Ideas for Final Project

Ideas for Final Project

• The ghostly girl might make it a little too close to 'The Ring'- maybe instead she should hallucinate about something different
• It could be difficult for them to get the ring off her, she doesn't want to get rid of it, they argue and fight
• When on the way to returning the ring to the park, the girl who had worn it could be getting nervous, doesn't want to get rid of it still
• After returning the ring it could be returned to the same girl who doesn't tell her friends it has come back to her, keeps hold of it
• The hallucinations get worse and worse until she goes insane, eventually committing suicide
• Her friends then return to the ring to the body

final film idea

4 friends aged 16-17 go and hang out in a forrest near their house, they discover an old ring buried there. The friends take it & start messing around with the ring, and one of them puts it on their finger. At first they can't get it off and start to panic, eventually it comes off, and leaves a burn mark on their finger. Then one of them is intrigued by the ring and wants to take it home with her. As she is walking home she decides to try on the ring for herself, she continues to walk home, and begins to see a ghostly girl in odd places. The ghost appears to be following her. She also begins to see blood splatters everywhere that aren't actually there, this really freaks her out. The next day she is still seeing weird stuff, and decides to confide in her friend. At first her friends don't believe her and think she is joking, however her behaviour begins to become progressively more irrational, her friends then notice she is wearing the ring they found, and get her to take it off, after she takes it off her behaviour becomes more normal and she stops seeing weird hallucinations. One of the friends decides to find out more about the ring. They research online and find out about the girl who was murdered in the park, and realise that the ring must belong to her. The hatch a plan to return the ring to the park but it comes back to them. The realise that they have to return the ring to the girl so they find out where she is buried and dig up her grave and bury the ring with her.  Everything then goes back to normal. The End.

Film Clips

A selection of horror film clips

Rec - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeaUokzE9fI

Nosferatu - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-DrKgjit4I

The Phantom of the Opera - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa3bHKWZoJg

Dracula - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nfmh178L98

Carrie - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJe0iVo8y3A

Audition - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR1DnkweK5U

Zodiac - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEvnwKFUnI0

Sin City - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKFLrTYKIXk

Certification

Certification

The certification for out film would be a 15- given the frightening content of the story that could scare younger audiences. Also, the language used by the teenage characters would be inappropriate for minors, because of the content of the conversation and the inappropriate words used. 

The following is a list of what is most likely to warrant a 15 certificate, although it is a very rough guide:

• The work as a whole must not endorse discriminatory language or behaviour.
• Drug taking may be shown but the film as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse. Promotion of drugs which are easy to obtain are unlikely to be allowed.
• Strong threat and menace are permitted unless sadistic or sexualised.
• Dangerous behaviour (for example, hanging, suicide and self-harming) can be allowed provided the detail of such is low so that it can not create too much of an impression of the viewer. Abuse of weapons which are easily obtained will not be tolerated.
• Frequent use of strong language can be permitted, although very strong language needs to be restricted and would have to be seen as reasonable in the context. Frequent usage of very strong language would be seldom allowed.
• Nudity in a sexual content must be restricted however nudity in a non-sexual content does not.
• Sexual activity without strong detail would most likely to be allowed. Some strong sexual references may be allowed to, but very strong ones may not, unless used within reason. Sexual acts or references with the intention of causing arousal is not likely to be permitted.
• As long as the film is appropriate for 15 year olds, no certain themes are prohibited.
• Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable. The same applies to references. Any sexual violence should be discreet and be strongly justified.

[edit]

Target Audience

Target audience -

Due to the research we have done on recent horror films, many horror films tend to appeal to a more teenage audience. I think our film would be much more suited to a teenage audience and would gain more publicity if marketed towards teenagers. It would make sense for our film to have a 15 certificate, due to the nature of it being quite frightening it wouldn't be appropriate for younger children but there's nothing that would warrant it needing an older certificate. It could also appeal to young adults, I feel the main audience would be quite young as more recent horror films seem to be marketed towards and are most popular with a younger audience.

Individual Film Idea - Shannon

Film idea.

·      A car rattles down the middle of an old country road, inside are five teenage girls of a similar age

·      From the dark outside, they hear the sounds of groaning, and hurriedly try to restart the car

·      The car will not restart, the girls panic.

·      They finally find refuge in a military base but they find everyone dead.

·      The girls hear groaning again- loud and panic, the film ends.

Individual Film Idea - Siobhan

Film Idea.

My film idea is

• a group of friends find a ring in a park and take it. 
• The ring belonged to a girl who got murdered in the park and strange things start happening to the group. 
• Someone in the group finds out about the murdered girl and suggests to the group that she is the reason for the strange happenings. 
• In the end they have to get the ring back to the girls grave and normality is restored.  

.

Similar Film Styles (for serial killer idea)

Similar Film Styles:

Audition- Controversial Japanese director Takashi Miike creates this unnerving horror film about a widowed TV producer auditioning prospective wives. In his search, one candidate particularly stands out, a lovely ex-ballerina dressed in white. The widower cannot believe his good fortune, until he starts looking more closely at his potential bride-to-be: her autobiographical details don't quite check out, she has a number of ugly scars on her legs, and he learns that people in her life have a habit of disappearing. When he discovers a man trussed up in her living room with his tongue and feet lopped off, he concludes that she is perhaps not the woman of his dreams. Audition was screened at the 1999 Vancouver Film Festival.

The style of Audition is quite strange, and is a generally quiet, occasionally slow film despite gruesome undertones. I like the filming style and the dialogue. 

Zodiac- A serial killer in the San Francisco Bay Area taunts police with his letters and cryptic messages. We follow the investigators and reporters in this lightly fictionalized account of the true 1970's case as they search for the murderer, becoming obsessed with the case. Based on Robert Graysmith's book, the movie's focus is the lives and careers of the detectives and newspaper people.

The idea of a serial killer being hunted is good- it creates tension and characters to root for. 


Sin City- The film is primarily based on three of Miller's works. The Hard Goodbye: About a man who embarks on a brutal rampage in search of his one-time sweetheart's killer, killing anyone, even the police, that gets in his way of finding and killing her murderer; The Big Fat Kill: Focuses on a street war between a group of prostitutes and a group of mercenaries, the police, and the mob; and That Yellow Bastard: Follows an aging police officer who protects a young woman from a grotesquely disfigured serial killer. 

It's not strictly a horror film- but the comic book gruesomeness is effective and I like the style of the majority of the screen being black and white with only one feature in colour. 

Carrie- A young, abused and timid 17-year-old girl discovers she has telekinesis, and gets pushed to the limit on the night of her school's prom by a humiliating prank. 

The idea of getting revenge on high school tormentors and a religious guardian is usually lifted from Carrie

Death Proof- Two separate sets of beautiful women are stalked at different times by a scarred stuntman who uses his "death proof" cars to execute his murderous plans.

Shot in the style of old 1970's exploitation films- it has a look unlike most modern movies that I like- although it's hard to replicate. 

Individual Film Idea - Molly

My film idea is about a group of 4 friends that go away on a camping trip for the weekend to an isolated area in the woods. Whilst enjoying themselves they discover strange deformed carcasses of woodland animals, they later discover that they're accidentally camping on the location of where a top secret government experiment on bio-weapons is taking place. Upon this discovery they decide staying in the woods wouldn't be a good idea, so they head off to the nearest town that's next to the woods, which is also a very small, isolated place. When getting there they find the small town is overrun by people who have accidentally been infected with the government's biological weapon and have become all deformed and zombie like. The group of friends must then fight to survive and escape the town.

Individual Film Idea- Emma

Film Idea

•        Female teenage serial killer
•      Unassuming character- sweet, liked, quiet, clever
•    She has had trauma in her life previously- lost her family at a young age, living with an over-religious aunt
•       Goes on in life to have urges to kill
• ·     Picks of people who she believes deserve it- people who picked on her as a young child, pick on other people

·       The story starts with seeing her at school, singled out in colour against a background of grey, bustling people in a school hallway

·      Someone is rude to her, hear the sound of screams over the top of the audio

·      As the story unfolds we see the police begin to close in on her, they discover the crematorium she uses has been broken into, unexplained human waste

·      Her character changes, becomes more maddened and insane

·      Get flashbacks of her disturbing childhood- death, abuse

·      She ends up killing herself rather than getting caught. 

horror film posters

 

from my research of horror film posters I have found that most film posters of this genre have similar elements included in them which give the audience a clear indication of what genre the film is. My research shows me that horror film posters typically include dark backgrounds, distorted images, blood splatters and red text. The use of distorted images doesn't give much about the film away, which gives the film a sense of mystery. This entices the audience to find out more about the film. The red text used connotes blood, which implies to the audience that the film has gruesome content. Some horror film posters also include blue tints which connote coldness, blue tints can also connote calmness which juxtapose with typical horror film conventions.

Horror Film Conventions.

Typical Horror Film Conventions.



Most horror films have:

• A target audience - male, 16-24
• A 15 or 18 Certification
• Slow pace of Editing to builds tension.
• A three act narrative structure
• Predictable narrative content 
• Clear oppositions e.g. good v evil
• Use of low lighting
• Dominant, stereotypical representation of gender: The Female Victim
• Extensive use of close up
• non-diegetic sound
• Distorted diegetic sound
• Young/teenage characters
• Use of hand-held camera: audience identification/realism
• Point of view shots
• Low angle shots

Examples of Horror Films

Examples of Horror Films

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a 1920 German silent horror film directed by Robert Wiene from a screenplay by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer. It is one of the most influential of German Expressionist films and is often considered one of the greatest horror movies of the silent era. The film used stylized sets, with abstract, jagged buildings painted on canvas backdrops and flats. To add to this strange style, the actors used an unrealistic technique that exhibited jerky and dancelike movements. This movie is cited as having introduced the twist ending in cinema.

Nosferatu is a classic 1922 German Expressionist horror film, directed by F. W. Murnau, starring Max Schreck as the vampire Count Orlok. The film, shot in 1921 and released in 1922, was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, with names and other details changed because the studio could not obtain the rights to the novel (for instance, "vampire" became "Nosferatu" and "Count Dracula" became "Count Orlok").

The Phantom of the Opera is a 1925 American silent horror film adaptation of the Gaston Leroux novel of the same title directed by Rupert Julian. The film featured Lon Chaney in the title role as the deformed Phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House, causing murder and mayhem in an attempt to force the management to make the woman he loves a star. It is most famous for Lon Chaney's intentionally horrific, self-applied make-up, which was kept a studio secret until the film's premiere.

Dracula is a 1931 vampire-horror film directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi as the title character. The film was produced by Universal and is based on the 1924 stage play Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, which in turn is based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.