First draft of script

Int                        Bathroom

A young girl is taking a bath whilst shaving her legs. Unexpectedly there is a quick shadow of a figure. It cuts back to the girls face, now looking worried. All of a sudden there are a pair of hands, which strangle the girl   and push her under the water. The girl is struggling under the water and making large splashes. The figure gets the razor and slashes the girl’s throat. The mask falls over the camera, causing to fade to black.

Int                        Bedroom

In a teenage girls bedroom, there is a close up of Katie’s eyes. She is sleeping and her eyes suddenly open as if she has just had a nightmare.

Katie: (gasps)

She sits up; she is sweating and obviously distressed.

Ext                        Outside The College

Katie walks past the school gates and does a double take as she see’s flowers, messages, candles and a picture of the girl she dreamt about last night. Katie’s friend, Charlie joins her to look.

Charlie: Terrible isn’t it?

Katie jumps as Charlie has scared her. She looks confused.

Katie: Huh?

Charlie: Fifth student in two weeks, they’re talking about shutting the school.

Katie: (hysterically) I dreamt this, I knew this was going to happen!

Charlie: Katie, are you ok? I’m taking you to the nurse.

Int                        Nurse’s Office

Katie is in the nurse’s office, drinking a cup of water and trying to calm down.

Katie: I knew what was going to happen to Lucy. I can’t explain it; it was like a premonition or something.

Charlie: I believe you. Two years ago, my sister told me about this girl in her year that went crazy. She said she had these weird dreams about her friends dying and then they actually did.

Katie: Where is she now?

Charlie: The Looney bin.

Int                        Inside psychiatric ward

A creepy looking girl is staring into space; she is rocking forwards and backwards and whispering to herself. Katie walks in, curious by the girl.

Katie: Hello?

Girl: (whispering) It’s my fault, it’s my entire fault.

Katie: The murders?

The girl begins to laugh hysterically and points to under Katie’s chair. Katie looks under the chair and picks up a book. She opens it and screams, touching the pictures in the book. They are of the students; the dead ones have a red cross over the picture, which look like it has been done by blood.

Ext                        Forest

In a dark forest at night, a young girl is running through the woods frantically screaming and crying. She is obviously being chased. She has make-up down her face and her clothes are torn.

Girl: (crying) No! Help me.

She runs into a branch and it knocks her out. She wakes up with the masked figure over her, who continues to stab her multiple times in the stomach. Close up on her face, as blood spills out of her mouth and the black mask falls onto the camera, where it fades to black.

Int                        Bedroom

In a teenage girls bedroom, there is a close up of Katie’s eyes. She is sleeping and her eyes suddenly open as if she has just had a nightmare.

Katie: (gasps)

She sits up; she is sweating and obviously distressed. She looks down and there is the mask in her bed.

Film Synopsis

Synopsis

In a small British countryside town of Crookhorn, where nothing exciting ever happens, Katie a confused teenage girl is having strange premonitions about her closest friends dying. Every night whilst she sleeps, her distressing dreams reveal a dark and dangerous figure in a mask killing her friends one by one. In the morning, that dream has become reality.

Not being able to trust anyone, Katie confides in her school teacher, who is extremely interested in the strange goings on. The teacher advises her to visit the psychiatric ward to talk to a young girl who also claims she has had paranormal premonitions. Katie unwillingly stumbles across a book she wishes she hadn’t.

When she finds her best friend Jenny gruesomely killed by the unknown, Katie starts to give up and await her own fatality. As the deaths add up, she begins to realise the masked killer might be closer to her than she imagined. 

Audience Questionnaire Results

I asked people only in this age group, as this is the age of the market I will be targetting. I shall be creating my teaser trailer purposley for the needs of people within this age band.

This data shows that more people like horror films then not, which re-establishes the popularity of the horror genre.

Audience Research Questionnaire

On the website freeonlinesurveys.com I created a free survey to find out what is most preferred in a horror movie. The link to my survey is here

Click here to take the test

Taking the next step...

Today I finished all of the pre-production questions and completed our analysis of a film magazine cover and also discussed the synopsis so I can establish a clear plot for my trailer and also considered possible ideas for the location. A location I have been thinking about is an old victorian style house, as we need a bedroom. We also would ultimately like to have a typical forest scene, so we would need to think about different forest's we could film in.

We thought about characters and would like to use a main girl and also other small parts for the gruesome murders. We also considered props and everything we would require for filming and pre-production. This would be a black mask, a bed, fake blood etc. Next week we hope to look at our location in detail and also write up our synopsis from act 1 to end. We also hope to devise a rough draft of our script, which we will be inputing ideas onto a mind-map throughout this week.

Horror film trailers

I have analyzed three trailers which are Paranormal Activity, Halloween 2 and The Hills Have Eyes 2.

Out of these three trailers i feel that Paranormal Activity is the one that has the strongest indication of the narrative. I think this because in the trailer there is a lot of quick shots of footprints and things flying at the camera, and objects crawling under the bed cover. By doing this i think that they have put all the scary parts from the film into the trailer so that most of the narrative is given out in the trailer so that you have a lot of knowledge about the film already before you have seen it. There is also speech from the characters in the trailer which give more of the narrative away such as talking about catching a phenomenon and such things like "I feel it breathing on me". I feel that this gives too much away because the audience knows that there is something in their house which they can't see just by the trailer of the film.

However, I think that Halloween 2 is the opposite and doesn't give a lot of indication of the narrative away. In this trailer there is a lot of screaming and no indication of what it is about, there is also shots of a woman getting rushed into hospital and no indication of to why which leaves you in suspense, and leaves you feeling like you have to watch the film to see what actually happens in the film, like a trailer should do.

The Hills Have Eyes 2 trailer is also very similar to the Halloween 2 trailer, where it doesn't give a lot of information away. At the start there is shots of a girl screaming and no indication to what she is screaming for or about. Then it suddenly changes to something completely different where it looks like men in some form of dessert, which doesn't seem scary but then there is shots of things happening in the dessert, but you still don't get an idea of the real story line. There is also a bit of text on the screen about the film but it doesn't give too much away.

Analysing film magazine cover

As there are no magazine covers which feature our analysis of trailers or poster films, I have decided to analyse a front cover from Empire magazine which features the film Hulk. I believe this is relevant as it is from the same horror genre and provides the same connotations and themes.

The normal title of the magazine has been edited to fit in with the theme of the film, the font is very bold and has connotations of blood. The title has also been made to look like it has burst and broken, creating the atmosphere of aggression. They have used the word 'incredible' which relates back to the title of the film, this connects the audience and makes the theme appear consistent and more professional.

The character of the 'Hulk' has been made to look like he is breaking out of the magazine. Because it is a 3D cover, it has a greater impact on the audience as it is more realistic and life-like. The image in the middle also has direct eye-line to the audience which gives the impression of direct address as if it is singling out the reader. It also reinforces his strength and power because it shows him breaking through a concrete wall.

The word 'Hulk' is bigger than the rest of the text on the cover and is in the same consistent green color to make it stand out. Also it enables the audience to recognize and establish the film title. The front cover is very simplistic and gives no information about what is in the contents of the actual magazine. This emphasises the focus on the film and shows its importance. The color scheme is also very simple which consists of green, black, grey and white. This enables the title of the magazine, which is in red, so be the most bold text on the cover. The word 'unleashed' emphasises the fact that the 'Hulk' is trying to break out and how aggressive he is.