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.