Storyboard Progress

Today we had a meeting concerning the storyboard, which we hope will be shot over this evening and tomorrow. The main challenge was to make the concept of the film as clear as we could, while also introducing settings and characters that would be built on in a full version of the film. Also, we thought about how we could implement theory into our teaser trailer. We thought about doing so through a character but we felt due to the nature of a teaser trailer, the characters would not get enough time on film to be properly formed, and in turn it would be difficult to use them as a way of giving the film a marxist perspective for example.
However, there is one character who has the most coverage, and his setting (camping in a wooded area) would be useful to show a life without money and luxury. This could be a step to making this character a means of showing a marxist viewpoint.

Locations for a Horror/Thriller Movie

This is a great website to learn about all of the best locations to film a Horror/Thriller movie. Locations

Codes and Conventions of a Horror/Thriller Movie

The conventions of the Thriller/Horror genre are to do with sound and editing. E.g. quick cuts and camera angle changes, music that gives tension when appropriate. It can be do with lighting, especially the use of shadow. Mirrors and stairs are also conventions of thriller movies.

The codes and conventions are mainly what the audiences expect to see within a thriller, this includes all types of thrillers, such as cross genres, such as action, adventure, sci-fi etc.

What audiences expect to see is what producers need to include in attracting their audience. The codes and conventions within a thriller mainly allows a female protagonist to be a victim of a dominant male character, this enables the audiences to familiar themselves with the stereotypes as females are always vulnerable dependent victims, and the dominant male figures as being dominant.

Psychological thrillers which are sub genres play with audience’s minds by manipulating a character or a plot to keep audiences guessing. However cross thriller genres involving adventure and sic-fi; use a slightly different way of using codes and conventions as there are not many ways to engage audiences. For example within a thriller, in a scene where it is scary and engaging, it will be more likely to see dark colour's so the scene can be represented in a way that audiences expect to see it, also the sound which would be loud and intense.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning Film Poster

This is a film poster I made for the film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. The main purpose of the poster was to refer to the metaphorical significance of the 2 elements of the title, (i.e. Saturday Night as one part and Sunday morning as the other). Personally, my reading is that the time of Saturday Night is symbolic of the exciting aspects of the main character (Arthur Seaton)'s lifestyle; going out to pubs and events, and his carefree approach to his love life. In contrast Sunday Morning represents facing up to the reality of what has happened, particularly Brenda becoming pregnant as a result of her affair with Arthur in addition to the connotations relating to "the morning after".

To this end I used the colour and font of the text on the poster as a motif for these metaphors. Albert Finney's (who played the character of Arthur) name and the words Saturday Night are in a modern font and easygoing colour, and placed high up structurally to signify the nature of Arthur's character and his light-hearted "Saturday Night" activities. Whereas Rachel Roberts's (Brenda's) name and the words "Sunday Morning" are in a more sensible font, a deeper colour, and in a lower position. I felt that this reflected the harsh, underlying truth which Arthur has to face in the film. In addition the word "and" and the name Shirley Ann Field (who plays Doreen) are a halfway point between the two other opposites.

Also, the picture of Arthur working in the factory displays how his character is so iconic. He is a northern working class man, shown by the factory in the background, who defies his humble stereotype by having so much audacity and doing whatever he wants. This is summarised by his appearance; the slicked back hair, the cigarette and upturned collar convey someone with an anti-establishment viewpoint.

In relation to our coursework task, making this poster has given me experience that I can put to use in the Ancillary Task, namely the significance of using text and images in a film poster.

Creativity theories

Creativity can come from a very basic idea and then branch out into different areas. This comes about by Beachcombing, as explained in Pete Fraser's blog, a technique in which aspects are taken from other texts and the collective influences form a detailed idea for the person doing the beachcombing.



A similair tactic is the story dust method, which is mainly an analogy in the form of a star growing. Matter gathers gradually over time, and the larger the mass gets, the more is drawn towards it. The metaphor applies to creativity by the space dust representing small ideas which can be written down on cards or paper, which then results in an overall idea when all the "cards" are composed in a good order. The method is explained in Tim Clague's blog.

(Whole group post)

Famous myths

Chupacabra

The Chupacabra (from chupar "to suck", and cabra "goat") is a "cryptid" (an creature whose existence is unconfirmed but has been suggested) that has been found in many locations in the Americas. The animal has a reported habit of killing and draining the blood of livestock, especially goats. It is rumoured to be a heavy creature, the size of a small bear, with a row of spines reaching from the back down to the tip of the tail. The main source of sensationalism comes from the conditions of the corpses left behind. Sheep were found with 3 puncture wounds in the chest and left completely empty from blood.
We could bring this to our idea by forming the character's perception of the film's "creature" by the effects it leaves on its surroundings; possibly by the people or animals it kills to the destruction or clues it could leave in its path. The different things characters find would help to make their individual perceptions of the creature more varied.

Yōkai

Yokai are demons from Japanese mythology. They relate to our plot idea because a group of them called Henge, a kind of shape-shifting animal who imitate humans, mostly women. The legends could have some significance to characters in our film who are aware of the Henge myths, for example, someone Japanese or someone from the new stereotype of western people obsessed with Japanese culture. They could bring an approach to tackling the creature in the film that would help us form a narrative arc for that character.

Hybrids

Hybrids are combinations of different parts of naturally occuring animals. Examples are centaur (human and horse), gryphons (bird and lion), and mermaids (obviously, fish and human). These could be valuable influences to our film idea because it could be a way for characters ti visualise the creatures by piecing together things they are familiar with in real life to create something new. If we felt like going even further we could use this metaphorically as a subtext, referring to the process of making a high-concept film.

Possible Narratives/Plots

Our film will be probably be a crossover of the thriller and horror genres. To achieve this on a low budget we must create a 'Blair Witch Project' type film that focuses more on atmosphere and characters than on expensive special effects. Our group has also been thinking about myths and legends that could be adapted to a modern environment To this end, I have been thinking about some potential plots that could be realistically achieved on a very low budget.

Plot 1

A man, recently divorced for unknown reasons, is being admitted out of an institution that reminds us of a hospital; but something doesn't seem right. After he returns home, he starts to hear a soft singing coming form his garden. He investigates, but finds nothing.

Several weeks later, he again hears this singing, but this time it is accompanied by a silhouetted figure. We follow the character as he explores this unnatural phenomena and along the way, explores his own mind.

Plot 2

A body is lying, motionless on a field. We then see someone running from this field, back towards civilization. This is left ambiguous for now, although we return to the scene at the end of the film.

The person running has been living alone for several years, only maintaining contact with a few good friends.

As the film develops we discover more about this persons past and the demons that haunt it. These demons reemerge following a strange encounter and events eventually escalate up to a murder of a trusted friend. The repercussions take a huge psychological toll and the main character and they deteriorate into a nervous wreck.

Although these plots are extremely ambiguous and need significant development, they are achievable on a low budget and could be adapted to encompass many different theories and myths.

Sam Halsey-Jones

Trailer examples

High-concept films are an ideal genre for making a teaser trailer, here are some successful examples of such films, with Cloverfield in teaser form.

Jumper



Cloverfield



Inception



FB

Possible Music

For this film / teaser trailer we are hoping to create our own music for it. So far we have a brief idea of what this might include. In the style of Pink Floyd it'll have to be slightly spaced and strange to say the least. to achieve this we'd used a ping pong delay but with the dry element reduced to nearly nothing, this would create the effect we need, making the music pan from left to right with delay, and whilst this is occuring, there would also be a lexicon ambient reverb under it, creating a huge spaced affect, this combined with the ping pong delay would with no doubt create the sound needed. The type of music you'd use with these effects would be extremely simple. No fancy dominent major 13 chords, just the root note with the 9th, nice, simple but effective.

G.Strivens

Media Film Ideas

Genre: Horror/Thriller

Subjects that we may hint at during the teaser trailer:
• Marxism/Feminism
• Myth
• Theorists
• Binary Opposites
• Narrative Arcs
• Stereotypes/Countertypes
• Mise en scene
• Realism
Plot Ideas:

• Creature may have infected the persons mind (may not have to show creature but make some hints that it could be seen)
• Main character can sense it in everyday life, but doesn’t know is it is real or just imaginary.
• Main character may have a brain disorder that hasn’t been discovered yet
• That the creature is real but is said to be from a myth, so it hasn’t been discovered yet in the animal kingdom.

Characters:
• Between two/three characters

Produced by Oliver Musto

High concept films and their restrictions

The Fly, 1986

The concept in this film is of a transporter, and when the inventor uses himself as a guinea-pig to test his machine, his genes are combined with those of a fly which entered the transporter just as it began to operate. The effects used in the teaser trailer are out of our group's reach financially and technologically, (e.g. explosions, smashing glass, zapping computer graphics for the title) but we can cheaply achieve other effects as shown here or here. Were we to use these amateur special effects, we wouldn't be restricted by genre. We could make a laboratory background through greenscreen for medical sci-fi, use colour passing to make our film conform to the style of films like Sin City for a noir / comic book / thriller, and reversing film or using blood pouches if we wanted to shoot a punch or other dangerous stunt for action, science fiction or horror. So producing a trailer for a plot similair to the fly would not be impossible, but we would have to be economical with our effects and use them sparingly.

This webpage also details how the traditionally high-budget sci-fi genre can be achieved for next to no money.

FB