What I Have Learnt

There are a few things that I have learnt in order to produce a successful horror film opening. From watching many previous A Level horror film openings and many horror films to gain inspiration, tips and ideas.

One of the main points I took great notice of was to watch what is in the frame. Whilst watching previous student's horror film openings, there were several times when everything we could see in the frame was not necessary to the film. And so instead of seeing what we only needed to see; the two main characters, we saw a large couch and coffee table taking up most of the frame. This made me aware that it isn't really pleasant or helpful to show anything else apart from what is necessary to the film and I will now definitely be cautious of what I put in the frame.

Another observation I made was that in order to build tension, it is nearly essential to use tension building/mysterious non diegetic sound. Like this:

When I was watching the previous A Level work, the times when students tried to build suspense and scare us, didn't fully frighten me. I thought it was lacking something, that horror films normally do not slack on and I think that was tension building sounds. After watching some horror films, (in comparison to the A Level work) at all tense times, there was either non diegetic sound or significant Foley sounds used - and that's when I was able to note that scary tension/suspense sound is essential when trying to build tension and scare the audience.

Dialogue. I learnt that dialogue is not a necessity to be in the first two minutes of a horror film to make it interesting and attention-grabbing. Nor is screams, blood and knifes. From the previous A Level work we watched, the most successful ones were often those that had minimal to no dialogue but instead just sounds necessary to the film.
Likewise to the movie Sinister (which is the horror film that we took the most inspiration from whilst coming up with our opening concept) there is no dialogue during the opening:

Breakdown Sheet for Shooting

Storyboard scene number: 1

Date: 14/12/2013                                                                         Time: 5/6

Setting: Garden                                                                           Location: Chantelle's house

Crew members and roles: Ashleigh, Joyce & Chantelle

Cast members: Carolina , Dina, Mary and Zaila

Extras: Siblings

Wardrobe: White nigh gown & pale clothes ( t shirt & jeans )

Make-up: Pale face, defined facial features

Props: Rope, Ductape and Rocking chair

Special effects: Pan

Potential problems and how you’re going to overcome them: As this scene has no dialogue we need to make sure we try to eliminate as much background noise as possible that we wont want in this scene. this scence is also outside so we need to make sure we check the weather beforehand.

Breakdown Sheet for Shooting

Storyboard scene number: 3

Date:   13/12                                                                     Time: 6:00pm

Setting:  bedroom                                                             Location: Sophie's bedroom

Crew members and roles: Ashleigh - Director 

                                           Chantelle - Make up artist

                                           Joyce - Set designer 

Cast members:  Carolina - main character ( girl)

Extras: sibling

Wardrobe:  white nightgown 

Make-up: Normal but unnatural pale make up

                dark hair 

Props: pictures of killings 

Special effects: no special effects are needed for this scene

Potential problems and how you’re going to overcome them: a problem we could face may be that Carolina is unable to come so to overcome this we will film a scene where she isn't involved.

Breakdown Sheet for Shooting

Storyboard scene number: 2

Date:   14/12/13                                                             Time: 5.00/6.00pm

Setting:   Garden                                                             Location: Chantelle's House

Crew members and roles: Ashleigh - Director
                                        Joyce - Set Designer
                                        Chantelle - Make up artist

Cast members: Carolina

Extras: Sibling

Wardrobe: White nightgown

Make-up: Normal-to slightly pale makeup on face

                Defined facial features

                 

Props: Red bracelet and rocking chair which Carolina will be sitting on.

Special effects: Sting

Potential problems and how you’re going to overcome them: The scene is filmed outside, so we may be faced with the problem of having unsuitable weather/lighting - but to overcome that, we will check the weather forecast before hand and film when we are sure there will be darkness.

Film Pitch and Feedback

After presenting our Prezi presentation to my media class, a number of feedback was given back to us from my peers and teacher. Here is some of the feedback we received:

• We need to have a clear idea of what our two minute opening is going to contain
• Think about our connections between killer and victims
• Think about the camera angles we would use to show what we need to and how we want to
• The idea of the beginning to foreshadow the result of what happened in the rest of the movie was interesting and unique

Overall, we got told that our ideas were very good but we just need to link them together and think a bit more about what exactly we want to show in the two minutes.

Here is the link to our Prezi presentation: http://prezi.com/ktlkilrgofql/horror-film-pitch/

Preliminary Task

For this preliminary task, I had to edit a mini film based on the word 'anger'. My group decided to go with the simple idea of an angry teen at school.

Before filming we had to create a storyboard to sketch all our scene ideas and put down all the different shot types we would be using. Creating the storyboard taught me that it is much easier to arrange my film ideas by drawing the main actions of each scene and writing the shot types and camera movements I would be using instead of going straight into my mini film whilst trying to remember my ideas and wondering what shot types I should use. In all, I learnt that story boarding saves a lot of time and just helps the scenes in the mini film to be exactly what I want without any extra unwanted stuff.

Filming my mini film was a bit difficult as the space we had was very small with a lot of chairs and tables in the way. This made it hard to move the camera and tripod in a place that would be able to film certain shots such as the 'over-the-shoulder' shot. Doing this just taught me that filming anything requires a lot of space. I also learnt that using a tripod is very necessary in order to create a more 'professional' type film as without a tripod a steady shot of the acting will not be delivered.

Editing was very time consuming as I had quite a lot of editing to do. When filming, the record button was pressed accidentally a lot of the time meaning we recorded a lot of things that weren't necessary to our film. I learnt all basic things on Final Cut needed to edit my short film such as deleting unwanted scenes and adding parts of 2 scenes together. I gathered that editing takes a lot of time and patience in order to be precise with the editing.

Here is the link to my preliminary task: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDKvMINEJQ4

Horror Film Conventions

Horror Conventions

A good location is key in horror films. The settings for horror films are usually that of an isolated, abandoned place. Places that emphasise isolation and being alone making the audience assured that there is no one around to help them. I.e. Alleyways, abandoned buildings such as old schools/hospitals/hotels and the woods. These locations all have a “dark” history and can easily be portrayed as dark and mysterious in horror films.

   

Horror films often use point of view shots, which makes the audience feel as though they are in and involved in the horror film and therefore bring more fear onto the audience. Extreme close ups are also used often in horror films, giving the audience a real sense of fright with uncomfortable, surreal shots of things such as a spirit’s face. Horror films focus closely on emotion so using close ups allow the audience to see the fright or evil on a character’s face, making the audience feel sympathy or hatred towards the characters. High and low angles are used sometimes in order to belittle (normally victim) or exaggerate (normally the evil character) a character. Exaggerating a character using a low angle makes the audience more scared which is obviously the objective whilst making a horror film whereas belittling a character using a high angle will make the audience feel sympathy as the characters will seem weak or vulnerable. Canted angles are quite popular during horror movies, used for dramatic effect to create a sense of disorientation. This makes the audience feel as though something mad is going on/will happen.
    



Diegetic sounds are essential in horror films. Disturbing sounds such as children’s nursery rhymes and whispers (like the audio clip below from 'Nightmare on Elm Street') are examples of diegetic sounds.

These sounds create a more realistic and intense feeling on the audience whilst also creating a scary effect on them. Non-diegtic sounds are also very essential in horror films. High-pitched ringing sounds are often heard during horror movies in order to give a spooky effect and to hold the audience’s attention to the visuals. In some cases the high pitched sound is sped up which tells the audience that something unnatural/chaotic is going to happen. For example the opening scene in ‘Insidious’:

Heavy breathing, a heartbeat and screams are some other examples of non-diegetic sounds – all used to scare and create tension.

The costumes used on characters in horror films let us know what kind of character they are. Dressing characters in creepy masks or very harsh makeup such as pale foundation and red lips hides their identity, which automatically tells us that they are the villains. The victims are usually dressed normally to show that they are just “everyday people” making the film seem more natural and therefore scarier as we may begin to believe anything could happen to us whereas the villain will, in almost every horror film, stand out and have a very distinct look. This sometimes makes it easier for the villains image to stay in our head for longer than we want and are comfortable with. And this adds to the scariness of the film.