AS Media Studies Horror Film: Amelia

Props

The phone used in our film is the main prop, it is a major part of iconography. At the beginning of our film, we see Amelia pick up her phone but the audience aren't aware that an unknown number is calling her. Later, when Amelia is walking home by herself and the audience see the call from the unknown number. This starts to raise suspicion. The crack on the screen suggests that Amelia is careless and vulnerable.

We got inspiration from the film 'Scream'. In 'Scream', the phone ringing suggests that something bad is about to happen, so we used this idea in our own film. Also in 'Scream', Casey picks up the phone and starts talking to the killer but she doesn't realise that she is about to be killed as she is naive and immature.

To create the fake blood we needed for the trees, we used gelatine for the thickness and red and blue food colouring for the colour. This made the blood look more realistic. It also made our film more unnerving.

Storyboard

Sound

For our horror film, we used sounds from freesounds.com. This website allowed us to use appropriate sounds for our film for free without any copyright issues. The main song we used started out quiet but it was also eery which we thought would be good to set the atmosphere. But as the film goes on, the song gets louder and spookier which creates tension and hints that something is about to happen.

Credits

The credits at the beginning

• Name of production company/companies (always respect people with the money); e.g. "A Big Name Production" - A Sweet Disposition Productions
• Producers - Bella Warren, Laura Brown and Ellie Plummer
• Actors - Ellie Plummer
• Screenplay writer - Bella Warren, Ellie Plummer and Laura Brown
• Film Editor - Ellie Plummer
• Sound Effects - Freesound.com
• Director - Bella Warren

Credits at the end

• The film title - Amelia

Originally we were going to have the film title at the beginning of the two minutes but we decided to change it as we thought it would be more effective having it at the end. The credits at the beginning will appear during the shots of Amelia in the classroom. We decided to place the credits here as those shots are quite long so we thought that the credits would brake it up a bit.

Our preliminary task

Changes to our film

Originally, our film was going to be set in the 80s and about a girl called Amelia who finds her mother dead. For the opening two minutes, we would have showed too much so we decided to completely change our idea and keep it simple so we didn't go over time. That's when we came up with the idea of Amelia finishing school and walking home through the woods but someone is there watching her. We also decided to leave it on a cliffhanger so the audience will not know if Amelia will survive or die.