My group an I have chosen to classify our film as 15. We have chosen this as our horror film will have strong language and scenes of strong violence which are bit too disturbing and discomforting for viewers of a younger age - but not to a point where it is sadistic or sexualised, as a 15 year old is not yet matured enough to view these things. Our film also has scenes with harsh weapons in which viewers younger than 15 will not be able to watch without the mindset to know what is right and wrong and may feel the need to mimic these actions.
These are the conventions of each scene my group and I came up with:
In our first scene we decided to go with a more unlikely situation of having our character be alone, as opposed to being amongst a group of friends etc. This subverts to the convention of most horror films. However, we decided to conform to the 'settings' convention of horror films by having our first scene set in the woods at night - abandoned and isolated.
We also purposely chose a yellow jelly baby to represent our victim as we felt that yellow is a very warm, accepting colour, and with this, our character will gain more sympathy from the audience during his horror movie like circumstances.
In our second scene our victim is entering a mental asylum, with other characters laying down in hospital beds. We again, purposely chose more darker/drained coloured jelly babies to represent the mentally challenged patients which conforms to the general 'dark coloured' clothing that is often seen worn by the killers in horror movies.
In our third scene our victim is now surrounded by the killers, and the conventions of this scene are the same as the ones in our second scene.
In our last scene we chose to go with a more mainstream ending where the villian/villains are retaliating abruptly often with a chase scene. (as seen in our scene)
The setting in this scene also conforms to the convention of the 'dark', 'isolated' atmosphere seen in most horror movies.
We also thought that the camera movement for this scene could be a very fast, abrupt kind of movement (hence the lines drawn in the back on the white board) to create a chaotic visual.
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:
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.
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.
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