assessment 5 - Pitch of ideas

My idea for my opening sequence is based on a kidnap over jealousy. The kidnapper will wear gloves to hide their identity. We are going to film in a garage, or type of shed. This is where most of the filming will take place as we are using a lot of close ups. The close ups will be of tools with blood on them, eyes for facial expressions and show how the victim is feeling.  We will use cut away shots from the kidnap scene to the scene the garage to give the audience an idea of what is going on, but not give it away totally. The beginning scene, and the flash backs will be filmed in a dark wood or forest, this will be the place were the girl is being kidnapped, the first scene in the forest will be filmed as if we can see the victims point of view and we are going to use a hand held camera effect.

The props we will need will be things like tools, such as knives and saws etc.  We will also need some fake blood to use on the props to look as if they have been used to torture the victim. 

The kidnapper will wear quite plain, old clothes so if any fake blood gets onto them it wont matter as much. The kidnapper will wear gloves to try and conceal the identity and add mystery to it.

We will use low-key lighting to keep to the conventions of a horror film and make it look dark and scary, this will also add mystery to it.  

We will use incidental sound to create tension within the scene and we will use lots of heavy breathing to also increase the tension. Especially in the flashback scenes.

To show the title of the film we will splatter blood onto a surface as if  it is coming from the victim and then the title will appear over it when we edit the sequence. 

Wordle

assessment 3 - horror timeline

1951: A new cycle of horror movies begins. The Thing ‘from another world’ terrorises an arctic research base. The BBFC introduces it’s new ‘X’ certificate, now over eighteens only can watch films in this new category which replaces the old ‘H’.

1952: Cinema start to fear it is losing it’s audiences to television a new gimmick is born, it is the 3D movie. The first 3D film is a cheap spectacle which makes a fortune at the box office.

1960: Finally with a larger budget to work with and freed from the constraints of his back to back movies Roger Corman begins a cycle of horror films based upon the works of Edgar Allen Poe, many starring Vincent Price and all borrowing liberally from Hammer’s style of filmmaking. The first in the cycle is House of Usher. Hammer itself releases Brides of Dracula a sequel to their first Dracula.

1969: Boris Karloff dies aged 82 and with him the last link to the Golden Age of Horror is lost.

 

1972: Cushing and Lee star in Hammers Dracula AD 1972. In an attempt to appeal to younger audiences the setting is updated, teenagers become the main characters and the film is filled with psychedelic rock music. The film is cut and banned in some countries notably in the UK where the BBFC refuses it a certificate.

1986: Cronenberg releases his most commercially successful film yet, a remake of the nineteen fifties movie The Fly.

1987: As horror films become increasingly comedic Sam Raimi releases a slapstick remake of his own earlier film under the title Evil Dead 2. It seems that the horror boom of the seventies and eighties is largely over and that audiences are once again looking elsewhere for their entertainment.

 

1996: Wes Craven launches his new slasher franchise with Scream. The film has it’s tongue partly in it’s cheek with many knowing references to horror movie history and laughs mixed in with the scares.

1997: Producers rush out a film of I know What You Did Last Summer to cash in on the success of Scream. This slasher movie will spawn two less successful sequels.

1999: James Fermann leaves his post as head of the BBFC. There will now be a softening of stance towards explicit content and over the next few years many ’video nasties’ will be certified and finally released in the UK. After a decade bereft of new ideas in the genre a low budget movie shot on a handheld camera becomes a worldwide phenomenon.

 

2000: The Exorcist (1973) is given a cinema rerelease.

2004: Saw an ultraviolent movie franchise is launched it is to be the first in a series rumoured to be stretching to six films and a videogame. It also sees the advent of a new sub-genre of extremely violent splatter movies called by some critics ‘torture porn’.

2006: The Hills Have Eyes is remade.

2007: Halloween becomes the latest 1970’s horror movie to get the update treatment.

assessment 3 - genre research

Supernatural

The rules of the normal world don't apply; ghosts, demons, vampires, werewolves, the occult etc. Within this sub genre is an ever-growing list of sub-sub-genres -- most of which deal with vampires.

 

Psychological Horror

Based on the disturbed human psyche. Obviously psychos on rampages fall into this category, but it is just as often more subtle. Since the reader's perception is sometimes altered by exposure to an insane viewpoint, psychological horror can also deal with ambiguous reality and seem to be supernatural.

 

Cross Genre

When genres -- horror, fantasy, science, and speculative fiction -- start slipping into one another the Brits call it (appropriately) "slipstream."

 

Slasher film

 is a sub-genre of the Horror film genre typically involving a psychopathic killer stalking and killing a sequence of victims in a graphically violent manner, often with a cutting tool such as a chainsaw or scythe. Although the term "slasher" may be used as a generic term for any horror movie involving graphic acts of murder, the slasher as a genre has its own set of characteristics, which set it apart from related genres like the splatter film.