RD Old preliminary Task

From doing this Preliminary task I learnt a lot of new skills and I learnt about what looks effective and what doesn't.

• Continuous filming and action match can look very effective.
• Learnt how to use 180 degree rule
• It is always better to get too much film rather than not enough.
• Dialogue needs to be loud and clear or it can be lost in editing.
• Use of actors is vital.
• Slow down action, so nothing is missed.
• When editing you can often get rid of a lot of the beginning film.

Group: Preliminary Task

Group: Pitch Feedback

 

Feedback:

• They liked the idea of a 'normal' looking family, but they are actually psychologically deranged. This aids our idea of them being unexacting antagonists. They also liked how the antagonist is an anomaly-style character.
• We achieved technical excellence through our clear and specific identification of shots that we are going to aim to use.
• They approved of our suggested location of a basement, and thought it was very appropriate for our plot.
• The title (Flesh) was also regarded as being appropriate and also attention-grabbing, and works well with our storyline.
• The final piece of feedback was the idea to amplify certain diegetic sounds, such as increasing the volume of the sizzling meat when we do the extreme close-up shot, they thought this would be very effective and contributes to the idea that they are a 'normal' family.

Targets:

• Firstly, despite the feedback suggesting that the ideas for the characters were good, they didn't agree with the casting and the ages of the people we had decided to cast. This made us re-evalute the effectiveness of using a cast that are our age. This prompted us to look into casting people who are older, perhaps our parents, therefore this will make our plot more realistic and professional.
• Another problem that they suggested was the large size of the cast, we will have the crew with 4 members, and then a cast of 6 members. They suggested that such a large cast could be hard to direct and achieve an effective finish, however our chosen cast have acting experience and we feel we can easily achieve a good outcome, despite the amount of people on set.
• Secondly, we also looked at our suggested location (the school basement) and we looked at the practicality, for example, filming during the holidays would be very restricted. This inspired us to look for other possible filming locations, and we have successfully found a suitable house in which we can use both the basement and kitchen. This means we can be more lenient when it comes to filming and also it will look more realistic (by using only one location). 

R.D: Analysis of an opening sequence-Shutter Island (Scorsese, 2010)

Genre

• This film is a psychological thriller
• The fact that A-listers are used is generic for this sub-genre as most horror films are low budget.
• The main character seems to have some kind of mental disorder and seems tired
• There is a flash back of a lost loved one in the opening
• I think the audiences expectations would be fulfilled because it is raising tension and showing us little bits of things which makes us want to find out the answers
• I think this text conforms to the characteristics of the genre and doesn't challenge anything originally

Film Language

•  A long shot of the boat in the distance conveys mystery
• An extreme close up of the main characters face places us with him
• A two shot of the two men develops a relationship between them
• The editing of the swap from looking at the boat to on the boat shows us where the characters are
• The way the man is dressed shows he is a detective
• The handcuffs in one of the room shows the boat has been used to transport prisoners makes it seem scary
• The dialogue between them shows that the new guy looks up to the main character "Teddy Daniels, the man, the legend"
• We see the main character is hunched over, he is weakened by the water
• The diegetic sounds of the boat and the main character vomiting are amplified to makes us feel like we are there
• The main character look sick and sweaty and his eyes are red to make him look worn out
• The distribution and production studios are named and the title appears, they all come on a black screen before any action begins, they are in gradient from white to black and a plain but striking font, thin and tall
• The title appears last just before the picture begins

Narrative

• There are 2 detectives who are partners on a boat on the way to shutter island
• We have seen our obvious protagonist who has problems of his own
•  When his girl is mentioned this brings the flashback which is very short and doesn't give away too much
• We are positioned with the protagonist, the main character
• That they are on a boat and they have just met, we also get the idea that they are going to a new case
• Tension is created because nothing is given away we don't know where they are going or anything much about them

Representation and Ideology

• The middle class is represented because the lead is middle class and we are positioned with hi
• Gender ideology is represented because detective is a high up role and they are both men, this reinforces gender stereotypes that men have all the high up jobs and women should stay home and raise children

Institutional Context

• Most Horror films are independent and low budget, the psychological thriller is different to the rest of the genre in the way it is often made Industrially and often features stars and has ultra high budgets.
• Leonardo Dicaprio has been used, who is a very famous star showing us the budget must have been high. 
• This film was produced by Appian Way Productions, Phoenix Pictures and Sikelia Productions. 
• We see straight away that the film must have an extremely high production value because of the use of the huge boat and that Leonardo Dicaprio  is in it.

F.O'C - Technical analysis: 'The Strangers' (Bertino-2008)

 

• This opening has quite generic conventions within the horror genre. The idea behind it is to create mystery and a plot base to captivate the audience and to set up the rest of the film.
• One of the ways it creates this mystery is by having relatively short cutting rates (most being around 7 seconds). This gives the aundience brief teasers of a murder location without revealing too much.
• The narration at the beginning stating it was 'based' on a true story is common (and usually untrue) in horror films to entice the viewer.
• 70% of the shots were of the opening credits and the houses where nothing was revealed at all. This was purely to build suspense and set the theme of the film (of murders in 'normal' neighbourhoods).

JP. Technical Analysis - Silence of the Lambs (Demme, 1991)

• In this opening sequence there is quite a slow cutting rate between the scenes, I think this is to emphasise that the character is going around there normal day and nothing unusual has happened. This is what we want to try to do in our opening so we might take a slow cutting rate into consideration

R.D-Technical Analysis- The Ring (Verbinski, 2002)

Shot Number	Duration (seconds)	Camera	Mise-En-scene	Sound
1	5	Tracking shot, follow girl, medium shot	Young girl, protagonist or victim	Silence followed by fuzzing
2	7	Static shot, extreme close up of girls face	Scared facial expression	Fuzzing continues
3	9	Tracking shot of living room	Plain living room, TV has pixels	“
4	6	Medium shot, tracking girl across room	Girl walks across the room	dialogue
5	2	Static close up	remote	fuzzing
6	2	Static medium shot	Girl	Fuzzing then silence- sound bridge
7	3	Static, Medium shot	Tv, goes from pxel to black	Fuzzing stops
8	25	Continuous shot, zoom in medim long shot	Girl walking away and turning back	Silence, fuzzing comes back
9	3	Extreme close up	Girl up close to the tv	Fuzzing continues
10	1	Medium Static shot	Pull plug from wall	Fuzzing stops
11	8	Whip Pan, medium shot	Girl to kitchen	Noise from kitchen
12	6	Extreme close up	Girls face scared	Silence
13	5	Static, medium	Girl walks into frame	Silence
14	3	Static long shot	Fridge door opening by its self	Silence
15	2	Static medium shot	Girl crosses frame	Heavy breathing enhanced
16	1	Tracking, high angled long shot	Girl runs across room to fridge	“
17	13	Extreme close up, switch focus	Girl to corridor	Silence
18	20	Long shot, static	Girl runs up the stairs	Dialogue

• I have seen in this clip that the faster the cutting rate more more tension is increased.
• The girl is wearing school uniform which emphasizes  youth and makes her weak.
• The majority of the clip was focused around the one girl.
• We are considering using a house as are location, I thought the 3 shots they used on the stairs was interesting and we might want to do something like that.
• I think in this clip there is a obvious show of good vs evil, our clip will be a lot more blurred in-between.

Group Task: Film Treatment

Film Treatment

 

A women is standing in the kitchen making dinner, she is wearing a floral dress and an apron. The kitchen is spotless, there are pots and pans hanging from the walls and even the fridge magnets are arranged. In the pan a juicy piece of meat is frying, as she turns the meat she hears a key turning in the front door a few moments later her husband walks into the room and kisses her on the cheek. He is wearing a smart business suit and a large overcoat, they have a mundane conversation while he makes a cup of tea. He takes off his coat and a newspaper falls out one of the pockets, he shows his wife an article about a missing teenage girl. Before his wife has time to reply there is a large rattle and it sounds as if its coming from downstairs, she says "What was that? Can you go and see what that was?" He hurriedly replies "Of course, ill go". He walks out of the room and down the stairs towards the basement.

 

In the basement one of the walls is covered in photos and drawings of people, there are also newspaper clippings about the people in the pictures which are reporting them missing. He adds the clipping he just showed to his wife to the wall. On the other side of the room there are two cages each holding a victim from the pictures, one is a young male in ripped jeans and an oversized t-shirt. The second cage contains a young girl in a short skirt and a small top, makeup if running down her face and they are both gagged. There is another young girl tied up on the floor and another boy laying face down on the ground, not moving. The man walks over to the body and picks up his arm, checks his pulse then lets the arm drop limply to the floor. He then feels the fat on his upper arm and looks pleased. He turns around and the girl tied up cowers, he goes over to he and strokes her cheek. She begins to stroke with fear, there is a noise, the door to the basement has been opened. There are footsteps down the stairs then the wife walks into the room. She smiles at her husband then her eyes move to the victim on the floor she asks her husband "is he done?" and her husband replies "yes he's ready." The wife then catches the eye of the girl in the cage and the girl looks at her pleadingly but the oven timer goes off. The husband and wife walk upstairs arm in arm and lock the basement door.

F.L - Technical Analysis, Funny Games (Haneke, 2007)

I analysed Funny Games (Haneke, 2007) I looked at each shot and focused on the following four areas:

• Camera angle/distance
• Duration of shot
• Mise-en-scene
• Sound

• From this I can clearly see that 55% of the shots feature the family (who you are lead to believe are the protagonists). This immediately allows the audience to create a positive bond with the family because they are given prevalence. 
• The average length of shot ranges between 5-8 seconds, with 45% of the shots being this length, this is quite a slow cutting rate in comparison with other horror film opens, this fits well with the opening because the opening is different to a horror film and doesn't feature many typical horror-film aspects. 
• Camera movement is kept in a fixed position (be dies the tracking shots of the car). This keeps the sequences relatively repetitive and allows a small sense of continuity editing (very minimal), however it doesn't create much pace and the scene lacks any real tension.
• The framing mainly uses central or slightly left/right aligned, but mainly centred with titles either central or located at the bottom of the frame. On one shot there are hands in the bottom of the frame, but the next sequence in which it focuses on the same shot, the hands are then centred to the centre of the shot. 
• The transitions are simple cuts between each scene with no apparent continuity or montage editing. The only visual effects which are featured are the title credits, which use a basic font, plain red colour and medium size text; these are normally located in the centre or bottom of the screen. The bold colour draws attention to them and could potentially detract the audiences attention away from the characters/shot. 

I feel this film opening is relevant to my groups planned production, because:

• It focuses on a family structure, which is the main focus of our production – a normal family that seem innocent and nothing ‘strange’ about them, however as the story develops you learn more about them.
• Also, the beginning looks at mundane aspects of life, like a normal car journey. Similarly to our production, the first half will focus on a normal family kitchen scene, and this is clearly paralleled with the ‘Identity’ opening, but just through a different set up (car journey vs. kitchen discussion).
• Lastly, both use simplistic shots but focus on the parents’ emotions; this is similar to our production because we will aim to capture the characters emotions through close-ups and mid-shots as well. We feel this is an accurate and appropriate way of showing the characters thoughts and feelings to the audience, without presenting them as the antagonists too obviously.

RD: Concept Development-Casting, Costume and Props

Casting
Man (antagonist)- Tall, dark hair. Tim?
Wife- Kind looking. ?
Male Victims- Normal boys. Miles
Female Victims- Normal girls. Anna, Orla
Child?- Young, innocent.

Costume
Man (antagonist)-Business suit, glasses, moustache?.
Wife- Dress, apron.
Male Victims- Ripped jean, blood stained baggy tshirt.
Female Victims-Ripped suggestive clothing: short skirt, crop top
Child?-Dungarees

Props
Rope
Cages
Tea cup
Kettle
Oven timer
Hand cuffs?
Photos
Newspaper Clippings
Gags
Chains
Keys

Man: Our antagonist being tall with dark hair suggest normality but also a bit of mystery. He will be dressed so the audience are made to believe he is a regular working gentleman.

Wife: The wife is needing to look kind and dress like a classic stay at home, cooking dinner lady. This is so when it turns out she is also in on the plan it is made to be more of a shock.

Male Victims: The male victims should look like they have been beaten or tested on or mistreated in someway but it is not obvious so the audience guesses for themselves what is being done to them.

Female Victims: The female victims will be wearing ripped and suggestive clothing implying to the audience that they are being sexually assaulted. They will also be made to look weak to create a binary opposition with the wife who is in power.

 Child?- We have not decided whether we will include the child character yet but if we do he will be mad to look innocent but completely unbothered by the people in cages, to show how normal it is to him.

JP. Concept Development - Sound

• We will be including diegetic sound in as most scenes to try to express the couple as a normal family. These sounds will include dialogue, movement and a kettle boiling
• As the antagonist nears the basement we will sync non-diegetic sound such as spooky and eerie creeks and noises to create a tense atmosphere.
• We will be getting all of these non-diegetic sounds and some diegetic sounds from https://www.freesound.org/
• We will want to use these extra sounds to create a visceral experience for the viewer similarly to in The Ring (Verbinski, 2002) when the women walks towards the door and the music immerses the audience as we know something is about to happen.

Soudtrack:

• Tension building when wife goes into basement
• Light hearted music to express normality
• Scary, enhanced music when the victims and newspaper articles are revealed

Effects:

• Chains rattling enhanced 
• Scratching 
• Muffled screams
• Oven timer ping 
• Sizzling meat
• Close door and lock enhanced 

JP. Concept Development - Potential Locations

• Through our discussion in class as well as our location recce we decided an internal location would be best for our film.
• The process of choosing a location has become easier now that we have a brief plot, we have decided our scenes will consist of a hallway, a kitchen, living room and a basement.
• We are in the middle of contacting friends and family and seeing if anyone would have a suitable house.
• Since in our plot the antagonist's are normal people we want the set to be a normal ish looking house, the basement will be the only area where we will create a specific set

• This is our location recce to our friend Harry's basement, we can see it has an eery damp look to it
• It also already has a cage in it which is convenient for us since we need one as a major prop
• We found the basement was quite small but will work fine for our filming, Harry said it would be fine for us to film there and he also lives very close to Fred and I
• We found this recce very useful to us as it helped us visualise our ideas; this location is what we think we are going to use in our production due

F.O'C - Concept development 2 - Typography

The typography of our title and any credits we may have will be a very important aspect of the film. The word typography encapsulates all parts of the text such as the font, the colour, whether it's serif or sans serif, line spacing and line length. We have to take all of this into account when deciding on the typography as it can create or destroy a mood/ atmosphere within a film.

Font:

• The font is the main aspect of typography.
• A capitalised font will draw a lot of attention however it is proven that more time is required for humans to read and internalise what the writing dictates.
• For this reason our group may want to consider a capitalised font for the title which will stay on the screen for longer, but not for the credits which may subconsciously devalue the visuals.
  

The Scream 4 (Craven-2011) Title

• The web link below has 161 different horror fonts which I think we could definitely utilise. A more subtle font may go nicely with our chosen plot idea.
• http://www.1001fonts.com/horror-fonts.html

Colour:

• Colour if used effectively can set the mood in a scene almost subconsciously.
• Red - Blood and violence. Pink - Innocence and playfulness. Black - Mystery, fear and evil.
• As you can see different colours can connote different things and not only can we use this when deciding on the typography, but also when looking at mise-en-scene.

Photoshop:

• While finding the right font to start out with is important, we have to remember that by using the Adobe Photoshop software we can dramatically change and customise our text making it unique for our chosen filming style.
• We can stretch, apply colour grading, patterns and textures if we feel as though it will improve the quality of the text.



Another thing we must take into account is the length of our title. A long title would maybe require a taller and less wide text so we could fit it all in frame. However a tall text would probably be preferable no matter what length the title is. An example of this is the trademark font from Alien (Scott-1979) which I found effective and innovative while being simplistic and not stylised.

Group: Concept development 1 - Mindmap

In today's lesson we discussed numerous ideas to do with our horror opening as a group. The areas that we looked at were:

• Location - Kitchen, hallway, basement in a 'seemingly' regular household.
• Our individual research tasks into film openings.
• Plot - We've outlined the plot which can be seen in a different post in more detail.
• The antagonist - White collar, seemingly normal, middle class, glasses. He will be represented at the start of the clip as a regular, unsuspecting, middle class worker.
• How we are going to utilise visceral and intellectual pleasures.

JP. Analysis of opening sequence: Halloween (Carpenter 1978)

Genre:

• This film is an iconic psychotic stalker/thriller, Halloween includes conventions of this genre such as a knife, a female victim and a psychopathic killer who doesn't want to do the murder but is being 'controlled' which in this case is the little brother.
• These characters are stock characters of horror films, visual signifiers of the psychological horror are represented through pov shots and props such as the mask and knife

Film language:

• A point-of-view shot looking up the stairs is used to build tension after the teenagers go upstairs, this combined with the continuous editing makes the clip more immersive. This shot was very effective since we couldn't see the antagonist so we had no idea who or what it was, especially not the little brother. We only find out it is the little brother through dialogue, the first major piece of dialogue is of the girl saying the little brothers. This dialogue is important to us since it is when we first learn that the girl has a relationship with the antagonist.
• Mise-en-scene is used a lot in this opening; props such as the knife set the scene for the audience. The urban house with just the teenagers in give a sense of isolation which is typical to these kind of films, we also see vulnerability when the male teenager leaves through a pov shot.
• Sound is also used in this opening such as the diegetic sound when the antagonist is outside, we can hear crickets and other ambient sounds. Non-diegetic sound is also used for example when we see the lights turn off in the window and a sudden high-pitched alerting sound is matched, this is done again when the antagonist spots the girl. These sound effects are visceral and so keep the audiences on edge.
• The opening is done without any pro/post filmic effects and has very minimal editing to it apart from the cuts and music.

Narrative:

• The audience is always placed with the antagonist since we see almost everything from their pov. The first scene is off the sexually promiscuous teenage couple on the sofa and one of them asks if they are alone, this idea of isolation is strongly expressed in this genre of horror. 
• We then see the antagonist picking up a knife from a pov handicam shot and he progresses into the stairs where we see the male teenager leaving the female along.
• We then follow the antagonist up the stairs and into the girls bedroom where he kills us, this matched with the non-diegetic sound creates an immerse atmosphere.

Representation and Ideology:

• We instantly see two teenagers who are sexually attracted to each other, in most horror films the couple are murdered rather fast, just as they were in this opening so this stereotype was met.
• Carpenter tries to express the vulnerability of youth at the time by making the first characters to die the young characters.
• Many antagonist's in these genre's of film are children or women so this stereotype was also met, similarly it was set in an isolated house and the victim was a girl.

Media Audiences:

• Halloween (Carpenter 1978) was aimed at the core audience of 16-30 since it is mainly teenagers and young adults who enjoy horror movies, especially since the protagonists are young as well.
• There are mainly two different perspectives that Halloween was interpreted in, one was that the boy had mental issues/possession and it was not really him doing the actions and the other was that she had been targeted due to her sexually promiscuous attitude and so we sympathise with the boy. I personally interpret the film as the boy being possessed since when the mother comes home he asks normal again.

 

Institutional context:

• Halloween premiered on October 25, 1978 in Kansas City
• The film grossed $70m
• The film had no big A lister's in it, some of the opening was even played by the producer
• It was produced by Falcon International Productions and distributed by both Warner Bros Pictures and Compass International Pictures.
• Halloween has become increasingly iconic for the psychology genre as it has become somewhat of a cult film and inspires many inspiring ideas.

RD: Task 5: Horror Research Task

Reading source 1

1. In the late 60's/ early 70's women were repositioned in the horror genre. They we no longer seen as the weak characters they became able to defend themselves and seek out the antagonist and fight.
2. The conventions of the 'stalk and slash' subgenre of horror: Group of teenagers, use of drugs and alcohol, "masked killer".
3. Slasher and Stalker films are most commonly watch by teenage boys and young men because they enjoy the female nudity and the graphic violence shown.
4. The author of this article argues that theses types of film are significant because they have given birth to some very important film franchises and at the core of all these films it is a deeply moral tale.
5. The final girl is the sole female survivor of numerous Slasher films. The final girl is generically more intelligent than the rest of the group and much more "morally pure" than the others, giving her the ability to recognise the danger earlier. An example of a final girl is Clover in "Her body, Himself".

Slasher Film-Friday the 13th

Stalker Film- One Hour Photo

Final Girl

 

 

 



Reading Source 2

 

1. Stories that aim to scare are so popular because cultures create and ascribe meaning to monsters, endowing them with characteristics derived from their most deep-seated fears and taboos.
2. A study of horror monsters can give an insight into the anxieties and concerns of the contemporary culture.
3. Nosferatu (1922), one of the earliest horror films use the vampires as a metaphor for the Germans in WW1.
4. Horror is still popular with audiences today because it has the ability to adapt and change to the preferences of each generation.

Horror Monster