Pre-Production Evaluation

Pre-Production Evaluation

Script

From the start, I wanted to make a movie that fits within the horror genre, as I find them very interesting and I imagine they would be fun to make. Initially, I was going to make a movie with a totally different plot to the one I ended up making, and I started a script on that. However, it featured many complex dream sequences and would be too ambitious to actually bring to life. I thought about perhaps reworking this original script, but instead scrapped the idea. I then decided to instead make a slasher film. this would be a lot more fun to film, and also a lot easier. However, I still wished to limit myself to a two man cast. Due to this, I was limited for dialogue. I decided to use this as a positive and tried to focus more on expression and body language in my movie. While nobody involved had any acting experience, I believed I could get the reactions and expressions that I wanted. Nonetheless, all of this lead to there only being seven lines of dialogue in the whole film, all said by the same character. This allowed me to also put more focus on action. Due to my film being a slasher, it needed a recognisable yet realistic villain. To play into this, the villain was a large man in black clothes and a balaclava who stays silent and mysterious throughout the film. For the victim in the movie, I cast a friend of mine who is quite young looking, making him seem vulnerable and suited to the part. He also has a very slim frame, and looks like he could be realistically overpowered by the villain. With them cast, I also had to write around them realistically. This meant that for the fight scene towards the end of the film, I wrote for The Intruder to dominate most of the fight before eventually being overthrown. I also wanted to throw a classic slasher trope into my film, so I settled on a character that seemed to be dead, actually being alive. I was worried this would come out as confusing in the film, so I tried to write it in a way where The Intruder could realistically survive his stab wound. In the end, everything came together nicely.

Location

For my film, I only needed one location, that being a large house. This wasn't going to be hard, as I had a friend with a large house who volunteered to have this as the shooting location. To see if it was appropriate, I went and took a look around. Unfortunately, my movie required an upstairs bedroom, and the only upstairs bedroom was very obviously one that belonged to an adult and not a teenager. Due to this, I had to find another location to shoot at. Luckily, another friend of mine volunteered to have his house in the movie, so I went to do a second scout. While I was there doing a location scout, I also checked for any risks and filled out a risk assessment form. This was necessary as I would not be able to shoot in an unsafe location due to the risk of any severe injuries occurring while on set. If i hadn't checked for any risks, then I would potentially be putting myself and my crew in harms way when we came to shoot the short film. Luckily, there turned out to be no real threats. The only potentially dangerous thing that could happen is during the shooting of the scene that takes place on the stairs, but we had measurements in place to make sure nothing could have went wrong, and if it did, harm would be minimal. The location turned out to be suitable, and I had permission from the owner as-well. After having consent forms filled out, everything with the new location was sorted fairly quickly.

Budget Planning

Initially, I wanted to shoot the film on a non-existant budget. This was so that i wouldn't have to go through any hassle and wouldn't have to spend personal money on something I would use once. However, I realised i would need a prop knife, since using a real one was obviously out of the question due to the amount of safety risks. Then, a previously owned balaclava had seemingly gone missing. Due to this, I was forced to purchase a prop knife on Amazon and a balaclava in a ski shop, keeping my money spent still under ten pounds. Both items, while cheap, were still very high quality. The balaclava was something that I was very happy to find for the price, as it looks like a typical burglar mask, which fits into the breaking into homes aspect of my film. Luckily, I already owned a camera, tripod, light and access to editing software so no vastly expensive purchases had to be made. Since my sister allowed me to use her camera, she also allowed me use of her SD card, which was very helpful for keeping a low budget bas they can be very expensive. Keeping track of all the purchases that I made was very important, as it let me remember what I had actually bought and it allowed me to see the total amount of money that I spent. No other pieces of equipment where needed, so I was ready to film.

Storyboard

In order to fully see how my movie would play out, I had to draw up a storyboard. This allowed me to see how things would look on screen and if they would be hard to shoot or not. My drawing is not a strong point, so I was initially worried that my storyboard would come out really unclear. However, by using the description boxes fully to my advantage, everything tuned out fine. The storyboard helped me remember everything to do when shooting, specifically when it came to all the different camera angles and shot types. I personally feel like I may have used too many over the shoulder and close up shot's, but I wanted to keep things quite simple. I would've rather used simpler shots well than attempted a really technical shoot and having it come out sloppy. The storyboard also helped my cast as it was a simple visual presentation of everything that they had to do in the movie. This was useful for when I didn't quite know how to describe to them what I wanted them to do, where I wanted them to stand and much more.