Final copies of scripts and storyboards.

This is the final copy of our story board we used for our opening sequence.

Planning and securing location.

We mainly filmed at this location in Aldenham School. It is a resolute woodland area. We felt it was the ideal location as it looks very natural, but at the same time had the right qualities for filming. 

We also filmed in Mcgills house, a day/boarding house in Aldenham school. We filmed in the Mcgills kitchen as it features provided a good, gloomy feel to the scenes shot.

Thrillers that inspired me in planning my thriller. Number 23 (2007)

The number 23 opening sequence

In the opening sequence for this psychological thriller Number 23 (2007), the typewriter effect is utilized, as in our opening sequence. We thus got our inspiring from this as we felt that is created a sinister, mysterious feel which we would hope would inspire the audience from the very start and continue throughout.

Also, the use of blood is very frequent in this opening sequence, which again inspired us in the production if our opening sequence. We choose to use inspiring from successful thriller as we felt it would increase our chances of getting production deals with company's such as Platinum Dunes, due to their previous track record of producing films of Number 23 type.

Shooting schedule.

We never really had a planned out shooting schedule but we had a vague idea of when we would be filming, editing etc. However we where sure we would do the majority of our filming in the half term.
We eventually came to the conclusion that all the scenes filmed inside (The kitchen scene's) in school term. In this case was at approximatly 7 o clock on a Tuesday night. We took the decision to film at night as we wanted the outside climate to be dark as it coensides well with the ethos of our film, dark and gloomy.

The shot's in the forrest/woods were all filmed in the half term as we felt it would give us much more time to make sure all the shots were perfect. This turned out to be a good decision as it took us 3 days to film all the shots to our liking. Another reason why we choose to give ourselves a prolonged time frame to film the forrest shots was because of the weather. We filmed in late January/early February, meaning the weather was very unpredictable. Un fortunately we had 2 whole weeks of horrible weather so it was difficult for filming to flow smoothly.

We also had to plan our filming schedule around the free time of our Rene and Grace, our actor/actress. This was not very difficult as they both had a lot of time, which was very helpful for Sachin, Alex and myself. We finished all our filming by late February and commenced editing straight away.

Permission forms

For our film each actor/actress needs a permission slip to sign that allows them to be filmed and allows us to post footage on our blog. Sachin, Alex and I have made our own permission slip that we will give our actor/actress to sign. Once they have signed this we can begin to film.

This is our permission slip:

I ________________________ agree to be a part of Sachin, Alex and Max's media project and allow them to post this footage on each of their blogs

Signature

_________________________

We also need a permission form to film in one of our location. This location was one of the boarding houses, Mcgills. We needed permission from the current housemaster. In this case Mr Dunstun.

This is our permission slip for it.

I _________________________ agree to allow Max, Sachin and Alex to film part of their media coursework in Mcgills house.

Signature ____________________

Props

Props used in opening sequence

We purchased a replica mask of the one used by Jason Vorhees in the hit thriller Friday the 13th: The Beginning (2009). We made the decision to make our villain wear this as his 'trademark'. I felt this was a good decision as it added a sense of mystery and trepidation to the character. It also conveys an 'untold story' to the audience as to what is the story or man behind this mask. This is different to most other horror thrillers in which the villain wears a mask as they usually find it in the course of the film and make it their identity hider, whereas in our film this mask in on the villain at all times.

Make blood is almost a given when it comes to choosing props for a horror thriller, subsequently meaning we purchases some. The fake blood added a good effect to some scenes such as the blood in the sink. As well as creating a good effect in scenes it also conveys the sadistic nature of the killer. 

Like the fake blood, a knife is also a regular prop in horror thrillers as it is the traditional weapon of choice for the majority of cereal killers. We have continued this tradition by using a fake dagger in our opening sequence. We concluded that a dagger would be the best option as we wanted our character to be sly and sinister in his approach. We felt this was accomplished with the use of the dagger. I personally think this would have been a struggle if the killer was instead,f walking round with a 10 inch machete or raging chainsaw in his hand. 

Research into potential target audiences.

Method of identifying target audience.

We conducted a survey to find out which age group we should be targeting. We asked 10 people from 5 age groups

12-15

16-19

20-23

24-27

28-31

to rate on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the most interested, how interested they would be in viewing a horror thriller. When we've received every participants rating, we calculated the mean for each age group and put in in a bar chart. The age group with the highest mean score would be our target audience. How results are as followed:

This bar chart shows the mean score of the participants in each age group. We concluded from this graph, as you can evidently see, that the age group of 16-19 has the highest average score, therefore we made the decision to make this age group are target audience.