James Wan is a Malaysian Australian film director he has directed some of the best, biggest, scariest horror films such as some of the saw films, Insidious, Insidious: Chapter 2 and The Conjuring. All of these films have appeared in cinemas across the globe. He is a very good director and widely acknowledged around the world. He tends to focus on horror films but he has also directed Fast and Furious 7 another big blockbuster hit. He has won many awards in his career, including the Pegasus Audience award, Special Jury Prize and Youth Jury Grand Prize all for the hit film Saw. Saw made a gross of $102,898,663 wroldwide from a budget of 1.2 million dollars which is amazing.
I have inserted music over my blog which is the type of music used in horror films. It is spooky and gives you a chill down your spine, making you feel scared. This type of music is good in horror films as it is generally used to build tension up and then scare the audience, this is a very effective technique that most horrors if not all will use.
Wednesday 27 November 2013
Every horror film is different, each has a different genre, some are about the supernatural, ghosts and possessions and then there is natural horror where there is a murderer which is human or animal. Personally I find the supernatural horror films a lot scarier as the character tends to be unknown and this mystery makes you feel scared of the character. There are also horror films that use different actors which change the type of horror it is, for instance a teen horror uses teenagers to be the actors who are possessed or murdered throughout the film.
A good horror character makes the audience fear them. They need to have a background story to them as to why they do what they do, such as they were bullied as a child and they are going back to kill the bullies, something along those lines. They should have a different thinking style to other people, should be evil thinking. Take Michael Myers in Halloween, he wears a mask that has no facial features, a character in a horror that has no face visible can be more scary then when you can see the murderer. At the very start of the first film he goes upstairs and stabs his sister to death. We then know that he is emotionless,his family isn't worth much to him, but we don't know why he did this. Another good character is Jigsaw from saw, he is a very mysterious person and captures people who have done bad things and tortures them. He also uses a doll which is creepy looking and makes the audience fear it. Further scary characters are Freddy Kreuger in friday 13th and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
A horror film has the audience on edge throughout, scared of what is going to happen next. It needs to have a main character that the audience will be afraid of seeing when it appears on screen, this can be human or creature. It has to have the audience guessing, cant be too obvious. The setting of the film must have a spooky feel to it otherwise the audience wont be scared of it. I think that having scary music over the back, like the music on my blog, when something is about to happen can increase the fear in the audience.
I have drawn inspiration from this picture, it is from the film Dog Soldiers in which soldiers are doing a drill in the Scottish highlands and they are attacked by werewolves. In the scene we can see in the picture a werewolf is attacking someone who lives in the highlands, it is set in the woods, but veers off from traditional horrors as it is very open and we can see what is surrounding and happening around the characters. This takes away the element of surprise so I think it is better to film somewhere more enclosed as it gives a more spooky feel about it.
As a group we have chosen to make a horror film opening sequence. We have done a lot of research into films of all genres and decided that we have good resources and some possible locations to film it, so it would be best to do a horror film.
This image is from The Cabin in the Wood. It gives me inspiration for my opening title sequence, mainly due to the setting as i would like to film part of my opening sequence in the woods. The cabin is also very spooky and creates an image of mystery. The Cabin in the Woods is a horror film and just from this picture we get an idea that it is from the darkness taking over part of it and the mysterious, scary look about it. Also we can see the woods around it are very crowded meaning we can't see what's going on in them, adding to the spooky, mysterious feel.
I was walking through the woods by my house and thought this would be a good location to film my opening sequence. As I am not to sure on what I am going to make for my opening title sequence the location could change but i think this will be a good location to film as there is a lots of open space, I can also go out into the fields next to it and the housing estate so there is a lot of space to film in. This also means the genre can be whatever as you can change the mood by changing location.
I decided it would be best for me to do an in depth analysis of an opening title sequence, I chose to do final destination 5 as I'm probably going to make a horror film myself. I thought it would be a good idea to do a timeline of everything that happened during the sequence, this allowed to have a greater understanding of what happens in this sequence and also what many films of this genre might use to draw the attention of the audience. I could also use some of the information I gained from this when planning and creating my opening title sequence.
From using my time plan I learnt that throughout pretty much the whole opening title sequence, an explosion happens and a credit comes out of this explosion, also a random object comes out of these explosions. I think this gives the audience clues as to how people are going to be killed off in the film, keeping their audience guessing and therefore entertained. CGI is used very heavily throughout this opening sequence, this costs a lot of money especially as it is used so that the explosions look very realistic, this lets the audience know that a lot of money has been put into making the film. There isn't any part of the opening sequence which is filmed so that we can know where the location of the film is, but we can sort of get a location from the objects flying out of the screen at you. There are numerous objects that fly out, like a propeller from an aeroplane we can assume that part of the film may be in an aeroplane or at an airport, in another point lots of kitchen knives fly at you so there may be a part of the film that is located in a kitchen. Yet again this has the audience guessing and interested in to what's going to happen in the film.
The opening sequence doesn't have a particular order in which the credits are shown to the audience. It starts off with the Warner Bros Pictures and New line cinema own designs of credits and then it cuts into the films opening title sequence. The New line cinema credit is repeated highlighting the importance of their company in the making of the film. After the presents and production credits the film name appears and fades away, then come all the other credits. One thing I noticed was that the film title was a lot bigger than the other credits which all the same size, this made it stand out. All credits throughout were the same colour and all centre screen, this shows that they are all of equal importance to one another. They all had the same entry to the screen as well, exploding out towards the audience and fading away. At the end it comes to who the film is written and produced by, the credits are then broken up by lots of explosions and objects flying everywhere after these the directors name explodes out. I think this has been done so that the director is away from the other credits and shows he is more important. The opening sequence then ends with lots of explosions again.
Throughout the opening sequence there are lots of hints to what is going to happen in the film and what it is about. The use of heavy loud music in the background creates tension and a darkening mood. The CGI, explosions and objects flying everywhere lets the audience know there will be action and death in the film. Overall I think that although it is quite a simple opening title sequence it is very effective in getting the audiences attention and setting the mood for the film.
