Film Magazine Research

I've been looking at film magazine covers for my second ancillary product research.

Did I Meet My Targets 23rd October

My target for this week was to sketch some posters, I met this target as I sketched a total of 4 posters which have given me a guideline for creating the end result.

Concepts for My Poster Sketches

 This poster is a close up of the possessed boy's face, he looks really unwell which I'll recreate with makeup and he's holding the music box which will have the title on the lid.

 This poster shows a close up of the possessed boy’s eye, something which I’ve see a lot of emphasis on in real posters, in the pupil of his eye I’ve created the illusion that the boy’s soul is within screaming.

Targets For This Week 19th October

My target for this week is 

• to sketch some posters.

I need to do this because I need to get a better idea of what I want my poster to look like so that I can start making it.

Setting

I'm going to look at each of the scenes of my storyboard and decide where it will be filmed and at what time of the day so I can start to prepare and plan filming.  

Did I Meet My Targets 16th October

My target for this week was to include more theory onto my blog, I have done so by researching into binary oppositions within existing horror films which has impacted ideas for my own trailer.

I also researched into Propp's character theory which helped me to make sense of the characters within my own plot,

Propp theory in my horror trailer

I made this prezi of the Propp character theory- I researched the theory and how it links to horror as well as how it links to my horror trailer.

I did this so I can check if my trailer is meeting typical conventions.

I found that I had most of the typical characters in my trailer, however there were some which I found difficult to relate to horror and therefore to my trailer.

Blog Targets

My teacher went through my blog and gave me some targets and comments so I scanned them and put them below.

Binary Oppositions in Horror

Often in horror films there is a binary opposition of calm vs. chaos. At the start of the film it's often calm, maybe a family moving in to a new house on a sunny day and having fun vs. the middle to end of the film where there is chaos.

This opposition can also be seen sometimes in horror titles and posters for example...

The silence of the lambs; this is not an unpleasant looking poster because of the butterfly .

Films which don't necessarily sound like horror films/ they sound pleasant :

Prom night, the ring...

PROM NIGHT - end 

PROM NIGHT- beginning

I definitely want to include this structural pattern in my horror film as it helps with the narrative of the film and thus helps people to keep up.



Targets For This Week 12th October

After speaking with one of my media teachers, I have realised that I need to do more theory work on my blog.

• Include more theory into my blog.

Other Ancillary

I was going to do a website homepage for my other ancillary piece but I have decided to do a magazine cover instead as I feel like I have a better understanding of magazines so the end result will be better.

Storyboard video

 

 

There are some scenes which I will add a long the way which I may or may not include, I'll do a post on those when I think of them. There are also some scenes which may not be included in the final cut as just like in the editing process of a real film, some scenes may not fit in or work well so they will be cut.

Conventions for Protagonists / Victims- Age and Gender

In my opinion the victims or protagonists in horror films are usually female. For instance in Scream the main character and victim is a female, this is also the case in the Possession, Ouija and the Ring and loads more.

I think recently though there are more victims played by males in horror films, such as Insidious.

For my plot I have chosen to go against the standard conventions and I have cast my victim as a male, however there is also a secondary protagonist which is his sister so I'm not going against the genre conventions completely because horror film fans may be comfortable with the specific conventions and a drastic contrast might not work so well with them.

Horror films are considered by some people more effective in scaring the audience when the victim is played by a child because it's more shocking, some examples of films with child victims are the Possession and the Exorcist.


But this is another convention I have decided to go against as I'm casting my victim as a teenage boy, this is not something that has never been done before (I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream etc. ) so again, it's not too different that it makes horror film super fans not enjoy it. I also think that because my target audience is 15-25, using a teenager to portray the victim may create the same effectiveness in scaring the audience as teenagers can relate to the boy and maybe identify with him and the arguements he has with his sister.

Did I Meet My Targets 10th October

My targets for this week were to 1. create a storyboard which I have done, although I'm still working on it as there were a few bits that I forgot to put in and I have yet to decide the ending (video up soon of me explaining it in detail)

and 2. create some tension graphs, I made 3 tension graphs and I noticed that the use of music is very important in creating tension - something to help me later on when picking background music 

Original Storyboard

I made my storyboard and I've almost finished it.
I'll explain it briefly..

1. Establishing/ over the shoulder shot of the family looking at their new house. cheerful music is playing, the sun is shining etc.
2. quite a zoomed in shot of the 'sold' sign being taken down, voice over 'this is a fresh start for us'
3. family at dinner with the housekeeper, cheerful music, everyone smiling and laughing,
4. close up of the teenage boy laughing- maybe in slow motion- showing him happy before the chaos, 'I need you to take some boxes up to the attic for me'
5. black screen - 'from the makers of _________'
6. boy in attic- mysterious music/digetic sound

 7. focus on the music box and everything in the background is blurry, digetic sound.
8. over the shoulder shot of him examining the music box, low light and there is a torch on the music box, digetic sound/mysterious music.
9.close up as he opens the music box and it plays.
10.the boy looks startled- he's been possessed, music heightened and intense
11. flash of black
12. appearing unconscious

13. flash of black
14. falling back
15. flash of black
16. laying on floor unconscious
17. flash of black
18. fade into 'you won't sleep for weeks'

19. mum checks the boy's temperature, voice over- 'mum he looks terrible'
20. 'stop pestering me there's nothing wrong' he gets agitated
21. text
22. the sister is on her bed talking to her friend on Skype throughout the next few scenes there is a voice over 'there's something wrong with my brother, weird things keep happening to me but not to him'- maybe elongate the conversation as a voice over so I can have longer scenes
23. girl sitting in living room and the light starts to flicker
24. she's in bed and she hears weird noises

25. back to Skype call- filming of the call.
26. text
27.digetic sound as she types 'Catherine....' on her keyboard 'I need to find out what happened here'
28. text
29. we see the girl looking at a photo which we can't see- she looks shocked and drops it.
30. text

31. long shot of the girl in her bedroom, crying because she's so scared
32. shot of her in the mirror looking startked as we hear a child laughing
33. she looks around and is startled, she looks to the side and as she looks back...
34. ... 'come to the attic' is written on the mirror.
35. text


and that's all that I managed to do for my first draft. As I was describing it I realised there are a few things which I missed out and I didn't finish it as I''m still working on what would be in the end. So I'm going to edit and improve it and talk through it in a video so that I can explain it in detail and more clearly.

Titles continued...

I've done some more research on horror titles to try and find some more possible names.

I think that there are mainly two 'types' of titles, 1. Classic Halloween/horror related/unpleasant 2. Pleasant sounding, ambiguous titles to show a contrast.


1. Unpleasant







2. Ambigious

Titles...

I've been thinking about what to do next and I think the best thing for me to get started on would be my poster, but I need a title for the film before I can come up with a poster.

So, I thought of some of the significant things/ events in my plot, here's what I came up with...

• Possession
• Ghosts
• Music box
• Fire

When I was making my magazine for my AS coursework, something which really helped me to think of a name was to find synonyms of words related to the magazine.
I thought this would also work for my horror film, for example 'Sinister' is a synonym of 'evil' and sounds a lot better in my opinion.

So I decided to find synonyms for the above words:

I've highlighted the ones that I like

Ghosts

• phantom
• devil
• demon
• soul
• shadow
• specter
• vision
• apparition
• revenant
• appearance
• haunt
• visitor 
• shade
• spook
• poltergeist
• phantasm
• wraith 
• vampire
• daemon
• manes
• kelpie
• banshee 
• zombie
• eidolon
• ethereal being
• incorporeal being 

Music

• The only one I liked for music was 'melody' I think this would be interesting to use because it sounds like a pleasant name which contrasts to the horror.

Fire

• inferno
• heat
• blaze
• bonfire
• embers
• combustion
• scorching
• devouring
• searing
• luminosity  
• warmth  
• conflagration  
• glow   
• hearth  
• element 
• tinder  
• flare  
• pyre  
• scintillation 
• hot spot  
• phlogiston 
• sparks  
• campfire 
• incandescence 
• oxidation 
• charring 
• flames
• coals
• flame and smoke  
• up in smoke 

Other names that I've thought of are Revenge- as the ghost sister is trying to get revenge on her step sister.

Tension graphs

I made some tension graphs to help me decide where to place everything in my trailer. I did one for The Conjuring, Sinister and The Amityville Horror.

I think the conjuring trailer was the most effective in keeping me captivated and scared throughout.

Targets For This Week 5th October

• To complete a storyboard of my trailer.
• To do tension graphs of trailers to help me with where to place scenes in the trailer