My A2 Film Studies, FM3 Creative Project, consists of an extended sequence from an imagined film. The creative process involved pre-production, production, and post-production; this involved the research of the conventions of my chosen genre; horror. As I did not work in a group, I took on the role of director, producer, editor, and cinematographer. I am targeting the horror audience, ages of 17-25. People of this age group usually have jobs and are university students; they have disposable income. People in this audience will spend their money on luxury items; cinema tickets for example. They go to the cinema with their friends, and despite males preferring action films and females preferring drama films, everyone likes to get scared and so they go see a horror film for this reason; this was one of the main focuses in my project.
My primary aim was to show the audience how much power the antagonist has over the main protagonist, through the use of editing, mostly quick paced cutting. My sequence begins with Akira, in long shot, waking up confused, only to be greeted by Lucifer. A conversation then ensues between the two; I break the conventions of conversation by shooting this scene in shot-reverse-shot. This is because the protagonist is talking with a disembodied entity. One of the ways in which I show the audience how much power the antagonist has is when the camera cuts to Lucifer, the shot is in extreme close-up of both of his eyes, Lucifer is never seen in full view throughout the entire sequence, and when he does make an appearance, only his eyes can be seen. I added static to Lucifer’s shots because in horror films, television and radio static is used as a visual cue to signal the arrival of a supernatural presence, and Lucifer is a powerful supernatural presence. By lessening his screen time and restricting the audience’s view of him, Lucifer is seen to be a powerful character, not by his appearance, but by his actions and the effects of these actions on the other characters, in this case Akira. The scenes which depict Akira’s interactions with Lucifer; specifically the dream scene, are shot in canted angles, a staple feature in horror films which suggests imbalance, this helps to convey my aim to the audience visually. Editing wise, I added a composition I made in After Effects; shattering glass. I used this composition for the dream sequence, for the close-up shot, where Akira realises that something is wrong. This along with the transition to black and white conveys to the audience, that Lucifer has just shattered the control Akira had over his dream. The use of black and white shows the audience; through colour coding within the Mise en scene that Akira’s dream is essentially “dead”. Just the idea that Lucifer can alter people’s dreams at will, shows the audience how much power Lucifer has.
My second aim was to show the audience the main protagonist’s visual perception, this keeps the audience from being mere spectators, allowing them to familiarise themselves with Akira, being able to see what he is seeing. This familiarisation in turn allows the audience to align themselves with him. Akira possesses a special kind of colour-blindness; not the actual deficiency per se, but he chooses not to acknowledge anything which doesn't bear any particular interest to him. If anything which presents immediate danger or interest to him then everything will be returned to full colour. To achieve this, shots of Akira were made black and white, as this is how he sees his world, bland and colourless. The shots of Flash are in full colour; this is done to show the audience a contrast between a regular person’s perception and Akira’s. The transition from black and white to full colour is instantaneous; which connotes the sense of urgency that the object in his line of vision presents.
The third aim of course was to achieve the basic purpose of a horror film; to instigate emotions of fear, horror, and disgust from the audience. I wanted the audience to feel unnerved rather than to outright frighten them. To achieve this, I chose to film the scene in which a possessed Rebecca walks towards Akira, with no background music, just the sound of footsteps can be heard. The footsteps go at a very slow pace and echo; this adds tension to scene, as the audience won’t know what Rebecca would do next. I again used shot reverse shot, cross cutting at a quick pace between Rebecca and Akira; this along with canted medium shots of Akira desperately trying to open a locked door helped to add a sense of urgency, which in this case is the potential danger that Rebecca now presents to the protagonist, which quickly proved to be true when she strangles him. In terms of costume, I chose to have Rebecca's hair to be covering her face, similar to the appearance of 'Kayako Saeki', the main antagonist of the 'Ju-On: The Grudge' film series. From the point at which Rebecca becomes possessed, her face becomes obstructed from view; I positioned the camera on the side during filming, alternating between mid-shots to long shots when she walks towards Akira. The audience can only assume what her appearance is like under her hair. This helps towards the aim, as it allows the audience to feel uneasy at the fact that they can only imagine what her appearance is like.
The creative process of my project began with outlining the conventions of my chosen genre and the story type, which is 'the Quest'; the protagonist is set a task to find someone or something. He accepts this challenge, searches for and finds that someone or something. He is then either rewarded, or not, for his success in his quest. I felt that my chosen sequence illustrates the story type, or at least the first part of its description; the task is forced upon the main protagonist, and is told that there is a reward for him if he were to complete this task, the actual 'quest' is not depicted as this sequence serves to set up the events for the rest of the imagined film. I then began researching my chosen genre, and the other sub genres relating to it. The narrative structures in horror films are almost always linear, having a basic structure of a beginning, middle, and end.
The plot in horror films usually revolves around the intrusion of an evil force, a convention that I had used for my project. My sequence serves to introduce the main protagonist, Akira, as well as the audience, to Lucifer, the devil himself.
The main influence for my film sequence is the Japanese horror manga and later feature film, ‘Devilman’ (Go Nagai, published in 1972). This was the main influence I drew ideas from when it came to the creation and development of my main protagonist, Akira Fudo. I originally planned to have my protagonist's name to be Kai Kurosaki as it was the first thing which came to mind at the time, however I opted to change to the current name as a homage to the main protagonist in 'Devilman'. Akira's personality is also similar to his 'Devilman' counterpart, in that both are generally kind and modest, but my protagonist is quick to insult others if he is given the chance, as evident in the opening dialogue scene of my sequence where he calls Lucifer, "Lucy".
The general plot in 'Devilman' was the main influence for one of the main plot-points in my imagined feature; Akira gaining demonic power. In 'Devilman', the protagonist is given a choice, to gain demonic powers and live or to refuse to do so and die a painful death. I used this concept of the protagonist gaining a great power within my sequence, except this 'great power' is unknowingly bestowed upon the protagonist, rather than being accepted of his own choice. This is made evident by the fact that the final shot of my sequence, gives the audience a hint at what Lucifer gave to Akira; a close up shot of Akira’s right hand as it crackles with electricity.
One of the other influences to my imagined feature, in terms of plot and the creation and development of a character was the horror film 'Carrie' (Brian De Palma, US, 1976); the plot in this film revolved around a female character with psychic powers. At first I thought that this aspect would be really good to include within the plot of my imagined feature, as I thought that it would be an interesting twist to the story if the main protagonist's love interest turned out to be the real antagonist.
Also this helped me make Rebecca's character more interesting, rather than just leaving her to be the generic love interest; I made her out to be the person whom Lucifer, was supposed to possess, in order to bring about the apocalypse, but because of an incomplete transportation spell, he accidentally possesses Akira instead, which sets the film's events in motion. Rebecca was also supposed to be portrayed with some of the traits the original Carrie character had; innocent and kind-hearted.
However, Rebecca is merely pretending to be kind to keep up her appearance. I wanted her character to develop in this way so that Rebecca's "big reveal" as the true antagonist within the plot would have made the audience quickly unalign themselves from her. None of these character traits, and her back-story are included within the final version of the sequence for a few reasons, with the main reasons being that some of these aspects, specifically the psychic powers would need professionally made special effects to be made practical onscreen. And also I felt that my sequence would need to have been extended past the 5-6 minute length I was aiming for to show her back-story.
I chose Lucifer to be the antagonist as mentioned earlier; the plot in conventional horror films involves the intrusion of an evil force. I felt that there would be no better choice than the devil himself, who in religious beliefs is the source of all evil in the world. In addition to these characters, I also had two minor characters that would appear in the sequence. The first is Flash Thompson, whom I made out to be Akira's bully from high school. I named him after the character of the same name from the Amazing Spider-man series; who also happens to be the bully to main protagonist, Peter Parker. The reason why I included Flash was because right after I had come up with how I wanted the dream sequence to play out, I had to find a plausible way of knocking the Akira character out without putting the actor in any actual physical danger. I thought of having the character knocked out by a rude passer-by, which works visually as the audience can make sense out of the protagonist being knocked out by a character whose physical strength is slightly greater rather than, for example, having a piano fall on top of him in a comedic fashion. It is also easy to make a shoulder barge believable without having to injure the actors. The second minor character was Cody Travers, whom I made out to be a photography student who goes to the same college as Akira. He was supposed to be killed off when Akira accidentally kills him in the ending I wrote with the original screenplay. However, due to conflicts when it came to scheduling filming times, the actor who was going to play Cody pulled out of the project.
After I had finished with creating the characters, I then proceeded to write the screenplay. Having read a few screenplays beforehand, I did not find this part of the process to be particularly difficult, as I knew how to structure the screenplay out. However, I feel that I had spent too much time on the screenplay alone, which in turn made some aspects in the creative process to not turn out as good as I had hoped. After completing the screenplay and the script, I drew up a storyboard to give me a rough idea of how the sequence would look. The storyboard, I felt, was the only aspect in the creative process which I believed could have been done extensively better; my storyboard consisted of six pages, four panels on each page, with only twenty-four shots drawn. This storyboard does not include all of the shots, which are in final planned sequence, and in terms of the information for the shots which were included, there was a scarce amount of information given. Having spent too much time on the screenplay, not only was the storyboard essentially rushed, but also I was not able to create an animatic, due to the minuscule amount of shots the storyboard had.
For the soundtrack, I chose to have music, which would fit in with the editing of the film; when quick paced cutting between shots is present, particularly in the walking scene, a fast-paced song will begin playing in the background for example. The soundtrack itself consisted mainly of tracks from different video games. I was originally planning to use five tracks overall within the sequence, but due to one of my actors pulling out from the project at the last minute, and unable to find a replacement, I had to re-script the ending to compensate for the missing actor who was supposed to play a minor but important role within the ending. I omitted the track, which was supposed to be used for the original ending, as the song was too fast-paced, and it did not fit well with the new ending.
In terms of props, the only one, which I had planned to use in the sequence, was a box of chocolates. It is typical in romance films and in real life for a man to bring a gift to give to his "special person"; a bouquet of flowers, jewellery, and in this case, a box of chocolates. Although it is made evident to the audience in the opening dialogue between Akira and Lucifer and the dream sequence that Akira is planning to ask Rebecca out. The box of chocolates is used to show the audience, not just Akira's intentions but to show how Lucifer manipulates him; he purposely gives Akira what he needs to further his current ambitions (the box of chocolates), and just before Akira reaches his goal, he forcefully snatches the opportunity away from him (the dream sequence) while at the same time furthering his own ambitions. For the costumes, I chose to have the characters dressed in what the actors were wearing at the time shooting began; their everyday clothing. This adds a sense of realism to Akira's character as well as the others as it shows them as everyday teenagers. This also helps to make Lucifer seem 'out of place' in contrast to the seemingly normal setting and characters, not only in his presence but his actions within the narrative.
Filming the sequence itself had no complications overall; there were five film shoots in total, four concentrating on the main shots of the sequence and one focusing on the shots which had to be redone. There however, a few relatively minor problems. The first was using the wrong sized tripod during the first shoot. This was of course, an ignorant mistake on my part, but it caused the camera, when filming the opening shot, to jerk if any movement was made to change the camera's angle. The second problem was actually being able to schedule a day for filming with the actors. I am aware that like myself, they are also students who have their own coursework, which needs to be completed, so I could not ask them when it was inconvenient for them to do so. This did not cause any actual problems to the filming of the sequence. There were however three instances where this presented a potential problem; the first was during the third film shoot, which was in January. Many students at that time had exams during the month; I myself did not have any exams during this time, but my actors on the other hand did, this meant that they were not only busy with college work but their exam revision as well. I concentrated on editing the older footage so that by the time the exams had finished, more time would be spent on editing the new footage. The second was in February, when students, including my actors, went to the New York trip. I lost a week which could have been used for filming, but instead I again used the time to edit the existing footage. If I had not spent time editing the footage during these gaps in between film shoots, I would have not had enough time to properly edit and export the final version of the film sequence. The third problem was the aforementioned actor who left the project.
The editing process was straightforward overall. I quickly got accustomed to using the Adobe programs in the edit suite, which I was assigned to, specifically After Effects. The two After Effects compositions which are present within the sequence; the shattering glass and the electricity effects were made using this program. Editing the footage itself was not as difficult as I first made it out to be, this due to two things; there was no steep learning curve when I came to first use Adobe Premiere, and due to the aforementioned time gaps between film shoots, I had plenty of time to get used to using the program. Most of the shots were not edited with straightforward cuts; my sequence feature many cross or additive dissolves, dips to white and black, and quick cutting. I did not want the sequence to have a consistent pace all the way through, which is why I opted to incorporate different transition methods between the shots.
This also helps with how I wanted the editing to go with the soundtrack. The initial version of my sequence (refer to Film Sequence Version 01) included inter-titles, which would display to the audience, the name of the character and his/her role in the plot; Akira's inter-title introduces him as 'the protagonist'. I put these into the sequence at first as I thought that it would be easy to simply show the audience what role the character has within the plot. I opted to take these out and instead leave it to the audience to interpret who has what role.
In conclusion, I feel that overall my creative project was successful. Audience feedback was unanimously, positive. I made an audience feedback sheet/questionnaire shortly after finishing my sequence. I made ten copies of the sheet and showcased the sequence to ten students. The sheet had a simple layout, all feedback would be left anonymous, the first two questions on the sheet asks for the applicant's gender and age, while the four main questions ask whether, the narrative was easy to follow or not, what genre the sequence falls into, whether it was Akira or Lucifer who is in control and their overall opinion plus any suggestions they could make to improve the sequence. From what I gathered from the feedback I was given; most of my audience were at most 18 years old, there were three audience members who were under 18.
According to 8/10 audience members, the narrative was easy to follow; one member mentioned that the narrative, while easy to follow, was abstract. The third question relates back to my primary aim of showing the audience how much power the antagonist has over the protagonist; the response to this question was almost unanimous, as the audience were able to identify that Lucifer was in control, which shows that I have achieved my primary aim; as the audience can identify that it is the antagonist who is in control. The only concern, which caught my attention, were the responses to the second question; "which genre do you think this sequence falls into?"
Although my film features some of the conventions commonly found in the horror genre, I believed that I was not able to achieve the basic purpose of a horror film; to instigate emotions, of fear, disgust and horror from the audience. It is evident from the feedback that I have not achieved this, as there were varied responses to this question; one audience member said that the sequence fell into the action comedy genre, while another said that it fell into the science fiction genre. The fact that the audience cannot identify it within the chosen genre is the main flaw of my sequence. Despite this setback however, my sequence has received positive reception, some members of the audience in particular stated that their favourite part was the soundtrack. The only suggested improvement, which I had been given, was to increase the volume of the dialogue, as the music made it difficult to listen to at some points.
Overall, despite some setbacks in the creative process, and not being able to achieve the basic purpose of a horror film, I am glad that my sequence had received such positive reception, and I feel that I have achieved the aims, which I had set for this project.
