1. The planning stage of my horror film started by making a mind map of all the effective
concepts of a horror movie. After that I watched the first five minutes of a lot of horror film
to see the best way to start a story, not reveal much of how it was going to go, yet
interest the audience enough to make them want to watch more. If any really inspired
me, I’d make a list out of them. When I had a basic idea of how my film would go, I drew
out a storyboard made up of only stickmen. For any scenes that needed more detail, I
would then draw that part out again on a separate storyboard, taking more time with it
and making it better than stickmen with more detail. I then made a script off of this
storyboard, constantly checking everything together to see that it fit and that the lines of
the characters would follow their actions perfectly. Creating an animatic made it even
easier after that, as the step by step helped to explain to the actors exactly how things
were supposed to go. It also helped me as I edited everything together, reminding me
how things were supposed to go, and putting the shots together correctly. All of this
made things faster and easier.
This project has greatly improved my use of shot types such as match on action shot
reverse shot, and point of view shots. I feel that point of view shots are really important
for horror films when a main character is on the verge of discovering something or being
attacked. I definitely feel more confident with my equipment, especially when it’s my own
and I can practice and familiarise myself with all the settings and uses. I am really happy
with the turn out of my film and how it has fulfilled the brief given at the beginning of this
project. It shows enough content to establish the genre it is from the choices given, yet it
is still only the beginning of what could be a real film.
Compared to my preliminary task I feel that I have improved vastly, and part of this is
because of how much I have learnt in better software’s for editing, as I now use final cut
though I did use iMovie for my preliminary. What was necessary in my preliminary task
was to show the use of the 180-degree rule, a shot reverse shot, and a match on action.
Within my film I used these far more fluently and I a certainly more confident in using
them now than I was when completing my preliminary task.