Film Pitches - From Idea To Finished Product

Creating a film is a very expensive and hard process which requires financial help from Grants, Donations, Savings etc.

An opportunity for the film to be financed is from the producer, they are the ones who will provide the funds for the film or they will find the funds for the film. If the producer could not sponsor money for the film themselves then they could rely other sources of funding such as Government Grants. To achieve a grant, there has to be benefits that a film productions could bring to the country and for the citizens, for example Employment Opportunites (for people to help making the movie), The Ecomony, Tourist Attraction (if the film is made in London, some of the audience from different countries might want to visit the setting of the film) and a development of national culture. 

Another opportunity for funding a film used to be the UK Film Council. UK Film Council funded script development, film production, short films, film export and distribution, cinemas, film education, culture and archives, festivals and audience support schemes, and they help develop and promote the film industry in the UK. There were three funds offering around £17 million Lottery funding per year for the production and development of films, but currently the UK Film Council is replaced by the British Film Institute (BFI).

Another way to make money is by Pre-Sales (they will expect certain elements that are likely to guarantee success).

To find a distributor for my film, I would enter in many film festivals as possible, hoping for my film to be recognised and for the film festivals audiences to discover my film for it to be known and blogged so that potential distributors could visit and gain more information about the film.

Also, I would take into consideration that subsidised distributors deal with less populist films and work on small budgets, so their industry profile is inevitably less commanding.

Moreover, employing well-known professional actors/actresses (Marguee, e.g. Leonardo DiCaprio on the left) would help finding a distributor for my film because it would promote my film which will attract the distributors.

In an ideal world, I would want Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation to distribute my film because it is very popular international film studio. That company has franchised many globally successful films such as Alien, Die Hard, Avatar, Star Wars, Predator, Home Alone and many more. 20th Century Fox Film Co. also franchised on popular TV programmes such as The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, etc.

An example of Twentieth Century Film Co.'s success is from 2009 American film 'Avatar', the film had a budget of $237 million and made a massive $2,782,275,172 in the box office, which proves how successful Twentieth Century Film Co.'s films are.

Ominous - My Horror Opening

This is a prezi presentation that explains the plot of my horror opening named "Ominous" and how it appeals to my target audience, what sounds intrigue me to use in my horror opening and camera shots that would appeal to my audience.
To improve my idea of my horror opening, I should add more props to my opening to make it more effective, for example masks and I was warned that it would be difficult to film a public place as its important to have permission from people who will be in the shot, which will be tricky to do.
Also, my class highly recommended to have the camera handheld when its from the stalkers perspective, so it would give a chance for the audience to be the stalker's shoes, rather than the victim's.
Furtheremore, my class stated that they liked the idea of the ticking sound and the fact that they won't see the stalker only the outline figure.

Click here to view my prezi slideshow explaining my horror opening

Things I Expect To See In A Horror/Thriller Film!

Things I expect to see in a horror film is eerie, rememberable music/sound effects, e.g. The Exorcist and Psycho etc. Link To The Exorcist Theme Music
In a horror movie there has to be suspense, if everything is rushed then it ruins the frightful atmosphere. There's an example to the slow suspense in The Ring, where the girl walks at a slow pace towards her victim Link To Suspense Scene Of The Ring

Also, I expect to see close up camera shots in horror movies to show the villian or the victims reaction or emotion on their face clear to the audience and I expect to see high angle or low angle shots to show the status of the character and the vulnerability in the situation. Example Below is a close up of the villian in "The Ring" and picture on the right is an example of a high angle shot from the victim in the horror "Psycho"

Futhermore, in horror movies I expect brutal deaths or somewhat of evilness being portrayed. Horror movies could include weapons or supernatural villians like vampires, werewolves or ghosts etc.

Horror movies need to have slow movements to make the suspense drag and to make the scene to be bloodcurling. Also, the editing needs to look very realistic because if it doesn't look real then the audience wouldn't be scared and it would deteriorate the ability to terrify the audience.

In Addition, the most famous horror films always has the most famous quotes, so for horror films to be more popular, a good catchphrase would be more useful and entertaining for the audience. Examples:

"Here's Johnny" Quote From The Shining 
"Hi I'm Chucky" Quote From Child's Play

My Prelim Task

This week in my Media course, we all had to get into groups of three and record a prelim project of anything of our choice, but it had to include camera shots such as match on action with a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another characer, with whom then exchanges a dialogue using shot reverse shot. I was directing the camera shots and the characters position and I edited the video above. While I was editing this video I learnt how to include titles in my movie and editing sounds and including sounds in my project, which is very useful as the sounds worked well with the atmosphere I was trying to create producing this project.
Please watch my video and tell what you think and how I could improve for my next project.

The Green Screen Experience

On 06/10/11 we had a visitor to teach the class how to function the green screen effect on a video. When the visitor demostrated how to edit a green screen video, I thought it would it was very easy, but when I had to film and edit out the background myself, it was more tricky than I thought. My group made a mistake for choosing a white background to edit out as the majority of common things are white such as eyeballs, teeth and clothes etc. So we had a few problem editing but I had massive help from the teachers and I learnt from my mistake so I now know what not to do if I use the green screen effect in the future for my coursework.
My group decided our practice video should be a scene from Titanic which I am very happy we chose to do that as it was different and the rest of our class found it amusing. 
Apart from the editing, everything else in our video was successful, like the acting, the camera angle and the sound, which I was very pleased from and I would definitely consider using the green screen effect in my coursework as I could set a scene in a place that is impossible to film.

Overall I enjoyed the experience and I am happy with my green screen video as it was my first time.

Findings On My Film Survey

When I posted my film survey, I gave it a week for my audience to complete it and then I observed the findings.

I found that the majority that were interested in my film survey were females aged 17-22, so they fell in the female under 25 category in target audience.

Most of those females watched horror films monthly and the majority like psychological horror films, for example, Hide And Seek and The Shining.

They mainly watched horror films on DVD and liked to watch horror films with equally family and friends.

A great number of women said that suspense scares them the most during a horror film and they preferred to watch horror films in the evening.

These findings will be a proficient help for producing my opening on a horror film as now I acknowledge what a minority group of females under 25 prefer to watch and how often they watch it, etc, so it could be easier to target to this specific group.