Storyboard for Main Task

Horror Thriller Ideas

Horror

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Denotation and Connotation of Horror film images

'Gothika'
Denotation
Woman in front of wall with red writing on it. Saying 'Not Alone'.
Connotation
'Not Alone' symbolises how she may not actually physically be alone or mentally.
Her tracksuit highlights that she may be at home or somewhere comfortable as she has not made an effort with her clothes. The red writing could be blood, therefore showing us she is in trouble and red signifies anger or danger.











'Halloween'
Denotation
Man wearing a mask, looking over a stair banister holding a big knife.
Connotation
Low angle shot to show that he is in control and holds the power within the shot, and the fact he is holding a knife shows he could be bad/evil.











'Scream'
Denotation
Person in white mask and black hooded cloak who is holding a knife looking through window at a woman who is on the phone.
Connotation
Knife signifies danger, and the woman may be on phone to someone asking for help e.g. the police. The mask covers the person's face building fear  because we don't know who the person is.

Horror Film Treatment

In my opening horror film sequence, the opening shot will be an establishing shot of two girls in a plain, simple room with just a few book shelves and some plain furniture. They will be in the middle of the room, sitting opposite each other, and in between them is a Ouija board. The lighting will be candle light, but still quite bright. They will be laughing and joking about it, moving the glass around a lot. There will be an over-the-shoulder shot of them doing this, and the laughter will become quite distant and faint, and the light will get slightly dimmer. There will then be a close up shot of one of the girls laughing, and another close up of the other laughing still, but looking slightly unnerved. There is then a long shot, and the girls will decide to get up, walking out of shot through a door. The board in left abandoned in the middle of the floor. There is a zoom shot of the glass, and it will slowly start to move across the board on its own. As it is moving, one of the girls comes back in. There is a close up shot of the glass still moving, and then a mid shot of her staring at it in disbelief. There will be quite slow, sinister and repetitive music play, building up the tempo.

          There is a mid shot of the board and the candles surrounding it will then suddenly go out together, leaving the room in darkness. All you will be able to hear is the gasp of the girl, then some fumbling and the striking of a match. There is a close up shot of the girls face, holding the candle below her chin, with just her face in light. She is breathing heavily, and then starts to shine the candle around the room slowly. The shot will be a panning shot, following the candle. It will pass over a bookshelf, the door, another bookshelf and then a very sinister masked face. She passes the candle over this, with the camera still following, then quickly pulls it back to where the face was. There are only old books illuminated by the candles. There is a mid shot of the girl who is holding her breath and still holding the candle up to the bookshelf and there is silence for a second, then the loud scream of the other girl is heard from the distance, and it cuts to black.

Conventions of the Horror Thriller

Within the horror thriller, I expect to see certain elements. These are known as the codes and conventions. They help signify to the audience what genre of film they are watching and enable the audience in advance to have an idea of the kind of pleasures they will recieve from watching the film. That is with a horror film the pleasure of blood, death, gore, and with a thriller that of suspense, fear and action, or possibly supernatural elements.
Below is my list of the key codes and conventions of the horror/thriller genre:

HORROR:

• death
• blood
• knives
• torture
• darkness
• isolation
• paranormal
• victims
• ghosts
• screaming
• footsteps
• puppets
• mutation
• creaking doors
• trees
• wind
• clowns
• banging
• ripping
• bad omens
• storms
• creepy children
• psychos
• twists in the plot
• dolls
• hooded figures
• rats
• owls
• church bells
• creepy music
• candles
• pain
• fear
• scratching

THRILLER:

• mystery
• action
• false sense of security
• chase sequences
• kidnap
• fire
• shouting
• guns
• murder
• weapons

Prelim Post Production

We have begun to edit our prelim tasks, and although they are not finished we have managed to cut our scenes to form a basic sequence. We used a programme called Final Cut Server (below).





We had to upload all of our sequences we filmed, and put them in to the 'rush bin'. We did this so that if anything went wrong, we had back-ups of our clips.
We then chose the clips that we wanted to use, and put them in the 'log bin'. We named them so that they were easily recognizable, making the diting process easier (e.g. Felix close-up). On Final Cut Server, there are two screens so you can see what you are doing. The first screen shows the clip you are using, and the second shows the editing clip. Below is the time-line window, where you can cut and organise the clips. We used our storyboard for reference and were able to see which shots were needed where.
This related to choosing the correct shot order. We played around with different clips to see which ones made the most sense in the sequence, and which shots were appropriate within the script. For example, we placed our character one above character two when he was giving him and order, resulting in a low angle shot showing character one had the power. We would choose this shot over a wide angle shot with the same dialogue, because it is mroe relevant to what is being said.
To make the clips flow smoothly, we experimented by making sure our clips overlapped on the time-line. However, positioning them correctly was often quite tricking on the time-line, because we had to be very precise.
I really enjoyed the editing of the prelim task, because it allowed us to be creative and come up with our own interpetation of the scene, and luckily we had shot many different shot types, so we had a lot of material to work with.

Filming the Prelim

I was in a group of four people for our prelim filming task, which was filmed in a classroom. We white balanced the camera to make sure it was right for the lighting in the room, and we had to make sure the exposure was correct. We started our task with an establishing shot, and filmed the whole of the sequence using this type of shot. We then did the same with an over-the-shoulder shot facing our first character, and then filmed it the whole way through facing the second character. We repeated this process of filming the sequence the whole way through for our close-up shots of both characters. We filmed like this so that editing would be easier, as we had more shots to work with, and so that we didn't miss anything crucial. We then did some of our own improvised shots, such as focusing on the sliding back and forth of the rubix cube, the slamming of the cube, and the entry of our first character in to the room. One problem we did find was that because of the room we had to film in, the lighting was often quite hard to get right. We also had a few problems with getting an over-the-shoulder shot of character two, as character one kept blocking his face due to the fact he was standing and character two was sitting. To fix this we had to put the tripod quite high up, to match the shoulder of character one, creating a low angle, over-the-shoulder shot. One thing we made sure of was that we didn't break the 180 degree rule, to keep the continuity. I enjoyed filming the task, and it taught me a lot of adjusting the camera to suit different shot types.