Location Ideas

We want to film the opening scene to our horror film inside a house. We'll begin our film with an establishing shot of the house to show the location of our film and to set the scene of it. We want to film it inside a regular, quite new looking house as opposed to an abandoned, scary looking house to not only make the viewer relate to it more, but to also give the viewer a false sense of security. We want to film it inside the house, from the villains perspective (using a point of view shot), to make the viewer feel like they're actually walking through the house to create tension and to keep the viewer on edge. We'll film part of it in the bathroom as it'll create a relaxed, calm atmosphere and it'll make the victim seem more unaware of what is going to happen to her.

These are some pictures that we took at the location in which we're going to film our opening scene to our horror film:

This is a shot of the street to show the whereabouts of the house where we are going to film our opening scene.

This is an establishing shot of the house. We're going to use an establishing shot at the start of our opening sequence to set the scene.

This is a shot up the stairs as during our horror film, the villain, will be walking up these stairs towards the victim. 

This is a shot of the bathroom. The victim will be in here during our opening sequence.

And finally, this is a shot of the bath. The victim will be in here for the opening scene as baths are commonly associated with being an environment in which you can relax. We thought that by having our victim in the bath, it'll create a kind of safety blanket and make the viewer feel like the victim will be safe, but in reality, she won't.

Characters

Storyboarding

This is a picture of our group planning our storyboard for our opening sequence to our horror film.

Final Logo Design

We decided on this as our logo because we think it fits well with the theme of horror. We decided on this font as it looks somewhat unnerving as the letters aren't always consistent in size and they're faded slightly, also, it's bold and easy to read. The red of the hand print contrasts nicely with the black of the font, thus enabling it to stand out well whilst still being able to read the font clearly. The red of the hand print looks like realistic blood, whereas some of the other ideas we tried out looked somewhat fake. Red is commonly used in horror films as it is associated with not only blood, but also danger. Having this as our logo shows that our film company would specialise in horror films, like twisted pictures do, as it wouldn't be appropriate to use on children's films as it may scare them.

Logo Ideas

Originally, we were going to call our film company 'Freakish Zone'. We then however, decided against this and decided to call it 'Freak Zone Media'. We tried out some different font styles in order to decide which one to have for our logo.

We decided to use 'VTKS CHOICE' as our font. We then went on to try out different ideas of what to have, other than the font, on our logo. We tried out quite a few ideas, keeping with the theme of horror.

Storyline Ideas

These are our initial ideas for our horror film.

We have decided that we want to film the opening scene to our horror film inside a house. We want to film it inside a regular, nice looking house as opposed to a haunted, scary looking house. We decided to do this to not only make the audience relate to the film more, but to also to give a false sense of security. We thought of having the main character of our opening sequence, the victim, to be a girl who lives on her own. We were thinking that she should be quite young, about 20, to make her seem more vulnerable. We were thinking of beginning our film with the woman in the bath as this will create a relaxed atmosphere and therefore, also making her become more vulnerable. Our main character throughout the film, the villain, will be male. He will somehow be linked to the victim somehow because of their pasts; for example, she was the one who got him put in jail or something. We thought about having our villain wearing a balaclava as this is one of the standard conventions of horror films but then we decided against this idea as because they know each other from their pasts, it will be more scary this way as the girl will recognise him and realise that he wants revenge. We thought about maybe having police mugshots at the start of our film as it'll make it seem more mysterious as the audience will instantly wonder why they're in prison and what they did to be put in prison. We thought one of the mugshots could maybe be of an important character in our film, such as our villain. Also, by having police mugshots we thought it would draw the audiences attention in as they will want to find out more about their pasts.

Questionnaire

Typical Locations of Horror Films

Film Institutions

What is suspense?

Suspense is the feeling of anxiety or uncertainty about the outcome of actions in which they do not know what may happen. In the media industry, film writers and directors use suspense to provoke emotion and fear amongst the audience. Alfred Hitchcock (film director) says that an audience experiences suspense when they expect something bad to happen, yet are powerless to intervene to prevent it from happening. A stereotypical scene in a horror film that is suspenseful typically has an eerie, slow-building soundtrack which increases in both volume and intensity as it progresses. It also tends to have scary elements such as darkness and shadows to create feelings of vulnerability and that they are being watched.