2020 Film Blog

We recently were able to complete our first day of filming. We had so much footage and we felt this one was a pretty good blooper where I forget my line.

So I know Fargo is not a horror film so some may be wondering why I decided to include this in my blog, but if you really analyze the clip I believe you can see just why I decided to include it. This extract creates an immense feeling of tension through its use of ambient noise to contrast a score and its pans and over the shoulder shots. I felt that this scene gave off a similar feeling of tension that I would like for the opening and I really liked the inclusion of the ambient noise and thought it would be a good idea to include it in our film as well to help with the tension of our opening.

This extract gives the watcher a very tense feeling as it portrays a horribly dangerous situation with a lot of tension. This is all conveyed through the use of over the shoulder shots, pans, and lots of ambient noise throughout the extract. It begins with an over the shoulder shot to show the farm they are driving up too. This is done to establish the setting and show the eeriness of the place they are driving up to. Also used is a lot of slower pans at the beginning of the clip to help establish a slower pace for the clip. This is also done to contrast the increase in pace throughout the clip to add to that tension and suspense. Lastly with the use of the ambient noise to contrast the beginnings score also adds to that suspense and danger of the situation. These all come together to make a scene that is very eerie and tension-ed filled scene that gives off the impression that they are one second away from everything going wrong

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vQHbATbV3FG8M-5qPvkWYfoBsVDfxsUSdxr-X2j0berluhF67Z3iV4JBTpx8l1k4-QHkSnbt1afjbpp/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000

As we were doing research into other found footage horror films we found that a lot of the more popular films has something in common with each of their marketing. They all used a sort of viral video approach by releasing clips of their film with no context and no indication it was from a film. This helped gain major interest in their film to help it find success. Some films who did that were The Gallows, and Cloverfield. Since these were big inspirations for our film we decided we should do this too.

For our viral marketing campaign we would release short found footage camera clips with no explanation or indication that it was a film. This would help draw attention to the clips and people trying to find out what they are. The clips would lead up to our first initial trailer which would leverage the interest gained from the horror clips to get the most amount of traction for our movie as possible. We would post new clips about every month from a random YouTube channel and each clip would be followed with a #Untitled. The hashtag would help gain social media interest and discussion. So as people talk about it and share it then they would be doing the marketing for us!

After much work we have finally put together our script! We think this would be the perfect intro script to establish our characters and establish the feelings of our film.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XtZJc2O_BDdEL5kvZfrlr5I8sj-p89wwsA_bPKY3RV4/edit?usp=sharing

We recently found the perfect font for the title sequence of our film. The font is called “Horroroid”. This is the absolute perfect font for our film in order to convey the scary tone were looking for. Were planning on directly cutting to our title card as soon as the opening scene finishes. It was be a jarring sharp cut in order to emphasize the scariness of the film. Although fonts may seem like such a minute detail of the film, we realize that fonts can really help create a mood for the film.

As we have begun the script writing process we have begun to realize just how hard it is to write a script. When we thought about script writing we were just think about writing dialogue but we soon realized that a script encompasses pretty much every aspect of the scene you’re writing including things like fades and setting and moment. So we have been having a real hard time writing the script so its been taking a little longer then we imagined. Whenever the script does get done I’ll be sure to update the blog with the full script. But for now here is a tiny bit of what we do have written.

Fade In:

1 – Forest – Dusk

Scott, Logan, and Michael are walking through the forest. Michael is holding the camera and is walking behind Scott and Logan. 

Logan

Uhhh Scott… where the hell are we going?

Scott

I told you I saw something back here. 

As we have been writing the script for our film and forming our pitch we decided to put together a little short synopsis to showcase the plot of our film.

Three high school seniors stumble upon something that they weren’t supposed to see inside the woods behind their houses and have a close encounter with some sort of demon creature. They don’t believe their own eyes and chock it up to some weird person playing tricks on them and decide to not mention it to anyone as they feel they have no way to prove what happened. They try and continue on with their lives but strange things keep happening and they keep having the strange hallucinations. They try everything to get rid of the hallucinations but when a tragic event happens they must come together to confront their fears and the demon. 

When people read this short synopsis we want them to understand not only that its a horror but also feel for the tone of our film. We wanted the tone to come across as almost a coming of age horror film so we made sure to mention the confront of fear the teens have to face. In the actual film we would like the fears to actually represent their adulthood and how they are unsure of how things will be or what they will do once they become adults and when they confront the fears they come to terms with fact that what will happen will happen and they are capable people who by the end of the film are ready for their adult lives.

As we make preparations for our proposition to Blumhouse productions I wanted to make a quick post just finalizing what our film is. So our film is a found footage horror film with a demon or demonic figure as the monster. We want to have a bunch of teenagers going into the woods and filming what they are all doing and then stumbling on something they should not have seen and then have a quick encounter with the beast to end the the opening. We want to have someone be killed by the monster and have that lure us in to where we see the monster, but the monster would not be seen by the audience because it would be difficult to get a realistic monster so instead we may have a loud sound or shadow to covey that the monster was there to the audience and then act like we see the monster and run. We want to try our best to play into the found footage aspect of our film because that can be used to set out film apart and can be used in things such as viral marketing campaigns and other things to catch audience attention. Our intended audience for the film would be teens age 15 to adults age 30. We feel that this range are the type of people who would go see our type of horror movie. It would be rated R for the amount of blood and gore seen in the film but it would not be a hard R so teens under the age of 18 can convince their parent to let them go. This is the basic outline of our film and is how we are going to pitch it to Blumhouse next week.