Mood board

This is a mood board. a montage of famous characters/scenes or posters of different horror/thriller films. This was part of our research.

Storyline and plot

The whole film storyline:

A phsycotic murderer, goes on the hunt for women that he stalks, attacks and kills. He is fixated on these women for a few weeks before he kills them. This is were the title "Fixation" becomes relevant.

The audience are always with the Villain, with many point-of-view shots as though the audience are the killer, which adds to the disturbed nature as the audience get to view first hand his physcotic behavior. Also, the process of hunting down, being obsessed and eventually stalking and killing the women, is a very scary and disturbing process.

It is also more disturing as the villian is followed around in his everyday life, he has a job, friends and a good life but, has a very dark secret. This makes everything seem very real and scary as it is unbeknown to any of his friends about his fascianation and physcotic fetish for attacking and killing, usually young, women.

The police then attempt to find him, however he escapes there attention, until near the end. However, during another killing, it backfires on our hooded villian as he is stabbed to death by a woman he is attacking as she becomes aware of his stalking and is ready for him. The police arrive on the scene just after the stabbing in a dramatic ending that involves the police closing in on their man, as he is stalking and about to kill the woman. She gets to him first however.

Plan for our main task

    Starts with credits, flashing montage of credits entwined with small clips off a mysterious man looking at a board of pictures, of which are all young women (age 18-25) After the images of the man looking at the board, new images of a man following another young woman are presented. the camera angle is point of view of the mysterious man. These clips are also intersected by small 2 second credit rolls. the woman appears convinced someone is following her, but she never claps eyes on the man, in this case the camera. 

     The credits now stop, as a new clip appears from a mid shot, stationery view from where the woman is opening her front door. As she walks in the door and turns the light on, the man that was shown at the start is stood silently, head bowed with a knife in his hand. The woman screams and the door shuts behind her stopping the camera seeing what is going on which will crete a cliff hanger for the audience. Also this is a different type of horror as the audience are left to imagine the horrors that are happening behind that door. 

      Musically, we are using a slow, eerie style music, which will build tension and increase the thriller element of our film. the music is being manually produced by garage band on the computer.

Opening sequence - credits

In the opening to our film, opening credits are going to roll in different 3 second intervals entwined within footage. These credits are going to list the actors/actresses, producer and director.

They will have a white colour scheme on top of a black background. This is to make it stand out, plus the wrting will be in a medium to large font of around 18, so that it is imposing on the reader. The writing will fade in and fade out so that it grabs attention. The font will be Lucidia Grande because this looked like a proffesional font and didnt discredit the opening, keeping in the atmosphere of a thriller.

Research and analysis into the opening of a Horror film

The Background Story

 

•The Haunting in Connecticut is a modern film, released in 2009, telling the story of events that occurred in 1987. It is based on the allegedly true story of a paranormal event in Connecticut, a state in the northeast of the USA. The events were produced into a book “In a dark place” written by Ray Garton who had interviewed people involved in the events.

•The book explains paranormal activities experienced by the Snedeker family in the 1980s. The family say that the house they moved into, in Connecticut, was possessed by a demonic presence. The family gave statements about what the saw, describing the demons themselves as “very thin, with very high cheekbones, long black hair and pitch black eyes.” The house was later examined by two investigators, who confirmed the families tales. The house was exorcised in 1988 and the investigators are satisfied that the exorcism was a success.

•Doubt has been thrown over the statements by the author of the book saying that the families accounts didn't quite match up. Also the land lady of the house was not convinced by the families story.

•The issue of supernatural powers is a much debated and split topic among the human race, fascinating many people into independent research. This is why the events of what might and might not have happened in that house, will attract a lot of attention. The background to the film makes it more and more attractive to audiences as they may want to form more of an opinion once they have seen the evidence behind the claims.

•The fact that there maybe some truth behind the story, makes the film more terrifying but, interesting and the curiousness of the audience, can attract more viewers. A film like this differentiates itself from other standard horror films because of these reasons. That is why the film has its uniqueness.

Opening Sequence

•The opening sequence of The Haunting In Connecticut has been done very effectively as if produces a lot of tension and suspense upon the audience. It does this using a number of devices, camera angles and sound effects.

•The first thing the viewer sees is a black screen with soft, calming, classical, orchestral music in the background played in a quiet way, non-digetically. This puts the audience into a false sense of security. The next two minutes are split up by a sequence of images and shots that have a big impact and set a tense atmosphere straight away. The tense atmosphere is helped by a definite, however gradual change in non-digetic sound.

 

•The sequence begins with the soft music I described. Flashed images of black and white photographs are presented. We get the feeling that they are old photographs because of the black and white tone and the clothes that the people are wearing. They are old fashioned but very formal confirming the audiences suspicions of the photograph being very old. The camera begins far away from the photographs, despite them taking up the whole screen, however the camera slowly begins to zoom in and attracts itself to a specific person in the photograph and eventually an extreme close up of that persons emotion.

•A number of photographs are presented in this way, and it becomes apparent to the viewer that the people featured are stood over dead or unconscious people and have stern and unhappy emotions. This denotates death and connotates horror, mystery and possible murder. An underlying feeling that the audience may get is that the people in mourning are of the same family, in each picture. This leads us to believe that the photographs are displaying a sequence of mysterious deaths in one particular family, in a short space of time. The people that are dead are of all ages from child to adult, and all this makes for a tense atmosphere and confusion in the viewers mind.

•This is not all that is shown. In conjunction with the photographs, a sequence of footage is entwined within the photographs. The footage is in colour, indicating it is modern and not connected with the photographs. It is also easy to spot the change in tone because of the big difference in colour. The photographs create a Physcological effect on the audience, however the colour images throw physical violence and horror into the concoction, creating a very tense atmosphere for the audience.

•The footage depicts an operating theatre, with operating equipment, presented by using very close up camera angles. The main theme is the striking image of blood dripping and flowing onto the floor from an open wound, carved by a person penetrating the skin. This is a very definite and physical action, which presents a whole new side of horror to the audience. The sound of the blood dripping to the floor occurs digetically.

•The blend of the two vast changes in colour, mood, atmosphere and effect on the audience creates a whole new atmosphere of its own. The audience can also work out that the two halves are connected and linked. The images of death and pain makes the audience think that death and pain are going to be prominent throughout the film, which increases the tension and suspense because they don't know how and when it will occur.

 

Sound

•The sound plays a huge part in the effectiveness of the opening sequence. It does this by a massive change in atmosphere by the sharpness of the music.

•soft, calming, classical, orchestral music is played in the background in a quiet way, non-digetically. The impact on the viewer is that it makes them feel calm and the images of blood have more of an impact. The calm music lulls them into a false sense of security. As the scene progresses and the audience begins to work out what is happening, the music becomes distorted and echoed. This gradually gets louder and clearer until it overwhelms the now unrecognisable calm music. This occurs while the pace of the imaging occurs. The sounds become harsh on the audience’s ears and screams/scratching is introduced. All of these sounds are non-digetic.

•As this all happens, the low dripping sound of the blood occurs digetically. All of the sounds during the opening create an era and uncomfortable atmosphere for the audience.

 

Films and directors we used for inspiration

Here we have a list of films, directors and actors that influenced our idea and overall film.

Alfred Hitchcock (Physco)

Brian de Palma (Obsession)

Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense)

These are all phycological thrillers, which fit our film's genre. Also, Obsession is based on the same themes as our film.

Storyboard

For our main task we have used a storyboard to plan our main production so that we can use or work off of it.

List of titles

Rejected titles:

• Obsession - We didn't feel that this word was good enough to entice our audience
  
• Stalker - This was a bit bland and boring
• Taken - However, we didn't want to use an already well established film title
• Fixated - We were originally going to run with this, however, we decided to go with.....

Proper Title:

1. Fixation - We felt that this had a better sound to it then Fixated. the word came about because we liked the idea of obsession (one of the main themes in our film) but we felt that this word wasn't poignant. We looked up the word in the thesaurus and came up with Fixation.

Age Certificate

Age Certificate: 15

We have given our film an age certificate of 15 as went want it to be aimed at teenagers. The phycological nature of our film means that actual physical horror is less violent and graphic. This means that the film is more accessible to younger people, and can be available to a wider market.

However, we felt that the genre of our film meant that it wouldn't be suitable to be a 12 certificate.