music research

These are a few tracks that I have found on the internet that I believe would be appropriate for our horror opening. Unfortunately, the likely hood of the composer, or the corporation he works for, letting me use them for free is very slim. As they have no lyrics whatsoever, I believe that they can be particularly effective in setting a specific tone of isolation and despair that is needed in our horror opening. The biggest downside ( other than the fact that getting permission to use them would be unlikely) is that they don’t last the 2 minutes needed, with most lasting under a minute. The tracks are all electronic and were composed by Kelly bailey for the videogame half life 2.

Radio: a creepy track, which sounds very jumbled and messy, voices can faintly be heard at the beginning. Just as the track begins to pick up steam, it abruptly ends, further adding to the fear it gives offhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxLPnMrEvkM

slow lighthttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjb05NPcbYw&feature=related

dirac shore: a strange ambient track, with various water sounds. Bubbling and running water can be heard throughout the track. This would be ideal for our horror opening, due to a focus on water related deaths.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53kd7f4iefk&feature=related

probably not a problem : a strange track with a focus on trumpets, with loud beeps fading the music in and out. The sections with the beeps is reminiscent of the theme to the film ‘aliens’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFUI6w3yzsM

requiem for ravenholm: a shortened version of ravenholm reprise, punctuated with a large guitar wail. Could be used to powerful dramatic effect if used in a correct situationhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b_CxSQ3r8U

ravenholm reprise: a track that flows and peaks and dips in intensity. The ding of a triangle can be heard every so often, giving the track a creepy foreboding tone. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzMO_aJ4gmc&feature=related

dream is collapsing: the chances of getting this track, composed by Hans Zimmer for the film inception, would be next to impossible. However, I do feel that it would work excellently in our planned opening, as the tracks frequent crescendos and changes of pace would suit the footage planned in our storyboards very wellhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlcJ-fDmDhA

Font design for our horror opening

Font design for our horror opening

After we settled upon the title of ‘the deluge’ for our horror film, we decided we needed a suitable font to represent the tone our opening was trying to take. Due to the death of a character in a bath, water was a constant theme throughout the film, with many others dying from being drowned as well. We needed a font that would fit well with this constant theme. I decided to use the sites 1001fonts.com and dafont.com to find suitable fonts. After I've found some suitable designs I intend to alter them in Photoshop to tweak them to a design that would be perfect for our project.

Fonts from dafont.com

Font 1: children should not play with dead things
This font is particularly effective at fitting with the theme of our horror opening, as it appears to have some sort of liquid dripping from the words. The rounded edges and uneven shapes can be linked to water itself, making this font a good choice for our project

Font 2: plasma drip
plasma drip would make a good font type to use for our horror opening. Its bubbly edges represent flowing water very well and fits with the theme of our film. Much like the previous font ‘ children should not play with dead things’, this font also has water dripping off of the letters, further tying in with the theme of water.

Font 3: raptor kill
the font of raptor kill is both a good and bad font to use for our film opening. It successfully signifies water by having it drip from the letters. But on the other hand the letters aren’t defined and are quite hard to read. This is a problem due to the title ‘the deluge’ being odd, and it’s essential that people know what it is. This is one of the fonts I would consider choosing for the title of our horror opening.

Font 4:DuerTWOo

To achieve the desired effect on this font design I wrote out tHE DeLuGe, instead of ‘the deluge’. I did this because it gave a far better effect, and made the font look far more ominous and chilling. The fonts main style looks a lot like its in the style of watercolour brushstrokes, which fits in very well with the theme of our horror film.

Font 5: dink

While this font doesn’t really represent water in any way, It does signify insanity very well. It achieves this by having larges cracks throughout the E letters. This would be fitting for the general plot of the our film, but would be a bad representation of our opening, which has very little to do with insanity, only water

alien analysis

Alien; what makes it scary?

Ridley scotts film alien is often considered one of the greatest horror films of all time, and has been iconically labeled a ‘haunted house in space’. Alien is a great film, and has a few concepts and themes that would work well in our horror opening.

What adds to the fear factor of the alien itself is its mental and physical superiority. It bleeds acid; meaning conventional methods for killing it would be useless (as it would severely damage the spaceship the crew is travelling in). Another reason which makes the alien more fearsome is the fact that the crew are unprepared and poorly equipped. They are a crew operating a mining ship, not trained marines. They don’t possess any guns and wouldn’t know how to use them if they did. They can’t escape, as the emergency shuttle doesn’t have enough room for everyone. Ripley and her co workers are isolated and trapped, fighting a creature they know very little about.

What really gives the alien its scare factor is both the crew of the nostromo and the audience don’t know what it looks like. After the iconic scene where it bursts from executive officer Kane’s chest, it escapes and hides in the ship. The crew believes that they are looking for a very small creature, but in reality the creature ages very quickly. What the viewer and the audience think they are looking for in actual fact is very different
chestburster scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuapyExYJBI

After this, the next time the alien is seen; it appears to be fully grown. This is when it kills its second victim, engineering technician Brett. This is the first of many scenes where the alien shows its mental and physical dominance. It knows that the crew are looking for something small, and wouldn’t suspect the alien to be large and hiding above them in the air ducts and chains that hang from the ceiling. The alien doesn’t hunt its victims; it waits for them. This is an aspect that we want to incorporate into our horror opening, with the killer already in the house of the victim, waiting for the right opportunity to strike.
brett death scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc3A13Yu_qc

The alien further shows its intelligence later in the film when it hides in the air duct system. It knows that the crew are hunting it, with intent to kill it, but it decides to wait in an awkward place. Not only does this make it hard to find and kill, it forces the team to split up, allowing the alien to slowly kill them off, one at a time in isolation.

From the things I have learned from watching alien, the most important is the sense of isolation. While we cant and haven’t set our horror opening in space, we have set it in a house. If we have an establishing shot where the house is shown to be isolated and not surrounded by any human activity, we can set a very lonely and desperate tone to our film from the offset, greatly adding to the fear it can cause the audience.

nightmare on elm street analysis

a nightmare on elm street; what makes it scary?

There is no doubt that out of all horror films, Freddy Kruger is easily one of the most recognised and iconic of all horror villains. His charred disfigured face, stripy jumper, trilby and clawed glove are all identified with him, and give him the ability to install fear into the minds of almost everyone in the audience. But what really makes a nightmare on Elm Street scary? There are many reasons, some of which are ideal for the horror opening we’re making.

I'm my personal experience, what makes nightmare so terrifying is the fact that Freddy can infiltrate dreams, a state where we are most vulnerable and defenceless. His is seen as unfightable, it is impossible to flee from him, as it’s impossible to not sleep. This, coupled with the fact that he can alter his form, makes him the ultimate enemy. A good example of this is when he increases the length of his arms in Tina’s final dream sequence. She proceeds to run in the opposite direction, only for him to appear right in front of her. this is made more shocking due to the tight camera angle, which shows very little to Tina's right, which is where freddy appears. the tighter the angle and the less the audience can see, more is left to their imagination, heightening the fear factor Despite it being tinas dream, Freddy is most certainly in control. His power is cemented when he kills Tina in her dream, only for the very same to happen in the real world. This unique ability is what makes Freddy scary. It should also be noted that Tina and rod had sex the night before they were both murdered. This is a convention of horror which ultimately lead to their brutal demise.

Tina’s final dream and death: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=609GY6-QDSg

Kruger's jumper was initially meant to be red and yellow, but wes craven changed this when he read that red and green are the 2 most contrasting colours the human eye can distinguish. This would further add to the shock factor of Freddy's appearance. The red and green striped pattern also appears on objects Freddy possesses, such as the car in the final scene, making his presence iconic. To an extent this is something that we would like to do for our film, with our killer wearing a specific item while killing, which could identify the audience to the killers real identity. Such an effect was used well in scream, where many on the characters had the same boots as the killer, ghost face.

Nightmare on Elm Street ending scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mnNpqc7rXA

A more useful aspect I have taken out of nightmare is the excellent use of foreshadowing. After Tina wakes up from her first dream, she has 4 slashes in her nightwear, the part which covers her stomach. Later on when she is actually killed she has the same 4 slashes, only this time on her stomach, killing her. There is also some clever foreshadowing for the death of glen. As he is falling asleep, the radio announces ‘It is now 12midnight and this is station KRGR’. KRGR is the word ‘Kruger’ without the vowels. As we intend to use quite a lot of foreshadowing in our horror opening, nightmare is an excellent film to study for doing so successfully.
Glen’s death scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKIW0zbFsxM

The dream sequences are really where this film is at its scariest. Unlike the remake, the dreams are surreal and capture the ideas that real nightmares contain. Freddy is supernatural, blood pours from ceiling; he is able to extend his arms to insanely creepy lengths. These ideas make the film all that more frightening and places the focus on horror not gore. Wes craven has shown on 2 occasions now (nightmare and scream) that the slasher genre can be far deeper (bad pun) and more complex than it initially seems.

psycho analysis

Psycho, what makes it an effective horror?

after watching Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece psycho, I feel that I have learned a great deal more about what makes a scene scarier and what increases tension in the build up to the films various murders. Both of these would help greatly in making our horror opening, which, in a slight reference to psycho, features a murder in a bathroom.

the iconic bathroom scene, undoubtly psychos scariest and most memorable moment, is very useful in researching murder scenes. It lasts 45 seconds and in this time not once can a knife be seen entering Marion crane, leaving a great deal to the viewers imagination. All that is shown if thrusting actions from the concealed murderer, Marion screaming and falling out the bath she's standing in and blood (actually chocolate syrup, as it shows up better in black and white) running down the plug hole. To further add to the drama and horror of the scene, the also iconic music (composed by Bernard Herrmann) plays. The string orchestra and amplifies the tone tenfold, and after watching the scene again without music, its dramatic effect is lessened considerably.

Another, less powerful reason why the shower scene is scary is due to the fact that the killer has infiltrated and killed in a place where most people feel safe. Somewhere as innocent as a shower adds an incredible amount of fear to scenes like this. Such a technique is also used to great effect in a nightmare on Elm Street, where beautiful sunny suburbia and the world of dreams and terrorized by the iconic Freddy Kruger.

The same can be applied to the murder of private detective arbogast at the top of the stairs in bates’ mansion. With the terrifying music, his death is harrowing as mother leaps from her concealment in her room to stab him, sending him tumbling down the stairs. In reality without the music, things are far more different. Mother doesn’t so much leap from her hiding place as she hops round the doorway and mildly jogs up to him before halfheartedly stabbing him a few times. It is even more apparent that almost all of the fear that psycho gives the audience is generated from its chilling musical score.

How will this help our horror opening?
Researching psycho will help out with our project in a large number of ways. For example, it has shown me an effective way to have a character being stabbed without showing a knife plunging into skin. It has also proved that a large amount of fear is generated by powerful music and sound effects. This can make even the tamest scene scary to almost any audience.

The shower scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VP5jEAP3K4
aborgasts murder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsgDP31v2LE&feature=related

making labels