Planning: Casting

Why is Casting important?

In my opinion, Casting is one of the most important processes in Pre-Production and requires a high amount of care when doing it. Casting involves running auditions from the potential actors, to find the most suitable person for your film. It is important that you find someone who is not shy in front of a camera, someone who will not burst out with laughter when filming, and someone who can create verisimilitude within the production.

To find suitable actors for our production, our group will run short auditions for the potential actors. We will give the actors short scripts to perform, and use these performances to decide whether they will be suitable.


Characters

Our film consists of 4 characters. These characters go camping, showing they are all outdoor,
adventure seeking people. My group and I evaluated the characters in our film, and what type of actor would be suitable for playing the part in our production.

Our first character is Peter. Peter was brought up by a single mother and he never met his dad, causing him to develop a wild nature, and rarely being at home. Peter is seen as the leader of the group, as he is brave and not scared to take risks. He is the loudest of the four friends, which gets him into a lot of trouble.

Elliott is seen as the weaker member of the group. He is two years younger than the rest, often resulting in him being bullied into doing things he doesn't want to do. However, Peter acts as an older brother figure over Elliot and sometimes gets protective over him.

Our third character is unnamed, as he dies early on in the production. This character is used to place the scenes of the other characters in the camp in juxtaposition, as he is running away from the 'Killer'.

Evil Steve is the villain in our production. However, Evil Steve is rarely seen. The film cuts between the group in the woods, and a Point of View from Evil Steve through parallel action.


Actors

This is Stephen, one potential Actor. Stephen gave a strong audition, but unfortunately he cannot look at a camera without laughing.

Another potential actor is Tom. Tom also has the same problem as Stephen,  he is very shy in front of the camera, shown by the crossed arms.

Planning: Location

It is important to have a good location when it comes to horror films because in horror films, most of the locations are secluded to create a sense of insecurity so that there is no escape and that the victim will struggle to get away meaning that the killer can easily single out people to kill and people will not know.

The first location is Bramble side woods and is a wooded area and is very suitable to film because  the location is quite big as  so there will be  more than one specific area where we can film. The large area is possibly the area in which we are going to film because there would be so many different areas to film in case one area isn't good enough. But this location can be quite bad because the main road is quite close to the area meaning we are going to be hearing a lot of cars go by. Also there is a wooded area behind the area near the main road but cars may still be heard but if we go further into the woods, the traffic won't be heard as much therefore we will most probably like to use this location just because of how close it is to where all of our actors live.


Our second location is is going to be in Corby, this is because there is an area that is wooded and would be good for filming in as well. Also Corby isn't too far away meaning that all of the actors will be able to get to Corby.  As you can see from the picture, there is a large area where we are able to film and is secluded as well meaning it would be a good location. But this location isn't very good because there are not many trees around meaning we can't really make the audience feel like it is a secluded location. Also the other bad factor about this area is that the area is a nature trail meaning there are going to be a lot of people there and we may be interrupted.

We have one more location  which is possibly the best one of the three as well which is also in Corby and is a much better location than the other ones because there is not a main road nearby and the area is very large as well meaning that we can film in more than one place. It is quite a secluded location as well meaning that we may not get interrupted when filming as much as we might in the other locations.

Planning: Storyboard and the importance of storyboarding

The importance of storyboarding

Storyboarding is very important in the pre production stages, this is because before the filming actually begins, the storyboard is a very good way to plan for what is going to happen in the film because of how simple the process is but how effective it can be. storyboards also cover a lot of different aspects  such as the shots, the movement, the angles etc. These are really helpful because instead of doing the filming without any planning, it will look quite bad because no thought has gone into it whereas if there is a plan such as the use of storyboards. The whole filming process will be much more easier and the production phase will be effective and done in a quick time as well meaning there will be no time wasted on one scene.