Planning: Treatment

The treatment was written up by Titus Goremucheche as part of the disscusion by Team Black Hat.

This is the Treatment for “BlackHat Films” and here we are going to briefly explain what you will expect to see in our opening scene for our horror movie. This summaries the basics that are going to be there, as full treatment will be up shortly, when the production team finalizes everything that will be included in the opening.

The first that will appear to the audience is a non-diegetic sound of a mother’s cry, in a ghostly and sinister way; the cry is very distant and as the opening titles appears which include the production company name. The font type for the title will appear in white and change colour to red with blood for a split second, which will get the audience in the right frame of mind that they are watching a horror movie. As the opening titles are playing we hear a diegetic sound of rain banging against a window. Then we get our first code of a camera shot panning from the ground to a boy who is laying down on the bed, his on his phone when we first see him and his about to go to sleep, as that shot place through we get the titles of the people who are playing a major part in the movie for example, the directors, producers, music by and the actors. These titles will play for approximately 20 seconds of the opening. Then we cut to a point of view shot of him putting down the phone because it’s raining and there is no signal, when he puts his phone down he goes to sleep. As we get those first two shots we don’t hear and non-diegetic sound the only sound we hear is all diegetic, the rain on the window, the boy moving on the bed and him placing his phone on the table near his bed. We then cut to a close up of the boy closing his eyes as his sleeping, then the camera shot will zoom out to show the room in a bit more detail, his room is dark and gloomy and you can sense that his not the only person in that room because there’s a shadow that moves really quickly in front of the camera, the reason why there is a showdown that will move fast across the camera is so that we can get the audience to jump so in other words a false scare.

Then we start to hear non-diegetic which is quiet in the background and it sounds like a lullaby but we want to make it sound that it doesn’t sound exactly like a lullaby because we want to audience to remember that sound because it will appear a few times in the opening. As the non-diegetic sounds plays we cut into the boy’s dream, where we can see a woman hanging herself in his room. As this scene plays out the non-diegetic will be slow and very eerie. As the woman hangs herself, the boy having the dream tries to save her but he cannot move his stuck in his bed and when he tries to speak to the woman his voice doesn’t come out as she’s hanging herself she sings a lullaby, the effect on this is so that the audience can piece together the non-diegetic lullaby sounds they heard when they got that false scare.

He then tries tries had to get out of bed and falls down but as he falls down off his bed it cuts to a part where his fell off his bed in real life and he looks at his phone to see the time and its 02:15 in the morning. He then gets back into bed and he sleeps on his side face with an extreme close up of his eyes, he then hears someone singing a lullaby behind him and he slowly turns to see who it is and as he turns the camera zooms out slowly as is zooms out it shows a figure which seems to be sitting beside his bed as he turns to look he sees n

othing because the creature has disappeared. With sigh of relief because there was nothing there but his still confused he closes his eyes and looks up and a deformed thing on his ceiling and it jumps towards him, this processes will play out slowly as he looks up then the scene will play very quickly as the creature jumps at him at this point the non-diegetic music has picked up and is very loud. The creature is screaming at the boy. He manages to escape into a different room but in doing so he trips up and falls down but luckily he get into the room in which the creature can’t get him. Then we hear scratches from above the boys head as he looks up the creature is there and it cuts to the title of the movie which is still to be discussed within the group.

The non- diegetic sound will be loud to scare the audience then it will slowly fade away. That will be the end of our opening scene, we include quite a few conventions for example, no signal, falling over, and the false scares that we have with the shadow moving across the camera. The aim for this horror movie is to be different to any other cliché horror movie, we like to think that, making a difference is better than following the norm and that’s why we think that having the title of the movie and the end of that little opening is a good idea because its different to what other people will do. We also aim to use the basic conventions that we see in popular films, so running into a room in which the only way out is to face the villain directly, also the use of no signal on the phone also gives the sense that you know the character is going to have something bad happen to them.

This treatment was done by the “BlackHat Films” production team and we have all generated our ideas to the page and soon to the stage, everyone had a fair amount of input into this treatment and we hope that we can produce a piece of work that will be interesting to watch and leave the audience interested in watching the rest of the film.

Audience Feedback

The following post was completed by Panashe charamba as part of the collation of results from the questionnaire made by team black hat.

As a group we discussed what the three potential openings are. After the discussion we decided which opening we liked best, and by Majority votes and filming budget taken in to account we chose Opening two. To check if our decision was the best one, we decided to create a questionnaire with the three openings, and we asked the audience "Can you please rate our opening out of 10", 10 being the best and one vies versa. Titus then took these questioaires and wrote up the final draft which he then took to the public to get the results.

To validate our results we asked the people who best suited the description of out target market and this was a a young outgoing teen who liked to socialise and was a horror films enthusiast.
The people we asked also had to be at least 15years as this was the age rating of our film.

Our results show that opening two was the highest rated opening, with 109 points, then opening three second with 91 points, and then with 84 was opening three. From this we where able to see which opening our target market wanted, which would help us greatly as we would know which opening to make, to get the best reaction from the audience. This questionnaire didn't affect our choice greatly as we already wanted to use opening two, it just simply supported our decision.

Three Possible Openings

The following post was completed by Mariella Ralph; as part of the discussion about the three openings conducted by team black Hat.

The plot of our movie is based on an urban legend of a mother whose son died in the same house in previous years. The mother couldn't cope with the loss of her beloved child and committed suicide - unknowingly to the couple and their child now living there. The child looks identical to the deceased child and causes the mother's spirit to protect him so it can give herself that second chance; in conclusion of doing this, she harms everyone who will ever come across his pathway. 

In lesson today, BlackHat Films worked together to create three different potential openings for our movie. Underneath I will explain the three different openings we decided as a group.

The first opening-
The parents leave their teenage son at home with his friend. The boy's friend see's this mother's ghost and warns the other boy to get out of the house - the boy oblivious to what's going on, ignores what's happening and refuses to leave his house. The friend becomes scared and decides to leave him on his own and tells the boy it's his own fault for not listening. The boy is left on his own, beginning to get paranoid and suspicious of his friend's accusations. With his parents out of town, the boy calls up his neighbour to come around and check everything is safe inside his house. The boy faces outside the window to see his neighbour on the phone to him and as the neighbour reassures him telling him he'll be over and everything will be fine, something comes up behind and murders him. The boy begins to panic and the titles begin…

The second opening-
This boy becomes disturbed with these flashing mental images of how this mother died. The flash backs build up to her death with individual shots leaving the boy confused. Each room the boy enters he receives a flash back of the history of this story in his head.

The third opening-
This opening reflects on the teenage son who died and the recent teenage son in the same family house. For example, if the recent son was to enter a different room in the house, it would flicker back to the previous son walking into the room and if the recent son was to make a movement such as take a drink, it would flicker back to the previous son doing the same action.

This section of our work, is where the group discussed the three possible openings, for our teen horror film. this will help us as we will know have choices, of which will be the best opening. this task will also allow the group to get audience feedback for the opening and we will be able to which on the target audience will like best.

Target Audience

As a group we discussed what our potential target markets characteristics should be like, to do this we all wrote what we wanted the character to be like, in three individual colours. My-self I wrote down in green pen, Mariella Ralph wrote in purple and finally Titus Goremucheche wrote his ideas in Red. this task will help us colate which characteristics we want, after being decided by the group.

The typical member of our target audience is quite confident and socially active. We have chosen to brainstorm our potential target audience based on a male even though we would want female's to enjoy out movie too we felt this might allow us to describe further detail into a male character. The age we are focussing on is from 15 to 17. This male enjoys sport activities and plays quite a masculine character. Alternatively with this in mind, he doesn't have a dad and plays the protective brother towards his little sister who lives with him in his mother's house. Even though he likes the classic horror genre of movies, he carries a great sense of humour. 
In his spare time he likes to watch old classic movies at home from his DVD's or any film's shown on television. He also prefers to go on dates and watch new released horror films so he has someone to cuddle up to and not show his weakness. He is a student and to earn extra money he works a part time job at ASDA which involves him working on the tills and talking to customer's because he has excellent communication skills. He takes pride in his appearance with his nicely styled hair and good fashion sense. As well as taking care of his skin, he is also well-groomed with a good hygiene.

Reasearch: The Opening titles of se7en

In this task we where asked to analyse the opening title sequence of  "Se7en"

The video below is the opening title sequence of the film "se7en"




In this task I watched the opening of the film se7en and noted down everey time i saw a title in a time line ranging from 00:00 to 02:08. This part allowed me to see what infomation is given by the written text and how it is presented, this will then help me, when making the opening for our film, as i will knoiw what sort of format to use. The next part of the activity was where I looked at the visuals provided with the text.

This section allowd me to see what infomation which was provided, using the visuals and how it was constrcted, to create its sence of mystery and fear. the techneques used, almost created a back story to the film, with out going in to to much detail and you almost see what the film is about in these small clips used, and this technique could be very usefull, in the making of our film opoening. the final section of the activityuwas where I looked at the auditor
y infomation. This was the music played duing the title sequence.

 The music played further supporeted the sound reasearch i i conducted prioir to this. the music used a range of uncomfrtable sounds, which could be easily incorporated in to our film as the sounds are relevent and taking inspiration from this sound track could further develop the music we could use in the opening.

Research: Importance Of Opening Titles

The opening titles in a film can just be important as the, the opening two minutes of actually filming. then opening titles are key as they give the audience key information that that either they will want to see or the makers of the film will want them to see.

Usually in the opening titles you will see the most important people, who are part of the film, for example the producers and the big name directors. In the open might also see, the a list actors which might be crucial to this film, as they can usually make or break the film. Despite the producers adding their names for fame etc. They also add they for the purpose of the audience as they sometimes go to films because they have a certain actor or a certain director and producer. Another piece of information you see in the opening is the studios names, usually the big companies have their own animation going with their company like Marvel and Warner bros, they sometimes you could see the smaller companies written as "in collaboration with…" or "In association with" as they are less know and the larger companies want more attention towards them. the last thing you see is usually the the name of the the film and this is conventionally done in bigger and more distinguishable text for example in the horror film "Candyman" which is shown bellow;

This is the film title in "Candyman", as shown the title is large and recognisable, as this is important to the company that they get the film name across to the audience.




This image is in contrast to the one above. In this case it shows an example of where the information given is the actors in the  movie. this information is important, and the producers want the audience to know the actors but, but the still it is still not as large as the title.




During the opening titles you will also be given information through the music played, as this can be a key aspect, it telling the audience what genre the film is. A lot of opening tiles have sound as this has become the norm on the opening titles. The piece of music played during the opening titles can also  be be used as a trade mark for the film and the audience will the associate the music to that film, and this is commercially beneficial for the films. One good example of  music used well in the opening credits was in the film the exorcist. this film uses the music, to show that the film is a horror film with the high pitched violins and the distorted notes.The music then changed  in to, old catholic church music, this further informed us that the film might be based on religion, all at the same time as giving use the visual information of the written credits.

Click on the image bellow to watch the opening credits of the exorcist, the video also contains the audio with goes with the credits.

The opening titles can also, present the information through typography one example where typography is used to good effect is in the Exorcist. This typography is good as is is big and bold this makes us think that the film is going to be hard hitting and leave an effect on the audience. the text is also in red, the red colour means danger, fear and blood, so this foreshadows what the film is about.

Conventions of the opening titles

The opening titles also have conventions which most films follow. usually the films follow the same order in what appears first in the opening titles. The first titles to appear, are most likely to be the name of the Studios, these could be the companies, which may have made the film or produced it. These could be films like Walt Disney Pictures, Lions Gate, universal and Marvel.

The second titles to appear are the production companies. This section is where the companies which actually made the the film, the companies which invested a large amount in the film and these are usually titled as in association with .... Productions.

The third title is then the the Producers name, which is labeled as (Producers name) Production. Then separately it is then the director which is labeled as a film by (Directors name) or a Film by (directors name).

The fourth title or Titles are usually the the actors names. theses are usually the more prolific actors, which will impress the audience, or in other cases the actors which have in their contracts that their name will be added to the opening titles .

the last title but in some ways one of the most important titles, is the of name of the film, this usually is in larger bolder fonts, which will stand out and and be unique from the the other title
   

Research: Importance Of Opening Title Video Reasearch

The video titled 'The Film Before The Film can be accessed by clicking on the image below;

The video titled "Art Of The Title" can be accessed by clicking on the image below:

The following videos have allowed me to see and understand how the development of the films opening titles have occurred, they also show the significance of the opening titles, in cementing the genre of the film by the designs and music used, furthermore it gives a wider view of the different techniques used in the opening titles to make them unique to the individual film. The videos also show me how good opening credits look like so I can then use them as either guidelines or inspirations when designing our own.

Research: Sound in Horror Films

Sound in horror films is key to the fear factor created. One key piece sound used is the non-diabetic sound used in horror films is the music. this is the sound with the film creators want you to hear, and is to enhance the film experience.

Good examples of were soundtracks have been used to good effect is in jaws and psycho. Scientists now think they know why these films, use these sound tracks and why they make us feel the way we fell when watching films. the reason which they think this music makes use feel uncomfortable is because, "the harsh, discordant and unexpected sounds used in the horror soundtracks imitate the screams of frightened animals" according to the Mail online . The sounds which these films used are called non-linear sounds, these toes of sounds are mostly heard when animals are in distress, they are used to show the animals fear. These intern have been used purposely, by film makers to enhance the emotional impact of the scenes. These sounds remind us of fear and danger, which is why they make us feel uncomfortable, and distraught.

Some more modern sound tracks are slightly more sophisticated in their approach. Movies have found ways to twist, music which most would think of happiness like nursery rhymes, and know represents fear and something much more sinister. I believe the suttle of the nursery rhyme/music box songs is much better, as it makes the viewer uncomfortable, as they try to relate to the music, but along side the images and the way its portrayed, this becomes much harder and makes the audience uncomfortable.

Through this research I have found that it is best to find something that people relate to audience, like nursary rhymes and make them discorded and twist them and make the audience uncomfortable. One example where this is used to good effect is in "The Ring" and also in "Silent Hill"