Conventions
used?
I
chose to do a horror/thriller movie as it is a very captivating, popular genre.
It also opens up a variety of different camera shot techniques that I wanted to
practise myself from watching many different horror/thriller movies. I found
the Blair witch project fairly influencel when it came to point of view shot
when I glanced across Rory then back tracked and it seemed as if he
disappeared. I was obviously inspired by the Blair Witch cellar scene in this
case. I also based some chase scene ideas off of the film 28 weeks later using
a dirty over shot in some cases when Rory was in the background, also the chase
scene when the camera had a side on close up shot of the guy being chased face
showed a very realistic perspective of his expression of fear, I tried copying
this. I was interested in the use of cut shots in the nightmare on Elm Street
which I also tried to incorporate in the chase scenes.
Conventions
developed?
Our
music choice was an interesting pick as we wanted to avoid classic horror music
themes and wanted to mix it up a bit by choosing an eary down beat dubstep song
which I thought worked well when I took my headphones out in the scene turning
it into a tinny diegetic sound which gave the scene a chilling feel. Opposed to
a conventional horror movie sound track i.e. high pitched strings giving it a
anxious tense feel.
Conventions
challenged?
Again
our use of dubstep music in our sound track has a very different approach to
horror movie music as we didn’t want to use mainstream horror music. Another
example of a movie that uses Dubstep in its soundtrack is sucker punch, although
this movie is a lot more action based it fits fairly well in it.
We
were told to avoid woodland scenes as the lighting can usually be pretty poor.
We didn’t plan on shooting any scenes in the woods but the place where we
planned to finish our shoot was under construction and we stumbled onto the
wood by chance. To our surprise the area of wood where we chose to shoot was
pretty well lit up due to it being a small wood. This played to our advantage
very well as we filmed our final chase scene here.
Normally
in horror movies a lot of special effects are used i.e. fake blood or editing
to make people disappear, however we used none of the sort but there is one
scene in particular where Rory disappears in a split second without a trace or
sound wich we were quite proud of. We didn’t use any gore in our film opening
either as we thought it would have clashed with the thrill and mystery of the
movie.
Another
concept that we challenged was shooting our movie during the day opposed to
most horror movies being shot at night which adds more suspense and mystery
however we added these themes to our movie by using enclosed areas i.e. small
vacant shack and woods.
Our
main character played by myself is portrayed as a rugged energetic man walking
his dog opposed to a defenceless woman. This in itself challenges the
conventions of most horror movies.
