Our Final Film

This is our final film 'Recurrence'.

Evaluation: Question 7

7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=pOW9NEpZDoE

We decided to present the answer to this question as a group. After discussing what we each thought about this question, we put all of our ideas together and recorded ourselves as we each talked about a different part to the answer.

Evaluation: Question 6

6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hupGUM9Z8Bo&feature=youtube_gdata

I have also presented my answer to this question in a movie maker clip.

Evaluation: Question 4 & 5

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
5) How did you attract/address your audience?

[I wanted to combine questions 4 and 5 because I thought that explaining who our film is targeted at and how we addressed the audience should go into the same answer.]

We decided to rate our film as a 15, as we were aiming at older teenagers. Although we think this film would appeal to most age groups in this category, we wanted to focus on certain elements of the opening in order to attract our chosen target audience. We felt that we would need to make the characters in the opening scenes relate that that target audience. When the scene changes from the title to a mother and her teenage daughter arguing, we thought that the body language shown, portrayed what was happening, without needing the sound to back it up. We all agreed that this scene in particular would relate to most teenagers and parents of teenagers who may have experienced tension and arguments in their own family lives. The following scene shows the girl running away from home which we hope will make the audience feel sympathy for the character and want to continue watching to find out what happens to her. We also used certain elements within mise-en-scene in order to make the audience feel like they could relate to the teenager. We made sure that the character was wearing something that was simple, so we decided that the character should wear jeans and a jumper. We didn’t want the girl to stand out too much, since she was meant to just be an ordinary girl. As we mainly wanted to relate to teenagers between 15 and 19, we thought that it was best for the character’s age to be unknown to the audience. I think we made it clear that she was also between the age of 15 and 19, which means that a teenager who is watching, may feel relatable if they think that she is the same age as them.

Evaluation: Question 3

3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoSFQamyKOw&feature=youtube_gdata

I have presented my answer to this question in a movie maker clip.

Evaluation: Question 2

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In the opening scenes of Recurrence, we wanted a particular social group to be represented, in order to fit with the audience that we are aiming our film at. The main social group which is represented is a family, which is clearly under stress and unhappy. As the audience will see throughout the opening, it is a broken family, where there are two parents divorced with a teenager who is left in the middle. We thought that our opening puts across the stresses of a modern day family when the parents are no longer together.

As the film begins, you see a girl who is standing in front of a big house. We wanted to leave the audience unknown to whether she lives in the house and is from a well off family or whether she works at this house, as it is meant to be set a long time ago. We thought that the switch over to the present tense would leave the audience wondering what bearing she has on the rest of the film and what might have happened to her in the past.

When the scene changes to the teenage girl and her mother arguing, we thought that the audience would be able to tell that it has moved to the present tense. We thought that the modern house and the typical teenager attitude would give off this impression. The body language between the mother and the daughter portrays a lot of tension and built up frustration through the facial expressions and hand gestures. We wanted to portray the modern lives of a broken family and what effect is has on the people involved.



Evaluation: Question 1

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Through analysing and doing deconstructions of the openings of psychological thrillers, we got a lot of ideas about how to do our opening. When planning the opening of ‘Recurrence’, we wanted it to have more substance than many thriller film openings because we wanted to include enough story in the opening scenes to draw the audience in. Although we wanted to stay mainly on the normal conventions of a thriller, we wanted to also develop them. I think that we managed to expose the audience enough so that they realised the genre was a thriller, but I also think that we made them really wonder what is going to happen throughout the film.

When discussing our film with people, we found that lots of people asked themselves these questions...

·         Is the film going to be old fashioned?

·         Who is the girl?

·         Will the film have flashbacks from modern day to the past?

·         Will the whole story be in the past?

·         Will the girl from the opening scene reappear?

·         Why are they arguing?

·         Does the mother know she’s gone?

·         Where is she going?

·         Whose house is it?

·         How does she have a key?

·         Where is her dad?

·         Is there a relationship between the girl and her father?

·         Why is she acting like she has never been there before?

·         Why is she in the same place as the other girl?

·         What is going to happen next?

At the beginning of the task, I did a deconstruction of the film opening of ‘Road to Perdition’. After doing this, I thought that the opening of our film should have more content relevant to the story. In Road to Perdition, the opening starts with a clip of the end of the film where a boy is standing on the beach. The shot then changes to a clip where the boy is cycling through the town, going the opposite way to everybody else. I think this represents him taking you back to the beginning of the story. The long opening doesn’t really give you a full sense of what genre the film is. In contrast, we started with a clip from the past, whereas Road to Perdition started with a clip from the future. In ‘Recurrence’, we wanted to start the story immediately from the outset. We also wanted to subtly convey the girls’ family situation to the audience to help them empathise with how she is feeling. I think doing the deconstructions really helped us to realise what we wanted our film to be about, what target market it should be aimed at, how much story we wanted to include in the opening two minutes without giving too much away and how we would portray to the audience that it was a thriller.

Audience Feedback

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE3jlkjgF-Q&feature=player_embedded

This is the audience feedback from our film opening.

Analysis of Shots

The scene begins with a close up shot of a lit candle in front of an old, stone pillar which gets blown out after a few seconds. We wanted to start the opening with this because we thought it looked slightly creepy, which suited the genre of film that we chose. We filmed this part at dusk, as we wanted as little natural light as possible, so that the candle was the main source of light in the shot.

The scene then changes to an establishing shot of an old house and a girl walking down the steps holding a candle. We also filmed this at dusk, so that the candle would stand out and light up the girl’s face as she walked with it. We filmed this from behind a bush, to give the impression to the audience that someone is watching her.

The shot then moves to a close up of the girl, as she blows out the candle.

The screen then fades to black and the title ‘Recurrence’ comes up in white letters. I think the first scene displays a lot of mystery that will intrigue the audience to keep watching.

The opening then fades into present day, showing a mother and her teenage daughter having an argument. The teenager storms out of the room and the camera moves to the other side of the door to watch her slam the door and continue to storm upstairs, into her bedroom and start to pack her things. We originally filmed every shot so that it followed on into the next, but came out with 5 and a half minutes of film, so realised that we had to cut it down. We used fade in/fade out transitions to merge shots into one another, in order to show the passing of time.

This allowed us to get the overall time down to around 2 minutes. We shortened a lot of the shots that showed the teenage girl packing her things and leaving her house, as we felt that the scene was too long, uninteresting to watch and unnecessary to the storyline.

The sequence of shots which follow the girl as she goes to her dad's house and down the long driveway include a wide variety of angles. We used a panning shot to show her walking past the camera as she enters the gates at the top of the driveway and a tracking shot from the front because we wanted to show her emotion of feeling fed up and tired. We then included a hand-held shot of her feet and the suitcase going past the camera. We thought this was an effective way of showing her journey to her dad’s house because the scene then leads on to a shot where the camera is close up to the suitcase and then tilts upwards as she walks away from the camera to reveal the house. The camera is then at a low angle to show her as she pulls the suitcase up the steps.

 

We thought this sequence of shots really showed how tired and fed up she was. We wanted to portray her struggle as she pulls her suitcase along the long, stone driveway.

We think this particular shot really shows how much she is struggling, because it shows her trying to pull the suitcase up the steps, one by one.

Inside the house, many different and interesting camera angles are used in order for the audience to get a feel for the layout of the house. We also wanted to use some angles to make it look like someone is watching her.

The scene begins with a close up of her putting the key in the door, which we thought was effective as it then slightly tilts upwards as she walks in. We also thought this shot would be a good place to put one of the titles and when editing, we decided on putting ‘Director of Photography – Rebecca Atkinson’ in that place.

A mid-shot is used while the camera tilts downwards as she puts her things on the floor and then tilts upwards as she closes the door. We wanted the audience to see what she was doing, therefore used the tilt to show that.

We then used a slow zoom into a close up of her face to show the real emotion in her face, so that the audience could understand how she is feeling.

The camera angle then changes to a hand-held pan of her feet stepping over her bag and walking away.

After a mid-shot and slow pan of her walking into the room as you hear the diegetic sound of her calling out for her dad, the camera angle changes to an aerial shot from the top floor of the house, looking over the bannister at her, as she turns around. We used this shot because we all agreed that it looked like someone was watching her. We wanted to make the audience to

feel like that was what was happening, in order to give off a creepy vibe about the house.

 

As we wanted to create this feeling for the audience, we continued to use shots that would do this, for example; we then used a tracking shot as she walks through one of the rooms and up to the stained glass doors, opening them and walking out. The tracking shot makes it look like someone is following her.

We think this shot is very effective because the natural light which comes through the stained glass doors brightens up and outlines the figure of the teenage girl.

As the film is called ‘Recurrence’, and the girl at the beginning was filmed from behind a bush as she walked down the steps, we wanted to show the audience that something happened to her, and that it was going to happen to the girl in the present tense. We did this by filming the girl in the present tense from the same position as before, as she walked down the same steps.

We think that the combination of shots and music that we used did make the audience feel that someone was watching the girl and that something bad was going to happen to her.

Research and Planning: Peaceful Sleepers Soundtrack

We chose to use the song 'Peaceful Sleepers' by Amy's Ghost for our opening two minutes as we thought that every part of the song seemed to go with our film. The build up in the song created more suspence in the film and the words also seemed to fit with what went on in the opening two minutes.

Research and Planning: How Filming Went - The Second Time

Although the first time that we filmed, we thought that everything went smoothly and we were able to capture everything that we wanted, when it came to editing the opening two minutes, we realised that we didn't manage to do so. Some shots were too long, and we realised that we didn't have the variation of shots that we wanted to include. We also started to realise throughout the editing process that the film was boring and wasn't really going anywhere. Our main aim was to capture the audience and make them want to watch more. As we felt as though the first idea did not meet the standards that we wanted, we decided to film a second time, in order to get everything we wanted.

Whilst filming the second idea, we all realised how much better it was than the first idea. The camera angles varied more and generally looked a lot better. We planned out timing a lot better for certain shots, for example the close up candle shot at the beginning and the girl in the white dress walking down the steps and blowing out the candle. We wanted these shots to be filmed at dusk, so that it was slightly dark, but not too dark that you couldn't see. We wanted the other shots to be filmed in the daytime, therefore we filmed the second half first and the first half afterwards.

Throughout the editing process, we were very happy with how it was beginning to turn out. We were all so glad that we re-filmed as the film had more suspence and it felt like it could go somewhere from the opening two minutes if there were to be a whole film.

Research and Planning: Age Rating (final)

As mentioned earlier with the previous idea for Recurrence, we still want to rate our film at a '15'. We think that this is the appropriate age rating for the genre of the film and what is included in the film.

Research and Planning: Synopsis of the Whole Film (final)

Synopsis of the whole film:

Set in a suburban town, a teenage girl is seen to run away from her mother’s house to move in with her father. Lara (the teenager) does not realise what she is about to encounter. She enters the house expecting to be greeted by her father who appears to be out.

As she begins to explore the house and move her things in the audience begin to realise that she is not alone in the house, and that she is being watched. Lara calls her father who answers and says that he has been called out of town due to business and will be back a.s.a.p. A little spooked by the house Lara calls her boyfriend Matt explaining what has happened and he agrees to come and stay with her until her father comes back from business.

Soon the couple realise that there is something seriously wrong, and both say that they have seen a young girl walking around by the river and in the garden. Matt says that they are probably paranoid and due to the events that have happened all they need is a good night’s sleep and to put it to the back of their minds. Suddenly they couple wake in the middle of the night to find the girl standing at the end of the bed. She says that she is merely there to warn them that the same fate that had befallen her will happen to Lara and she must leave as soon as she can. They demand to know what she means but she vanishes in to thin air.

Overtaken by curiosity the couple find the old house records in a desperate attempt to find out who the girl was. They soon find out more than they wanted to. Her name was Lucinda Kent she lived in the house over a 100 years ago and was found brutally murdered along with her mother and brother her father was also found dead next to them and it seemed that he had taken his own life.

Confused Lara and Matt decide to leave and get away from the area, yet as they are about to leave Lara’s dad arrives back and says to the two that they are being stupid, that they were probably just imagining things and that they are perfectly safe with him. Reassured they decide to stay.

The next day the couple find that they cannot leave the house the doors are locked, and when they go down to the basement in search of tools to get out they find Lara’s mother and brother dead in the cellar. Frantically trying to find a way out they realise that what happened all those years ago was the father had killed his family and took his own life as he was ashamed of what he had done.

Lara and Matt as they try and leave the basement are confronted by Lara’s father as he points a shotgun at the two and states that he had to do it. But before he can shoot them both Matt leaps for the gun two shots are released in the struggle one hitting Lara’s Dad. As he lies bleeding to death on the floor Matt turns to reassure Lara and finds that she has also been shot.

He holds her until she dies and you see him leave the house before the police arrive. He later discovers that the young man who was courting Lucinda had been at the house when her father had gone insane and he disappeared after the family had been killed.

Research and Planning: Cast & Crew (final)

Cast:
Girl (from the past): Rebecca Atkinson
Teenage Girl: Lara Allgood
Teenage Girl's Mum: Dee Allgood

Crew:
Production Company: BLS Media Productions
Written By: Sarah Harris, Rebecca Atkinson & Lara Allgood
Soundtrack: Written and Performed By 'Amy's Ghost'
Filmed By: Rebecca Atkinson & Sarah Harris
Costume Design: Lara Allgood
Casting Director: Sarah Harris
Director of Photography: Rebecca Atkinson
Directed By: Rebecca Atkinson, Sarah Harris & Lara Allgood

Research and Planning: Prop List (final)

- Candles
- White Dress
- Teenage Girls's Clothing
- Suitcase
- Bag

Research and Planning: Storyboard (Final)

This is the final storyboard. As we decided to shoot again, we have done a few storyboards with new ideas on. This was our final idea.

Research and Planning: NEW Script

Recurrence Script:

Fade In

Close Up: A candle is set against a stone pillar and is alight, words appear above “Some say that fate is set in stone” the words fade and new words appear above “yet what if fate was merely the past repeating itself” the words once again fade and the candle is blown out “RECURRENCE” appears above the candle.

Long shot: Of a girl leaving the house holding a lit candle

Close up of the girl holding the candle she looks up

Fade out

Fade in

Wide shot: Lara is sitting on the sofa non diegetic music plays over the top as her and her mother have an argument. Lara storms out of the room.

Long Shot: Lara slamming the door and walking up the stair well, across the landing to her room.

Montage of mid shots, close up and over the shoulder shots: Lara packing to leave the house, grabbing her things and walking back down the stair case putting on her shoes and leaving the house and walking down the street.

Fade out

Fade in

Long shot: Lara walking round the street corner and entering the drive way.

Another montage: Lara walking down the driveway approaching the house.

She lets herself in to the house and walks through the hall way under the stair well and out the back door in to the garden.

Long shot: Lara walking to the same position as the girl in the previous scene she looks around.

Fade out

Research and Planning: Synopsis of the Whole Film

Some say that fate is set in stone.
But what if fate was merely the past repeating.


Paul and Lara Allgood return home after attending her mothers funeral. As they return Lara notices that things have been changed and someone or something had moved things around in the house. They notify the police that someone has entered their house, however with no proof and nothing appearing to have been taken the police can do nothing to help. Paul recieves a call and quickly leaves the house leaving lara alone on her own. Her friend Matt comes over to check on how she is doing ok to find her huddled up in her room whispering "they are coming" she is addmitted to a mental hospital under the belief that she has undergone a nervous breakdown due to the stresses that she has recently suffered. Yet paul is acting strangely and when LAra returns home paul has disappeared and the house seems to be trying to communicate with lara. Terrified LAra and Matt work toegether to try and find out what is going on. They trace back the records of the house and discover that exactly 100 years ago that a mother, father and daughter lived in the house, the mother was taken ill and died, the daughter was placed into a mental hospital and the father went missing. Matt and Lara soon realise that there is more to the house than what meets the eye and they must battle against history to survive.

Research and Planning: Ring a Ring a Roses

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfTtWW5iqfU

This is the sound clip that we want to use for the start of our opening with the new idea. We want to use it because it sounds quite creepy which is appropriate for our genre.

Research and Planning: Changing The Idea

After filming completely and editing the whole of our opening 2 minutes, we decided that it didn't think it worked as well as it could have done. We then discussed new ideas in order to show different techniques with the camera and came up with the same sort of idea but it is slightly different. It is still called 'Recurrence' and has the same characters in it.

Research and Planning: How Our Filming Went

Yesterday, (on the 4th of February 2012) we filmed the opening 2 minutes of 'Recurrence'. It went really well as we got it all done in one day and it came out as well as we'd hoped it would. We did change a few things when we got to the location as we felt that it would look better for the places that we had to do the filming in. We had a few things that we had to change because there were builders at the house we were using but we managed to avoid them being in the shots.


In the first part, set 80 years ago, we really wanted it to look realistic so that the audience actually felt like they were in the 1930's. We used the oldest looking room in the house and made sure there was nothing modern in there. We used costume, lighting and location in order to do this. Rebecca Atkinson, who played the girl in the beginning, wore a long white, laced/silk dress which we chose because we thought it helped with producing a feeling of it being back in the 30's. We turned the lights off and only had light coming through the stained glass windows on the door and the candles that were lit on the floor. I think we managed to create a feeling of creepiness in this scene because we really tried hard in the planning stage to make sure that we had everything covered in making sure that it looked realistic.


We had to make changes to the last part where Lara Allgood's Dad was meant to say "Put the box on the hallway table" and "I thought I told you to put it on the table" and Lara's reply should have been "But I did...". The reason we changed this was because we thought of a few shots that we could use, in order to be able to show a variation of different shots in the opening 2 minutes. We also thought that the new shots made it more interesting to watch and made it creepier.

When filming the outside scenes, there were some unwanted diegetic sounds that we couldn't really do anything about. When editing, we will get rid of these sounds in order for the clip to sound authentic when the final opening 2 minutes is done. When editing, we will also use some non-diegetic sounds in order for the opening 2 minutes to feel creepy and sounds that will fit with the genre. We don't want to make it sound ridiculous or fake, so I think we will use more discreet and understated non-diegetic sounds.


With the planning and research that helped us to plan the opening 2 minutes to 'Recurrence', I hope we managed to create believeable scenes that feel creepy to watch. We are all excited to start editing and hopefully have it finished soon.

Research and Planning: Storyboard (New)

This is our updated storyboard. We felt that the last one was too brief, so we did another one with more in depth detail.

Research and Planning: Reason For Choosing The Location

For the opening scene which was set 80 years ago, we wanted to use a victorian style house so that it would be realistic. We also thought that the house would fit with both tenses of the opening which was really important as we wanted to make each tense believable.

Research and Planning: Location Shots

Location Shots

This is the house that we will be filming at for the opening 2 minutes of our film.

This is the driveway that we will be using when the car comes down in the current day scene.

This is the car we will be using in the current day scene that Lara and Paul arrive in.

Research and Planning: BLS Media Productions

BLS Media Productions is a new production company, which is based in Pinewood Studios. We work on making major motion pictures for the ever growing British film industry. We are currently a low budget company that focuses on the story lines and basics of a film in order to make something great. Recurrence is our first major film yet we have made short films such as:
-The Briefcase
We consist of a production office supported by Debbie McWilliams and Shaheen Beige. In the past have had funding from Film Four and The British Film Council.

Research and Planning: Props

For the opening two minutes of our film, we need the following props:

- Hallway Table

- Candles

- Land Rover Discovery

- Boxes

- Girls' Nightdress

Research and Planning: The Script - Dialogue

The script for the opening of 'Recurrence' does not involve much dialogue as we wanted the audience to be actively involved in the film and so it is up to them to fill in the blanks. We thought that having less dialogue in the first few scenes would mean that the audience would feel the creepiness that we wanted the opening to portay.

Research and Planning: Cast & Crew

Cast
Girl: Rebecca Atkinson:
Lara/The Daughter: Lara Allgood
Paul/The Dad: Paul Allgood
Crew
Film Production Company: BLS MEDIA PRODUCTIONS
Writers: Sarah Harris, Lara Allgood & Rebecca Atkinson
Directors: Rebecca Atkinson & Sarah Harris
Camera: Lara Allgood, Sarah Harris & Rebecca Atkinson
Editing: Rebecca Atkinson, Sarah Harris & Lara Allgood
Hair and Make-up: Lara Allgood

Research and Planning: Synopsis of the Opening

The film begins with a scene set 80 years ago. A young girl is seen praying for her life, before an unknown killer murders her.
RECURRENCE appears on the screen with the sound of a girl screaming.
The scene then changes to present day where Lara and Paul Allgood are moving in to their new house, the very same house as seen in the first scene. Lara begins to move in the boxes, yet realises that they are not alone in the house.

Research and Planning: Animatic of Storyboard

This is an animatic of our storyboard.

Research and Planning: Synopsis of the Whole Film

Recurrence

Set in a suburban town a young girl is praying in a very ritualistic way. Yet she is being watched, she kneels down and says the Lord’s prayer which are her last words as she is murdered horrifically by an unknown assailant.

Present day Lara and Paul Allgood daughter and father, have bought a new house near the town center and ideal for Paul to commute to work, yet little do they know that there is much more in store for them as they are moving in to the house where the girl was killed 80 years ago. They arrive at the house and begin to unpack boxes, Lara who is not all together happy about the move places a box on the hallway table, after coming back to the hall after collecting another box, she sees that the box has moved.

After moving in Paul receives a phone call telling him that he is needed at work a day earlier than expected and so he leaves his daughter alone in the house. Lara wakes up and sees that her dad is gone, and so takes the opportunity to explore the local area. She takes a stroll along the river behind the property where she meets Matt Simmons, who turns out to be her next-door neighbour, who after startling Lara offers to help her any time she needs him. Back at the house things begin to change, pictures have been moved and it looks as if the house is trying to get her to follow its inner depths.

Paul arrives home to find Lara hysterical and after discovering the root of the problem is just an “unlikely” and “unrealistic” tale about the supernatural he fails to believe her and thinks that she is merely making it up to get out of the place she didn’t want to move to. Terrified Lara calls upon Matt to help her and together they begin to explore the house finding more than they could ever bargain for.

The House is standing on a secret 300 years ago hundreds of people were killed in the very spot where the house was built. And so for the rest of time the souls of those who died will haunt the house and kill all those who live in it. And the souls next victims are paul and Lara 

Lara and Matt begin to search desperately to find the answer to setting the souls free. Time is running out and the souls are becoming restless. Soon Lara and Matt come to realise that the house will never leave them alone.

THE PAST ALWAYS REPEATS ITSELF.

RECURRENCE. 

Research and Planning: BBFC Age Rating Certification

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/15-2/

We think that the age rating of '15' would be the option in accordance with the bbfc age rating certification link which is above. We also wish to target our film at that particular age range as the main characters are ages 15-17 and so we believe that it will appear to that audience the best.

Research and Planning: Location Shots

The room we might use for the beginning scene.

The house we will be using for the whole opening 2 minutes.