Insanity- Our opening two minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSkl5GceRfk

Research and Planning - Storyboard (Animatic)

Evaluation - In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

 

Our title is 'Insanity' we got the idea for this title after shooting this scene. During this scene my character shows that she is losing sanity when she decides the only way to cope is if she kills her baby. The title 'Insanity' is short , and this is because it leaves more to the imagination of the viewer as to what is going to happen in the film. Short  titles are becoming more common in the film industry purely  because they can be easily remembered and because they leave more to the imaginiation.  For example Saw, Scream, Insideous, IT, etc. For example the film 'The Cabin In The Woods' already tells us the setting of the film and doesn't leave much to the viewers suggestion. howvever our one worded title does!

This scene is a typical convention of a horror film,  normally at the beginning of a horror film you will find a house house at night that looks bandoned and has a particular eery feel, that is the  reason we selected this particular shot. Jess and I originally got the idea for this scene after watching the film 'The Ring'. I hope for this shot to havee the asame impact as 'The Ring's' because it creates tension within the first few seconds. The location jess and I chose was a suburban road which is again very typical for a house to be placed within a horror film. The house itself is well kept on the outside as well as the inside so is really  like the saying 'no one knows what really happens behind closed doors' which I think  adds more mystery as to why the character of the mother character act the way she does.

 

Jess and I chose the scene where my character comes back as a ghost and is stood in the living room staring at the baby (Harriet). We chose this scene so the audience can see both my character in full costume as well as Harriet in her play centre, which is a main prop for her character.  We chose this scene for this evaluation task because it
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showed a major prop for Harriet and also Shanie's costume for her character all in one shot. Shanie's costume we had to think about quite a lot as her character was struggling with everything we had to communicate that with her appearence so a simple white nightdress which is what some horror films have women wearing when being a ghost or mentally unstable like Sidney's mother in Scream 3 as she was a figment of Sidney's imagination, it still created a very eerie and disturbing ethos to that scene, so to include an item of clothing similar just seemed right as she is a ghost and having had a baby recently she could be in a nightgown, everything linked together really nicely.










 

We have chosen the scene where my character comes back as a ghost and is stood in the living room staring at the baby girl Harriet, we have chosen this scene so the audience can see both my character in full costume as well as Harriet in her main prop that we used for her: the play centre. We chose this scene for this particular evaluation activity because it showed a major prop for Harriet and also Shanie's costume for her character all in one shot. Shanie's costume we had to think about quite a lot as her character was struggling with everything we had to communicate that with her appearence so a simple white nightdress which is what some horror films have women wearing when being a ghost or mentally unstable like Sidney's mother in Scream 3 as she was a figment of Sidney's imagination, it still created a very eerie and disturbing ethos to that scene, so to include an item of clothing similar just seemed right as she is a ghost and having had a baby recently she could be in a nightgown, everything linked together really nicely. The scene where Shanie's character kills herself we see Shanie's character in her nightgown so linking to further on into the 2 minutes, Shanie's character also has a pill bottle in her hand with the lid separate from the bottle implying that she collapsed after taking an overdose, we thought carefully about how Shanie's character actually killed herself as the topic we were doing is a sensitive one as things like this do happen, we were going to try and make it look like Shanie's character hung herself but we weren't sure how to accomplish this without actually harming Shanie and putting something that graphic into our opening 2 minutes, we settled for Shanie's character overdosing on medicine for depression as we had an empty medicine bottle which was the perfect prop for this scene. I thought that this scene worked out amazingly and hopefully our audience do too, we put a lot of consideration into this topic also and worked senstively towards it.

We have chosen the death scene of Shanie's character for camerawork as we really like the angle of the camera, the slow motion of the camera and how its perfectly timed with the lullaby in the background. This particular scene did take a while to capture as i was filming i had to try and move the camera steadily, slowly and to also capture Shanie's character fully as well as the pill bottle all while fitting it into the lullaby's rhythem. Once we got the shot we were ecstatic as it was everything we had imagined it to be and more, it really did do Shanie's characters death justice.

We have chosen the death scene of the baby for editing as we added an amazing 'Ghosting' effect onto it which gave Shanie's character a more edgy look about her and really made her look crazy which is what we were looking for in this scene, Shanie and I had previously used this effect in our preliminary task and loved it then so deciding whether to put it into this scene or not was easy, it looked jumpy at first and we weren't keen at all but after we rendered it and saw it in better quality it made the scene look 100% better by a long shot.

We chose these 3 screenshots as these were the 3 main frames where they had titles cleverly in place, the first title that you see is 'Starring Shanie Bradbury, Natasha Allwood and Harriet Allwood' these are fading in and out while Shanie's character is walking up the stairs which is what we like about them as they aren't taking your mind off the film at all they look like they belong in the film. The second title you see '2006' which is just as a scene is beginning so your focus is on the writing but it fades out just in time for your focus to be averted away to look at the scene that's beginning, we placed it in the corner as we wanted it to be in the same place as the very first title on the first scene which reads '1996' so then the audience subconsciencely links them together. The last title is 'Directed by Shanie Bradbury' we weren't really sure where to place this title at first but then we found the perfect location- on the back of the front door whilst its opening, this title then fades out as the door is opening to yet again not distract the audience from the opening 2 minutes itself but convey information about our opening 2 minutes. All of our titles are very subtle within our opening 2 minutes as we didn't want the audience to focus just on the titles but to notice them.

 

Our story is a supernatural horror story about a mother who cannot cope with a new baby and crumbles ultimately ending her child's life and hers, a new family then move in 10 years later to find out that their house has some dark secrets, this is where things get ghostly and scary. We chose Miramax to be the opening institution of our opening 2 minutes as you often see Miramax before well known old horrors which is why we chose it, the beginning of the 2 minutes should look like it's old so having a well known old institution would benefit the film and also the audiences reaction while watching it.

 

The genre of our opening 2 minutes is supernatural horror, the opening doesn't necessarily suggest that it's a supernatural horror but definitely a horror story, the opening scene is a house in the dark with only the lights on the inside gleaming through, we thought that the lights from the inside would create an eerie ominous glow, however you could argue that if there were no lights then it could be more scary but the next scene wouldn't flow. We are hoping that the house in the dark would create a link in the audience's mind to The Ring when the first scene is a house alone in the dark. I don't think that the audience will know if it's a supernatural horror or not until later on but it definitely looks like just like your typical horror film opening.

 

The characters are introduced whilst the mother is writing a letter to her unsupportive husband and family members about how much she's struggling with the new baby and how no one is offering help at all, in the voice over you can tell by the tone of voice that the mother is clearly distressed about the whole situation, the baby's face or body is never introduced but the sound of her crying is included so people know that the baby is in the house, this is when we are technically introduced to the baby. The second half of the 2 minutes is when we are introduced to the new family, the mother and the new child (Harriet).

 

On our opening 2 minutes we used a range of effects, as we are not computer whizz kids we didn't add any really amazing effects but we felt like they weren't needed. The effects we did use however were the 'Ghosting' effect, which we used on the death scene of the baby where Shanie's head was moving then had a delayed reaction soon after it, We also made the beginning scenes black and white to emphasize the fact that it was based on the past, We sharpened a couple of the frames as they weren't as clear as we had hoped, We auto coloured the door scene so that the door lock wasn't so orange as the lighting gave everything an orange tint.