Production company animation

Sound track

Choosing the right soundtrack is an important decision for film producers. Some films of higher budgets have pieces of music written especially for them. A Composer such as John Williams is highly renowned in the filming industry for creating soundtracks that flow parallel with the narrative and themes. His career has last for almost 60years, and has composed for films such as Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, E.T., Superman, Indiana Jones, Star Wars etc...

Because our film is for the purpose of a media A level, the funding is not necessary, and getting a custom soundtrack is only possibly if we make it. It would be possibly to make a music sound track, but unfortunately the technology available to us is too novice. The only composing program available to our school is Sibelius, which is technically good for rhythmic composition, but not instrumentally. I have experienced this software at GCSE music and found it easy to work with, but it gave a poor automated sounding product as an end result.
The alternative method would be to use a soundtrack already created.

The sound the group and I want is a type that denotes the horror genre, this in musical terms requires the songs to be in a minor chord, as this chord type projects a sense of sadness, pain and anger. The alternative chord type is major, which projects a happy joyful moment, which would be ironic and not doing the job we initially selected.

The song we have chosen to be part of our soundtrack and to appear in the teaser trailer is called 'Final Hour', by X Ray Dog...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo2_s7J8-JA&feature=player_detailpage

The track is a slow tempo piece, which is of a minor chord like we initially selected. However, the piece is known and renowned as a intensifying movement that is themed very much around the action genre. But with action come violence, which is the main theme we as a group want to show and we all feel this piece of music does exactly that.

Locations of filming

The image below is the office set, located at a group members house. This set is used in the film as Molly's room for investigating the murders. She spends many hours in this room, and is shown in the teaser trailer. Showing this footage in the teaser trailer allows the audience to understand that she is the Protagonist, and the character who tries to solve the mystery in the thick mist. We will follow this character throughout the storyline to understand her point of view.

The office has been design before the filming, as we needed time to create the collage of newspapers, that were full of murders. Another prop on the wall is a map, this map will have marked crosses/ circles to represent murders and releva

nt locations to solve the mystery. The PC will be on a website relevant to the murders, possibly a news site, where there are articles of recent murders.

The teaser trailer will show clips of various shot types of her solving the mystery.

The Chapel/ Church we are using is based in pottersbury. This church is available for us to use as Ellie Gocher's grandparents are the caretakersof the church,and have access to the key. With our permission slips we can prove we have used the church setting uder the agreement of the church's caretakers.

Sunday's Child Font and Editing

The font we initially chose was 'Piece's Of Eight'. To develop this font to another level to make it unique, I edited the font in Macromedia Fireworks. I chose this program because I am capable of working effectively with the controls, because of previous use in the past. The effect I tried to reach was a gore/rough textured look. To get this I played around with the features of the program.

The settings I chose to edit the text first was under the pain brush tool, where I played with the properties, where I could get really specific details. Above is an image of the specific settings. The Image below is the paint brush using black paint.

The image below is what I got when I placed the black over the red paint. This was the effect I wanted to apply to the Pieces of eight font. The colours together connotates death, pain and anger, which relates to the narrative of 'Sunday's Child' and the horror genre. The texture and style mixes the two colours in, and the red cracks into the black, giving a blood streaming effect.

Below are final images of the film title. Transparent and black background versions were created, this allows the team to engage the image in different background colours.

'Sunday's Child' Title

Above is the final title of the Horror/ Thriller teaser trailer that we are planning on making. The title 'Sunday's Child' was introduced to the group whilst deliberating a group name during one of our group meetings.

The font is called "Piece's of Eight", that I found on the internet, where I then downloaded it to Create the title, which was then abroved by the group.

The name relates to the children's nursery rhyme/ poem, which is a method for teaching the days of the week for youngsters. This links in with our narrative, where children are kidnapped and murdered. Sunday is the traditional day of peace, from the bible, where god rested on the 7th day when creating the World. An ironic day for violence.

Sunday's Child Poem.

Mondays child is fair of face,

Tuesdays child is full of grace,

Wednesdays child is full of woe,

Thursdays child has far to go,

Fridays child is loving and giving,

Saturdays child works hard for his living,

And the child that is born on the Sabbath day

Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

The title 'Sunday's Child' was'nt the original name. Our first name was 'The Unholy', but we thourght as a group it was giving too much away, as the film is about the unholy children not believing in God, and then to be murdered for their Atheist beliefs.

Permission

Dear …………………………………………,

We as a group are currently creating a teaser trailer, film poster and website for our A2 Media piece of coursework and I would kindly ask for you to give your consent to use both the still and moving captions taken of you over the month of November 2010.

If you are happy to give your permission for the said use of your captions, would you please sign at the bottom of this letter and return to a member of the group.

We will also be pleased to show you the final product and would appreciate later feedback.

Kind Regards,

Lewis Tillyer, Chris Mahoney, Guilano Rapoz and Ellie Gocher

I ……………………………………………. Give my permission for you to use all captions taken of me in November 2010.

Signed

……………………………

Actor Profiles

Molly Bell- Molly Bell

Molly is familiar with acting as she attends weekly to a Drama school at the Derngate in Northampton. We as a group know Molly through our team member Giuliano Rapoz, who also is part of this Drama School. At the age of 15 she is studying her GSCE's, and is willing to give her time to us.

Annie Bell- Keira Berry

Keira plays Molly's younger sister in the film. She also attends drama school where she was scouted to play a part in a Vodafone Television commercial. The group knows Keira through Lewis and myself, as we know Keira from Whittlebury Primary school. Aged 11 and now attending Sponne secondary school she is mature for her age and is a promising hope to be part of a professional media filming production.

Molly's Mum- Tania Tillyer and Molly's Dad- Bryan Tillyer

We have Lewis's parents playing Molly's parents, as they both are comfortable being filmed on camera, and are supportive of Lewis's studies. Along with this we can use the Tillyer household as the Bell's. We are planing on filming a few shots when Molly is carrying out an investigation of the child kidnaps. Bryan and Tania are ideal for the job because they are free during the weekends for us to film, and fit the right age category for stereotypical parents of Molly's age.

Priest- Lewis Tillyer

Lewis has volunteered to play the role of the priest. Although he is a teenager he has a mask to cover his face, and so the identity is kept secret. Lewis is not old enough to be a priest, and if we were to make the film we would of chosen someone different to play the part. Lewis is aged 17 and has no experience acting, but nonetheless, he is confidently in playing the part of the mass murdering paedophile priest.

Dead Children- Kyle Tillyer and Zini Rapoz

These two kids are young (11 &12), and their parts in the teaser trailer is to play the role of dead children in the playground. These children just about fit the age range we want. Zini is team member Giuls' younger brother, like wise with Kyle and Lewis. Having younger siblings feature in the teaser trailer is good, as we can directly tell them what we want without any hassle. Giuls' brother also attends the Derngate Drama classes, and therefore is comfortable with acting, whilst Lewis' brother carries through the same confidence.

Updated Storyboards

These storyboards took lots of planning, as each frame had to resemble each shot in the teaser trailer. Using a copy of this whilst filming we could easily film the right shots courtesy of the storyboard. Each picture has it's own caption besides it, stating the character postition, shot length, angle and shot timing.

Shooting Schedule

The image image below is a professional time schedule created by myself that the group used. These three tables acted as a reminder, a piece of material that we could later turn back to and follow.
The Tables told us When we were filming, Where the filming would take place, What we needed and Who we needed to film. The shooting schedule shows our organisation as a team and that we have our time management sussed out.

Group Presentation / Pitch

These Images below represent the groups slide show presentation that we used as a visual medium to present our work to the pretend production company (rest of the yr13 class) that we aimed our film production at, for the financial support that real life producers do (eg Steven Spielberg, James Cameron etc). This task was the closest thing to the real pitch and as a simulation we presented our work in a formal manor. The pitch went well as we pleased the rest of the class with our constructive ideas in the narrative and physical products. We rehearsed the pitch before hand for confidence and to decide who takes the roles. We equally presented our idea in speaking to have an equal input to the task. I also controlled the presentation through the computer that displayed on the large over head projector.

Film Plot- Sunday's Child

• Opens with a young girl running from an un seen threat and eventually getting brutally killed by a hooded character.
• Credit Sequence
• Few months later, the village (the girl killed was from) are throwing a fete.
• Little girl goes missing
• Police are investigating, forensic science teams, etc. But they cannot trace the girls whereabouts or the killers.
• Girls parents begin arguing more and more and the mother has turned to drinking.
• Girls older sister cant stand problems at home anymore and as police cant find anything she begins to create her own investigation.
• Girl begins to investigate around the village, asking citizens what they saw happen at the fete, where they were etc. Uses microphone to record investigation
• Other incidents begin to occur- a small group of children (all similar in age to the previous) go missing from the village playground.
• Police get nowhere with investigation.
• Molly finds security in her boyfriend, her parents disapprove of her having a boyfriend, arguments occur between parents and molly, they blame her for daughters disappearance.
• Whilst investigating one day, few days after playground incident, molly is walking down a road in the village and senses someone/ something watching her, making her insecure, when she turns to see what’s there she sees no one. As she turns back she bumps into the village priest. He apologises and comments on molly’s sisters disappearance and how he hasn't seen them both in church for several months. Molly smiles and carries on walking.
• Molly arrives at the playground and looks around for any signs of evidence. She cant find anything. As she goes to leave she notices a large adult size shoe print of some mud on the path. She quickly takes a photo and returns home.
• Whilst looking at the shoe print image on the computer, struggling to find any clues of suspects from it, she sits back in stress. As she does so, she notices a pattern of mud on a flyer in a pile on her desk. She suspiciously picks up the flyer, for it to reveal the same footprint as the image. Unaware of the priest watching her outside the window (masked)
• Flashback- when molly bumped into the priest, dropped some flyers and the priest accidentally stepped on one.
• Molly quickly grabs her bag and microphone and runs out of the house (night time).
• Molly runs to the village church, the lights are on inside unusually and the door is unlocked.
• Molly creeps in quickly, looking around for children and the priest.
• Suddenly as she walks round the corner and into the main church hall a horrible smell hits molly and she sees all the missing children, all dead in the church pews, etc.- ‘Sunday school’ style.
• Molly runs to her sister to see if she is alive- she doesn't move suggesting she's dead .
• As she stands in the church, breathing deeply and beginning to cry, the priest appears from shadows and begins to loudly preach and pray, cornering molly.
• As the priest leans into her, raising his blood-stained hands, molly takes out a bible from behind her back and smacks the priest around the head.
• As the priest crouches in pain, molly pushes past him and begins to run for the door.
• Just as molly is about to reach the door, it swings open and a crowd of the village adults swarm in.
• Molly is relieved and quickly reveals how the priest is the killer and they have found him, however, the adults all ignore her and continue to walk towards her, forcing her back into the church , whilst chanting prayers.
• Molly begins to panic and scream- “what's wrong with you?”, “he killed them all!”, “he’s right there! Why won’t you help me?”
• Adults all crowd around molly and the priest leans in and sedates her, she screams and then blacks out.
• As she wakes up, slightly dazed at first, she notices she is outside and all the adults are down below her. Molly looks around and has realises she has been crucified. Molly screams in pain and disbelief of it all.
  

Storyboard - Sundays Child - Teaser Trailer

External factors

With our media production being part of an A level, we can only do our best with the technology around us, as we are not expected to use our own money for this study. The external factors that may hinder our production would be:

• The Weather- This is a problem that is entirely out of our control. If it snows, it snows, however we will just have to cope with this and carry on with the filming. If the conditions are so bad that we're not able to meet as a group, then we will have to re-schedule our shooting to another date.


• Illness- Being ill is another thing to consider, as it depends on who it is. If one of the scheduled actor's/ actresses are ill then we will have to amend our planning of shooting dates to another time. If one team member is off ill, then I think the rest of the team must carry on as we have limited time with our actress (Molly Bell).


• Technology- With our non-existent budget we will have to make do with the technology we already have. An advantage of this would be that we are already familiar with the hardware/software, and so we can easily reach our penitential as a group if we work together. Creating science fiction effects/ live mix special effects is our of our capability. An example of the software would be 'Magix Video Pro X 2.0'. Editing software is something that every has in our group. HD video cameras, SLR camera's, Tripod's, laptops etc are found around the groups personal belongings.


• Setting- The places where we are filming are'nt the most spectacular, but whilst planning our production and narrative we would have an understanding of where to film. For example permission may hinder our chosen location, and so we would have to of chosen a realistic location.