Wednesday 2 May 2012

part two.

Lighting:

Our use of lighting in the dream sequence subverts the general rule of thumb for horror films: dreams in horror films must be nightmares and they must be dark. For example, in the opening of A Nightmare On Elm Street, the dream is dark and tense, like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn_DjzN8410 

However, our dream sequence includes lots of bright scenes, such as the butterfly clip, the daisy clip and the memory clips.
In this memory clip, which is in the dream sequence, there is high key lighting and high saturation, because we decided to show Jess's time with Sarah as good and happy. We also didn't want the dream to be too dark, because Jess still had part control over herself, shown when she throws Hannah out of her room. However, parts of the dream have low-key lighting, such as the mimicry scene. This was to show how dark Esther is and how dark she makes Jess's mind.

Editing:
The psychological thriller aspect of our film is really shown through editing. We use a technique called psychorama, which means splicing in an image quickly so it flashes up, sometimes too quickly for the human mind to pick up. This is used in other horrors and psychological thrillers, such as Terror in the Haunted House and Fight Club. I spent so long looking for the scenes in Fight Club on YouTube, but there's only one uploaded there; however, it's a good one:

I won't mention the other one at the end.
It's so much more subtle in Fight Club, literally blink and you'll miss it, than in ours. However, our films had two different intentions: Fight Club didn't want to give away the twist at the end, but  wanted to leave hints for eagle-eyed viewers, whereas our film wanted the audience to question reality from the very beginning and question what was real and what was not. 

Character:
The killer in our film challenges the normal convention of murderers in horror films. In our film, the murderer is Jess:
She doesn't exactly strike you as the killing type, right? That's because, in horror films, they generally use grown men, sometimes with a disfigurement. For example, there's Freddy (Nightmare On Elm Street), Jason (Friday the 13th), Leatherface (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and Michael Myers (Halloween)

1 comment:

  1. Have a look at Jess' and see if there are any extra ideas you might choose to rework into your piece. Have a look at the terms antagonist and protagonist especially.

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