Podcast 5/11/09

Genre Research

Genre movies are those commercial feature films which through repetition and variation, tell familiar stories with familiar characters in familiar situations. They also encourage expectations and experiences similiar to those of similar films we have already seen. - Film Genre Reader (2003)


Being Human 2008

Being human is a supernatural, drama-comedy series broadcast on the BBC. It is about three twenty-something characters sharing a house in Bristol trying to lead a normal social life despite being a ghost, a werewolf and a vampire. Annie is a ghost and cannot really communicate with anyone apart from her housemates. She can walk through walls and doors and can disappear quickly. It links well into my film as my main protagonist is a ghost and cannot communicate with other people.

 

The Others - Alejandro Amenabar 2001


A woman named Grace retires with her two children to a mansion on Jersey, towards the end of the Second World War, where she's waiting for her husband to come back from battle. The children have a disease which means they cannot be touched by direct sunlight without being hurt in some way. They will live alone there with oppressive, strange and almost religious rules, until she needs to hire a group of servants for them. Their arrival will accidentally begin to break the rules with unexpected consequences. They find out at the end of the film that they actually are the ghosts and that they have been dead for along time. This ending ties in really well with my film as it has the same ending, my main protagonist, Lauren is not aware she is dead til right at the end when she sees a newspaper headline about herself.



Ghost - Jerry Zucker 1990

Sam and Molly are a very happy couple and deeply in love. Walking back to their new apartment after a night out at the theatre, they encounter a thief in a dark alley, and Sam is murdered. He finds himself trapped as a ghost and realises that his death was no accident. He must warn Molly about the danger that she is in. But as a ghost he can not be seen or heard by the living, and so he tries to communicate with Molly through Oda Mae Brown, a psychic who didn't even realise that her powers were real. Eventhough Ghost is a romantic drama, it holds one similar theme, that the character is dead and cannot communicate to anyone apart from this psychic woman. Again it links into the narrative of my film, that Lauren is dead and she can't talk to anyone, or be heard.

The Ghost Ship - Mark Robson 1943 (original)

The rarest of Val Lewton's horror films, 'The Ghost Ship' has scarely been seen since it's original release, when two screenwriters sued RKO for alleged plagiarism of their story. 'The Ghost Ship' is, in fact, more personal than some of Lewton's better-known films. Central to the story is the relationship between a ship's new third officer and his psychopathic captain. The captain is obsessed with his authority over the crew and neurotically unable to admit any error in his handling of them; he blames his errors on the officer. Eventually the captain murders a crewman who has questioned his decisions but when the officer tries to have the murder investigated he finds himself barred from the ship for the captain's shortcomings. Knocked unconscious during a fight, he is mistakenly carried back on board be crewmen, only to be declared dead by the captain and hence ignored by the crew. This ghostly existence is the key to the film's title and one errie aspect of this nonsupernatural tale of terror. - from the text, 'The penguin encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural.


Mark Water's 2005 Just Like Heaven

Just like Heaven was a Hollywood blockbuster with the well-known female actress, ReeseWitherspoon playing the main protagonist, Elizabeth who was a doctor who was in a car crash and was put into a coma. Months later a guy, David played by Mark Ruffalo rents her falt which she still believes she lives in, as her spirit is still living in her flat, as she herself does not realise that she is in a coma. She can only be seen and heard by David, she cannot communicate with anyone else. The idea that she cannot be heard or seen by anyone (apart from David) is a narravtive I am using in my film. My main protagonist, Lauren cannot be seen or heard by anyone and gets frustrated that she can't communicate with her family as she, like Eliazabeth, does not realise she is dead until right at the end of the film.

Goran Durik's 2007 Wristcutters: A love Story

When his girlfriend Desiree breaks up with him, the heartbroken Zia commits suicide cutting his wrists. He awakes in the arid Beyond, a dark place inhabited by suicidal people and worst than the world of the living. He finds a job in the pizzeria Kamikaze, sharing a room with a weird roommate. When Zia meets a former friend, he is informed that Desiree has also committed suicide a couple of months after his death. He befriends the Russian guitarist Eugene, who died electrocuted in a rock concert, and together they decide to seek out Desiree. While driving in a lonely road, they meet the hitchhiker Mikal, who is chasing the People in Charge to clarify that she is not a suicidal, but a victim of OD. In their journey, they befriend Kneller, who owns a camping, and Eugene falls in love for Nanuk. Wristcutters is a surreal but yet slightly realistic film about young love. It invloves the issues of self-harm and sucide, the issues also centred in my film.

 

Skins

Skins is a teen drama, based on the life of a group of 17 to 18 year olds, experiencing love and life with little adult supervision. It deals with issues such as smoking, alcohol, drug abuse, teacher abuse, arson and sex. It is aimed at a teenage audience due it being sent in a college and the storylines being about the life of teenagers, eventhough it is a little exaggerated in skins for dramatic effect and gripping storylines. I have loosely based my character, Lauren, on the central protagonist of skins series 3, Effie who is known for her wild partying and drug taking. She also contains the same destructive qualities that I have used for my main protagonist; smoking, drinking, drug-taking and also an outsider in her family.

For my film, my target audience is a teenage audience as the narrative relates to issues surrounding teens.

The genre of supernatural has now gone mainstream due to the number of increasing supernatural t.v. dramas and films. From the earlier years such as the T.V shows The X files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this created a foundation to which hundreds are supernatual shows were born such as many vampire series like 'True Blood', 'Blood ties' and 'Moonlight.' Not all supernatural shows were about vampires though, eventhough the series of books 'Twilight' which were later made into international blockbuster films caused a phenomonum in vampires. Other supernatuaral tv series which are popular right now are one such as 'Ghost whisperer,' 'Smallville,' 'Supernatural,' and 'Medium.'

Hammer Film Productions is a film production company based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic "Hammer Horror" films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers,
, and comedies – and in later years, television series. Like most British film production companies, Hammer films had low budgets, but making use of quality British actors and cleverly designed sets.

During its most successful years, Hammer dominated the horror film market, enjoying worldwide distribution and considerable financial success. This success was due, in part, to distribution partnerships with major United States studios, such as Warner Bros. Like the British production company 'Working Title', Hammer film productions mananged international success due to their partnership with the American distribution company.

A hugely successful run of gothic monster movies cemented Hammer's reputation as the 'Hammer House of Horror'.
Before the second world war Hammer Productions made several films, of which the most ambitious was The Mystery of the Marie Celeste, filmed in the summer of 1935. Then production ground to a halt and by 1939 it was no longer considered to be an active British film production company.


Now in the 21st century, Hammer films started a major change  in January 2000  it marked a major change for the company. Chairman Roy Skeggs, who had been with the company since the 1960s, resigned and handed the business over to a private investment consortium which included advertising guru Charles Saatchi.
Over the next few years the company set about a new slate of proposed co-productions, and the first steps towards realising the potential of the Hammer brand in licensed merchandising.
2007 marked fifty years of Hammer horror, with various events to mark the occasion, including a restoration by the BFI of Hammer's original Dracula.
In ealry 2007 the company changed hands again, this time to a European consortium, headed by Dutch based Cyrte Investments BV. Backed by a $50million investment Hammer soon announced its return with Beyond the Rave, a co-production with MySpaceTV, unleashed via the internet in April 2008. This was swiftly followed up with the announcement of Hammer's first films for over 30 years - The Resident (co-starring veteran Hammer actor Christopher Lee) and a remake of Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In.
With the arrival of Beyond the Rave, and filming on The Resident underway Hammer has made not only its first dramatic production in nearly thirty years, but a welcome return to horror.

Teaser Poster

Deadlines

Here are the deadlines for my blog:


1)  Friday 16th I will have recorded details of 30-40 Short films I've  analysed
2) By  tuesday the 20th I will have blogged my acting / music / costume / prop requirements
3) By Friday 23rd I will have completed initial pre-production tasks and my teaser poster.
4) By Friday 13th i will have completed all main pre-production tasks.
5) By Monday 16th I will have completed my 2nd podcast

Codes and Conventions

Software and Hardware

For the production of my movie I will be using Final Cut Express 4.0 as it is a much more complex and advanced editing program than imovie which is the program I used last year for my AS coursework. Final cut can enable you to produce a much more higher quality film as it has a wider range of tools and application than imovie. Final cut is film industry standard.

What I found on Final cut is that it was much eaiser to cut into the middle of clips, you could just delete the section you did not want and your wanted clips would just move together. It was also easy to upload and trim the sound, you could cut the audio in the same way you cut the video or you could cut them both together by pressing the link together button. Transitions were also fairly simple to use, they had alot more options than imovie but for my film I only used the fade to black transition as my film was not a fast-paced film and did not need as many.
As I got more familiar with final cut I got more confident with usinf different tools such as experimenting with effects.

I filmed all my shots on a DV camcorder, a Canon digital video camcorder MD101 which we used I used for my AS coursework. These camcorder are very easy to use, as I had already used it before but it's settings are not so advanced so it is easy to film with. It has some good  features such as

•  Auto White Balance
•  Manual Brightness/Contrast Setting
•  Multiple features to change lighting and focus such as Daylight and Nighttime
•  Built in microphone and Stereo audio output
•  800x Digital zoom and a 25x optical zoom.

What I did do when filming is place a piece of white paper infront of the camera so that it adjusting the white balance. I used the zoom control effectively, you have to use it very softly and slowly to achieve the maxium affect. I also used a tripod for most of my shots so that the shots were not shaky. I did nto use a tripod however for the alleyway scene as I wanted the shots to be shaky, in the style of a social realism film.

I also used a portable audio recorder to record my voice over. I only used this once, but it was quite simple how to use it, all you had to do was plug it in and press the record button once to check you were capturing the voice levels and then record again record the voice.
I also used the boom mic for the scene where Lauren is trying to communicate with her sister, The Boom mic allows you to cut out background noise and all you have to do is connect it to your camera.

Props, Sets and Mise-en-Scene

Because the character in my film wears dark clothing and is a troubled teenager, her bedroom is suppose to reflect her 'type' and help signify to the audience that she is a dark, troubled teen so the bedroom is going to be dark also. I am going to put up band posters on the wall, emo, indie rock bands not girl pop bands as this would provide an oppositional reading. The bedroom is going to be messy, clothing draped on a chair and on the floor, many empty alcohol bottles on the floor as well to help signify her mental state. The bedroom is going to be heavily set up. 

 I will be using fake blood for the self-harming scene, which I have already and I already have quite a lot of empty alcohol bottles as well.

 She will be smoking so there will be a cigarette and a cigarette packet in the bedroom scenes. I am going to be making the article for the newspaper, to explain her death which the audience see right at the end of the film, which I will make on photoshop.