Pre-Production

For this media project, I had to make a short film which followed the regulations of a brief. The brief stated that the film needed to:

• Be located, shot and edited outside of London
• Include a fictional narrative
• Feature a noteworthy architechal/natural landmark/feature which helps represent the town/city it was filmed in.

When I was trying to come up with a story, I had to consider the locations I had available to me and the amount of actors I could gather. My first decision was to have as little characters as I could, so that I didn’t need to rely on needing more actors than I could get. I also knew I needed a landmark which represented the location of my film, so I thought and jotted down some landmarks in and around Worthing that I could use. I also thought it would be much easier to control the environment (lighting, mise en scene etc.) if the film was located in a house.

I wanted my genre to be a crime or a horror, so I started brainstorming some ideas for films in those genres. I came to the conclusion that a horror film would be most suited for me, as I could film it all in a house and it would work. It took a while, but I eventually came up with a few ideas for a film. The idea I eventually favoured was one about a man who lives alone (Danny), and somehow gets haunted or intruded by an antagonist, perhaps a ghost or zombie. I needed to think of a realistic way that a stranger could introduce himself to the Danny, and the most obvious idea was for the stranger to be a door to door salesman, trying to sell an item. From here, I branched out to a few more ideas, like the item the salesman will try to sell will be a strange and old item, and that the salesman could be someone who died many years ago. So, the basic narrative that I had come up with was that a salesman would try to sell something to Danny, a man who lives alone, and Danny doesn’t want to buy the item. The salesman leaves but later on Danny notices strange noises/movements in his house. The story will then end with the audience finding out that Danny was being haunted by the salesman.

My inspirations and influences in coming up with this story were films like The Woman in Black and Paranormal Activity. Both these films include ghostly characters/ideas and the houses in both films are haunted by something. There are strange things happening like doors closing and unusual noises, which helped me with how to present the house as being haunted.

Now that I had this idea, it was time to create a storyboard, which helped me understand and create the visuals of my film. I had to draw scenes which I knew were possible to film and I had access to.

I started the film with a scene of the beach, which I used as an establishing shot. I used this to tick the box for including a well-known landmark, as the beach and the pier are show the area that I would be filming. I then wanted to cut to the road that Danny lives on, to establish the exact area that Danny lives in. I didn’t find creating the storyboard too difficult, as I knew what I wanted to do and the ideas came to my head as I went along.

After this I created a script for my film, which I found more tricky than the storyboard. My main struggle was that I didn’t intend my film to have much dialogue, with only one real conversation. This meant that the majority of my script was description, and it was hard to create as many pages as I wanted. After adding detail and some more dialogue however, my script filled out and was completed.

The hardest part of my pre-production was finding a cast and location to film. I only needed two actors, but didn’t fully know what kind of actors I wanted, and I wanted a house which was on a quiet road so that the audio didn’t get disturbed. After a long time of thinking and looking, I found two people who were perfect for the roles I wanted – my friend and my granddad. Luckily, my granddad lived in a very quiet road, which was perfect for filming. The only problem was that he lives in a bungalow, and my script and storyboard include stairs. However, I decided that it wasn’t too big of an issue as stairs weren’t a big part of the story, so it didn’t matter.

After perfecting the story and finding a date to film, I gathered all the props and clothes I needed and took the filming equipment to the location.

Production

The production went surprisingly well, as I hadn’t filmed anything like this. The actors read the script to understand their roles and know what they were saying, and when they were ready I started filming. I managed to direct the cast with quite a lot of ease as I knew what I wanted them to do and they understood very well.

I started filming before sunset, as my film include day and night scenes. This meant I had to schedule the filming well, and make sure I had enough daylight otherwise I would have to film another time.

During filming, there were quite a few shots that I had to redo, however I knew I would have to do this because it’s unlikely a scene will be perfect first try. The actors didn’t have to follow the dialogue in the script very strictly, as I wanted the conversation to flow naturally and not something that they had to remember of by heart.

I enjoyed filming and directing, especially due to the fact I had a set idea as I planned it well. There were a couple things I changed during filming, but nothing which affected the story (for example certain shots were different).

For the establishing shots of the film, I wanted to create an atmosphere which was not as gloomy as the film for a contrast, but still empty with no one around. My idea in the script and storyboard was the open the film with a scene of the beach, however I realised that I would rather film the down lands, which gives an atmosphere of happiness but also emptiness.

Post Production

After filming, I uploaded the footage onto a Mac, and started editing. I used Adobe Premier Pro, which is a programming software I was already quite familiar with. I didn’t take long to put the clips together to make the basic film, and once I had done this I started to come up with ideas for the different cuts and techniques I could use. I added different transition types where appropriate and changed up the lighting in some scenes to make it more fitting etc.

I then added the music and sound effects in, making sure the timing for all of it was perfect. The sound effects had to fit in with the timing of the video, so I made sure I was precise with it. There was an error with one of my clips, and the audio was very muffled, so I used audio from a different clip to create the sound of footsteps, and luckily it worked just fine.

For the end jump scare, I needed to create something scary out of the ghost, so I went into Photoshop and liquified his face to make him look more monster-like. Once I had done this I put the image into Premier Pro, and just used the still image as the video for the end. I think this worked well as the audience wouldn’t have expected the mans face to look any different, as he had looked human throughout the film. After this I added the text needed for the beginning of the film, including the intro credits and the title. I decided to fade the credits in time with the footage so that the intro flowed nicely.

I then dug deeper into the editing, and came up with the idea to use a 21:9 cinematic aspect ratio for the establishing shots of the film. I did this to set the mood of a film and create a more dramatic effect, it also looked more professional. I then made the black borders transition out when the title appeared, so that the audience would feel more immersed into the film. After reviewing the footage of the intro clips, I realised it wasn’t as smooth as it could be, so I used the warp stabiliser tool in Premier to fix this. It worked very nicely and it made the intro look more professional and cinematic.

Finally, I added in the end credits, which didn’t take long using the basic credit roll motion. I think my film was good and successful, and there is not much I would change. If I could go back and re-film some clips I would as when you edit footage you have a better understanding of how the clip should have been. I would also have been more careful with the microphone, as there were a few parts in the film that you could hear other noises, which I had to take out. However, overall I am happy with my film and it went as planned.