Today we were set the task of making a 14 second long film based on the genre of our main project. For our group our genre was psychological horror. We had a quick think about the conventions of a psychological horror such as jump scares- making the audience jump, taking place in a generally "normal" location such as a house or a school, very dark looking- sometimes with a wash of colour such as green or red as these colours suggest envy and danger, sometimes masks are used to change the look of the unsuspecting killer. Psychological horror films rely heavily on the fears and beliefs of the character. To help us with our ideas, we quickly searched for 14 second horror films to inspire us and help get some ideas flowing. This is the film that inspired our idea:
This film inspired us as it was very subtle and effective, so we had an idea about using a mask to creep up on an unsuspecting person in a scary setting and make them jump. As we were keeping our same production roles from our main project (to create a 3 minute film) it was my job as the producer to find a way of getting a mask. It was suggested that we call our local party store "Struts" to see if they would let us borrow one of their masks for an hour or so, as we didn't feel it was necessary to spend money on this project. When I called, we were told that we couldn't borrow one of the masks due to it being halloween and all the masks were selling so fast. However we still had another option which was to go to the performing arts dressing room. The director and I went to go see one of the performing arts tutors to get permission to see if there were any masks in their costume room. When we went in we unfortunately didn't find any horror masks like the ones we initially wanted. However, we did find 7 plain white masks, which were actually pretty scary due to them being so smooth and expressionless. We also found a gas mask which looked pretty interesting so we borrowed that too.
Now that we had secured the masks that we had, we now had a direction for our film. We thought that having a person being haunted by people wearing the white masks. Then Ethan (our director) put the gas mask on and commented on how it was difficult breathing through one and someone made a comment about it being about smoking- and there was our idea: a horror film based on addiction.
It was decided that our film is about a boy who struggles with his addiction to smoking, and he has these demons that are haunting him and encouraging him to keep on smoking and causing himself harm. While the idea itself doesn't sound all that frightening we are hoping that by shooting it in the black box studio with some effective lighting, we will be able to make something that looks extremely creepy.
Below I have added our idea that we wrote down and also a picture of the storyboard:
Now that we had secured the masks that we had, we now had a direction for our film. We thought that having a person being haunted by people wearing the white masks. Then Ethan (our director) put the gas mask on and commented on how it was difficult breathing through one and someone made a comment about it being about smoking- and there was our idea: a horror film based on addiction.
It was decided that our film is about a boy who struggles with his addiction to smoking, and he has these demons that are haunting him and encouraging him to keep on smoking and causing himself harm. While the idea itself doesn't sound all that frightening we are hoping that by shooting it in the black box studio with some effective lighting, we will be able to make something that looks extremely creepy.
Below I have added our idea that we wrote down and also a picture of the storyboard:
We went into the black box studio and began setting up our equipment. Kira, our sound operator wasn't needed to record audio here, as the only "dialogue" we needed was heavy breathing, which could easily be recorded later on, so Kira took on the job of lights operator, as we needed different lighting for different shots. For our first shot which is of the boy sat in the middle of the floor, we only needed fairly basic lighting which was pretty dim. We wanted it really dark, however this caused problems for our camera operator as it was too dark to clearly pick things up even when she changed the ISO. For our first shot we needed to move the camera along towards the boy sat on the floor, and we wanted this to be as smooth as possible, so our camera operator sat on a wheeled chair with the camera resting on the back of it, and I pushed her a long as best I could. I pushed her very slowly, as we were just wanting it to be smooth rather than fast, as the speed can easily be changed later during editing.
The next shot that we needed was of the boy looking up and a masked person sitting there looking directly at him. We thought that having some red lighting at this point would be effective, as red is symbolic of danger and at this point we want it to appear like the boy is in danger. We had the red light come on after the boy looked up. This was quite difficult, as I was in charge of telling Kira when to change the lights and there was confusion as to who was doing what when, so this shot took a bit of time to get right.
We did another scene where the boy is standing up while surrounded by the masked people and then we moved on to our final scene which the film has been building up to. As we were only a small group, we all had to act in it (aside from Jemma the camera operator as she needed to record everything), we also needed to add three people from another group so that there was lots of scary masked people behind the boy in the gas mask for the final shot. The reason why the boy ended up with the gas mask on is because he succumbed to his addiction to the smoke. We used the haze machine to create a thick smokey haze to enhance this.
Below I have added some photos that we took during filming:
The next shot that we needed was of the boy looking up and a masked person sitting there looking directly at him. We thought that having some red lighting at this point would be effective, as red is symbolic of danger and at this point we want it to appear like the boy is in danger. We had the red light come on after the boy looked up. This was quite difficult, as I was in charge of telling Kira when to change the lights and there was confusion as to who was doing what when, so this shot took a bit of time to get right.
We did another scene where the boy is standing up while surrounded by the masked people and then we moved on to our final scene which the film has been building up to. As we were only a small group, we all had to act in it (aside from Jemma the camera operator as she needed to record everything), we also needed to add three people from another group so that there was lots of scary masked people behind the boy in the gas mask for the final shot. The reason why the boy ended up with the gas mask on is because he succumbed to his addiction to the smoke. We used the haze machine to create a thick smokey haze to enhance this.
Below I have added some photos that we took during filming:
Once we had finished filming, we went into the editing suit to make it into a 14 second film. We expected this to be quite difficult as we had quite a lot of footage, but it was actually surprisingly easy. Our editor Connor did most of the editing: adding lots of fades between cuts to build tension, and then static visual effects like you'd get on old TVs. Our sound recordist Kira added sound to the film using preset sound effects from Final Cut Pro 10 (the editing software that we cut the film on). Even though the sound effects were just free ones that were in the software, there were some ones which fit our film perfectly. Kira recorded Ethan breathing heavily for the end, and then imported it into the film. Here is the final finished film:
Evaluation:
I think that our film was fairly successful because it met the brief which was that the film had to be 14 seconds long. I think that it's clear that our film is a horror film as we kept in line with a few conventions of psychological horror: red/green colours over the footage, building up to something big and being very unusual. However, I think that our use of colour was a bit too much, it might have looked better if the colour was more subtle in parts, however we can easily change this later in editing by changing saturation and hues etc. The parts that are lit with the red I feel are the most effective, particularly at the start where the light goes red and then the boy looks up. At some points the camera is a little out of focus, but I think that this is just down to the amount of haze and also that it was very dark in the studio. As a whole, I think the finished thing is pretty good, it could maybe have done with being slowed down at some parts, but then it would have exceeded the 14 seconds.
This small project was really helpful as it gave us a small taster ready for when we start filming our end of unit project. I was expecting it to be more stressful, but it really wasn't and now I am really looking forward to filming week when we return after half term.
I think that our film was fairly successful because it met the brief which was that the film had to be 14 seconds long. I think that it's clear that our film is a horror film as we kept in line with a few conventions of psychological horror: red/green colours over the footage, building up to something big and being very unusual. However, I think that our use of colour was a bit too much, it might have looked better if the colour was more subtle in parts, however we can easily change this later in editing by changing saturation and hues etc. The parts that are lit with the red I feel are the most effective, particularly at the start where the light goes red and then the boy looks up. At some points the camera is a little out of focus, but I think that this is just down to the amount of haze and also that it was very dark in the studio. As a whole, I think the finished thing is pretty good, it could maybe have done with being slowed down at some parts, but then it would have exceeded the 14 seconds.
This small project was really helpful as it gave us a small taster ready for when we start filming our end of unit project. I was expecting it to be more stressful, but it really wasn't and now I am really looking forward to filming week when we return after half term.