Unit 2
Creating Suspense
Creating suspense
What is Suspense
Having a anxious or excited feeling about the unknow
Music
Music is a very very important element to Horror Films. If you take away music in a horror movie the suspense will not be as effective.
Take Jaws for example yes it would be a little jumpy with the shark swimming around but take the music away and it completely changes the intensity of the moment. The music is telling us that something is going to happen. We know the shark is close or about to attack when the famous jaws sound plays.
Build Emotion
Building the emotion is very important especially in Horror's to build the tension. Don't have the actors go to 100% straight away as there will be no more tension. If you have a actors slowly build up that fear then that will make the suspense go up.
Taking time
Taking your time to really let the audience feel what the actor is feeling can impact how the audience feels. This also links in with a actors acting. If you have a good actor who can really show their scared and you let that linger the audience will start to feel that;.
Lighting
05/10/22
Today we learned about lighting. We did Lighting Grids which talked about
This Lighting grid has a range of different things about lighting. It talks about lighting types, quality, source and colour. All these things are very important to look at it when your filming and editing scenes and this can change the atmosphere of a scene.
Lighting Types - This is where the light is hitting a character/object. This can change the way a character is perceived. In this video you can see when the light hits the girl at different angles her expressions look different.
Quality - This is when the lighting is either hard or soft. This can make a big difference to a scene. This can make a scene look dreamy and romantic. Whereas a harsh lighting can give a very dark/ mysterious feeling to a shot.
Source - This is where the lighting is more dominated in the scene. It's also about brightness so you might have a key light on one side of the face which means that's were the main light source is coming from.
Colour - This is what the colour the light is. Is it warm? Is it purple? These are all creative decisions and can impact a scene massively.
How colour/lighting changes faces
this video is a great example to see how lighting can change a person's face. It not only changed the perception of her face shape it also changed her expressions. When she did have any shade on her face she just looked normal and you could see her facial expression.
I noticed that when dark shadow hit the side of eyebrows and a bit of her forehead, she looked more powerful and more mysterious.
When the light hits her face it gives her more emotion, whether that being sad or sinister it just added an extra level of emotion.
This is more of an action she's doing but when she puts her hand over her face the shadow was very creepy, I really liked the way it looked.
We looked at some videos in class and talked about the lighting.
Lights Out - Who's There Film Challenge (2013) - YouTube
In this scene its starts off bright, the light coming from the corridor and her bedroom. Then she turns the corridor light off and it's darkness in the corridor. There is still light coming from her bedroom which doesn't make us as worried as an audience because we can still see light. She turns the light on and off which makes the figure come in and out of shot. The flicking of lights builds up tension as we don't know what's going to happen when she flicks the light off again. When she goes in her room she turns her main light off and turns her bedside light on. By doing this we can still see her facial expression which is good to build up the tension. We can see she is scared which makes us feel like we should be scared. The scary figure ends up turning the light off and everything goes dark and the scene cuts. That's great for leaving the audience scared. It makes them question, thinking what's happened now the light has turned off?
The light used in this short film was very good. People are always scared off the dark as we don't know what is lurking in the shadows. Darkness is essential to horror films. Switching from light to dark built up the tension which is very important to make a horror enjoyable
Colour Theory
19/10/22
Colour is also a very important part of the visuals. Having certain colours can massively change the atmosphere of shots/scenes.
Red - This is a very known colour for anger. While it can be anger it can also be romantic. Take this scene for example. Her Movie Scene
Orange - This can symbolise the sun or a desert like setting. This is also a very warmth and friendly colour.
Yellow - This can give a very happy feeling. This can also represent nature for example dandelions
Green - Green is a very obvious colour to symbolise nature but it can also represent a dark powerful in a character. For example Maleficent. The green colour gives her a more powerful look. Maleficent's Powers
Blue - Blue is very good for representing sadness or a deep emotion. It is good for creating a isolated atmosphere
Purple - This is very good for making a character look rich and powerful. This is also very good for making a scene look ethereal and fantasy like
Pink - This can be a playful romantic love. This a very feminine colour. It can also be quite dreamlike and mystic.
White - This can symbol pure.
Context - Neo is approached by a guy in a stimulation. Blue pill which is normal life which was boring and the red life puts him in the matrix. He picks Red Pill which gives him freedom but he becomes a big target. The movie is very big about the stimulation, the matrix and time. In this scene the main colour of the scene is green. Green is also the colour of code which represents the stimulation they are in.
We were put into two's and we got given a colour to make a presentation about. I was working with Robert and we got the colour Yellow.
Here is the presentation.
On the presentation we just covered some stuff about the colour Yellow.
Task 1
Research
What Scares You The Most Survey
I made a survey for all the actors and film students to fill out about horror movies. Some of the questions in the survey were about What makes a horror film scary and I got them to rate a few horror movies on how scary they thought it was. Doing this survey gave our group an incite of what people our age find scary or what people think about different type of horror movies.
What I found from this survey was that everyone said Music is what makes horror films scarier. Which I would agree with. Turn the sound off when you are watching a horror movie, its not the same. Following that was Acting. I also agree with that. If you don't have the right actors or actors that cant really show that fear in the facial expressions its not going to be as believable.
When I asked what they rated horror movies of the how scary they found them. The Shinning was the highest rating one. Getting a 4/5 - 5/5 from nearly everyone. The next close movie was Us getting a 4/5 on average.
We pay a big homage to the horror/thriller movie Us by Jordan Peele.
In the film their is a evil twin of the family which hunt them down and try to kill them. Each twin goes after themselves. In our short film we have a evil twin hunting down the main character. At the end of the film, a evil twin version of the friends come in with the other evil twin to kill the friends.
Another thing similar to the Us movie is the costume. In the Us movie they are all wearing the same red outfit which give the movie a more creepy vibe. We are using this idea in our short film as we are going to have our evil twins wear black robes that are the same. They are also going to be wearing matching masks that fit their faces.
Task 2
Ideas
We got put into teams of five. I am working with Freya, Hollie, Oliver and Robert.
Me, Freya and Hollie were watching Short Film's to try get some inspiration. We watched one about an intruder which was pretty good. I think stuff the boys were thinking of stuff behind us.
Okay Google - Horror Short film
In this film there was a man going around his house trying to see if he could find someone. Every turn made us anxious and we just didn't know when someone was going to jump out. When the man appeared we weren't sure what was going to happen which was good.
Idea 1
Oliver and Robert then proposed an idea. It starts with a group of people, their with friends and there's one main character. The friends leave and their by themselves. Somebody or something is there but they just have an uneasy feeling. The character finally sees the person and starts a chase scene. Nobody else can see the person but this character whose running. Then the person runs into this figure and it turns out to be Dracula.
Idea 2
A couple days later we had a group talk again. Freya then told us her idea of mixing it up. She said instead of having Dracula, we could have a disfigured twin of the main character. I think that sounded much better and I also haven't heard anyone else say something like that, they were all doing vampires I think. When she said her idea I remembered seeing Midsommar when a woman's face who was disfigured which was very unsettling which I think if we can recreate would be really good. That could also be our Homage. If you didn't know Homage means imitating someone else's work as a tribute to them.
Idea 3
We have changed the ending a little bit. At the end when the evil character has killed its twin they go back to the room where the friends stay. When the evil twin knocks on the door, the friends open it and a evil version of them comes out. I think that just adds a bit more mystery. Do they all just become clones? Are they really dead?
Task 3
Planning
Production Schedule
Tamara Hollie
Due 12 October Due 12 October
Character breakdowns Picking Location
Mood Boards Risk Assessments
Cast List
Oliver Robert
Due 14 October Due 14 October
Story board Script -
Shot list
By Robert
By Oliver
By Robert
By Hollie
By Oliver
By Oliver
By me
By Freya
Task 4
Production
Poster
made by Freya Whitehouse
Here is our trailer
made by Freya Whitehouse
Here is our final film
Task 5
Evaluation
What went well?
Communication
As a team we communicated with each other well and we worked well as a team. We all knew what each others jobs were and we did them all well.
Flexibility
The weather was not on our side on the first day of filming. We were filming our inside footage when the weather just got worse. We were quick on our feet and we changed the locations so some stuff that was suppose to be filmed outside we changed in to inside. The next day we got up early and filmed all the outside stuff which didn't take as long as we got everything else done yesterday.
What to improve on?
Equipment
We didn't have a mic holder and this made it difficult for the camera operator to film as she was trying to keep a steady hand on the camera and hold the mic at the same time. Oliver mentioned that we should have brought a kit to set which would have tape, scissors etc.
Communication
Communication with the actors could have been better. It wasn't awful it was just we could of had hourly updates so they knew what was going on. Kelly also mentioned next time having a AD on set to keep track of the actors.
Target for next time?
My target for next time is to be more productive on set. I think I could have helped more than I did. I also want to keep things more organised as sometimes I found myself not knowing what was happening even though I was on the film crew.
Comments
Post a Comment