THE OPENING

here it is; UNHINGED

CELEBRATE

MEDIA OPENING FINISHED

LINK WILL BE UP SOON

film production companies

MAJOR COMPANIES
Fox entertainment group- formed in 1990s, it is now part owned by Rupert Murdoch, and is best known for Power Rnagers series in 1995.

Paramount motion pictures group- founded in 1912 by Adolph Zukor with films such as: Willy Wonka, A Dolls house and Judgement day.

DreamWorks SKG- American company began in 1994 with films such as: Antz, Shrek, Bee Movie, Flushed away and Shark tale.

Sony picture entertainment- In 1989 Sony acquired Columbia pictures entertainment. with films such as: Men in Black, Jeopardy, Spiderman, The Karate Kid and Ghostbusters.

NBC universal- formed in 2004, General Electric' NBC merged with Vevendi. In 2009 GE and US cable company Comcast agree to buyout NBC universal. Comcast getting 51% and GE getting 49% and GE are to buy out Vevendi.

INDEPENDENT
Dark Castle entertainment, Silver pictures, Sherwood pictures, O entertainment, ImageMovers, EMI films, Five and Two pictures, Gold circle films and Liberty Media.

We chose Dark Castle entertainment as we decided our opening was more likely to go straight to DVD is produced therefore would have a smaller company representing it. Dark Castles has represented Psycological thrillers such as: Gothika and Orphan although these were also shown by Warner Bros and Columbia pictures as they are the major companies. Dark Castle was formed in 1999 by Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler. It usually produces horror films as its name pays respect to William Castle who was a filmmaker in 1950-1960, the company's goal was to remake these films, after two films, they decided to produce their own material. Beginning with RochnRolla, they produced other genre films other than horror.

Shameless; Blood on Hands (Jodie)

In a recent episode of TV Drama Shamless, I noticed an interesting similarity between it's storyline and our groups AS film opening. In Shamless, a character witnesses a brutal murder and because of the guilt he feels, starts to hallucinate blood on his hands. Here are photos from the episode;





This type of shot is exactly what we are trying to achieve in our film opening. We are using POV of view shots of our protagonist looking at blood on his hands because he has either witnessed or committed a murder and the blood is a symbol of his guilt.

This is useful for our blood research because it shows that the blood needs to look extremely authentic in order to be believable. As a group we decided that the blood used in Shameless does not look realistic when looked at close up. Therefore it ruins the horror effect they were trying to achieve as unrealstic looking blood does not intimidate the audience.

Therefore we need to work hard on creating authentic looking blood in order to scare and intimidate our own audience. This needs to be done as suspense and fear are key codes and conventions of pyschological thrillers; our chosen genre.

Breif update of filming work so far (Thea)

We filmed the first part of our opening, the running through the tunnel, the interuption/bumping into the girl and then running into the toilet with some POV shots of blood.

However, we have encounted some unexpected issues;

-The blood we have been using does not look realistic enough on the hands of the actor
-When our protagonist bumped into the girl (kristy) it looked as though there was some connection/possible romance between the two
-The POV shots when the camera was strapped to the head was to far to the right and was shaky
-We were told we could not film further at the station until we had permission (which we tried to obtain but failed)
-Our actor was over-acting which affected the opening as there was no speech so it all had to be portrayed with body language

We have overcome these issues;
-gettting hold of some lamb blood that will look very realistic and will have the right consistency and will wash off as normal human blood would
- we are using two female actors to bump into our protagonist as to show there is no possible connection or romance just a coinsidense
- film at a time which the station door will be open and very quickly so we will not be caught
- Changed actors to a Theatre studies A2 student that will have a lot of experience in acting and will be able to portray his emotion without being melodramatic.

Making Fake Blood (Jodie)

*please note colouring of photos is brighter than actual product*

To extend our research into fake blood I decided to develop Kathy's creation of hair gel and food colouring. This is because even though in large amounts in did look realistic, when it washed off hands it came off in clumps. This was a problem when we had shots of the protagonist washing the blood of as it did not seem authentic.

Therefore to resolve this problem I exp[erimented with making the mixture by using flour. This would absord the moisture from hte hair gel which was causing teh clumps when washing off. Then I added different coloured acrylic paints to obtain the right colour.



After I finally created a colour which I felt was most authentic, I tested what it looks like on paper to start with. Although it did have the right colour, it was too thick for human blood so I added a small amount of water.



I then tested to see what it looks like on actual hands. It did seem authentic when in large quantities, but when it was more spread out over the hand, the hair gel base made it seem quite sticky and gloopy in comparison to actual blood which is thinner. However when I tried adding more water to make it thiner, it would not mix with the hair gel properly or it became to watery and unrealsitic.




Finally as a group we deicded this blood creation is not as authentic looking as we wished and therefore we are going to develop the research furthur. At this moment in time we are currently looking into using real animal blood as it would be most realistic.

Police and emergency servies telephone calls (Thea)

Looking at emergency service calls on the internet a lot of the ones that are on youtube are unfortunately hoax calls or joke ones. However the greater remains the same. As you can see below, the operator answers the phone with; "Greater Manchester Police, How can I help?" Currently, in our opening, the operator says Hello, emergency services how can I help, although this is very similar. Perhaps our operator may need to say, they are the police as the call would probably have been directed to either 'Police, Ambulance or Fire' before being asked to give details of the incident so that their call could be advised clearer. We may need to re-record the telephone call depending on how much this authenticity will affect our opening.

Effective use of editing and sound that also reflects mise en scene (Thea)

Having look into our two minute film opening, we feel that the first 30 seconds is going to have a much bigger impact that then next two minutes. Due to this, we are keen to make sure that our editing is really effective and adds to the suspense and tension of the opening.




I have looked at The silence of the lambs trailer as it is a infamous psychological thriller. Although, it is a trailer and not an opening, the editing techniques are still incredibly effective. the quick shots of the Protagonist at the very beginning as 'Orion' pictures are displayed along with the intense burst of sound that sounds like a door or a metal frame is being closed? (not too sure), is very effective and definitely puts the audience on edge. This may be very effective for use within our opening perhaps especially as our protagonist is looking at his hands with the blood to reflect his unstable frame of mind.





I have looked at the opening of the psychological thriller se7en. The editing is very quick between shots and the music is distorted as is the mise en scene as it is unclear to see what the person is doing. However, it is clear that they are mentally unstable and the fast editing is a excellent reflection of this. Perhaps, the quick cutting from one object or scene to another is being used to reflect how indecisive and confused the main person is. the music is also distorded and although it clearly has a beat it does not seem to make clear logical sense and other than the undertone of the bass there appears to be no real sense of rhythm or structure with the other sounds. This is also reflects the insanity and lack of structure that the person feels within thei brain.
This may be useful within our opening as we want to reflect how our protagonist is very confused as he is not sure whether or not he has killed the girl. Also, the tempo/beat of the music increases as the tension of the opening does. We have used this affect within the first 30 seconds (where the photographs are being shown), although we may want to consider this with perhaps having an undertone of music running throughout the opening as our protagonist is running through the station and the tempo could build up as his unhinged state becomes clearer as the blood becomes more and more on his hands and eventually onto his face.

Name Ideas (Thea)

Having decided we wanted a name to be relevant to the film yet not give too much away (from audience research). We decided to look up the mains themes of our film in a thesarus to open some new ideas.
The themes are;
-Insanity/Insane
-Murder
-Blood
-Clensing
-Psychopathic

Insane;
Unhinged Deranged
Senseless Infested
Absurdity Criminality
Remorse Contribution
Blame Uncontrollable

Murder;
Slaughter Butchery
Shed the blood Slay
Massacre Kill
Mullitate Thrash

Blood;
Gore Extraction
Disposition

Clean/Clense;
Purify Purge
Absolve lustrate

Psychopathic;
Disturbed Insane
Maniac Deranged



Other ideas;
Sceptic, she (will add more after group discussion)


Lots of these are very simple and are one word which is good as one word/short titels are a code and convention of psychological thrillers. We will have a group discussion and then vote on the title for our film. We will also ask members outside of our group for their opinion on the name as we want to make sure it has the correct effect on our target audience.

Running POV shot

We researched ways in which we could get a POV shot of our protagonist whilst he was running, so we should also get shots of his hands. This would used as an insight into the mind of the protagonist and it let's the audience see what he is seeing himself. The main idea we had of using a POV shot while running is that the audience can see the blood on the hands of the protagonist which would create confusion as the opening focuses on the the question whether the blood is really there or not.

However after trying several methods of holding the camera to the eye level of our actor, this came with great difficulty as whoever was holding the camera's footsteps would be picking up on the sound and therefore two sets of footsteps could be heard when the footage was played back. Also if the person holding the camera was runnig at a different pace to the protagonist, the camera would not correspond the protagonist's running.Therefore, in order to tackle these issues we would actually strap the camera securely to the side of our protagonists head. Before hand we held the camera to see whether it looked like a POV shot, in which it did.

Firstly Thea and Jakob experimented running along side each other, whilst holding the camera to Jakobs head, however the camera was a bit shakey, and it was hard to keep in sync with one another.Therefore this method of creating a POV shot would be ineffective

We then used a method of attatching the actual camera to jakob's head using duck tape and a swimming cap to protect his hair. This worked very well as it got the exact height and angle of the protagonists eyes. However as Jakob could not see through the camera himself, we had to direct his hands to the right place where they could be seen. This was also difficult to create a 'looking down' affect because of the directioning.




We finally decided that the use of a POV of shot is not necessary when our protagonist is running as we realsied that you do not actually look at your hands when running. Therefore we have deicded as a group that we shall still use the POV of shot to show the blood on the protagonists's hand, however this will be done he is still.