Horror Films

Horror films are movies that strive to elicit the emotions of fear, horror and terror from viewers.

The contrast of colouring draws your attention, as well as all the main subjects placed central to the poster giving it a strong message.

This poster uses all four hot spots, the first two of which is the striking title. The poster is full of information and busy with a lot of action based subjects.

This simplistic photo consists of two subjects; the title and the photo. Creating a basic poster leaves more aprehension for the audience.

This is an extremely graphic poster that has been used to encourage the imagery of the film and the title "DEAD WOOD." Rules of thirds has been used, more so for the image and the title, these are placed here to draw the attention of the audience immediately.

Chosen Thriller Film

Storyline of FIVE

A man is taking revenge on the fact that his wife has been murdered. He is quite a spiritual man, not Christian but weird rituals. He has a ritual that he wants to perform, to regain his wife and the only way it can work is if he uses victims that resemble his wife. It takes him a year to collect his four victims. Meanwhile the daughter is witnessing all these women being taken away and then never seeing them again. On the fourth victim she plucks up the courage to go down to the basement where she has been told not to go, she then hears screams and other terrifying sounds. When the time comes for the fifth and final victim the ritual says it must be the family blood of the man. Unfortunately the man has turned completely delusional and the only person he then sees that has his family blood and reminds him of his wife is his only daughter. The ritual doesn’t end up working because the daughter isn’t actually his! His wife had an affair and the daughter was from that relationship, unbeknown to the man.

The opening sequence

I’d like to have three close ups of
The man’s hand, drawing the chalk circle.
The woman’s face, with a tatty blindfold on.
Bird’s eye view of the circle with the star inside.

She becomes curious, peers around the top of the stairs, she starts quietly walking down the stairs to the basement door. When she gets there she gently pushes the door and it swings open, she can’t see anything inside because it is so dark. She steps in, and sees pools of blood at each point of the star, except the top point. In the far corner there is a body. White tunic dress and a tatty bit of material around her eyes. There are heavy footsteps coming down the stairs, she runs and crouches in the corner. The steps stop by the door; there is a silhouette of the man in the doorway. The heartbeat of the girl can be heard and with each beat there is a flash of the circle with a girl lying at one of the points, and at the next heartbeat there is another girl at a different point. Without another sound the man is leaning over the girl. He lifts his arm holding a knife, and then there is a long scream.

My Thriller Idea

My idea of a thriller is about an innocent man being murdered one night out with his best...A man is dropped off at his house, in the early hours of the morning by his best friend, both whom are extremely drunk. He stumbles out of the car and starts to stroll to his fron door, but is oblivious of his surroundings and falls to his knees to throw up. He is feeling extremely light headed and intoxicated with alcohol. He is breathing deeply and puffing. With that second, you hear a stabbing through his spine. He is dead.
I targeted the film to young adults, those who are similar to this man, so they can relate.
If I were to publish this film, I would like Warp Films to fund the film. They are an English film company whom publish low budget films, but are popular in English cinematic productions.
The whole clip is filmed from his point of view, you never see his face the camera also moves with his every move. When he falls to the floor, so does the camera. When he struggles out of the camera, the camera follows this too. You hear him singing in the car, vomit and being stabbed through the spine. All of these things I think help to make the open scene a person one that alowes the audience to be in his situation, almost to feel his emotions and even his death.
This would be a simple scene in terms of props;
Hurtwood ground.
A parked car.
2 men/actors
Stabbing Sound effects.
Darkness.
Standard clothing.
A few sound effects would be used to produce full effect and a deep response;
Radio Music.
Short, mumbled conversation.
Door shutting.
Panting breath.
Vomiting.
Stabbing.
Foot steps.

Preliminary Task Evaluation

We started with grasping our location that we were able to film in. Our location was a small, ugly room. I felt this may have restricted our filming technique, all our filming wsa either close up that sdidn't show any of the mess or wide angles were we could move the camera round to a blank wall. The rooms only advantage was the blank canvases on the walls, the lack or paint and art allowed as to cmopletely concentrate on the acting and filming. Even though the room was not perfect, it did have the essentials; a door, blank walls and room for the camera and actresses to move around freely in. My task in the group was not the director nor the one that would sit back and give any ideas or not to get involved. I found myself discussing different ideas with my group members and sometimes disagreeing and trying to persuade them that my idea was better for our film. I tried to get involved that helped my other members but I did not want to be so overwelming that others didn't have a chance to give their own ideas. I accepted and lsitened to others ideas and helped them to develop their idea which could be filmed.
Our room consisted of two lights. We were able to move them around the camera, as well as the height and diretion of the light. This prevented out filming from being too dark or over exposed. These lights gave shadowing to both of our actresses. At first I wanted to remove these but I was told hsadwoing gives dramtic effect. As we progressed I started liking these shadows more and thought it gave a more realistic feel to the clip. All the lighting was quite hard and sharp becuase of the light bulbs, but once again this gave a sense of realism to the clip.
With reference to the filming, we correclty set up the camera and the tripod which we connected together and kept together throughout all filming. Within each scene, we changed the height of the tripod to give different views, but we never had to take the camera off of the tripod. Even when we shot low, we simply spread the tripod out and lowered it. The tripod really helped to keep the frame straight in every scene, and we made sure this was true by using the "bubble." This allowed every angle and shot to be straight and structured. As I said before, the lighting created very dark shadowing; for my group we found this a disadvantage when it came to the camera and ourselves. When we were all crowding round the camera and observing what wsa happening, we found our own shadows were disturbing the shot this meant only one of us could control the camera. Our angling at first was influenced by the storyboard that we were given and we filmed each scene to the appropriate angles. After, we had more time to add more angles and shots to our clip that later we could cut into our film. We started to bring in new ideas of different extreme close ups and wide shots. One idea was to film the actresses feet, that we could quickly cut in to increase the atmosphere. To do this, we loosened the screws of the lower part of the tripod and spread the feet to lower the angle shot. We also shot extreme close ups of the door handle and the quick motion of the actress exiting. This added dramatic effect that emphasizes the actions of the actresses and the scene. I was not completely aware of the 180 degree rule through out the prcess, but my other group members changed the camera angle to prevent breaking the 180 degree rule. Stephanie, whom recorded the action always said "Stand By, Rolling...Cut" This helped everyone in the room to keep quiet and aware of when we were filming and also allowed the actresses to completely concentrate on their scene.
Overall, our practical film making went well and though our group worked well together to share ideas and efficiently produce the short clip.

Editing

Introduction to practical skills

Account of my Practical Experiences

In the first week of studying Media Studies, we were introduced to Photoshop. As the weeks progressed, we were taught about still cameras. How they worked, the functions and tripod. A few weeks later we were taught about filming and technical terms. We learnt the basics of photography, as well as changing focus, ISO, exposure etc. We were then introduced to our blogs, how to create, personalise and expand them. Through out this process, analysis of short film clips and TV drama was incorporated in our syllabus.

We started with Photoshop. We were taught how to import photos and how to edit them. I found this quite helpful in relation to our assignments that we were to be appointed later on in the course; we were asked to create our own horror film poster, filled will imagination and unique formats. Filled with logos, slogans and directors names. In this case, Photoshop became very useful. I used this programme for all my different formatting and editing. I imported a photo, cut, cropped, edited it etc. Photoshop looks extremely confusing, but once you get to grips with it, it becomes very simple and efficient to use it. A very useful skill.

As our understanding of Photoshop progressed we moved onto still cameras. We were set an assignment to take a photograph of one another, which would eventually be posted onto our blogs. We could use our own imagination and desire to photograph one another in any area of the school, but one which portrayed our personalisties the most. I enjoyed this task because of the freedom we had to take our own personal photos as well as for others to grasp the art of photography, negative space and the rule of thirds.

After using still cameras we moved onto filming techniques. We had a lesson on the film camera, there is a lot to learn in filming, especially how to work the camera correctly to capture great clips. Like Photoshop and still cameras, filming is simple once you understand the processes. Learning vocabulary and basic camera shots helped me shoot clips in different angles and movements. We were eventually set an assignment in class to create a two minute short film clip. This task was to practice and learn camera shots; Extreme Wide Shot, Cut-In, Extreme Close-Up etc not plots, characters and acting skills. We did this in groups and after we watched one another’s. We critiqued each others short clips and recognised what we had done wrong or right. My group found we over exposed our shots from the sun. This was a good way to learn how to correct this, before our real two minute horror film that will be made later on in the year. This exercise also taught me that you must chose the correct scenery at the correct time of day. Our short clip was ruined by the sun, this at the time could not be corrected because of the nature of the day, but in future I know to either shoot internally or away from the sun light.

Finally, we have started to create our personal blogs. We started with an introduction to the blogs, set assignments, like this exact one and from there we have added to our blogs, to eventually produce a full blog with all of my work through out the year posted.