My Horror Film Idea

Horror Idea

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What Is A Horror Film?

Personal

The audience’s own connection with the fears or terrors of the story.

Fear of things other than human, (monsters) in the darkness.

Fear of the body being disfigured or harmed.

Fear of our personal boundaries and lines being invaded and too close.

Watching terror from a safe distance.

Ideological

Has hidden or obvious messages rooted within the story.
The themes include punishment, rejection and repulsion of subjects which deviate from ‘right’ thinking.

From simplistic or basic messages, i.e. the innocent virgin girl survives at the end, rather than her naughty slutty friend, to the more nuanced or subtle fears of strangers/hitchhikers breaking our boundaries. Or the condemnation of any deviant religions.
Our perception that the power of science can defeat the darkness at the expense of older beliefs in religion and superstition.

So, In our modern understanding of fear we rationalise the supernatural and defeat it with the psychology rather than Latin chants.
Modern media creates ‘demons; by crusading against sections of society and labelling them.
Are there really so many more paedophiles today than in the past?
How many escaped mental patients have actually stalked and killed innocent people.

Industrial and financial

Perhaps the most lucrative genre in the film industry, horror draws in huge audiences justifying the continual re-invention, re-making and franchising of every successful horror product.
We wonder at whether there should be an ‘Indiana Jones 4’ or a ‘Lethal Weapon 5’. But no question is raised over the production of ‘Saw 6’ or re making ‘A nightmare on Elm street’ after 9 previous incarnations.

Introduction to stills camera.

We had an introduction lesson on still cameras. In this lesson we learnt the basics and the rules of composition about taking pictures. We were taught that we should imagine that when we are taking the picture, that it has a frame. Inside that frame is the rule of thirds, which is the frame split into nine boxes. These boxes have ‘Hot Spots’. The picture to the right is an example of the 'Rule of Thirds' with the 'Hot Spots'. The rule of the Hot Spots is that they lead your eyes to what you want them to see first and last. For example, the top left red dot is the 1st hot spot, the next top right dot is the 2nd hot spot. The bottom left one is 3rd and the bottom right one is 4th. So in this picture, the Sheep's head is most important because it is in the 1st hot spot.

After we learnt the basics and rules of picture taking, we were sent out to take our own pictures taking in what we had just learnt.

To the left is a picture I took when we were sent out. Using the Hot spots, you can tell the car is the most important thing in the picture and Katrina on the floor is the 2nd most important thing in the picture.

Preliminary Post Preduction

We started by the uploading Rushes to the Final Cut Server, from which we were able to access an Edit Proxy of the raw footage which we could then open in Final Cut Pro to begin the editing / post production process.
Continuity Editing was a very important part of ensuring that the shots are put together in an order that makes sense to everyone. Also to make sure that they are all relevant to the story.

We were given a story board to follow when filming, so we used that to Log our shots. For each shot, we filmed it about 2-3 times, so we had a choice of the best shot. To make a Log Bin, we set up a new folder in final cut, called Log Bin. It was important rejecting some of the shots because; some of them may have errors in continuity.

This is the picture i used to create my Horror film poster. Here it looks very innocent and not very scary. However editing and adding other pictures makes it a lot scarier and horror themed.

Preliminary Task Evaluation

We filmed inside the classroom. We had a table, with a desk light, a gun, a £20 note and some substitute drugs on the table. A chair was placed next to the table, with one of our actors sitting on it. It worked very well for our task because ours was about drugs, and the room had brick walls and it looked very suitable for a drug user’s house.
When we filmed, we all took turns in filming, for example, I filmed all the mid shots, Leah filmed all the close-ups, Felix filmed all the wide shots, and Lukas filmed all the over the shoulder shots. I also helped when I was not filming by saying stand by, roll camera and action. This helped everyone else on set because I used appropriate terminology, making sure everyone knew was going on. When someone else was filming and someone else helping with the terminology I was in charge of the continuity. For example, when our male actor Ben came in the room, he hit the table, and the line of our substitute cocaine would move out of place, so at the end of every shot, I would go and re-line it, making sure it looks the same as before. This is very important because when we come to editing, everything has to look the same all the time. Otherwise It might jump from a mid shot to an over the shoulder shot and something is in a different place to the mid shot, it looks very amateur.


Lighting

For our lighting, we had all the room lights turned off. We had a hard light that was quite light and in a spot light form on our actress Saskia sitting on the chair. There was also a desk lamp turned on sitting on the table, pointing in Saskia’s direction. This lighting worked really well with our scene because, the hard light made Saskia’s shadow very sharp against the brick wall, it was very obvious in the scene. We made sure that the light was the same all the way through filming.

Filming

We set up the tripod, and placed the camera on in, making sure it was securely fit. I then turned on the camera, put it on the colour bar screen and filmed for about 15 seconds. I then turned it off colour bar and placed the camera were we filmed. We checked that the tripod was level by looking at the bubble making sure it was centre.
Before we filmed we asked the actors to come into screen, making sure that they would fit in the frame, i.e. no heads halfway out the frame. If either of the actors did come out of the frame, we re angled the camera and re took the shot.
Some of the angles we chose to film, were not very good because it had a very strong glare of the light, so before we filmed we checked, and if there was a glare, we changed the angle.
Our group was very concious of the 180 degree rule, everytime we changed the shot we would make sure that we were not over it, also checking props, lights and actors.

I chose to call this film poster, 'Kiss and Tell' because without the blood and the vampire mouth, this could be perceived as a nice chick flick. However if you add blood over the top, with scary font it gives it a whole different look. I used my own photos that we took in Media, and also some from google.