Megans trailer idea 2

For my trailer i am going to focus on the supernatural elements of the vampire. I am going to have a brief background, with a bit of voice over and then see the main character get turned. The majority of shots are going to show the strength and power of the newborn vampire.


After some thought, i am going to still go for a trailer to show off the supernatural elements of the newly turned vampire. The trailer is going to start with a black screen with the title of the film to surface* out of the background for a few seconds. Then it will be straight into the action with a heavy tension music background.

Enna and Mel - practice film exercise

Overall we were quite pleased with the outcome of our film, we thought it was a huge improvement compared to the last one which we filmed. This was because we filmed ALL the shots we needed and we followed the story line more.
However, there were still several weaknesses which we noticed after filming. Firstly, we broke the 180 degree rule at one point in the film, therefore we did not have continuity editing. Also, the lighting wasn't great in places and there wasn't enough shadow in some places.

2nd part to practice 

This is the beginning to the film we shot last time, the shots are quite long and there is only 3 which makes it look quite boring. In the film we copied, they edited these and these were the shots whilst the credits were coming in so it didn't seem as boring. A major weakness, is the last shot, which is extremely blurred and the auto focus needed to be set.

Pre production evaluation - Enna Rob

Being director, I have a lot of responsibilities and duties which are important to the whole group. Essentially my role involves a lot or organising and decision making. I have the responsibility of actors, location, safety, filming sessions and writing a majoroty of the script etc. I also have the final say on the shots, editting and music. The main obvious aspect of my role is directing the other members of my group, for example telling them which part of the film we are going to shoot next.
To begin with, I had no idea where we were going to shoot our film but I later took inspiration from the film "Twilight" and tried to look for a similar location and setting. This picture doesn't particularly show the setting greatly but as you can see, the characters are surrounded by tree's and woods, very similar to our location. I liked this idea as having a location on such a large scale gives the film a sense of adventure, excitement, and thrill. The reason I chose the woods I did (Bramcote park woods) was because it is huge, and also there is a lot of flat land as well as trees. Of course, like in twilight where they have the supernatural element and can jump high above trees, we need things like flat land, so it is safe for the actors to run in the chase scenes for example.

Another important thing to me was obviously the script, initially I wanted something quite simple and conventional, but we decided to challenge ourselves and have gone with something quite complicated. We have also decided to include a twist at the end, and whether this will succeed and work as planned, I don’t know. It’s a risk I chose to go through with as director. Right now I am fully confident in our script, I can’t see any reason why it should not work if it is all shot as planned, and I hope our efforts will be reflected in our first draft of the film.

A director who has influenced me is Daren. S Goyer - he is the director of Blade and many other successful films. There are several reasons which contribute to why I have been influenced by him but the main one is because of how much I was inspired by Blade, I thought both the story line, and the film graphically was sensational. I have taken an aspect of the story line of blade and used the idea in my film. This is the idea of having two vampires, (parent and child) and the child being the protagonist vampire. I would have liked to use more of the storyline but there were a lot of supernatural elements which I could not improvise with and add into my film.

The opening of our film is hopefully going to create a lot of tension and suspense. The main parts which will create this tension and suspense are the beginning where the dad is challenged by a vampire and gets bitten, the part where the child becomes a vampire and the very end where the boy (now vampire) chases the vampire who turns out to be his father. I think the scene where the child becomes a vampire will be possibbly the most successful scene due to the range of angles and shot types we plan to use. For example, the close up of the fangs and long nails. The last scene will certainly create a lot of tension while the chase is happening, and lastly before we see that the vampire is the childs dad, a lot of suspense will be bulding up. Here is the beginning part of our script:

And here is the final part:

The conventions of our sub genre (vampire) which we have used are the typical facial/ body features, for example vampire teeth, long nails, pale skin and red lips. We are also going to use the phisical supernatural aspects, for example fast running. Lastly, we are using a typical vampire location - a secluded, deserted, spooky setting. Although this isn't as typical as a cemetry, it is still a common aspect in many of the films which we have watched.

2nd edited part of practice film

Main weaknesses:

• lack of footage so there are a few jumps
• The actor is laughing/giggling in about half of the shots
• The lift scene is the same shot and jumps.
• The automatic door (3 shots) break the 180 degree rule as the camera is in the wrong place
• Lack of close-ups so we feel distant from the on-screen character and her story
• The shots are longer because there are a lack of variety of shots

1st film shoot - Enna

We plan to go for our first shoot in the woods on the 22nd of June (next wednesday) Before then, we need to organise costumes, makeup and which part of the script we aim to shoot. We hope to go out a maximum of 3 times to the woods. After we have then shot the part of the script that takes place in the woods, we will start to shoot the scene which takes place in my house (the very start of the script.) We don't expect this to take more than a couple of hours. We will then start to edit this, and if we realise we have missed any parts we aim to shoot this before the final week of term.

Wednesday 22nd June - arrive at

My Role As Sound Designer - Charlotte Reid

My role as sound director means that I am responsible for the music, I have to create the music myself and I also have to make sure that it goes well with the film, I need to make sure that if the scene is a chase scene that the music suits it, that it is more upbeat and not slow. If not it could wreck the whole film. I already have a few ideas for the film, and so far I’ve already found it tricky.

Our idea for a film came from lots of different films, there is Blade, where we liked the idea of him turning himself into a vampire to kill the bad vampires. There is also 30 days of night which has the same storyline to it, but this protagonist has turned himself into a vampire to save his family. There is also the whole idea that vampires don’t exist, which we have also taken into our film.

Twilight is the main “horror” film I have based my music on, because it is the only horror film I have seen from beginning to end. But I also think that the music from this film is good because there are lots if chase scene with upbeat music which is kind of what I want to go for. I quite liked the fight scene in eclipse, when it goes all quiet and then BAM the music starts.

Our opening is going to engage the audience though tension, it’s going to be one of those openings where everything seems normal but then that makes you know that something bad is going to happen, also I think that we are going to have the music make it more obvious too.

My role as an Editor- Megan Wildsmith

Pre-production Evaluation

My role is the Editor which means that I am in charge of making sure that shots go well together before the editing process. I have to check the shot list and script and try to visual the shots in a sequence remembering all of the rules of continuity. This will ensure that there are no big leaps and that the editing is invisible. This is important because the key to a good film is when everything flows seamlessly.

Our initial idea for our film came from the film Blade II. We liked the title sequence montage where you saw blade getting ready for a fight and we developed it from there. We decided that the boy should be leaving home and that the film should be a sequence of flashbacks in the wrong order including him stalking and killing a young girl. Also, we want to include a funeral scene at the end.

The inspiration for our film came from watching films such as...

When watching horror films for research I have found that the film 1408 is especially good when it comes to editing. The film uses a wide range of angles and shots and they are edited together perfectly so there is always tension. The audience is always on guard waiting for something to pop up or something to appear behind the main character and I think that this is how a horror movie should be- always capturing the attention of the audience.

Our opening will be more tension that ‘fear’ as we are starting off slowly with a scene of the boy in his bedroom. It will be edited together slowly with long shots and also there will be minimalistic shot types and angles, with a few canted angles, but generally calm, subdued and creepy.

As we choose ‘vampire’ as our sub-genre we have conformed to a lot of the conventions- for example, we are going to be using vampire teeth for effect, scenes of neck biting, a graveyard scene and also stalking. We think these conventions are important because it will make the film more exciting and action-packed.

Some things like neck biting we can’t actually film but we can edit scenes together in a way which suggests it occurs. For example, cutting together clips cleverly and using a range of angles and shot types to keep the audience watching closely. A film that often does this is ...