Effictiveness of the pre-production

Our pre-production was very useful as it allowed us to have a well planned and time effective shooting day, due to a thorough organization.

In my opinion the organization which helped us the most was our shot list as it helped us establish the best angles in which to achieve the “spooky” atmosphere we wanted. It also helped us asses the best shots in which to show of our skills. Furthermore the props and costume list helped us to be prepared and not delay shooting to find what we needed as we already had the props to hand on set.

I would say one of our weaknesses was not anticipating the smell which the meat would exude, as it would have been more pleasant to have a mask or a perfume spray to cover it up.
This experience of film making was very beneficial as it opened my eyes to all the planning which is needed. It also taught me that it is good to have a high-quality crew who you get on with around you as it is useful to have people on the same page as you who understand the aim of what you are trying to achieve.

Our shooting Schedule

9:00- Meet in the edit suit to gather our group for the day, call our location and confirm the time in which we where coming and ensure that we had gathered all of the props which we would need that day.

9:30- Left to travel to the location.

10:00-10:30- arrive at location to shoot the external and internal of the butchers, and also aquire some shots of the meat which was supplied by the butchers.

12:00- Return to school to shoot the main proportion of our sequence in the studio.

1:30- Break from filming for lunch.

2:00- Return to filming.

5:00- Finish filming and clean up the studio and pack away camera equipment.

The shooting schedule was important as it was vital to know when we were going to our location, for example as there was only a certain time in which we could do our filming as so not to disturb the distributing of their products to customers. It also helped us keep on time for all of our shooting so that we finished on time.

We also had a shot list:

Pan/Tracking shot of the interior of the butchers.
Medium close up of meat hanging (in post production put on titles)
Medium shot canted angle of hands picking up box
Wide shot of door and man entering the frame with the box in his hands
Extreme close up of bloody hand opening the door. The handle is left bloody.
Medium close up on hands holding box of meat whilst walking
Wide shot of meat being tipped onto dirty work top.
Wide shot of other worktop with rusty knives on.
Close up of hand picking up rusty knife
Medium close up from high angle of rusty knife and dirty hand cutting meat on work top.
Blood is dripping off the worktop, medium/wide of floor with blood spilling out a title.
Close up of dirty boot walking across and messing up the title, follow feet, and pan up the body to the hands injecting the meat.
Side shot close up of meat being injected by dirty syringe and hand
Wide shot of hand throwing the syringe backwards
Wide Shot of the syringe landing on a worktop with lots of other syringes, blood, knives.
Cut to medium close up of the man packaging the meat (on the bottom right hand side of the box is a labelled saying “Farm Fresh” “Best Quality Organic Meat”)
Close up of the cardboard box being closed, and another title is seen on the box
Medium shot of him picking up the box
Side wide shot of the van, man is seen walking into frame and chucking the meat into the back of the van.
Wide shot of the back of the van, he closes the door, and another title is seen on the door
Extremely wide shot of the van driving off into the distance for a long time
Fade out to a close up shot of the packaged meat on a shelf
Zoom out to see there is loads of meat like it. (seeing the logo)

However, on shooting day we didnt stick exactly to this we more used it as guideline to what we wanted to achieve.

Casting

The character which we need to cast for are thriller was a man, as men in the media are portrayed more as the villain although in real life this is not always the case. We furthermore exploited this stereotype of the tall evil masculine male, by using a teacher from our school who previously has had experience in acting and also worked in butchery for a while and therefore had the skills to handle knives and chop up meat. One of the main focuses of our thriller was our characters hands and how he so gruesomely massacred the meat. Our actor had very big hands emphasizing his masculinity, in contrast to if he had small delicate hand he would not be seen as very powerful and dangerous which is how we wanted our character to be been.

Location

I organised the location of a film as it was vital to the appearance you want to achieve. The majority of are thriller was shot in a studio which was provided by our school. We accomplished a mysterious and sinister atmosphere by having a small dark room which had minimal – dim lighting and muddy blood stained walls. The room had a arrangement of props such as the box full of meat, a clever and other parts of animal for example piigs heart and lungs.
We also needed the exterior of a butchers shop and the inside of a walk in freezer so we acquired a location in Godalming which had all of these things. This location was perfect as it had a back entrance for our main character to walk through, which supports his mysterious nature. The inside of the abattoir was larger but appeared smaller than it was due the hanging meat around the room.

Props and Costumes

• Meat
• Syringes
• Rusty knifes
- Kitchen knife
- Pocket knife
• Cardboard Box
• Fake blood
• Cleaver
• Apron covered in blood stains
• Pair of big black boots
• Dirty work top- wooden
• White van

Target Audience

A target audience is a primary group of people that something is aimed at appealing to. A target audience can be people of a certain age group, gender, marital status.

Our thriller's target audience is between the ages of 18 - 40. This is because of the film being lurid and horrible. Although it would be aimed at a middle aged audience as well, the teenage age group would be the thrillers main audience as the teenage age group would be interested in the horror factor of the thriller. Furthermore the fact that it could apply to them, as a food scare is quite a universal problem. This is also how an older generation can relate to the movie as a there are constantly concerns in the media of food scares e.g. salmonella, foot and mouth and bird flu. This gives this phenomenon a twist as the meat farmer is deliberately trying to infect the meat as opposed to it being a virus “accidentally” passed through meat. In addition there is not a restriction on which gender this movie is aimed to as it can apply to all meat eaters. However, it could appeal more toward men as it is full of gore, arteries and blood.

Account of Research

When researching for food scares we found that this was a serious problem. This was beneficial to our thriller idea as it helped us understand that there would be a wide audience for our thriller due to it being a universal problem. We found images such as this which emphasize the problems with meat diseases.

We also had some ideas for our credits in the title sequence as we thought it would add to the gore having the credits dripping with blood. Using paint we made a mock up of what this would look like.

We also made a design for the company “Farm fresh best quality organic meat”. We wanted to put this design onto the box which is full of the poisoned meat helping the audience to make the connection that this butcher is corrupt and out to inflict pain on others. We made this design in paint using an image from the internet and word art, to create the writing. We then put these two images together to compose the logo: