Final Storyboard

Editing

In post production of our film, we used iMovie to edit our footage to create our final product. The editing stage of our film took 3 months from the final day of filming. 

We started by creating a montage of the man in the dungeon as per our storyboard.  After forming, precision cutting and colour correcting this, we were able to start developing our soundtrack as we could see the mood we wanted to create throughout our final piece. 

After this we added the establishing shots at the start of the film, and then we added the opening credits with the actors names.  We had some really good raw material here including the diegetic sound and i planned the credits to match with this - Guilherme's name comes up with the sound of a passing car. 

When choosing footage to use, we selected and highligted sections of the footage to insert and precision cut ready for the final film. This also helped us later on in production when matching with the soundtrack as we could see general themes throughout the footagewithout playing the whole film.

Nearer to the end of production we started to add the sound, we added the soundtrack created my Estelle on Garage band as well as some sounds we had recorded in advance and some computer produced sound effects.  This created the tone of our film, and really brought the piece together.

The final stage of production was to add the production company.  We extracted this from a sepererate film to be used at the beginning of our own.  We chose hammer films after extensive research into production companies and which would be suitable to represent our film. 

Garageband

Once creating the project on Garageband for the film opening, I had to choose tempo, signature and key. I choose 100 beats per minute, as horror film music classically contains long notes or drones so I had to choose a fairly average speed. I choose ¾ time signature as it’s off the normally heard 4/4 or 6/8 time signatures to create an unusual rhythm. The key of C# was chosen to create an unusual or unfamiliar sound.

The first software instrument I used was ‘Izmir Ambience’. This is a synthesizers and fits in with modern horror film music. It creates the sound of a long drone with a hint of ringing as well, with gives a very eerie atmosphere. I used the musical keyboard on Garageband to create this sound, I focused on the key of C#m so started with that note for the long drones. I only played the note for a bar but the effect on the synthesizer continued the note and faded it for a further bar. For the transition of fade to white for the flashback in  the opening, I held the note down of considerably longer and the effect of it meant that it would gradually get louder as well.

As I wanted to use a mixture of classic and modern sounds, I used strings. The ‘Hollywood Strings’ were one of the only strings on Garageband that could hold notes for very long time. So I used the strings to sustain C#m throughout the whole strings section. I then added other notes from the scale over the top but continued to have these notes lasting from 2-8 bars long.

Next instrument was the ‘Rotuma Bells’. These created a very low sound and used them as long bass notes. As each instrument is added one at a time, it sounds like a build up of suspense.

Nearer the end of the piece the sound needed to pick up pace, so I used an introduction from ‘Lunar Strings’ which were high pitched but shorter than any other note. Then the ‘Sub Synth Bass’ kicks in with a steady and fast 2 notes. The bass also links into the clip of the women looking at her phone and the sound is to represent her heart beat.

The ‘Rotuma Bells’ also add in just after the bass with a quick up beat riff from the scale of C#m, to add to the change in tempo.

In Garageband, I recorded what you are playing on the musical keyboard and then edited and adjusted the notes using the precision cutting tool. Here I could lengthen or shorten, delete or change the notes positioning and pitch. This meant that if I played the wrong note I could easily just change it to the right note without re-recording the whole sequence. I also used this technique so all of the notes ended at the same time at the end, as I could see all the notes from each instrument at the same time and shortened or lengthen different instruments to end at the same bar.

Once all of the instruments had been precision cut, I adjusted their volume levels separately. So I made the sub synth bass louder to create a big impact. I also changed the long drones and the beginning to be louder as the clips have sounds of cars driving passed and the drones needed to be heard with it. The strings and the bells also needed to be quieter as they were all playing as the same time so didn’t need to be as loud as they complimented each other.

Changes of Music in Horror Films

·         Classis Horror FIlms

·         Classic horror films use orchestral music to portray emotions and to create an atmosphere. Orchestral music is one of the most powerful forms of music and is very dynamic. It’s range of emotions that can be portrayed is so vast, from a build up of tension with high pitched strings, to fast up beat chases, it’s music fits in well with the genre of horror.

 E.g. Friday the 13^th uses orchestral music throughout.

E.g. The Bride of Frankenstein, 1935, was one of the first horror films to include a full orchestra. Even Frankenstein, 1931, only used music for the opening credits.

·         Modern Horror Films

·         Modern horror films use more electronic instruments and industrial music. The use of technology within the music of films had expanded and using synthesizers had become popular in the horror genre as it could create unfamiliar and surreal sounds to create fear.

E.g. Hitchcock’s Psycho, still mainly used strings but also used an amplifier to create a sound of bird screeching. The amplifier replaced using microphones to record the violins, so it produced a much harsher sound.

Marketing research - Poster deconstructions

By studying numerous film posters which relate to our genre, several consistent themes were found, as well as 4 clear various changes in style.

The 1st of these is the Gothic style shown in the posters for 'Nightmare on Elm Street,' 'The Crazies,' 'Shutter Island' and Jacob's Ladder.  This has key features of red font, with a black and red colour theme often with a very pale blue/green feature. - Links to fear of physical pain.

The second style challenges the conventions by being bright with a light colour theme with a white background - shown in posters for 'The Shining' and 'The Eye.'  This plays on the idea of something familiar and ordinary being twisted. Key features are black and red font
, and a twisted image. - Links to fear of psychological disturbances.

The third style is a lifeless style shown in posters for 'Martyrs,' 'The Blair Witch Project,' 'Poltergeist,' and 'The Uninvited.'  The key features are a grey scale colour scheme, sometimes with very slight tints of red and an image with very low levels of lighting which highlight specific features. - Links to fear of the unknown.

The fourth apparent style is the clinical style shown in posters from 'Donnie Darko,' 'Orphan,' 'Paranormal Activity,' 'The Descent and 'Fear of the Dark.'  These all have a very strong presence of the colours blue and green and often portray bright artificial, clinical lighting. - Links to fear of logical fears pushed to the extreme.

Deconstruction of poster for 'Nightmare on Elm Street' 

The font used is simple, with sharp edges, which symbolises blades.  Red font follows protocols of slasher film style poster as it resembles the idea of blood. White font is used in coordination with the red font to show that innocence will be harmed. The word 'Nightmare' is in a larger font than the rest of the text in order to emphasise the idea of horror.  This play on words is very effective in attracting people to watch the film.

The image itself is used very effectively in this poster.  A medium shot is used of the man in order to make the viewer feel that the villain is disturbingly close.  It also gives a clear shot of the blade in his hand whilst not being so close as to reveal his identity.  The picture is back lit which has connotations of fear.  The lighting highlights the smoke rising behind of him which indicates a fire incident, and smoke adds to the enigma. The lighting creates a harsh shadow covering most of the mans face, but lights him well enough to see the poor and deformed state of his skin.  The villain sustains this enigma with his head down and the brown old fashioned hat covering the top half of his head, which leaves the viewer in anticipation of his appearance.  He also looks in control and powerful due to his stance.  His sweat-shirt links in with the theme of old fashioned and past events.  It also indicates towards the relative age of the character. 

Deconstruction of poster for 'The Eye'  
 

 The font used is simple and modern so shows that the film is set in the modern day The colours used are black and red to show the ideas of darkness, evil and death that run throughout the film.  The word 'eye' is written in a bold font to emphasise its importance.  One of the main attractions of the film is that Jessica Alba is one of the main cast members. Therefore her name is positioned above the title and in red to make it stand out. 

The image is also simple and does not give the plot away.  It does however hint that whoever's eye is on the picture, has darkness inside her, as the hand is coming out of the eye.  The warm brown colour of the eye contrasts well with the pale fingers, which supports this idea.  Also, one half of the whites of her eyes is quite a clean white, whilst the other is shadowed and dark showing 2 sides to the person. The white background of this poster challenges codes and conventions of horror film posters and gives the impression of something supernatural, as well as showing the involvement of someone innocent.  This poster has taken a more clinical approach which would be more relevant to our film, however it does seem to apply more to supernatural horrors rather than psychological horrors.

12 and 12A

‘12’ and ‘12A’

Our media Product doesn’t fit into any of the criteria except for the ‘drug’ section as the use of drugs in our opening is only used once and doesn’t have a big focus. Therefore we would not be able to rate our film opening as 12 or 12A.

Lighting

For our dungeon scene, we have researched a number of different colours to see what would look best during the scene to symbolise that the scene is cold and clincal. We used different colour plastic bags and lighting gels to test out the different colours for the dungeon scene.

 The first colour we looked at was a deep shade of red which looks harsh on the character and has connotations of blood and anger which would be good because it would show how the character is anger from trapped by the psycho.

The second colour we tried was a dark blue to show how the psycho is a cold hearted person. This would also show that the scene is clinical because now in the modern day, the best three colours to show clinical are blue, green and white.

This colour is a bright white but with faded marks of green and blue. This is created by using the artificial light in the dungeon. This would be quite good because they show the colors of clinical. Yet it may not be as effective as the blue because of the connotations of white are pureness and cleanliness and that is completely the opposite of the effect we are trying to achieve.

This is an eroded white wall (so the marks on the wall look like the paint have eroded away). This was done by turning off the light off and then just leaving the photography lamp on.

This is a deep shade of orange which is done using an orange lighting gel. The colour our scene looks too bright for a scene of a dungeon and we would rather have a dark shade of colour to show how cold and dark the character is.