Research into chosen genre: Horror

Horror Film Openings:

INSIDIOUS

SE7EN

THE RING

Generic Conventions:

• Fast paced editing (Se7en & The Ring) to present the storyline of the film through the visual imeragry of objects and occurances.
• Slow paced editing (Incidious) to make the audience feel involved with the scene and the occurances that are being presented.
• Jolty, unclear titles (The Ring & Se7en) to represent the confusion throughout the film. making the audience aware that they will have to concentrate in order to understand the plot of the film.
• Red titles on black background (Incidious) to show the generic representation of a horror film, using the colour red as a representative of blood and death. 
• Eerie non-diegetic sound - movie score (Incidious & The Ring) to create a scary/intense atmosphere, to prepare the audience for the rest of the film.
• Intense non-diegetic sound - movie score (Se7en) to represent that the remainder of the film is going to contain some intensitity or intsense moments and the audience should be prepared for them.

Most Popular Horror Films:

1. Ouija: Game Never Stops - 8.9/10
2. The Ornate Lock - 8.7/10
3. Psycho - 8.5/10
4. Alien - 8.5/10
5. The Shining - 8.4/10

Highest Top -US- Grossing Horror Films:

1. World War Z - $202 Million
2. What Lies Beneath - $155 Million
3. Gremilins - $148 Million
4. The Blair Witch Project - $141 Million
5. The Conjuring - $137 Million

This will help us when creating our own film opening as it allows us to see what generic conventions for a horror films work in certain areas, for example, the title could be represented in the generic way, or in a more speradic way where it isnt always clear to read. also it allows us to see what horror films were the most popular and what films grossed the highest reveniew.

Melissa Tyler 1330

Mise en Scene considerations...

Props:
Generic conventions

• Old book/s (old eerie feel)
• Rope (imitation of hanging/death)
• Wires (Confusion/strangling)
• Blood (Death/gory/fights)
• Wood (old/mouldy/burning/fire/death)
  
  
  
  

Lighting:

• Daylight/naturalistic lighting- rest of filming (props) (contrast with horror/uneasy feel)
• Night time/pitch black- burning books (mysterious feeling/can't see what's coming)
  

Costumes:

• Pale colours (innocent-main character) (stereotypical victim in horror film)
• Dark colours (dead bodies-eerie feel) (stereotypical villain/monster)

Makeup:

• Natural for main character (innocent, not expecting anything)
• Pale faces for dead people (injuries showing)

All these features are all mainly used as generic conventions in horror films as it helps create that haunted, uneasy feel. The props all connote death and the costumes and makeup all match up with the stereotypical characters in horror/thriller films)

Cerys Moston 1243

25 Word Film Brief

Man finds a book, reads it, and discovers that the events in the book begin to happen to people and eventually get closer to home.

This will help us to create our own film opening as it allows us to see our full film storyline in simplistic form, making room for adjustments to the storyline and in turn, the opening seqeunce which we will be creating.

Melissa Tyler 1330

Certification for our film...

We've decided to certify our film as an '18'.

 'Films rated 18 are for adults. No-one under 18 is allowed to see an 18 film at the cinema or buy / rent an 18 rated video. No 18 rated works are suitable for children'

'The strongest gory images are permitted at this category'
'At 18, horror films may contain very strong horror, gore or sustained threat'
'Though 18 films and videos may cover difficult and strong subjects and themes, harm is still a consideration'

Our film would potentially contain strong gore, horror and strong themes of death. Although our opening may not show or contain these, the actual film itself would highly likely present these ideas, therefore would best be suited for an '18' as this is the only category to accept these strong themes.

Bibliography: British Board of Film Classification website

It is important to know the certification as it allows the audience to be aware of what to expect within the film and for us, it keeps us in a mindset that we need to keep it this way, especially not to offend anyone. Showing our film certificate, will also prevent us from getting any negativity back from audiences as we've warned them and have made it clear, and so that we can stick to our aim of our target audience.

Cerys Moston 1243

Research into Film Openings

Comedy

SUPERBAD

Generic Conventions:

• Colourful backgrounds
• Comedic body language
• Upbeat tempo
• Slapstick comedy
• foreshadowing the comedy involved (slapping, therefore slapstick comedy)

Horror

THE RING

  



Generic Conventions:

• Eerie non-diegetic sound (movie score)
• Unclear titles
• Fast paced editing
• fade to black editing
• black and white filming
• filming of objects rather than people
• crackling and screeching non-diegetic sound

Romance

 LOVE ACTUALLY

Generic Conventions:

• The continuity of the mention of the word love
• affectionate body langauage. For example, hugging and kissing
• peacful, relaxing non-diegetic sound (movie score)
• naturalistic lighting
• Slow paced editing
• the colours red/pink which connote romance, these can be used in titles or mise-en-scene

This will help us to create our own film openign as it will allow us to understand the genreic conventions of potential genres of our film opening and what we can realsistically do using the generic conventions.

Melissa Tyler 1330

Horror Genre mood board

We collected some images that will inspire us, especially inspire location choices for our film as well as colour schemes, these images follow themes of a sepia colour or slightly green tinted. I Think this mood page will be very helpful to create a high standard film.


Georgia Neale (1251)

Film Institution....

We have decided to be an Independent film institution. Our horror/thriller genre is quite specific and will only be a type of film that certain people will like, it won't be something everyone would like to view. This genre of film may only apply to a niche audience therefore an independent institution. Being an independent film institution makes it easier to maintain that good standard for our opening and so we can focus on the detail and quality of our opening.

E.g. Benderspink
Previous films: The Ring, The Butterfly Effect, Insanitrarium, Kill Theory
Producer: Chris Bender
Producer/manager: J.C. Spink

They've turned their management firm into one of the more successful hybrids, mainly due to their solid judgment about what audiences enjoy. By no means exclusive to the horror genre (summer hit We’re The Millers is one of theirs, as was Monster-In-Law, which some might consider a different kind of horror movie altogether), the company has done well by finding solid remake fare (The Ring), low budget franchise possibilities (there were two straight-to-video Butterfly Effect sequels), and high concept fare (Demeter follows the tale of the 19^th century ship that brought Dracula to England).

One of our inspirations for our genre was The Ring. This was the film that gave us this haunted horror idea and the kind of eerie feel we want to create. This information shows that even the smaller, less known companies still create very successful films and their film institution doesn't put them at a disadvantage.

Cerys Moston 1243

Choosing the Genre...

We, as a group, decided to create a horror/thriller film. We all agreed that this genre was very appealing and that it's usually a big hit in the box office. This genre really keeps audiences focused and interested and is an eye opening topic.

We previously have done edits, filming and research on horror and thriller and therefore it made it easier to get a good understanding of the genre and therefore, we were able to get to ideas quickly and had time to make decisions.

Although this genre is hard to make, we think that we a prepared as we have had experience and we want to challenge ourselves. We are fully aware that the Mise, lighting, editing, sound etc. is extremely important when creating this genre to make it effective, but this will be something we'll have to develop along the way to create that eerie feel and atmosphere for that horror/thriller genre.

Cerys Moston 1243

Mindmaps of 3 Film Genres

THRILLER

HORROR

DRAMA

These mindmaps will help us when creating our own film opening as it allows us to see our film ideas as a whole and decide when looking at each of them which is the best out of them all, which we will then use and adapt towards our film opening.

Melissa Tyler 1330

Final Cut: Se7en re-make

This is our final cut of our opening sequence re-make of Se7en. We know that this isn't a complete two minutes but we've learnt enough, especially form the editing as there was so much involved. The editing was a major part of this as well as the filming. It's taken us over 3 weeks to edit what we've done so far and we've learnt a lot of the techniques. This filming and editing experience has been a huge help towards our actual film opening as it's taught us many different techniques that we could use when it comes to making our film opening to make it easier and quicker for us later on.

Cerys Moston 1243

Shotlist (re-make)

This is our shotlist for our opening title sequence remake. This explains the exact timing, type of camera movement/angle, placement, action of each part of the opening. This was extremely helpful when it came to filming as it told us exactly what to do and when. Therefore, making it easier to handle and made the job slightly quicker, even though it took us around 8 hours to film. This gave us practice towards our actual shotlist, when it comes to it, and so we can be more prepared when it comes to filming it.

Cerys Moston 1243

Se7en Opening Re-Make: How was It Made?

The production of this Se7en opening re-make proved to be extremely challenging. We decided that my house would be the best location for filming as the darkness of the rooms proved to have the correct, low-key lighting for the majority of the scenes. Some scenes needed a very low key light, and because we filmed this sequence during daylight hours, so those particular scenes were filmed under a blanket whilst holding a torch onto what needed to be filmed. For example, this scene was filmed under a blanket with the torch from my iPhone shining on the picture:

Original



 Remake

We also had the difficulty of  not having the same objects that are used in the original opening sequence so had to improvise with random kitchen utensils and put them together to make objects look similar to the original. For example, this was made from a cap opener and a toffee hammer:

Original 

Remake

Also to get the correct lighting as high key we used a small aquarium lamp and held it up at the right angle to get the correct shine and shadows on the objects which we were filming. This allowed us to capture a similar effect from the lighting to the original opening sequence for Se7en.  For example, we used a garlic press for an object that closes quickly, to create a similar effect to the original.

Original









Remake

To create the effect of dry skin on the hands, we used PVA glue which we then dried and picked at to create the effect of chipping it off with a Razor. However we did not have a razor so we used a soldering iron stand instead to create a similar visual effect.

Original



Remake



To create the titles in the same style and design as the original, our group member Georgia Neale (1251) took screenshots of the original title designs and drew ours herself on her graphics tablet. This was to replicate the titles as close to the originals as possible. this was also does to help create a tense atmosphere which would be used to set up the rest of the film.  

Original

Remake

Original

Remake

Melissa Tyler 1330









se7en re-make timeline

This is a timeline of when the titles are shown, this was incredibly helpful during editing as I could see the exact amount of seconds the different titles needed to be on screen. I put the audio timing's in blue so it would be easy to see if it matched up with the audio when I was editing.

Georgia Neale (1251)

Se7en Remake: Storyboard

This is the story board which we will use as a group in the production of our remake on the Se7en opening sequence. This shows each scene within the sequence and allows us to clearly see the angle of each shot, so that it is a reliable source to make the shots as close to the original as possible. There are a lot of different scenes within the Se7en opening as it is put together as a compilation of multiple objects which create a background for the Genre and Narrative of the film.

 Melissa Tyler 1330

Se7en Opening Sequence

This is Se7en opening sequence.
This opening is very complicated and we knew this is what we needed to challenge ourselves. Its clear that the editing involved in this sequence is tricky and very fast paced. We wanted it to be hard for us, so it'll hopefully be easier for us when it comes to making our actual film opening.




Cerys Moston 1243

Why we are doing a re-make...

Our group is creating a re-make of a film opening to get an idea of what's involved in the process to help us develop our own actual film opening. By doing a re-make, it'll help us further on as we'd know the process now therefore we'd be quicker and have learnt from our mistakes. This re-make will help us gain skills from the filming, editing and managing experience to get things done efficiently.

Cerys Moston 1243

Candidates

Cerys Moston     1243
Melissa Tyler     1330
Georgia Neale    1251