Ideas to date and The 3 Act Structure

      The 3 Act Structure

      ...is the process of structuring a story for the screen and is about making creative choices about which actions, events and characters will be the best ones to tell that story. The story is the actual content of a film and the structure is the form or they way the story is told.

      Act 1 - introduces main characters and sets up the conflict that is the story of the film.
      Act 2 - explores the consequences of the catalytic moment.
      Act 3 - resolves the story and tells us the outcome.

      One film we looked at particularly for the 3 Act Structure was the latest Bond film - Skyfall. After a discussion we decided Act 1 is Bond completing the old mission and being given his new one from M. Act 2 would be the locations in which we see Bond and him nearing his meeting with the baddie. Finally, Act 3 would be the shoot out, the final conflict and Bond's success.

      Another film could be a pick of any from Harry Potter. Act 1 is Harry finding out he is a wizard, the very very beginning of Harry's adventures. Act 2 is his day to day life in Hogwarts and Act 3 is his showdown (usually with Voldemort), ending with Harry usually in the hospital ward in Hogwarts and the feeling that everything is okay for now.

      Narrative/Story

      Linear - straightforward, following the chronological/time order.

      Non-linear - messes with time such as using flashbacks, flash-forwards and parallel story lines.

      After researching into this and discussing our film a little more, we have come to the conclusion of using a non-linear narrative as our Protagonist finds out hidden secrets of a past she never knew existed. This could be done by flashbacks, or beginning the film at the end, and only just giving this away toward the end of the film. 

The 3 Act Structure for our film 

      Act 1 - The setting up of our Character. Our protagonist Amelia Western. Emphasis on the era with strong use of mise-en-scene. Working out who she is. Something comes into her life that she can't explain. 

      Act 2 - An object from the modern world, appears in her house. Maybe there is a phone in her kitchen drawer, something she wouldn't have seen before. A message appears on the screen. She throws the phone down in shock and falls to the ground. She is confused. She has no idea where it is from, what it is or why it is there. She is fighting the inevitable. 

      Act 3 - The climax. The change takes place. Our protagonist suddenly realises the lives she has been living. She isn't sure what is real and what is fake anymore.

Horror Film Survey

      Here is the survey I created briefly to hand out to a few people to gain knowledge on their preferences in a horror film. We also did a few videos which I shall upload further down :)

The Survey

Name: _________________

Age: ___      Gender: __________

Please state your favourite horror film and why.

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

Please circle your preferred sub-genre of horror.

Psychological        Action        Zombie         Gothic

Science Fiction     Slasher       Splatter  The ResultsComedy 

How often do you watch horror films? (Please circle)

0-1 weekly                  2-3 weekly                 

4-5 weekly                  6+ weekly

What is it you specifically like about horror films?

________________________________________________

________________________________________________

Please circle your preference on the protagonist.

Male          Female          Adult           Child

Other (please specify) _________________

Do you have a preferred setting? If so, state what, where etc.

________________________________________________

________________________________________________

What are you preference on sound? (e.g. eerie silence or uneasy and loud etc)

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

The Results 

(Apologies on size, I realise it is a pain but I just couldn't find another way of displaying it properly!)

Video's

With thanks for the interviews with James Dyer, Chris Burridge and Kristian Coomber

Inspirational Moodboard

Here is a select few of films we have looked at and are hoping to use ideas from for our own opening title sequence:

We are keen to watch more films to gain a few ideas, but so far so good!

Horror Audiences Research

Audience

      Most characters and especially the protagonist can usually be found within the same age and/or gender of the target audience in order to give them something to relate to. This is a huge bonus when working on the marketability as more often than not, people will watch films with characters around their own age.

Cinema Audiences

      Audience data describes the gender, age, ethnicity, social group and region of the film audience as a whole and for particular popular film titles.



      This graph shows that British Cinema Audiences peaked between the points of 1939 and 1950. But then declined just after 1950 by 1.3 million in 1965 and since then has remained very steady on-wards to 2010.

________________________________________________________________


      Here is a graph showing the breakdown of ages of people who visit the cinema on a yearly timescale and as you can see, 15-24 year old's are most likely to attend a cinema showing of a film. This helps our primary research as we can use these demographics to select our marketability.
 

Graph from: http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/audiences

 
 Our plan is to produce a new horror/thriller film with a marketability for teenagers and adults. We believe that this target audience will be most suited to our genre of film as some modern psychological horrors (such as SAW) are quite popular within our target audience, and especially due to the results from our survey on a  previous post. To conclude, we think best to class our films as a 15-18 due to the violent/disturbing scenes featured. Also we believe that this target audience will be the ones most likely to watch the film as our research shows us that 15-24 year old's represent the largest percentage of cinema goers (around 40%).

Survey Results

      We asked a few people from the age group 15-24 what they looked for in a horror film and their responses varied from suspense, story line, death, shock, action and adrenaline. This feedback helped massively on us gaining an idea into what people look for in such a genre and we aim to cover most areas.

Horror Audiences 

      Horror (definition) - an overwhelming and painful feeling caused by something frightfully shocking, terrifying or revolting; a shuddering fear.
  (Taken from ://dictionary.reference.com/browse/horror)

      What we aim to find out is why people choose to watch horror films and the outcome was mainly because they have the 'thrill factor'. Target audience for horror are also typically males within the age range 15-24 as males tend to seek thrill and action within films whereas females typically prefer genres such as comedy and romance because it is lighter entertainment. However, recent figures show that females watching horror films has exceeded male viewers for the first time. Not only are women conventionally less likely to visit the cinema to see horrors, but statistics show that the vast majority of films within the genre are written, produced and directed by men.

       Evidence of this comes from the article I have read and researched on the UK Film Council website and here is an extract: "The number of women attending cinema screenings of horror films now marginally exceeds male attendance figures for the first time. With funding support from 'Skillset Film Skills' Fund, Warp X in partnership with Threshold Studios, has established Darklight: Women Direct horror, a unique training and production initiative to encourage women directors keen to reinvent the horror genre for the 21st Century."

Film Distributor

      After a little research on distributors used for various horror films I struggled to find many that used the same.

Film                                                        Distributor

Saw                                                         Lionsgate

Se7en                                                      New Line Cinemas

Silence of the Lambs                              Orion Pictures

Sinister                                                    Summit Entertainment

The Exorcist                                           Warner Bros & 20th Century Fox

The Shining                                            Warner Brothers

The Ring                                                 Dreamworks Pictures

The Grudge                                             Columbia Pictures

Hannibal                                                  MGM

      After researching distributors we have decided to use New Line Cinemas as it has worked with a few great horror films that came up popular on our surveys and overall feels to be the right distributor for out film.

Ideas 15th January 2013

25 Word Challenge = High concept film.
Treatment - Film idea.

Taken for funding, including a page on synopsis of idea and 10 pages of sample scenes.

      For Amelia Western, what she thought to be an old trip through time, ends up opening

 haunting flashbacks of a past she never knew existed.

      Today we have given more thought into the idea of using a photo and scratching out the eyes of one person. We are thinking a picture of two young girls, only one with her eyes having been scratched out and the girl in our title sequence to be holding this, the other possibly being her sister. The inspiration of this having come from The Others and Insideous. (Another idea of my own was to combine two photo's together, one being solid and the other having a lower hue so that they appear to be ghost-like in the photo. I am as we speak working on Photoshop trying to do this)

     On the same topic I would really like to use and interpret the scene from Woman an Black (as mentioned in a previous post) where we see a figure appear over the shoulder of our main character. Yet all this is to be finalised and thought through.

     Something else we covered today was the plan for character names. Amelia Western and Esme Waters work quite well and appear to be popular.

      After a small group critique we noted down a few ideas and one person mentioned that our protagonist could suffer from amnesia. I guess this could work and be quite believable, but it just isn't the plot myself and Bex were aiming for. Also a few people mentioned she could have had a past life, which I thought quite interesting. This led to another life, to another character, to a possibility of a sister and this relating to the photo of two young girls.

      We also defined the location for our title sequence which will be the Pier in Clevedon. It is over 150 years old and usually fairly quiet. It is a lovely Pier with some great features. 

Sub-genres of Horror Films

Action Horror

      A sub-genre combing the intrusion of an evil force, event, or supernatural personage of horror movies with the gunfights and frenetic chases of the action genre. Themes or elements often prevalent in typical action-horror films include gore, demons, vicious animals, vampires and, most commonly, zombies. This category also fuses the fantasy genre. Examples include Resident Evil, Ghost Rider, Doomsday, Dawn of the Dead and Blade.

Body Horror

      In which the horror is principally derived from the graphic destruction or degeneration of the body. Other types of body horror include unnatural movements, or the anatomically incorrect placement of limbs to create 'monsters' out of human body parts. David Cronenberg is one of the notable directors of this genre. A few body horror examples include Frankenstein, The Invasion, The Fly, The Thing, Hellraiser and Cabin Fever.

Comedy Horror

      Combines the elements of comedy and horror fiction. The short story 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' by Washington Irving is cited as "the first great comedy-horror story" in 1949 (novel published in 1820). Examples for this genre include An American Werewolf in London, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Gremlins, Beetlejuice and Shaun of the Dead.

Gothic Horror

      A type of genre that contains elements of goth and horror. At times it may have romance that unfolds in the setting of a horror tale, usually suspenseful. Some of the earliest horror films were of this sub-genre. Examples include universal films such as The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy.

      Modern gothic horror include Interview with the Vampire, The Wolfman, Dorian Gray and The Woman in Black.  

Natural Horror

      A sub-genre of hororr films 'featuring nature running amok in the form of mutated beasts, carnivorous insects and normally harmless animals or plants turned into cold-blooded killers'. This genre may sometimes overlap with the science fiction/adventure genre. Examples include Jaws, Deep Rising, The Swarm, Primeval, Anaconda and Snakes on a Plane.

Psychological Horror 

      Relies on characters' fears, guilt, beliefs, eerie sound effects, relevant music, emotional instability and at times, the supernatural and ghosts, to build tension and further the plot. Examples include A Tale of Two Sisters, The Exorcist, The Others, The Mothman Prophecies, The Blair Witch Project, The Shining, Sinister, The Changeling and The Sixth Sense.

Science Fiction Horror

      Often revolves around subjects that include, but are not limited to killer aliens, mad scientists and/or experiments gone wrong. Examples include Alien, Pandorum, Apollo 18 and It Came from Outer Space.

Slasher Film 

       Often revolves around a psychopathic killer stalking and killing a sequence of victims in a graphically violent manner, mainly with a cutting tool such as a knife or axe. Slasher films may at times overlap with crime, mystery and the thriller genre and are not all of the horror genre. Examples of this include Psycho, Black Christmas, Halloween, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Prom Night, Scream, Friday the 13th, Candyman and A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Splatter Film 

      These films deliberately focus on graphic portrayals of gore and graphic violence. Through the use of special effects and excessive blood and guts, they tend to display an overt interest in the vulnerability of the human body and the theatricality of its mutilation. Not all splatter films are slashers and not all slasher films are horrors. Examples include Cannibal Holocaust, Blood Feast, Saw, Inside, The Collector and The Midnight Meat Train.

Zombie Film

      Films of this sub-genre features creatures who are usually portrayed as either reanimated corpses or mindless human beings. Distinct sub-genres have evolved, such as the 'zombie comedy' or the 'zombie apocalypse'. Examples include Dawn of the Dead, Land of the Dead and I Am Legend.

Teen Horror 

      This sub-genre revolves completely around teenagers. Typically, these films have a large cast and a clear hero or heroine. Teen-Horror films often play upon traditional teenage issues, such as dating and prom, turning them into suspenseful and thrilling situations. Examples of this are I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 

 

Supernatural Horror

       This sub-genre include ghosts, demons, or other depictions of supernatural occurrences. Often, Supernatural-Horror films combine elements of religion into the plot. Common themes in this sub-genre include the afterlife, the devil and the demonic possession. Examples include The Exorcist, The Ring and The Omen.

(information from Wiki and http://thescriptlab.com/screenplay/genre/horror)

Horror Timeline 1896 - 2000

1896

The world's first 'true' horror movie - The Devil's Castle - was made. It was made by an Illusionist and was only 3 minutes long!

1898

George Albert Smith patented his photographic design. It enabled 'ghosts' to be shown on film. 

1910

The first version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is made.

1911

Notre Dame de Paris is released, filmed by Pathé and was the first full length film with a monster in it!

1912

The Vengeance of Egypt was released by Gaumont and was the first full length, pure horror movie.

1913

Thanks to Lon Chaney, his film The Man of a Thousand Faces created make-up that stunned the world.

1915

The Golem, a silent film of German release is produced by Hans Lippmann.

1928

The Man Who Laughs becomes the first horror movie with sound, even the credits were read out!

1931

A film directed by Tod Browning, Dracula.

1935 

The wife of Frankenstein boasts a musical score by Frank Waxman where many of the musical norms of horror music were established in this film.

1937

The 'H' (Horrific) certificate was introduced by the BBFC to replace the old 'A' (Adult) rating. 

1946 

Bedlam, a film about the infamous St. Mary's of Bethlehem: a Victorian Institution for the insane was banned in Britain.

1952

The first 3D film is made - Bwana Devil - and despite having a budget of only $400,000 made $2.7 million at box office.

1973

The Exorcist was one of the first classic horror films to be made in full Metro colour.

1976 

The Video Home System (VHS) is launched by JVC.

1980

This decade of film has such a believably realistic feel that it is no wonder this generation of horror had evolved to Thriller/Slashes such as The Shining, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street.

1982

Mary Whitehouse begins a campaign against 'Video Nasties'.

1991 

The Silence of the Lambs is a 1991 American thriller that blends elements of  the crime and horror genres.

1994 

Anne Rice's gothic classic - Interview with A Vampire - is made into a film, in which Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt feature.

1995 

Another advance in the horror film evolution is Se7en. Strong ethical beliefs are tested in these horror films as new age demonic and satanic type horrors are released as people wanted to watch what they could mentally challenge. 

The 90's brought us the Dolby Digital sound system which enhanced the thrill of watching horrors significantly.

2000

Final Destination reiterated the possible reality of another medium controlling us. The use of dead creatures/forces has been popular with the new decade of 2000-2009 with other films  following the same pattern.

(research from various sites, generic internet search to find dates etc.)