Preliminary Task

Synopsis
The film follows a guy in his late teens. The films starts with him fast asleep. Suddenly, he hears a noise coming from downstairs.

He gets up from his bed weary and confused (shot 4). He reaches his door way and looks around to see if there is anything near his room. With the light behind him it causes a silhouette of his body, he then walks away from the door and grabs a jumper, as he may be searching for a long time. As he walks down the hallway, he hears a noise in the living room, he walks through the kitchen towards the living room. The character has a safer route with plenty of places to hide if anything tries to retaliate and find him.

He walks through the kitchen then hears a noise coming from the living room and hides behind a wall in the dining room where he can see the living room. He then slowly looks around to see a dark hooded figure sat down on the sofa. The main character feels brave to start speaking.He begins to ask "who are you?" but is interrupted quite abruptely. The hooded figure cuts in with some sort of riddle ‘I am unpredictable’. The teen then replies in agitation "what are you doing in my house?" then he is interrupted again with the words spoken loudly and with emphasis this time ‘I am your reckoning!" The hooded figure quiets down half way through his sentence as it makes him seem manipulative and over powering. Stuttering with what to say next, the lights start to flicker on and off, then after the third time the light goes out and the hooded figure disappears. The teen slowly returns to his room thinking to himself whether it was a dream or not. He crawls back into bed and goes back to sleep. The Opening title ends.

Shot List

Shot Number	Shot Angle/Shot Type	Description of the Shot	Location
1.	Long Shot/Low Angle	Setting the scene for the film. Capturing the night sky and the house. Music starts playing. Titles are displayed.	Outside the house.
2.	Low Angle/ Panning Shot	Camera pans up the stairs slowly towards the destination of the boy’s bedroom (Main Character). Music is still playing. Titles are still displayed	The Stairs
3.	High Angle/ Close-Up	Boy is seen sleeping until he suddenly wakes up to hear crashing noises downstairs. Music fades out at the start of this shot. Titles stop.	Bedroom
4.	Close-Up	The boy lifts himself up. The Camera looks directly at the boy showing his facial expressions of fear.	Bedroom
5.	High Angle/Close-Up	We see the door handle being opened halfway. Suspenseful music is played, so that the tension starts to rise.	Bedroom
6.	Long Shot	The second half of the door is opened. We see the boy as a silhouette from the other side of the hallway. Suspenseful music is still played.	The Top Hallway
7.	Close-Up	We see the character’s face checking his surroundings. Curiosity is shown on his face. Suspenseful music is still played.	The Top Hallway
8.	Mid-Shot	We look at the character behind, eventually, he walks into the darkness for further inspection The Suspenseful music  stops Music starts playing.   At this moment, the title of the movie is displayed	The Bedroom
9.	Mid-Shot	Camera stands in the middle of the stairs. Character walks in 2 seconds later walking past the camera. Music is still playing. Titles are still displayed	The stairs
10.	Close- Up then a Mid-Shot	The camera looks at the characters face as he reaches the bottom of the stairs – noise starts again in the living room. Suddenly the character is in deep shock and quickly leans against one side of the door whilst the camera pans to the other side. Music Stops. Titles are not displayed.	The Bottom Hallway
11.	Close-up then an Over-the-Shoulder Shot	Noise Stops. Camera switches to look at Character leaning against the wall. He slowly turns his attention to the living room. A loud sound effect is played over the sudden appearance of an unknown character who lounges on a chair looking surprised.	The Living Room
12.	Close-up	Dialogue: The boy says “Who..?” The camera looks at the boy and kitchen. The camera captures the setting and the facial expressions of confusion.	The Living Room
13.	Mid-shot/Canted Shot.	Dialogue: The man says “am I? I am unpredictable!” The boy is immediately interrupted by the mysterious person. He finishes what the boy asked and answers.	The Living Room
14.	Close-Up/ Canted Angle.	The camera looks at how horrified the boy is after the mysterious man answers his question. The camera moves to a canted position, still concentrated on the boy’s face. Eerie music plays.	The Living Room
15.	Over-the-Shoulder Shot.	Camera looks at the back of the boy’s head. Lights start flicking on and off. When they’re turned back on a second later, the mysterious man disappears. The Eerie music fades out.	The Living Room
16	Low Angle/Mid-Shot.	The opening comes to an end. The boy breathes heavily because of what’s happened.  He then leaves the room slowly.	The Living Room
17.	High Angle/Close-up.	This shot is the same shot as Shot 3. We see the boy climb into bed thinking it was just a dream. His eyes are wide open for a couple of seconds, then closes them to go back to sleep. Opening finishes.	The Bedroom

 Continuity Task & Planning for the Film

The task for filming the opening includes a variety of different shots and action that are needed in the film. We’ve described each of the specific instructions we were given from the examining board.

Opening the Door, Crossing a room & Sitting down on a Chair Opposite another Character

A close-up is used to show how significant the handle of the door is. It creates a feeling of anxiousness for the audience, since this is when the tension gradually starts to grow soon after the main character decides to inspect the incident coming from downstairs.  Then, the mysterious character is seen sat on a sofa opposite the main character.

Exchanging A Couple of Lines of Dialogue

Mystery is revealed to the character wondering whom this mystery figure he sees in his house. interruption from the mysterious character suggests the confusion. The mysterious character reveals himself as ‘The Reckoning’ only to confuse the character as well as the audience to create an Enigma Code.

Match on Action

The first shot is a close-up on the main character's face to see if it’s safe for him to venture through. It’s followed by a mid-shot behind the main character looking around into the darkness, eventually walking out of his room.

Shot/Reverse Shot

There are two over-the shoulder shots showing the connection between the two characters. It assumes they are both looking at each other, one in disbelief (main character) and the other in amusement (visitor)

180- Degree Rule

This will be used during the interaction between the two characters. This rule depicts that the two people are looking at each other and that they’re in the same room together. To express that the characters are interacting with each other, we want the main character looking to the right (in the living room) and ‘the unknown’ character looking to the left (also in the living room). Therefore, the rule is present in our production.

Audio Material

For the audio material, we’ll be using Royalty-free music, which means that we can use music without copyright claim. We'll be using Soundcloud for our music.
Time Schedule

Me and my task partner were always in regular contact during the creation of our blogs. We were able to find a suitable time to film our entire opening in less than 2 hours.  We wanted the film to take place in the dark, so the time schedule was specified to around 5:30 on Sunday. We talked about what props we might need and what location we could use for the film to creates a sensual gritty feeling. We finalised our thoughts and we decided Liam’s house was a good location for our film, but not anymore props were needed because we're only filming a fraction of the film, the opening for that matter.

Update: Starting to Edit the Film.
Today was the day we started editing our Preliminary task with a brilliant editing software called Final Cut Pro X. It seemed okay, since me and Liam are familiar with editing videos, however, the files on Liam's memory stick could not be imported to the software. Instead, we phoned up his Mum to drop off the camera so we could start uploading straight from the camera. This turned out to be a success, Final Cut allowed the files to be imported and the editing began.

It seems the problem was that Liam saved the files onto his memory stick. Saved files is not applicable for this specific software and maybe others.

 

Equipment Planning and Human Resource Planning

For some shots, Liam and I needed tech support. We wanted Liam’s Mum to help with filming when me and Liam were in shot. Her steady filming assisted with the outcome becoming a success.  We wanted to use a professional video editing software.  We decided to edit the film in school because they’re accessible there. We have available free-time we have at school. The toughest task for us was the lighting, we used a peculiar light that enabled the film to create the time period to be at night time but the camera to see what was going on. The lighting we used was kept to a minimum throughout the opening of the film.

 The costumes we used were carefully chosen for the opening. We wanted the film to create verisimilitude based on the setting. We felt that we portrayed the characters well using the following costumes:

• We decided that the boy (played by me) would wear a t-shirt so that it sticks to the time setting. The Mise-en-scene would suggest the clothing is ordinary and it links to the character.
• The un-named character (played by Liam) would wear a black mask and a black hoodie creating a masked villain protecting the identity and therefore creates the situation for the film. We wanted this character to create a misunderstanding (Enigma Code). The inspirations behind the costume were other horror/thriller masked villains (i.e. Jason, Scream, Michael Myers).

 
    Storyboards


Original Ideas

Equipment for Preliminary Task




This is the sort of camera handle we used for shot two involving panning the camera down the steps of the attic. The shot list states that there should be stairs involved in the film. This piece of equipment enabled the movement of the camera to run smoothly creating a subtle mood within the location.



                                                

A useful piece of lighting equipment was used in most of the shots in the film. It is a combination of an inspection lamp, a lamp shade and some cardboard. The credit for making this goes to Liam for the creation. We wanted this because the other light sources in his house were too bright and and we wanted to keep it to a bare minimum

Liam's camera is a professional type used by some Independent film-makers. It is capable of switching to different settings such as focussing on detail and providing more lighting in case we ever needed it. Moreover, the camera allows the shots in our film to be in high-definiton.To add to the filming equipment, we used a tripod with mutiple functions to acheive what we wrote on our shot list. such as: a spirit level, panning stick for ease of moving camera, 3 interchangeable legs and the ability to move the camera sideways/forwards and backwards. 

Sunday 27th January - Behind the Scenes | How we created our film
 We filmed on this day to shoot our entire Preliminary Task. The main type of equipment we needed was to accomplish this was: Liam's Handycam camera and a good piece of lighting equipment that enabled the film for some lighting, but allowing the film to still be set during night time. Using this type of lighting would help us with several clips like the silhouetted main character would imply the mystery of the film. On that day, the jobs were clear for both me and my task partner, I was the Director, Liam was the Camera-man and we both shared the job of the Cinematographer. In case we were following the schedule right. We got ourselves print-out copies of the shot-list, that way we wouldn't lose track of our well prepared shots.

Final Cut Pro X
For us, the editing software was a breeze to construct our artifacts. We were able to use the basics of editing that we needed to turn most of our attention on. This consisted of triming the unecessary parts out, editing and adding titles to look like they suit to the mood exposed from the film and some lighting changes (some scenes were quite dark). Our biggest concern rested on placing the right music onto the film, this meant that we had to scower the website Soundcloud for quite some time.


The lighting was put onto a step-ladder so that it was directly focussed on the main character's body for one of the shots in the film. We wanted this to be perfected for the reason that the tension would be triggered to start. The shot significantly features the darkness surrounding him, this would portray a theme of corruption overcoming innocence. This idea of mine was inspired by the opening for 'The Birds' (read Forms and Conventions of Movie Openings).