Final Title

Here are our final designs for our title. The top one will appear first and then the second one will fade in and turn red then slide off the screen like blood dripping down. This will add the tension and fear into our audience that we want to create.

The Treatment

As a group we have decided to do horror as our genre. Our film starts off with girls rehearsing a play in the theatre in 1959 and one girl mysteriously gets killed. The film then reverts back to the present and shows girls rehearsing a play nowadays and then another girl gets mysteriously killed by the so called “Ghost”.

NB: The film begins with the name of the production companies and distributors etc fading up onto a black screen.

Our film starts off by fading into a typical day at school with female students rehearsing for their school play. We then see the date fade across the bottom of the screen. As they come to the end of rehearsing the scene, the drama teacher watching asks for the girls to stop and to prepare to start rehearsing the next scene of the play. One of the girls starts to talk about a ghost that once haunted the school for many years. This starts to creep out the new girl of the school and she starts to get a little worried. The other girls walk off stage to prepare for the next scene she stays on stage and the worried girl stays on stage to do a solo piece. We then hear a creak above the stage and we zoom onto the girls face as she looks up in apprehension of what she’s just heard above her. The screen then blacks out and we hear a squishing sound of the girl being killed by a mysterious object followed by a violent scream by the other girls… the title of the film scrolls up the black screen, then drips back down turning red like a blood effect.

The next scene starts with the camera focused on the theatre lights and then pans down onto some girls rehearsing for a play. We then see “50 years later” fade across the screen and then a teacher enters the theatre. The teacher watches the rehearsal by the the girls and applauds them on a good rehearsal.

The Descent

I decided that watching the opening to the horror film 'The Descent' would enable me to analyse what the audience would derive from watching the first 5 minutes and whether they would be able to guess what genre film it is. The film is a horror and as a group we decided that we would choose the genre horror for our piece of coursework.

First off we start with the credits of the film, which are shown one by one in a spotlight effect that fades across then clears in one motion, on a black background. The spotlight effect emphasises the actors and actresses names that may show a light in a dark place, reflecting the image of what the film may be like.

Afterwards it cuts into a long shot of a clear blue sky and the tops of trees. Also we here the diegetic sound of laughter and shouting which then immediately cuts into a mid shot of three women white water rafting. While the women are rafting it cuts to a high angle shot of the rapids that the women are going to face next, which look rough and distressing that might hint that there will be an accident or something bad going to happen to the women. While the women are rafting it cuts to a mid shot of a little girl and which seems apparent, her dad. The girl shouts down “mummy, mummy” to the women showing us that one of the women is her mum, and the girl and dad wave down to them all.

Research on the 'Horror' Genre

Narratives (the kinds of stories)
•Group of teenagers lost

Settings
•Woods
•Haunted/abandoned house
•School
•Mental home

Stock characters
•Killer
•Group of kids/teenagers
•Police/sheriff

Iconography
•Blades
•Knifes
•Guns
•Masks
•Colour black/red
•Blood
•Shouting
•Screaming
•Sex

Audience
Adults

Films
•Jason
•Scream
•Nightmare on Elm street
•The Ring 1 and 2
•Dawn of the dead