Our Film's BBFC rating

OUR FILM'S BBFC RATING

We decided to rate our film a 15. According to The BBFC (British Board of Film Classification), a 15 rated film:

• Will not have any discriminating language.
• Drugs may be used but it cannot promote the use of them
• Strong horror is allowed unless sadistic or expressed in a sexual way.
• Dangerous behaviour eg suicide should not be expressed in a way that could be copied or promote this behaviour. Weapons should not be promoted.
• There can be use of strong language such as f*** and strong terms such as the c*** word can be used if the context allows it to be accepted.
• Nudity may be allowed if in a sexual context. No constraints against non-sexual nudity or educational.
• Sex may be portrayed without plenty of detail.
• Violence may be strong but should have large detail on inflicting injury. Strong gory pictures are unlikely to be accepted.

We decided this would be suitable for our film because it will include:

• gory images in attack scenes and throughout the film with strong use of blood.
• strong horror- not expressed in a sexual way.
• some use of strong language (not in the opening)
• strong violence 

Makeup Practice

MAKE UP PRACTICE

To the left is a photograph of all the equipment we used in order to create each look. We used:

• Naked Palette
• Large eyeshadow and lip gloss pallette
• Pack of 24 make up sponges 
• Fake Blood capsules

 Counselling scene makeup: 

• "Healing bruises" 
• scabs around nose and lips
• washed out face
• attempt to cover up bruises with foundation

 Attack scene makeup:

• Throughout the scene, more blood will be applied to face to make it realistic.
• redness of the face post slaps and punches to show effect
• bleeding nose and lip and swollen eye

Filming Device

Filming Device

For filming our opening, we decided to use my I Phone 6. 

"Stunning 1080p HD video at 60 fps, capture more dramatic slo-mo video and, for the first time, create time-lapse videos. Continuous autofocus provides constant focus as you capture your footage. And cinematic video stabilisation keeps your shots steady, even when you’re not."

BBFC RATING GUIDLINES

BBFC RATING GUIDLINES

When deciding what rating our film should be, we used these guidelines to help decide what we should rate it as.

Change with cast

CHANGES WITH CAST

Unfortunately, Jon West (who was supposed to play the counsellor) will be unable to take part, due to issues with him travelling here down from London and his unavailability. So, instead we will use his understudy, Ben Howse. This may prove a challenge because the character of the counsellor is meant to be in his mid-twenties, however, Ben is seventeen. To solve this issue we will need to make him look older. We will do this by using makeup to add bags under his eyes and comb down his hair which will hopefully make him look older and therefore make our film opening more believable.

Aditionally, Jessie Owens is also unable to take part because of unavailability in relation to the filming schedule, so instead, the understudy used is me- Matilda Hale. I am very excited to be taking part as I love acting and think I fit the character very well so I will try my hardest in making it convincing and genre appropriate.

Auditions and Casting

AUDITIONS AND CASTING

On Thursday 4th December, casting auditions took place in the drama studio. All AS theatre studies students prepared a monologue or duologue to perform to both AS and A2 Media Studies students, in the hope that they would be seen as suitable for one of their film openings/trailers. I also performed a monologue because I am a theatre student as well as a media student so I both watched and performed. In the end only one student got cast in a student's piece. The main reason for this is because most groups had already cast their actors prior to the auditions. We decided to cast Jessie Owens as Rose, Callum King as the attacker and Jon West as the Counsellor.

STORYBOARD ANIMATIC- for initial plot

STORYBOARD ANIMATIC

Costume Ideas

Rose's Outfits


Counselling Scene





Yellow Jumper- represents innocence, youth, false/ forced happiness.

Black Jeans- represent normality, nothingness, emptiness.



















Black Doc Martens- represent a sense of character, youth, individuality.














Blue Ribbon- represents youth, individuality, sense of character, deep sadness -in contrast with the red ribbon in attack scenes. 









Attack Scene

Red short skirt- represents sex appeal, danger, blood, school girl like to create some sense of innocence and juxtaposition.

Black Jumper- represents darkness, night-time, danger.

 Red Doc Marten- contrasting with the black equivalent in the counselling scene. Red represents danger, sex and blood.

Initial Storyboard

Initial Storyboard

Location Ideas
Our Opening is set in two different locations. For the counselling scenes, we need to find either an existing Councillor's office with simple sofas or chairs and a table. To gain inspiration we looked at many counselling and therapy rooms featured in existing films. 

The councilling office from the film "The Sopranos"

Many of the rooms we found share similarities. Many include two chairs with a table in between them. They may include a box of tissues, glasses of water, a plant and large window(s). We also discovered that a lot of councilling and therapy sessions take place in houses,perhaps to provide a sense of safety and security for the patient. 

Dark alley at night

The other location our film opening is bases in is an alleyway. This needs to be dark, eery and threatening to create a contrast from the friendly, comforting mood of the counselling office. We had many ideas of what we wanted the alleyway to look like. 

Eery Alleyway

We pictured it being lit with streetlamps as the flashbacks will be set at sunset or   night time to create an eery atmosphere.

There are many places like this in our local town where which would be suitable to film in because they are exactly what we need. Therefore, this location would be very easily found.

Choosing Our Narrative

Initial Narrative

CHOOSING OUR NARRATIVE 
Once we decided on our specific genre, the group started to brainstorm ideas we had for our narrative. This allowed us to come up with two main ideas. Our initial plot idea was based around a teenage girl with a troubled past involving a stalker. The opening would focus on this protagonist at a party involving drugs, causing her to hallucinate and start seeing her stalker at the party. It would involve lots of blurry, unnerving camera work and muffled sounds of the music and madness of the party as we follow the girl dealing with her hallucinations. The opening will finish as this girl is walking out of the party. She will be holding a knife covered in blood. This cliff hanger will make the audience speculate over who she killed or even if she did and then the film's title would come up and the main narrative of the film would be set months later. However effective this idea would be if it were to be successful, we realised that it was far too ambitious and it would only work if every single detail was perfect. It would have been too much of a challenge as many experienced,skilled directors admit that party scenes are the most difficult to create, because of the atmosphere that needs to be achieved successfully. 

Final narrative

We therefore decided to brainstorm another idea in the hope of reaching a more approachable and realistic narrative. We decided to keep the initial idea of a girl who has a stalker. However we decided to base the main narrative with her talking to a Councillor about how the stalker attacked her. It will involve her having lots of flashbacks of this traumatic experience. The opening will then finish with her walking outside and seeing the stalker across the road. It will then cut to a black screen. We decided to choose this narrative because, yes it would be easier to create, but we also much preferred the narrative and it is unique. It will also be a challenge for us because of all the unnerving flashbacks involved. It also fits perfectly with our genre of psychological horror because it will frighten the audience as well as it being thought provoking for them.

Choosing our genre

Choosing our Genre

For our film opening we could have chosen any genre we liked, however, from the outset, my group already knew which genre we wanted to create a film opening for. This was horror. 

The reason for this is because, as a group, we had all watched many horror films together so felt confident in the traditional elements and tricks that are used in them. We therefore thought we would be able to make a successful and believable horror opening, because of our knowledge of the genre. 
We then had to decide which aspect of horror we wanted to look at specifically. We did this by watching existing, popular horror film openings in order to inspire us and give us ideas. We watched the openings of "Halloween", "The Woman in Black", and "Hostel". This allowed us to see three different types of horror film in order to get an insight into the different techniques, mise-en-scene and cinematography used. After watching these openings we finally decided that we wanted to create an opening to a psychological horror film.

Psychological horror is a subgenre of horror fiction, film, and video games (as a narrative) which relies on the characters' fears and emotional instability to build tension.

 This was partly because the genres of slasher horror and the paranormal would be hard to film and still create a sense of realism because of our lack of equipment and special effects available. We as a group are also extremely interested in psychological horror films because it includes a sense of depth to it and completely captures the audience, making them completely involved in the narrative while at the same time making them terrified. Therefore, we wanted to be able to create this emotion in our audience with our film opening.