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/