Magazine Cover Final Draft

Magazine Cover First Draft

Poster

Extended Research: What Makes Horrors Scary

This looks at a few films and notes the scariest scenes and why it is the audience find them scary.

The Strangers

‘The Strangers’ is a film about a couple that get invaded by a trio wearing masks. Starring Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman; ‘The Strangers’ has been acclaimed to be ‘Terrifying’ by the Sunday Mirror and ‘Undeniable Horror’ by the Empire film magazine. The horror in this film is not due to blood and gore, but to the cunning of the ‘monsters’ and concealment of their faces. It is a common fear to be scared of masks, because it is impossible to recognise what the masked person is feeling, neither can you see what they look like. There is one particular scene close to the start of the film when the victims do not realise they are being attacked. The woman (Tyler) walks into the kitchen and behind her the audience can see a man in a scare-crow like mask in the room behind her. He stands there for a long time and the woman does not notice, when the shot angle changes to look into the kitchen, and then changes again to reshow the room behind her the man has gone. The audience are wondering where and what he might be doing.

We decided to try and use ideas like this in our film, the idea of the monster being a clown (to help conceal it’s face) and to try and do a shot where he was there and a second later he is not.

30 Days of Night

Starring Josh Hartnett, ‘30 Days of Night’ was described by London Lite to be ‘The Best Vampire Film in Decades’. Set in the small Alaskan town of Barrow, a place where for one of the twelve months of the year the town suffers no daylight, this due to the rotation of the Earth around the Sun. the town becomes invaded by vampires, who have there own dialect, and although do not look terrifying they are scary because of their abnormal looks. Vampires are one of the oldest myths, and backs up a lot of the ideas used in horror genre films dating back almost to the beginning of the film industry. Perhaps one of the most horrifying scenes in this film is when the character played by Hartnett is going up to a dark building looking for someone. Again this is relatively close to the start of the film and the audience are starting to expect something scary to happen. Whilst Hartnett is looking for the individual he draws his gun and torch, looks around, to very suddenly find a head on a stick. This is not only a grotesque image but because of the speed at which it is found the audience is made to jolt in retaliation.

Resident Evil

Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez star in this action packed zombie horror film. After waking up with amnesia the character played by Jovovich is taken by some sort of covert armed force into a massive underground base under her home. An incident has happened killing all the employees in this underground base, as the film progresses it happens that the base belonging to the ‘Umbrella Corporation’ is infested with the living dead. Again zombies are a very recurring theme in the horror genre, they have been before and certainly are more so now. The scariest scene in my opinion happens at the start of the film when they are first going into the underground base. The group come across a flooded room which they can see into because of the large windows, in this flooded room there is a dead woman floating. The group notice and acknowledge this but continue on their mission. The camera zooms on to the dead women’s face and very suddenly her eyes open. This is scary because the audience do not expect her a drowned body to open it’s eyes and this is the first clue to the film being a zombie film, for audience members who did not know before beginning to watch it.

Time Plan

September 12^th

· Start researching:

o Film Ideas and Genres

September 18^th

· Start story board

· Start researching target audience

September 24^th

· Start poster and magazine covers

· Start thinking about set location for film

September 30^th

· Have all above tasks finished by this time at the latest

October 6^th

· Book out camera and start filming, also book out camera for two upcoming dates

October 9^th

· Book out camera for this time and film extra shots to use if necessary

October 12^th

· Book out camera for this time and film extra shots to use if necessary and start the editing if finished

October 21^st

· Continue editing through to this date, this is the set deadline

All Dates leading to November 1^st

· Finish any of the above tasks that may not be complete.

November 2^nd

· Start evaluation questions and finish ASAP

Fan Made Teaser Trailer For Scream 4

NOTE: Please Note that this post had originally included screenshots of the fan made teaser trailer. However due to either a technical fault or lack of technical resources the screenshots would not post. Please follow the link provided to view the trailer, there is either a large box or [Photo] to indicate where a screen shot is meant to be. Thank you.

A fan of the scream franchise has released a home made teaser trailer which our group found like a good example to get some ideas from. There is a ‘Scream 4’ to be released in 2010, and our group almost couldn’t tell that this wasn’t professionally made. As a matter of fact there are a lot of Youtube user comments asking when the film is set to release in cinemas.

‘Greenbeast101 (4 days ago) Marked as spam

when is it coming out’

The trailer can be found at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUbDTZEihKA

The beginning of the trailer is the first ring of a telephone, which is sharply followed by a shot of this telephone, with the camera zooming in on it.

The zooming in effect makes the viewer focus their concentration on the phone which quickly builds suspense.

‘Scream’ fans watching this will also notice that the girl in the photo is from a previous film.

Once the phone is taking up most of the screen a woman’s hand comes into the shot from the left and picks up the phone.

The screen then quickly fades to black and the voice of what sounds like an American teenage girl says ‘Hello’ timidly. She already sounds scared and nothing has happened, there is also an eerie sounding noise/music for the soundtrack.

The screen then shows some writing, and gives more hints away to the ‘Scream’ fans.

Notice the font is the same font in used in the previous films. The word ‘ENDING’ then fades to a red as if to resemble blood, but also it is used in the other ‘Scream’ films so fans should have figured out by now what that it is a trailer for a new ‘Scream’ film.

The screen then fades to a door, this makes the audience believe somebody or something is going to come through it, for people who have realised it’s a Scream movie they will be expecting ‘man in the mask’.

Then the more words come onto the screen and again the last word changes colour to red.

This refers to the last phrase, together it reads, ‘A story can not have an ending until the main character is killed’. This shows to everybody watching the trailer that it is for a sequel to something.

The screen then changes to a shot of the door again, and suddenly a hand slams on the window, making the audience of the trailer jump.

You can also hear the woman from earlier sounding scared and like she is struggling. This shows them that it is a horror film if they hadn’t already realised.

Next the screen again fades to black and finally reveals which film is being advertised.

The ‘A’ then changes colour to red and turns to ‘4’ to show that it is a new chapter in the franchise.

Then the screen goes to a closer shot of the door, and the traditional ‘Scream’ mask slowly appears on the other side.

The screen then shows a website where people can look up the film, this is a good device to create publicity and hype for the film.

Story Board

Due to unforseen problems with the uploading tool on blogger I was unable to post our video directly on here. However after a lot of hard work me and Chris have managed to upload our video (story board) to youtube therefore you can view it on that. The URL is below:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvcdKcbN5qo&feature=youtube_gdata

Evaluation Questions

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In our film we didn’t want to use a typical clown costume for our killer’s outfit because we thought that it was too cliché and we wanted to try something different. We took the route of the Joker’s outfit from the film The Dark Knight. The Joker wore casual clothes which made him look like an ordinary man, apart from the make-up which defined him as a clown. This brought a sense of realism to our film and made our killer character more like a twisted human being than a clown. For our magazine front cover we used Empire magazine as a template. We included the usually stuff such as a price, barcode, date, issue number etc in an attempt to make the magazine look as official as possible. We looked at several old Empire magazines and laid out our film magazine just like the lay out Empire use. It was daytime when we shot our film however the fact that it was shot within someone’s home made it a lot scarier because the killer was actually inside the house. However, the film magazine background is dark and sinister but I don’t think that the audience will pay much attention to the contrast. We used bright colours and put the title of the film (‘Frown’) on our film poster in an attempt to create a sense of playfulness. We’re trying to confuse the audience because we want them to get mixed impressions so they go on to research in on the web and find out more about it, kind of like viral marketing. Our trailer contains scary music through out and has a jumpy bit towards the end which does genuinely make the audience jump. We used the company Lions Gate Entertainment in our trailer because they traditionally make horror films especially the Saw series. Also we used the Twisted Pictures production company in our trailer because they have worked with the Saw series and other horror films. As you can see we have followed the Saw series closely because it has been largely successful and are on target to release their eighth film in the series.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Our film varied a little to the two ancillary texts that we used. Our film’s genre was horror so when we edited our film we included disturbing music, with suspending camera shots and a part which makes you jump. However, the trailer was shot in broad daylight. This was to emphasise the fact our film was different to most horror films and that our killer character struck at day as well as night. Our ancillary texts were dark and gloomy however we did try to use bright colours in both of them to try and make the clown character seem a slightly mental. The film poster is extremely teasing, showing only a pair of clown shoes and the title. The film magazine won’t have a full review on it either, just a little section of what they think the film is about. As mentioned earlier, we want our audience to find out about the film themselves and to be left in the dark about it, similar to how Paranormal Activity played with their audience. We were sticking to bright colours and dark backgrounds for both our ancillary texts and parts of the clown were shown on the two different pieces e.g. the clowns head for the film magazine cover and its feet for the poster.

3. What have you learned from your audience feed back?

When we showed our trailer to our classmates for the first time the first initial response was that they thought it was scary which is what we wanted to achieve seeing as our trailer is of the horror genre. The feedback we got from our classmates were positive and they thought that some of our camera shots where very spooky, particularly the scene where our killer character is in view of a mirror in the background and then disappears discretely. They also thought the use of a notorious producing company and the fact that we used credits made our trailer look very professional. A couple of classmates also liked our use of transitions with the text throughout the trailer, liking the fact that the trailer flowed throughout without any stops or delays. There were the comments that we were looking for. We did receive some constructive criticism about our use of sound effects throughout the trailer. A couple of classmates said that they thought the sound effects were too noisy for their liking and that some where louder than others. We therefore re-checked all of our sound effects throughout our film and changed them to make them sound better.

4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

In the first stages of our film we had to research and plan. To do this we used mainly computers. We went on hundreds of websites looking up different films, companies, actors/actresses etc in an attempt to help construct our teaser trailer. We also purchased a couple of film magazines in an attempt to get used to the structure of their front covers for our ancillary text. We went to the cinema a couple of times whilst in the research stages of our film and looked at several scary trailers before the film such as Saw VI and Paranormal Activity.
When filming we used a state of the art camera and tripod to capture all the scenes for our trailer. We then took our tape into the editing suite and began capturing and editing our trailer on the editing computer. We used my iPod Touch to record several sound effects and then we used a program called Sound Edit to capture all of sounds. We then placed the captured sounds into the correct places.
When it came to the blogging part of the project we used programs such as Microsoft Word and Publisher. We also used Windows Movie Maker to create our story bored. All the photos were uploaded from cameras and phones via USB slots in our computers.

Target Audience

Our film is aimed at people who enjoy watching horror films, it was said by Jeffrey Goldstein that:

‘One study identified three factors that were important in the appeal of horror films to males aged 15-45: the excitement generated by the film (called "sensation-seeking" by psychologists, the enjoyment of stimulation or physiological arousal), the wish to see the destruction found in horror films, and the satisfying resolution usually found at the end of the film.’

Although we intend on our film to appeal to young people; so usually people under the age of twenty-five. This is because of the usual audience of previous slasher films such as ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ and ‘Friday 13th’ were aimed at young people, usually teenagers. Teenagers like these films because the creators of the film make the characters around the same age as the target audience. Teenagers that like the same things the teenagers of the audience like, teenage characters that do the same things as the teenage audience. This appeals to the target audience because they can relate to the characters they watch on the big screen.

In this case however because of the film’s content it is not suitable for viewing of people under the age of eighteen.

Planning

Planning

We decided on a horror film because last year we did an action film and we thought we’d try something different. Tom and I are both scared of clowns and the majority of our media class are scared of clowns also. However, the young people of today tend to go and see films which have scary things in in an attempt to confront their fears, for a thrill even.
A poll was posted online on the http://quizilla.teennick.com/polls/result/12977668/ website and the poll showed that 66% of the users who answered the poll were afraid of clowns. This evidence backed up our theory that we think that the majority of people are afraid of clowns.

We have decided that our clown character will not be wearing the usual clown attire. We want our clown to be as realistic as possible to make the film more believable. The clown’s make-up will be all smudged and it will probably be wearing a suit. However the suit wont be smart, it will be more like ‘The Joker’s’ outfit in the recent Batman films.

There were several different places we thought of filming our film and they were:
Ø Tom’s house in Deal
Ø The school
Ø Chris’s house
Ø The school

We choose Chris’s house because it is situated in the countryside which means it is very isolated. This makes the setting for the film even scarier as it makes the family who live in the house a target. The film will be shot at night time so that it makes the setting and the clown look much scarier.

Research on Genre

Slasher Films Research

Scream and the New Film Cycle: Remakes of classic slasher films such as: Psycho and the continue of the Chucky series. (1996) Up until the 1960 film ‘Psycho’, the majority of horror films were based around monsters e.g. Frankenstein, Dracula, The Blob and Creature From The Black Lagoon. From then on, horror films started to have the films revolving around human characters instead of monsters. Directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and Francis Ford Coppolla were the masters of this genre, generating films such as The Shining, The Exorcist, The Omen etc. After ‘Psycho’, films like A Nightmare On Elm Street and Halloween. These films produced notorious anti-heroes and created franchises just for the characters such as Leatherface, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers. However, after time there was a slow decline in slasher films and the films that were being produced seemed to be too similar to the classics. This lead to most of the films being made being direct-to-video instead of being released in cinemas. Then Wes Craven came along and created the Scream trilogy. Scream revitalised the slasher horror films. This revelation has lead to the remaking of the classic films such as Psycho, Jason X, I Know What You Did Last Summer etc.

- Early Slasher Film: Halloween 1978

- Golden Age Slasher Films: My Bloody Valentine and Prom Night (1980)

- Decline and Direct-to-Video: Leprechaun Series (1993-2003)

- Scream and the New Film Cycle: Remakes of classic slasher films such as: Psycho and the continue of the Chucky series. (1996)

Since Scream boosted the slasher films back into the lime light, a new set of young filmmakers have taken the slasher genre by storm. The most famous ones are; Eli Roth (Hostel 1+2), Rob Zombie (Halloween 2007) and James Wan (Saw). These directors where a collection of filmmakers dubbed the splat pack. The successful style of Saw and Hostel films would soon become known as torture porn. These films, especially the Saw films have become very popular, especially the villain, Jigsaw. Jigsaw is an anti-hero because although he was killing people in sick ways, he was only killing people who had done bad things. He also gave the people captured a chance to live.

Our film would be produced by Lions Gate Entertainment mainly because they focus on scary films and Eli Roth (who has made several slasher/torture porn films) has made several films with them. Also, Lions Gate helped make a film called ‘Fear of Clowns’ which is good because our film is about clowns too.

The repertoire of elements has significantly changed over the years. It started off with the old hammer films, which were set in dark gothic castles. Also, the earlier films were set in Europe and were based on myths (e.g. Dracula). Then the massive change in the repertoire of elements was the fact that the gothic castles were replaced by houses, first seen in the films like ‘Psycho’. This was done in order to appeal to the Hollywood audiences. The repertoire of elements changed again when the Freddy Krueger films came out. These were set in quiet, suburban areas which made the films seem very realistic and much scarier. Now films are looking towards an urbanised industrial environment, for example films such as SAW and Hostel are set in places that look like warehouses. This is like the industrialisation of horror films as it hasn’t been done before and as it is moving away from the quiet ‘alone in the woods’ type of film and moved to a more urbanised area. When Levi Strauss first talked about binary oppositions he pointed out the facts that the good guys were situated in the safe areas with order and the bad guys were situated in the deep dark woods. However, as the films have progressed over the years, so have the binary oppositions. For example, in Scream, the bad guy is situated in the same place as the good guys who are meant to be safe. This makes the films much scarier as the scary guys don’t have their limitations any more, which means the good guys are no longer safe.