The actors that feature in this film are:
Tom Hazel who plays the main hero (yet to have his name revealed to the audience).
Sam Catto who plays the infected man in blue.
James Page who plays monster fodder (corpse) and infected at front door.
Myself who plays the infected man in grey.
Other corpses in street were played by neighbours of Sam Catto's.
When it came to editing my piece together I started out with around 60 different camera shots i had taken lasting 5 minutes long in total which I had to go through and pick out the best and most effective shots to narrow down to the required 2 minutes. I enjoyed editing my footage and got carried away so much that I forgot to take pictures or record me editing which is frustrating when it comes to uploading what i have done. I am however very pleased with my final product and think that I have made an effective piece.
When filming and editing I kept in mind to have a variety of long shots and short shots to help break the clip up and make it flow better and make the scenes visually more pleasing. The opening starts straight in the action, throwing the audience in the deep end so to speak. The hero is ambushed by 2 shady looking characters that try to tackle him to the ground, making feral like noises. I started up my typical horror music to abide by horror film conventions and immediately cut this to a pan/tracking shot of them running round the corner, during this chase scene I mixed things up shot wise to build up the tension and put emphasys on speed and trying to escape. My favourite shot that I used had to of been when Sam runs into the camera then immediately out of it just after this scene as if there was no camera there at all, considering the pace we were running at pulling this particular shot off took a couple of attempts but was well worth it looking at it now. I tried to keep the faces of the infected men as hidden and blurred as possbile to keep the audience intrigued at the beginning as to what exactly was happening, it keeps the audience on their toes and makes them question what they are seeing making them interact with the text which is what I had intended to make them do. Again i used an arial shot which worked particularly well at blurring everyone that ran past it adding to its mystery followed straight after by a corpse on the ground, this is another enigma code I have added to make the audience think who is he and what happened to him, leading to the obvious assumption that that is what will happen to our hero if they catch him. The fact that there is a corpse out in the open also shows that this is not an every day setting our character is in as people do not just get murdered and left where ever, it helps to reinforce the audiences thoughts that the men that ambushed our main character are not just thugs and that they are more primal than that. I then used a POV shot of one of the infected to show how they percieve things, giving the audience an insight into their minds so to speak where the heavy breathing and quick flash cuts reinforce to the audience that there is something wrong with the men. Tom opens the door to what we presume is his home ovbiously leaving the infected behind him time to catch up, tom turns around and drop kicks the infected to push them back and tries to close the door, there is then a close up as the other infected puts his arm in the way to block it. Tom panics andpushes himself off the door, pushing the infected back for a split second and giving Tom extra time to get ahead where Tom shuts them into the room. The shots i have used here have been simple but effective, cutting the camera to the side to get a clearer view from Toms perspective, getting up close and personal with the zombies so to speak, this gievs the audience the effect that they are there with him and really helps to raise tension. Tom tries to find a way of escaping but all the exits are either locked or he is cut off from, here i used a event pan/crop option on this piece of footage to give this panning zoom on the door as he tries to open it. I used another typical horror convention of trying to make the audience jump with another infected man coming to the door as Tom tries to escape out of it, making him panic and run upstairs. Shots like this are typically used to give the audience a sudden burst of fear, get their hearts racing and again making them respond to what they see making them more active in their viewing. Tom runs upstairs into his room where he seems to be searching for something, this makes the audience question what it is hes trying to find and again makes them interact more with what they are watching. Our questions are soon answered as Tom finds his gun and aims at the door, the music starts to reach its climax as the scene becomes tenser, I intended here for the audience to feel a sigh of relief that he can now turn the tables on his attackers but at the same time make the audience worry and panic because they must be about to attack him at any moment and designed it so that the music helped to add to this panic. This is another one of my favourite shots where the camera goes into a first person view of him holding and aiming the gun at the door, the door slowly opens when we finally clearly see who has been attacking our hero, we are revealed who they are at the same time, here I intended for the audience to feel the same emotions as Tom by putting them into his shoes. We now want to see if he makes it out alive, the camera cuts to a mid shot of Tom trying to shoot the infected but he has no bullets, this immidately takes out any feelings that he was safe as the gun is now useless, Tom again panics with the audience making them emphasise with him. The infected then throw him onto the bed where they proceed to eat him, the audiences fears come to life here were the complete opposite happens than they wanted, a dream fade out effect comes in confusing the audience as to what is happening but then Tom wakes up panting after having a nightmare where once again the audience are relieved that he is okay, there is then a pan of the street outside littered with dead bodies with a voice over of the character, 'This is my life, always running, never knowing when one of those things is going to find me' this voice over is used to tell the audience that yes it was a dream but it is his reality in the film and effectively is an introduction to the character without obviously saying 'hi i am...' the name of the film then comes up at the bottom of the pan and there is a fade out.
I think that this film opening does a very good job of setting up a relationship between the audience and the main character, it makes them worry about his safety even though they know nothing about him. It uses many typical horror film conventions to make it work, the use of dark/sinister lighting throughout, the use of a sinister and thrilling soundtrack that reaches its creshendo as the story reach its own and that the editing matched this pace of music. There is monster fodder shown in the form of many corpses littered through the streets and a close up on a corpse in the same alleyway the hero gets attacked in. The use of the alleyway and the culdesack is an isolated location making the chance of help arriving very slim, adding to the audiences fears for his safety. The use of the voice over tells the audience that this is the protagonists normallity and that he is used to trying to survive making him an admirable character.
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