as she asked for her timetable to the receptionist.
Having the 'student' in the corridors with other students convinces the audience even more that she is actually a student, which we thought was useful to use.

Main Task Decision

Our class got told that it was acceptable to work in pairs our in small groups for the main task. In the group I am in is obviously myself, Sophie and Harriet so we will all share the work load and work well together.
We have chosen to create a short film for the main task as we have clear ideas on what we want to create and the mood we want to portray within it. As we gained our thoughts quite early within the process, it allowed us to think more deeply about what we want to include in the film, the mise en scene and camerawork that would work best as well as finding reliable characters who wouldn't mind playing a part in it.

Short film