Main Task - Costumes

For the female character I wanted the costumes to be fashionable by today’s standard, but not too far from what was worn in the Eighties decade.  After researching into what sort of trends were popular during this period, I decided to use dull colours, but shapes and styles that represented this era the best. As you can see below.

Purple bandanna, Khaki Chinos, Black Blazer Jacket, Black T - Shirt and Light Brown Loafers

Dark Navy

For the male character I wanted his costume to be quite dark and intimidating. I also wanted him to wear a hooded top because I wanted him to hide his face.

Black Hooded Top and Dark Navy Blue Jeans

  

Main Task - Crew

Our production crew was made up of Safina Rashid and Saman Ali and including me, all three of us had different roles in order to complete the film:

Safina Rashid

Safina was the director and camera woman. She was good with the camera; she knew which camera angles she wanted to use. She also knew how to position the camera and she was creative. Also she took the responsibility to find new replacement actors for our film, her perseverance paid off. When we started to edit the film Safina did most of it as she enjoyed this, I gave her ideas where we could add effects. When we found out we had to make a piece of music to go with the film opening, we decided to use Garage Band. We mixed and matched sounds to get the right effect that would go with the film. Every time we edited Safina was always there to go over and check for any errors, we would often stay after school to try to finish editing the film. All in all she was a big help with the camera and with the editing.

Aabidah Ali - me

I tried to help with casting even though it became laborious. I was present when we would shoot the scenes, as I was in charge in bringing the equipment; also I contributed in directing and especially in choreography. I liked getting involved and showing the actors how they should play the characters, and what there body language should say. I was also in charge of the costumes, it was important that the clothes represented the characters appropriately. I liked doing the editing because it was for longer this time and we got to see different effects that we could use. Which I thought was a good thing, as we had a wider range of effects to choose from and if it went with the scene we kept it, if it didn’t we got rid of it.

Saman Ali

Unfortunately Saman was unable to participate in the production because of her timetable. She would have lessons when we would have frees. However, when she was around to help in the filming she did open us to different ideas in how to shoot each scene. Saman was present when we were shooting the first playground scenes, but because of some lighting and voices in the background we had to do these shots again. She also made an effort to meet us at one point when we were editing the film to input ideas.

Main Task - Casting

In our horror film there are two central characters; one is Katie stalked by an unknown shadow. The second is Dr Macbeth a psychiatrist that tries to help Katie with her fears. Except in our 2 minute film opening, both of these characters are not present. This is because we decided to open the narrative with an unexplained scene, which really belongs in the mid point of the film. We want the audience watch a puzzling climax at the opening, so they would feel like watching the rest of the film. The opening clip shows Katie’s mother and her murderer, further along into the film the mystery behind this murder will be unravelled by Katie.

We had so many problems with casting people for these two roles, it was often frustrating because we had to change our actors many times, before we actually came across two actors that stuck with us till the final piece. The original actor to play the male character was Furhaad Ahmed he agreed to act in our production; but at the very last minute he was unable to do the acting because of his own production and because he refused to come after school to do the filming. After Furhaad turned us down we decided to ask other males if they could act in our film, most refused because they felt camera shy and they couldn’t act. Some were unable partake due to there schedules clashing with our free time and vice versa. In the end to find a replacement, we then got ideas of getting a girl to just dress up as a boy seeing as the character’s face would be covered up anyway, we didn’t think it was that important if we did get a boy. But in the end we decided not to follow through with this idea because the viewers may figure out that we used a girl to play a male character, and we wanted to create authenticity. Eventually we got someone to play the male character in our film, he was reliable, his schedule matched ours and he was willing to come after school as well.

But unfortunately this time the female actress Sabah Sarwar decided to back out because of her job clashing with our filming schedule, but replacing her was easy because another female confirmed before the casting of this film that she would be happy to help and act if need be.

Actors In Our Film

Nadia Hafiz

The actress playing the role of Katie’s mother is Nadia Hafiz. We chose Nadia because she is talented; she also has past experience due to a grade A in GCSE drama. She was consistently professional, originally when casting there were many who had difficulty keeping a straight face, wasting more time doing the shots over and over again. This was draining the cameras battery, it was frustrating when they would just keep laughing and give up trying to be serious. However when we did the shots with Nadia she followed my direction perfectly, and acted with passion. She didn’t laugh once, she was professional throughout and she gave some input on how we could make each shot better, which was helpful. There was only one problem we had, which occurred in the early shots. Nadia had trouble with trying to keep a scared and tired expression. But we worked with her off the camera showing her examples and explaining how we wanted her to do her facial expression. After practising with her off camera, she finally understood the emotion behind the facial expression required. Nadia Hafiz was hardworking, hands on actress we had the pleasure to work with.

Memz Karakus

The actor playing the male character is Memz Karakus. He was patient and focused when I was choreographing his movements and how we wanted him to approach the victim. In the opening scene, you don’t really see Memz’s character for long but through out the movie his character plays a vital role. We wanted Memz to hide his face and only show his eyes to show the audience that he is the murderer. Also we didn’t want to expose his identity too soon. Memz understood his characters role and how to play it. I was pleased with his acting seeing as this was his first time in doing an acting role.

Actor's that were picked originally

Sabah Sarwar

Sabah Sarwar was originally chosen to play the character of Katie’s mother in the beginning of our production. With Sabah we did half of our camera shots with her and they turned out well, even though Sabah has had no previous experience in acting. The best shot that really came out well was, when we needed a shot of her face, her facial expressions and her body language were good because you knew she was scared. And because she actually was tired of all the running, this made the shot more convincing; this shot could have been great if we could have continued working with her. Unfortunately we were unable to complete her shots because she would forget to wear the characters costume we agreed on, the male actor wouldn’t turn up to do his shots with her and the she had to back out of the production because her job was clashing with our filming schedule.

Furhaad Ahmed

Furhaad Ahmed was chosen to play the role of the mysterious murderer originally. The only good thing that came out of his leaving the production was we didn’t lose any work with him as we didn’t do any filming with him. However it was a nightmare to replace him. Furhaad left the production due to our filming schedules clashing and he himself also had to get his own production filmed as well. Fortunately for us we did find a replacement that was available and suitable for the role.



In the end the cast that we did film with for our production couldn’t have been better, they were understanding and patient with us when we would explain or ask them to redo a certain shot. Both individuals worked hard in our film to complete it. in the future for actors not to back out in the last minute, me and Safina decided to make sure they will be free and nothing will come in the way for them to leave.

Main Task - Location

We needed a location with forestry, woodland area with lots of trees and the location had to be fairly big. We needed an area which also had a great deal of shrubbery rather than just open space. We looked over a few locations; the first location was Manzil way Park it had tall trees, however they are spaced wide apart, rather than giving the feeling of crowding. Although the park has a play area, again the problem was that in the background, the area back’s out onto a main road, where people would often walk past, it didn’t have a secluded feel.

The second location we looked at was South Park which is next door to our school; this was a good advantage for us. We loved the big open spaces, this also had tall trees, which were not too far apart, and enclosed areas along the side. As well as isolated shrubbery along the side, which are perfect for our Mise-en-scene.

The third location we looked at was a field behind the Headington Rowland pharmacy, we also liked this location but it didn’t have a proper park and not enough trees. However it did have a woodland effect and it was a big space. However the problem was one of our actors refused to come down to the area.

The last location we looked at was Angel and Greyhound Meadows; this was exactly what we were looking for. It had a park with a big open space and lots of tree, and the play area, was fenced up, in the middle of the grounds. Further it was completely isolated, and the area even before filming had a tense, ominous feeling, particularly when it was empty. But this time both of our actors refused to come as far as St Clements to film.

Out of these locations we decided to go for South Park, it was the second best in what we were looking for and plus it had a fallen tree that we decided to use in our film as a prop. It was convenient for everyone to meet up and to carry filming gear to. We were also thinking of doing a shot of the girl coming out of Brookes University showing her as happy like nothing can go wrong and then show her running through the park scared and panicky. Initially we thought by doing this as an opening, the audience will want to know what happened to her and why is she running but we decided to cut that out and just stick to the panic stricken scene in the park.

The trees in South Park are ultimately why we chose the area for filming. Our main scene is of the girl running through the trees scared. By doing this we wanted to give a threatening forest effect. The park had different areas with just patches of trees close together we picked the patch that was most effective for our scene. We used different areas in the park but we made sure that they followed through with one another.

For the park scene we did intend to use small children playing so as to create a sense of security for the viewer, but we decided to change that and lead the opening with an abandoned and haunting feel.

Main Task - Title of the Film

We decided to call our film Paranoia. We thought that this name fitted well with our story. We did have several other similar names but we decided to go with this name because it was short and snappy. We used the colour red as it signifies danger and blood which is another way we wanted to show the audience that this was a horror film. We chose this font because out of all the different fonts this one looked as if it represented the genre, it has a sharp effect like a knife or dagger. We also chose to do it behind a black background so the title of the movie stood out and created an ominous feel.

Main Task - Equipment

For our horror film opening we will be using a range of different types of equipment, it will be the same equipment we used for our preliminary task. Which by now we have a proper understanding of how to use the equipment correctly and safely without damaging it.

We used a Sony hand camera which the school gave to us to borrow. The Sony camera was compact and efficient for us to take with us to our filming locations; it was a good piece of equipment to use with all the different setting. The 60x optical zoom came in handy for when we did close up shots. A few problems we had with the camera was that no matter how long we charged it, the battery did go low after only 1 hour which was frustrating when we were doing crucial shots. Another problem was that the camera would freeze frequently causing our shots we took to not save, which meant we would have to let the battery drain for us to then charge again. Other than these problems the Sony camera was a useful piece of equipment we enjoyed using.

With the Sony camera we also used a Sony tripod. This was a brilliant piece of equipment because when we needed to do steady shots the tripod aided in making our film look professional. The tripod was useful overall because it allowed us in turning the camera in different angles, as well as different directions we could also adjust the height of the camera which was also convenient for us to travel with it.

After the filming was finished we had to upload our shots to the Mac laptop but we had trouble getting hold of a USB cable, due to the school not having a spare. Fortunately I had my own USB cables and managed to find one that matched the Sony hand camera. We used my USB cable until the school could give us one.

These pieces of equipment helped us to complete our filming to the best quality.