Planning for The Asylum (2)

The Asylum Planning:

Curtis

Casting:

Curtis - 'Smiley Pete'
Reasons for:

• Comfortable with the role
• Featured in the microdrama
• Male - Stereotypical killer

This was my role, i felt that i could play this role well. We did have difficulty with our options for the killer, as we were working in a group of 3 and one member was the director leaving two of us. Our friends were resistant to the idea of helping us out and acting. However, i was already certain that this was the role i would be playing.

Jake

Jake - 'Dr. Cruger'
Reasons for:

• Comfortable with the role
• Featured in the microdrama
• Male - Stereotypical doctor
• Short on options
• Our other team member would not suit the role

We cast Jake as the role for our doctor because he had previously acted before in our microdrama. Again we were limited on options for our roles because there was only three of us in our group and our friends were resistant to act

Heather

Heather - Scream Queen
Reasons for:

• We wanted to include a key slasher convention
• Blonde (stereotype)
• Has acted before (drama)
• She was comfortable with her role

Heather is a good friend of ours and we were delighted when she offered to play the role of our scream queen. Heather would be playing a vital role in our opening and due to her experience in acting she was happy with the role she would be playing. The only problem with Heather was that we would have to get everything in our shoot spot on and not need to do any re-shoots as Heather was only available for one day. Therefore we have planned the suitable day.

Location:


We plan to split our opening between two locations to provide an ellipsis to our audience to anchor this we will include exposition of some sort. As we will provide an establishing shot of a mental asylum - which will be detailed below. Our killer returns to the doctors house to seek his revenge. This is why we plan to shoot our film on two locations.

Location 1: Jakes House (Manor Park)
Reasons for:

• Easily accessible for our cast
• Ideal for killing scenes
• Lots of props we can use for mise en scene
• Anchors the doctors lifestyle (as a car will be involved)

This is where our killer will come to seek his revenge. We feel that this is a good location for our film because it anchors the doctors lifestyle to the audience. We also have a range of rooms we can shoot in to suit our production as well as the fact of on set mise en scene provided. However, we can only shoot here at certain times during the week therefore we have linked our time management in with Heather's schedule. 

Manor Park 

Location 2: High Royds (Menston)

Reasons for:

• We don't have a schedule for when we can shoot here
• An old mental asylum
• Provides good exposition
• Easily accessible 
• Ideal for our opening shot

This will be where our film opening starts, at this location. We feel that this will also provide a key exposition to the audience as our killer will be 'escaping' from this. The benefits of this location are that Heather is not needed for our shoot on this location as she won't have been included in the opening until there is the house scene. Therefore we are not limited for time for when we can shoot on this location and any re-shoots will not be a problem for us.

Mise En Scene:

Costume:
Each of our characters will have a certain costume to fit their role e.g. the doctor will be wearing a white lab coat and 'smiley pete' will be wearing a patients gown to signify that he is a patient with in the asylum. Also this will create a sense of realism in our opening.

Weapon:
Kitchen Knife we used intertextuality from Psycho for this idea because it was the original weapon and we decided we wanted our work to contain intertextuality to appeal to our secondary audience. 

Use of the forrest which is right next to High Royds for an escape route for 'Smiley Pete'. This is a location the is used in many films, as somewhere to run/ escape for example The Last House On The Left.

The forest is an option for us, we are not certain that it will be used in our opening as we haven't planned an escape scene

Here is a video about High Royds mental asylum:

Possible Distributers For Our Film

Possible Disributers for our film

Top Ten film distributers in the US (2012)

1. Sony: $336.4m (£209.9m) 17.9%  2. 20th Century Fox: $306.5m (£191.2m) 16.3%  3. Warner Bros: $235.5m (£147m) 12.5%  4. Universal: $219.3m (£136.8m) 11%  5. Walt Disney: $197.4m (£123.2m) 10.5%  6. eOne: $129.5m (£80.8m) 6.9%  7. Paramount: $125.8m (£78.5m) 6.7%  8. Lionsgate: $109.3m (£68.2m) 5.8%  9. Momentum: $82.1m (£51.2m) 4.3%  10. Entertainment Film Distributors: $59m (£36.8m) 3.1%

Source: http://www.mi6-hq.com/news/index.php?itemid=10724

Top Ten film distributers in the UK (2012)

1	Skyfall	Sony	101.0
2	The Dark Knight Rises	Warner Bros	56.3
3	Marvel's Avengers Assemble	Walt Disney	51.9
4	The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey	Warner Bros	40.8
5	The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2	EOne Films	35.5
6	Ted	Universal	30.3
7	Ice Age: Continental Drift	20th Century Fox	30.1
8	The Amazing Spider-Man	Sony	25.9
9	Prometheus	20th Century Fox	24.7
10	The Hunger Games	Lionsgate	23.8

Source:http://www.cinemauk.org.uk/facts-and-figures/admissions/top-10-uk-films-2004-2012/

Ted Dvd Cover

Marketing Tools used:

• Email lists
• Websites
• Blogs
• Press
• Flyers

Skyfall Poster

The distributers above would not realistically distribute our film, therefore i am going to look at more low budget distributers.

Eden Lake (James Watkins, 2008)

Eden Lake Poster

Gross:

 $5,824 (USA) (2 November 2008)

Production Co:

 Rollercoaster Films, Aramid Entertainment Fund 

Distributers:

• Atlantic Film (2009) (Sweden) (theatrical)
• Benelux Film Distributors (2009) (Netherlands) (theatrical)
• CDI Films (2009) (Argentina) (theatrical)
• Cathay-Keris Films (2009) (Singapore) (theatrical)
• Festive Films (2009) (Singapore) (theatrical)
• La Fabrique de Films (2008) (France) (theatrical)
• Optimum Releasing (2008) (UK) (theatrical)
• Weinstein Company, The (2008) (USA) (theatrical)

Donkey Punch (Oliver Blackburn, 2008)

Eden Lake Poster

Budget:

 $700k (estimated)

Production Co:

 EM Media, Film4, Madman Entertainment

Distributers:

• Optimum Releasing (2008) (UK) (theatrical)
• NonStop Entertainment (2008) (Sweden) (theatrical)
• European Film Partners (EFP) (2009) (Netherlands) (theatrical)
• Kanibal Films Distribution (2010) (France) (theatrical)
• Madman Entertainment (2008) (Australia) (theatrical)
• Magnet Releasing (2009) (USA) (theatrical)

To summarise, realistically i feel that optimum releasing (Studio Canal) would be the right distributors for our film because our budget is very narrow and they have distributed relatively low budget films before. 

Planning for The Asylum (1)

Characters and Casting:

These are our notes on our casting characters and location

Curtis - 'Smiley Pete'
Reasons for:
- Young
- Good actor for an important role

Jake - Dr. Cruger
Reasons for:
- Looks like a doctor
- Reasonable actor for less important role

Martin Wilson - The Dad (TBC)
Reasons for:
- Already a dad so the role will fit nicely

Sue Wilson - The Mum (TBC)
Reasons for:
- Already a mum so the role will fit nicely

Manor Park

Location:

Jakes House - Burley-In-Wharfedale, llkley road
Reasons for:
- Easily accessible
- A House - whichis where it will be filmed

This is a vital location in our film opening as it is where the killer goes to kill the doctor.


Highroyds - Menston

This is where we plan to film our opening shot - as the patient escapes from the asylum, the backdrop as well as the exposition we plan to provide will inform the audience with an idea of where the film is set and the time and date.

Inside Highroyds

Birdseye View

Assessing Past Coursework

Assessing Past Coursework

Scream title used - a good strong intertextual link - post modern theory suggests that its impossible to do anything original.
Kids toy used in the sound effects the idea is to try and mess with the phisiolgy therefore messing with the audiences psychology. Long drawn out notes used.
Framing includes the branches which connotes the POV of somebody hiding plus gives the option to include a hand to bring the branches down. False scare nice and early and thats always a good idea in a slasher movie, another intertextual reference used from the omen. An illipsis (where you cut out time) is signified by the fade to black and the fade back in. Mise on scene helps to signify that she is a young girl. Also a dutch angle is going on. Dialogue is very useful for exposition (providing background information to the audience) Could use a variety of shots such as a cut away shot when opening her gift. Includes two ellipsis in very small detail. you could argue that a female gaze theory is used, think about the female audience when doing male representations. Needs much greater shot variation. Mise en scene for the blood in the bath is good though the sequence should be real time even though it was shot or edited with an ellipsis, which wasn't needed. Over reliant on the coverage shot the two shot is over used. Need a huge amount of shot variety for killing scenes.

Underground:



Low resolution to start with. So were getting notes coming through in the titles realism is signified. Simple detail but significant because he has a bottle of alcohol in his hand and booze/sex/drugs all signify that your dead. Shake affect used to signify drunkness form the POV shot because the young man is drunk. Nicely framed character walking into the shot, someones watching is being signified when walking up the path. The violence is odd and there is digetic sound missing. Use of faster paced music coming in to the shot, although bits of the sound mix are missing which is poor. Good example of narrative enigma yes we should have seen violence but by seeing the legs and feet not anchoring wether its male or female is good narrative enigma. An effect is used to signify CCTV which may make sense if they reduced the shot size which is quite conventional when shooting CCTV. Again there is a good blood effect used however it looks weak with the editing, not enough footage. Fault of directing. Needed much faster paced shots mise en scene is nice though with the chain and the digetic sound. Psycho reference at the end. Fundamental prop was that there was not enough shot.

Red Run:



Flaw is no digetic sound if the sound is screwed up just go back and re-record sound. Varisimlitude (achieving realism) in a prime drama you would want a police uniform, car ect. Also reference to scream is used, popcorn is put on a hot ring at the beginning to built the tension as it rises, several connotations as it reflects and creates tension at the same time. Sexual symbolism as well as the bag gets bigger, and there is a post modern context as in the cinema they would be eating popcorn the approach is ironic.

Slasher Overview Vodcast

Our Slasher Overview Vodcast 

This is the vodcast we created to give an overview of the slasher genre as a whole, we narrowed the key conventions down. However, we still managed to include a reasonable amount of information in the vodcast.

Here are the key points we discussed:

• Slasher opening scenes
• Slasher Franchises
• Idents included in Slasher films
• The titles in slasher films
• The methods of editing and how violent or chase scenes were filmed
• Narrative and representations in slasher movies

Slasher Overview from peers

Looking at the other overview vodcasts from the class:

• Poppy, Kate and Millie

Early influential examples which become stereotypes are called architypes this is shown in Psycho - the architype of a scream queen and editing of the killings. 

The texas chainsaw massacre are influential movies shown other directors you can make movies for very little money. 

Black Christmas very influential on screen. They shrunk location costs by filming it all in one house.

Black xmas, Psy, TCM early examples of films that have been re-made.

Halloween (John Carpenter) was influenced by Black Xmas with the killers POV shot. In effect the audience becomes the killer. Peeping Tom has the same thing, very explicitly using that idea, the audience is positioned as the killer.
These are different to psycho but are tame to what we have today.
Big studios that had not payed attention to slashers realised there was money in the business after Halloween. Very quickly got immitators looking to use the same basic formula.

The final girl concept...in Halloween

Signified by:
Clothes 
personality
Audio
Academic 

Slasher films:
Non diegetic music 

Music can make you sub-consciousley hold your breath form long notes, fast notes speed up your heartbeat it has a physical effect as well as a psychological.

• Tilly, Hannah and James

Prototype slashers feature serial killers, narrative appeal comes from 'Who done it?'

High leve;s of blood and gore as well as explicit nudity drugs use and other sensational elements are used to attract an audience.

TCM-marketing idea was that it was based on true events.

Hybrid genres are genres mixed together several different genres in one e.g. Zom-rom-com.

A nightmare on elm street (wes craven)

Post modern slahser first one.

Self referential

(not a lot of information)

• Dec, Dom and Ben

Commutation testis used by taking out one thing from a scene removing the music.
In general each film is different but the typical audience for a slasher audience is 15-24. Primary target audience is 15-24 now if your movie is BBFC(British board of film councillation) rated the audience can know what will be shown. 25-34 known as mature youth. Point is typically your core audience will be 15-24 especially if you have intertextual refferences to films it can be mature youth. 
  Secondary target audience goes two ways, younger and older. Some secondary appeal to a 35 plus audience but its teenagers into their early twenties form almost all of the cinema going audience as you go up the numbers go down very steeply inded. the characters and language is appropriate for a teen audience. Probably half of slasher movies have a sheriff in them. Because the adult authority figures are useless.
  Halloween became the most profitable movie ever made at the time. An exception to Todorov because the disequilibrium is maintained as halloween 2 picks straight up form number 1. 


Daves Speech....
In the 50's and 60's most horror was either gothic or creature features (monsters. Combination between universal creature features and Hammer Horror with gothic elements. With the HH movies which were dominant worldwide in the 60's. The main characters were mature, upper class adults. Protagonists were working on middle class in films like LHONTL and TCM. Hammer Horror used a castle a lot in their movies, they were quite theatrical where as LHOTL were ultra realistic ion their design. Hammer is very stagey however the early slasher movies (72/74) halloween created a whole series of immitators such as peeping tom which was seen as sick and disgusting so producers wouldn't dare making films like this. Hammer looked rediculous alongside these modern contemporary movies and it wrecked the company. The idea of scream queens were reffered to hammer movies - busty blondes.