Horror Film Openings

Horror film openings have elements that are included to enhance the scariness of the film and to keep the audience engaged, and also so the audience can recognise that the genre is horror.

These are the elements that are used to make a good horror film opening:

• Questions - A question at the beginning of the film that will be answered later in the film, this keeps the audience engaged and want to watch on to see what happens.
• Suspense - The storyline should go slowly to create tension.
• Dark - The lighting should be dark to create a eerie atmosphere.
• Jumpy - They should have elements that make you jump to keep the audience interested.
• Music - This plays an important part in horror films as it creates the right mood and tension.
• Background - Something that happened before the beginning of the film.
• Mystery - So the viewer is not sure what's going happen next.  

Analysing Film Openings

For our next topic we will be making our own film opening with whatever genre, time period and storyline we want. To prepare us for this we have been analysing different film openings of different genres. This is how to analyse a film opening and what to look out for.

Title
Font - what type of font have they used? How does this follow our expectations of the genre?
Colours - why?
Length of titles - short or long? Why?
Billing or no billing - Why?

Codes and Conventions
Mise-en-scene - How does it reveal the era, plot, characters, genre, ect.
Sound - Diegetic or non-diegetic? What does this reveal? Mood, tone?
Lighting
Character - Facial expression, body language, costume?

Camera Angles
What do they reveal to us?

• Establishing shots
• Medium shot
• Close-up
• Extreme close-up
• Panning
• Over-the-shoulder shot 

When are they used? Why?
The length of time of the shot - what does this add?

Dialogue and Script
Plot - How much of the plot is revealed, and how is it revealed?
Foreshadowing/teasers - How we can link elements to the rest of the film
Characters - Personality, occupation?

Finished Video

This is our finished video, enjoy!

http://issyhill.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/finished-video.html

Evaluation of Preliminary Task

I think overall we all worked really well as a group and got on with the task in hand. We all had some involvement in the making of the preliminary task and worked hard as a team. I learnt a lot from making this task, like all the different angles and why they were used to make the film look more professional and run more smoothly. I also learnt about how to film properly, like how to keep the camera steady and pan around to make sure you get all the actors in the shot. I also learnt how to use iMovie and edit the preliminary task which was quite hard as first but once I had done a few few scenes I felt more confident with editing.

The things that I thought went well was the filming, we got all the shots that we wanted and we did it really quickly without any problems. We also came up with the script quickly too, and I think we had a good storyline. I think our storyboards were also successful because they showed each shot frame by frame so it was really easy to follow, which I think made the filming easier because we knew exactly what we were doing. I also think that we demonstrated the different camera techniques really well, and the end product looked very well done.

Things that could have gone better are, some of the filming was a bit shaky as we had limited space were we decided to film. Also some of the shots didn't quite match to the shot before so it stood out and showed that we had moved the camera, but the editing that we did helped to mask this.Our group also had some problems with getting our camera footage on to iMovie as we got it on once but somehow it managed to delete itself and we had to got through this long process of converting it so it would work in the Macs. We made sure to back it up the next time we put the footage onto the Macs! This problem delayed us but we managed to catch up in the end.

If we were to do this again to improve I would change the setting as we had minimal space to move the camera around, which made it hard to demonstrate the shot reverse shot technique. But for our first piece of work I think it went really well.

Preliminary Task Script

This is the script for our preliminary task.

Boy 1 - The character that is in love with the girlfriend (played by Billy Clark)

Boy 2 - The character with the girlfriend (played by Peter Barker)

The girl - (played by Ellie Fisher and Lucy Radnedge)

Boy 1: So how’s Ellie?

Boy 2: Mate, why do you always talk about her?

Boy 1: I'm just asking, calm down. It’s not as if you care about her anyway. She deserves better.

Boy 2: Like who?

Boy 1: Like me!! 

Preliminary Task Storyboard

We had to produce a storyboard to help us with our filming. This way we would know what order the scenes came in and what the next one was. It made our filming much easier and it ran more smoothly when we knew what we were doing.

This is my storyboard of our short film:

Planning Our Preliminary Task

We had to plan our preliminary task and decide what we wanted the story to be about. We had to keep in mind that the story needed to have a way of including the camera techniques and sticking to the brief.

The Plot
We decided that the plot should be about two boys having a conversation about a girl and she walks in on them and then she's angry. The two boys having the conversation would demonstrate the 180° rule because we had to show the audience that they were talking to each other. It would also demonstrate the shot reverse shot, because it would have the over the shoulder shot of them talking to each other. Then the girl walking into the room where the boys are and opening a door would demonstrate the match on action by showing her opening the door and walking through.     

The 180° Rule

The final technique we had to use was the 180° rule.

What is the 180° rule?
In film making, the 180-degree rule is a basic guideline regarding the on-screen spatial relationship between a character and another character or object within a scene. An imaginary line called the axis connects the characters and by keeping the camera on one side of this axis for every shot in the scene, the first character will always be frame right of the second character, who is then always frame left of the first. If the camera passes over the axis, it is called jumping the line or crossing the line. this technique would be used in my film when the characters are talking to each other.

Here is an image to demonstrate this:


Here is a YouTube clip to demonstrate how this works:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4wX_dmh8_g

Shot Reverse Shot

Another technique we had to use was the Shot Reverse Shot.

What is the shot reverse shot?
Shot reverse shot is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character, and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite directions, the viewer assumes that they are looking at each other. In my film this would be the two character engaging in conversation.

Here is an image to demonstrate this:



Here is a YouTube clip to demonstrate how this works: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1Ey0a6LJRA