Decision making

Throughout the period of time we have had with our project, decision making has been crucial to the completion and editing of our opening sequence. As a group, i believe that we worked well to overcome problems and when faced with crucial decisions, such as filming schedules, genre ideas, camera shot ideas etc. We all have tried hard to give our input to the group with suggestions, whether successful or not and ideas that we thought may work well. When filming, we regulary did the same shot from different angles and points of view to make sure all members of our group had their say and we could then analyse the shots, therefore choosing the best shots for that particular clip. This worked well as it gave a better collection of shots which we could choose from. Once we had filmed a few shots, ideas came naturally to us and we all new what we expected from the opening sequence. We also had a decsion to make with the music for our film. We decided to find some copyright free music that we believed would fit our film. When looking through the numerous amounts of music files and samples, we all had our say to which we thought was best, therfore narrowing down the selection for us. We also all agreed on the typography that we would include on our opening sequence. As a group, I believe that we worked well with minimal arguing as we were all on the same wave length of what we wanted to achieve with our opening sequence. This is why i think our group has had good success with our opening sequence.

Joel Duxbury

Still Writing Typography

As a group we have now found our final Font, and effects to match it.
after blood sweat and tears, we have come to the conclusion to use the typeface 'Courier New Bold' and the size to the font, is quite a medium sized font, as we thought that this matches the style of our film.
All the still writing on the film is placed over a black background and writing in white writing in the mentioned typeface. On the title screen, the title stays on the screen for 5 seconds. and enters and disappears from the screen using a fade out effect.
we thought we would you this effect as we thought it matches the curious and mysterious nature of our supernatural film.

On the other still writing shots, the single piece of writing on average will stay on the screen for around 3 seconds, and will also follow the same routine as the title, to try and keep the suspensory atmosphere.

Louis Percival

Copyright free music

As a  group we wanted to emphasise the emotions that our viewers would hopefully feel while watching our opening clip. We thought the best way to do this was to add some music to our film to create suspense and excitement. But, as we were not allowed to use any copyrighted material in our films, we would have to get written permission by the artist allowing us the right to include the material into our opening sequence. This left us with only a few decisions we could possibly contemplate. As a group, we could make a our own piece of music to add to our film, we could try to get in touch with the specific artist whose music we would want to use, and hopefully get the written permission we needed. Or we could find some copyright free music to fit into our film accordingly. This was what we decided to do. We began to search on the internet on such sights as www.StockMusicStore.com, www.akmmusic.co.uk and www.royaltyfreetunes.co.uk. After browsing through such sights, we could not find any appropriate music  to use in our film. We began to wonder whether we would ever find a tune that would fit with our opening sequence. Until, we got access to some college discs full of copyright free, usable material ranging from many music genres. We again, started to look for a tune that would run parallel with the first few shots of our opening sequence. We eventually found one that we altered accordingly to start at an exact point, then fading away after some time. This worked well with our film. We then decided to look for another piece of music, this time to create a sense of suspense and danger. We, again found a piece that we thought would do the job we wanted it to do,. The tune had a creepy sense to it making the viewers think something scary is going to happen very soon. As we hoped, both pieces of music worked well with our opening sequence and didn't clash at all. After all the hard work we did to find the sample music, I believe it was the best decision to use this music for our film.




By Joel Duxbury

Filming and editing update.

we have now finally finished our full film edit. after we had evaluated and picked off all the rough bits to our rough edit, we have manage to finally get to the final product. We filmed all the relevant footage we spotted we needed to film from the rough edit, for example the close up shots of the actors to introduce them to the audience. also we have finished all of the typography, and we are pleased with the fonts found and the way the enter the screen. after the disastrous attempt to film our final footage the other day, we have managed to get all of our final footage in good time before the deadline, and we have now easily finished our film before the deadline. As a group we are very happy with all of the music we have got.
so overall as a group we are very happy with our film.


Louis Percival

Filming and Editing update

We have now finished our rough edit of our film. As a group we are pleased with the edit but we feel we need to include a few more close up shots. We are also pleased with the music we have for our film. Because we feel that the film company that would make our film is film4 we have included the film4 opening sequence logo. We feel as it is only our rough edit we are in a good position to finish our film on time. To try and gather more footage we went filming but someone gave us a flat battery by accident so we were unable to gather all of our final footage. But we are still confident of finishing on time.

By Max Blanche

Filming update

So far we have filmed our full film but not fully finished editing the film. The footage we have got so far we think is really good and maybe we have to film a bit more footage to make our film complete so we have all the camera shots we want to. As we may need some more close ups or long shots, this is why we are finishing our editing now so we can film anything that is needing to be filmed.

Michael Keenan

Problems and solutions

As a group we have encountered numerous problems but have worked out solutions for them to make our film to the highest quality we can possibly achieve. The problems that have occurred in our group include editing problems, filming problems, equipment problems, schedule problems and other minor problems that have also caused  hassle. But, with good team-work and co-operation between ourselves, we allowed each other to give reasonable ideas to solve the problem and agreed how to overcome these problems. The first problem we had was what our opening sequence would consist of. This meaning, what genre would we choose and how we were going to create a sense of suspense to grip the audience. We decided to make a horror/supernatural thriller due to the fact we came up with quite a few ideas to create suspense. The next major problem was fitting the filming into our schedules. As we are all college students studying other subject, we needed to pick suitable days were all of us were free to film at the location we chose to film. Transport had to be sorted also to make sure we could get there and back. After we were happy with the first few shots of our film, we began to edit them on imovie. this started off fine, but as we carried o editing and cutting the clips, we all realised that some of our clips were not appropriate and some shots had to be re-done. This meant a temporary schedule was put in place to make sure we got the clips we needed. We went to get the clips, but as we got the equipment ready we noticed another problem, the batteries for the camera were flat and we hadn't got a spare. This meant a wasted journey and filming was adjourned for the day. But, after all these problems we encountered, we resolved them and carried on to produce our opening sequence.


By Joel Duxbury

What we still need to do

As we have filmed the first minute or so of our sequence we have still to film which we are doing tonight. we have a few scenes to do and we have all of our group together and we shall be able to finish all our filming tonight which will allow us as a group to finish the editing. We need to make some of our cutting between shots smoother. We also we need time left to make sure everything we have done is perfect and if it isnt we can edit it in due time so it fits well with the rest of our film.


By Joel, Max, Louis and Mike

What we have done so far part two

We have filmed up to one minute of our opening sequence thus far. We have also found the music for various parts of our film. We have nearly made our first rough cut of our film. We have included a few transitions in our film. This is to symbolise a change in time. We picked our transition very carefully because we didnt want our film to look amatuer but we couldn't not include a transition because it shows a change in time. We have got one shot that we need to do again because we feel it is poor quality. But apart from this we are pleased with our progress so far.

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

Questionnaire Results Anaylsis

As a group we wanted to get a wide range of peoples opinions from different age groups and background to the relation of what films they prefer to others. As we are college students, it was easy to get students views for our questionnaire, but we had to go out of our way to get older and younger peoples answers. As we wanted a wider collection of answers for our questionnaire, we did not mainly base our questionnaire on our idea of making a horror/ supernatural thriller due to the fact younger generations may not of experienced watching this sort of genre due to the age certificates. The first question we asked was "How old are you?". This is a personal questionnaire, but we needed to know this to get a more accurate answer. If we had more time to create the questionnaire again, we would of made tick boxes and age groups to avoid offending anyone. Secondly was "What gender are you". This question is easy enough to answer. To hide identity of the people who answered the questionnaire for us, we did not ask for their names so they do not feel pressured into falsely filling in the questionnaire. This question was sufficient for us. The next question we asked was "What do you look for in a opening sequence". This was the first of our questions relevant for our media coursework. This was an effective question which got the participants of our questionnaire thinking of what they appreciate from their films to keep them gripped and wanting to watch more. Our next question was to find out whether our participants preferred American films to British films. We wanted to know this due to the fact we are making an amateur British film with no budget, whereas American made films with well known actors and directors representing them can afford all the special effects and extras. Many of the teenagers who we asked, surprisingly said they prefer the British, gritty style films to the American high budget films. But overall, we had a shared view on what our participants prefer. Another question we asked was "Do you like being scared".  As a question this caused confusion with the participants at first. The question we asked was due to the fact of us contemplating on a horror/ supernatural thriller. We wanted to know whether our participants enjoyed being scared in their films to an extent. Overall, the questionnaire that we made was a success in getting the results that we wanted to achieve from it. The results gave us key information and we were all pleased with what we achieved with this questionnaire.


By Joel Duxbury

Target Audience

Using the Theory GRAS, (gender, race,age,sex) we have come up with our ideal target audience, and i will briefly describe through this, throughout this post.

The specified target audience, is 15 and above, or should i say that is the age limit for the film, so the film applies to ages from really 15-25 really, but this is only a rough estimation and im sure that the film will be watched by all ages and sex. The target audience is this age group because the film's genre of action/horror ususally applies to this age group. Seen as our film doesn't involve any seens of gore, or extreme violence, there is no real need for this film to apply to an older age group. our film is concentrating on the paranormal side of horror, with unknown species, existing in a house, or as thought by, by a group of teenage boys.

socio-economic status is of no real matter in this film, aswell. because it is not really a complicated film so there is no real need or use of education, to enjoy and understand the film. so there is no advisable socio-economic status. the same also applies with race. there is no existing, barriers or caution for any races. The ideal gender for this film, is male. due to the fact that after looking into it, males prodominatly prefer horror/action films to women. so ideally the target sex, would be males, but like ive said, im sure it will be watched by both males and females.

By Louis Percival

Roles in our film

In our film we have three main roles which are editing, filming and acting. As a group we have already planned these roles and researched into how to produce and make the genre we are trying to achieve. We have decided as a group of which shots to be taken and the positioning of the camera and Max Blanche will operate the camera whilst the rest of the group have to act in our film.

The editing that will be done in our film will be done by all of the group members using the program imovie. The editing will be done in our class time whilst our filming will be done outside of the class time.


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