Editing - first stages

After we had finished all of our filming, I took my storyboard and started to block out how the film would run. I started by editng the start of the news report about Kristen Blakely, I watched all of the clips and found that there was only 2 continous peices of film which were good to be put on the final film. I had a mid shot and a long shot of the TV and the mask next to it. I started by putting a 2 minute black screen which would be where the logo would play and then the news report would continue from there, so I cut the slight pause before the news report started and then played til the end of the 1 minute and 45 seconds of film. After I had done that I then began to decide how I would cut from the long shot to the mid shot half way through the news report as on our storyboard we had the mid shot then the bloody hand switching off the TV then panning along the picture fillled wall. After the editing lesson I had sorted the timing of the black background for the logo and the transitioning from that to thestart of the news report, I had also cut the first minute of that report so I could in the next lesson transition the two shots.

Re film, 23.03.10

When looking at all of our filming shots we saw a couple of problems which would make our film look less professional and lose the sense of atmosphere. The first problem was with the shot with the bloody hand marking a cross on the pictures, the shot slowly revolves a section of green curtain. This curtain was not meant to be in the shot and makes it look very unprofessional and distracts the audience from the picture.

Another problem was with the scene showing the news report on the TV, we thought the shot would be okay when filming but in an editing lesson we saw that it was very dark and the scene where the serial killer shuts off the TV was very light and was not a successful continious shot.

So to improve on these we decided to re - film these two shots to make it blend in with the rest of the film, an create the right atmosphere that we want to obtain from our horror film.

Ideas for our film opening

Immediatly when we starting brainstorming ideas we wanted the storyline to not be obvious in the first few minutes as it would lose the atmosphere of the film and not pursuade the audience to watch on.
We then started discussing lots of previous horror films like 'Texas chainsaw massacre (1979)' , 'The Amityville Horror (1979)' , 'The fourth kind (2009)' and 'The strangers (2008)' and realised that why they created such a huge impact on us all and were so scary was due to the fact they that had been shown as being based on true events.

We then decided that our film should have be based on true events to make it much more chilling and make the audience think more into it. We then came up with a series of murders and a news report, i thought this would be very effective as the news is part of daily life and throughtout the years there has been a lot of cases of murders.

Filming 15.03.2011

On our storyboard we were confused about what our ending would be and as a result thought it would be a really good idea to show who the stalkers next victim will be and where he might be. We came up with filming from behind a tree and onlooking a park and a swinging childs swing to show that he likes aspects of childhood things and a park is one of those. This clip was shot twice from different angles and the best was the one from behind the tree. This will only go on for a about 3 seconds so not much filming really had to go into this scene. We also took pictures of all of the set and things we had to do to get ready for filming on this day.

Filming 16.03.2011

This day was where most of our filming took place and the equipment we used for this was a camera and stand.

We moved the bed to the far right side, moved a small chest of drawers, cleared the wall of hanging bags and placed flat screen tv on top of drawers. Cut out pictures of the stalkers victims. stuck them on the wall. set up the camera in front of the tv. put mask on near tv, on cabinet. put fake blood on some of the pictures.

Moodboard for horror

Moodboard of horror

History of horror films

Definition of 'Horror':

1. intense fear: a very strong feeling of fear, shock, or disgust.

2. intense dislike: a feeling of distress or distaste.

3. something causing horror: something that causes a very strong feeling of fear, shock, or disgust.

4. something unpleasant: a very unpleasant or unsightly thing. http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861618773/horror.html 1930's–1940's It was the early 1930's when horror films became much more popular, mostly due to the American film producers especially Universal pictures. This decade brought to the screens a series of gothic type films, the most succesful features were 'Dracula (1931)' and 'Frankenstein (1931)'. Some of Frankenstein's scene were very controversial and in one scene where the monster throws a little girl into the lake and accidently drowns her was cut by sensorship boards in Pennsylvania, New York. The film 'Dracula' was reissued after the Production code was inforced in 1934, The Motion Picture Production Code was the industry censorship guidelines that governed the production of films during 1930 to 1968. At least two of the scenes in Dracula had been known too have been cencored as it would have supposedly given the audience horrible nightmares. 1950's - 1960's Advances in technologies occured in the 1950's and the gothic tone changed to films that were a little bit more relevent to the late - century audience. Horror films then seemed to fall into two categories of genre which were horror of armageddon and the horror of the demonic films. In the early 1960's the British company 'Hammer Film Productions' created a series of horror films these were 'The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)', 'Dracula (1958)', and 'The Mummy (1959)' and many sequels. They recieved huge international success from their bloody technicolour films and Terence Fisher the director was  acknowledged as pioneer of the modern horror movie.

Ghosts and Monsters still remained popular but then an essense of the supernatural began to make its way into films with aspects of demonic horror, examples of this was 'The Haunting (1963)'  and 'Rosemary's Baby (1968)'.

One of the most ifluential films of the late 1960's was 'Night of the living dead (1968)' the film grossed $30 million and was about zombies, it blended psychological insights with gore and moved away from the gothic trend and brought horror into everyday life.

1970's – 1980's

With the success of 'Rosemary's Baby' it lead to a release of more films with occult themes such as 'The Exorcist (1973)' and 'The Omen (1976)'. The ideas of the 1960's began to influence horror films with the release of 'The Hills Have Eyes (1977)' directed by Wes Craven and 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)' directed by Tobe Hooper. Also films were starting to explore fears about technology and society and 'Dawn of the Dead (1978)' did this by also re inventing "body horror".

In 1975 Steven Spielberg brought to our screens 'Jaws' and this film kicked off a wave of killer animal series such as 'Orca (1977)' and 'Up to the Debths (1979)'.
Near the end of the 1980's the release of 'Halloween (1978)' and  'Friday the 13th (1980)', these created a sub genre of increasingly voilent slasher films.

1990's

The first half of the 90's saw a series of themes from the 80's being re invented, film sequels such as 'Childs play' , 'A nightmare on elm street' , 'Friday the 13th' and 'Halloween'. They are got quite good success at the box office. During this time films such as 'Candyman (1992)' and 'New nightmare 1994' touched upon fictional horror and real-world horror, both mixing the two.

During this time the horror genre wore itself out with the nonstop slasher and gore films and people were losing interest. To re connect with the audience's horror became more self-mockingly and ironic which lead to the successful films 'Scream (1996)' and 'I know what you did last summer (1997)', these re-ignited the dormant slasher film genre.

2000's

The 20th century saw the beginning of the remake's of famous horror films. Examples of this were (The Amityville Horror, 2005), (The Hills Have Eyes, 2006), (Prom Night, 2008) and (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 2003).

Franchise films also became apparent in this century, 'Final destination' and 'Freddy v Jason', and have been very popular with horror fans. A large trend on the extreme, graphic violence horror films returned with 'Wrong Turn (2003)', ' Wolf creek (2005)' and 'The last house on the left (2009)' which was a remake.

Research on Masks

For our opening we have decided to have our serial killer wear a mask during his brutual incidents, we have come to the concltion that wearing a mask will create more of a sense of mystery and will have the audience guessing who is behind it and why he is wearing the mask.


For years in the film industry masks have been used in horror films and have been worn by a mennacing attacker of some sort, it makes the audience want to know exactly what they are facing. A mask takes that ability away and in many cases, a horror movie mask makes it impossible to tell if the attacker is someone known, or a complete stranger. The mystery drags the audience deeper into the horror film to see if they are able to find out who, or what is behind the mask


Examples of masks used in horror films:

Halloween (1978)

This mask was used in this movie to make it seem to the audience that the face has no emotion or remorse to what he does.





















Friday the 13th (1980)

This character wears a hockey mask to show part of his past as he used to play this when he was a child, this also has no real emotion so shows the character as a cold blooded murderer.
















Scream (1996)

The ghost face mask is used as a disguise to

conceal their identity while conducting serial murders. The facial expression is very twisted and in a way reflects the looks of terror on the victims faces.






















SAW (2004)

The pig mask was used to conceal the identity of the workers and create suspence as the audience do not know who is abducting the victims until the mask is removed.