Horror Lighting

Lighting in horror films is key because it can create an ambiance appropriate to the film and it can hook an audience. Normally the lighting is very dark and gloomy, this is because it want to create a chilling atmosphere. It also triggers in the audiences minds and pin points the bad guy in the film be it a monster or a zombie. It also creates a personality for the character and indicates if they are bad or not.

As you can see in the picture above the lighting of the bad guy is dark and chilling, this creates an atmosphere and personality for the character. This picture is from friday the 13th.

This is another example of lighting, the left side of the face is totally dark, but you see the right side with the blood smeared over the characters face, this gives the audience an idea of whats to come. This picture is from Halloween.

Film Roles for our group

During the planning of the film, we quickly decided group roles for the group to avoid confusion. This hepled us throughout the making of the opening sequence because we all knew our roles so this conquered future confusion and arguements because of the simple plan. The roles were as following:

Directors: Ben and Richard
Camera: Rob
Sound: Ben, Rob and Richard
Props: Ben and Richard
Musical Director: Ben, Rob and Richard
Location Confirmation: Ben and Richard
Editor: Ben and Rob
Actors: Aaron, Ben and Richard

Shot list for our opening sequence

• Scene One: Panning Long shot
• Scene Two: Establishing Shot
• Scene Three: Close Up
• Scene Four: High Angle Long Shot
• Scene Five: Mid Shot/Close Up
• Scene Six: High Angle Mid Shot/Long Shot
• Scene Seven: High Angle Long Shot
• Scene Eight: Low Angle Close Up
• Scene Nine: Close Up/Long Shot

Below is the storyboard to demonstrate this:

Similar Horrors filming styles

Another similar type of film to ours filming wise is Rec.

This uses a lot of hand held footage which is similar to ours, we wanted to research a film that used the shot types we did and what made them so good. As we used very similar film shots, we also tryed to impliment some of the scenes in the film Rec.

Target Audience

We created a questionnaire to ask some students what they thought of our opening sequence and see if they have any ideas on how to improve it.

The questions were:

• Did you like the opening sequence
• Would you go and watch the film based on what you saw in the opening sequence
• Did the music work well with the ambiance
• Should there be a voiceover with the images
• Does the text work well with the images
• Are the images appropriate
• Are the correct transitions used between each scene
• Was the contrast appropriate
• Is the opening scene steriotypical of a horror film

We gave this questionnaire out to seven people and listened to the compliments and constructive critism. The age group and gender group was specific to our target audience. We asked both boys and girls because we feel the fil, is appropriate to both age groups. The film is aimed at any race. The geographical location was tricky because we were generally aiming to everyone wherever they lived.

There was one question that proved to be most unanimous in that everyone felt the same, everyone said at the second time of watching the openig sequence was much better.

Steriotypical horror fans

• Male
•  16-24 years old
• Into sports or technology
• Social status- working or middle class
• Branded clothing- Fairly expensive
• Student or having a part time job
• Horror/action