Initial idea 1 - Horror

Initial Idea 1

When finalising the two ideas that as a group Gaia, Ami and I decided on the first of the ideas being American Horror story based and influenced. The theme of American horror story, relies on a serious of the same actors and actresses playing different roles in each of the seasons.

The first Idea

Sound-

- a soft melody playing in the background of the opening of the film, or a nursery rhyme or lullaby. The use of these in horror movies often are used because they seem mysterious and stereotypically make people feel as if someone were vulnerable. Being in this position almost makes the audience feel that they are the antagonist. This then helps to create mood and atmosphere which helps the whole of the opening of the film to be more convincing and gripping to the public audience.
- layered sound effects in the opening of a film, help to show the tension and the mood of the drama either rising normally when the pitch or the speed of the music increases and vice versa. These sound effects being dramatically being layered on top of the melody or tune then helps to create emphasis on the actions that are taken place in the scene.
- a sound bridge could be used in order to link the different clips and shots all together. The melody of a song could do this well as it ties in well with the rest of the theme and helps compliment the mood and atmosphere of the opening scene. The parallel sound helps to back up the tone of the genre which we have chosen as horror.
- some of the different overlaying music that we decided to put into the background is a heart beat from a monitor, a door cracking in the background and footsteps as the pace increases as someone walks to running away.


Mise en scene
- a bandaged face with only the eyes showing. At the beginning of this clip, the eyes appear to be closed, but then they suddenly open. A bloody teardrop falls out the side of the eye and down the cheek onto the floor. As it does this is trails along and as the camera uses a tracking shot to follow it  leads up to the name of the director which is made out of dripped blood.
- a syringe is pressed and the blood that comes out the top of it, again is similar to the idea before and the blood leads into a name of one of the actors. The same idea of a knife dripping with blood could be used also.
- Scary dolls could be used as props as they are stereotypically scary especially to adolescent audience.


Editing-
All of the editing would have a lot of jump cuts between the different clips that form the montage together. These will be short and bold, however, for the audience will be able to give enough of an idea that can help them to develop and create their own vision of what is going on; they could possibly start making possible scenarios up.

Cinematography-
There will be a lot of low key lighting. A lot of shadows will be used creating a mysterious effect that could help boost the mood and atmosphere to become better suited to the specific genre that we are using.
Close ups are normally a good way of creating a good idea as to facial expressions. However, within our montage we are not including any facial expressions. Our aim within our montage, is to do multiple, still frames or moving images, to create a slight example of what is later going to be involved within the rest of the opening scene of our opening scene.

Horror Opening

The groups initial idea was a horror opening, inspired by the the series, American Horror Story. The director uses quick, small clips of different scenes that are constantly changing cinematography in order to show the audience really small areas of the following series or film. There is little narrative but enough for them to start picturing where a story could evolve from here. The American Horror Story opening for the Murder House and Asylum series both begin with the credits accompanied with eerie mis en scene, cinematography,                                

sound and editing creating a scary theme for the audience. This then helps to develop the mood and atmosphere for the audience.

 Mis en scene, such as clothing and make-up and the background/setting, are vital within a horror film or series as it is one of the first things that an audience will be exposed to. For our opening, we plan to film in a dark, dingy set, as well as this, make up will be minimalistic and very washed out, hopefully this will create a horror film atmosphere and will make the audience feel scared and intrigued.



Cinematography using a range of different camera angles is most effective for the audience so we decided that the use of tracking, POV, close ups and pan shots would be ideal and would then help to assist with creating a well thought out and effective opening scene. After analysing the opening of American horror story, my group and I decided to specifically attempt the tracking, POV and pan shots, as well as our other shot plans. By using the correct camera angles the film opening will look professional and will have the correct effect on the audience.

AHS POV shot

AHS Tracking shot

AHS Mid-shot

The American Horror Story opening credits has non-diegetic music playing over the top of all imagery, it also had diegetic sound which could be considered as parallel sound. The non-diegetic sound was music, the music was very layered at some points but at other times it was just a simple knocking sound. This created tension for me and made me feel like something interesting was going to happen. Diegetic sound was also used, for example when lightning and thunder struck. This informed me that sound is a huge factor of setting the atmosphere within the first couple of minutes of an opening. For our opening I think we should incorporate diegetic and non-diegetic sound to complete the eerie atmosphere.

The editing in the opening of American Horror Story (S1-Murder house and S3-Asylum) is extremely sharp. It has no real storyline at this point in the episode. The use of quick transitions from scene-to-scene infers that the genre is an action-horror, as well as this, the scenes are very dimly lit but their is a varying white object in most of the scenes which the audience's eyes are drawn to. I am inspired by the range of transitions from each scene and I am going to incorporate this into my own work as I believe it is a very effective use of editing.