In this blog, I will explain my process of how I created my rough draft for my title card. The reason I call it a rough draft is that it is open for revisions at any time from now till the due date. This blog was originally supposed to be about my actors and the set location, but because I still haven't found people who are willing to act, I decided to jump ahead on my schedule so I'm not set too far back.
So first, I had to go on YouTube and figure out how to do a title. I went to a variety of different channels, trying to find a video that will really benifit me. The video linked below is was actually got me to create my title sequence.
Before getting into animating the title and all of that, I had to find a font for my title. I already knew I didn't want a very thick or decadent font for the title, but rather something simplistic that can still send creepy vibes to the audience. The resononing being becasue I feel like titles that are very bold and big go with very supernatural (monsters, ghost) kinds of productions like "Goosebumps".
To get my fonts, I just went to Adobe Fonts and typed in horror. It took me a while to really decide on which one to do, but after some trial and error, I found the perfect one.
Nonetheless, it oddly felt like a perfect fit with the aura my film was going to give off, and at the end of the day, when I'm finished filming, and the font doesn't look good with my finished product, I can easily change it.
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This is how my title would come in the frame . As you can see it isn't all displayed at once, but it gradually appears. |
font. https://fonts.adobe.com/search?query=horror
https://fonts.adobe.com/search?query=horro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ld7aAnG7O0
Now that I only have about a month till the brief is due, I have to put myself on a tight schedule in order to make sure I get everything done in time.
In this post, I will discuss how I want my film to be organized. I wrote it down on paper because that's what feels most natural to me, but I will also explain it in text form in more depth.
So to break down my opening, I labeled it into four main parts: the murder, the title sequence, and the brother. The paper shows four different sections but after really thinking on having a time contrint of only about 2 minutes, I had to cut out a section.
This section consists of the foreshadowing that I stressed my film will have. In this scene, a static shot close-up of a knife in a dark room will be shown being picked up from a countertop. Then you will hear heavy breathing and groaning from what sounds like a gagged man. Following this, you will hear stabbing sounds and screaming coming from that man. After 5 seconds, the screaming will stop, and a different voice will whisper "filthy" whilst breathing heavily. This scene will then cut to black.
I discovered that in the first minute, you don’t want to shock the audience, but you want to make them curious and slightly uncomfortable. This could be done with normal everyday actions that feel off, strange backgrounds, subtle camera movement, or odd sounds.
For example, many horror openings start with normal people in normal places, but the little touches- weird lighting, silent sounds, or unsettling camera movement- make you feel something isn’t quite right yet. These kinds of tricks are talked about in filmmaking guides, which explain how lighting and framing can make viewers feel “on edge” before anything scary happens.
This early tension works because it makes the audience’s imagination start filling in the blanks and the imagination is one of the scariest tools in a slasher movie.
Despite this fact, I might want to challenge this convention simply because I want my film's opening to transition from scary right off the bat, to what seems like a " day in the life" kind of film- building tension and keeping the audience puzzled on how the initial scary scene's foreshadowing will be revealed in the rest of the film. My mindset for this brief is to think about if I were making a full film, even thought im not. This helps me to make meaningful decisions on how to start my film.
By the end of the first four minutes, the audience should feel anxiety and suspense, even if they haven’t seen anything truly terrifying yet.
A lot of the best psychological horror films build up tension through pacing, slow, quiet moments that make viewers wait for something to happen. That stretch between “nothing scary yet” and “something scary might happen any second” builds fear in the audience. Websites that discuss horror filming techniques explain that filmmakers use lighting, sound, and camera angles to play with the audience’s nervous system and make them feel tension without showing grotesque images right away.
Also, movie discussions and fan threads show that part of what makes an intro feel scary isn’t the monster, but it’s the suspense, silence, and the feeling of not knowing what’s going on. Viewers often say that the best intro scenes are ones that just make them tense and on edge.
Sources
https://raindance.org/crafting-fear-filming-techniques-to-evoke-emotion-in-horror-movies/
https://raindance.org/crafting-fear-filming-techniques-to-evoke-emotion-in-horror-movies/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagged_Mind?utm_source
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagged_Mind?utm_source
For this blog, I will be planning out the title bit of my film opening. First, I started with the basic traits of a horror film title.
For my film, I will only be working with myself and outside actors. I've settled on a Psychological Slasher film as my subgenre. I think I'm going to use a professional camera to film because filming off a phone will never give the same effects as a real professional camera. Though I've had experience with such cameras, I need a better understanding of how to use settings like ISO and different filters to ensure my visuals are at least near-perfect. I want to edit in Premiere Pro because that's what I'm most familiar with. To execute this film correctly, however, I will have to do a lot of editing and research on how to do certain things. This includes: smoothly adding title cards, using color correction, and getting an overall understanding of the editing software itself.
As explained before, I will have my film target American girls born into the Gen Z demographic. This is easiest to achieve because I meet all of those traits. Also, that is the most common type of person to watch horror films, according to statistics.
The social issue that I chose to present in my brief is family dynamics and gender roles/representation. I chose these two because in my film opening, I want the main character to be a teen girl who lives in a dysfunctional family where her older brother is the killer of the family. I want the brother to be somewhat overprotective of the MC to a point where it's concerning. This displays the view of men thinking women are less dependent, while also showing how the dysfunction of the family can take a toll on each member's personal life.
Now that I've pretty much completed my research, I will create a basic outline of things that will take place in my opening.
So, in the first minute of my film, I want it to show the killer in their room/workspace with there signiture weapon. I think this might be a knife and then a cut to tiltle card. I then want it to cut to the main character doing something basic in their home, like waking up for school and getting ready. I want the elder brother to come out of his room and watch her suspiciously. I want him to continue to remind her to be careful out and mentioning killings happening. All the while, his left hadn isnt shown in the camera, and when she leaves the house, it will show the brother entering his room and locking it with his left hand being shown with the weapon in hand.
This is a very basic and subject to minor alterations. To make sure I know how to execute this right, I will try to practice filming different camera angles and get examples from movies. I will do little excersizes off my phone going scene by scene, making sure I have a clear view for how I want the scenes to be filmed.
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| Wide shot from Hereditary |
Now that most of my research is finished, it's time to start planning. I'm excited for this part because I've been brainstorming different outlines for my film. I chose to see a Psychological Slasher film opening for my brief. I did so because I enjoy watching films that mess with the human mind. The concept of technical elements like various camera shots and angles affecting how a person can view things interests me. I chose to work alone because I need things to be done in the EXACT way that I want them. This characteristic of mine would most likely make it very hard to work well with others.
Subjective narration is when a story is told from a character’s personal point of view, meaning the audience only experiences events as that character does, with their fears, confusion, and limited understanding of the events taking place. In horror films, this technique is used to increase tension and fear by restricting information and making viewers unsure of what is real. Directors often rely on point-of-view shots, distorted visuals, unsettling sound design, and unreliable narrators to place the audience inside the character’s mind. This creates unease because the audience cannot see danger clearly or trust what they are witnessing.
This technique is common in horror because it makes the audience feel the character’s fear and uncertainty. For example, horror movies often show everything through the character’s camera, so we only know what they know, which can be confusing and scary. Nonlinear or fragmented films, like "Memento", show events out of order to reflect memory loss or mental struggles. Filmmakers also use things like point-of-view shots, strange camera angles, distorted sounds, and quick cuts to make the audience feel what the character is feeling. Subjective and fragmented narration makes stories more immersive and unsettling because the audience experiences the story through the character’s mind instead of seeing a clear, objective version of events.
Fragmented or nonlinear narration is different from subjective narration because it focuses on how the story is structured in time, rather than whose perspective we see. In a fragmented or nonlinear story, events are shown out of order: past, present, and future may be mixed together, so the audience has to piece the story together themselves. The narrator might be objective or subjective, but the main point is that the timeline is broken, which can create suspense, confusion, or reflect a character’s memory or trauma.
In contrast, subjective narration is about seeing the story through a character’s personal perspective, not necessarily about rearranging time. Fragmented narration can be combined with subjective narration, but you can also have a fragmented story told from a neutral, outside point of view. Essentially, fragmented/nonlinear narration changes the structure of events, while subjective narration changes the lens through which we experience them.
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| A scene from the movie Jagged Mind. |
After long anticipation, I've finally finished my CCRs. They took lots of work, but I'm very pleased with the way they all came out!...
