Audience profile

In my survey I have discovered that the majority of the horror fans were male and were in at the most their early twenties. They seemed open to the idea of my film and would watch it out of interest as it would be challenging many of the conventions that are set within horror films. Their interests didn't just stay with horror films as they were also interested in action and thriller films. The fact they seemed to be also interested in thriller film gives me the confidence to challenge the stereotypical Horror genre. I think the audience would be accepting if I blended ideas of other genres into my film as it could have a much larger appeal to my audience.

This sort of feedback while brief is useful as it makes me more confident in going for the Horror genre instad of the thriller genre due to the interest for a horror film is much greater than expected. There was one exception to all of this which was a woman who was very against Horror. She was in her mid twenties and did not like the ideas behind my film.

I have done a brief profile of the audience that answered my survey. This is the feedback I have received from the survey I had created. 

Audience Research

In this slide, I studied the best ways to receive audience research so I can see which is the most efficient way to do research and audience feedback for the film I am making.

Creative and Inspirational sequences

Creative and Inspirational sequences

The Dark Knight

The film begins with the Warner Bros. opening introduction but is in a dark blue colour instead of its usual orange and yellow colour. The same goes for the Legendary Pictures opening sequence and the DC comics introduction afterwards as they are all in a dark blue colour unlike their normal colours. The camera then cuts to blue flames erupting on screen leaving a pattern of the Batman logo where there are no flames. The camera then zooms in on the logo until the screen goes pitch black signaling that the movie has begun. The film opens on an establishing shot of a city with many office blocks and skyscrapers in view. The camera tracks forward and eventually zoom in on an office block. One of the windows on the office block shatters to pieces and the camera turns to a medium shot of a man in a clown mask holding a weapon that may or may not have broken the window.

The camera then cuts to another medium shot that shows another man in a clown mask in the room handing a zip wire hook to the other. The henchman holding the gun then places the hook into his weapon and fires it onto the roof of the opposite building. The camera then cuts to a wide/ medium shot that shows a henchman with his back faced to the camera holding his mask in one hand and a large bag in the other. The camera zooms in on said clown mask very slowly and then zooms out quickly when a car arrives and the henchmen puts the mask on.

Drive

The opening scene starts with a wide shot of the city that the film is based in. The city is a night and the camera tracks to the left as this shot goes on. During this scene the actor’s name ‘Ryan Gosling’ appears on he screen in a pink flamboyant font. The camera shot will fade and transition to a man on a low angle, medium shot who is staring at what is presumably traffic in the city. At this point, the Title ‘Drive’ appears on screen in the same font and style of the previous text. The man will then turn his head to the windscreen. The next shot is an over the shoulder shot of the man driving down the street as the opening credits are listed on the side. The shot after is a first person perspective shot of the man who is still driving down the street. This is followed by a close up medium shot of the man in the exact same situation. The next shot is a wide/establishing shot of he car the man is in. This is done on a high angle with the camera spiraling slightly before zooming out slowly showing the many motorways within the city. The shot will then fade into the medium close up shot of the man from before. You will then see him drive his car into a parking lot in an establishing shot that tracks to the right. We then get another over the shoulder shot of the man walking towards an elevator followed by a first person shot of the elevator doors closing with the man inside the elevator. You then see a wide shot of the man coming out of the elevator. You then get a medium tracking shot of the man walking in a room. The camera then goes to a low angle shot of the man putting an item on the bed and walking out of the room. The shot is then another establishing shot of the man driving in the city with the camera zooming out while tracking the car. The final shot of the opening scene is another first person perspective shot of the man driving his car.

Sinister

The opening sequence starts with a black screen for an extended period of time to add suspense to the story. There some brief scenes of a camera film being placed onto a monitor. This is then revealed to be a super 8 film being shown.  The establishing shot shows a family of for with bags over each of their heads and nooses around each of their necks. You hear eerie music in the background to unnerve the audience. You see a wood cutting object balanced from a rope bouncing up and down on a branch attached to the wooden branch linked to where the family is tied. The branch eventually breaks causing the family to rise up from the ground and choke on the noose around each of their necks. The family eventually chokes to death and the camera jumps quickly. When the camera reverts back to it’s original shot there is a tear in the footage and it says ‘Sinister’ underneath it.

Here, I look at Creative and Inspirational sequences to help inspire me for what my opening sequence should be for my film.

Institutional Research: Hammer Productions

Institutional Research: Hammer Productions

Hammer Productions is based in London, in the United Kingdom was founded in 1934. It popularized the “Hammer Horror” films that were created in the mid 1950s until the 1970s. While they mainly focused on Gothic films, Hammer also produced noir, comedy, science fiction and thriller films.

Before 1955, Hammer focused on making a variety of film genres but in 1955 they decided to focus on Horror films. They released the film the Quatermass Xperiment that was a surprisingly big hit. It was an adaptation of the BBC serial The Quatermass Experiment and the success of the film led to the just as successful sequel Quatermass 2.

While producing Quatermass 2, Hammer deiced to produce a film based on Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein. While production took a while over doubts on the film’s success, The Curse of Frankenstein became an enormous hit across the world and it became on of the most iconic horror films of all time. Hammer would go on to produce a “Hammer” version of Dracula and the Mummy. Both films went on to be iconic in their own right as well but Christopher Lee’s performance in Dracula made him the most celebrated actor of the role making the Dracula image his own and setting a high bar for all those after him. These were seen as the three most critically acclaimed films produced by Hammer and have been the backbone to many future Horror films.

From 1959 to 1974 Hammer would produce many sequels for Frankenstein Dracula and The Mummy, with The Horror of Dracula being their highest grossing film. However the sequels would all decline in quality, as time would go on. Christopher Lee would become disillusioned with his role in the sequels refusing to speak the dialogue in later films as his dialogue appalled him.

In the early seventies Hammer struggled with Horror due to subtle Horror films such as Rosemary’s Baby which were more serious in nature and mature. Many of their films failed at the box office or was received poorly due to the uninteresting angle at the time it was produced.

Since 2007 Hammer productions has been revived and started production on modern horror films. They have gone on to produce the well-received Let Me In and The Woman in Black, an adaptation on the book by Susan Hill.

This some research i did on well known production companies within the industry. It is important to research them because you get to see what horror films are being produced by the largest companies in the industry.

Opening Titles Analysis

Opening Titles Analysis

Shark Night 3D

The film opens with the production company logo for the film appearing in the centre of the screen. The size of the text is quite small but it is large for it to be easily made out by the audience. The font is a large Impact style font with some brown decaying over the top of it. Underneath the logo it says “presents” in a smaller font but in a different font style. The font style in question resembles Copperplate.  The film then shows two more production companies with the same font styling and graphology of the “Rogue” text but are in a much larger size which gives the idea that these companies had much ore influence on the film when it was being produced. Another production logo and the director of the film then follow the previous texts.  All pieces of text in the title sequence are coloured white p to this point.

When the title of the film is revealed it has an image of large shark teeth around the text. The text in question has a yellow stain to it and has a large font size. It has an impact font again and has some very faint red over the text, which could be seen as dried up blood. Each word in the title has it’s own line which makes it much more visible with the word “Night” considerably larger than the other words. The film then goes on to list off the cast of the film in a white text with a black stain on certain parts of the text in white text with a large Impact font. The text will be various sections of the screen to coincide with footage of sharks edited together also on screen. The film will then list off the production members by showing their title in a smaller text above their name in a smaller font. 

Friday 13^th Part 3

The text appears at the start of the film when it enlarges itself, zooming onto the screen and popping out at you. The text has the shape of the text trailing behind it to give it a 3-D effect to it. The font styling of the text is a blood red colour with a particularly large font, which is due to the text always moving towards the screen. This is to emphasize the 3-D effects, which are featured in the film. The text will then revert back to being unseen and zoom back out to the point where it cannot be seen.

 This is also done with the cast but the titles or introductions don’t zoom out until all under the title are gone. For example, the word “Starring” didn’t leave the screen until both actors under this role’s text went off screen. The antagonist of the film and it’s actor get a full screen to instead of a section of it like other texts to show that they are the main attraction. This is also done with the more important production members such as the executive producer. Other production members are pushed ore to the side of the screen when their text is shown instead of being in the centre of the screen like the cast members.

Night of the Living Dead

The film begins with the production logo of the film. It is in a white large font in an Imprint Shadow styling. The word in the production log “Image” is considerably larger than the other pieces of text. The logo appears with word “night” in a much larger transparent text only showing the outlining of the letters. The other parts of the text are in a smaller, bold, Impact font which is in white. The film will go on to list of various production members in sections of the film with all the screen writers on one section and then all the effects in another section. The text is in a Copperplate styling which is in a white text yet again. However the text is quite small and can be hard to read at times considering it is a black and white film.

Opening Credits over the years

Old films would go as far as to tell you in some situations the entire cast and crew at the start of the film and at the end for the audience. However, in some situations the credits would not be clear enough  for the viewer to see due to the limitations of technology. Credits in their later years would try and be entertaining by using dynamic visual effects and dramatic music so it can make audiences pay attention to who was in the film. In the modern age many films decide not to show many opening credits as it may distract from the full experience. 

The opening credits were important to research the opening credits to see how I can present them in the film without taking away from the tension of the story while giving the necessary information for the audience. I have gone and researched 3 opening credits from a present day horror film to the end.

Genre Analysis

In this presentation I have analysed the genre of Horror and it's conventions clearly. I have looked at what makes the genre easily recognizable to audiences and what a company must do to in the most basic terms to create a horror film. The slide cover iconography, themes, characters, style, and narrative.

AS Brief

AS Brief 

Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposte another character, with she?he then exchanges a couple of line of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reserve shot and the 180-degree rule.

Main task: the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effect from a copyright-free source. Both preliminary and main tasks may be done individually or as a group. Maximum four members to a group.

Analysing Opening Sequence

Analysing Opening Sequence

In this piece I was tasked with analyzing the opening sequence in a horror film. This is what I have produced. It is important to know how to open a Horror film because if the film starts badly it is hard to win an audience member back. Unfortunately the film I have analysed does not have its opening sequence on YouTube. I was able analyse this sequence as I own the Blu-ray disc for said film. For a visual reference, I will put a trailer for the film in the blog so it is possible to see what style the film is. 

House of Balloons: Opening titles

This is the opening titles for the film. I doubt that they will be used in the final cut because I am trying to throw the viewer into the movie instantly and only show the title at the end. I also want the title to be presented in a minimal manner without many effects (e.g. just plain text on the screen) so it does not distract majorly with the atmosphere I am trying to create. I feel if I put in seperate titles it abruptly make the atmosphere have less impact on the viewer.

House of Balloons: Test Footage

This is my first test footage for House of Balloons. Unfortunately the audio has not been registered on Youtube properly. When this is fixed I will re-upload the video to the blog with audio. The shots have not been edited properly and sections of the film are missing. This is due to them not being recorded yet.