Ideas 1, 2 & 3
Idea 1 For this idea we researched the subgenre Gothic Horror to see influence what we should be striving for with our film. From looking at the trailer of Dracula Untold (2014) we noticed that witches, vampires and other mythical creatures were typically included. We also noticed how our setting would preferably have to be set on large open fields and isolated caves. The period we would set this in would be around 1800’s as our research of this film showed that the film was based on Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. We also realised how there was always one strong hero who had previously defeated many other enemies, who would then have to face the mythical creature/monster.
Our Idea After our research we decided to go with the theme of having mythical creatures, and the mythical creature we chose was Vampire’s. To add a twist onto the Gothic Sub-genre, we are going to set it in present time, as it would connect with the audience we aim to target. Our idea is to have four immoral teenagers messing around in an abandoned Christian Church, as religion plays a key part in horror films. The windows would be shattered in specific places such as key people within the Christian religion such as Jesus, as the Vampire is a dark spirit who would rebel against this religion. There would be scratches and blood marks on the walls to foreshadow the deaths of the teens. However, the Church setting we would like to have may be unrealistic as it would be hard to locate, therefore we would have to find our own abandoned building and recreate our scene with props etc. We will have the characters being stereotypical in the way that they act, disobeying rules and having no morals. We decided to include teenagers, as this is our audience for our finished product. Our antagonist would be a Vampire. Our antagonist would be the Vampire, which we decided to call Remus, which is different enough to set this vampire apart from the norm of ‘Dracula’. Typically, Remus hunts down the teenagers who would die one by one, with the typical biting of the neck from the Vampire.
Idea 2 Our second idea is to recreate a supernatural horror film. This is a very popular sub-genre within the horror market today which has highly influenced our decision to create an idea for this. We have based our research of the film Ouija (2014) as this has recently been released. This was very popular to our target audience of teenagers which urged us to pick this film. A lot of editing goes into these films, so we understood that our main focus would largely be on the editing of special effects. We noticed that in these films typically things such as doors opening and closing by themselves happen frequently in order to build tension. Another main aim of these films are jump scares which are created with fast unexpected shots.
Idea 2 For this film we decided to have it set within a house. This house would have a backstory, which is seen often in this sub-genre; the backstory would be that the house is built on top of a graveyard. The spirits that have risen from their graves and into the house would be children and women as they stereotypically key supernatural characters within these films. Our characters that are living would be a stereotypical family (mother, father and two children – such as toddlers and babies) the spirits would connect with the toddler as this character is more imaginative than the parents so it is stereotypically seen that the toddler would be first contacted. The baby would abnormally cry, look at a random space, which heightens the fear of the audience; furthermore the baby would be the first attacked by the spirit, as they are the most vulnerable. The spirit usually hates the parents as they want to protect their children but the spirit (which is always a negative one) wants to posses them. The father would die and then the mother and children would get away which leaves a cliff hanger and creates suspense as at the end of the film we would we have a caption like ‘and they haven’t been seen since’.
Idea 3 Our third idea is a psychological horror. These films intend to play with your mind. Within this we aim to create plot twists and use elements of everyday fears to create fear in the audience. We looked at the Silent House trailer or inspiration, we liked the plot twist within the film which portrayed a victim who later on is actually the danger to the other characters.
Our Idea Our location would be in a village, which connotes isolation, as there wouldn’t be many people around. We would have four young characters (three girls and one boy). The main character would be the epicentre for the plot twists. Our characters would contain an immoral teenager, irritant, sensible and shy. The main character meets with the three other teenagers, they go off to an abandoned building. The main character will be the danger for the other characters, they will kill the other three; sensible first, then irritant and then immoral. The main character will be the shy one but with plot twists we will then create them to be the danger. The final scene will be important within this film, as the three dead characters will reappear.