Preproduction

For my portfolio project, me and my group(Zhanae, Evicka, Ja'Niyah) are creating a horror movie opening scene that will follow all the conventions of the horror genre. Before we started this project, we picked are groups by interviewing our classmates, once we found the people we wanted to be in are groups based on the questions we asked. The next day we were giving a group contract that we had to sign and give back. Right after that, that's when we actually started on the planning process, we made a short story that consist of what our story will pertain followed by the different plot points. Once we turned in our story, we research different things in the horror movie genre to understand what these films consist of, then we did our script and storyboard.

Case study

                                The ring

History/target audience

The director Gore Verbinski created this movie to portray the genre of a supernatural/horror film to the audience of pre-teens and adults(pg-13 rated). It is based off of the supernatural horror novel written by Koji Suzuki published in 1991. 

Production

The ring was produced by Walter F. Parkes. This film was produced by Blumhouse Productions which is mainly known for producing horror films. The ring(2002) had a budget of $48,000which was a large amount for a horror film. Provided that, this is the biggest budget Blumhouse Productions as given in the last 20 years which was 20 million from US(2019).

Distribution

The ring was distributed by DreamWorks Pictures. This film was theatrically released on October 18,2002 and was put onto multiple streaming services. Some of these streaming services consist of paramount plus, Hulu plus, iTunes, amazon instant video, google play, and Vudu. 

Marketing

In order for them to advertise the movie, they created many promotional websites that showed a preview of the character and the places of the film. After that physical VHS copies were distributed outside of the theaters by placing the tapes on windshields of peoples cars. This initial success came from DreamWorks which helped to increase the film into 700 additional theaters. The ring made $8.3million in its first two weeks in Japan and $6.6 millions total box office.

Cross-media convergence and synergy

This film has a introduction that brings interest to the audience when it says based on true events, this has many viewers wondering if the haunted videotape is actually real which helps to increase the sales price.

                            Script Writing

The genre horror is a film genre that is scary for entertainment purposes only. The intended audience for this type of film consists of younger audiences because they are most likely to seek thrill. The purpose of horror movies is to give the viewer an insight on their biggest fears and worst nightmares.

Production, distribution, exhibition

                       Production, distribution, 

                             and exhibition

Production:

• When researching about the production aspect of films I have found that this refers to the making of these films; finding the idea, writing the script, pitching it to a studio, setting a budget, casting stars and employing a crew, filming, and editing.

• In addition to the setting a budget component, production needs its investors in order to get this necessary funding. The global cinema industry box office is a successful company and so these investors try to reduce the risk of losing money by difficult decisions. 90% of these box office takings come from the "big six" these six majors consist of: Paramount pictures, Universal, 20th Centaury fox, Warner bros. pictures, Walt Disney, and Columbia pictures. Some movie studies the create the best horror movies are Blumhouse, platinum dumes, ghost house pictures, Lionsgate films. But a ideal production company that I would do to produce my own film  is Blumhouse.

• When making a production, there is a few potential risks that lead to questions; What level of audience will it attract?, Level of funding necessary?, Is it marketable?, Will the funding make a profitable return?. These questions are needed because if the answer is no to any of these then changes will be made to the details of the film to make sure its a yes but apart from that these investors will take their money somewhere else.
• After the investors make the funding available(greenlit) the director can then start filming. 
• When doing the production portion it is important set budgets for example the horror film Scream, just for production the budget is $31,085,973. But for the most profitable film "Paranormal activity", against its poultry budget of $15,000 it earned $193 million.

Distribution:

• When making a advertising plan, the film distributor must decide how it will present a film to a directed audience. Once they do that they can look for the unique selling point or the unique selling proposition(USP) to see what aspects of their products are better than competitors.
• After they look at the main components of the film and taking them into consideration, then they have to decide what elements to stress in the market place to figure out how they want to put their product onto the market.
• Some ways to market films: poster, trailers, online and mobile content, special screenings/ premieres, interviews/articles, merchandise.

Exhibition:

• Film exhibition is the last stage to the films expedition from the idea to the audience.
• Once the cinema is released, the film will be available on different platforms

Source:

https://www.slideshare.net/robertclackmedia/productiondistributionexhibition-an-intro-final-for-media

Horror Films Research

                      Horror film research

                              Horror film components

Visual elements: From my research on horror films, some common visual elements in mise-en-scene; settings that are in a cabin or forest at night used to gain a tense fearsome atmosphere and dark areas used to help with jump scares. Props that consist of weapons like chainsaw, knifes, spiritual artifacts, and crosses/bibles. The dark lighting such as low-key lighting used to conceal whoever is hiding in the dark and it helps to create shadows. The color's used such as red can be used to signify a lot of blood is being used, also the usage of black can portray evil nature or lost soul and white could mean that the character is good and pure. In cinematography birds eye view, close up, tracking or panning, tilted angle, low angle, handheld camera shots. In editing match cuts, jump cuts, parallel editing, fade in/out, cross cut.

Auditory elements: In horror films some sounds commonly used are instruments, breathing, footsteps, ghosts, stabbings, 

Characters: In horror films, the common protagonist and antagonist consist of the non believer, hero, hysterical character, villain(killer, slasher, clown, masked characters)

Representation: Common representations in horror films are a chain of unfortunate train of events

                       Music Video Project

For my Media Studies class, I had to do a music video project with a group of my friends. This music video project consisted of us having to choose a holiday song for the first part of our project then we had to do a script write, storyboard, film, edit, publish the final project. 

                           Song choice/ concept summary

The project first started with us having to write the people in our groups names on a sheet of paper, then we pick the song of our choice which was Winter Wonderland by  Bryson Tiller and then we jotted down some ideas of what the concept of the video was going to be. For example, we wrote down that we were going to have people dancing in our video for the instrumental parts, different shots of us singing different lyrics of the song,  

                                     Script Writing

In addition, to us choosing the song/concept summer we had to script write. When doing our script write we used studio binder to look at the way in which it was done. We looked over the things on the example, we made are own using the feature that studio binder had that allowed us to script write. Provided that, we  did our own script write giving details about the 8 scenes we had. The details of consisted of where we were going to film(setting) and the lines we were going to say in each scene.

                                         Storyboard

For the storyboard we had to do it on a word document using the storyboard templates on studio binder. In the storyboard we had to number the scenes, the shots in the scene, and we had to correlate the shot size to the duration of the song for everyone's part. After that I added a description for each shot in the scene for example, the description would consist of me saying whos part it is for that scene along with the what kind of camera shot in is(medium shot, medium close up, and long shot.) 

                                       Filming/editing

The filming process was easy but we had to keep filming some shots either because we didn't like it and we keep messing up. The filming process took us about 3-4 days and within those days we were able to get the shots down. Once we finished filming the day after we started editing. We started editing in class but we had to finish the rest once we got home. The editing software we used was clipchamp, we inserted the videos and got to editing. We took some parts out, added transition's like fade in/fade out.

Editors Review

 

                 Editing Software Review

For my editing software review,  three video editing software's that I've researched is openshot.org; clipchamp.com; vimeo.com because they meet at least one requirements.

                               Compare and Contrast 

Minimum Requirements:

Accessible from anywhere (Web-based): Clipchamp.com; Vimeo.com

Ability to lay multiple tracks ( Audio and video): Clipchamp.com; Openshot.org

Ability to strip or mute audio and natural sounds from video: Openshot.org: Clipchamp.com; Vimeo.com

Ability to collaborate with other users: Clipchamp.com; Vimeo.com

Evaluation:

When choosing between these editing softwares, it was a hard decision choosing between clip champ or open shot but open shot doesn't meet the requirements completely. The video editing software package that I plan on using for my portfolio (component 1) is Clip champ. Based on my research I have chosen clip champ because clip champ meets all my minimum requirements and it has more features that the other editing softwares may lack. For example, on clip champ I can adjust audio levels to my liking, add multiple audio tracks, or mute or replace audio completely. Clipchamp.com is accessible from anywhere, its web-based and clip champ allows you to create/join a team to start collaborating with others.