Creating | Settings

When thinking about where we wanted our opening scene to be set we wanted the setting to be quite mysterious and we wanted to chose quite a stereotypical horror movie setting. We thought about setting it in a field, but we voted against it as we felt it would be hard to find an empty field to film in and also we didn't think it would suit our plot for the movie. 

We finally decided on setting our opening scene in an alleyway. We chose an alleyway as it's quite stereotypical and also it was a convienent setting that we could easily find near where we all live. When creating the storyboard we didn't really know how to draw our alleyway as we didn't actually know what alleyway we were going to film in. On the day of filming we decided to meet at someone's house and walk around to find some alleyways. We were successful in finding alleyway, but we just didn't know which one to film in. We all decided to filming in the alleyway in our opening scene because it was quiet and also it set out scene very well. 

Our setting helps set the scene well as it is easily identified as a small compact alleyway. It also helps tie in with the stereotypical dangerous alleyway as again it is compact which means that the murderer can either stab someone easily and capture someone.

Creating | Costumes

When thinking about the costumes for the characters in the opening scene we mainly focused on the main characters which are the victim and the murderer. We didn’t really focus on the costumes of the friends as they could just wear their own casual outfit. But we wanted to be a bit more careful and stereotypical with the main character costumes.

Main Character 1 – Becca – Victim

When thinking about what this character could wear, we thought that she should wear something white to show purity and innocence. So her costume is normal jeans, a white top and a jacket of some sort, with converses. We chose these clothing items to make up the costume because we wanted innocence and purity to be shown but also we wanted the stereotypical teenager look to be shown as well. This is why we chose jeans, a jacket and some converses. For the hair, we didn’t worry too much about it, so we decided to keep it plain, simple and basic and have the hair up in a bun. We also had make-up put on her because again we wanted to show a stereotypical teenage girl. We didn’t put a lot of make-up on the character as we wanted her to look natural and not like she is about to go to a party. We kept it natural so the audience wouldn’t think too much of it and they wouldn’t notice it.

Main Character 2 – Nadine – Murderer

When thinking about what this character could wear, we thought that she should wear something black to show danger and evilness. The costume we had for Nadine was black jeans, a black plain top, a black jacket and black converses. We had her wear all black because we thought it made her look mysterious and we also thought she could be identified as the villain easier and her character would be clearer. We kept the hair natural and had her wear it down so we could easily put the hood up on her jacket to add to the mystery. We had her wear a little bit of make-up. Villains don’t wear make-up but we kept to the idea that the character is a girl so we thought adding a touch of make-up would be a good idea. We didn’t put as much make-up on Nadine than we put on my character as we wanted it to be clear that she was the villain and that my character was the victim/damsel.

Extra Characters – Claire and Victoria – Friends

We didn’t really think in depth of what the friends should wear as we felt that they weren’t as important as the main characters and we wanted to put most of our focus on the main characters. However, we had the friends wear minimal make-up, like we did for Nadine, and we also had them wear casual everyday clothing. We didn’t want them to be to eye catching because we didn’t want the audience to be more attracted to the extra characters and not notice the main characters.

Creating | Characters

When thinking about the characters we knew we wanted a stereotypical female and a stereotypical villain. This is so the characters would be identified easily in our opening scene. We thought very carefully about our characters for the opening scene as they needed to be clear so the rest of the movie would be clear and easily understood. We first thought of the main characters which are the victim and the murderer.

Character 1 – Victim

When thinking about how we could portray the victim we thought that it should be played by a female. We thought this because we wanted the character to be shown as weak and unable to save themselves. By having a female play this role we felt it would show weaknesses and fear better than having a male play the role. We wanted this character to be a stereotypical female, as we wanted her to be shown as weak and useless. You could call this character a stereotypical damsel as they are shown as weak like our character. This character is played by me and she is the main character in our film. We wanted a female to be the main character as there are many things you can do with a female in films. If we were to make the entire film we could have experimented with friendship groups and relationships which could have linked in with the murder.

Character 2 – Murderer

When thinking about how we could portray the murderer we thought that it should be played by a male. We thought this because we wanted the character to be shown as powerful and strong. However, we didn’t have any access to a male for our film so we decided to use a female instead. But instead of having a stereotypical female, we decided to have a female that isn’t very stereotypical but she is still a stereotypical villain. When deciding to use a female instead of a male we actually thought it would be a good idea and work out well because they are contrasting characters. Also it could link in well with certain things that could have happened throughout the movie if we were to create the entire thing. This character is played by Nadine and she is another main character in our film.

Character 3 – Friends

When thinking about other characters we could involve in the opening scene, we thought about having friends of the victim shown somewhere in the opening scene. We thought long and hard about when to include them in the opening scene and how many friends we wanted. We went for two friends in the end so the total of the friends would be 3. We also chose a total of 3 friends (the two friends and the victim) because it is known as a stereotypical number of friends, like the “Three Amigos” or the “Three Musketeers”. We wanted the friends to be stereotypical females as well so they would link in well with the victim. We thought that the friends could be walking home from somewhere with Becca and they could leave just before Becca walks down the alleyway. We also thought about what they could talk about and what they could be doing. That’s when the idea of one of the friends having her phone out and the others talking about school work and gossip as that’s what teenage girls talk about. We had Victoria play the friend with her phone out and we had Claire play the friend who is talking to Becca. We had them play the friends because they are quite stereotypical teenage girls.

Opening Scene | Evaluation Part 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

Music

The style of music we used in the opening scene is quite loud and bold music. We used this type of music to build tension in the scene and also to add to the mystery of the scene. When creating the music we wanted to use quite loud and bold instruments such as drums or the bass guitar. We used these type of instruments to add to the tension and to make the viewer feel nervous about the scene. When editing the opening scene I found that without the music it was very dull and not very intense, but when we added the music it sounded interesting and it definitely helped build tension.

Quite a lot of horror films use loud and bold instruments to build tension. If you watched a horror movie on mute it wouldn't be very exciting and you probably wouldn't be scared or nervous. But when you watch it with the sound on, you immediately feel nervous and tense when watching a scene. This is because the music is a big part in making the scene tense and triggering the viewers reactions. With this in mind we wanted to make our soundtrack as bold and tense as possible.

Other film soundtracks that are quite similar to our soundtrack are 'Psycho' and 'Here's Johnny'.

'Psycho'

The piece of music from this film is very famous and well-known. It starts off with screeching noises and it ends up dipping in and out of the soundtrack. The type of instruments that have been used are string instruments such as the violin. This soundtrack is similar to our soundtrack because the same instruments have been used, and also they have similar tunes. Our soundtrack has a bigger variety of tunes, where as this soundtrack is more straight forward and basic as it uses the same instruments and has the same sort of tune to it throughout the whole thing. I like this soundtrack because although it is quite basic and they only use one instrument it is still very tense and makes the scene that little bit more scary.

'Here's Johnny'

The piece of music from this film isn't as famous as the other one but the same type of tune is used in quite a few horror movies. The soundtrack is very screechy and high pitched but it builds a lot of tension in the scene. The instruments in this soundtrack are mainly violins but there a few sound effects in it as well. This soundtrack is similar to our soundtrack because the same instruments have been used and also they have very similar tunes. Our soundtrack is made out of a few more instruments but this soundtrack and our soundtrack are similar as they use the same type of instruments in the same way.

Characters - Costumes, Sets and Props

We didn't use a lot of props in our opening scene but we did use a phone, a bag, a fake knife, and fake blood. We used them because we needed to show someone being stabbed also we used phones to make the teenage girl stereotype effect. We filmed outside on a street and in an alleyway because we wanted to build tension and make it into a mystery type scene. The costumes we used were casual everyday wear. Also for the murderer we wanted her to wear all black to emphasise the fact that she was a murderer.

The different characters we had were: Teenage girl - quite stereotypical and the person that gets murdered. 

Murderer - stereotypical villain wearing all black

Two teenage girls - stereotypical teenagers. 

Opening Scene | Evaluation Part 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our target audience are teenagers and adults but mainly young adults. A teenagers interest in films is a variety of different genres. A teenage boy would be interested in action movies, disaster movies, horror movies and comedy movies. A teenage girl would be interested in romantic movies, chick flicks, possibly action movies, comedy movies, fantasy movies and possibly horror movies, depending on the personality of the person. An adults interest in films is a little more restricted as they know what genres they think are boring and what genres they think are interesting. A man would be interested in comedy movies, action movies, disaster movies and horror movies. A woman would be interested in comedy movies, chick flicks, romantic movies, fantasy movies, action movies (depending on the personality) and possibly horror movies (again depending on the personality).

When deciding on what age to target the film at we created a target audience questionnaire which we gave to people of different ages to see what type of movies they like to watch. We put questions that link to the different genres of movies like; What is your favourite movie genre that you like to watch?

After having the questionnaire filled out by a variety of different genders and age groups we came up with what target age we were going to use. The results showed that teenagers enjoy watching horror movies as they like the tension and they like getting scared. Some teenagers said, however, that they don't usually like watching horror movies because they scare them, so we had to think carefully about that. More adults said that they find horror movies entertaining and they enjoy watching them because they like getting scared and they like feeling tense.

From the results of the questionnaire, we found that teenagers and adults like to watch horror movies, which is why our target audience is teenagers and adults.

Creating | Font

When choosing a font style to use for our film title, we looked on a website called “dafont.com”. We used this website because we had used it before and also we knew that we would be able to find a horror type font that we could use.

We looked at many different fonts when choosing a final font as we wanted to make sure that we found the right one. We tried out many different fonts with the title of our film, ‘Never Look Back’, to see which one suited it best.

We finally decided on a font called ‘face your fears’. We liked this font because we thought it looked like blood and we also thought it looked quite scary. There were many fonts that had the same type of style as this font but we chose this one as we thought it looked the best out of all of the ones we tried out. When thinking about the font before we knew we wanted a font that looked like blood or looked quite scary and it had to tie in with our opening scene plot. When we saw this font we knew it would work as it was what we wanted and also it tied in with our plot very well.

We put the text on a powerpoint slide and decided that we needed to change the colour of it. It was originally black and we felt that it was dull and boring. We wanted the title to be a bold colour but not too bright and not too dark. We agreed on the dark red colour as we felt it looked more like blood. Once the colour was sorted out, we had to decide on how we wanted to lay the text out. We decided that layering the text would look better so we put 'Never' at the top, 'Look' in the middle and 'Back' at the bottom. Also to make it more scary and to make it link in with the horror genre, we decided to put blood behind it and make the background black so the text would stand out more.

Creating | Movie Backing Track

These are the links to the soundtrack of our opening scene. We created three pieces of music to put in the background of our opening scene and we uploaded them all to sound cloud. When creating our soundtracks we used a mix of different instruments. We wanted the music to sound quite tense and we wanted it to show mystery. When creating the different soundtracks we had the basic edit of the opening scene playing in the background so we knew when each instrument and tune needed to come in to the scene. This helped us, as we knew when to start recording the music and we also knew when to finish. Also it helped us have an idea of how we wanted our music to sound like.

Soundtrack 1 –

https://soundcloud.com/nlbfilmas/moviesong-first-soundtrack

The instruments we used in this soundtrack is a simple drum. We used this because we wanted to add tension o the scene and we also wanted to make the scene more interesting. When adding this instrument we found that it definitely made the scene more tense and scary for the viewer. 

Soundtrack 2 –

https://soundcloud.com/nlbfilmas/never-look-back-alleyway-music
We used a keyboard with different sound effects because we wanted to add a few sound effects to the scene to make the scene more interesting and to make the tension build. We also used drums and guitar to make the scene more interesting. 

Soundtrack 3 –

https://soundcloud.com/nlbfilmas/third-soundtrack

This soundtrack was made to be put over the title scene so we can add tension to it. Again all we used is a drum because we felt it added a lot tension to the title scene. And also it was a good way to end the opening scene.