On Friday after School we were ready to start filming, we went to our destination which was at Sutton park. The location was perfect for our trailer, it had an eerie atmosphere, and my partner was the person who found the location after being there several times before. We set up out tri-pod and camera and were ready to start filming the opening to our film, which would start with an establishing shot. However, once the camera was set up we realised that we were unable to film as it was too dark and the camera was unable to pick up any movement. Therefore we had to stop and choose another day to film. We arranged another time to meet and therefore chose Sunday morning as we thought it would be an appropriate time for the lighting.
Monday, 22 November 2010
Costume and Props
Costume and Props
Today my partner and I got pick up the donated dress for our actress. We cut up the dress to a shorter length, we also took out the under layering material to make the dress have less volume. We wanted the dress to not look’s so much like a wedding dress but like a child’s dress. We then went outside and made the dress dirty by rubbing it in the mud and cutting whole into it to make it look more wore out. We had a dress fitting with our actress at my house to see what the fitting was like. The dress was unfortunately damaged as the zip did not work, therefore my partner and I altered the dress with safety-pins and stitches to secure it for filming.
On the same day, we also practiced with the make-up, we brought white face paint and black eye shadow, so the actress will fit the part. It was a simple make-up design, with a pale white face and then black eye shadow around the eyes to make her look mysterious and evil. We slightly back combed her hair to make it look messy. After our dressing and make-up, I am very pleased with the outcome, our actress definitely looks the part.
The props we had for our film was my brother teddy bear from when he was a young child, the teddy is about 14years old and therefore looks old and wore out, therefore I think that it fits the part, almost like a stereotypical old teddy bear.
Below are pictures of the make-up, props and costume which we used.
Friday, 12 November 2010
Company production title
Today, my partner and I, recorded for the company production title. Our company title is Pulse Pictures, we thought that the best effect for this would be to film a heart monitor for the title. We wanted something that would fit the genre of our film. Using this as our logo would be effective, by having the title 'pulse pictures' fading onto it.
We thought about how we would record a heart monitor but thought it would be hard to get hold off. After talking to people about how to go about filming we found a way.
Someone told us about the Oscilloscope, a machine is science would records and tests electronics, of voltages.
We played around with the effects, such as the lighting, positioning and effects on the camera and manage to get an end result.
This is an example of Oscillioscope
We thought about how we would record a heart monitor but thought it would be hard to get hold off. After talking to people about how to go about filming we found a way.
Someone told us about the Oscilloscope, a machine is science would records and tests electronics, of voltages.
We played around with the effects, such as the lighting, positioning and effects on the camera and manage to get an end result.
This is an example of Oscillioscope
This clip shows what we did to get the effect. In our trailer the clip is a lot shorter that this but it shows how we used the machine to get this effect. We filmed it several times to get the correct speed and so on. But I think it was perfect to fit with the production company name.
Thursday, 4 November 2010
Emails to actress
We have emailed Natasha to inform her of our short trailer which we are hoping she will star in.
this is the first email to her:
Dear Natasha,
Just to let you know my partner and I are producing a short horror trailer for media. We think that you would be the perfect actress for the part. You will be playing an innocent young girl, who is dead and haunting the park.
The whole trailer will be set in Sutton park.
Hope you will be able to star in it. Please inform us of your free periods so we can discuss filming.
Thanks!
Natasha's Reply
Arrangements
Friday 12th- Monday 15th we have booked the camera
Things to do before filming:
Things to do before filming:
- Contact Natasha (actress) about times of filming
- Get costume from person who is providing it
- Sort out make-up and props
- Collect camera, tri-pod, charger
- Test camera and lighting in our setting/ time of filming
- Organising some kind of lighting
- Gather together storyboard, make sure we have it for filming
- Perpare digital camera for photography
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
Interview with director of Paranormal activity; Oren Peli
Two years ago a man named Oren Peli decided to make a movie. He didn't know exactly how, but he knew he had a good premise, and he knew he had some helpful friends, so he spent roughly $15,000, hired a few actors and then spent a mere seven days filming in his own home. What came out of that was Paranormal Activty, a haunted-house labor of love that barely made its way around the festival circuit before being purchased by DreamWorks (only after Steven Spielberg reportedly experienced some paranormal activity of his own after watching a DVD of the film by himself).
Cinematical: What is your background pre-Paranormal Activity? And how did you lead up to it?
Oren Peli: By trade, I am a software programmer, so I never really had any experience with movies before. I started out with Paranormal Activity.
So this was your very first stab at filmmaking?
Yes, pretty much, I never even made shorts or anything like that.
Do you think there is anything inherent to a technical background that lends your abilities to filmmaking? For example, Shane Carruth is another filmmaker who came from being an engineer to make Primer, one of the last great groundswell movies before Paranormal Activity, on a similar budget and scale.
I think there might be, I've always been very comfortable with computers and software, so one thing that's made my life easier is the fact that I was very quickly able to figure out how to edit the movie, how to do the audio mixing, and the CGI that's in the movie. So in that aspect my background definitely helped me with the technical aspects, just being very comfortable working with the camera equipment...it all came very natural to me.
Can you describe the fears that paved the way for Paranormal Activity and why you decided to film it in your own house?
When I moved into my house, it was the first time I lived in a detached family home as opposed to an apartment, and it's in a very quiet, suburban neighborhood. So you become very conscious of every little sound you hear because you don't have any neighbors above the walls, basically you're not supposed to hear anything. When you do hear little creaks and knocks and stuff like that, you wonder what's going on. I'm sure most of it was natural sounds of the house settling, but every once in a while you would hear things that would be weird and you couldn't figure out where they are.
That's kind of what made me think how I would go about trying to figure out what's going on and being the techno-geek that I am, my initial inclination would be to get video cameras and set them up around the house to see what was going on. I didn't actually go ahead and do that, but that's what started making me think how freaky it would be if you had cameras running at home while you sleep and actually did catch something.
When you decided to take that premise and turn it into a movie, did you go all on your own or did you talk to friends or try to bring in producers?
Basically the entire crew for the original shoot of the movie was myself, my best friend Amir that I've known since I was 13 and my girlfriend I was living with at the time, and she became a reluctant helper because we didn't have a set and were shooting the movie at home, but she did help a lot in every aspect of production. The only thing I couldn't figure out how to do on my own was make-up, so I did hire a make-up artist. But that was basically the entire crew.
Did Micah actually operate the camera himself? Was he the impromptu camera man?
He was shooting most of the movie, though in a few scenes Katie was actually operating the camera. Most of the other time the camera is either stationary on the tripod in the bedroom or sitting on the kitchen counter etcetera.
Do you still actually live in the house?
Yep!
Your first draft of the movie was done in 2007. As far as your involvement since then has there been much refinement or has the film been mainly just sitting?
There has been some editing after a few test screening results in order to make the film a bit quicker and shorter, as we had some issues with pacing. So we tried to fix them, hopefully we did. That was the main part of it. Also, we shot the ending. That was the only real significant change.
I've heard varying numbers as to how many alternate endings there are. How many did you actually film?
Well I filmed a whole bunch, but most of them no one has ever seen, they were just for my own options. There was one ending that was shown at some festivals, and then another ending that was shown publicly only the one time. And then the current ending, which we've had for more than a year now.
Can you explain what those other two endings were or is that something we'll see find out later? [Possible Spoiler Alert]
The original ending... I'll just say very briefly, the movie ends with cops entering the house to find the scene of the crime. The other one...there's been some talks about it on the internet, but I'd like to keep quiet on it for now. Maybe one day we'll see them all on the special edition DVD.
How much raw footage did you actually film and how long did it take you to edit it all down?
Probably close to 70 hours; it was a lot. There were also some nights we just had the cameras rolling non-stop. It took about 10-months I would say to edit.
What was your approach to maintaining tension and the audience's interest with just 2 people and 1 camera?
It was very difficult to begin with having just two characters and one location, so I knew it would be a challenge. We just had to be sure the nights were progressively creepy and that there are enough interesting things happening during the day that actually contribute and weave threads into the plot that progress it so that the following nights have new meanings, particularly to what happened the previous day. It was very tricky, which is why it took so long to edit the movie.
Once it was picked up for distribution, were there any other reshoots other than the ending?
There were a couple of little things that came up on their own that weren't suggested by DreamWorks and some were a little suggested as areas of improvement, so we shot them and they turned out great and now they're in the movie. The ending was the one thing we had a lot of criticism about from the original version, so we knew we wanted to come up with something a little bit better.
Is it true that the new ending was heavily influenced by Steven Spielberg? One of the rumors going around the Internet is that after having seen it, he had to bring the film back to the studio in a trash bag. Have you heard anything about that?
Yeah, in fact I heard that story immediately after it happened, which was a couple of days after he saw the movie. So the whole story about how the doors to his bedroom got locked from the inside... personally I believe it. It's not something the marketing department just came up with before releasing the movie, I actually heard it a year and a half ago.
And yeah, the ending was suggested by Spielberg.
Have you two talked about other projects. I know when the Paranormal Activity remake was being considered you were on that, but have you guys brainstormed anything else.
I will say that anything that has to do with my future projects, I usually prefer to remain tight lipped, so I like as few people as possible knowing about it and when it's done, we'll show it to the world.
I'm assuming the answer is just great, but how does it feel to have people lining up around the block to volunteer themselves for sleepless nights thanks to Paranormal Activity?
Great! It's very rewarding to see the fans embracing the movie. This is totally a fan driven movie, because if it wasn't for the fans, we wouldn't be talking right now. This movie was launched by Paramount in a way that really allows fans to decide whether or not they want the movie to be released and where.
So if it weren't for the fans demanding the movie and saying "We want it to play in our home town" and if it weren't for the fans spreading the good word online in forums or on Twitter, the movie probably wouldn't have gotten anywhere. But because they've been so supportive and so generous and so flattering to the movie, that's why it's expanding everywhere next weekend.
What's your preferred brand of horror? Paranormal Activity is definitely a slow, restrained burn, and it works so well, do you have any intentions of going the more Hollywood, over-the-top route in the future?
Personally I like the slow burn; I don't think there is anything wrong with it. When I think about the movies that were most effective on me as a viewer I think of the original Haunting and the Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, the Sixth Sense, the Others. These movies are not over the top at all, they are movies that rely on good story telling, good acting, good premise, good exposition and I want to stay true to that in future projects.
I know you don't want to give away too much about your next film, Area 51, but is there any forewarning you can give someone like me, someone who had childhood nightmare's about alien abductions?
Well I don't want to get into any details about Area 51, but I will say that one of the scenes from a movie that freaked me out the most as a kid – other than the Exorcist, which the whole thing freaks me out – but I remember as a kid watching the abduction scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind and it definitely left an imprint on me.
Now after an unprecedented launch campaign in which fans literally got to demand that the film play near them, Paramount is ready to roll out Oren Peli's Paranormal Activity nationwide, a film I feel safe calling the scariest I've seen in years
Now after an unprecedented launch campaign in which fans literally got to demand that the film play near them, Paramount is ready to roll out Oren Peli's Paranormal Activity nationwide, a film I feel safe calling the scariest I've seen in years
Progression
Today my partner and I went to our local shopping centre to look for costume and props for my our trailer, we were unsuccuessful, we could not find what we were looking for. We were looking for a white dress and teddy bear, also blood and face paints. We thought they would be easy to find because it was Halloween at the weekend but we didn't find anything. We have thought I something better which my can use for our costume, which is a donated wedding dress, as that was our intial idea. So no progression today, unfortunately.
Personal investigation: Paranormal activity
Paranormal Activity is a 2007 American supernatural horror film which was written and directed by Oren Peli. The plot is centred on a young couple, Katie and Micah, who are hauted by a supernatural presence, evil, in their home, done in the style of “found footage” from a camera which is set up by the couple attempting to catch footage of supernatual occurances.
The film was released in the USA on September 25th 2009 and nationwide in October 16th 2009. The film itself earned nearly $108million at the USA box office and $194million worldwide. On the first day of release theaters took $36,146 and $77,873 on its first weekend.
From my personal investigation of this successful horror, I conclude that I believe this horror was only successful because it is advertisement and publicity. From seeing the film myself, I wanted to know the reason why this horror was so successful on a low budget. This connects with the trailer that we are going to make as we to will be making a trailer on a low budget. After looking at the advertisement and merchandise, it concludes that the trailer was what sold the film to the audience. From looking at the trailer for this horror, the key convention of this trailer is the fact that the director has included reaction shots of the audience. The shots of the the audiene and their reactions is a fantastic way to lure the audience in as they don’t see what the storyline line is but they see the effects of the movie. People see the reactions of the audience, and realise how scary it much be and therefore want to go see the movie. I admitt personally I was lured from watching the trailer to this movie from just watching the trailer. I saw the reactions of the audience and from just seeing that I realised this was going to be a scary movie. It was a unique way to lure the audience as I can’t recall another movie doing the same.
I have included a few still shows of the trailer for the paranormal activity, which shows the reactions of the audience. The freeze-frames show exactly how the director has created the trailer. I picked the keys shots and from doing that I realised that they included a lot of shots of facial reactions.
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