Ambition

When a sinister figure offers them success in exchange for murder, a group of old school friends struggle with paranoia and distrust as they turn on each other to complete the arrangement.

Production Company:
Rock Solid Entertainment

Format: 16mm digitally mastered
Year of production: 2005
Running time: 97 mins
Director: Nicolas Forzy
Producer: Nicolas Forzy
Executive/Co-Producers: Thomas Benski, Axel Beranger
Editor: Pete Mitchell
Screenwriter: Nicolas Forzy
Director of Photography: Daniel G. Cabrero
Sound: Marc Reveyron
Music: Roby Meola
Principal cast: Matthew Rutherford, Luke Robert, Alex Childs, David Rosenbauer, Marem Hernandez, John Robson, Martin T. Sherman

Blair Witch Project

The Blair Witch Project is an American horror film released in 1999. The narrative is presented as a documentary pieced together from amateur footage, filmed in real time. The film was produced by the Haxan Films production company. The film relates the story of three young student filmmakers (Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael C. Williams) who hike into the Black Hills of Burkittsville, Maryland to film a documentary about a local legend known as the Blair Witch, and subsequently go missing. The viewer is told that the three were never found, although their video and sound equipment (along with most of the footage they shot) was discovered a year later. This "recovered footage" is presented as the film the viewer is watching.

Directed by Daniel Myrick
Eduardo Sánchez

Produced by Robin Cowie
Gregg Hale

Written by Daniel Myrick
Eduardo Sánchez
Starring Heather Donahue
Joshua Leonard
Michael C. Williams

Music by Antonio Cora
Cinematography Neal Fredericks

Editing by Daniel Myrick
Eduardo Sánchez
Studio Haxan Films
Distributed by Artisan Entertainment

Release date(s) United States
January 25, 1999
(Sundance Film Festival)
July 16, 1999
(Limited)
July 30, 1999
(Wide)
United Kingdom
October 8, 1999
(Raindance Film Festival)
October 22, 1999
(Wide)
Australia & New Zealand
December 9, 1999
Running time 86 min.
Country United States

Language English

Budget $500,000-$750,000

Gross revenue $248,639,099
Followed by Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D51QgOHrCj0&feature=related

Halloween

Halloween is a 1978 American independent slasher film set in the fictional suburban midwestern town of Haddonfield, Illinois, on Halloween. The original draft of the screenplay was titled The Babysitter Murders. John Carpenter directed the film, which stars Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis, Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, and Nick Castle, Tony Moran and Tommy Lee Wallace sharing the role of Michael Myers (listed in the credits as "The Shape"). The central theme of the film is Myers' escape from a psychiatric hospital and his subsequent murder of a number of teenagers, whilst Dr. Loomis' attempts to track and stop him. Halloween is widely regarded as a classic among horror films, and as one of the most influential horror films of its era. In 2006 it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Halloween was produced on a budget of $320,000 and grossed $60 million at the box office in the United States, equivalent to over $150 million as of 2008, becoming one of the most profitable independent films. Many critics credit the film as the first in a long line of slasher films inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). The movie originated many clichés found in low-budget horror films of the 1980s and 1990s. However, the film contains little graphic violence and gore.

28 Weeks Later.

28 Days Later is a 2002 British post-apocalyptic horror/science fiction film directed by Danny Boyle. With a screenplay written by Alex Garland, the film stars Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson, Noah Huntley, and Christopher Eccleston. The plot depicts the breakdown of society following the accidental release of a highly contagious virus and focuses upon the struggle of four survivors to cope with the ruination of the life they once knew.
A critical and commercial success, the film is widely recognized for images of a deserted London, and was shot almost entirely on digital video. The film spawned a 2007 sequel, 28 Weeks Later and the graphic novel 28 Days Later: The Aftermath.

Directed by Danny Boyle

Produced by Andrew Macdonald
Line Producer:
Robert How
Written by Alex Garland

Starring Cillian Murphy
Naomie Harris
Noah Huntley
Christopher Eccleston
Brendan Gleeson
Megan Burns

Music by John Murphy
Cinematography: Anthony Dod Mantle
Editing: by Chris Gill
Studio DNA Films
British Film Council

Distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures

Release date(s) United Kingdom
1 November 2002
Running time 113 min.
Country United Kingdom

Language English

Budget £5,000,000
Gross revenue $82,719,885
Followed by 28 Weeks Later

Fox Searchlight Pictures.

The institution we are looking at to produce or film is something along the lines of a British film company who work on low budgets, but still produce top quality highly recognizable films. usually british films like this are distributed by american companies. for example, Fox searchlight pictures. This company is a sister company to 20th century fox. so is of high quality, and is known for creating great movies. fox searchlight pictures specialises in producing british, indie/horror films. for example 28 days later, and 28 weeks later. so this would be a perfect production company for us to use due to it specialising in what film we are producing. it has also distributed a high number of recognized films, such as, hills have eyes, the ringer, and slumdog millionaire. so i think that this company would be a wise choice.

Warner Bros

Another production company we could use could be, Warner Bros. but we are very unlikely to be able to get our film distributed by these, as the are of a high statutre, and we will definately not be able to afford the costs of this company due to its recognition. an example of a british film distributed by these is The Shining.
so ideally the best option would be to use fox searchlight picures, due to its availability and good quality.

By Louis Percival.

Preliminary task

In our preliminary task, we have done as instructed and created the sequence of a boy walking towards a room, walking through the door, and sitting down and have a short converstion with another person. In this we demonstrated the 180 degree rule, aswell as showing continuaity. During our time doing are preliminary task we found a number of problems that ocured but also we found alot of things worked well and we learnt alot during the filming of this task. For example we leanrt in depth how to use the camcorder and its accesories aswell as learning the basic skills on iMovie.

The first problem we encountered was to keep quiet during recording as we found that the camcorder picked up background noise which affected some takes which lead to early cuts in our filming. Another problem we faced was the size of the area that we were allocated to film in and props were to a bare minimum. Another problem we faced was keeping the 180 degree rule as the size of the room was so small which affected our filming however due to these circumstances we felt we did well at keeping this rule. Another plus, is when we threw the bag from one person to another, we edited it quite well, to make it look continuous and smooth. We also found that we had a good range of shots with good stability thanks to the tripod which helped tremendously with keeping the camera still and holding the camera in place.





By doing this preliminary task we found a number of ways we could improve in our film making for example, we could make takes last longer to give us more editing time so have more time to edit. Also we found we could improve on our shots and have a variety of different shots, but one thing that stopped us doing this in our preliminary task was the size of the room we were giving to film in and also our surroundings we had to work within.

By Michael Keenan, Max Blanche, Joel Duxbury and Louis Percival

BBFC certificate ratings

As our general idea is to make a horror opening sequence we needed to look at the official BBFC certificate ratings to see were our film would fit. We believe our film would fit in the 15 range meaning the film is unauthorised for people under the age of 15 to purchase or watch the film in the cinema.

By joel Duxbury

Box office figures for Supernatural thriller movies

There is a vast range of Box office figures for Supernatural thrillers from Paranormal Activity generating a estimated $141,911,135 but it only cost a estimated $15,000 to make. Another film that is of similar genre is The Sixth Sense which generated a estimate Worldwide Gross of $672,806,292 but had a estimated Production Budget of $40,000,000. Another film which is of similar genre to ours is The Blair Witch Project which has had a Domestic Total Gross of $140,539,099 and had a low budget of $60,000. The Blair Which Project is similar to our film because it uses a Handheld camera. As you can tell by these figures the Supernatural Genre is very popular worldwide.

Hear is a list of the top 20 Supernatural Films of all time.

Rank

Title (click to view)

Studio

Lifetime Gross /Theaters

Opening / Theaters

Date

1	What Lies Beneath	DW	$155,464,351	2,925	$29,702,959	2,813	7/21/00
2	The Blair Witch Project	Art.	$140,539,099	2,538	$1,512,054	27	7/16/99
3	The Ring	DW	$129,128,133	2,927	$15,015,393	1,981	10/18/02
4	The Grudge	Sony	$110,359,362	3,348	$39,128,715	3,245	10/22/04
5	Paranormal Activity	Par.	$107,911,135	2,712	$77,873	12	9/25/09
6	The Others	Mira.	$96,522,687	2,843	$14,089,952	1,678	8/10/01
7	The Haunting	DW	$91,411,151	2,881	$33,435,140	2,808	7/23/99
8	The Amityville Horror	AIP	$86,432,000	748	$7,843,467	748	7/27/79
9	Poltergeist	MGM	$76,606,280	1,060	$6,896,612	890	6/4/82
10	The Ring Two	DW	$76,231,249	3,341	$35,065,237	3,332	3/18/05
11	The Exorcism of Emily Rose	SGem	$75,072,454	3,045	$30,054,300	2,981	9/9/05
12	1408	MGM/W	$71,985,628	2,733	$20,617,667	2,678	6/22/07
13	The Amityville Horror (2005)	MGM	$65,233,369	3,323	$23,507,007	3,323	4/15/05
14	White Noise	Uni.	$56,386,759	2,279	$24,113,565	2,261	1/7/05
15	The Haunting in Connecticut	LGF	$55,389,516	2,732	$23,004,765	2,732	3/27/09
16	The Omen (2006)	Fox	$54,607,383	2,723	$16,026,496	2,723	6/6/06
17	Final Destination 3	NL	$54,098,051	2,880	$19,173,094	2,880	2/10/06
18	Final Destination	NL	$53,331,147	2,587	$10,015,822	2,587	3/17/00
19	Stigmata	MGM	$50,046,268	2,901	$18,309,666	2,899	9/10/99
20	The Skeleton Key	Uni.	$47,907,715	2,784	$16,057,945	2,771	8/12/05

By Max Blanche

Outlined genre

The genre of a film that my group and i are going to do is a supernatural thriller. We are trying to achieve this by following other films which have been created as a supernatural thriller so they give us ideas on what to do and some ideas in how to record the film. The film "The Sixth Sense" was a film that we studied and in that opening sequence we found that the director caught the viewers attention straight away and made it clear from the start that it was a supernatural thriller and also it attracted the audience that he was aiming to attract.

In this trailer for The Sixth Sense we can easily realize that it is a supernatural thriller with the way the boy speaks and the first thing he says is "they hanged people here" which shows to the audience that is on the lines of a horror or supernatural thriller. Also the background music is a sort that you would find in a supernatural thriller. The lighting in this trailer is low key lighting and also side lighting which is a key concept to make the audience see its a supernatural thriller.

Paranormal activity is another supernatural film and it is all low key lighting and a lot of hand held camera where we have got our idea as it is a modern way of recording films nowadays. The low key lighting that is used in paranormal activity is very affective and the sound that is used the way the director has made it go really quiet and then when something is about to happen the director increases the volume which increases the chance of the audience jumping and increases the chance of the audience becoming scared by the film which is what the director wanted to do so he has achieved his targets.

  

By Michael Keenan

Initial Ideas

When we sat down as a group and discussed our ideas, are initial idea as a group was to do a film that consisted of filming some of it on a plane but then we realized that we wouldn't be able to get access to a plane which meant that, that idea was not going to happen so as a group we came up with many ideas and some of our ideas were not easy to do such as this one. Another idea that we thought of was having a film about a footballer but then we realised that the things such as training and match's, and then we found that there was another problem with this at it would be a strugle getting a training session going and a match as it would consist of alot of people being involved and we couldn't rely on all of them and we wouldnt want to be let down by them which would affect our final piece.

But we then decided to make a Horror/Action Film. We decided to film at Mike's house as it the ideal location for a horror film. We have decided to film at night as this will add to the tension and anxiety of our target audience. We are still thinking of a name of the film but we has narrowed it down to three: The Unknown, Followers and Were not alone. We have had some ideas one idea being that three people go into a house and steal a video camera. After that they then decide to go into a abandoned house where abnormal events take place for example one person see's someone in a window but when he looks back the person has disappeared. We want our film to have the effect of looking like half of it is filmed on the video camera so the shots taken from this will look very shakey and have the record logo but the other shots will be recorded from a tripod.

By Michael Keenan, Louis Percival, Joel Duxbury and Max Blanche