Media Study Portfolio

My group and I have finalized our film locations, and our film will consist of several locations. The first place will be a empty house which we have access to, but the exact house is unknown for now as we wont recieve the location of it till next week. The other locations are off of W State Road 84, Markham Park, and my car. We choose to film our driving scene on the side of W Sate Road 84 because there is a little road on the side that no one drives down, and we will have no trouble filming there. I will also attach a picture with a amrked location for filming there. Then we are going to film in Markham Park because this is a gret location for a spooky forest like the one our charcater gets lost in. The trees in Markham park are very mosy and look great (great as in scary) because of their tall and grey look to them. I have circled a spot we would like to film in as there are usually not that many people in the location I choose. We also choose to use my car because we don't have

Today my group and I decided to skype because we are all in different places during spring break. We collaboratively decided we needed to shorten our film, because it was going to run over the 2-minute mark.   My group and I had a total of 5 scenes planned out, but this would take to long to film, so we decided to cut some parts of the first and second scene because they are not as relevant and meaningful as the other scenes. In a full movie these scenes would be very important, but because we only have a 2-minute window we cut out some of the intricate details we had planned out for the first scenes such as the main character getting ready, forgetting to lock his door, and the car having warning blinkers. All these minor details would mean something later in the film, but we have to cut them out. Cutting out these shots allows us to combine scenes one and two to make it into a less than 30 second first scene which gives us more time to film and work on our important or action scenes

I believe all horror films need some sort of music that keeps the audience on edge, for example every time the audience here’s a certain track playing, the audience knows something bad is going to happen soon because every time you hear the music something bad happens to a character. My group and I decided we are going to make a short little track to use once or twice in our film opening to put the audience on edge. Our inspiration for this is Psycho (1960) in this film there was a soundtrack of ‘stingers’ which were made with violins being slashed very hard to create a eerie noise that would bring up all the nerves and butterflies each time you heard it. This tactic has now been mirrored in countless horror films as this certain noise created by the violins just creates the creepy vibe that makes the hairs on the back of your neck spike up. I plan to record this track on Audacity which is a recording software I have had downloaded to my laptop for a while now, Audacity has all the t

Recently in our last class the group and I started discussing on what type of fonts we would use to show the credits and the title of the movie. So, I started researching and deciding which fonts would fit the theme the best. I found that in horror films the color red is most often used because it resembles blood and it is a very bold color. The color red is connotated to fear, aggression, danger, and anger. The red is usually a very bright crimson red to emphasize the pain and horror the character are going to have to survive through. The fonts used in horror films are usually very bold so the viewer feels the impact of the title, no horror film would use Arial or Times New Roman font because this would not allow the filmmaker to convey the genre of horror to the viewers. Horror films also tend to use fonts that seem to be written in blood or some type of liquid, another common font found in horror films is the hand written or carved font. These fonts emphasize the creepiness and ho

 This is our storyboard version 1.2 scene 2. This is a semi detailed version of our storyboard for scene 2. Just like scene 1 we have decided to add many little hints throughout the scene to help the audience figure out the storyline of the film opening. For example the main charcater left his phone at home which makes the audience nervous or worried as he will have no connections or a way to contact anyone if he gets in trouble. The character honks the horn at his friends house to signal he has no phone this foreshadows that the main character will be cut off from comunication and will have to fend for himself during the action of the film opening.

This is the storyboard version 1.1 of scene one. My group and I started developing a more detailed version of our storyboard becuase we want to be able to map out our scene opening in extreme detail. My group and I want to know exactly what are shots are going to look like so we don't have to deal with last minute changes to our project. In the first scene we decided to place a lot of hints and subliminal messages in the shots so the audience can figure out what is going to heppen before it happens. For example the note the main charcacter's mother left him is a sign of caution, but the chracter throws the note away which shows his carlessness, in another shot the the door is seen unlocked leaving the audience stressed and on edge as the main character leaves his house unlocked. Then at the last second you see his hand come and lock the door to ease the tension of the audience.

This is the general concept my group and I made for our main character/protagonist. This character is based off the basic teenage boy living in our city weston. This is a very rough sketch of the character because we do not really care how he looks, but we are more focused on how the charcater acts and behaves in our film opening. We want this charcater to represemt innocence and kindness as the audience genrally relates to this type of character more.

Almost all horror/thriller films, have some blood in some sort of way, either someone being murdered or hurt. In our film, we will need blood for the protagonist when he falls in the mountain biking scene, and also for our antagonist when he takes the protagonist to his bunker. We will need to learn how to make both oxygenated(fresh) blood and deoxygenated(old) blood. We found that the recipe below works best for our purposes on this ·          1/2 cup (118 ml) tropical fruit punch (Hawaiian Fruit Punch® works great.) ·          1 cup (237 ml) corn syrup ·          2 tablespoons (30 ml) of red food coloring ·          1 tablespoon (30 ml) of chocolate syrup ·          2 tablespoons of cornstarch ·          1 tablespoon of powdered cocoa This blood will be very essential to our film because the blood will be our main prop for the scary aspect of the film. We do not want to use weapons or crazy props for the film, simply because we do not have a budget for these props.

  I've come up with some ideas for my film opening, as my group and I intend to have a very well thought out introduction. We have decided to go ahead and stick to the horror genre. Not only do I find producing a film opening in this particular genre exciting and interesting, but we have also conducted the most research on this genre and feel most confident working in this area. I have studied many of the genre conventions in this category and am confident that I can put out a quality piece in this area.  There are many locations which we could use for our film in Broward, but the best place we have seen so far is Markham Park. A very enticing location is at Markham Park in Broward County, Florida. This spot has been used by many film students in Broward because it offers a very creepy vibe when entering into the very mossy and grey forest. Many of the trees’ have long vines of moss hanging from them adding to the creepy feel of the woods that is created here. The woods also ha

    In class, my group and I have begun to discuss who are characters are going to be, specifically the protagonist and antagonist.      After doing some research, I have found that there are  4 main types of villains. The evil villain, who has purely malicious intentions; the everyday antagonist, who simply opposes the main character and is not necessarily evil; the immoral entity, such as a totalitarian government; and the internal struggle, which would be an element of the protagonist itself. In our case, we find it best to use the evil villain as our antagonist. It is a horror movie, after all, and nothing strikes fear into the minds of people like a ruthless, senseless, killer.           For his backstory, the antagonist would have come from a rough family, where he dealt with great emotional trauma. The antagonist has a very dark soul and will show no remorse for his victims. The killer will be very mischievous and sneaky and will most likely not be seen at all or seen on

We have been molding our film opening scenes and have devised an outline during class on the different steps in the film opening. The outline is more specific than the original storyboard; next class we will create an updated, more precise storyboard that is better paired with our outline.       In our outline, we created the first five scenes of the opening, what we like to call "the buildup". In these scenes, we plan to build up the anticipation and suspense through various small details and hints that something might go wrong. Furthermore, with the use of slow, lingering shots we will focus on minute aspects of the film that may serve a more important role later on in the plot. The outline is a mix of the plot as well as shots and angles. We planned out all the scenes except the final scenes, where the antagonist will be introduced. We still are not sure where the antagonist will be situated in, and what his backstory is.       We intend to create a highly detailed sto

Psychological Thriller Analysis After researching and planning out some ideas for my trailer, I now believe the genre we are mirroring the most in our process is the Psychological Thriller sub-genre. This genre is what I believe our project mirrors and what I think we should attempt to create and follow in our trailer. A psychological thriller is sub-genre of horror that tends to focus heavily on its charcaters. This genre has strong elements of mystery, suspense, and drama. The charcaters in the film not only have to have the physical strength to survive whatever situation they may be in, but also have the mental strangth to survive. This is because the situations created by the filmaker are made to induce intense fear in the charcaters as the movie goes on, this may be in the form of a stalker, a unseen monster, or a killer on the loose. The possiblities are endless are endless in film making, but the idea my group would like to incorporate into our trailer is the unseen killer tha

This is our most basic and absract verrsion of the storyboard, my group made this in class when we were all just figuring out what basic scenes we would lie to shoot. I made this in paint excel so I could add text describing what I would like the viewers to feel in some shots, and what I want them to see as well. This is not a complete and finished storybaord I just wanted to make a very early version of the storyboard so we can fully see the development of my groups thoughts as we continue to work on our horror movie trailer. I believe this process will really map out my groups' thoughts and ideas for this trailer. This scenes are also very broad ideas for the scene and later storybaords will have more detial into individual shots and locations.                                                                                                                                                                             

Cabin in the Woods cover art. Another film that we have been looking at is The Cabin in The Woods. This film is about a stereotypical group of kids which are, the jock, the dumb blonde, the lazy friend, the scared cat/puss, and the smart one. These kids then go out on a RC trip to a cabin in the woods for a summer getaway and expect to have the best time of their lives, but they have no idea what’s in store for them. (Spoiler) The plot of the movie is a underground facility makes young kids go out to this cabin and they pump the cabin full of hormones to make them make stereotypical dumb horror movie decisions such as splitting up and going into the basement alone. The facility does this as a ritual to appease the gods. This is not the direction we want to steer the trailer to, but the trailer of the movie is very close to how we want to present our trailer, but with some infusion of the inspiration from the Blair Witch Project. The trailer of The Cabin In the Woods is very hig

I have been researching horror films to find inspiration for our trailer, and one of the films I believe is exactly how we want to present our film is the Blair Witch Project. The Blair Witch Project released in 1999 is an American psychological thriller that takes place in the woods of Maryland. The film has the three protagonist who are three young film makers making a documentary about the Blair Witch. The Blair Witch is a scary legend of the town of many young kids being killed. Although the trailer of the movie itself is not how we intend to do our trailer, there are some elements of the trailer I would like to incorporate. One aspect of the trailer which I believe mirrors our intentions is the short hand-held clips of the trailer that show the audience that the film is hand shot, and more of a documentary style of film. The rest of the trailer is just text that explains the film as the movie is based of true events of a real missing peoples case. The style we intend to use in