Shooting Script + My Prezi Presentation

I realized during Evaluation that I missed out putting in my Shooting Script and Shot List


The Shooting Schedule will be Tuesday 1st Of May, we will spend all day in the room we booked to get all the hospital shots. Thursday we will get the remaining shots and Friday, after reviewing the footage, will be a day we go out and get anything we missed.


Shot List:
S.1 - Low Long Shot of Hospital Gurney coming down a corridor
S.2 - Low Angle Close Up of Two Nurses walking down a corridor.
S.3 - Long Shot (Slow Zoom) of bleach white corridor
S.4 - MS of Alex sat in corridor
S.5 - Panning shot of hospital bed
S.6 - CU of hand checking drip
S.7 - Panning shot of Jean
S.8 - CU of bloody hand on a window
S.9 - CU of phone off the hook
S.10 - MS of Alex barricading a window
S.11 - Panning shot of Jean
S.12 - CU of Jean's eyes as the open.


http://prezi.com/m2bca1kcd528/jinx/

Evaluation

This brief started with each member of the class writing and pitching their very own remake of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. When each of these were pitched, 5 were selected, Jack's, Wingad's, Nathan's, Manuel's and mine. We was then split into 5 groups and each given one of those remakes to work on and create a trailer for, I was put on a team with Cannon and Katie and had Jack's remake to work on.
We started by taking his treatment and breaking it down scene by scene to see what worked and what didn't, parts we dropped for instance is the main character Jean, waking up in a hotel after Alex finds her and pulls her out of a car crash. We started to craft an entire trailer that revolved around that car crash, with dialogue already coming together and talks of green screen, but the more we worked on it, the more it was seeming more and more difficult, especially the car crash part. Cannon came up with a way in which we could do it in which the camera cuts to black before the hit, and the sound effects tells the story but it still meant having to find a car, and filming around the fact that Katie couldn't drive. So we went back to the drawing board. We seemed to come up with our new idea rather quickly, it started with dialogue from two nurses and then formed into an entire trailer that revolved around Jean in a coma lying on a hospital, it invites questions, and creates a great atmosphere.
I took on the role of team leader, this mostly just meant that I dealt with the paperwork, such as the Personelle and release forms. But it also meant that I ran the team meetings, and made sure that everyone was up to date with Journals, on set, I would take a back seat with a notebook to jot down the EDL's as Cannon worked his magic with the XM2 and glidetrack. When it came to creating the titles in Motion however, I found myself out of my depth, this is were Cannon came in, he was the teams tech guy, he even gave me a brief tutorial on Motion with a template. This was the first time on a team I felt like the ideas came from everyone and not just one person, a lot of our ideas came from Katie, and a lot of our amazing looking shots came from Cannon.
The various tasks that we concentrated on in the beginning were handled really efficiently and quickly, especially when we went back to the drawing board. We managed to get scripts, shots list, location, location and actor release forms done all done in a single day. The only thing I could think of that we could of improved is on the first day we went back to the drawing board, I was completely mentally dead, I needed to come back after some rest to creatively flow again.
Aside from that one instance, I feel like I performed really well, during my Peer 2 Peer Review, my biggest weakness was how serious I was during the entire production, although I don't feel like this is a big problem, I do see how having a bit more of a laid back attitude is easier to work with but it didn't have a negative effect on my teams performance.
The biggest factor that helped our teams decisions was Katie and her props, we had a lot of hospital equipment to work with, which helped create a lot of great shots. It is the fast paced shots that we should of thought about a lot clearer, we had one or two in our heads from the beginning, such as the bloody hand down a window.
The shots we have and use in our trailer are really effective, the slow zooms, and pans really add to a dramatic, atmospheric tension. The best part is that it builds up to something, in the first few drafts, my trailer built up to very little, the sounds really helps as well, everything mixes so well together, and really paints an eerie trailer. Our idea was to have quite a tense trailer, in which it shows a comatose main character, with a voice over put over it, this voice will throw up a lot of questions...

I feel like our trailer follows trailer conventions, dialogue is dubbed over another scene, the cuts are quick, it has a fast paced part, there are titles like "coming soon". The trailer doesn't give too much of the story away, it shows a few characters, gives a tiny bit of the story away (the birds attacking) but raises enough questions to entice an audience to go watch the movie.
When my trailer was shown to the class, the general feedback that I received was that my pace and sound/music was very well used, the trailer flows, but the segment in which it cuts to black goes on for a little too long.
Overall I feel like the biggest strength in my trailer is the ending, everything about it, the sounds, the shot, the build up, creates such a great ending. The slow build up really works to make that ending better like I said as well, it sets the mood you will usually find in other trailers. I feel like the weaknesses are the fast paced parts, in all the drafts I made, I was perfectly happy with that portion of the trailer, I was happy with the shots we got when we ventured back out to get extra shots but even when I re-watch it now, I can't help but feel that I could do more.
I think what I want to learn for next time, is to use Motion. I feel like at the end of my first year I should know how to use a lot more of the technical software to help with my future briefs and projects.

Promotion Package

This film will be best to be released in a early Summer slot, so it does not have to compete against the big blockbusters of the year, this also will be around the same time teenagers are coming to the end of the school year. This film does have the younger generation as it's prime target audience due to the young, attractive up and coming actors, but the story does not exclude any age group. The USP of this movie is the take and twist of a classic movie, this being a re-imagining of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds will also attract the older generation who have fond memories of the movie.


Possible Taglines:
Death Always Sends A Message


New Girl, Small Town, BIG Problems.


Bad Luck Can Be DEADLY!


This Is So Good, You'll Flock To Go See IT!


These Aren't The Sweet Little Birds You Feed At The Park!


Merchandise Etc:
This movie easily sets itself up for sequel after sequel as we have a simple premise and a enemy that can't be defeated, Death is another Freddy Kruger, Michael Myers, Jason Vorees, he can just keep coming back and cursing another poor soul. With the amount of sequels that are possible it makes merchandise a lot easier to sell that if this was just a one of movie, Death figurines, halloween costumes, lunch boxes, video games, the possibilities are endless. As for a site, we could play on a Urban Legend angle, for the films promotionally campaign, play this story out as a True Story, in the style of Blair Witch to entice audiences, even have a site that could get out the possibility that this could happen to the viewer, just to get the fear and hype before it's release.

Production Journal - Editing Week

This week was our editing week, and with a bank holiday on our first day only leaving us 3 days to edit, we worked fast. This didn't mean we rushed a edit, at the end of this week, I had 4 or 5 drafts of my advert finished, but time was always a factor in my mind, I wanted my edit finished for when we came into our final week so I knew I could concentrate on other stuff and not have to rush, other stuff being any unfinished work (not only in this brief but others) and polishing what we already have.

With the first day of editing, I concentrated on just getting everything into a timeline, the order of my shots, the music, the voice over, sound effects. Once I did that, I played with them a little to see what worked, what didn't and to try and get a real "trailerish" vibe. In the end, it came out as a slow paced, quite atmospheric piece, this really set the tone for my other drafts. During my 2nd draft, I started to create a more fast paced segment to go after the dialogue ends, when it came to this however, we found we needed more shots, the ones we had created a slow vibe, and the parts we used to quicken the advert wasn't that interesting. Before we ventured out, we decided to re-record our voice over, as our old one was a little underperformed and a bit half arsed. With our new voice over finished we ventured out to get a few more interesting shots, we had to think of shots that would be over in a few seconds but would still leave the viewer with something, whether that be an emotional response, or whether it just be them remembering that particular part. I had a few ideas of a character barging through double doors, or looking up into the sky, but Cannon had a lot of ideas that really took advantage of a tiny woodland area in college, he basically took the camera into this wood and got us an entire chase scene full of interesting shots. He also gave me a quick tutorial on Motion to create our titles, I don't know enough to write a technical journal about it as I only used a template. 

The template I used creates text that fades, giving a eerie title that fits with my trailer.

The template does everything for you really, I saw Cannon creating his from scratch to create the hospital heart monitor that is dominate throughout the trailer.

Once saved, I found my created titles in Final Cut in Master Templates.

For my next draft, I used the extra shots to make a more interesting fast paced portion of my trailer, and I also gave the slow beginning bit more of an atmospheric unsettling nature with music imported from Garageband, I colour corrected to give the impression of bleach white hospital corridors. It was really coming along but I was still missing something vital, birds. With a quick look in Garageband, I imported everything I could find to do with bird noises, most went out the window straight away but when I started to mix birds with my already imported music, the birds suddenly started to seem sinister and threatening.

Birds Trailer production Journal - Day 7

We was still right on schedule as our 2nd and last day of shooting came about. Our action plan was simple.

• Complete the remainder of our shots (all morning)
• While Cannon is batch capturing all our footage, Danny and Katie will use the small little office to record our dialogue with Morgan.

Morgan was a last minute helpful bonus that Katie organized late last night, this was instead of using Cannon as another male nurse.

We completed all our shots dead on 12, all but the pesky phone dangling scene. During lunch, while Katie to go meet Morgan, Me and Cannon headed out to Torirsolme to find a rarely found phonebooth, we succeeded and got a few great shots of blood dripping down the phone.

The voice recording went fine and was quickly completed on time which leaves me hoping that shooting is completed, tomorrow, when we review the captured footage, we will see if we need to go back and revisit any shots.

Birds Trailer production journal day 6

Today we finally got around to filming, we spent half the day setting up our room, so we was already running behind schedule. We made sure to get all our "hospital" scenes done as it meant we didn't have to book out a room. The footage is looking great, we will be reviewing and capturing it on Thursday, along with shooting the remainder of our footage, along with our dialogue.

Birds Trailer - Storyboard/production day

With Team Reem not being able to get hold of our location until tomorrow. we took the opportunity to complete paperwork and make sure the script is polished. Our action plan for the day was...

• Go over the script and complete it.
• storyboard
• look for music and sounds
• complete paperwork (Location and Actors release forms.)
• complete titles
• production journal for today

We also created a shooting schedule, now we know and have booked our location.

Tuesday the First Of May, we will be filming in K Block all day.

Thursday, we will be reviewing footage and recording 

The following is our storyboard...

this scene is a close up of a hospital gurney going down a corridor, it has to be a close up to avoid showing that we are clearly not using a gurney. We are using a trolley and throwing a white sheet on it.












The next is two nurses walking down the corridor, we tried this in various different ways (side angle etc) but we went with the two nurses walking towards camera and then stepping over.

The next is a slow zoom down a long, bleached white corridor.

Originally we was going with a close up of merchandise, represented by this shot of my notebook signed. But we then thought of a better shot, a shot of Alex sat in a empty corridor waiting to see if Jean is okay.

We have various scenes in which the camera pans along the hospital bed and Jean, these few are examples of them. The mid shot of Jean...

The close up of Jean's face...

...we experimented with this shot which makes for an interesting panning shot from her foot to her face.

This is a close up of a hand checking the drip, we wanted to have Jean in the shot as well for realism but didn't want the drip in the rest of the shots due to it having to be lifted up by one of us each time.

These are close up's of Jean's face, we took them from each different angles. We also did this for another similar shot in which we have a close up of Jean as her eyes open.

This is one of the "death" scenes, a slow pan of a window as a bloody hand hits the glass and slowly slides down it.

This is a shot of Alex barricading the room. We tried various shots such as close up's and long shots.

And this is our final shot, of Jean's eyes opening up.

Birds Remake Production Journal - Day 4

So then the last day of planning came, and it turns out I only needed a little time away to recharge because when I came in, I managed to form the makings of our trailer, with a quick conversation between two unseen charcters we had the basis of our new draft two trailer. And with Cannon researching and creating his own titles, he managed to come up with the perfect titles for us...

This is one of the quick ones that Cannon did while researching and practising and experimenting with Motion (cannon printed out the rest), this is the title with a simple light running through it.

...Cannon created a heart monitor style in Motion to act as our titles. He draws a crude outline of the "blips" like this...

...he straightened them out and then began to create the titles and production names.

As for our new ideas, the premise is that the trailer is told through the mouths of two nurses working in a hospital that our main character Jean has been admitted too after having the car crash, instead of showing the obsession, and the crash etc, we tell it through these women. We began by researching the hospital enviroment, and started creating a props list of items we will have to bring in to create out very own "hospital" room, college already has those long white corridors that you find in hospitals, with a few white sheets and a make shift gurney we shall have a room in which Jean is lying unconcious.

We are right back on track with our trailer now, luckily. Katie is getting her hands on most of the props needed, Cannon has our trailer, and we have our location, the only thing to do before filming is the music.

Bird Trailer - Day 3

I almost don't even want to comment on today, but here it goes. Planning was going perfectly, we was even a little cocky and looking into titles to have pre-hand before we came to editing. I was filling out all the paperwork, such as risk assessment forms etc. Then when it came to a sit down with Janine, she told us that she was worried we haven't planned the green screen moments. We was then encouraged to film around that crash, which resulted in the big red "reset" button being pressed on our trailer. This was in the last hour an half of the day, so we left that day with zero new ideas and the planning week coming ever closer to being over.

Birds Remake Production Journal - Day Two

Team Reem's action plan for the 24th of April goes as the following


Action Plan
Planning what goes into our trailer for the first half of the day.
Katie will then storyboard the trailer
Danny will script the dialogue
Cannon will work with Motion to begin creating Titles, ETC.


All of this was accomplished and all in all, today was a pretty productive day, we now have quite a clear idea of what is going to go into the trailer and what it will look like. The difficult shots, such as the car crash has been discussed and a great solution has been found, I mentioned the tricks of trailers in my research, one being dialogue being dubbed over another scene, and the camera cutting away from the action early to make the audience want more, this is what we do with our car crash, cut from the action and have sound effects etc play over.


I also made a list of the Assets that will need to be done by the end of this brief and have been using them as a checklist for our team.


Assets
Mind Maps (This was done in the first day, not sure if I mentioned it in my Journal but it will be handed in on paper.)
Pre Production Logbook
Identifying Resources
Finance and Legal Issues
Casting (This was again sorted on the first day of planning, I will be playing Alex, and Katie will be playing Jean. We came to the decision of including the little sibling today as well, this came about when story boarding. Cannon will be playing the part of the little brother.)
Location Decisions (We discussed this the first day and knew we would need a car and a homely environment, during the 2nd day we also talked a lot more about the dream sequences, particularly one were Jean is in a hospital bed, the room we use as a bedroom can double up as this with a simple change of sheet and a costume.)
Script (The script has come along nicely and has been completed.)
Camera Script
Storyboard (Katie completed this whilst the Script was being written.)
Permission Forms
Risk Assessments
Copyright Clearances
Shooting Schedules.

Birds Remake Trailer - Production Journal - Day One

Today was the first day of our trailer brief. We all got put into groups and took a vote on which of the Birds Remake that was pitched the week before gets the trailer treatment, Wingad's, Jack's, Manuel's, Nathan's and My idea was selected. I was put into a team with Katie and Cannon to work on Jack's adaptation. We started the day in a quiet room looking through the treatment Jack had written for us, we broke this down bit by bit discussing the areas we would have to avoid to fit the requirements, this is how that breakdown/meeting went.


The Trailer will be...

• 1 minute in length.
• Contain at least 4 lines of dialogue
• Contain no more than three people.
• Contain voice overs
• Contain text/graphics on screen.
• Contain no more than three shots of birds.
• It can contain visual references to birds (such as feathers.

Breakdown Of Script: - Set in Cape Hock

• Can't use scene of her being fired

This is due to us coming to the decision that we shouldn't waste the third character on a small character, such as the boss, or the hotel owner (which is mentioned in a little while.)

• Car Accident - KEY SCENE! This is also our first use of birds.
• Scrap the hotel bit. Instead, have it were she wakes up at Alexander's house

This is also due to the fact that this will add another location to our schedule.

• Asked to hang out by Eva.

We still aren't sure whether to include this part in the trailer, it involves making the little sister (Eva) as our third character.

• Jean is desperate to stay around and hang out with Alex
• Attack on the school

With scenes like this, I do think of how we would go about shooting, this is something we will have to discuss as a team at a further date, my first thoughts are to make the trailer more of a romantic comedy, so to avoid casting a lot of people and "big" scenes, such as the attacks.

• Suspicion towards Jean after the attack
• Jean and Eva head to Alexanders house
• Jean begins to hallucinate believing that the birds are her family, she lets them inside the house.
• While Jean is being attacked, she hallucinates that she is in hospital bed.

We ran with the idea of hallucinations a lot during the first day of plan, it is a key componant to this adaptation, and will be touched upon and worked on at later dates.

What We Are Going To Include In Our Trailer

• Voice Over

This is imperative, and will be scripted at a later date, I will talk about this in my research.

• Establish that she is an obsessive fan

I touch upon this in my mindmap. It is difficult to establish this without showing the character to be a bit of a unsympathetic, unnerving character.

• Car Accident (First Bird Scene)
• Jean Meeting Alex
• Dream Sequence - Hospital Bed

                                      - Hallucinations

Research
For research, I will be predominantly talking about what I saw in The Dark Knight Rises trailer but note that I found this is a lot, if not, all trailers I watched.

Trailers always tend to start with something like this, indicating a age rate on the following footage.

It will then cut to shots of companies...

...and more companies...

...I counted, it was 10 seconds of companies and logos hitting the screen before I saw anything from the actually movie. This is to credit companies that worked on it, and in the case of The Dark Knight Rises, show the company that owns the franchise.

It then cut to scenes, and footage from the movie. I found that trailers have a trick, in which they dub over dialogue with another scene, in DKR's case, it is establishing shots off Gotham City, I feel like this is to get away from just showing a scene from a movie, it is showing a snippet, plus, it also gives the editor of the trailer permission to use another characters reaction shot to dialogue from another scene to build on what is being said.

Trailers also show big names attached to it, we can clearly see the actors who are involved from the footage we are shown, but directors also get shown, as well does sentences such as "from the Producers of Transformers". Again, this is entice people to go out and watch it.

As for the footage itself, trailers I watched tended to follow a bit of a formula. Start with story, showing snippets of that story, maybe with text or dialogue to help, then build the action, tension, with a build up of music and fast paced shots, again with text hitting the screen to help. This defiantly has to be something we look into more and work on when it comes to our own work.

Trailers also give a release date, they always seem to be vague "This Winter" "Next Summer" tends to get used quite a lot. T.V trailers tend to be the ones that give a release date as they are released nearer to the date.

One final bit of text I found myself seeing a lot is this one, again it gives a vague release date but also informs whether it will be released in 3D etc, in some cases, I found a tag-line to finish of the trailer.

The Birds Remake - Cafe Scene - Draft One

Over the last few days, we have been script writing (all my scripts are on Adobe Story, I have printed most out, ask for the others.) Today, one of our tasks was to rewrite a scene from the Birds, it was the cafe scene, meaning there was going to be a lot of characters, and a lot of dialogue. At first, the concept of using my very own idea and characters from my remake of the birds pitch never even crossed my mind, meaning that I have two drafts of this rewrote scene.
The following is an audio file of myself, Wingad and Whitehead, reading through my first draft (the best we could) hopefully we will get round to recording my 2nd draft.

Character Development

Today we concentrated on Character Development, this is essential to a great script as noone likes to watch a movie or tv show with a boring, unfleshed character. We started with a bit of a free writing task. "using a slug line and screen directions (but no dialogue), in about 200 words, create and introduce a character in a screenplay." This was a lot more difficult than I first thought, primarily because I couldn't use dialogue. This is what I came up with...

INT: WAREHOUSE - NIGHT

The warehouse is quiet, drips of water from a broken pipe are heard in a corner, a rat shuffles past a hospital bed, camera pans up to see a stocky man tied down to the bed, he is blading and bloody. Beside him is a surgical tray with a very clean and sharpened knife. Through a creaky double door walks in HARRIS ASPIRE, on the outside you wouldn't take much notice of him, he is young, attractive, but he is very plain, average. If you look into his eyes however, you will see repression, a constant interior fight, you can almost see another HARRIS screaming to be let out. HARRIS shuffles over to a half broken mirror and stares into it intensly, he looks over to the unconcious body and whispers an apology . A sudden change takes over him, he twitches, he looks like he is having stomach cramps, the change makes him look more confident, almost evil, he walks up to the table and takes the knife with such glee. Beaming a smile he stands at the head of the lying man and starts to wake him...

Jinx (A Birds Remake) Treatment

Today we was tasked with creating a reimaging of the Birds, much alike what Dysterbia had done with Rear Window. I love this area of film making so was dying to put some of my ideas onto paper, I remember while watching the Birds, thinking about how this attack is almost like a biblical event, like god had sent these birds down to punish the sinners in this small town, of course with Birds being so open to interpretation, my thoughts about it can neither be right nor wrong. I took the concept of a biblical attack into mind and started to try and craft something around it, I thought that perhaps it wasn't a random town that was picked, but perhaps it was because of the Melanie character that it was attacked, like the hysterical woman in the hotel claims. Perhaps she had some control over the birds, or perhaps that she was just a Jinx, a cursed woman stepping into a town and dooming it. I ran with this idea and created this...

Title - Jinx
Tagline - Death Always Sends A Message
Synopsis - Jo Jinx is a happy go lucky young woman who moves to a small seaside town with her father when he unexpectedly recieves a promotion.

She starts her new life by enrolling in college and getting a small part time job in the local café. She begins to have very vivid and horrific dreams about the town folk being town apart by birds, she is mocked at first but then her dreams starts to become true. Jo is blamed at first but as the body count rises and more witnesses claiming that they saw birds commit the murders, they turn there attention to attacking back. Jo worries for her fathers and friends safety and begs them to leave town with her, but she is approached by a strange little man who sits her down at the café. He explains that he is death and that he must send a message to humanity every so often to make sure they still fear him, he does this by creating a omen, in this case the omen is Jo, he tells her that where ever she goes, the birds will follow and kill everyone around her. This forces Jo to make the ultimate sacrifice and isolate herself in a cabin in the woods, with no one around to attack, the birds have no choice but to attack and kill Jo, thus ending the Omen and saving the town.

Key Characters

Jo Jinx – Lead character, female, 21 years old.

Jo has recently moved to the small town of JanesTown with her father, she picks up a small part time job, and enrolls in college. She begins to have horrific dreams that start to become a reality.

Wants – A Normal Life

Needs – To survive and keep her new friends alive, as well as her father.

Sam Synder – Love Interest, nice guy, has an instant crush on Jo from the moment he meets her.

USP – The unique twist on a classic.

Target Audience – Teens and Young Adults

EDITED

I was one of the few people in todays session to practise my pitch on the class, and I have walked away with a lot to think about, most of the audience feedback was them disliking the fact that I kill off the main character, especially after bonding and being with this poor woman throughout the entire film. They also didn't like that I separated the love interest and my main character, I did this for the simple reason that by definition, if I introduced a love interest, they become a main character, sort of by default. I already kill of one main character at the end, I didn't want another dead and have a Romeo and Juliet ending on my hands. I also think that the fact that I left the love interest alive builds on the ultimate sacrifice even more, it makes it a lot more heart wrenching when she is forced to say her final goodbyes and leave to ultimately die. Taking the dislike of my main character dying into consideration, I had to think of a way to create a happy ending, this is what I came up with.

Everything that I have written previously still happens, this new part takes off from the moment Death has a sit down and a cup of tea with Jo.

Upon hearing that it is Jo's fault that the birds are attacking, the towns folk once again turn their attention onto her. They grab her and plot to sacrifice her life to hopefully end the curse, this angers Death and he sends in flocks of birds to attack the entire town, during the chaos, Sam takes the opportunity to save Jo. She is suspicious as to why Death wanted her to stay alive as much as he did and decides that she must confront him. She drives out to a deserted Cabin in the middle of the woods and calls Death out. She succeeds by threatening to take her own life, she demands that Death release his power over her, and removes the Omen, when he refuses she tells him that he has no choice, as with no one around to attack, the Birds have no choice but to attack and kill Jo, when Death sees how prepared she is to die for the town he backs down and lifts the Omen. The movie ends with the birds flying away, towards Deaths next Omen.

The Birds Treatment

So the movie opens up with Birds flapping and flying pass the camera as the title hits the screen, the audience is curious, and nervous, cut to San Francisco, big city, but we concentrate on one woman, attractive, young, guys can't help but to wolf whistle as she walks on by, and she is flirty, she'll wink and smile right back. She is a fan of birds, so visits a pet shop weekly, in there this particular week she meets an eligible, single guy. Her attempts at flirting fail when he admits he knows her, he has heard about how she was recently “pushed” into a fountain “naked”. During the conversation Mitch (who is the love interest) brings up that it is his sisters birthday coming up and that she would love a species of bird known as “Lovebirds”. Our main protagonists, Melanie then takes it upon herself to purchase some Lovebirds and drive the 60 miles to where Mitch is living, a small fishing town. She follows a lead and meets the towns teacher, Annie. Annie gives Melanie information such as the sisters name and where they live. Melanie journeys there via boat to “sneak up” on the house, she lets herself in, drops of the birds and a note and journeys back. In the water however Mitch returns and spots her, he gives a playful chase in his car and awaits for her at the docks, as she approaches the docks though, a seagull swoops down and pecks her head, drawing blood. Wanting to help, Mitch takes Melanie to the local restaurant to clean her up, there we are introduced to Mitch's protective mother, Lydia, who takes an instant dislike to Melanie. Melanie still manages to get invited to dinner at Mitch's house. During conversation Melanie has to lie about why she is in town and says that she is staying with her good friend Annie. Annie does have a room for rent and agrees to Melanie stay, as Melanie is getting ready there is an ominous thud, when they investigate, they find that a seagull has flew into the front door and died. At dinner we are introduced to Mitch's little sister, Kathy, who takes an instant warmth to Melanie because of the gift, some more ominous things begins to happen during dinner, such as a phone call revealing that the towns chickens are acting up and not eating, not to mention that the birds are shown to be gathering more and more. Whilst back at Annie's we learn her back story involving her and Mitch. Mitch rings Melanie asking that she come to Kathy's birthday party. Even though it means staying another day, Melanie agrees. At the party birds suddenly flock down and start to attack the children, the adults round all the kids up and gets them to safety indoors, worried Lydia goes to check up on her father the next morning, she discovers him dead, his house is trashed, the birds have smashed their way through the windows and pecked his eyes out. In hysteria Lydia returns home and is put to bed, Melanie looks after Lydia while Mitch goes to the police, Lydia starts to voice her concerns about Kathy's safety. To put Lydia's mind at ease, Melanie heads out to the school, everything seems fine and quiet so Melanie takes a seat on a bench and begins to smoke, a crow lands behind Melanie, then another, and another and another until hundreds of crows are there. With help from Annie, Melanie begins to calmly escort the children out of the school, but the crows start to attack, horribly pecking at the children. At the restaurant, the word has got out about the attack at the school, the town folk are spooked, a mother and her two children are planning to leave town as is a smartly dressed man, a well educated elderly woman states that this is impossible, as birds don't have the intelligence to launch attacks, a drunk in the corner declares that it is gods punishment, and that it is the end of the world. Suddenly the birds attack again, this time it is a man filling up his car, this forces the man to drop the pump and leak petrol everywhere, the smartly dressed man is lighting a cig at the same time and ignites the petrol, the birds attack as people are fleeing from the fire in panic, Mitch saves Melanie and takes her to the hotel, in which they meet an hysterical woman who screams at Melanie and declares that this is all her fault, and that the birds only started to attack when she came into town, Melanie strikes the woman and then leaves with Mitch to go and find Kathy. Kathy is safe but Annie is found dead, Kathy says that Annie died protecting her. Mitch barricades his house to keep everyone safe but the birds attack and nearly get in, they suddenly stop attacking however which leads everyone to believe that they are save, for now. During the night, while everyone is sleeping, Melanie is woken up to noises, she goes to investigate, she finds the birds have broke through the attic roof and are waiting for her. She is viciously attacked and falls unconscious, Mitch and Lydia save her by dragging her out the room but it is clear she needs to get to a hospital. Mitch ventures outside which by now is covered with thousands of birds, he gets Melanies car and everyone drives away onto a unknown future.