tanith spong media
''Short of the week''- how are films constructed?
Genre
In the short horror ‘’Butterflies’’ the techniques they have used to make the audience scared is using sounds like creaking doors, scary intense music and jumpy sounds to keep the audience on the edge of their seat.
The character being mainly used is a young girl who maybe has schizophrenia as these horrible thoughts and images keep being shown on screen. A man keeps appearing so maybe this is somebody in her head? Is he real? This is making us as an audience afraid as it’s so random and gory and confused about the unknown.
Visual Imagery
The visual imagery for a horror film is that everything is dark and creepy, this is exactly like this short film as the setting itself is in a dark place, probably an abandoned building where nobody goes. There’s lots of high screams and scary sounds which can relate to the visual imagery. The colour frame is in black and white. Black and white colour is used to make it more mysterious as you can’t see everything in black and white also it is a dull and boring colour and black is associated with scary.
Narrative
The narrative for this horror is like a nightmare. Its very creepy and keeps the audience on the edge of their seat with the uncomfortable scenes.
Soundtrack
This short horror has several different soundtracks, most of which are similar high-pitched sounds; like ghostly music and screaming sounds. The music is very tense as it changes and goes extremely high pitched when something bad is about to happen. There’s music all the way through this but it changes at the scary parts and slows down/gets quieter when nothing interesting is about to happen.
Misc en Scene
The female character used is in a black dress. This is ironic as black is a creepy colour and the colour frame itself is in black. The man used is topless with blood and cuts all down him, this is scary as we do not know what has happened to the man. This keeps the audience interested as they want to know what has happened.
The lighting used is very dark and dull to make it creepier, i.e. a lot more things can happen in the dark, which the audience wont be able to see, this makes it more scarier.
The location looks like it is in a dark place, probably an abandoned building where nobody goes. There seems to be lots of rooms with blood all over them and random things appearing, ie a goat.
Camera Work
This short film features a lot of close ups on the characters facial expression, this is to catch the different facial expressions so the audience can get a feel of what is happening. This is also to capture the tension.There is also a lot of long shots used to capture the whole scenario and to show to the audience how creepy it is.
Watching this short horror has given me ideas for when it comes to making my short horror film. I am going to use a lot of creepy music for the suspense and tension and I am also considering using black and white colour throughout to make it scarier.
In the short horror ‘’Butterflies’’ the techniques they have used to make the audience scared is using sounds like creaking doors, scary intense music and jumpy sounds to keep the audience on the edge of their seat.
The character being mainly used is a young girl who maybe has schizophrenia as these horrible thoughts and images keep being shown on screen. A man keeps appearing so maybe this is somebody in her head? Is he real? This is making us as an audience afraid as it’s so random and gory and confused about the unknown.
Visual Imagery
The visual imagery for a horror film is that everything is dark and creepy, this is exactly like this short film as the setting itself is in a dark place, probably an abandoned building where nobody goes. There’s lots of high screams and scary sounds which can relate to the visual imagery. The colour frame is in black and white. Black and white colour is used to make it more mysterious as you can’t see everything in black and white also it is a dull and boring colour and black is associated with scary.
Narrative
The narrative for this horror is like a nightmare. Its very creepy and keeps the audience on the edge of their seat with the uncomfortable scenes.
Soundtrack
This short horror has several different soundtracks, most of which are similar high-pitched sounds; like ghostly music and screaming sounds. The music is very tense as it changes and goes extremely high pitched when something bad is about to happen. There’s music all the way through this but it changes at the scary parts and slows down/gets quieter when nothing interesting is about to happen.
Misc en Scene
The female character used is in a black dress. This is ironic as black is a creepy colour and the colour frame itself is in black. The man used is topless with blood and cuts all down him, this is scary as we do not know what has happened to the man. This keeps the audience interested as they want to know what has happened.
The lighting used is very dark and dull to make it creepier, i.e. a lot more things can happen in the dark, which the audience wont be able to see, this makes it more scarier.
The location looks like it is in a dark place, probably an abandoned building where nobody goes. There seems to be lots of rooms with blood all over them and random things appearing, ie a goat.
Camera Work
This short film features a lot of close ups on the characters facial expression, this is to catch the different facial expressions so the audience can get a feel of what is happening. This is also to capture the tension.There is also a lot of long shots used to capture the whole scenario and to show to the audience how creepy it is.
Watching this short horror has given me ideas for when it comes to making my short horror film. I am going to use a lot of creepy music for the suspense and tension and I am also considering using black and white colour throughout to make it scarier.
Horror Sequence
Our ideasFor this task I was originally working alone but I wasn't too sure what idea I was going for. I then started helping Chloe out with her idea involving clowns. We came up with this idea. The short horror involves somebody hallucinating so we typed the word 'hallucination' into the thesaurus and came up with a few words and then chose the right one we felt suited best.
I have pointed an arrow to the chosen one. We chose this because we wanted it to be a word which nobody knew. Which is 'Phantasmogria' |
- Phantasmagoria
Two girls are walking through a forest at night. One of them is extremely drunk, the other is sober. The girl who is drunk bends down to be sick, suddenly leaves start falling on top of her head. As she looks up to see what it is, she sees a clown dangling in front of her. She starts to scream, scatters back on her hands and knees into her friend, her friend then walks off annoyed at her and leaves the girl alone in the forest.
The girl then sees the clown again staring at her with a red balloon laughing. She then sees another clown to the left of her doing the same thing as the other clown. She then thinks she’s hallucinating, walks backwards and bumps into another clown who then looms over her with the biggest smile ever and laughs. The clowns corner her and jump as if to grab her, she then cowers into a ball and screams. She unravels from the position she was in but when she stands up, the clowns are gone. She then sees the red balloon in the middle of the forest, she goes up to it and pops the balloon, a note falls out onto the ground reading “Watch your back,” she then stands up and her face goes blank. The camera zooms out and the audience sees the three clowns stood behind her, they then put their hand on her shoulder. The screen goes black and all is heard is a high pitched scream. - Another
idea we came up with is about a girl who gets stalked by unknown person dressed
in black going through a dark alleyway, she starts to walk faster and so does
the stranger until she then reaches her house and goes to bed. She then wakes
up in the middle of the night and the stranger is looming over her with a
knife.
After a lot of thinking and editing we decided to go with this idea:
- Boyfriend and girlfriend are sat watching the stars romantically, things start to get scary. He goes to wee in a bush, the bush starts to rustle and he hears strange noises but he thinks nothing of it and carries on weeing. The music builds up and suddenly there is a high pitched scream coming from over the hills. He worries and gets scared and starts to head back to his girlfriend who is nowhere to be seen. He looks down and sees his girlfriend’s bracelet on the floor, muddy. Around him are marks of struggle, showing the audience the girl has been taken. He looks over towards a tall hill where he can just about make out a dark figure, dressed in black on a hill holding the girls scarf (the scarf is blowing in the wind). He goes to run towards the figure but falls down the hill. As he gets up, (the music is building up) he looks up and the figure is standing in front of him. The shot then ends with a dramatic sound and the camera cuts. The last shot shows the boys dead body being dragged off camera by the figure in black.
Alternate ending: As he gets up, he starts to run. We see the dark figure at the top of the white horse standing over his dead girlfriend’s body. The music stops. The credits and the bloopers appear.
We have come up with two different endings,
the alternative one is the one we really liked but we decided to stick with the
original idea.
Characters/Crew:
- Girl: Tanith
- Boy: Michael
- Person in black: Sarah
- Sound: Kirsty
- Camera woman: Chloe
- Written by: Chloe and Tanith
- Directed by: Chloe and Tanith
Characters/Crew:
- Girl: Tanith
- Boy: Michael
- Person in black: Sarah
- Sound: Kirsty
- Camera woman: Chloe
- Written by: Chloe and Tanith
- Directed by: Chloe and Tanith
storyboard
After coming up with our final idea for our horror, we then made a storyboard for it.
Pre production work
This is the rest of our pre production work for our horror.
To make it easier for us we have decided to make a schedule we can follow from now until we have finished the horror. This makes it easier for us as we know when we will be filming and when we will be editing. This is our schedule.
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Final Idea
Although we really liked this idea, when it came down to filming our horror idea, our actors/actresses weren’t able to film on certain days due to them filming their own horrors and it also being quite far away so it was hard to travel to our location (Westbury) so myself and Chloe decided to change our storyline slightly to make it easier to film.
Our final idea consisted of two girls staying after college to do work, messing around. One of them then goes to the toilet and when she comes back her friend is nowhere to be seen. Her ring is on the floor next to a fallen chair- the room looks odd. She then walks around the college and briefly peers in all the rooms but can vaguely just make out her friend in one of the rooms but this is a hallucination. When she walks into the room, the door slams and the lights turn off, all except one light hanging above a mirror; the mirror reads “You’re next” as she looks around she sees nothing but when she turns back around a person dressed in black is standing there and pounces. The girl then falls to the floor and the shot ends with the girl being dragged off screen.
We have kept lots of ideas from our original idea but changed the location to the college. We also changed the characters to two girls who are friends, rather than a romantic scene with a boyfriend and girlfriend which meant changing the actors and actresses.
Characters
Girl 1- Sarah Woolley
Girl 2- Kirsty Pickett
Person in black- Me
Although we really liked this idea, when it came down to filming our horror idea, our actors/actresses weren’t able to film on certain days due to them filming their own horrors and it also being quite far away so it was hard to travel to our location (Westbury) so myself and Chloe decided to change our storyline slightly to make it easier to film.
Our final idea consisted of two girls staying after college to do work, messing around. One of them then goes to the toilet and when she comes back her friend is nowhere to be seen. Her ring is on the floor next to a fallen chair- the room looks odd. She then walks around the college and briefly peers in all the rooms but can vaguely just make out her friend in one of the rooms but this is a hallucination. When she walks into the room, the door slams and the lights turn off, all except one light hanging above a mirror; the mirror reads “You’re next” as she looks around she sees nothing but when she turns back around a person dressed in black is standing there and pounces. The girl then falls to the floor and the shot ends with the girl being dragged off screen.
We have kept lots of ideas from our original idea but changed the location to the college. We also changed the characters to two girls who are friends, rather than a romantic scene with a boyfriend and girlfriend which meant changing the actors and actresses.
Characters
Girl 1- Sarah Woolley
Girl 2- Kirsty Pickett
Person in black- Me
Filming our Horror
This is our first shot. The reason we filmed this shot as a birds eye view was because we wanted our audience to see the environment they are in. We also wanted our audience to think its just a normal day and nothing out of the ordinary is going to happen.
The reason we filmed this shot from the side on is because we wanted another to shot to show our audience what these two characters were doing. We wanted to start it off as normal as possible, without giving anything away. We filmed a close up of her typing to again, show our audience what they were doing but also show the isolation in the room. We done this by just focusing the sound on her fingers hitting the keypad. We filmed this shot as a side view was to show our audience that the girl is off somewhere. We also wanted our audience to see both their facial expressions to know what is going on. By the girl telling her friend she's off somewhere gives a hint to our audience that something is going to happen. The reason we filmed this shot as a medium shot was because we wanted to show the isolation in within the building. From this point on, we decided to switch between the two characters to build up suspense and tension. We wanted our audience to have an idea that something was going to happen, hence the build up. As we were flicking back between the two characters, we decided to make Girl 2 pick up her phone and act natural as if nothing has happened. We filmed this as a close up because we wanted to get a good view on her phone, this was to show naturalism. We filmed this medium shot of her going into the toilet because we wanted to show our audience where she was going- we made this pretty clear by getting a clear shot of the 'Female' sign above the door. We filmed an extreme close up of the girl on her phone because we wanted to show that the girl was wearing a ring which is a big clue later on in our horror. Originally we wasn't going to keep flicking back between both the characters but we decided that if we do it this way, it builds up more of a suspense. We filmed this shot of the girl walking into the toilet because we wanted to show the audience where she was going. We cut the previous shot of her going into the toilet just as the door was opening so we could change the shot type and to make it look better. The girl is turning around in this shot as she hears something creeping up on her. We have shot this scene as a close up so you can see the girls reaction. We filmed this shot as a medium shot to get the girl in the whole shot and see exactly where she's going- we wanted to make it certain she was entering back into the classroom. This is a medium shot as again, we wanted to get her in. We also wanted to get a moving shot of her walking over towards the ring she spots on the floor. This is the shot of her picking up her friends ring. We filmed this shot as a close up because we wanted to get a clear view of the ring. This is the shot of the girl heading to find her friend after she hears a scream. We filmed this as a moving medium shot to get a clear view where she was heading and also to see her body language and facial expressions at the same time. We also filmed this shot as a medium shot for the same reason; to get a clear view of where she was heading. This is actually a running scene but from this screenshot looks like a walking scene. The reason she's running is because she's heard a scream coming from down the hallway. This shot is a back view of her running. The reason we changed the shot for the same scene was because we wanted to make it seem more realistic. We also wanted to change it up a bit and get lots of different shot to make it look better. This is the shot of her slowing down from running and looking around the corridor for more evidence or any sign of her friend. We have also made this shot as a medium shot to get her fully in and see that she stopped from running. The reason we have filmed this shot over her shoulder was to get a better view of what she spotted. We tried making this shot as a point of view shot but it didn't work as well as what we thought it would so we decided to stick with an over the shoulder shot. This is the shot of her spotting her friend through the door. The reason we made this shot as a close up was because we wanted to get her facial expression in full view once she had seen her friend. After the close up shot, she looks away slightly and when she looks back her friend is gone. It turns out to be a hallucination. Once she notices her friend isn't there, she looks into the room through the glass door to see if she can see anything. We've shot this so it looks like she's looking into the glass but we've specifically not shown what exactly she's looking at. This is so we don't give too much information away. This is the shot after. This is of her waling through the door to enter the same room. We've made it the same shot as above because we wanted to keep them similar as they are very similar kind of shots. These two are the shots of the door closing. As the door closes, the lights turn off and the room turns pitch black. The reason for this is because we wanted to build up the scariness from here as we thought it was appropriate. This is a medium shot because we wanted to show how empty and isolated the room is which she's in. The reason she is standing still is because she's looking around, inspecting the room. This is a similar shot but we have made it into a long shot to show how big the room is when she was walking away. As she walks away, the person in black appears into the image, we have done this to show people that she's not alone in this room. This is the shot of her turning around as she feels someone is behind her due to seeing another shadow on the green wall. The reason this is a medium/close up is because we wanted to get her facial expression in and the full view of her turning around. This is the shot of her heading over towards the mirror as she see's a note saying 'You're next', this shot then turns into a close up of the image and the lights turn on. The reason we made a close up of the note is so our audience can see the writing clearer and to make it more spooky. After the girl see's the note, she turns around and the figure in black walks towards her, this ends with her falling on the floor. When filming this shot we made Sarah hold the camera whilst she ''fell'' to the floor to give it a better effect that she's fallen. Once the camera falls, the screen turns fuzzy. We have done this to make it jumpy and more scary. We got this video from youtube and imported it using KeepVid. We done this to get a clearer image. This is the final shot of her being dragged by the person in black and struggling to get free. We have made this so it looks as if the camera has toppled over. After our final scene, the title of our horror appears and a loud boom at the same time. This is to make the audience jump as they won't expect it. The font we used wasn't a font on the macs so we went on a website called DaFont and picked one called 'Night Bird.' |
Editing our Video
![Picture](/uploads/3/9/1/8/39187541/1418995740.png?250)
Once we finished filming, it was time to put the clips together on Final Cut Pro. Once we had trimmed the clips down to the appropriate size, we then started to add in different audio's and sound effects from Youtube.
![Picture](/uploads/3/9/1/8/39187541/7687151.png?1418996118)
At first we decided to put in a soundtrack called Say by John Mayer. We decided to put this in as its quite a casual song- not too sad and not too happy. We then decided to change this to a calmer song. It didn't have a name but to find it we typed in 'tension building music' and clicked the first video. The reason we changed it was because it didn't fit with the other soundtracks.
![Picture](/uploads/3/9/1/8/39187541/9920995.png?311)
Once our first sound track was added in, we decided to edit it by turning down the volume at certain parts in the song so it would fade in with the other soundtracks.