Horror Movie - Redrafting

Since we received the feedback from the questionnaire we have spent time improving the horror movie opening taking on board the feedback. Although people said to change the title we didn't agree as 'the river's' true purpose would come apparent further on in the film and we didn't want to explain everything at the beginning as its one of the mysteries found in 'the River'.

One of the things we did change however was the ending, when the detective (Josh Spoelstra) was talking to the father of children played by Harry Smith, we cut out the bit where Harry smiled and put in an earlier fade to keep the intensity of the film's current situation and ring true to the horror genre also.

Through re-editing, the title 'The River' did go a bit odd, and didn't 'move' properlyy like we wanted, but we soon corrected this. We also removed the 'ghosting effect' as this failed to work correctly once we exported it. We also made the title's appear slower to make them feel more professional and this also added to the readability.

Overall I think The opening is now improved and when we showed it to the class for a second time this did echo.

Horror movie opening: Questionaire

After finishing our horror movie draft we were told to make a questionnaire for the rest of the group and year 13's so they could tell us what they thought was good and what they didn't like through a 'yes and no' system. Then finally leaving a comment for us on how to improve it.



In the questionnaire we asked a variety of things that would help us improve our movie, the questions i feel covered everything, so when we get the results it'll be very clear for us on what to change and what worked well. I think the questionnaire will give us a very good idea on this and help us achieve a better opening overall.

Horror Opening Questionnaire: The River  

1.       Did the opening make you want to watch on?                    Y / N

2.       Was the storyline clear?                                `                   Y / N

3.       Did the editing flow well?                                                  Y / N

4.       What did you think of the special effects?                          G/ B

5.       Were the characters believable?                                        Y / N

6.       Was the camerawork good?                                             Y / N

7.       Do you think the film title relates to the film?                      Y / N

8.       Did the sound and music fit the scene?                              Y / N

9.       Was the continuity good?                                                 Y / N     

10.   Did the film have enough conventions of a horror film?      Y / N

11.   Was the title sequence like a real movie?                          Y / N  

12.   How could we improve the film?

After the rest of the class and other years watched it we seemed to get good feedback overall, we constructed our results in the graph below -

 

The feedback we received was mostly good however the over all issues was with the 'title sequence'. Most thought that it was too fast which we'll take on board and change. The most voiced comment for question 12 was too shorten the last scene as a character laughs which we'll also change. Another comment was to remove 'the ghosting effect' which is a shame as when editing it looked really good and made the masked people look in-human and supernatural. it distorted however when we exported it, so we'll have to get rid of that also.
The second comment we received quite a lot of negative feedback on was question 7: 'Does the title relate ?' We are considering changing this though we still think it does relate, and that its true relation to the film would come clear later on, remembering it is just an opening and it would spoil it if we answered everything at the beginning.

Horror Movie Draft of 'The River'

 

This is our draft of our Horror opening 'The River' We think it has turned out well but we still don't think its perfect, so we'll be making a questionnaire for the rest of the group to fill out so they can voice their opinions on what they liked and what they think didn't work.

Lighting used in 'The River'

I choose lighting carefully when directing our film, making sure the opening which was a somewhat happier scene had high key lighting, gradually decreasing as the story progressed and the characters went deeper into the wood eventually dieing at nightfall. This is done in a wide range of film by using lighting to convey the emotions of character, 'dark' a connotation for misery, brightness for happiness etc. I also took use of such pathetic fallacy when directing emphasising the situation and mood of the characters to audience, somewhat subconsciously.

Horror movie:Music

It was hard to find the correct source for the un-copyrighted music we have in our horror film however when we did locate a good website there was lots of good conventional and unique horror tracks on it. We downloaded over 20 tracks and put them with our film in each scene until we were pleased with the result in each section and in the end we have the carefully chosen music that's in the product today.
We made sure to get slower tracks for sections such as the title sequence and very tense tracks for the climax of the opening were Rowen's character realises Michael's death which overall we thought accompanied our film well. We were lucky to find the tracks what we did as they all worked so well in our film we think due to their general convention horror factors while still having an original sound to each tune.

Special effects in our film.

Many films nowadays have to us special effects to appeal to the more expecting modern day audience,we thought of this and tried to incorporate this in our own film production, in the end we only managed to use a black and white effect however, however we did plan to use the 'ghosting effect' which worked well by making the masked antagonists more conventional to horror by not appearing as normal humans,the effect made them appear translucent and distorted which made them appear ghost like and supernatural which greatly appeared to a modern audience and further their conventions to horror. However we weren't able to use this effect in the end as after distorting it it looked very bad so in the end we decided to go without it. Although the horror film looked better with it it looked better without it then a blurry and bad version.

'Elliot Minor' horror music

Before I suspected that their music was copyrighted I thought that the band 'Elliot Minor' would have very appropriate songs for our film with their well known scary undertones to their music which are also quite mysterious songs however I soon realised that their music would most likely be copyrighted which was a shame so we began to search for un-copyrighted music and luckily we managed to find some stereotypical horror symphonies which we have used in our final production.

Horror movie opening: Watching it back

At first we were quite unhappy with our horror opening after watching it back. However after doing some serious editing on it, our opinions changed. We were quite pleased with it after cutting out some useless footage, sharpening the cuts and putting some better edits in it as well as title screens and a range of effects and music. Below are some screen shots of the logo we devised for our production company 'Raven productions' and print screens of the process of editing.

In this screen shot we are editing the shot were Micheal has just heard a strange noise from a bush we are editing the close up on his face to make it the right length and also an effective edit.

We are editing a POV shot here and putting in a 'ghosting effect' to make the masked man appear un-human.

Here we are putting in the title of 'The River' we made it 'wave' to represent water and it also looks more creepy adding to the genre of horror with this.We put the title near the end to show that the shocking event at the beginning at the movie is just a snippet of whats to come, implying that there is much more gruesome scenes to come later in the film.

This is a shot of our finished logo 'Raven productions'.

Art of the title sequence notes

In preparation for our own  title sequence we watched the movie 'Se7en''s and took notes about it. I was surprised of how many shots were incorporated in it due to such a small space of time. After taking notes on it it taught me that a title sequence is important in an opening, and that it can show a lot to an audience about the genre and what the film is actually about quite quickly.

These are some screen shots from the opening of 'Se7en' and from these its quite easy to understand that the genre is going to be something like a thriller or a horror by the low key lighting. The font of the titles also hints at the horror genre by looking very messy, implying that it could be a mad man's writing emphasising the genre further. By all the writing, books and pictures etc it does look quite complex as well emphasizing the idea of thriller and also that the story could be something to do with the police or a detective story. The dirty/bloody hands in the picture also emphasis an idea of horror suggesting the character is a murder or something perhaps.

I didnt completely analyze the title sequence but i did analyze a fair amount, which gave me a very good idea of what a title sequence should be like, and all the connotations and conventions that were in 'Se7en''s as well. It also gave me a better idea of what we should do in our own.

Below i will state my notes on it -

. Music starts (abstract)  begins straight away
.Book unfolds slowly.
.Production company name appears in sharp white font (4 seconds in) font distorts and 5 seconds in it blurs.
.Writing of Chalk board writing  distorts and mirrors. It then goes back to normal and to a black screen.
.Low key lighting (shadows)
.Graph paper with two sketchs of comparisons of disgruntled hands.
.Film creator's name blurs over this and fades as shadow moves across the screen.
.Blooded hands (dirty nails) working with machinery then cuts fingers (draws blood)
.another actor's name appears in the same font then fades to black.
.Green liquid with "D3-15" in black marker on it, possibly poisonous
.Same hand holding a razor examing a metal object with writing on it.
.Another actors name appears in the same font.
.Tea bag put into water.
.Picture flashes up of a disfiguerd man (autopsy like) then cuts to tea bag again.
.Production name appears then greatly blurs.
.Document is opened by some one and the blooded hand writres on it.
. Supporting actors appear in a similar font with no black background.
.Upside down disstorted writing.
.Red transparent photo of an odd looking person is shown, then white scratches appear.
.More characters names appear
.Negative film slips being cut
.Book cut up
.Covers fingers and puts sellotape on something
. Variety of newspaper,documents and baby photos cut up
.Dollar bills cut up
.More names appear in similar font
.Picture of disfigured man in water (red room)
.Pages unfolded
.Crossing out words in a document

Horror movie opening: filming in progress

Note: I would of uploaded my storyboard next however the scanner isn't working at the moment so i'll post the storyboard later when the scanner does work again.

These are pictures that were taken during filming the horror movie opening. These pictures are of a range of stills from the movie and also pictures of myself filming it and reading the storyboard. Hopefully they give a good look into the process of filming the horror movie opening for 'The River'.

 This photo is were we are filming what was originally the start of the opening. A dead body laying beside the river, then the camera was going to pan up to the kids playing with the ball. This shot we decided to remove because of poor camera work, due to being an awkward amount of space etc so it was later scrapped.

 In this shot Michael had fallen over after missing the ball, we had to re shoot this a few times for him to fall in the right area.

 In this shot Michael is getting up falling leading in to the next shot.

 In this shot Michael Walters was going to be desperately  trying to reach his sister (Rowen Elliot) before being pulled back by one of the masked people. This was a very awkward place to film,it was small and due to all the sticks and bushes it was very difficult to acquire a good shot here, so we ended up re shooting it quite a few times. We later scrapped this shot though due to their not being enough time for it, as with it the film would have been just over two minutes.

 In this shot Michael is running off to find the ball.

This shot is a still of the two kids playing catch, we had a few more photos from filming but they were either too similar or unclear so that's why i didn't upload anymore. I hope this gave somewhat a good look into our days of filming.

Horror film: Inspiration.

As a subject I also take English language and through the coursework of an original horror story I thought of a mystical spooky wood with strange masked beings in it and this was what my story centered on. Although the plot and the cast is a lot different to that of 'The River' the idea of the setting and the antagonist i had created through my story inspired me to develop and use them with a new plot for our horror which is 'The River'.

Original horror opening idea: 'The River'

We were always going to choose a location similar to that of the location I posted previously below, originally though we were in a larger group of five (Michael Walters, and Craig Robson) the original idea was a teenager (Craig) felt like he was being followed and then begins to run. He sees a strange person in a mask, and then becomes cornered by more masked people. Before they get too close though a beast, which I suggested could be a POV shot of the camera on a extended tripod swaying side to side, showing the size of it., then finishing with a zoom as the teenager (Craig) screams and the opening comes to a close.It was going to be called 'the harvesters', however after we were informed that a group of five was too big, we split. Myself, Jonathon Fromant and Josh Spoelstra in one group, then Michael Walters and Craig Robson in the other.

This caused an issue for the idea of 'The Harvesters' as we came up with it together, but in the end we all decided to keep the ideas we thought of individually so we shared the ideas respectively. As Michael thought of the majority of the idea to 'the harvesters' we had to come up with something different.

We tossed around a few ideas which came to nothing,(a werewolf, something like the saw franchise). The main idea we stuck with though was a brother and sister playing catch. The ball goes missing, and the boy chases after it, the sister then later goes in after him hearing a scream. The idea was at first more intricate with the sister seeing a memory of her father killing her dad. Her father interrupts the suppressed memory by finding her and saying that her brother was at home, and that her eyes played tricks on her. They walk home as the father looks back at a masked figure, like he knows of the mystery woods already. This idea was far more psychological then it is now, and would have been complicated to portray to the audience with only a 2 minute time limit however, thus we changed the idea and made it more simple.


The final idea was the brother and sister playing catch, the ball goes missing as its thrown into the wood. The boy chases after it then we cut to a scream. The sister worried for his safety, runs in after him whilst we see quick scenes of her being watched through the bushes. She finds the ball then a drop of blood falls from above, in shock she looks up to see her brother hanging from a tree. She moves back in fear and confusion as a group of masked figures surround her. She then screams as they pounce, then the camera fades to black and the title 'The River' appears in a watery font.

We settled with this as our idea because it built up tension well i think, which in my opinion all good horror openings and movies should do. From the norm of two kids playing catch, then - a scream - someone hanged - someone attacked. It gave a good insight of what to expect for the rest of the movie, and hopefully it hooked the audience enough to want to watch on.