Paranormal Activity

Over the weekend I went to the cinema to see Paranormal activity.
Although it was not as scary as I was expecting I thought it was a really good film and the way they filmed it was really effective.
The whole film is filmed on a handheld home camera by the couple in the film.
The woman, Katie, has been followed to 3 different houses by some kind of ghost or demon, she believes, that watches her at night, makes noises in the house, whispers her name and breathes on her.
As an attempt to try to catch any of this activity on camera and get to the bottom of it, her husbad, Micha, sets up the home camera on a tripod in their bedroom with a microphone. The camera is placed so that you can see the bedroom and the door, and the corridor and stairs.
Each night different strange things happen that sometimes wake up, and sometimes don't wake up the couple. One night their bedroom door opens and closes, another night they hear footsteps coming up the stairs and into the bedroom, another night they hear a loud thud from downstairs in their front room.
As the film goes on, whenever it comes to the night scenes the whole cinema made groaning noises and sunk into their seats as they knew something unexpected and scary was about to happen, which I think was a really good effect to have on the audience.
The part of the film which I believe was most succesful and effective was the end. The woman becomes possessed by the demon and you see her get out of bed and go downstairs. As you cannot see downstairs you do not know what is going on and then siddenly you hear a desprate, terrified scream of Katie so Micha jumps out of bed and runs downstairs after her. After some kind of struggle everything goes quiet. You hear footsteps coming up the strairs towards the camera again and then it all goes quiet. The silence stays for a couple of minutes which had a huge impact on the audience because they were in suspence and it was left to our imagination of what was happening and what had happened downstairs. Suddenly the silence breaks when the possesed Katie throws a dead Micha at the camera.
The end was so effective and had everyone in the cinema screaming. The element of silence was what was so scary because you did know what was coming next. Also the fact that you did not see the demon or whatever was possessing her for the whole film had a huge impact as it was left to the audiences imagination of what it was.

I hope that the fact you cannot see our stalkers face in our film, has a similar scary or creepy impact on our audience.

Editing

We've put our raw footage onto our mac at school and have started to edit.
After first watching our filming we realised that the lighting in the dark room is very dark and quite hard to see what is exactly going on. We decided to try and lighten the scenes and put a red tint over the shots to make it look lighter but still have an eery feel with the red lights. I think that this was really effective so we have written down everything that we have done to the clips so we can make it consistant throughout our film. We also decided that our outside scenes were very bright and did not really add to our scary theme. We also realised that the clouds from the outside scenes are not consistent because when each shot changes, so does the clouds. We edited this, again using imovie by making the scenes greyer and the sky white so you cannot see the changing clouds and the scenes have a more gloomy eery feel. We have only just started editing so we only have the first few seconds edited together but so far I am really enjoying and can't wait to continue making our film come together.

Se7en

In our lesson on friday morning we watched the film Se7en. This was because Miss Foster had previously shown us the opening credits to get us thinking about our own opening credits in our film, but because we all thought it was so good and wanted to know more about the film she decided to let us the whole thing as a class.

The opening credits were really effective because you don't understand what it is or what is happening until you watch the rest of the film so it makes the veiwer interested and want to carry on watching.


The rest of the film is about a detective, Morgan Freeman, who is about to retire and has 7 days to teach the new detective, Brad Pitt, how to do his job.
Within those 7 days a serial killer starts his work by killing people according to the 7 deadly sins, gluttony, greed, sloth, lust, pride, envy and rath.
You saw throughout the film how he killed these people and at the end find out his reasonings behind them.
I thought it was a really good film and really enjoyed it. Although many people in the class afterwards were saying that they thought it was a poor ending, I disagree and think it was really powerful. The fact that the audience are left to just imagine what it looks like inside the box I thought was really effective and the way that you can really empathise with Brad Pitt at the end and understand his anger and upset.
There were many things in the film which were used to add to the atmosphere and help you understand the characters. The lighting for example was low key and for almost the whole film it was very heavy rain which made the film very dark and gloomy to add to the mood and effect of the film.
There was also a part in the end when the two detectives are driving the killer to the destination he has told them and there is a conversation between all three men. This is a vital part of the film as the killer tells them his reasons behind all the killings and how he believes he was chosen by God to do this and how he admires the two detectives for their work. As this conversation is happening the camerawork is very clever to show the audience the different characters. Whenever the killer is talking, he is shown through the wire bars as if to show he is bad and should be away from people. When Brad Pitt is talking he is sometimes also shown through the bars to show he is just as bad as the killer in his attitudes, but when Morgan Freeman talks he is shown normally without the bars to show he is good.

There was also a part in the film where the detectives find the killers flat and one of his rooms is a dark room with lots of photos of his victims hung up. This looked like a really effective shot with a red tint so I think this has once again made our group think about maybe putting a red tint over our own dark room scene when editing using imovie.

Second day of filming

On Thursday after school we got permission to film in the old dark room. We went to set up the dark room by pinning up photos of the stalkers victims with notes written about them including their name, age and any other information such as their hair and eye colour.
Sarah's dad then arrived at school so we started to film.
Our first shot was with all of the lights off and Sarah's dad opening the door of the dark room and switching on the red lights. We positioned the camera in such a way that you could see the door and the red light bulb which was outside the door which turned on when he switched on the lights inside. I think this was an effective shot as you could just see his shadow in the doorway and the door made a creeking noise which will add to the atmosphere of our film.
For our next shot we did the same thing but we moved our camera to inside the dark room so we had it from a different perspective.
We then put the camera to one side of the room and had Sarah's dad standing by the developing baths with his back to the camera. The shot started off by focussing on one of his past victims photos which was pinned to the walls and then when Sarah's dad dropped something on the floor it made a loud crash and the camera made a quick pan around to him which I think added tension. He then picked up the item that he dropped, turned back to the developing bath and dropped a photo of Charlotte in there as if to develop it. He then took it out of the bath and clipped it up to the line which already had photos of me and Molly clipped up.
Finally we filmed the last bit for the dark room which was for the very end of our clip. This was when Sarah's dad replaced the original photo of Charlotte for one of her gagged and tied to a chair, which showed he had caught her. He then pinned up a photo of Sarah next to that to indicate that she is his next victim.
As Sarah's dad walks away from the line the camera zooms in and pans across all of our group's photos which we had attached our names to, which will be our credits. As the light in the dark room was very dim we held a phone light up to the photos from behind the camera to make it a bit lighter but still have quite a scary effect.
I really enjoyed filming this part and hope it turns out good when we come to edit. The only problem with the dark room was that is a very small room with lots of equipment so it was hard to have all of the group in there at the same time giving directions when we were actually filming because we had to be in certain positions so that you could not see our shadows.

Stalker/obessive films I have watched

Over the last few weeks I have tried to watch some films to do with stalking and obsessive people to help with our film when we are editing.

First I watched "Obessed" With Beyonce Knowles and Idris Elba.

This was about a woman who got a tempory placement at a job. She ended up becoming obsessed with her boss at that placement and tried everything she could to stay at the job and got a permenant place there. She was convinced in her head that she had a relationship with this boss and always tried to be with him and would do anything for him. As the film goes on her obsession becomes worse and she becomes jealous of her boss's wife (Beyonce).
There are interesting camera shots in this film such as when the woman is watching the boss's house which we included into our filming when Sarah's dad was watching Charlotte leave her house. I thought it was quite a good film and think it has helped me to think of some ideas to put into our editing now.


The next film I watched was "The Watcher" with Keanu Reeves.

This film is about a serial killer who watches or stalks girls for weeks until he knows everything about their routine such as when they wake up when they leave the house when they eat when they sleep and most importantly when they are alone. Then he finds them and kills them by slitting their throat with a piano wire. He starts to play a game with a certain police officer by sending a photo of his next victim to him in the morning and says if the police officer does not find the victim by 9pm the same day, he will kill them.
I thought it was a really good film, even though it had quite a disapointing poor ending and think it will really help with our ideas.
There was a part in the film where you saw him developing photos of his victims in a dark room. In our film we are still not sure whether to put a red tint over our dark room scene or not. In The Watcher they have a red tint and I think it looks really effective so I will show my group and see if they agree.
Here is the trailer for The Watcher and you can see the effective dark room scenes in it breifly



Finally, the last film I watched on this subject was "Single White Female"

This film is about a woman, Ellie, who breaks up with her fiance and is so left to live alone. She puts an ad in the local newspaper asking for a female room mate. The woman, Headra, who she eventually chooses to move in with her starts to act strange around Ellie and becomes obsessed with her and her life. She wants Ellie for herself and does not want her to get back with her fiance or to ever leave her. She cuts and dyes her hair so it is identical to Ellies and starts wearing her clothes. She sleeps with her boyfriend and pretty much steals her identity. When Ellie finally realises that she needs to get away from Headra, she does not let her leave and tries to kill her.
I thought it was a really good film and would recommend it and I also think it had interesting camera angles when she was watching Ellie and when Ellie was trying to hide from her in their apartment which we could try and use in our film when we edit.