The protagonist stands mournfully in front of the grave of her mother. She has a small handful of wild-flowers bound tight by string. She places them respectfully and sorrowfully next to the grave. A slow breeze tugs at her skirt. She is dressed in a traditional plain 19^th century dress with a neck choker necklace and a small ornate hat. In her hand is clutched a piece of torn paper, and a small photograph of her mother. The sound of church doors being heaved open is heard before the protagonist make her way between the pews. The church is silent, save for the sound her footsteps, which echo ominously throughout the building. There is a dusty atmosphere and the light catches the dust in the air and creates streams of light from the windows. She finally sits one pew from the front, on the right, next to the aisle; her head bowed looking at the handful of paper. She fiddles with the paper, looking at the photograph then at the note. The writing on the note is written both vertically and horizontally across the paper. 

    There is a slight gust of wind through the church. On the altar at the front one of the candle sticks topples over with a clang and rolls of the table onto the floor. The protagonist jumps and looks down at it. It rolls across the hard stone floor towards her and bumps into her foot. She reaches down and picks it up then gets up and places it back at the front of the church. She then returns to her pew and continues to read the note. Without her noticing, the doors at the back of the church silently swing shut. A short time later, while still seated at the pew, a strand of the protagonist’s hair is slowly lifted backwards. This is followed by more strands one by one until she finally notices. She moves her head very slightly when she senses the movement and whispers words of apology in fear. She turns her head a little further then suddenly it is forced down onto the pew in front with a smash. She screams and her head is dragged backwards again by her hair, revealing the trail of blood appearing from her hairline. She is dragged off the pew and onto the floor. She tries to scramble forwards when the pulling on her hair is released but then her legs are gripped. She is pulled up the aisle to the door by her legs, screaming and grabbing for a hold. She is released before reaching the door and gets up and stumbles back into the church, staring at the door in fear and panic. She runs for the door and tries to open it but it is locked. From the outside of the church her slamming against the door and struggling against the invisible force can be heard. Then the door stops rattling and there is silence. The outcome of the encounter is unknown.

Shot By Shot Analysis

Shot Duration	Camera distance, angle and movement	Mise-en-scene	Sound
00:00-00:06		Momentum Pictures Logo	Synth sound effect
00:06-00:10		Black screen	Silence
00:10-00:18		Hammer Logo	Silence
00:18-00:27		UK Film Council logo	Silence
00:27-00:37		Black screen	Silence
00:37-00:47	Just below eye height, Establishing shot, Mid-shot. Shallow focus on cups	Two ornate china cups on a small table. A teapot moves between them in a pouring motion but nothing is poured.	Quiet, eerie background synths. Echoing clangs of the china
00:47-00:49	Just below eye height. Close up on doll. Shallow focus.	An old Victorian looking china doll. A cup is brought to its mouth; pretend drinking, taken away again.	Quiet, eerie background synths continue. A piano/xylophone joins
00:49-00:52	Just below eye height. Close up on doll. Shallow focus.	Another old Victorian looking china doll. Opposite side. A cup is brought to its mouth; pretend drinking, taken away again.	Quiet, eerie background synths and music continue
00:52-00:57	Mid-shot. Low angle.	Three young girls sitting on floor playing with dolls. Dark, grungy Victorian room. Various toys on the floor and a pram.	Quiet, eerie background synths and music continue
00:57-01:00	Just below eye height. Close up on doll. Shallow focus.	Doll in mid-ground having hair brushed. Foreground another doll out of focus.	Quiet, eerie background synths and music continue
01:00-01:02	Just below eye height. Close up on doll. Shallow focus.	Doll being tucked into a small bed	Quiet, eerie background synths and music continue
01:02-01:04	Eye height. Two shot, mid-shot.	Two girls smiling and pretending to pour the tea.	Quiet, eerie background synths and music continue
01:04-01:06	Eye height. Mid-shot	Third girl also smiling, placing a cup down out of frame.	Quiet, eerie background synths and music continue
01:06-01:08	Low angle. Mid-shot.	The tea set and the three girls sitting around it. Only the bottom halves of the girls can be seen.	Quiet, eerie background synths and music continue
01:08-01:16	Adult eye height. Long-shot.	Girls can be seen in the bottom middle of the frame. The rest of the room is revealed. The three girls all stop what they are doing and turn to stare at a point just out of frame towards the camera.	Starts with a synth stinger. Background music becomes more uneasy sounding, more echoes and a different tone. A breathy, wind sound effect can also be heard.
01:16-01:19	Low angle. Mid-shot.	The girls all turn to look out of frame to the left, towards the windows.	More uneasy sounding music continues.
01:19-01:21	Mid shot. Dolly zoom in on windows.	Three windows centre frame. Zooming in on them. Windows are dirty, can’t really see through them.	A slight boom in the music at the start of the shot. Uneasy sounding music continues.
01:21-01:22	Low angle. Mid-shot.	The girls begin to rise out of frame as they slowly stand up, still watching the window.	Uneasy sounding music continues.
01:22-01:23	Low angle. Previous shot but zoomed. Medium close up.	Zoomed in from previous shot. Two girls still rising to stand.	Uneasy sounding music continues.
01:23-01:25	Low angle. Medium close up. Shallow focus.	The bottom of one of the girl’s dress and her feet as she stands up.	Uneasy sounding music continues.
1:25-1:27	Medium close up. Shallow focus. Hip height.	The same girl’s side as she stands. Her hand holding a china cup can be seen. She drops it out of frame.	Uneasy sounding music continues.
01:27-01:28	Low angle. Medium close up. Shallow focus.	The same girl’s shoes again. The cup falls into frame and smashes on the rug. The girl begins to turn and she steps over the shattered cup.	Clash of the cup smashing. Uneasy sounding music continues.
01:28-01:30	Low angle. Medium close up. Shallow focus.	China doll lying on floor. Two girl’s feet can be seen stepping over it.	Uneasy sounding music continues.
01:30-01:31	Low angle. Close up. Shallow focus.	Close up on China teapot, girl steps on it and crushes it.	Crash of teacup smashing. Uneasy sounding music continues.
01:31-01:34	Low angle. Medium close up. Shallow focus.	China doll on floor. Girl steps on it and smashes its head.	Echoing smash of doll’s head. Uneasy sounding music continues.
01:34-01:39	Eye height. Medium long shot. Dolly tracking backwards.	All three girls centre frame walking towards the camera. Frame of window appears at the sides of the shot as the camera tracks backwards. The girls go up a step and their heads go out of frame.	Uneasy sounding music continues.
01:39-01:43	Eye height. Medium long shot. Slow pan up as girls step up.	The girls step up a step in sync towards the three open windows centre frame. In sync they reach for the handles.	Uneasy sounding music continues.
01:43-01:46	Eye height. Medium close up.	A girl’s hand reaches for the window handle in shot, and pulls it downwards, unlocking the window. The girl’s arm can be seen pushing the window open by the handle.	Echoing clicks of the window being opened. Uneasy sounding music continues.
01:46-01:58	Eye height. Medium long shot. Same as shot previous to last. Slow dolly zoom backwards.	Three girls at windows. All step up onto the window frames in sync. They all jump forward out the windows.	Uneasy music continues then comes to a peak as they jump with a build-up of sound. Once they have jumped there are the screams of a woman.
01:58-02:01	Low angle. Close up, shallow focus. Slow zooming outwards.	The face of one of the china dolls.	The scream continues into “My babies”. A quiet humming or whirring of sound continues.
02:01-02:05	Long shot of room. Dolly zooming backwards slowly.	The room with the open windows can be seen. In the far right of the frame the very side of a figure in a black veil is revealed in the foreground by the zoom. Fades to white clouds.	Humming of sound continues. Another shriek from the woman.

Analysis of Findings

• None of the shots feature the protagonist of the film, only the three first victims and a glimpse of the antagonist.
• There was medium speed cutting rate, with each shot being around 2-3 seconds on average. There were some exceptions at key points in sequence, such as the shot where the girls turn to see the antagonist out of frame and the shot where they jump out of the windows. The cutting rate remains pretty much constant throughout the sequence.
• The camera was still in almost every shot, and the in shots with camera movement this movement was very slow. This kept a slow, steady pace that reflected the chimes of the background music.
• There were many cases where the framing was used to emphasise the similarities of the three girls. Many shots included all three of them at an equal spacing across the screen. Of particular interest was the shot of the three girls at the three windows. Their silhouettes against the light was jarring and contributed to the creepy, tense atmosphere.
• All the cuts were regular snapping cut, with the exception of the start and end of the filmed section of this sequence, where a fade was used in both cases. This contributed to the slow, soft feel of the sequence, gradually introducing and moving on from the scene.

I believe this sequence has been incredibly useful to analyse because its style is incredibly similar to the style we are hoping to create for our own opening. I will be taking elements from this into account when planning our own shots, significantly the low cutting rate, dark grimy colours and strong visual imagery (such as the three children at the three windows).

• Our project will either be a period piece with appropriate costume and atmosphere, or take place in a more modern context.
• It will likely be set in a decrepit church and have a female protagonist

• The opening will begin with the protagonist entering the church cautiously, but with a certain amount of purpose. She carries a piece of paper torn from a book which will either have be covered in obsessive writings that are comparable to John Doe's diary, shown in the Seven (Fincher, 1995) title sequence, or alternatively, the paper will be torn from a book based on dark magic that has the the associated symbols on it.
• She will make her through the church pews and sit a few rows from the front, next to the aisle. She starts to read from the paper, potentially tracing the cult symbols with her hand. This may be in attempt to summon a ghost or spirit, or resurrect a friend or family member who died in the church. If the latter is accurate, then the protagonist is being punished for using dark magic by the summoning of an evil spirit to enact justice. As she reads, her hair begins to rise into the air as if it's floating and and after holding on the shot for suspense, her head will be smashed into the pew in front. We then have the opportunity to use prosthetics as a pro-filmic effect to depict her wound. She is thrown into the aisle and dragged towards the altar. At this point we may use intercutting in the same way we did with the title in our Wilderness piece to end the opening. Ending the opening here would set up a core plot focused on the creation of a myth based on the death of the girl that inspires a group of people to look into it
• The protagonist picks herself up from the floor after being dragged and runs towards the church doors in a bid to escape. As she reaches them them, they swing shut in front of her and lock. The ensuing action is shot from outside the church. The camera is focused on the door while the protagonist shakes it helplessly from inside, and the sound of the ghost attacking her can be heard until the door stops shaking. This creates enigma as the fate of the woman and her death is left open to the audiences imagination. Again the extract could end here or the shot of the door could be sustained and the lighting could change to denote the passing of time. Depending on the time period either police lights will be visible, or the flash-lights of old-fashioned investigators will land on the door before the cut to the title. With this ending to the opening, the film the movie itself will be focused on the criminal  investigation of the murder of the girl and the potential haunting and descent into madness of the investigators as they attempt to discover the secret behind the case.

After showing our Wilderness Woods film short to the rest of the class they provided us with answers to two questions:

1. What techniques were effective?
2. Which techniques could be improved? 

Effective Techniques

The group stated that the following techniques were effective and why they were effective:

• The tracking shot that revealed the protagonist. The slow movement provided tension and was visually pleasing as it added a dynamic aspect to the shot.
• The movement of the leaves in the close up of the phone on the ground. They gave the shot a more mysterious aspect and helped to seal the revelation of the phone on the ground.
• The inter-cutting of the protagonist looking into the woods and running through them. It gave a release to the built up tension and with the synchronised sound effects gave a shock to the audience.
• The use of the rule of thirds with the close up of the protagonist's face and the tree stump on the hill he walks past. This gave a uniformity to the shots and made the sequence seem more professional.
• The colour grading in one of the close up shots. The slow drain from the normal colour to the green colour gave a sense of uneasiness to the shot.

Techniques to be improved

The group also mentioned some techniques that were either not present or that could have been done more effectively:

• There was no diegetic sound in the piece. It would have felt more real if the sound of the leaves the protagonist is walking through could be heard.
• Some moments where the focus is pulled wrong. This was down to the auto-focus system on the camera finding a target in the background and pulling the focus to it mid-shot. To avoid this in our final opening sequence we will be using manual focus for all the shots and designating points of focus to be pulled to throughout the shots.

How can we use this information in our next filming task? 

• We will attempt to include a tracking shot as this worked very well in our Wilderness Woods video.
• We will also apply the rule of thirds where applicable to give our footage a professional look.
• We will colour grade every shot, it provides a much cleaner look to footage when used correctly and helps to up the apparent production value.
• We will use manual focus for every shot and pull the focus more carefully.
• We will make use of an external microphone and boom pole for our final piece to provide clear, high quality diegetic sound.

 

Location

Our intention is to create a sequence with a slightly gothic, and certainly period atmosphere. For this we have chosen a few possible locations:

• A run down local church in the day
• A field at twilight/at the golden hour
• A spooky house or overgrown garden at night

So far our favorite possible location is the church, and we have already begun looking for possible locations and creating draft emails to send to owners. We wish to use electric lighting and a fog machine to help create the gothic atmosphere, so we are trying to keep our search narrowed to locations with power for the time being.

• Our ideal location so far is St. Thomas' church in Capel. It is local and has a very creepy and run down atmosphere.
• The church is owned by a conservation trust and has a section on their website dedicated to filming in their churches, however they quote large prices for TV and Film companies so we are proceeding with the knowledge that this church may not be a viable option and may just serve as a basis for the type of location we would like.
• We are also taking into consideration the fact that filming a horror sequence in a church, especially if it is a working church, may not be a possibility for us as we are no-budget film makers. We are trying to adapt our plot concept to the other locations stated above as backups.

Costumes and Props

We would like to set our opening in the past to give it a more authentic look. Our ideal time period is the late 19th century as we feel this will help contribute to the gothic feel of the sequence. We figured that if we are able to use our ideal location that will already cut out the majority of modern objects and sights that will ruin this atmosphere, so to seal the look all we need to do is find appropriate costumes and props for the era. Ideally these will consist of:

• A plain cream/white Victorian style dress for the protagonist.
• A Victorian style neck choker/Mourning Choker necklace for the protagonist.
• A period style pen/quill or pencil.
• An A5 sheet of worn, poorly kept paper with writing on both sides going horizontally and layered on top going vertically. This will be used by the protagonist as she sits in the church.
• A traditional style sepia portrait printout of a possible family member, used to suggest she is at the church to visit someone who has died.

Acquiring the props will be easy as they are items that we can make ourselves. The costume pieces however may prove to be an area we need to compromise on. Thankfully I know of a couple of people that we may be able to borrow or rent these costumes from so we have a starting point of where to look.

Visual Effects 

There are a number of pro-filmic effects that we intend to use to show the paranormal presence in our opening:

•  An unknown force knocking down a candle stick on the front altar. This shot will have the background blown out of focus, instead focusing on the protagonist. The candle will be in the blown out area, allowing us to have fishing wire attached to it to pull it over with without it being visible on screen. The focus will be pulled to the background as soon as it has fallen, sealing the protagonist's reaction to it.
• The paranormal presence pulling strands of the protagonist's hair backwards, small clumps at a time. Again we would like to try and create this effect using fishing wire attached to the clumps of hair. We will then use after effects to mask out the area the wire is visible in if it shows up on camera, and replace that area with a clean slate which we will film at the same time. 
• Blood on the protagonist's head after having it smashed into the pew in front. We will use fake blood to create this effect, working it into the hairline of the actor to obscure where the gash should be so that we don't have to spend a long time creating a realistic cut wound. 
• The protagonist being dragged down the aisle by the paranormal force. For this we intent to place the actor on a small skateboard and drag/push them down the aisle. The camera will be at a high angle to hide the gap between the actor and the floor and the actor's performance in her reaction to the pulling should hopefully seal the effect and make it appear real.

In addition to these effects we intend to use some key pieces of kit to help give our opening the appearance of a moderate production value. These include:

• A fog machine to soften the tones of the building and help give a HDR look to our footage. This should also create some impressive light streaks from the windows if the weather is bright enough.
• Multiple clamp lights to help bring out the actor from their surroundings and encourage the audience to focus on them.
• A camera slider to give some subtle motion to some of our still shots to make them more dynamic.
• An external microphone and boom to pick up high quality audio so that we can include the diegetic sounds we record.
• A reflector or bounce board to make sure there is a moderately even light tone on the actor's face and to help avoid harsh shadowy areas.

In class, we had a group discussion of the following:

• Research and Findings from our Analysis of a horror clip - We discussed our horror clip openings we all did. For Mia and Harry's opening clip, they both had a stereotypical female protagonist which is something we decided we would like to avoid in ours. We are not ruling out having a female protagonist, we decided that we do not want a stereotypical one (e.g. a female who is scared, the one who needs saving etc.) In Kurt's film opening, he said how the antagonist was unclear which led us to discuss if we liked the concept of an unclear antagonist due to us wanting to do a opening sequence on paranormal / supernatural horror.
• Location - We discussing good locations where we could base our opening sequence where we came up with: Church, field, village hall, garden, house that could be made to look haunted. We discussed the possibilities and how accessible these places would be. For example, a garden and a field would be an easily accessible place to film however it can be unreliable due to weather.
• Audience Pleasure - We discussed the idea of causing the audience to feel uneasy throughout our opening sequence and think we could achieve this by the duration of shots and the non diegetic and diegetic sound that will put in during post production and the actual filming.  We also discussed about putting a jump scare in our opening which we think would be good to put in at the end or near the end of the opening.
• Antagonist Montage - We were asked to come up with how we would montage an antagonist into the opening sequence without the use of sound. We thought of; items moving around mysteriously; shadows; silhouettes; fog/mist.



Spider Diagrams presenting our discussions from class