Horror Mood Board

This is our mood board with pictures from horror films like prom night, one missed call and paranormal activity. We chose these pictures because some of them are key moments to the horror film they are from and we thought it would be good to include those types of pictures instead of a lot of DVD & poster covers of the films.

Diary entry- music lesson

A few days back we visited the schools music rooms to test out there computer music programmes, the programme was useful and had a lot of different instruments and sounds to choose from. For our horror trailer we want a big bass tune like Dubstep for example as the action starts, we had a go at making a tune like this but we found it hard with the sounds we had but were going back to try again since we agreed it would be better for us if we made the music ourselves instead of getting a non-copyrighted piece from the internet.

We also managed to find this program on the BBC website, it's a dubstep mixer which you can use to make your own dustup tune. It is a good program but is very limited in that you can only change the amounts of drums, snare, bass & synth.

Diary Entry

We've decided to make a horror film for our trailer since we figured it would be relatively easy to do in our area and last year we had already wanted to make a horror movie but instead went for an action movie. Our films going to be based in our school, a lot of the scenes we shoot will be in school and will be shot around 18:00 as it will be dark then.

An important part of this is actually getting permission from the school, so when we get back to school we will go and ask whoever we need to see if filming after school hours is possible. If we get permission we would start filming as soon as possible and film from 18:00 to 20:00.

Annotated Trailer Ending

Top Section

*       Production Company's

*       Cast

Middle Section

            *       Crew...

*       Co-producer

*       DOP

*       Cotume designer

*       Production designer

*       Editor

*       Music

*       Producer

*       Executive Producer

*       Director

*       Writer

End Section

*         Legal

*         Gold Circle Films Logo

*         Lionsgate Logo

*         Film Website

*         Soundtrack Information

Horror film character research

A typical horror film has many pre-cast characters. Conventional characters that feature in almost every horror film.

The protagonist- Usually the hero/victim of the film

The villain- Monsters, demons, ghosts, serial killers and mutated people are popular choices

The cannon fodder- consisting of reckless teenagers indulging in things they shouldn't be like alcohol, sex and drugs who get killed off thick and fast

Sydney Prescott in Scream (heroin)

Jigsaw from Saw (villain)

Drew Barrymore in scream (dumb blond)

A creepy boy who frequently appears in the Grudge

More common characters are scary children, zombies, cults, psychopaths and corrupt officials who casually turn a blind eye to mysterious happenings.

Costumes & Props

Lots of horror films use dark coloured clothing throughout the film which often helps set the dark mood of the film and creates a sense of bleakness. Often the clothes that the characters wear are just normal/casual clothes which is the director attempting to make the characters and the film seem more realistic.
Seeing the characters dressed in strange or out of character costumes would have the audience confused, leaving them unable to relate to the characters which is key to making horror films scary.

The audience must feel part of the film or must feel a connection through the things they see like costumes and props. A normal kitchen knife becomes a psychopaths weapon of choice or the victims only defence against pure evil. A necklace you wear or a wrist band you own could be like the charm or cursed one from the horror film, these things are all key to creating the all important element of fear.

Locations

There are many different locations that we could include in our horror film. Most recently horror films are frequently set in a home or in enclosed areas such as the Saw sequel, Paranormal Activity, The Last House On The Left and Insidious. Another common feature of horror movie locations are isolated areas like forests, houses in the middle of know where and small run down or isolated towns.
In our film we intend to use a mixture of indoor and outdoor elements to create an eerie and tense teaser trailer.

Possible locations-
.School
.A nearby forest
.Alley ways in town
.An attic
.Abandoned houses
We will look into the possible locations in more detail, take pictures and decide later on in our planning.