Throughout our project we have had to use colour corrective to make it more horror thriller like. The mise-en scene in horror thrillers is arguably the most important part of the film. The lighting throughout is dull and cold feeling therefore we have reflected this on our work. From the picture above you can see that when we originally filmed our piece the lighting is very bright with very low contrast. The colour yellow is incorporated throughout our opening as it signifies danger and to alarm the audience. We have the theme of the bottle with the warning sign on and bright colours to show it is corrosive as well as the yellow tape around the light switch which has a jump cut screen shot on to again alarm the audience.
The tool we used in premiere is video effect > colour balance > brightness and contrast and colour balance. For our effect we went for in our horror thriller we are making the blue higher and the red lower therefore to make low tones and a colder screen. Using warm lighting will make the audience feel comfortable. If we make the screen look cold then the audience will feel uncomfortable and creeped out.
Throughout the process of the project through editing and creating I have gained some new skills which I have been taught through my peers, group members, teachers and youtube video tutorials. At the start of the project I didn't know how to use the cameras, premiere or after effects now I am capable with all of these (some better than others). Within the first couple of shootings I found myself as the one who would organise what would happen within the scene and direct our actors on how to react to certain things as well as contributing into the group on which shots would be suitable for each part of the narrative. As well as this I have improved on how to film as I have been out on my own and tried to shoot Daniel from a low angle, POV shot and other parts. At the start of this project I was so unaware of how to do film without making the camera shake when zooming or pressing the start button without shaking the tripod but now I feel I have improved in this area. As well as this on the 'media @ ccc' website there is lots of tutorials which teach you how to use premiere which I have watched and have taught me all the basics which will also be useful for next year and when we do our later editing. I have edited a scene in our piece just using the basic skills throughout for example I used fades and cuts however it was very basic in comparison to the editing that Prentice can do. Finally for our piece I spent a very long time trying to work out how to use After Effects as this is a very complex programme. I had to have help from my teacher in order to get started and think of ideas but when I got started I found the templates that are in the programme before and incorporated my own found font from dafont.com to make it into our own, I had to watch youtube videos to show me what levels I need to add and how to actually do what I wanted to with it- but now I know the basics of the program and would have knowledge is someone asked me. Our opening as a group is coming along slowly but surely. We are doing our opening piece by piece which is slightly irritating but it hard to find a time when we can get a big chunk of it done as we are all available at different times. As well as this I feel that although we are making good progress if we had got done and really pushed to have got it done then we would have had more time to perfect our piece. Our deadline is so soon and we still have a few finishing touches to do. My group have all been very patient with one another and we have all incorporated our skills to make our opening the best it can be. For example Prentice as a lot of experience in premiere and editing therefore he is very good at the editing part of the project but I still give it a go too. The filming has been done evenly through me and prentice as he has done the filming when we have been in a group but I have done the filming when it has been the outside walking along part, Dan preparing the room and the part with Daisy getting ready. Joe has stepped up to the plate with the acting when the majority of our project was done but our actor broke his leg so we had to work around this by putting in a text message to rearrange what the narrative actually was.
Today we faced a huge problem for our group when our main male actor Daniel injured his leg and is now on crutches. Daniel is the antagonist in our opening which means that he needs to be evil, therefore him roaming around on crutches for opening wouldn't look right. 3/4 of our project is done with Daniel in it- therefore we will have to change the piece as we cannot now have him suddenly on crutches half way through. One of our group members; Joe has agreed to be in the final bit that Daniel would be in and the final setting up the room part would not have Daniel's body or face in- just his hands.
This is our character we will use for the female character who is the victim in the opening. For the opening we will need to make daisy look ill in the opening as she is being locked in a small space which is dark and warm; for this we will make her look sweaty/ pale. By doing this we will use pale make up and make her look sticky by make her forehead wet. Moreover throughout the piece we want to make her look as average as we can (reflective of mise-en-scene in thriller research)- because the characters traditionally throughout are average and therefore more relatable we would want her to be dressed in plan, darker clothing with not much make up (bare minimum).
Dan Dodd: Throughout the opening Dan's head will be cut off, yet when it comes to him preparing the room and sending the text we reveal the character still unaware to the audience if it is the same man or not. For Dan's character we will want him to play someone with very little emotion throughout as he will then appear more mysterious and therefore building tension for the audience. Dan will also be dressed in everyday clothes which will be dull and insignificant.
Within our opening there will need to be certain propers used in order to create the story:
Rope will be used within our scene in the split screen scene, to be the bit where the two are in binary opposition- as she is getting ready and generally being a girl whereas he is being a thug and setting up a dark, dull room with rope.
Chair- which she is tied to
Chain
Hammer
Gun
Dog lead? so when they are working in the park they look as though they have a purpose.
From this first edit we noticed some issues with it for example:
At the start of the shot after you zoom out you see the girl strapped up, however as it goes to a full shot of the girl sat on the chair, you can see that we have cut off the top of her head.
Throughout the entire seen we have tried to build the tension by making sure the mans identity is not revealed yet after about 15 seconds he is identified- which defeats the object of trying to make him mysterious/ unidentified.
When the girl is sat on the chair she is not awoken by the man entiring and the sound of the door yet as soon as the lights come on she is awake, this is unrealistic.
From these problems we have identified we will try and improve our next cut:
Prentice our group member did some work on after effects. He used this to create a background for our opening credits which would be editted in at the end of our opening. He took my research and took into account the colours that we think we should use- for example colours that reflect our piece of work. This is just the background without the writing on top as we have not yet finalised the font we feel that we should put on top. The background is black which reflects upon my research:
Prentice then looked at the effects that he should put on the writing and how it should enter and exit the screen. From my research I found that the writing often flashes and doesn't just jump appear- therefore this is our first trial on how the writing should appear.
Today we finished our editting of our first scene of our opening. This is the scene where the girl is tied up in the chair. This was filmed in the school in the art department in a isolated looking room, which is vacant and plainly decorated. We haven't editting in the establishing shot of the house or the graphic match of the moon to the pearl necklace. We found that this went smoothly however we have realised, despite the fact we have spent about 50 minutes doing the filming, the actual scene came to about 15 seconds. This is a big realisation for us as we need to take into consideration how much time we do need to complete our 2 minutes. Moreover it was a struggle to find a time when our characters would be able to come for filming as if they do not have the time to take out to help us/ act for us then it will push forward filming to another time. Moreover it is difficult with actors as we need to use the same actors the entire time, therefore if they are not able to act then we cannot film as it wouldn't work to just incorporate a new actress/ actor randomly. Therefore we need to make sure they are available well in advance. As well as this we are filming in a darkroom at the start- but we didn't have night vision camera with us therefore we used the torch on our camera as a way to light up the room and shine on the girl's face- this actually worked really well as it ended up looking like something out of "quarantine". Quarantine is filmed entirely by a camera man therefore making it more believable for audience- almost like a real life documentary (true story).
We then decided on the idea that the girl would be being filmed by the man, therefore being a point of view shot from the camera. Therefore when we go to shoot the scene again, this is the idea we will try out and see if it works effectively.
Within our opening we planned to have a graphic match that follows on from our establishing shot of the house. The establishing shot was to be a picture of a house which would then zoom into a shot of the moon on the right hand side behind and above the house. The shot of the moon would then graphic match into a extreme close up of the protagonist's necklace.
Firstly we put an image of the moon on the premiere time line. To try out our idea so that we wouldn't waste our time later shooting the moon and house for it not to work or look sloppy anyway.
By putting this together on premiere, you can see from the screenshots that it worked very well however we would not being able to use this image of the moon due to copy right, as well as it not being a moving imagine or our own original filming. Moreover this image of the moon is very clear as well as being on a jet black background- something that looks very idealistic and perfect. We realised that ours may not work this well however we would give it a go anyway. Prentice was to do the filming of this part as his house was the house we were using for the establishing shot. Prentice went home and tried on several occasions to take this shot of the moon however it did not work. We found that to moon was not full therefore would not match with the shape of the necklace. As well as this on another occasion Prentice found that the sky was too cloudy therefore didn't give the effect we wanted to create. These problems brought our attention to the fact that our graphic match probably wasn't going to work out therefore meaning we would have to think of another new original idea.
Within horror film openings mirrors and reflections are used often to build tension as the audience feel as though something will pop up from behind them. In our opening we want to use a mirror shot within the scene where the girl is getting ready, therefore we plan to have a shot of her walking through the bathroom door, using the mirror. The problems with this however is we need to make sure there is no way that the camera will be in view of the mirror, or obstructing the girls direct path to the mirror. Therefore here I am testing it out to see how it would work. From taking these shots we can see that it will be very easy to include this shot, as well as effective within the thriller opening to create suspense.
From my previous research I realised that typography for titles/ credits in an opening sequence is all capitalised and blocky. So for my recent typography research I have used dafont.com to find fonts which are relevant and we could work with to be relevant in the horror thriller genre. I hope that we can use one of these fonts and play with it so it flashes onto the screen using white font on a black background. This is something that we will be working on in second priority to the filming of our opening.
From the fonts above we have taken into consideration that many of these fonts look as though they have been used for a action thriller film- for example "bad grunge" this one is bold much like films for example die hard:
Whereas we plan to use something more suitable to our horror thiller genre- for example:
which is reflective of our title- for example we wanted it to look some what elegant to go with the theme of a date as well as fitting to the conventions of the horror thriller theme.
For our opening before the extract begins we need to incorporate titles to our piece. On youtube I researched some titles on the thriller side so that we could see the sort of style they use for horrors although we are doing a horror thiller:
Within the titles we can see that the reoccurring black background is popular for horror films. The writing over the black is capitalized and block writing. The writing flashes on the screen which could reflect on the idea of lightening and mystery, although they've incorporated this effect it is still very simplistic. Within the Saw horror opening they have incorporated barbed wire which is reflective of the gory story line. From the following research I can depict that although it is the initial thing the audience will see when watching our opening, it is still very simple and to the point. We will keep to the theme they have used in these horror openings, which is black background with the capitalised block writing which will flash onto the screen getting closer to the "camera".
When making our thriller we need to consider what the expected sound would be in the right parts of our thriller, for this we will use a non copy righted website to choose a piece of music to reflect what is happening in our horror thriller opening.
For example when we see the establishing shot of the house at the beginning of the piece the sound will be low and long sounds until we find the girl sitting tied up in the basement where the music will become higher and shorter. In this extract from the conjuring I will analyse the type of sound we hear at each bit to understand why/ where different parts sounds would be used.
At the start of this extract we hear silence; I think silence is used to heighten the tension as well as to hear the diagetic sound in the scene. As soon as something significant happens in the scene (in this case when the girl bumps into the door causing her to fall down the stairs) we see that the sound became high and short to shock the audience. As she hits the floor of the cellar and is lying on the floor the sound then becomes low pitched and longer notes which is trying to cause the audience tensions to build and prepare them for something scary to happen. The sound as she is looking around the room is eerie and again mid sounding notes which are long winded, yet as soon as the ball drops and bounces along the floor again we hear the high pitch, short sounds. As the scene develops and the light flickers out and she's in panic the sound continues to be high pitched- reflective upon her emotions. As she pulls herself together and finds the matches which to her would be a form of safety she sound then goes back into low pitched long winded sounds, but again when some claps behind her she would panic which reflects the music turning back into a high pitched short sound. For our thriller I think this research will be helpful for us when we go to choose which music to use as we need music which would reflect upon how the victim in the thriller is feeling at the specific time. For example when the girl is strapped up and panicking we will need the sound to be high pitched and short, yet when she is getting ready for her date the sound should either be silent of low as this is reflective of the idea that something bad is about to happen, preparing the audience.
For our thriller we intend to do some opening credits on a background. For this we will need to research the reoccurring themes for credits in a horror film opening sequence. Here is some research I did looking at clips to see the type of typography they use.
Here we see the black background with white writing on. The typography is block writing which is capitalised.
Similarly to the previous video, the font is block and capitalised. Moreover the background to the majority is black. The font appears on the screen by fading on in each one which shows mystery. Moreover when the font is on the screen you can see the font flashing which could be representative of the lights flashing on in the movie- therefore reflecting some what on the story line. As the lights appear on the screen the who screen seems to flash up which will bring attention to what is on the screen more so. The sound matches when and how the writing appears on the screen- for example when the writing "saw II" appears on the screen there is a dramatic crashing sound which appears from the continuous eerie sound throughout.
Similarly to the rest of the title sequences to horror films we can see a black backdrop with block, capitalised writing on. Red writing is reflective of the story line of death. As the writing starts to melt away in the same way as blood the sound matches it changing to a different type of sound, when new writing appears on the screen, similar to SAW title credits it makes a up beat abrupt sound. From this we can see that we need to make sure the writing that we put on the screen is in time to sound we choose to use. We can see that the reoccurring theme in horror thrillers openings block and capitalised font which isn't over complicated by being on a straight black background, or something that reflects the storyline.
In this clip we see a character who would be similar to the girl playing the role of the victim in our opening. From this we can see she is wearing average, plain, dull clothing along with bland make up, this is used to take the attention away from the girl is dressed and instead the attention on what is happening in the opening. Alternatively it could be used to show that she is an average girl- making it more relateable to the audience, making them feel as if it could be them in the position. The character at the start is loud and angry which is binary opposition to her apprehension at the ending.
From the setting we can take that it is a large and vacant house which would heighten the tension in the opening by making her looking isolated and more alone. The decoration of the house is very bland, with the plain white/grey walls and the lighting used is dim and eerie. Within the opening there is a main focus which starts and concludes the opening. The TV playing white noise. This prop is used to heighten the tension to the audience as it is frantic noise. We could incorporate a prop like this in our opening as it is symbolism for her being anxious/ nervous which is what the girl in our opening will feel.
The strangers
There is only two characters in this opening which do not match the sound of the voice on the phone at the end this is used for the audience to be left in the dark on what has happened which will build up the tension as they are on the edge of their seat to see what is to follow for the rest of the film. Moreover the character who are in it are two average looking boys who are dressed in again bland clothing. This is interesting as throughout our brainstorming we imagined the male and females costumes to be significant of their characters- this is something we will need to look into. Similarly with The Ring, in The Strangers we can see that the houses used are large and again very spacious. This could reflect upon the idea of the despondency and isolation of the character. Moreover when moving to house to house they use a slow motion effect on the shot which creates dramatic tension which is very effective in this opening- we could use this in our opening as our establishing shot is of the house. Yet the lighting used is light and calm which could represent the idea of "the calm before the storm". The opening has some titles at the start which is spoken over. We are particularly interested in the title sequence itself- the significance of the colours used. The black background could be connoting the darkness and scariness of the story with the deep orange/ red writing on top used to represent danger. In our opening we plan to use a background with writing over it for our credits- therefore this is something we could take to influence the way ours will look.
The Women In Black
With this opening the characters used are young and innocent looking, although it is obviously set in an earlier time these children are representative of average looking children at their age at this time. Moreover their change in facial expressions from the start to end is binary opposition of them playing happily to them suddenly being overcome by something. This is similar to The Ring.
Moreover similarly to the other two openings, which appears to be a convention of horror thrillers is the open rooms in large looking houses. The lighting used in these houses appear to be dim and dreary, within no unnatural lighting throughout- this maybe to make the audience feel cold and reflect the dull atmosphere.
The props used in this is a stereotypical horror film prop- dolls these are used as they can be made to appear creepy.
Summary:
From looking at the mise- en- scene in thrillers I have learnt that the houses used are large, open and dimly lit. Therefore our group will need to find rooms which are plain, with not much colour and film at a time when it is not too bright (midday/ morning) therefore creating the cold atmosphere for the audience. As well as this we can learn that the characters in the openings appear to be wearing average, dull yet typical of the person clothing in order to not take away the attention of the storyline throughout. Therefore we may need to re- think our costume ideas. Finally throughout the openings there appears to be props used to enhance the tension of the opening which again is something we should consider when making our opening.
