The opening horror sequence. Group work

Film title: Axiom
Film idea: Heather Schreuder



The film starts from the frame of sleeping 17 years old girl and camera slightly moves from the right to the left horizontally as a Pan technique. During these movements, three flashbacks sparks. All flashbacks are shown in black and white and a bit green light with kind of white noise on the screen to create a perception that all these events were performed in the past. We also added a white noise to give flashbacks frames more mystery because all these scenes are in girl's mind so they must represent that the girl is unconscious. Camera moves to the left and first flashback appear. In the first one we can see the scene of argument of two adults (girl's father and mother) who are shouting at each other then we can use either fade out or the similar spark to move rapidly from a flashback to girl in a bed and camera will still move horizontally to her head. After few seconds of pan another spark appears getting us back to the argument of two adults and suddenly the male grabs a knife and stab the female. After first strike cut to a little girl who is watching behind the wall on this scene then cut to the knife and in moment of second strike - cut to girl who is scared and frightened because, as we can understand, the male is the father of this girl and right now he is killing his wife and girl's mother. When the father finishes he work we want to use an allude which will predict next events so the father just throws the knife under the cupboard. (Later, the grown girl comes to her old house to find out any evidences or hints why she sees these flashbacks and her father guilt). One more spark or fade out, camera almost films the girl's head. Spark back to the last episode of flashback where the father goes to girl's room and trying to find her but she hides under a bed and then he rapidly bended under the bed. After this scene all sequence gains a great speed and the frame surface from girl's eye and she suddenly wakes up with thrilled face. Our group decided to use as a main location Hurtwood main building and its boarding house because we need two rooms with beds (where little girl hidden and where grown girl slept because there must be two different rooms). And also we will use one room which looks like a living room where the scene of argument will be filmed. The little girl and the living room will be lightened by key light for making it more harsh, aggressive and exciting because of the presence of villain and another bedroom with adult girl will be just a bit dark because she wakes up at night. Regarding the characters we are planning to take in a film one 7 year old girl with a permission of parents and her willing to play and also take two or three A2 students who will play the father, the mother and the adult one girl who slept. The murderer will have an appearance of good and kind father, may be a bit skinny with kind eyes to twist the stereotype about the killer must be looked like big, masculine and scary guy to our advantage because nobody expect to see a really 'good father' as a murderer. We decided to wear the father mostly in black clothes because black colour always represents an evil or danger and the mother, in opposite, will be wear in white clothes to underline her innocence and the role of victim.

Plan of my horror film

Plan Of The Film Sequence

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What is a horror film?

A horror film serves lots of purposes and there are the main of them:

1) Personal - the audiences own identification with the fears or threats of the narrative - tapping into primal fears of:

- The creature/other in the darkness. Body being ripped/mutilated. These are the basic tricks of horror films where presence of more powerful villain and a few killed victims is one of the main rules.
- Emergence of terror but from a safe (vicarious) distance and viewer understands that all sequence on the screen is unreal.



2) Ideological - the implicit (hidden) or explicit (obvious) messages embedded in the narrative. Themes of punishment/redemption and/or revulsion at any subject which deviates from correct 'thinking'.
Beginning from the 'basic' textual messages, for example, the 'virgin and innocent' young girl (primarily blond one to underline her innocence by the hair color). She can be one of the first victims if there is the same innocent but much smarter girl who survives at the end of the film. Because the death of such character will get us more excited and make us against the villain who kills innocent people.

Example of typical victims from the 'Scream' movie trailer:




3) Financial and Industrial is one of the most significant part of continually re-invent and exploit that is why horror franchises are the most popular and the same characters can appear in five or even more part, for example, SAW franchise, Halloween, Friday 13th, Nightmare on the Elm street, etc.
This thing works because in all horror films there are basical tricks which woke up one of our fears despite how many times we watched the similar films. The main thing in horror film is an idea of the villain so if he was created with animalistic/mysterious/superstitious signs who might wear a mask (if villain is a human) to multiply our perception that this character is not like we are and if he wears a mask it creates another fear of something unknown because we don't know what is under the mask and we even can associate this character with demons. In addition from year to year the modern technologies gives directors opportunities for filming even more horrible film than a previous re-make.


Comparison of original Friday 13th and the last re-make.

Friday 13th (1980)



Friday 13th (2009)

Intro to stills camera

Because photography and all images have their own meaning and atmosphere we must to know and understand the language of pictures (eg. shapes, shadows and different shades from light to dark, textures, patterns, lines, colors) and know how to use it to deliver the exact information to viewer that we want. Just as we planning to write a speech we should use the basic laws to make our photographs and still frames understandable.
Composition means arrangement: so we should put together of parts to make a unified whole, make a composition as an intuitive act.
There are several rules and principles that govern the way visual elements behave and interact with them and combine in four borders of a photograph.
Once we have used these ideas and even sharpened our vision, we will have an opportunity to make a photo more exciting and effective that ever before.


One of basic rules is a Rule of Thirds.

This rule is useful not only photographers but amongst artists too.
It works like we are drawing imaginary lines dividing an image into three both vertically and horizontally.
You should place the most important object(s) where these lines intersect.
Using this rule helps to create a balanced picture with important objects with more clear vision because they are exactly on the lines and support objects on all free space where no lines are so they can look blur and this will underline their second role.
The last thing about Rule of Thirds is the tome being.
You may want to brake this rule as soon as possible and it’s okay because the main purpose of this rule is just to teach young people to see objects in these frames to recognise main and support objects and how to place them. After we learnt and used it, we can even break it to make our frame more unusual and sometimes surreal to create more exciting picture which will make the viewer to think why this picture is not as usual as others.

Intro to video camera

On the first half-term we had an intro to video camera in which our teacher showed us the basics of using video camera, how to make a primitive shots and how to use tripod correctly.
First of all we were presented how to set up camera correctly not damaging the lens and then turn it on. So, the camera almost ready to shoot but then we were presented for the pan handle and special levers to make the camera movement steady and smooth or in opposite fast and harsh.
Then we learnt how to 'bubble' the tripod which means the process to establish the tripod in exactly right position for this particular frame and we can know about it by an indicator on tripod which shows us the rights position when the bubble is right in the centre of the circle.
After we learnt these basics the camera was connected to TV to show us what we can see on camera display and to know their meaning.
For example, our teacher represented us Db indicator which show us the level of artificial light and we don't have an extreme need in it, the level of Db's should be always zero.
When the microphone was attached to camera, teacher told us that its omni directional so all sounds around this mic will be recorded so we should be really careful when filming to avoid unnecessary sounds on the background of film.
There are different filters to balance the light in the shot and the most popular and used are four of them:
1 3200k indoor
2 5600k outdoor with 1/4 Nd
3 5600k outdoor clear
4 5600k outdoor with 1/6 Nd
Finally, the last thing which was presented to us were an angles which can captured by camera. They can be wide or standard and it mostly depend on what screen you are going to watch this film because the standards of 80-90s TVs was a standard frame and the new one which becomes more and more popular is a wide screen.
With this knowledge we are ready to start filming and up to this time we already tried ourselves in a roles of directors, cameramen, actors and, mainly, generators of ideas and scenarios how to make our realisation of storyboard exemplar the best.