Importance of Camera Angles and Shots

Camera angles and movements combine to create a sequence of images, just as words, word order and punctuation combine to make the meaning of a sentence. Camera shots are very important in shaping meaning in a film.

There are many different types of camera angles and shots.

CAMERA SHOTS:

• An extreme long shot contains a large amount of landscape. It is often used at the beginning of a scene or a film to establish general location(setting).
• A long shot contains landscape but gives the viewer a more specific idea of setting. A long shot may show the viewers the building where the action will take place.
• A full shot contains a complete view of the characters. From this shot, viewers can take in the costumes of characters and may also help to demonstrate the relationships between characters.
• A mid shot contains the characters or a character from the waist up. From this shot, viewers can see the characters' faces more clearly as well as their interaction with other characters. This is also known as a social shot
• A close-up contains just one character's face. This enables viewers to understand the actor's emotions and also allows them to feel empathy for the character. This is also known as a personal shot.

CAMERA ANGLES:

• A bird's eye angle is an angle that looks directly down upon a scene. This angle is often used as an establishing angle, along with an extreme long shot, to establish setting.
• A high angle is a camera angle that looks down upon a subject. A character shot with a high angle will look vulnerable or small. These angles are often used to demonstrate to the audience a perspective of a particular character. The example above demonstrates to us the perspective or point of view of a vampire. As a viewer we can understand that the vampire feels powerful.
• An eye-level angle puts the audience on an equal footing with the characters. This is the most commonly used angle in most films as it allows the viewers to feel comfortable with the characters.
• A low angle is a camera angle that looks up at a character. This is the opposite of a high angle and makes a character look more powerful. This can make the audience feel vulnerable and small by looking up at the character. This can help the responder feel empathy if they are viewing the frame from another character's point of view.

Risk Assesments & Health and Safety

When conducting a risk assessment, consider all the likely hazards, who may be harmed, property which may be damaged, and the controls already in place. Then, for each likely hazard, bearing in mind the controls already in place, record the ‘risk assessment’ level which can be seen on the following table. The further actions to be considered will be determined by the level of risk assessment.

Below is a table which I designed on Microsoft word in which to show what a risk assessment looks like. It is important as a media student to conduct a risk assessment whilst shooting as we are not professionals and therefore will need to take extra care and consider all the potential hazards in which we many face in order to ensure filming runs smoothly and everybody whether on set or off is safe at all times.

Hazard & Number of people exposed	Main Risks Identified (H) (M) (L)	Controls to minimise risk
Busy Road / Actors and Crew	HIGH-Cars speeding past which may cause fatal accidents	Whilst shooting is going on, road is to be blocked
Behaviour of dog/ Actors and Crew	MODERATE-Frantic barking of dog which wants to attack when let off lead	Dog will be on leash and supervised at all times. Feeding and recreation areas to be arranged for animal away from location premises
Burns from campfire/Actors and Crew	HIGH- Wild flames which may be very threatening if in contact with human	Request for local fire brigade

LIKELIHOOD	CONSEQUENCES
	Insignificant	Minor	Moderate	Major	Catastrophic
Almost Certain	HIGH	HIGH	EXTREME	EXTREME	EXTREME
Likely	MODERATE	HIGH	HIGH	EXTREME	EXTREME
Moderate	LOW	MODERATE	HIGH	EXTREME	EXTREME
Unlikely	LOW	LOW	MODERATE	HIGH	EXTREME
Rare	LOW	LOW	MODERATE	HIGH	HIGH

S number 5- Script

A script is an essential part of any film or play. It is important that a script covers all the details aspects of the dialogue in the film. In our trailer, there is not a lot of talking. We chose to do this as we thought as a horror trailer, the absence of dialogue and speech is more likely to create suspense.

The speech we included in our trailer was that of a news reporter near the start of our trailer describing the killings that had been taken place and stating it was a 'massacre' helping to establish the viewers understanding of the trailer as a whole. In my opinion this is effective as the viewer is able to gain a lot of information through the news report of the journalist (acted by my friend Mary).

In order to enhance the news reports, we decided to have voiceovers overlapping eachother to again reinforce the fact that there had been many killings in different areas. We recorded ourselves using a mobile phone and recorded a line each in different voices in order to emphasize the fact that the news reporters were of both genders, male and also females. This was quite funny as it meant that I had to do an impersonation of a man.

Below is the script in which we followed whilst recording the reporting scene.

Reporter 1(on screen)- 'Good evening, I am live at Hampshire Valleys where a death has been reported yesterday night around 11pm. The young woman has not been identified yet however police and forensics are now on the case. This is similar to two attacks in the same borough around the same time. This mysterious event has been described as a massacre. This is Mary Johnson reporting for ABC News, Goodnight'

Reporter 2(voice over)- Another murder at 11:54pm in which another girl has been found brutally killed, left with no identification. She was thought to be....

Reporter 3 (voice over)- Yet another young woman found cobvered in blood after walking her dog at the park in Hampshire Valleys. It is assumed she has been here overnight. Police and forensics are....

After we had recorded the reporting scene, we decided that we should shorten the scene and also the voiceovers as to not bore the viewers. We used the editing facilities on iMovie HD and cut the bits we felt were the most important.

Below I have included images of various horror film scripts from films: Dracula and Orgy of the dead. (Please click them to enlarge them)

S number 4- Stock Characters

A stock character is a fictional character based on a common literary or social stereotype. Stock characters rely heavily on cultural types or names for their personality, manner of speech, and other characteristics. In their most general form, stock characters are related to literary archetypes, but they are often more narrowly defined. Stock characters are a key component of genre fiction, providing relationships and interactions that people familiar with the genre will recognize immediately.

STOCK CHARACTERS IN M.M.2

• news reporter
• killer (antagonist)
• victims-(protagonist)

Character 1- The first character we see in the trailer is the news reporter who is played by Mary Adebusyi. Marys position as a news reporter was to inform the viewers of the many deaths that has been taking place in the form of a news report. In order to establish the location and make it seem as though there had actually been a murder there, we bought black and yellow hazard tape in order to suggest a blockage of the area due to the death. As Mary is not a member of my Sixth Form I phoned her on several occasions and discussed days in which she will be available to come to the school and film as our shooting location was nearby. On the day of the recording, I supplied Mary with a script and she helped to stick the tape on the brick walls which was difficult as they were not sticking properly. As it began to rain, both I and Mary were beginning to get stressed as we had to do many takes in order to decide the best one and also I had to film shots from many different angles. Overall, Mary was happy with the clips I had recorded of her, she said:

'I felt comfortable with what I was asked to do because I was given the script beforehand so when it came to recording I was ready for it. I hope I look good on camera, thats the only thing I'm worried about (laughs).'

The character in which Mary plays is important in helping the viewers understand what is happening (massacre) in our trailer.

Character 2- The second stock character in our trailer was a victim who was played by Chantel. Her scene included her running away from the antagonist in a dark corridor. Chantel was a useful character as she also does performing arts which meant her acting skills were polished. The importance of professional actors cannot be stressed enough as we felt that it made a great difference on the trailer as a whole. For this reason we decided that we would not use any children in our trailer due to their inexperience in professional acting. We recorded Chantel running in a corridor panting deeply and also building suspense for the viewer. As Chantel attends the same Sixth Form as us, it was easy to locate her and organize shooting times in comparison to Mary. Once we had filmed the scenes involving Chantel, I asked her how she felt about it in which she said:

'I'm quite happy with what we recorded today but I think it was a bit time consuming because we had to stick black sugar paper all over the art corridor windows to make it darker. Apart from that I'm happy with everything else'

Character 3-This role of another victim was played by Jessica (Jess) another friend of ours who also does performing arts. Initially, she was meant to play the antagonist however she did not have the right costume required of this role. Jess was featured in another running scene to emphasize the amount pf people the killer had killed. We were also pleased with Jess playing this role as she had short hair in comparison to Chantel in which we felt the audience would make a clear distinction between the two victims. We also used Jess to take still images in which we could use for our magazine.

Character 4- The role of the killer was played by Harrianne (Harri). The costume of the antagonist was important and as Harrianne had many clothes which fit our description of the killer, we decided to allocate her to this role. She wore a lace blazer, a long grey skirt which was pleated at the hem, patterned tights and reed heels. The heels were the most important asset to us as a group. As we wanted the viewer to immediately identify that she was a women due to the significance of womens portrayal in other various media in which women are shown usually as users of make-up, wearing red lipstick and dominantly wearing colours such as red and pink and therefore we decided not to challenge the conventional stereotypes.

Also, all four actors in our trailer are FEMALE. We decided to do this in order to make our horror trailer different as most horror depicts the killer or villain as a man due to the stereotypical connotations of men being strong and aggressive. However by using a woman as an antagonist, we felt that it would bring out a different side of our trailer in the sense that it would stand out from others.

S number 3- Schedule

As we wanted all of our work to be a product of all of us and not only certain members of the group, it was important that we would have to sit own and work out an actual timetable/schedule for our shooting times. We did this also because we did not want to have to prospone any shooting dates at late notice due to poor preparation. We sat down during a lunchtime one day and made a list of all of our availabilities. After, we discussed and decided on the best days we felt we should film. We also took into consideration the location and also times in which we would shoot for example we felt for some scenes, it would be better to shoot around 6pm as it is winter and therefore gets dark fairly early. We also discussed that to do this, it would take dedication from each member of the team. Once everybody was happy , we photocopied copies of our shooting schedule in order for us each to have a copy at home and a copy in which we would carry around with us.

S number 2- Story boarding

Below: A slideshow which I made using picasa and then uploaded onto www.youtube.com

The slideshow contains images of my storyboard in which I designed in order to separate each scene therefore reducing confusion and also maximizing the chances that things will run smoothly when it comes to recording.

The second element of the Five S' is story boarding. Storyboards are graphic organisers such as a series of illustrations or images displayed in a sequence. Storyboards appear in many forms, from emerging literacy books to emergency instructions on airplaces to technical textbooks. When writers in various fields want to make ideas easily understood, they choose a storyboard format or one of its close cousins: the flow chart, the time line, or the PowerPoint presentation. Storyboards are widely used because we know pictures combined with text offer a rich synthesis of information that can entertain and inform. The pictures in picture writing can be simple cartoons, photographs, or sophisticated technical diagrams.

A storyboard can be any length, two or two thousand squares. A storyboard can be simple like the Cinderella board, or elaborate and dense in content like a graphic novel.

Storyboards also can be adapted to fit many tasks, from maps to time lines. Like making text lists down a page or writing text across the page, the way we arrange storyboard boxes can help convey the logic of the task at hand, and make that task easier to accomplish. To convey content, organization boxes can be arranged vertically or horizontally, or set in meaningful clusters.

The 5 S' / S number 1- Shot lists

After a lot of research in preparation for my horror movie publicity campaign, it was time to start planning in detail. In order to help set myself a strict outline in which I will use as guidelines to complete the planning tasks I decided to separate the elements of planning which I will need to explore and complete. These are also known as the 5 s' and include:

• Shot lists


• Storyboards


• Schedules


• Script


• Stock characters

Shot lists

A shotlist is an uninterrupted sequence of frames taken by a video camera. In other words, this is the continuous film taken from when the camera has been turned on to when it has been turned off. A list of shots helps in the planning and filming of your movie.

At the start of this task, I had difficulty in differentiating the differences between shot lists and also storyboards as they are very similar. I watched a video on http://youtube.com/ (click for link to website) on shotlists and storyboards which helped me understand the difference between them and also how to construct my own. The video may be found below:

Below, I have created a shot list for Midnight Massacre 2, capturing the types of shots which will be included in each scene throughout the horror trailer. (Please click to enlarge)

Planning- Audience feedback 3

Planning- Audience feedback 2

Planning- Audience Feedback 1

Myself and my group decided to carry out some audience reseacrch before the actual production of our film trailer. We went out and around school to interview people on their thoughts of horror and what they would like to see or what they would expect to see. We created 3 videos which show 2 students and a teacher talking about their experiences of horror films, so we can see what is typical and try and challenge conventions.