Audio in horror

 The tone of any story no matter the genre should almost always be established early on as it allows for the audience to understand what kind of movie they are watching and create an atmosphere. Horror movies use the use of music to create suspense and at times use other auditory cues such as door slamming in order to scare the viewers. A horror movie with no soundtrack will find it to be very difficult to scare the audience, as usual, they feel more in the moment when audio is in the movie. A movie that does this very well is the movie The Conjuring. In a scene where both daughters are in bed, we can hear unnerving music in the background and after the daughter point to a corner where there is nothing, she says the person is standing right there. While on-screen we see nobody in the corner we can almost feel the presence of the being. The suspense builds on this and finishes off with the door slamming shut and the girl's screams being heard. This movie was one of the scariest movies made during this time due to the use of its audio and visual effects. It creates suspense that can make any person hold their breath and is a perfect example of how horror movies would not be the same without audio.

Schedule

 I have decided to make a little bit of a schedule for myself since it will allow me to coordinate how much time the entire process will take and how much time I will dedicate to it. Of course, if I ever need to change the schedule to get some extra time I will need to adjust the schedule in the future.

This week: This week is already coming to a near close, so for now I will be doing as much research as possible and try to find a suitable mask for my killer. The research can include past movies, productions, and their development process.

Next week: I need to have most of my costume design worked out for both characters, the setting established, and decide whether I want to play one of the parts or need two separate actors. The actors are also something I will need to find. Since I decided to do this project by myself it will be a little more challenging to find actors, but I will find someone suitable for the position.

In the following weeks: I will need to dedicate some of my weekend and the time I have in class to either finding actors or filming. I will most likely use my Friday or Saturday to record since on Sunday I have school the next day and will not be able to film that late into the night. Once I have finished recording all of the visuals for the film I will also have to include all of the audio. I will most likely use music from a copyright-free audio source. I will create all the other sound effects including, breathing, screaming, walking, and possibly the electricity turning off. More sounds to come.

Written Storyboard

(Establishing shot): A long shot of the house the lights inside are turned on, it is nighttime. The camera is angled at an angle from the right. Then in walks the killer to the shot with a weapon in his hand. the camera at the moment can only see his hand, weapon, and some of his pants and shirt.

(Another long shot, then medium): We see a character in their room listening to music and either dancing or singing along.

(POV shot): We are in the killers perspective and see them walk up to the electrical box and turn off all the lights.

(Medium shot): The lights turn off, the music turns off, and the character stops dancing. Gets annoyed and walks of the the left of the camera.

(Over the shoulder shot of character looking at the stairs)

(Closeup of the characters eyes)

(Another medium shot of stairs)

(Over the shoulder shot of character walking towards the stairs) character is then jump scared by killer appearing

(A closeup) The knife comes up and then swiftly comes down towards the camera then fades to the title screen 

The mask and setting

I already have my storyboard mostly complete with some details I may change later. What I need to focus on now is the fact that my killer has no mask and no real costume design yet. This is of course difficult to think of as I need to come up with a unique idea as to what to do for the mask or weapon. Usually, a killer's most defining character trait is their costume design, and in the case of a serial killer, it is either the weapon they use or the mask they wear. Of course, some movies such as psycho do not have masks, but in my case, I believe that a mask will be easier to record and have a more lasting impact. It will also keep the mystery horror element to my story and add a bigger horror element.

The mask was the main factor I have to take into consideration, but there is also the fact that I have not defined any setting for this. While my house would be a very good option for at least the inside portions of the shots, I feel that another house may give off a more creepy feel. I will have to either stick to my house or find a more suitable house in the future when I start filming. When I film it will of course have to be nighttime and hopefully not raining or storming outside.

My somewhat finalized draft

 As the title has indicated I have a much better idea of what I wish to create. I want the focus to be mostly on the killer, because the character will die at the end of the 2 minutes. I want the killer to appear as a stalker as well as a professional serial killer. What I mean by this is that I want the movement of the killer to seem fluid like and seem as if this is not the first time they have done this. The killer will not wear a mask but will instead be in the shadows at all times. This will be difficult to light up correctly, but I want this to make it seem like the killer could be anyone. This will hopefully create a mystery horror, where the plot will derive around who the killer is and trying to find what they do before they kill more people.

What I plan to create

 I know what I want to do now , because upon consideration I enjoy playing with the concept of a killer entering a person's house. There will be some POV shots and then an establishing character shot. At the end of the 2 minute segment the killer will most likely slash at the screen and the title will appear on the screen. For the music I may find some eerie background music to build up the tension and will also create my own color scheme and possibly a cool title sequence. This still needs some work in order to iron out the problems but I hope that I will come up with a solid plot in order to start my storyboarding project as soon as possible.

Audio design

 I continued to research horror movie aspects mainly looking into the sound effect aspects of them. Something that really caught my eye was a youtube video series called the Mandela Catalogue. It uses many sound effects and creepy visuals in order to demonstrate its horror elements in an interesting and working way. All in all, I will most likely take some inspiration from this and use it in my opening in some way. This demonstrates that any person can make a creepy video and that all that is needed are skills and time. In the future, I will start to develop my plot in order to start finding places to record and develop my horror character and possible protagonist or protagonists.

Week 2

 It has proven to be difficult when it comes to finding a good genre to make my project about as well as the overall plot and what I want to create. After researching a couple of different genres which had interesting concepts behind them I decided to pick a horror-based genre. I decided to research some of the most famous opening horror scenes to come about. While almost all of them are unique and different the ones that seemed to interest me the most were John Carpenter's Halloween and The Thing. Both involve decently simple effects but demonstrate the horror that is to come. 

In the instance of the Halloween movie, it can be seen that the shot starts to darkness, and then a jack-o-lantern is lit up. The camera slowly zooms into the pumpkin until all we see is the eye and nose, both carved in a way to look like Michael Myers holding the knife. This perfectly describes how the movie is going to play out with a slow-rising horror element all the way until Michael Myers is seen in his darkest and most evil form. The simplicity of the shot and artwork is also very nice since I do not have as much prop work to work with and demonstrates that having a lot of money does not make a good film. 

For The Thing what caught my eye was the transition from the spaceship falling to earth to the title. I love the flames burning into the title since flames are used throughout the entire movie to burn the thing. I also liked this because it involves both practical effects as well as some editing to make it look very good and polished. I am still thinking of what to do overall but these two films have certainly inspired me to take these two films and make something new from some of the elements John Carpenter used.

The start of a new chapter

I have finally finished with my previous project and must now look ahead and create a completely new project from scratch. With just my imagination, my previous skills, and what I have learned throughout the year I must come up with a brand new plot, characters, a good setting, little details to go along with all of this, and possibly music or other sounds to make the opening scene seem realistic. There is just one problem with this idea, I have no idea what I am going to do. In order to fix this, however, I have decided to focus on one step at a time so that I can come up with a cohesive story that is both logical and intriguing to the viewer. 

The first task I have assigned myself is to come up with the genre for the plot. A plot will almost never be good if a genre is not defined at the start of the film. I will have to keep in mind the places and resources I have available to me in order to make a good genre. Next, I have to come up with the overall plot of my film. I will only be making the opening, but I should know more or less what the story throughout the film would have been, as I may use this in the opening sequence to progress the overall plot. Lastly, I have to come up with the characters and how they will behave, wear, and speak to one another or act in certain situations. 

Once I have done all of this I can start to think about the little details and where I want to film everything. I will have an overall idea of what I want to do and where I have to go next in my production strategy.

Music Marketing Blog Post #2

After discovering that we had to research indie rock music we started to do research on other rock bands in order to get a better sense of what we should make our video about as well as for the marketing campaign. After we finished researching for the campaign we started to work on both the marketing campaign as well as the storyboard for the music video. We also gave each other emails as well as phone numbers in order to create a chat and also to share the Canva link, Google doc link, and any other sort of photos or videos when necessary.

We spit the work up in order to not waste time and to finish this portion as soon as possible as to concentrate all our efforts solely on the music video and marketing campaign. We did the marketing campaign on Canva and wrote down the storyboard with three pieces of paper each consisting of 8 squares. We all confirmed what we liked or what needed changing until we had a relatively final draft of what we had to film. Of course later on, while filming when someone thought of something to add we would record it in order to have the option while editing. I ended up recording some extra scenes in order to make up for the run time but mainly so that the story would make more sense from going to the setting of the town center to the middle of the woods. 

After we finished recording everything all that was left was editing the video. I decided to edit the video and after everyone sent me the film I used the storyboard that we had come up with beforehand in order to use it as a nice way to place the shots in the appropriate places and use any promotional bits wherever it was needed as well as a little synch with the song and the shots.

This project taught me many things such as time management, editing a music video, and finding some of the best shots in a film. While recording this project one of the most fun and also difficult parts was imagining the song playing with a specific shot composition in your mind and then executing it the way you like. I believe this will be helpful because it increases the amount of knowledge I now know about video composition and audio transitions.