Sound

Soundtrack development

We looked at several styles of music from the website 'incompetech', below are a few styles we liked. Each one could create suspense, which we want in our opening as no one knows what will happen next. Many of the styles are made using a piano and there are a couple of other instruments used, for example violins, cellos, flute, clarinet and synths.

Metaphysik:
http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1400056

Come play with me:
http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1400042

Unnatural situation:
http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/?keywords=unnatural+situation

Classic Horror 2:
http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?collection=38&Search=Search

Classic Horror 3:
http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?collection=38&Search=Search

Title name

Possible title:

The Path of Shadows - the word "shadows" represents the unknown figure that is haunting the girl.

This is our title inserted into our different fonts.

Shot List

This is our first shot list for the opening sequence, giving a general idea of what we want to accomplish. As it is only a draft it may be altered slightly.

• Close up on eyes opening
• Long shot of girl rolling over and getting up
• Close up of feet as touch ground then walk away
• Camera inside cupboard as doors open –Girl’s eyes become visible over rail as she moves
• hangers and takes a piece of clothing out then walks away with it
• (Alternatively long shot of girl taking clothes from behind if cannot get camera in cupboard)
• Mid shot of girl brushing her hair while looking in the mirror
• Long shot of her walking towards and out of her bedroom door
• Long shot of her walking down the stairs   
• Pick up letter from the floor (in long shot)  
• Close up of envelope opening, then drawing
• Close up on face reaction  
• Long shot of girl holding letter –Mum asks “What’s that?” 
• Girl says “Nothing”  -Mum says “Ok have a nice day”  
• Close up crumples up the picture/puts it in bag
• Long shot walks out door
• Long shot walking out of the front door
• Long shot of her walking down the street
• Long shot of her entering park
• Long shot of her walking through the park
• Long shot of her waling past playground
• Close up of girl’s face as she turns towards the playground as she hears disembodied sound of child laughing
• Long shot of her walking towards swing (as if in trance)
• Close up of her touching swing
• Long shot of her sitting on swing
• Close up of her face
• Close up of her hand touching chair
• Flashbacks of child laughing on swing
• Spirit’s hands, ominous and in black gloves, appear in shot pushing the child on the swing
• Close up of girl’s face looking shocked/scared
• Long shot of her walking quickly away and out of playground
• Mid shot girl shudders once and keeps walking
• Long shot of her back while walking, approaching tunnel
• Mid shot of her from the front as she stops walking
• Long shot of tunnel with toy in the middle of the arch on the floor
• Long shot of her walking towards the toy
• Mid shot of her bending down next to toy, from the side
• Close up of her touching toy
• Close up of her face looking confused/scared
• Looks up to end of tunnel, when hears child laughter,
• Long shot with child standing at end of tunnel
• Close up of girl’s face as hears loud noise and turns away
• Long shot of tunnel –Child is gone
• Long shot of girl
• Cut to black –Child’s laughter

Costume

Costume ideas

Teenage girl - casual clothes, jeans, jumper, coat, suitable for Winter.

Young girl - similar to the teenage girl, possibly with a younger feeling eg. brighter colours.

Title

Title ideas

We chose 4 of our favourite titles we would possibly use for the opening sequence, each one has a slightly childish theme to them which fits our idea.

This is our preferred font, but we thought that it would look best with a title that had more than one word, for example "The Girl on the Train":

We then chose this title which we figured would solve the problem if we had a title which is one word, for example "Titanic":

These are two others titles we considered:

Character - young girl

Young girl - age 5

I took photos of Flo as she is going to play the main character as a young girl in our opening sequence. Flo looks relatively similar to Imi as they both have dark brown hair and eyes. She is wearing a lot of bright colours which contrasts against the older girl who is wearing more monotone colours. The brightness of the photos were enhanced to emphasise the difference between the girl when she was a child vs her as a teenager. Although the darker photos do show a different side to her, for example the swing photo is slightly creepy as she sits next to an empty swing. Also the very obvious shadows in the top left photo and the crayon photo indicate two sides of her character/personality. The drawing on the bottom left is similar to what the drawing in the opening will look like.

Characters - teenage girl

Teenage girl - age 16

We did a photoshoot of our protagonist character, Imi. These photos are a lot duller than the ones of Flo as we reduced the saturation. The photos of her screaming indicates a distressed character. The photo on the top right is of her doing are, which shows that she still has an artistic side to her, which fits with the drawing in the opening.

Character - the figure

The figure

This final set of photos represents the figure. They are the darkest as we used the lowest saturation. She wears all black and covers her face, so we have no emotional connection with her character. She is also included in the child's drawing.

Final ident

This is our final ident video, we took several videos using different colour combinations but this was our preferred one. We put the paint on the back of the pallet knife and smeared it across a piece of white paper. When editing we made sure the writing appeared as the paint appeared, using the style 'shock' and font 'normal'. We also enhanced the saturation to make it brighter and more eye catching.

Location scouting

Location 2 - Shillington Park, Clapham

Most of these photos were taken around 7/8 in the morning

Location scouting

We took several photos of different locations we may use for our opening. Mainly looking at parks with swing sets and possibly a pond.

Location 1 - Sunray Gardens, Herne Hill

I took these photos around 3/4 in the afternoon and it was a quite sunny day. So the lighting is likely to be different if we film here.

Ident testing

We tried out filming the ident a few times, using different colours and techniques. The first time the colours were too dark, the background had a very yellow tint and the spatula had dried paint on it, so we decided to re-film it. These are photos of what each one looked like:

We used this pallet knife to smear the paint across the paper as it was long enough for our hands to not be visible and was completely clean.

As you can see below we tested different combinations of colours, mainly using blue, purple, red, yellow and green. We also tried to different techniques, first we put the paint on the paper first in a line and then smeared it with the pallet knife and then we put the paint on the bottom side of the pallet knife and smudged it on the paper as if it appeared from no where.

Graphics - ident

Ident idea

The idea for our ident is paint being smeared on paper or a glass tile using a spatula. We will use bright colours, which makes it more memorable and eye catching. The name we have come up with is ‘Acrylic Productions’ as it fits the paint theme and is also an original name. For the name we will try to have each letter appearing one by one as the paint is smudged across the screen.

The process we will use to smear the paint is putting a few colours on a piece of paper/glass tile and smudging them with a spatula so that the colours would partly mix together.

The photos below shows an example of what it will look similar to.

Audience Research - interviews

Interviews 

We interviewed a few people who were 16/17 years old to expand our audience research, giving us more qualitative data. We had mixed responses; most liked our proposal for our opening but a few were not as fond of the idea. Most like psychological thrillers, which our opening is slightly based around which is a positive, although some don't enjoy the horror genre.

Audience research - survey

Survey monkey

We created a survey on Survey Monkey and posted it to our Facebook page for our friends to complete, once we received our results we filtered the age range, so it only included our target age range, which was 15-25. Around 68% of the responses said they enjoyed thrillers and most people's favourite sub-genre was crime and the second highest was psychological. Our proposal has a psychological/horror genre so knowing that a lot of people enjoy psychological thrillers is useful. We also gave people the option to say what their favourite thrillers were, these included Shutter Island, Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense, No Country for Old Men and Inception. Overall the survey was very helpful for us to know what our target age range enjoys, whether or not they like thrillers and the types they like.

Official Film Opening Proposal

This is an adaption from our original group idea, which was too complex, too fast-paced and more like a trailer than an opening. An ordinary morning when a teenage girl's memories come back to haunt her.

Starts with her brushing her hair, looking in a mirror. She walks down the stairs and finds a letter addressed to her, she opens it to find a drawing of a little girl holding a toy. She then leaves the house to go to school, on the way she walks past a park. She sees a swing set and one of the swings is swinging by itself. Suddenly the little girl in the drawing appears on the swing holding the toy but quickly disappears again. The girl is spooked and leaves the park and walks under a bridge/underpass where she sees the same toy lying on the floor. She bends down to pick it up and then the camera tilts up to show the little girl standing at the end of the bridge/underpass and it finishes there.

Inspirations: 'The Woman in Black', 'The Girl on the Train', 'Insidious'

Preliminary Task

This is my preliminary task, we had to show different editing and filming techniques, including shot reverse shot (when the two girls are talking) and match on action (when the girl opens and walks through the door). But making sure the 180 degree rule wasn't broken. It was useful to get more experience using a camera and editing the clip and next time i would like to get practice with the sound recorders. One thing that was challenging was getting the actors to pay attention when filming them.

Opening Proposal

1: Summary
Starts with mum and daughter reading a book together at dining table, then the dad returns home from work, clearly angry. Daughter runs upstairs and hinds under duvet, close-up of her under duvet with shouting in the background then a loud smash of a cup or plate and the screen goes black. The mum goes into daughters room in the middle of the night and they leave in a hurry to the train station, lots of high-speed editing here. Dad notices and rushes after them but just misses the train. Scene ends with him calling someone on his phone telling the receiver to track the train. Ends with a close up of his face.

Genre - psychological/action thriller

2: Audience
Target audience - 16-25, mature theme not suitable for younger ages.
Certificate - 15 as it contains violence and possibly strong language.

3: Plot
Mum and daughter are on the run from abusive dad/husband, but he has a lot of power as he is has the technology to track them down.

4: Style and Tone:
- Keep audience on the edge of their seats.
- Full of suspense and tension.
- The start, when they are reading the book should have a slightly warmer feel, for example by using yellow/orange lighting. But once the action starts it should have a colder feeling, by using blue lighting. Similar to the colour change between the flashback and reality in the opening of Shutter island.

5: Characters, costumes and props
Woman - age 35-45, wearing jeans and a plain top, hair down (nothing fancy)
Daughter - age 5-8, wearing pyjamas
Man - age 35-45, wearing a suit with shirt half untucked and lose tie, scruffy hair, indicates that he's tired/doesn't care about appearance.
Props - children book, digital clock showing the middle of the night, rucksack that mum carries, phone that dad calls on, plate/cup to smash for sound effects.

6: Graphics
The title would likely occur when the screen suddenly goes black and could possibly fade in and out, joining the scenes together.

7: Sound
Diegetic - reading book, shouting, calling phone.
Non-diegetic - music or fast beat when they run to station.