Research into similar films

Prom Night (2008)

A similar film to ours is 'Prom night'.

Brief synopsis of plotline:
'In Bridgeport, the deranged high school teacher Richard Fenton is obsessed by the teenager student Donna Keppel; she witnesses him murder her family to stay with her, but Richard is arrested and sent to prison for life. Three years later, the traumatized Donna is feeling better but is still under psychological treatment and taking pills. On her prom night, she goes with her boyfriend Bobby and two couples of friends to the Pacific Grad Hotel for the party. But the psychopath Richard has escaped from prison and is lodged in the same floor in the hotel chasing Donna, stabbing her friends and staff of the hotel that cross his path.'

How is it similar: The Storyline is similar in the way that both films include an obsessive killer. In our film, Ben, having become obsessed with Alex and Becky after being rejected by them, plans to kill the in a 'If I can't have you, no one can' way. Ben manages to get inside the house while the girls celebrate getting into University and spend their last day together. Ben kills each girl.

'M' (1931)

Although 'M' focusses on a child killer, the film has a few similarities to ours. For example, the killer whistles a tune ('Hall of a mountain king') as he approaches his victim. In our film, when Ben is approaching Alex, he begins to whistle a tune.

Re-shoot

We are going to re-shoot a few shots as well as some additional shots on Wednesday as some of the shots appear too dark and we also decided that we need to include some more close-up shots.

Research into film posters

Costume - Becky

We have decided the costume that Becky will be wearing will include black skinny jeans, a white printed shirt, black cardigan and brown flat shoes. This costume is more formal and grown up compared to Charlie's costume which highlights that she is the older friend and is more mature. Similarly to the other characters costumes Becky's outfit is fairly casual which suits the casual nature of the setting that they are in.

Becky's older personality is also reflected in the fact that she is wearing a shirt that has a vintage look to it, also the shoes that she is wearing are a loafer style which is also an element of vintage fashion.

Character Profile- Charlie

Name: Charlie
Age: 17

Occupation: Student

Appearance: Mid length colourful hair, short (5ft) , Blue/Green eyes

Personality: She is a silly person and likes to play pranks on people. She is quite childish  and talkative.

Part in the film: Youngest out of the three friends and the first person to die in the film.

Shooting pack & Prop list

List of items we need to take with us when we film:

• Camera
• Tripod
• Tape
• Script
• Shot list + Storyboard
• Costumes
• Fake blood
• Lights

Props:

• Knife
• Glasses
• Bowl
• TV remote
• Hand-held camera
• Shower radio
• Spanner

Character profile- Ben

Name: Ben 

Age: 19

Occupation: Student

Appearance: Brown hair, Average height, brown eyes

Personality: Ben is known for being obsessive, the girls mention in a stalking incident while in the car. Ben has psychological problem which lead him to murder the girls. When the girls previously said that they weren't interested in him, Ben appeared to have disappeared out of their lives without any explanation. During this time, Ben locked himself away and planned his revenge.

Part in the film: Ben is the murderer in the film.

Character Profile- Alex

Name: Alex

Age: 18

Occupation: Student

Appearance: Mid-length brown hair, short (5ft 3), green eyes

Personality:  Alex has a bubbly personality, is a bit of a 'girly girl' and is known to be a drama queen. She has been best friends with Becky since childhood, and met Charlie in high school. During the film, Alex is preparing to leave her home town to go to study at The University of York.

Part in the film: Alex is the last character to die in the film. Throughout the film Alex is seen with her handycam as she films her last day with her friends.

Research into similar films: Scream

Scream

Storyline: A peaceful town in California turns into a bloodbath when a masked killer haunts the town. Sidney Prescott, a young teenage girl, whose mother was killed a year before, becomes the target of the mask killer. Her boyfriend Billy Loomis becomes the main suspect along with Sidney's father. Local Tabloid News Reporter Gail Weathers and Woodsbroro's Deputy Dwight "Dewey" Riley investigate and try to figure out who the killer is and if it's the same person who killed Sid's mom the year before.

How it is similar to our film: The sub-genre of Scream is teen horror which is the same as ours and therefore the main characters are teens, similarly to our film the first murder takes place in and around a house with the first victim being female. There is also mention of other horror films in both our film and Scream. The killer in Scream also uses the same knife to kill all of his victims and in our film we are also going to have the killer using the same knife.

The knife that is used to kill all of the victims 

Scene inside the house

Shot of outside of the house

Link to Scream imdb page

Character Profile - Becky

Name: Becky

Age: 19

Occupation: Student

Appearance: Long ginger hair, average height, green eyes

Personality: Mature for her age and looks after the other two like they are her little sisters. She is going to study Business Management at the university of Northampton. 

Part in the film: Oldest out of the three friends and the second person to die in the film

Script - Last Goodbye

We used Celtx to create our script.

Title sequence storyboard

Music in our film

We decided to look at the different types of music that we could use within our film. These would be used to create suspense throughout the film. We like 'Intermission', however a problem with this is that the language is Spanish, and so it wouldn't go with our film due to it being English. This has given us an idea to look into creating our on version of something like this.  We also decided that 'Embrace' by Moonrise could sound good on the credits of the film.

Rough storyboard

Research into possible distributor

Entertainment

Entertainment is an independent film distributor in the UK. This company could be a possible distributor for our film as it specialises in independent films which ours is one of. It is also a very well known company, known for distributing films such as Saw, 17 again and Sex and the City and British films such as Stormbreaker and St Trinians 1&2. If a viewer sees that our film is distributed by this company then they may choose to watch our film as they trust that the 
company distributes good films. 

Link to website

Maxim Media International

Maxim Media International is a film distribution company that specialises in the horror genre. This company could be a possible distributor for our film as they specialise in horror films therefore our film would reach its target audience of teens who like the horror genre. They have distributed films such as American Scream King, Backslasher and Blood Forest.

Link to website

We think that Entertainment would be best suited to our film as it would allow the film to reach a wider audience.

Shot list

Treatment

Title: Last Goodbye

Duration: Approximately 5 minutes

Genre: Horror/Teen horror

Certificate: 15

Audience: 15-20 year olds both male and female that generally like horror films.

Synopsis: Alex walks out of a shop to be bumped into by Ben who drops a necklace on the floor, when she picks it up and turns round to give it back he is gone. Thinking no more about it Alex gets into her friend Becky's car where Charlie is also inside. The three friends go to Charlie's house where they are going to watch a film and spend their last day together before they each go away to university. Alex is filming their last day on her hand held camera. 
When the three are sat watching the film Charlie goes to fetch some more popcorn but doesn't return for a while. When the power suddenly goes out Alex and Becky assume that Charlie is messing around trying to scare them and go to the kitchen to find her. They keep shouting her name and cannot find her, when they hear the garage door open they go to look in there but as time passes the girls fear grows. As they approach the garage they hear the back door open and realising that this couldn't possibly Charlie as well they lock themselves inside the garage. Alex discovers a wrench covered in blood which immediately assures the girls that their worst fears have come true. The killer who turns out to be Ben enters the garage where the girls are hidden behind a pile of boxes, as Ben looks around the garage the girls run out shutting the door behind them. Alex runs upstairs and Becky shuts herself in a cupboard. Ben soon finds Becky and kills her and progresses upstairs dragging the knife along the walls to scare Alex, he finds a radio and tunes it in to play an upbeat song as the soundtrack to him killing Alex. Ben uses Charlie's phone to ring Alex and tell her he's found her, he then walks into the bathroom and drags the knife down the glass shower door where Alex is hiding. The film finishes with Ben standing over Alex holding the knife up.

Suggested elements: A key feature in our film is Alex's hand held camera which we include some of our shots from. 

Title Sequence Analysis

http://www.netflix.com/WiPlayer?movieid=70060008&trkid=50264258&tctx=0%2C6%2Ce5f22bfb-fd0d-4a2b-bd55-9aa69cf3eb57-39353599



We could start off with our production company, the same way it does for The Strangers (2008). This is effective as it can tell you about the budget or style of the film depending on the company.

We could use the way that this flashes onto the screen for our production company as it creates a sense of creepiness as it is quick to come onto the screen, possibly making audiences jump.



We could have our companies appear on the screen like this as it is simple, and would be easy to do but the simplicity creates a sense that
something is wrong because the scariness is missing.




We could use this to scare people even more, and this would be believable as it is not far fetched for someone to be stalked and killed. Using this could give people a sense that it could happen to them,


We could then back this up with statistics the way that this film has done, to again give people a sense of this could happen to you, and also to make it seem more like it could be true.

We could launch then straight into the film, but put a slight effect on it to make it seem off, this seems to have too few frames per second, so the picture appears to drag slightly, so it's nothing major but still makes you think somethings off.

Analysis of a title sequence

American horror story - Asylum

The title sequence for American horror story was created by Kyle Cooper who has a certain style that he uses in title sequences. We hope to use a similar style for our title sequence as we think it will look effective in our film.

Editing 

I really like how the sequence is edited at a really quick pace and shows many different clips really quickly and then a title, we plan to use a similar style sequence in our title sequence. By only showing the clips very quickly it briefly shows the audience what the film will include and presents the dark tone of the film but doesn't give aways anything about the storyline or characters. 
The fact that we only see each shot for a few seconds means that the audience are not sure what they have seen and make up scenes in their head related to an item they have briefly seen. For example when we stop the clip we can see that this is a pigs head covered in blood, however when we only see the shot for a few seconds all we notice is the blood and assume that it is a human body. 

This shot also demonstrates how the audience are not sure whether they see a hand hanging over the edge of the trolley or not. 





Music

The music used in this title sequence is fairly calm compared to the tone of the title sequence which adds to the eeriness of it as it makes the blood, gore and death in the scenes appear light hearted and normal.

Mise en Scene

The lighting throughout the whole title sequence is very dark which adds to how little the audience can see and so makes the scenes even more mysterious.

We plan to use a similar extreme close up shot of an eye like this one in the title sequence.