Friday, 21 October 2011

Target Audience

In this section, I have narrowed my audience down to who I think will enjoy and want to watch my film the most. Here is my ideal audience:




















From this specification I can now refer to this when I am having difficulties with my storyline and title. This means that I can always keep in mind my audience and what they would like to see in my film, making it successful and effective.

Thursday, 20 October 2011

Textual Analysis - Comparison Between Two Psychological Horror Film Openings

Both The Eye and The Others have a lot of dark lighting and musical suspension. Sudden diegetic sounds cut through the music (screaming, smashing windows, rocks hitting a metal surface) to jolt the audience out of their trance created by the music. In both films the two assumable main characters are both female and do not reveal much about themselves at first. Revealing their character seems to be a gradual process. Both characters are shown mostly to be disturbed or upset by something, but the audience are not shown what it is. This builds on the psychological mystery of the film. In both openings there is a play on the audience's emotions. In The Others, the mix of a children's story and calm music with the dark setting and the screaming is used to confuse and scare the viewers. Whereas, in The Eye, the audience is confused as to who is in the wrong; the shouting, seemingly abusive children or the victim/woman who appears to hang herself in the end. The audience are made to feel a mix of suspicion, fear and pity for the woman. This play on emotions and dark settings make these two films a definite psychological horror.

From this comparison of two successful psychological horrors I have learned more techniques to define my genre. I now have more ideas for music choice and the pace of editing. I will start the shots off a little short, but they will grow shorter as the scene builds up and the music and diegetic sounds will become louder in time with the editing. My main character will remain quite mysterious throughout the opening.

Textual Analysis - The Others

The Others

 This film opens on a black screen with a woman softly narrating. She begins with "Are we sitting comfortably?", which many of the western, older generations would associate with 'Listen With Mother'. This would help the audience link this beginning to children's stories. This also helps us identify the target audience as adults and older generations.

A candle light-like effect then flickers on to reveal a drawn, dark picture montage of the interior of an old house, gothic house with childish characters dressed in old fashioned clothes. Revealing the setting of the film to be quite historic and gothic. The music is slow and classical, but with a sinister twist, indicating a tragic storyline. The credits fade in and out peacefully with the pace of the music.

The last drawn picture is of a big, historical house in what seems to be the middle of no where. The picture fades out onto an establishing long shot of the actual house. The mist has enrobed the building. Mist would be a connotation for spooky, mysterious scenes, settings and/or stories.
The music seems to come to an end slowly, indicating to the next shot.
The music is suddenly cut short by a very high-pitched scream emanating from the woman on screen, breaking the calm produced by the music and childish pictures. This could symbolise reality breaking through a story-like visage. A close up of the woman's face shows her terror. Slowly, the camera turns 90 degrees and zooms out into a mid-shot to establish that this character was lying in bed.This would indicate that was she just having a bad dream. This quick run through from peaceful, to terror, to relief plays on the audience's emotions effectively.
 The scene then moves to a long shot of the outside of the house. Mist is still surrounding the house, blocking out the background, so it remains mysterious as to where the house is situated. Three silhouttes walk across the grounds. The audience can hear distant conversation between the three. They sound cheerful as they laugh. This is a big contrast to the mood of the scene.


There is match on action in the next shot as the camera closes in on the three beings approaching the house. The long shot is taken up mostly by the granduer of the large door and face of the building, showing that the people who live here are of high class status. The conversation is a lot more audible, but we cut in half way through a sentence, so the clip the audience does hear is very confusing and sparks many questions about the trio. There is diegetic sound as they cross the gravel-covered ground towards the door.

At the end of the two minutes, we are re-introduced to the terrified woman in an earlier shot. This ties up the connection between her and the house, as she answers the door in an over the shoulder shot to the three, mysterious characters. Only her face appears in the crack of the door; implying that she may be paranoid or nervous about showing herself fully. Another connotation for this body language could be because she is a mysterious character who has yet to reveal everything.

Textual Analysis - The Eye

 The opening of this film opens on a long shot, onto a very dark, night-time scene. There are bare tree branches moving slightly in the wind, like skeleton hands; a very typical, yet a little old fashioned feature used in scary stories and films. There is very low, quiet, eerie music building tension. There is diegetic sounds ongoing through out this opening as we hear hard objects hitting a metal surface. There is also a sound of crickets in the background to emphasise the night-time.
 Fast pace editing is used as each shot changes. Some times it cuts to black as if we, the audience, are blinking; Like we are seeing this event unfold before our eyes. We still hear the music playing at the same pace and we hear more objects hitting a metal surface.

We then quickly cut to another long shot of the outside, with a blurry foreground, as though the audience is viewing this scene from behind fauna. A person sprints past the scene in a blur, shouting something in another language, so the English audience does not understand what is going on, but the frantic footsteps imply that something immediate and alarming is going on. The music gradually gets lower in pitch signifying a slow down of the action, nearing a climax.
 In this shot, there is a dark, yellowing hut, that looks like it's existed for a long time. There is a non-English word painted in red graffiti on the hut. The chosen colour suggests danger or blood, warning the audience that this will not be a nice introduction. The fast pace of the editing is kept up, as the music gets lower and lower in pitch.

There is a close up of a light bulb being turned on. the hand uses a cord to switch it on, showing that this setting is a little behind times. The background is still pitch black, confusing the audience as to where we are. We hear the sound of the light bulb humming and heavy breathing that could suggest that the character who turned on the light has been running and/or sobbing; which also suggests terror.

It then cuts to a close up of some kind of inanimate object we are unable to recognise. In the background we see the shadow of a person walking around quickly. Frantic whispering can be heard, and we connect it to the panicked movements of the shadow. The music grows lower in pitch as the climax approaches.

We are then snapped out from the dimly lit room as we are shown a long shot of the opening scene, but this time, two young characters have occupied the shot. They project childish shouts in a different language and throw rocks. We then understand that the action they are performing links in with the sound of hard objects hitting a metal surface. We presume the metal surface is the hut we were shown earlier. 

This shot then confirms that the mysterious, stressed character is inside the old hut as we hear muffled cries and the smashing of glass as another rock hits a window. There is a mid shot of the shadow and there is more frantic muttering. The music gets lower in pitch still. 


Then, the close up of a hand preparing a black wire indicates that is what the character within the hut was up to. The colour of the wire has many dark connotations such as death. A woman is muttering as she ties the wire up and the music grows lower still.

The woman grabs a chair, which helps the audience clue together what is about to take place. The room is still very dark and it is very difficult to see exactly where she is or what she looks like, keeping the mystery. Kids are still shouting and throwing rocks. The shots become slightly longer to give the audience a chance to catch up with what is happening.
Music tension increases and still decreases in pitch. More diegetic sound as more windows are smashed by rocks keeping the reality of the event. We see a close up of the woman's feet as she struggles to reach something. To match this, we hear strained gasps and muttering.


There is a medium close up of a shaft of light through a cobweb, creating creepy lighting and emphasising the darkness. An object fades in from the darkness and it almost looks like a white, hollow, face. The music rises in tension as it closes in on the climax. More windows are shattered so we receive a fusion of reality and the surreal image of that face.
The last shot of this sequence is an extreme close up of the mysterious character's eye. This links in with the title of the film as well as shows the audience that she is only young because there are no visible signs of old age. There is a shadow across half of her face, hiding her full identity. The tear drop runs down her face to show that she is either scared and/or upset. The woman, through sobs, mutters something in another language. Her voice is shaky but almost begging, showing that she wants to be free of the horror she seems to be faced with. Music reaches a climax as it hits it's loudest, highest note and it cuts to the next scene.

Thursday, 13 October 2011

Synopsis - (film name here)

Synopsis
Quinn and Max  are a young, ambitious couple, struggling to make their way in the city after a long, relaxed few years in university. They live in a fairly posh town house that Max’s rich parents mostly paid for. They seem to have it better than most.

One night, whilst working the night shift in the hospital, Quinn runs into Francis, the elusive janitor everyone at work is always gossiping about. Quinn drops the bags of blood she is carrying and they burst on the floor. Francis stares at the blood for a second, glares at Quinn and then leaves. Quinn is left bewildered. At home, she frets about what she had witnessed that night, as Max watches her with a concerned expression before leaving for work.

Quinn goes back to the hospital for her next shift, unknowingly rushing until she turns up half an hour early. She confides what happened the night before with her friend, another nurse, Mary. Mary tells Quinn about how she’d had a similar encounter on her night shift the other week at which Francis had said to her ‘mind where you tread.’ Mary seems very troubled and a little scared. Quinn asks her how things are at home with her terminally ill husband, Karl. Mary brushes off the question with a nervous nod of the head and then leaves. Quinn has a long, tiring shift in which a patient of hers died in his sleep. Very stressed, Quinn blames herself and drives home in a daze, leading her to nearly run over a little boy in the street. When she returns home, she breaks down in Max’s arms and falls asleep that way for a few hours. At around 3 in the morning, Quinn awakes suddenly as if she has had some very disturbing dreams. Tired and confused, her body seems to lead her towards the laptop, where she searches the name ‘Francis Denver’, even though she has never known Francis’ last name before. No matches were found. Quinn refreshes the page repeatedly until she falls asleep at the desk.

The next morning, Max awakes Quinn and irritably tells Quinn she has an unhealthy obsession with the janitor. Quinn over reacts, and knocks the laptop onto the floor, causing it to break. Max, alarmed, books her in at a psychiatrist, to which Quinn says she’ll go to, but ends up stalking Francis back to his house. To get to Francis’ house, they have to walk through a dark forest. Quinn loses track of him and turns to head back home when she is hit hard in the head and blacks out. When she wakes up she is unfamiliar to her surroundings and develops a couple of bruises and a nasty gash on her head. As she treats herself she realises that she’s in a room full of bloodstained sacks, supposedly full of bodies. Quinn is confused as to whether they are real or not. She soon blacks out and hears a loud screeching noise

Quinn awakes in hospital after an unfathomable amount of time. She finds out she is lying in the same bed her patient died in before. She is approached by two police officers and an inspector, who accuse her of murdering her fiancé and Mary (the nurse who works with Quinn). Quinn is taken to the police station where she is interrogated. She is shown a number of pictures of Mary before and after her death. Quinn has short but gruesome flashbacks of Mary's body hanging in the janitor's closet. Quinn does not remember anything else except the name, Francis Denver. After a while the police don’t have enough evidence to throw her in jail and she is left under surveillance. Not being able to leave the house, Quinn becomes crazed and depressed. She empties her bedroom and locks herself in with just a picture of her fiancé.

After a few weeks, the inspector breaks into Quinn’s bedroom to find her weak and curled up on the floor. He tells her that they have found more bodies and more evidence that all points towards her. In desperation and insanity, she pounces upon the inspector, bites a chunk out of his shoulder and then makes a run for it. She runs through the forest towards Francis’ house. As she gets closer to the house, flashbacks of what actually happened hit her (Quinn did kill all those people through paranoia). She seemingly shakes it off and runs faster. When she gets to the house, she creeps around the back. Looking weak, insane and barely human, Quinn picks up a brick and enters the house. She creeps up to an armchair where Francis is sat, in a deep sleep. As she is about to hit Francis, he wakes up and there is a big brawl and chase through the house and out into the forest. Whilst the chase is happening, there is confusion as to who is chasing who. Quinn gets more flashbacks of herself running through the same woods, chasing her fiancé with a bloody knife in her hand. We then are shown Francis, running for his life. He stops and hides behind a tree to catch his breath. He hears a twig snap and looks up to see Quinn crouched on a branch, readying to drop the brick on his head.

The film flashes to white and then fades to black, where the credits start.

Now knowing my storyline, I can get a good feel for how the opening should look like. I can now choose tense music to match the suspense during the film. Opening on Quinn in a mental hospital will confuse the audience. A clean, plain setting will give none of the storyline away.

Wednesday, 12 October 2011

Psychological Horrors - Codes and Conventions

From my horror genre research below, I have decided to use psychological for my film. Before I can storyboard my film opening, I need to bare in mind the basics of Psychological horrors. This will help when I want to indicate to the audience what to expect from my film. Here are the codes and conventions of a psychological horror
Characters
  • Young adult or a child (usually female)
  • Mentally unstable
  • Emotionally unstable
  • Dark, gothic in looks
  • A detective (or other figure of authority)
  • An unsuspecting partener or friend

Settings
  • Mental Hospitals
  • Dark, gloomy, abandoned places
  • Big, isolated domains
Props
  • Old photographs/teddies/dolls/anything else of sentimental value to a character
  • A weapon of some sort (ranging from proper weapons such as a knife to inanimate objects such as a metal pole)
  • A source of research such as a laptop, book, files.

Storylines
  • A story full of suspense, twists and deaths/mental torment.
  • One person either mentally ill or the victim of brutal abuse from a stalker/family member/friend.
  • Not always, but a lot of times it ends in the main character either dying or ending up in hospital/mental asylem.
  • There is usually a strong sense of confusion and mystery inflicted upon the main character and thus, the audience.
  • There is almost never a happy ending.
  • The horror usually is ceased through the main character working out what is happening and stopping it. However, sometimes the horror is not stopped, either implying that you cannot stop the horror/fear or that there will be a sequel.
  • Ones closest to the main character are usually killed off
Sound
  • Very little dialogue throughout most of the film.
  • More dialogue when the main character is trying to reason/workout what's happening to them, showing panic and desperation.
  • Tense, low music to build suspense, which usually builds up louder when a scary scene is coming up.
  • Sometimes there will be a very quiet drum beat in the background, mimicking the heart rate of the character and possibly the audience's.
  • A lot of silent scenes giving the film an eerie effect.
Cinematography and editing
  • Fast pace editing for the most part to emphasise confusion and action. However, slow paced editing is used at tense moments to build suspense.
  • Characters will have flashbacks from time to time, each time they get closer to working out why these acts of horror are happening.
  • Sometimes, not very linear, showing the result of horrible events at the beginning to spark curiosity and fear. It would usually show the character after being through an ordeal (e.g. in a mental hospital, alone and lost in a forest, in a hospital bed, etc).
  • Mostly filmed in dark places such as night-time, dark houses, etc.
  • The camera nearly always focuses and follows the main character
 From researching the codes and conventions of Psychological horrors, I know what I must include in my opening to give the needed effect of suspense and fear on my audience. A non-linear approach (opening on the after-effects if events) will create the needed 'play' on emotions towards the character and her situation. I also know that using a young, seemingly vulnerable female lead will create fear for the character.
With these in mind, I can effectively make my film into a clear psychological horror.

Tuesday, 11 October 2011

Preliminary Task


The doctors appointment from Holly Jones on Vimeo.



Before my peers and I started thinking about our film ideas, we had to learn the basics of film. We experiemented with reverse shots (for conversations), over the shoulder shots, match on action, and more camera angles. We also learnt about the importance of the 180 degree rule. The rule is if the camera is filming from the left hand side of a person, it can never cross over to the right hand side, and visa versa.

If broken, the audience will be snapped out of their 'trance' and brought back to reality. The camera switching angles confuses the audience's brains and breaks the illusion.

From filming this preliminary task I have learnt the skills I need to make my final film look professional and effective. I will be using match-on-actions, reverse shots, over the shoulder shots and much more to bring my film opening up to the right standard.

Wednesday, 5 October 2011

Horror Sub-Genre Research

Before I started planning my film, I had to research and display information on horror sub-genres to give myself an idea on how to go about creating my opening. I found there were many sub-genres related to horror. Some bordering on the edge of thrillers and others on the edge of fantasy and even comedy. I found that there was really no such thing as a solid horror movie. This, I feel, made it easier for me as I could narrow my film down to a particular, recognisable style, however, I knew it would be difficult to keep myself from turning, for example, a monster horror into a zombie apocalypse.


I decided to research horror as I prefer it to most other film genres and I have been writing a phsycological horror novel in my free time, which would give me inspiration for this film.

Other films that inspire me are: Silent House, Silent Hill, The Ring, Hide And Seek, The Blare Witch Project.