Monday, 28 November 2011
Monday, 14 November 2011
PLANNING - Original Photography
Here are some photographs that our group took of different locations that may be used in our trailer. We will also use some of these photos for our magazine background and our film posters.
Sunday, 13 November 2011
PLANNING - Narrative Ideas UPDATED
After a few discussions with members of my group, we decided to slightly make changes to some areas of our narrative
Title of Film trailer: REBORN
Title of Film trailer: REBORN
Characters/Actors: 4 ghost hunters - Me, Sophie Whitlock (ghosthunter who gets possessed by Charlotte Manson's ghost), Shaughna Phillips and Joshua Duff. These actors won't be paid but are willing to work, which suits our groups overall budget of £0.
Settings: City of London Academy classroom and the nearby church. Most of the trailer will be filmed in the church for the action scenes. The classroom room will be used to show the ghosthunters planning how they are going to catch Charlotte Manson's ghost.
Narrative: based on a true story, the Charles Manson murders in real life. Our group decided to base our narrative on the real Charles Manson but add a unique twist. This is why our antagonist is called 'Charlotte Manson'. It flips the stereotype of females being inferior and getting killed first in Horror Films.
Our storyline consists of four ghost hunters looking for the ghost of Charlotte Manson, a mass murderer of South London, Bermondsey in the late 1960s (based on the real Charles Manson). Rumours within Bermondsey say that the spirit of Charlotte Manson is trapped within the local church that her body was buried under and this is the church we will be filming at. This is also the location of which many of her Victims are buried at.
Her spirit possesses one of the ghost hunters when they enter the church (Sophie Whitlock). Sophie starts acting differently towards the others. Whenever they make ghost jokes she doesn’t laugh or respond in anyway. Her face begins to turn paler as the trailer goes on showing that she is clearly possessed. The spirit is now fully REBORN (relates to our title) within Sophie's body, so Sophie starts killing the other 3 ghost hunters. The spirit of Charlotte Manson is trying to recreate the murders of the late 1960s.
Our storyline consists of four ghost hunters looking for the ghost of Charlotte Manson, a mass murderer of South London, Bermondsey in the late 1960s (based on the real Charles Manson). Rumours within Bermondsey say that the spirit of Charlotte Manson is trapped within the local church that her body was buried under and this is the church we will be filming at. This is also the location of which many of her Victims are buried at.
Her spirit possesses one of the ghost hunters when they enter the church (Sophie Whitlock). Sophie starts acting differently towards the others. Whenever they make ghost jokes she doesn’t laugh or respond in anyway. Her face begins to turn paler as the trailer goes on showing that she is clearly possessed. The spirit is now fully REBORN (relates to our title) within Sophie's body, so Sophie starts killing the other 3 ghost hunters. The spirit of Charlotte Manson is trying to recreate the murders of the late 1960s.
Tagline: 'Manson's back…' We believe this tagline is catchy and mysterious at the same time. It will be easily remembered by our target audience.
Editing Styles or techniques: We agreed that we were going to use a handheld camera for some of the scenes in our trailer, e.g. running scenes to give the effect of realism and illustrate that the ghost hunters within the story are inexperienced ghosthunters because they are young. We will also use some steady camera shots, like panning and tilting, to illustrate our skill and understanding of Horror Trailers.
Props/Costumes: Within our £0 budget. Everyone will wear their own clothes nothing extravagant. Dark coloured casual clothing will be worn by all the characters within the trailer apart from Sophie. Sophie will wear lighter colours than everyone else to break the conventions of horror. This will also make her stand out to the audience more and make her look innocent, so that it is unbelievable that she is killing her fellow ghosthunters. We decided that our killer won't have any props like Murder weapons. This will add the element of mystery that we believe our target audience is seeking from our trailer. The only significant prop being used by the ghosthunters in the story will be the Cross.
We have also developed our story boards and filming schedules for our group. We created our filming schedules so that every member of our group knows what things they are doing and when they are doing them. These filming schedules list the dates we are filming on, director, actors, setting, camera shots/angles, lighting, actors costume for continuity, etc.
Friday, 11 November 2011
RESEARCH - Horror Mood Board
The images I have used in this HORROR mood board are very scary to me. They are all characters from past famous Horror films and they will help me inspiration when creating my own media products to relate to the horror genre. Like the questionnaire results said from my target audience, I don’t need to use gore or violence in my media products to attract my target audience. They prefer the elements of mystery and suspicion, so I will aim to create all my media products in this way. My media products need to leave my target audience questioning but at the same time scared.
Market Research - Questionnaire Results
The questionnaires we gave out to randomly selected people should us that every 9 out of 10 Sixth Formers likes watching horror films. Also, the majority of people said they enjoyed the 'shock factor' of a horror film instead of gore, violence and other aspects.
This suggests we should include a few shocking scenes in the trailer that will make the audience jump. They also told us that they are more attracted to a good storyline rather than gore or violence. This connotes we should make our storyline intriguing to our audience instead of including a lot of violence to draw them in because they want to see a good storyline.
From the results of the focus group questionnaire, we found that the most popular sub-genre was 'gore' and the most popular 'time' of horror was the 1980's so our storyline could be from the 1980's or based on the 1980's horror.
From the results of the focus group questionnaire, we found that the most popular sub-genre was 'gore' and the most popular 'time' of horror was the 1980's so our storyline could be from the 1980's or based on the 1980's horror.
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
RESEARCH - Possible Subgenres of our trailer
From http://www.cuebon.com/ewriters/Hsubgenres.html
Paranormal is a subgenre with mortal heroes. Such tales emphasize a difficult battle against evil supernatural encroachment, whether by a saintly exorcist or high-tech ghostbusters. There are many popular examples, such as Tobe Hooper's film Poltergeist. (Unlike most 'horror' stories, there's 50-50 chance the good guys will prevail.)
Psychological (surreal)
This subgenre is usually written from a tight viewpoint. Is the protagonist really seeing terrible things, perhaps battling against demonic possession -- or is he (less often, she) going insane? On the flip side, this subgenre can feature an insane protagonist, such as a tormented serial killer. A modern example is the novel Heart Shaped Box, by Joe Hill.
Surreal horror incorporates bizarre imagery, often drawn from vivid, threatening dreams.
Psychological (surreal)
This subgenre is usually written from a tight viewpoint. Is the protagonist really seeing terrible things, perhaps battling against demonic possession -- or is he (less often, she) going insane? On the flip side, this subgenre can feature an insane protagonist, such as a tormented serial killer. A modern example is the novel Heart Shaped Box, by Joe Hill.
Surreal horror incorporates bizarre imagery, often drawn from vivid, threatening dreams.
Hauntings subgenre tales feature exactly this. Often the persistant ghost is a specific individual, somehow connected to the building or protagonist. The (supposedly true) novel and film The Amityville Horror are famous examples. The TV show The Ghost and Mrs. Muir verged on romance, and the "Caspar" franchise on comedy.
PLANNING - Narrative Ideas for Horror Trailer
Possible Titles of Film:
- The Night that never lived
- Slaughter Reborn
- REBORN (chosen name)
Characters: 4/5 ghost hunters, a ghost, church caretaker
Settings: City of London Academy classroom and a church. Most of the trailer will be filmed in the church
Narrative: based on a true story, the Charles Manson murders. 4 or 5 ghost hunters looking for the ghost of Charlotte Manson, a mass murderer of South London, Bermondsey in the late 1960s (based on Charles Manson). Rumours say that the spirit of Charlotte Manson is trapped within the church that he body was buried under and this is the church we will be filming at. Her spirit possesses one of the ghost hunters when they enter the church (Sophie). Sophie starts acting differently towards the others. Whenever they make ghost jokes she doesn’t laugh or respond in anyway. Her face begins to turn paler as the trailer goes on showing that she is clearly possessed. The spirit is now fully REBORN within Sophie's body and starts killing the other ghost hunters. The spirit of Charlotte Manson is trying to recreate the murders of the late 1960s.
Tagline: Manson's back…
Editing Styles or techniques: We agreed that we were going to use a handheld camera throughout the trailer to give the effect of realism and illustrate that the ghost hunters within the story are amateurs.
Props/Clothing: Within our £0 budget. Everyone will wear their own clothes nothing extravagant. Dark coloured casual clothing will be worn by all the characters within the trailer. Props include fake blood, Charlotte Manson's previous murder weapons, etc.
We have also developed our story boards and filming schedules for our group. We created our filming schedules so that every member of our group knows what things they are doing and when they are doing them. These filming schedules list the dates we are filming on, director, actors, setting, camera shots/angles, lighting, actors costume for continuity, etc.
RESEARCH - Timeline of Horror
1920's - The first horror movies:
Early horror films are surreal, dark pieces, owing their visual appearance to the expressionist painters and their narrative style. Darkness and shadows, such important features of modern horror, were impossible to show on the film stock available at the time, so the sequences, for example in Nosferatu, where we see a vampire leaping amongst gravestones in what appears to be broad daylight, seem doubly surreal to us now.
1920 classics
The Golem (1915/1920)
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919)
1930's - Horror begins to talk . . . and scream.
Horror movies were reborn in the 1930s. The advent of sound, as well as changing the whole nature of cinema forever, had a huge impact on the horror genre. Sound adds an extra dimension to terror, whether it be music used to build suspense or signal the presence of a threat, or magnified footsteps echoing down a corridor. The horror films of the 1930s are exotic fairy tales, invariably set in some far-off land peopled by characters in period costume speaking in strange accents. Horror was still essentially looking backwards, drawing upon the literary classics of the 19th century for their source material.
1930's classics -
Dracula (1931)
Frankenstein (1931)
1940's - Horror eats itself
Wartime horror movies were an American product and they was banned in Britain. With film production curbed throughout the theatre of war in Europe, horror films were cranked out by Hollywood solely to amuse the domestic audience. The studios stuck with tried and tested ideas, wary of taking risks that might suggest they had no measure of the zeitgeist, and trotted out a series of variations on a theme. This was not an age of innovation, but horror movie memes were, nonetheless, evolving. If the horror movies of the 1930s had dealt in well-established fictional monsters, looking back towards the nineteenth century for inspiration, the 1940s reflected the internalisation of the horror market. The Americans looked at themselves as “safe”, whereas everything else, particularly anything hailing from that frightening, chaotic, unreasonable and uncontrolled place known as Europe was dangerous.
1940's classics -
Cat people (1942)
1950's - Creature features
It is hard to grasp the changes that took place in popular consciousness between 1940 and 1950. In ten short years the concept of a horrific monster had altered irrevocably. Whereas Lon Chaney, Jr in a fine covering of yak's hair had once served as a powerful envoy from the dark side, now there were more recognisably human faces attached to evil. Faces who had fought on both sides in WW2, the developers of the atom bomb and the death camp, mad scientists indeed whose activities would have unnerved even Victor Frankenstein or Dr Moreau.The military action of WW2 had left over 40 million dead, and millions more exposed to the full spectrum of man's inhumanity to man. Homecoming soldiers and bereaved widows had too many horror stories of their own to appreciate fantasies on the big screen, and much preferred the silliness of Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein et al. The world could never be the same again, and the dawning of post-war posterity in America brought with it a new breed of monsters, adapted specifically for survival in the second half of the twentieth century.
1950's Classics -
The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953)
The wasp Woman (1960)
House on Haunted hill (1959)
1960 Thriller to chiller
Horror films and thrillers had intertwined way back in the days of the Old Dark House (1932) and Cat People (1942). However, horror's relegation to the B-movie zone in the 1950s meant that those directors who were interested in thrillers had concentrated on producing glossy, stylish, film-noir stories with no taint of the supernatural, the monstrous, and therefore the drive-in. It is interesting to compare the original Cape Fear(1962) with its 1991 remake. And yet... The undisputed master of the thriller, Alfred Hitchcock, chose the 1960s for his two main ventures into the horror genre.
1960's Classics
Psycho (1960)
The Birds (1963)
1970's - Nightmare decade: in front of the children
Horror movies of the 1970s reflect the grim mood of the decade. After the optimism of the 1960s, with its sexual and cultural revolutions, and the moon landings, the seventies were something of a disappointment. It all started to go horribly wrong in 1970; the Beatles split, Janis and Jimi died, and in many senses it was downhill all the way from there: Nixon, Nam, oil strikes, glam rock, feather haircuts, medallions... However, when society goes bad, horror films get good, and the 1970s marked a return to the big budget, respectable horror film, dealing with contemporary societal issues, addressing genuine psychological fears.
1970's classics -
The Exorcist (1973)
The Stepford Wives (1975)
1980's Horror films
Horror movies of the 1980s (which probably begin in 1979 with Alien) exist at the glorious watershed when special visual effects finally caught up with the gory imaginings of horror fans and movie makers. Technical advances in the field of animatronics, and liquid and foam latex meant that the human frame could be distorted to an entirely new dimension, onscreen, in realistic close up. This coincided with the materialistic ethos of the 1980s, when having it all was important, but to be seen to be having it all was paramount. People demanded tangible tokens of material success - they wanted bigger, shinier, faster, with more knobs on - as verification of their own value in society. In the same way, horror films during this decade delivered the full colour close-up, look-no-strings-attached, special effect in a way that previous practitioners of the art could only dream about. Everything that had lurked in the shadows of horror films in the 1950s could now be brought into the light of day. The monsters were finally out of the closet.
1980's Classics -
The thing (1982)
Child's Play (1988)
1990s Horror in the 1980s
By the end of the 1980s horror had become so reliant on gross-out gore and buckets of liquid latex that it seemed to have lost its power to do anything more than shock and then amuse. Peter Jackson's Brain Dead (1992) epitomises this; a riot of campy spatter, it climaxes with a zombie orgy through which the bespectacled hero must cut his way with a lawnmower. It's hilarious, and not scary in the slightest. The original creations of the late 1970s/early 80s were simply pastiches of their former selves, their power to chill long having disappeared in a slew of sequels and over-familiarity.
1990's Classics -
Se7en (1995)
Wes Craven's new nightmare (1994)
2000's Global Convergence
Horror movies in the late 1990s predicted dire things for the turn of the century. Whilst January 1st, 2000 came and went without much mishap, many commentators have identified the true beginning of the 21st century as September 11th, 2001. The events of that day changed global perceptions of what is frightening, and set the cultural agenda for the following years. The film industry, already facing a recession, felt very hard hit as film-makers struggled to come to terms with what was now acceptable to the viewing public. Anyone trying to sell a horror film in the autumn of 2001 (as George Romero tried with Land of the Dead) got rebuffed. "Everybody wanted to make the warm fuzzy movies."(LA Times 30/10/05) There were even calls to ban horror movies in the name of world peace. But, by 2005, the horror genre was as popular as ever. Horror films routinely topped the box office, yielding an above-average gross on below-average costs. It seems that audiences wanted a good, group scare as a form of escapism, just as their great-grandparents chose Universal horror offerings to escape the miseries of the Depression and encroaching world war in the 1930s. The monsters have had to change, however. Gone were the lone psychopaths of the 1990s, far too reminiscent of media portrayals of bin Laden, the madman in his cave. As the shock and awe of twenty first century warfare spread across TV screens, cinematic horror had to offer an alternative, whilst still tapping into the prevailing cultural mood.
1920 classics
The Golem (1915/1920)
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919)
1930's - Horror begins to talk . . . and scream.
Horror movies were reborn in the 1930s. The advent of sound, as well as changing the whole nature of cinema forever, had a huge impact on the horror genre. Sound adds an extra dimension to terror, whether it be music used to build suspense or signal the presence of a threat, or magnified footsteps echoing down a corridor. The horror films of the 1930s are exotic fairy tales, invariably set in some far-off land peopled by characters in period costume speaking in strange accents. Horror was still essentially looking backwards, drawing upon the literary classics of the 19th century for their source material.
1930's classics -
Dracula (1931)
Frankenstein (1931)
1940's - Horror eats itself
Wartime horror movies were an American product and they was banned in Britain. With film production curbed throughout the theatre of war in Europe, horror films were cranked out by Hollywood solely to amuse the domestic audience. The studios stuck with tried and tested ideas, wary of taking risks that might suggest they had no measure of the zeitgeist, and trotted out a series of variations on a theme. This was not an age of innovation, but horror movie memes were, nonetheless, evolving. If the horror movies of the 1930s had dealt in well-established fictional monsters, looking back towards the nineteenth century for inspiration, the 1940s reflected the internalisation of the horror market. The Americans looked at themselves as “safe”, whereas everything else, particularly anything hailing from that frightening, chaotic, unreasonable and uncontrolled place known as Europe was dangerous.
1940's classics -
Cat people (1942)
1950's - Creature features
It is hard to grasp the changes that took place in popular consciousness between 1940 and 1950. In ten short years the concept of a horrific monster had altered irrevocably. Whereas Lon Chaney, Jr in a fine covering of yak's hair had once served as a powerful envoy from the dark side, now there were more recognisably human faces attached to evil. Faces who had fought on both sides in WW2, the developers of the atom bomb and the death camp, mad scientists indeed whose activities would have unnerved even Victor Frankenstein or Dr Moreau.The military action of WW2 had left over 40 million dead, and millions more exposed to the full spectrum of man's inhumanity to man. Homecoming soldiers and bereaved widows had too many horror stories of their own to appreciate fantasies on the big screen, and much preferred the silliness of Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein et al. The world could never be the same again, and the dawning of post-war posterity in America brought with it a new breed of monsters, adapted specifically for survival in the second half of the twentieth century.
1950's Classics -
The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953)
The wasp Woman (1960)
House on Haunted hill (1959)
1960 Thriller to chiller
Horror films and thrillers had intertwined way back in the days of the Old Dark House (1932) and Cat People (1942). However, horror's relegation to the B-movie zone in the 1950s meant that those directors who were interested in thrillers had concentrated on producing glossy, stylish, film-noir stories with no taint of the supernatural, the monstrous, and therefore the drive-in. It is interesting to compare the original Cape Fear(1962) with its 1991 remake. And yet... The undisputed master of the thriller, Alfred Hitchcock, chose the 1960s for his two main ventures into the horror genre.
1960's Classics
Psycho (1960)
The Birds (1963)
1970's - Nightmare decade: in front of the children
Horror movies of the 1970s reflect the grim mood of the decade. After the optimism of the 1960s, with its sexual and cultural revolutions, and the moon landings, the seventies were something of a disappointment. It all started to go horribly wrong in 1970; the Beatles split, Janis and Jimi died, and in many senses it was downhill all the way from there: Nixon, Nam, oil strikes, glam rock, feather haircuts, medallions... However, when society goes bad, horror films get good, and the 1970s marked a return to the big budget, respectable horror film, dealing with contemporary societal issues, addressing genuine psychological fears.
1970's classics -
The Exorcist (1973)
The Stepford Wives (1975)
1980's Horror films
Horror movies of the 1980s (which probably begin in 1979 with Alien) exist at the glorious watershed when special visual effects finally caught up with the gory imaginings of horror fans and movie makers. Technical advances in the field of animatronics, and liquid and foam latex meant that the human frame could be distorted to an entirely new dimension, onscreen, in realistic close up. This coincided with the materialistic ethos of the 1980s, when having it all was important, but to be seen to be having it all was paramount. People demanded tangible tokens of material success - they wanted bigger, shinier, faster, with more knobs on - as verification of their own value in society. In the same way, horror films during this decade delivered the full colour close-up, look-no-strings-attached, special effect in a way that previous practitioners of the art could only dream about. Everything that had lurked in the shadows of horror films in the 1950s could now be brought into the light of day. The monsters were finally out of the closet.
1980's Classics -
The thing (1982)
Child's Play (1988)
1990s Horror in the 1980s
By the end of the 1980s horror had become so reliant on gross-out gore and buckets of liquid latex that it seemed to have lost its power to do anything more than shock and then amuse. Peter Jackson's Brain Dead (1992) epitomises this; a riot of campy spatter, it climaxes with a zombie orgy through which the bespectacled hero must cut his way with a lawnmower. It's hilarious, and not scary in the slightest. The original creations of the late 1970s/early 80s were simply pastiches of their former selves, their power to chill long having disappeared in a slew of sequels and over-familiarity.
1990's Classics -
Se7en (1995)
Wes Craven's new nightmare (1994)
2000's Global Convergence
Horror movies in the late 1990s predicted dire things for the turn of the century. Whilst January 1st, 2000 came and went without much mishap, many commentators have identified the true beginning of the 21st century as September 11th, 2001. The events of that day changed global perceptions of what is frightening, and set the cultural agenda for the following years. The film industry, already facing a recession, felt very hard hit as film-makers struggled to come to terms with what was now acceptable to the viewing public. Anyone trying to sell a horror film in the autumn of 2001 (as George Romero tried with Land of the Dead) got rebuffed. "Everybody wanted to make the warm fuzzy movies."(LA Times 30/10/05) There were even calls to ban horror movies in the name of world peace. But, by 2005, the horror genre was as popular as ever. Horror films routinely topped the box office, yielding an above-average gross on below-average costs. It seems that audiences wanted a good, group scare as a form of escapism, just as their great-grandparents chose Universal horror offerings to escape the miseries of the Depression and encroaching world war in the 1930s. The monsters have had to change, however. Gone were the lone psychopaths of the 1990s, far too reminiscent of media portrayals of bin Laden, the madman in his cave. As the shock and awe of twenty first century warfare spread across TV screens, cinematic horror had to offer an alternative, whilst still tapping into the prevailing cultural mood.
Friday, 4 November 2011
PLANNING - Typography for Poster & Magazine
Here are some font ideas for my film poster and magazine. These fonts will be used for the title/masthead on both media products. The 3 I selected for each product were my favourite choices as I felt they would best suit the genre of Horror. One of these 3 fonts will be used for the Masthead on my Film Magazine:
One of these 3 fonts will be used for the Title on my Film Poster:
One of these 3 fonts will be used for the Title on my Film Poster:
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