Ideas from films

Attack the block: In this film you never fully see the monsters but you know they are there. This leaves what    the audience thinks they look like up to their imagination. We can use this in our film as you never quite see the other person in the shop.
Click here to see Jojo's post on the opening sequence of Attack the bock.

Woman in black: Here lots of strange things happen and there is a figure that watches people from afar. This can also be used in our film as a POV shot of the person watching to see through the other person's eyes but not to reveal the other person's identity.

Dawn of the dead: In this film the characters are in a shopping mall and we can use subtle scenes of the characters using the setting from this film to apply to ours.

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Script

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Fonts

Fonts: Fonts can have many connotations and the appearance of fonts can help to suggest what genre the film is. Here is a very classic horror looking font:

 

We can tell this by the 'painted' look of the letters. Often in horror films there is writing made from blood on the walls and this convention is now a recognisable feature of the horror genre. This font is imitating this and gives a very clear idea that the writing is linked with the horror genre or murder in some form.

Another font i picked out was this one:

Here this font's main focus is the shadowing of the letters. Using shadows in a horror genre is very common and helps to add to the creepy effect. Here the font is white like the background so the letters can only be seen through the shadow. This is similar to how a character's shadow is visible during a scene but they are not, usually before they attach another character.

Thirdly I picked this font:

This font has a handwritten look to it. Another convention of horror movies are both old fashioned vampires and laboratories, both of which feature hand written letters/instructions. This font looks similar to writing with a fountain pain, such as they did long ago.

This fint was used in The Shining and was also used in the poster's advertising the film. This font has a very slanted look and gives an iconic feel to it. It also very bold so that it stands out and is very pronounced. This gives an almost intimidating feel to the text.

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Horror genre

When discussing themes with Jojo, we came to a disicion on what theme we will use in our openning sequence. We are going to use a horror theme. So here are some conventions of the horror genre:

The setting is usual far away from people, whether in the mountains, similar to The shinning, or in the contryside, similar to A cabin in the woods, and most typically a haunted house. Usually this setting is unfamilar to the characters.

Another convention is iconography. In a lot of films these are repeated, such as low key lighting, monsters or a mad man. The mise-en-scene is very important here too. Starting with the low key lighting, this gives a very haunted and dark feel to the films. This also limits the character's and the audience's view of what is happening and movies can use the dark to trick us in thinking that there is something there as we cannot clearly see what is happening. Some props such as kinves or chainsaws are used often as they are very dangrous weapons that a person on their own cannot defend against, helping to induce a feeling of fear and defencelessness.

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