A still from 'Severance'
We also looked at a video game called ‘Siren Blood Curse’, a stealth-based survival game in which you play as a member of an American film crew that goes to Japan in order to investigate and document a village which mysteriously disappeared, and the team then become 'human sacrifices'. Like ‘The Blair Witch Project’ ‘Them’ and ‘Severance’ the game is partly set in a woodland environment. We wanted to include this in our own film as we felt it gave a sinister sense of mystery and eeriness – it is so easy to get lost in a wood and there is a severe sense of isolation in only being surrounded by trees and not knowing what is around the corner.
'The Blair Witch Project' Trailer
Our film was essentially about a gang of youths terrorising another group in a woods, therefore we wanted to clearly represent the two sides of teenagers today – the conformists and the non-conformists. In order to do so we dressed the characters in two different styles of clothing. To make the gang look intimidating we dressed them in a stereotypical uniform of ‘chavs’ wearing grey tracksuit bottoms and black hoodies, which were also used to help hide their faces as we wanted the characters to look furtive. The environment this group inhabit adds to the menacing feel that we wanted to create. We also added a baseball bat as the weapon of choice, something simple but effective. There are numerous stories located around the internet of teenagers attacking, or being attacked, using baseball bats. This created a sense of realism as events such as the example we used could so easily happen around the world. Here are just a few examples of such occurrences:
Teenage victim speaks out about baseball bat attack
Teenage bat rampage shocks Tokyo
Tom Harris being interviewedThe choice of social groups we chose, particularly concerning age, reflect the audience that we wanted to target, primarily teenagers who could relate. However, should this have been made into a full-length feature film we wanted to also spark the interest of a variety of different social groups, giving an insight into the lives of teenagers today, albeit with a bit of gore. To have this effect we tried to include a variety of different characters, troubled, vulnerable, and cynical as well as a sub-plot concerning the relationships of the three main characters. We felt it was important to educate our audience on the way in which young people cope with a variety of problems they come across shown through the way the narrative flashbacks to the actual events, making the audience wonder about the events that preceded Tom Harris’ police interview. However that said, I don’t think our film would appeal to young children or the elderly because of its horror nature.
In order to reach our target audience, we showed our classmates of a similar age our film throughout production. We found that some found our ideas a little clichéd, such as our original idea of having a cult, rather than a gang of youths. It is useful that we changed our idea as I felt that it was much easier to pull off, in terms of not really having to find any unusual costumes, and was much more effective as it created a piece that generally felt more real, as if it could happen in real life, which enhanced the frightening and tense situation we originally wanted to create. We were also criticized in that the opening of our film felt a little too much like trailer rather than a feature film so we added in the narrative interview section at a very late stage in order to give the audience a clearer sense of what was happening. It also attracted the audience as there was more reference to the characters in the hope that they could feel more connected and sympathise with them.
We also constructed our film in a way that built tension and suspense throughout by having constant blackouts, which were included from the very beginning of our preparation in our storyboard, merged with very dark sound effects, such as creaking metal.
I learnt a lot about technologies through the process of constructing our film. Most simply, I learnt how to use a Mac. As a PC user, both at home and at school, the structure of a Mac at first seemed baffling to me, but gradually have learnt the basic functions and shortcuts necessary in order to work them efficiently. Admittedly, I actually prefer the Macs to PC’s now because I think that in general the functions are more dynamic, despite at first having trouble mastering them.
We also used FinalCut Express and LiveType to edit our film. Again, I found that at first these programmes were very difficult to use, but as we got further into our project, and I became more competent with the Mac’s everything seemed to slip into place. In actual fact, everything on both programmes seemed very logical to work. On FinalCut we particularly enjoyed experimenting with the various different effects, particularly with lighting, as this helped to add to the eerie atmosphere we wanted to create. On LiveType we imported the a font from the website ‘dafont.com’ which was used against a basic black screen as a wanted to keep it simple, and not having the text distracting the audience too much from the content.
Since the beginning of the year, I have learnt a lot. Mostly, I can now appreciate the significant amounts of effort that has to be put into producing TV and film. Huge amounts of detail and thought go into creating each shot, making sure each frame has a relevance to the idea that the director is trying to portray, making sure the mise-en-scene, editing, sound and cinematography are perfect in order to convey a specific meaning, and from making the preliminary task, also the severe amount of effort that goes into making sure the continuity is correct. However, I am pleased with the amount that I have learnt throughout the year, and proud of the final clip we produced.
