Rub-A-Dub Final Video

CCR!!

Sound Effect Summary

We have had to get creative with our sounds. We used YouTube to find sound effects that we liked, then experimented with ways to remake them ourselves. Some of these were easy, but some weren't so much.

1. Running Water: my sink turned on
2. Transition Sound: ripping a sheet of paper
1. Based off of the Dawn of the Dead title transitions. 
3. Flatline Sound: Anne Marie's car put into reverse
4. Door creak: an actual creaky door
5. Scream: courtesy of NAT

The flatline sound was probably the most random sound effect we had to come up with. I was literally laying in bed last night at about 9:30 and had a lightbulb moment, which I immediately sent into our group chat. My boyfriend has a golf cart, and it makes a drawn out, high pitched noise when you shift it into reverse. It is almost identical to how an actual medical flatline sounds, and it's super easy to get. So that was the first idea. But, his golf cart is broken, so I couldn't get it. Then, Anne Marie remembered that her car makes a similar sound when it is put into reverse. So, the sound is now derived from that. It is kind of faint, so I had to turn it up to like, 300% but it works!

The water running was probably the easiest sound effect to record. I literally walked into my bathroom, turned my sink on, and hit record. The only reason we did this was because the sound of the water running on the actual video clips sounded weird, and because the sound isn't as loud and it kind of echoed, and  on the clip you can hear some talking in the background. Due to us recording just the audio clip, however, we were able to place the clip in all of the areas we needed without worrying about if the volume of two different clips matching up and what not.

The sound I am most proud of is the transition sound. The ripping sheet of paper was so simple, and the sound turned out to have great quality and sounded super cool. We put it at the beginning of every transition in the opening, and it just adds that extra startling nature to the sequence.

Post-Break Recap

So over spring break, in addition to the stuff mentioned in my last post, Nat was able to add some flash-forward inserts in order to allude to the murder. Meaning, in the beginning, there are jump cuts to post-murder shots, to set more of an eerie tone and to get the audience involved with what is going to happen. We also added some time stamps while we were in class, in order to make the time difference more apparent. We are still working on certain sounds, but we were able to record and insert things like water running, and ripping paper for transition sound effects.

For the sound effects, I have learned that even if it sounds really quiet when you first record it, once you put it on iMovie you can really adjust it to the volume you need. For example, the water running that I recorded was fairly quiet, but once we uploaded it we were able to adjust the volume to where you could hear it over the music, but it wasn't overly loud. The main reason the sound wasn't very loud to begin with was because it was recorded using the Voice Memos app that comes on every iPhone. This app is really useful, but it doesn't have the volume aspect that we originally needed, due to the location of the microphone on my phone. To get sounds, we have to make sure the microphone is as close as possible to what we need to record. I learned this app is actually fairly useful, and I will probably be utilizing it in my CCR if I need to use voiceovers at some points.

Something we need to work on is making our actual title slide more prominent. Meaning, we need to make sure that it is differentiated from the rest of the credits. We could try downloading another font, or change the color. Changing the color would probably be the easiest route, but may not achieve the level of differentiation that we need.

**update: I ended up changing both the font AND the color.**

Our Font

Processing

Today, my mission was mainly sound. I was able to use a converter website in order to get the music from the video to an MP3 file, and then downloaded to the desktop. This wasn’t too hard to do, the hardest thing was finding a free website that I could use. Once I accomplished that, all I had to do was copy and paste the YouTube link, then hit “download”. After that, the file was converted to the MP3 file and downloaded to the desktop, where I could then drag it into iMovie and insert it into the project.

Once I had it inserted, I had to shorten the song so that it fit the length of the clip only. So, I just cropped the song, which was pretty simple. But, this resulted in a really rough and abrupt ending to the song, which was off putting. I knew that I had to fade the clip out, but I really didn’t know how. Therefore, I had to go online and find a video on how to fade out. To watch, click here. The consequence of doing that was the music flowed better, and made the sound overall more pleasing.

On a different note not relating to sound, scary fonts are hard to find. The generic fonts that come on computers are... generic. So, I used the website Urban Fonts to find an appropriate horror film font, and I had to download it to the desktop. I thought it was going to be easy, but I had to legitimately download the font 3 times before it saved to the computer, and was available for use. But, it was worth the process because the mood completely changed.  The picture to the left shows the font in the small screen in the right corner.

Source Links:

https://macmost.com/fade-out-background-music-in-imovie.html

Cutting it Up

So yesterday we learned from a fellow classmate how to transfer videos from YouTube to iMovie for  the project. For our film pitch project (see earlier post) we pitched our movie idea to Blumhouse Production Company. Because of that, we wanted to have the Blumhouse opening/logo in the beginning of our film. So the big project was getting the video converted to the project. We had to copy the link of the video to a YouTube converter, and convert it to an Mp4, then download in to the computer. That is the basic shortened version of what we did, and we are going to give credit to Blumhouse in the title sequence. The purpose of doing this is to make the opening more authentic seeming, because it will be just like a big-time movie opening. In addition, the Blumhouse opening is horror-themed, so it helps to set the mood for our project-- see below.

This skill will also be beneficial to use when we have to get music onto our iMovie from YouTube. Although the actual sound effects we have will be original, we need the music for the background sound for the entirety of the introduction. This music, like the logo, will help to set a mood/tone for the project. We spent a lot of the class period yesterday browsing through possible soundtracks on YouTube, and only found two so far that are possibilities. That is something that we will be focusing on a lot more over spring break.

Sound Creation

I mentioned sound in my last post, and how we are still working on it and we are still trying to figure out how to even make the sounds. We were shown this video in class, and honestly it has become one of my favorite videos ever. And, when I went on YouTube and searched "how to make movie sounds", this was still one of the first videos that popped up, probably due to how informational it is.

This shows the ultimate science behind making sounds, and the creativity surrounding the making of them. This provides some good ideas on how to make sounds that are close to what we need. Also, it helps to help us embrace our own creativity to make our sounds realistic and good quality. Sounds will be the main focus over spring break, because we will have the time to record them and everything. Right now, we have hardly any sound in our project, as we have been focusing on things like transitions and color correction. We have gotten most of our credits down, and chose to go the route of using a filter to change our coloring.

Relentless Curveballs

Well, we were using a MacBook Pro for our project from one of our school computer carts, but that sparked some issues. We were not aware at the time that some of the classes we share the cart with have so many kids in the classes that they need every computer in the cart, so we had to save our project elsewhere and return the computer. So, Nat brought her computer in and we tried making that work. She has an older version MacBook, and an older version iMovie also. After transferring the clips, we found that it would be more efficient to use one of the "crappy" computers that our teacher has in his room. The good things about that is that we have a computer that will for sure be available every day in class, and unlike Nat's it has the better version of iMovie, which will allow us to put in more of the effects that we want.

Another curveball that I was thinking about earlier was that next week we have spring break. Which means we will have to see about taking the computer to one of our houses that way we can work on it over the week-long break. We still have quite a bit to do at this point, so we cannot afford to just take a week off. Most of our transitions are finished, and I believe we have one more clip to reshoot. Color correction is done, and we have to really crack down on getting our sounds done. Anyways, it is going to be pretty hard probably to coordinate all of us being available over break to work on it together-- I know for sure that I will be working full-time over break, with most likely only one day off, which I will not be doing anything on besides sleeping because it is supposed to be a "break" after all. Either way, I am pretty positive that we will figure something out.

Current representation of us right now. 

Who ACTUALLY Likes Technology?

Okay, the title is pretty rhetorical because almost everyone likes technology to a certain extent. But, when technology hates you and gives you problems, then it sucks.

The more "blown out" take of the clip
versus the focused one. 

We ended up videoing the clips on my iPhone 7. This worked out pretty good, the quality is not absolutely amazing, but it is still decent. I think the most difficult part was making sure that the camera stayed steady. I have learned over the course of having this phone that it is easily susceptible to shaking-- you have to keep your hands pretty steady. But, we were able to do that for the most part. There were only a few clips that we ended up having to reshoot because the filming was unsteady. Another problem I kind of had when I was videoing a couple of clips was having the camera focus on what I needed it to so that the light didn't wash everything out. I had to figure out where to focus the camera to achieve optimum lighting, which took a few shots.


This was completely our fault, but when we were shooting the other day, we were about 1/4 of the way through shooting when we realized we were not shooting in landscape. It would have been really helpful if we would have had a reminder or something so we remembered. Maybe we are all just a little stereotypical blonde on the inside, though.

Today, we spent an entire class period trying to import the videos from my iPhone 7 to the computer. Or should I say, computerS. We started out trying to import them to a MacBook Pro and save them to the desktop, but it was an older version of the computer so it did not work. So, we tried to just import the clips into iMovie. This kind of worked, except for the fact that they all imported as BLACK CLIPS. Which obviously is not helpful. Therefore, our next step was to try a MacBook Air. Again, it didn't work with just importing the photos. Needless to say, we ended up Airdropping the clips from my phone to the computer, then saving them to Anne Marie's Google Drive. We then saved them to a flash drive, and we plan to back everything up on the flash drive regularly in order to make sure everything stays saved and we do not lose anything.

SETting Up

Hanging up the towel.

We had a lot to do before we even started filming today. To begin, we had to make sure everything was where it should be— meaning, we had to make sure all of the stuff in the bathroom was arranged to how we wanted it. We also had to put a towel over Nat’s bathroom window, because we ended up filming around 11:00 a.m. The reason for this was that we wanted to make sure that we had the bathroom as dark as possible, along with the hallway. We made sure to close all of the bedroom doors in the hallway, so the light did not flood in.

Mixing everything together for
 the blood mixture.

Making our blood was a whole other adventure. We could not find any at stores like Walmart, and we did not have the time to order any online. So, we made our own. We started off with trying to dilute paint with water, but it was too runny. So we then tried adding honey AND glue AND flower to that same mix in order to thicken it, but it didn’t work. What we ended up doing was getting some honey in a little dish, and mixing red and black paint into it for the color. This worked really well for us, especially considering that we made it in probably under 20 minutes. We had to make about three different batches, however, because we kept running out. In all honesty, making the blood was probably the most challenging part of everything today.

Costuming for today was overall interesting. I forgot to bring my robe, so we found one at Nat’s house so that I looked like I was at home getting ready for bed. Finding stuff for Anne Marie was a whole other story, because we wanted her to look unidentifiable and kind of scary. We had to dig around trying to find a black sweatshirt, and then Nat remembered that she had ski masks from her ski trip, so we had to run around trying to find those. So, we were able to fulfill our scary killer costume, that was almost stereotypical. Nat literally just wore the clothes that she wore to school, although it could be seen as ironic that murder=blood, which is red, and her shirt was red ;)

The bathroom before shooting. 

The hardest part I think with continuity of our props was the door, and how open it was. We had it cracked open, but we had to keep going in and out. So, we had to kind of estimate again and again how far open it should be. But it was not that huge of a problem. Thinking now, we probably should have knocked over or displaced some of the items on the counter post-me getting murdered and falling to the ground. We will probably just try to see how it looks, and if worst comes to worst we can just try to reshoot and redo it.

The bathroom before and after blocking the light with the towel.

Some Changes

So, after some discussion and looking at our storyboard, we came to the consensus that we have too much going on in two minutes of film. Therefore, we are modifying stuff a little bit.

We are keeping the same overall idea that we had, but we are cutting out the entire plot line including the best friend being killed. So, our intro is just going to consist of the original murder, and the events included in that.We have also decided that we need to make sure we have elements of an actual title sequence, so we plan to have cuts in between shots with credits.

The best example I could find is the "Psycho" title sequence. I have talked about it before, but this time to kind of reference how they set everything up. So, how am I relating this to our project? Between each credit, there is the little line transition. For our project, instead of the line transition we would have footage that we shot. The time between would also be longer in our intro, due to the fact we are having actual footage to separate the credits, not just fancy transitions.

Making these changes also helps us make sure that we will stay within our time frame, and not have too much action that would force us to make it longer than it should.  I think we were kind of overthinking and therefore overdoing stuff beforehand— we had more of a short-film mentality as opposed to an introduction to a two hour movie mentality.

It Begins

So after a lot of coordinating, we have arranged to start shooting today. It was kind of hard to work around all of our schedules, because we are all busy.

Nat's availability: 
Monday, Wednesday and Friday after 5.

My availability:
Monday and Wednesday after 5, Tuesdays as long as I do not work.

Anne Marie's availability:
varies depending on her work schedule.

Therefore, after 5:00 today, we are going to try to get this show on the road. The pros to this is that with shooting today, we still have plenty available time to reshoot anything we need either Wednesday or next week. We also have a whole lot of class time to work through all of our footage and begin editing, that way we don't have to worry about further coordinating outside of school and stress ourselves out over availability. 

Another aspect of availability is the availability of technology in order for us to begin shooting. The basic and easiest technology to use would be our iPhone cameras, with the best camera being on an iPhone 7. This camera has better raw image support than other iPhone cameras, and the image signal processor (ISP) makes images an videos better quality than past iPhones, with improved white balance and focus.

Resolution: 1334 x 750 

Megapixels: 12

However, Nat's mom has a camera that is more on the fancy side. The only thing with this is that the availability won't be the same as with our phone camera, and it may or may not be harder to download the footage and edit it. The camera is a Canon PowerShot SX530 HS 16MP CMOS Sensor Camera. In normal terms: it's fancy. It has a lot more settings, and the quality is a lot better than the iPhone camera.

Resolution: 4608 x 3456

Megapixels: 16

Source Links: 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/09/08/apple-iphone-7-and-7-plus-camera-explained-how-good-are-the-phot/

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/canon-powershot-sx530-16-0-megapixel-hs-digital-camera-black/2761156.p?skuId=2761156&cmp=RMX&extStoreId=1405&ref=212&loc=DWA&ksid=95f7feca-4c8f-464b-b038-6ab17e1ff1f8&ksprof_id=3&ksaffcode=pg269395&ksdevice=c&lsft=ref:212,loc:2&gclid=CjwKCAiA_c7UBRAjEiwApCZi8aR2Gw6xGdnxLdtUSiaWYwk8PjcXtFrOEqoun5NeTeRWmXk_J2V5thoCw6MQAvD_BwE

Storyboard

The very beginning, establishing where I am at and what I am doing. 

Hand-drawn because it couldn't be made online. But, consists of the actual murder, and a hopefully realistic screaming close-up.

Nat coming into the scene, looking for her missing roommate.

Nat finding the body, and basically freaking out.

After finding the body, then her getting murdered herself.

Sources:

storyboardthat.com

Our Mock Film-Pitch

We are pitching to Blumhouse production company, with the name of our film being "Rub-A-Dub". The film is going to be about a serial killer that has an obsession with killing people in their bathrooms. Our movie is overall going to follow this estranged murderer as it kills its' victims and the police frantically try to catch the killer before they strike again. The opening sequence will cover the killer's first victim and basically set up the main plot for the film as a whole. This production company will be a good fit for our film because a lot of its most popular releases are horror movies. It also has some movies that have somewhat similar plot lines, so we are able to predict our success based on that.

Example Movies:

1. "Insidious"
2. "Scream" Series 
3. "The Purge"
4. "Unfriended"
5. "Get Out"

**Our movie mimics the "Scream"series to a certain extent, which in total grossed about $332 million. It is in the same horror category, and has potential to be just as successful.**

We will have secure resources with Blumhouse, because it is a very large production company with plenty of financing and equipment to help us produce our movie. 

Example Budgets:

1. "Get Out": $4.5 million
2. "It Follows": $2 million
3. "Texas Chainsaw Massacre": $300,000

Our predicted budget: $200,000

When talking about distribution, we were planning originally on going through film festivals for distribution. But, Blumhouse has signed a 10 year contract with Universal Pictures, who they now use as their distribution company. Due to this new contract, if Universal chooses to distribute our film, we will not have to go through the film festival circuit. '

Our project is an original movie that will prey on the audience's fear of death, especially the feelings of someone finding you vulnerable, in the bathroom. This movie will guarantee the attraction of our target audience and will be worth an investment. 

Mise-en-Scene

Nat's Bathroom

I briefly discussed costuming already, but here is a refresher. The character who gets killed (me) will be wearing something along the lines of a strapless bathing suit. We need to convey the illusion that the character is actually taking a shower, in order to make the sequence more realistic. The killer will be in the stereotypical black clothing, with the face covered to keep the identity of the killer unknown for the sake of the movie plot. I think blood falls in the costuming category, due to the fact that I will be wearing blood for a good portion of the introduction. We will probably make some fake blood at home, due to limited monetary resources. We’re also going to need to make some that doesn’t stain, so that we don’t make as big of a mess. But, with the opening taking place literally in the bathtub, it will at least be easy to clean no matter what. The main thing will be making sure that no skin gets stained-- I do not want to be red for days.

Lighting is going to be a very important part of our film. Filming in the early morning, late evening, or at night is going to be pretty crucial, because it will add to the hype of the events. I think we are planning on meeting up sometime in the evening, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Props are also important. Everything in the bathroom is basically considered props, because they are making the setting realistic. We don't want a bare, extremely clean bathroom because in reality, there probably aren't any teenage bathrooms that are spotless. Although I discussed blood in relation to costuming, it also can be considered a prop, just because it's adding an effect. In addition, whatever murder weapon that is utilized will be ultimately the most important prop. It is basically the center of the introduction, because the movie in its entirety revolves around the aspect if the murder weapon. 

Source Links:

https://nofilmschool.com/2016/10/8-spooky-lighting-techniques-you-can-use-your-horror-film

Some of the Finer Details

So after some deliberation, we have decided to ditch the supernatural idea and stick with a serial killer. We are leaning more towards the killer murdering the 1st character, then hiding/coming back and killing the roommate. This movie is in the same horror category as the “Scream” movies, but more enticing. We also decided that we will be filming in Nat’s bathroom. It’s a bit on the smaller side, but the shower is easily accessible which means that it will be easier to film the footage we need. Her house is also fairly secluded, which will be helpful if we end up incorporating any establishing shots. I was nominated as the character who “dies”— aka the character who starts the serial string of murders. The costuming for this is basically going to consist of shorts and a strapless bathing suit top, utilizing shots from the shoulders up (medium close up and close up shots). This is to give off the illusion that I am actually showering, when I’m really just standing in a shower in clothing, getting soaked. I think we are also going to try to shoot at night or in the morning, that way we don’t have the bright sun from the middle of the day impeding on our spooky effects.

Post-Group Meeting, and Post-Murder

OKAY SO, stepping away from all of the research, we (the group) met up to actually go kind of into depth for the synopsis of our film. We have all done our own individual research, so using that we were able to discuss what we think we should overall do. We decided that our sequence is going to follow the aftermath of a murder, and possibly the actual murder itself. The murder will be knife/stabbing murder, and the rest of the movie will deal with the characters investigating the murder. The thing we are still figuring out is whose bathroom we are going to use in order to stage the intro. We want one that doesn’t have many windows, and that is still big enough that we can all fit in there to film what we want. So, we have all agreed to take pictures of our bathrooms so that we can choose the one that we collectively think will be the best. One aspect we are still debating/deciding is if our murderer will be human, or some supernatural, demonic thing. The supernatural “thing” would probably be harder to stage and/or convey through the short period of time, but it would add to the orinigality and the creative part of our film. The murderer being human would be easier, but it may be too popular to actually entice people’s attention, unless we pulled it off really well and marketed it amazingly.

The quickest summary possible is that there is going to be a girl who is killed in the bathroom, and the roommate later comes in trying to find the roommate (who is dead). We are figuring out if we are going to have the roommate open the curtain then have the camera pan down to the body in the tub, or if the camera will show nothing and the dead person comes alive and basically stabs the roommate. There are still lots of theoreticals to work with, but we have the basic idea of what is going to occur.

ExHiBiTiOn

The main form of exhibition that we would most likely utilize is theatrical exhibition via film festivals. Theatrical exhibition is showy, and would be more practical for our purpose. If we were to utilize non-theatrical exhibition, we would probably get less attention with the movie just premiering on TV or something. This would be following more of the path as "Get Out" (see earlier post) by premiering at a film festival in order to catch people's attention.



One of the best film festivals I found in relation to our movie is the NYC Horror Film Festival. This is an independent film festival based strictly on horror genre films. It is "America’s largest and most recognized genre film festival focusing solely on Horror and Science Fiction". The benefit of this is that it specializes in our genre. It also is not extremely expensive to enter the festival to be exhibited, which means we won't have to scrounge up money in order to display it, especially after all of the money that would go into production.

This is a good option mainly because of the allocation of resources. If we weren't able to get things like film sponsors, then the money needed for production would more than likely come out of our pockets, resulting in limited funding. Therefore, this is an easy but efficient way to exhibit our film. And, we know from "Get Out" that this is a fairly successful route to take for exhibition.

Source Links:

https://nychorrorfest.com/

Production Companies: The Better Choice

When researching possible independent film production companies, the very first one that came up was Miramax. They have been producing films since 1993, and they are actually "known for distributing independent and foreign films".

Films Distributed Include:

1. "Pulp Fiction" (1994)
2. "Gangs of New York" (2002)
3. "Reservoir Dogs" (1992)

However, it would have to be taken into consideration that despite films distributed by Miramax are fairly successful, having 81 Oscar wins, the fact that Miramax is founded by the Weinstein brothers isn't the best attribute. With the sexual harassment allegations surrounding Harvey Weinstein, one of the founders, the entire reputation of the company is questionable at this moment. People may not be as drawn to a movie produced by this company, due to the fact that there are allegations like that, which have been made very public. Therefore, this probably would not be the company we would choose.

This supports that Lionsgate has been more successful with its films, compared to Miramax.

Another independent film production company that came up was Lionsgate. Lionsgate has been in production since 1997, and are one of the most popular independent film producers.

Films Distributed Include: 

1. "The Hunger Games" Series (2012-2015)
2. "American Psycho"(2000)
3. "Dirty Dancing" (1987)
4. "Saw" (2004)

Lionsgate "continues to grow into a vertically integrated global content platform of increasing diversity, reach and scale." This helps support the fact that Lionsgate would be an adequate choice for a production company. They have 30 Academy Award wins, and 29 Emmy wins from their releases, which supports their success. By theoretically choosing this company, our potential viewers would engage better with the movie due to the company's reputation, especially compared to Miramax. 

Source Links:

http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Miramax_Films

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2017/10/13/here-are-all-of-harvey-weinsteins-oscar-wins/#64e8c5fbd946

http://investors.lionsgate.com/

Stand Out, Be Independent

We plan to utilize a smaller, independent production company. This allows us to be more creative with what we choose to do, and also means we won't need to acquire as much funding. Relating to that, we are able to benefit by "choos[ing] quality actors/actresses that are willing to work for less money". This is important because many actors or actresses start out in independent films, and then work their way up into bigger Hollywood movies- meaning, they would presumably be more inclined to do more quality work, since their career potentially is being built off of these movies. Our film therefore has the potential to be high quality, but just with a lower budget, averaging at about $750,000 according to Sundance Infographic.


“Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is one of the more popular independent horror films. Made in 1974, it only had a $300,000 budget, according to IMDb. They used actual locations as opposed to sets, which probably helped with saving money in the long run. This film embodies creativity- you have to be creative to manage to make a movie based on a bunch of cannibals. And, in order to pick the locations and such of the movie there needs to be some creativity so that the settings compliment the theme of the movie.

“It Follows” is a more modern independent film, released in 2015. Although it had a much larger budget than “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” of $2,000,000 it still has a relatively low budget compared to more major-motion picture movies. However, it was shown at the Cannes Film Festival before it was majorly debuted. Our film would most likely follow this same format, but with more of the budget of something like "Texas Chainsaw Massacre". But, it would have more of the modern characteristics of "It Follows"-- however, "It Follows" has "no displays of current technology or cultural references that could make it feel dated". This is an important characteristic because it was "shaped" by its "attention to detail".

Source Links:

http://www.independentfilme.com/benefits-of-indie-films/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072271/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3235888/
https://www.wired.com/2015/03/it-follows-unholy-trinity/

rePRESENTation: Casting in the Present Day

With most movie genres, women and men have unequal representation. A study from the University of Southern California found that of the 5,839 characters in the 129 top-grossing films released between 2006 and 2011, fewer than 30 percent were girls or women. This study was done by Stacy Smith, who is reliable in her knowledge and findings, due to her job actually being to research depictions of gender and race in film and TV. But, here is the REAL interesting information: the horror genre is the only exception to this trend of unequal representation.




Why is it like this? Well, when horror movies first began, they mainly focused on victimizing women- which would mean that they would obviously have to cast more female characters. Even though the main plot of horror movies has moved away from that and more towards films more focused on things like social issues, and generalized fears of the population. What this means for our film is that if we made the entire film, we would be able to have pretty much equal representation between the genders, due to there not being many gender stereotypes in the genre itself.

Racial representation is a whole other ball field. In the early 1900s, there weren't many African Americans in film. The main movies that African Americans starred in were "black horror films", which were horror movies that feature African American characters and/or infuse African American culture, which were developed by African Americans. However, in the1970s the variety of opportunities open to African American actors, directors, writers, and producers continued to expand from when African Americans were basically exploited in films. Although there are still controversial images, there is much greater representation.

One of the most popular horror movies that has both equal gender and racial representation is "Get Out". This movie is about a couple's weekend getaway, where the boyfriend meets the girlfriend's parents and they encounter some... um... paranormal activity. This movie not only has equal gender representation, but it also has an African American as one of the main cast members. This movie shows how the movie industry has changed in representation over the past hundred years or so, but also addresses stereotypes within the movie. Considering the time period our movie would be coming out in, we would most likely utilize these types of aspect in our movie.

Source Links:

https://qz.com/1016753/horror-is-the-only-film-genre-where-women-appear-and-speak-as-often-as-men/

http://exhibits.library.duke.edu/exhibits/show/africanamericansinfilm

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/550106/pdf

What the Font?

Most horror title sequences have edgier fonts for their introductions. Those who don't have edgy fonts are boring, and fairly unoriginal. I think the use of creative fonts helps with adding both a tone and a personality to the film. One of my favorite use of fonts that I have found is for "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."  This font without the red color and blood dripping from it, would actually not be very horror-like. With that being said I think that element has to do with the fact that the movie is a horror-comedy. Therefore, the almost bubbly nature of the letters could be ironic. But, by adding those characteristics, there is a new persona about it. The red coloring alludes to both passion and lust, which are main characteristics of the movie itself. This is important because it is almost giving a theme to the movie without actually getting into the content. The basis of this can be utilized in our sequence- meaning, we can figure out how to denote a deeper meaning from just our font, and the color it is in.

Another title sequence font that I have come to like is the "American Horror Story" one. Unlike "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", "American Horror Story" is a TV show that has different spinoffs (i.e. "Freak Show", "Cult", "Hotel"). But, the producers use the same font in all of them. This font, to me, just seems to have a creepy nature about it, which ties into the abnormal nature of the series. What I like most about this font is that it is irregular and just not normal, and "in horror of any kind, there are irregularities". This for e embodies a horrific, weird kind of tone that fits in with the whole series. The disproportionation of all of the letters just beautifully relate to the aim and actual characters of the show.

Both of these sequences have fonts that seem to just tie directly to the plot of the movie/series. Honestly, I never thought about if there was an in-depth meaning behind fonts until I actually looked at them and made connections. Therefore, I think that this knew knowledge will help us with enhancing our title sequence in order to make it the most horrific possible.

Source Links:

https://www.inquisitr.com/1246305/why-is-the-american-horror-story-font-so-creepy/

Stereotypical? Or Smart?

As mentioned in a previous post, the main age category who views horror movies consists of 18-30 year-olds. This category makes up 60% of the overall viewers, according to BoxOfficePro. This will be beneficial when we think about who will be the "main" character of the sequence- a.k.a. the character who gets murdered.

In 2017, the most popular horror movies had lead roles of younger people. "It" had main characters consisting of teenagers, "Get Out" focused on a couple who seemed to be in their late 20's, and "Mother" had a main character in her late 20's also. The significance of this is that the most popular movies have characters who are either close to, or within the "typical" age category. This seems to draw more people in to watch them, and seems more appealing. Horror movies play off of fears, and if the main character is someone the majority of people feel like they can relate to, then they may be more likely to be interested in seeing it.

This will be useful for us when we cast. Not only does it give us direction of who we should cast, but it may come in handy later when we get into the marketing portion of the film. Think about it, how many people are going to want to go see a horror movie where the main character is 86 years old? The age of the character seemingly makes a difference as to what may be popular.

However, we already have the stereotypical killer, who makes his/her appearance in the title sequence. This is the most important character, and has to have the unbothered persona that every killer in every movie seems to have. This character should not be hard to cast, but still needs to be thought out. There is always the option of a non-human killer, but with a low budget that may be hard to create. The option for that, since we lack tools like CGI, would be going to Walmart and buying a scary animal mask, but it would lack authenticity and may just look cheap and cheesy. Therefore, we need to go for the stoic, average citizen.

But, does it SOUND creepy?

When looking into popular horror title sequences, such as "Psycho" and "The Shining", one thing the both of them have in common is music/noise that kind of makes the hair on your arms stand up. I keep mentioning the suspense element, but that is because in a clip this short, it seems really important to make sure we have that element down. This is the same no matter what form of murder we collectively agree on.

In "Psycho", the music is said to "set the tone" of "something horrific" happening after the credits. The music is high pitched, and almost screeching to an extent. When I researched it, I found that the music's purpose was to foreshadow the "psychotic state" of the killer. Now, how can this be useful? This type of foreshadowing gives us a lot of room to determine if we can work out something similar- if the music we choose can somehow reflect our killer's mental state, or his character. Not only would we be able to give excessive meaning through visual images, but also audio codes.


Now, in "The Shining" the opening sequence is just one, long tracking/aerial shot with non-diegetic sound. This is different then the shorter shots in "Psycho", but in "Psycho" there are only shots with the names of people. The music in "The Shining" seems to build up in intensity slowly, which causes anxiety in the viewer to peak, also. The raising intensity makes the viewer expect for something intense to happen in consequence to the sound. This technique of sound could be useful if we were to do a tracking shot down a hallway-- given, it wouldn't be as long of a shot, but we could still utilize the aspect of building up the intensity of the music to correspond with the context.



Source Links:
https://celluloidwickerman.com/2013/12/30/analysis-of-sound-and-music-in-alfred-hitchcocks-psycho-1960-part-2-an-audiovisual-foreshadowing/
http://roobla.com/the-shining-opening-2/

Murder, We Wrote

Okay, so the biggest question is what type of murder will be occurring. As of right now, we do not have an agreement as to what type of murder that will take place-- all we know is that someone is going to be murdered in their bathroom, and more than likely it will be at night. Murders in the dark, at night, are scarier, and could be seen as an additive playing off of the fear of the dark.


One possibility is the typical knife murder. This option is super bloody, and super dramatic. It can allow for a slightly drawn out and dramatic sequence of events. The possibilities of this option are endless. The character could be stabbed in the shower, or while brushing their teeth, or anything else. With this option, though, we would have to decide on the finer things like what type of knife to use. The scary butcher knife? Or a sleeker knife? Possibly a machete? All of these options would lead to a different outcome-- meaning, each one would have a unique set of stabs and such, which also would effect the suspense.

Another possibility would be a murder by a gunshot. This type of murder would be sudden, and to build suspense we would have to focus more long shots on the content leading up to the murder, not on the actual murder. The quickness of this could be beneficial to our time limit, but it is a lot less suspenseful overall. And, it would be a bit harder to obtain a gun than a knife as a prop. But, if we were to use this option we would also have to determine if a shotgun or a handgun would be utilized, similar to picking knives in the theoretical knife murder.

The final option that we discussed is a murder via a toaster in a tub. This option is a bit more sinister, but could tie into the slight humor we originally found in creating this film— it would really intrigue people due to its originality, because I cannot think of any films off of the top of my head that involve a toaster murder in a tub. Using this option may be a bit hard to shoot, but if we chose it and really worked on the creativity of the shots, then I really think that we could make it very good. The creativity of the shots would also contribute to the overall creativity of this choice. And, I think that in marketing it would draw more people in, theoretically.

To Begin With: An Overview

We are OFFICIALLY embarking on this film journey!

Starting this all off, I began with refreshing myself on the genre conventions of the horror genre overall since we are getting into the time of the year where we really need to start focusing on our films. We already determined that our setting will mainly be in a bathroom, since the murders that the whole plot would focus on all take place in bathrooms. We need dark lighting in order to convey that dark and scary effect throughout the sequence. My group collectively decided that our location will be at someone’s house. This is because we do not have the resources to develop a set, so a bathroom of ours can be utilized. The main conventions we need to focus on will need to focus on in building the suspension that would continue into the full movie. We are more than likely to be appealing to people around the ages of 18-30, since 60% of the horror genre audience consists of that age range.  We are playing off of the fear of murder and darkness— the context of the murders are going to help to set the tone of the whole introduction.

Since we are only making a short portion of the film, one horror element we will really have to focus on is suspense. One aspect I think we can utilize is giving a slow, methodological pacing to our shots to build authentic suspense, not "cheap" suspense. Although we can't do super long shots because of our time restriction, we can definitely have some important clips that are longer than others, in order to build up some tension for the whole duration.

Source Links:

http://pro.boxoffice.com/who-is-your-audience-in-2017/

https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/5-tips-building-better-cinematic-suspense/