Brief

Preliminary task:

The preliminary exercise was a continuity exercise which involved filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom they exchange dialogue. The preliminary task should demonstrate match-on-action, shot-reverse-shot and the 180-degree rule. and be no longer than a minute.

We did a short video of one classmate entering a room sitting down to talk to her friends which then turns into an argument before one of them stands up and storms away.

Main task:

The main task was to create to titles and the opening of a new fiction film, the genre was your choosing which should last a maximum of 2 minutes.

I chose to work with Sam and Gina and we all collectively decided that we wanted to make a horror film as it was all our preferred genre. It took quite a while to decide what the initial story line and subject of our film would be. We chose to go with the sub-genre of 'paranormal horror' this was because we decided we were going to incorporate an Ouija board as we found that 'Ouija, 2014' was a big success among teenagers and young adults and it was a similar narrative to what we wanted.

There was a long process in deciding what to name our film but we eventually named it 'Retention'. Retention is the 'continued possession, use, or control of something'. This title foreshadows some of the events that are going to happen in the film whilst not giving away too much of what the film is about.

The opening sequence to the film is only to establish the characters and get the audience's attention without giving away too much of the story line. The opening scene introduces each character and their different mindsets and personalities.

Main task plot: 

Jace is visiting Riley's house because she is having a party. All of their friends are there; Malia, Eli and Mackenzie. Due to Riley only just moving in, they still haven't cleared out the house so Malia suggests they go look in the attic for an old board game. Riley disagrees and said there's no point whereas Jace is eager to find out what's up there. Later on, Jace and Malia venture to the attic meanwhile Riley, Eli and Mackenzie are downstairs being anti-social. Jace finds an Ouija board and the group proceed to try and perform a seance. They start to fill with disbelief when the board doesn't work until suddenly the lights switch off and the board becomes animate and moves by itself.