Drawn Story Board (1min)

As part of our planning for our final assessment piece, we needed to draw a 1 minute long storyboard. This 1 min has got to show all the basic shots and approximate shot lengths. I decided to take the 2nd minute of our film.

The storyboard begins with our main character sitting in her chair watch the home video that her mum left her. However, for some unexplainable reason the screen freezes. This first shot is then followed by a close up of the victims face, which shows confusion. This is followed by a shot where she goes to the television to see why it has stopped working. She tries to press play on the remote, however this doesn't seem to work, so she unplugs the TV and walks out the room.

The second half of the storyboard starts with our victim deciding to leave to go to her mums grave. This is shown by a 'mid shot' of her walking to the front door from the living room. This is -followed by a 'mid-close up' of the victim picking up a bunch of flowers and her keys from the table next to the door, to indicate that she is going to her mums grave. After this we get a shot of her leaving the house and the door shutting behind her. We then get our first sense that there is something not quite right in the house, because as soon as the victim closes the door, the TV turns back on and continues to play even though it has been unplugged. We are then left with a close up of her mum finishing the home video with a message that reveals something shocking to the audience. After the scene at the house, we go straight to the graveyard. This is shows with a long 'long shot' which tells us where the next scene is taking place, and also reveals a strange figure who has just come from the victims' mums' grave wearing black.

Pitch

Film User Ratings

Another exercise which allows us to consider our

target audience is to look at the user ratings on IMDB of several films of our sub genre.

This first graph shows the data for the 2002 horror film 'The Ring'. It is obviously fairly quickly that this film is much more popular with men than women, which may be seen as the stereotype with films of this sub-genre. Furthermore, the age groupings show that the most votes were cast for people between the age of 18-29, which again fits with the classic target audience. This was certainly the information we hoped the find, as our target audience will be the same as that of 'The Ring'.

The second graph shows the user ratings data for 'The Grudge', starring Sarah Michelle-Gellar. Similarly to 'The Ring', it is the male audience that have largely viewed this page, and the males aged 18-29 are once again the largest sub-section. Furthermore, the males aged 30-44 (which had a big further for 'The Ring') have a large effect in this graph.

One of our favourite psychological horrors that we used as research was Steven Spielberg's 'Poltergeist'. As with the previous two, there is the common audience of males between the ages of 18-29 and 30-44. However, one slight difference is that this film appears much less popular with females than 'The Grudge', and this may be down to the protagonist; Sarah Michelle-Gellar plays the main character in 'The Grudge' whereas there are several protagonists in 'Poltergeist', and possibly less emphasis on young women. This supports our choice to place a teenage female as the main person in our film.

The final film which we researched on IMDB was the classic psychological horror starring Bruce Willis, 'Sixth Sense'. Firstly, it is obvious to see that this film is without doubt the most popular of the four that are on this post, and yet it still supports the classic demographic which has been a constant in all of our films, with males making up the majority of viewers and emphasis placed on those of a younger age.

Using this information, we can see that aiming our horror at a younger audience (between 18-35) may well provide most success, as well as choosing a female protagonist, which may well appeal to both sexes.

Classification

As we are making a horror film, we realised that classification was a rather important and slightly controversial subject. In this post we will illustrate the subtle differences which make the two guidelines slightly different.

Obviously, a film which carries a 15 certificate should not be watched by anyone under the age of 15. The basic guidelines suggest that controversial areas such as sex, violence and drugs may be shown regularly so long as they are not overly done (or in the case of drugs, not shown to be endorsing them.)

In the case of horror themes, 15 films are fairly flexible in showing any menacing scenes, unless these scenes are deemed as sadistic.

18 is the final classification (excluding R18), and states that only people over this age are permitted to watch these films. The main difference between this classification and the one before it is links to sex: in 18 films, sexual scenes can be much more visual and possibly crude. Some of these films may be seen to be pornographic, and so are deemed 18. However, there are very few other differences, which leads us to the conclusion that our film (which will not include sexual references) will be classified as a 15.

Textual Analysis

Step Outline (13th October)

Description of what is happening scene by scene	Number of shots in this section Average length of shot
Home video scene: mum, who is dead, leaving main character a message. Titles at the bottom of the screen Ending with the Title of film at the end of the home video APPROX-1min	3 shots – 3/4secs each approx 4/5 shots – 7-10 secs each approx
Intro of main character Getting ready to go to mum’s grave Start of supernatural activity APPROX-45secs	7 shots – 3-9 secs each approx
Long shot/graveyard scene Main character at the graveyard Long shot of her going to grave Including unknown hooded figure APPROX-1min	2 shots – 8 secs each approx 4 shots – 2-4 secs each approx 3 shots – 7-10 secs each approx
House scene Main character returns home Supernatural activity increases High angle shot from top of the stair case Hooded figure seen at scene 3 at the end of the garden APPROX-2min 15sec	4 shots – 3-8 secs each approx 3/4 shots - 2-6 secs each approx 2 shots – 10-15 secs each approx 2/3 shots – 3 secs each approx

Lighting Lesson Photos

This first photo shows the use of just one light: the key light. It is focused on one side of the characters face, thus creating dark shadows both behind him and on the opposite side of his body and head.
This second image is again created through the use of solely one light, which in this case is the back light. The character stands straight in front of the light to create one large shadow. This technique may be useful in our horror film to create areas of darkness which may be able to move and therefore create tension.
This image shows the use of a red gel, which is placed in front of the key light to alter the colour of the shot. It creates a rather evil, sadistic effect, and with the addition of a fill light, one side of the face is more lit than the other.

This final image shows the use of a fill light (torch), which has been placed behind some paper so as to distribute the light more evenly, stopping the harshness which may come with just the torch. In this case it has created a half of light and a half of shadow, which may well come in useful with our horror.