Our film opening (in reference to mark scheme and other films)

We have filmed most of the footage for our Western and horror based film opening, involving a character being attacked by zombies and rescued by another. To do this well we looked at film openings in these genres and looked at the construction section of our mark scheme so we know what we had to include:

To create a believable location for our zombie apocalypse setting, we added to the mise-en-scene. We chose to film it on the road by our school as it was easily accessible to everyone and gave us an urban setting with wide open spaces (school field) as is similarly seen in Western films. The location and mise-en-scene of John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’ was influential to us, as it begins with an incredibly wide and barren landscape with an unknown threat within it. This influenced us at the start of our film opening, using long shots of our main character in the road before switching to close ups. ‘The Thing’ was influenced by Westerns (as written about in this article) in its imagery and directorial style, though it is a horror-alien film, similar to ours. 

““The Thing” is a remake of another Howard Hawks film, and while it may take place in the arctic, and may have a villain of a shape-shifting alien, it’s following once again the “Rio Bravo” structure. Tough men in a small place defending themselves from an obviously evil outside force. They may have technology at their disposal, but they use dynamite and fire as their main weapons. It’s tough and gritty in certain ways. And, knowing Carpenter, most likely influenced by the cowboys”

'The Thing' - opening location and mise en scene

We made and printed out zombie warning posters to put in the mise-en-scene to foreshadow the threat of the film before the zombies are revealed. This was an attempt the make the atmosphere more unsettling, as a paranormal threat in a familiar setting such as the school would be more unnerving and closely based in reality.

We varied between holding the camera steady and moving with it fast, depending on the action of the character. The more shaky effect as the Little Guy runs at the beginning should emphasise his need to escape the zombies quickly. We also used static shots when filming the range of close ups of the zombies at varying lengths to highlight the Western technical influence, inspired by stylised Spaghetti Westerns such as Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy. We mainly tried to stay as close to the storyboard as possible to so we would get the shots that we needed to edit it together smoothly and stick to the narrative beginning.

Closeups on poster for 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly'

The most significant instance of framing the shots was when the two zombies begin to slowly move towards the Little Guy’s unconscious body because a variety of close ups on the characters had been building up to the wider shot. As the scene is based on horror style Western showdowns between two characters, the symmetry of the shot was important. Placing the Little Guy in the middle of the shot between the two zombies at the edge of the image showed that the LG is what both were aiming for.

When we have got the rest of the footage, we will focus on editing, adding typography and matching the images to music to add to the horror-Western theme.