Horror Film Timeline:

Megan Byrne time line of horror


- Overall, it was useful for us as a group to further evaluate and and deconstruct the horror genre. From this research we recognised how our media production is likely to fit into the more modern styles of horror, considering the 2000s are renowned for some of the most famous supernatural horrors such as Paranormal Activity (2007) and Insidious (2010) - films our production was was highly influenced by. 

Props, Locations, Makeup and Costume

Location 1: A Forest

- We decided that this would be a good location for our film opening as we decided to set it in a small country side village, and we feel that this is a typical styled forest that you would find in a village in England. Another perk of using a public forest is that there were no rights against us filming there as it is a free public place. Luckily on the days we were filming there were no people in the forest, as obviously it is a public place one of the difficulties we may have faced when filming would be passers by. We also had no problem with the sounds of birds or rustling of trees as we had already decided that we were to place narration over our production, but this too could have been a struggle we could of faced. We got the inspiration for this location from other horrors of the same supernatural genre such as The Woman in Black, the locations for The Woman in Black are highly 'natural' and often set amongst forests, woodland grave yards etc. We though the aspect of setting some of our opening in a forest would make our production feel like a realistic horror of the super natural genre.

Prop: Plastic Tea Set

- We purchased a plastic tea set for 1 pound which was convenient for our budget as it was extremely inexpensive. The fact that the set was plastic too meant that it looked 'childlike' as stereotypically children wouldn't be aloud to play with real china as it is too expensive, the fact that it was plastic also helped us make them look 'destroyed', we did this by placing them in mud and covering them in leaves to give them a more 'used' look, helping them look aged. The use of tea cups links to the supernatural horror genre, as often in supernatural horrors children are heavily featured for example in films such as Dead Silence, Annabelle, The Woman in Black etc - we gathered our inspiration from films such as these and decided the childlike aspect would add a vulnerability to our production as often the lives of children being at risk within horrors evokes fear and tension for the audience.

Prop: Chalkboard & Chalk

- Kaya already owned a chalkboard and chalk so this part of our props was not an expense issue. We thought that the use of a chalkboard would help add an eery effect to our titles, and make them seem more ghostly than just adding them in with a normal text over the production. It ties in perfectly with our 'dolls' theme by adding a stereotypical childlike aspect of the chalk and board, whilst also tying in with the victorian aspect as in victorian times, chalkboards were classically used amongst schools. A difficulty we could have faced with using this to display our titles could have been that perhaps the text wasn't clearly visible, or if the camera shots were shaken it would be hard for the audience to read the titles. In order to avoid this we shot each title a couple of times, just to make sure that we perfected each shot. This idea linked in to our supernatural theme perfectly by making the text seem slightly opaque and ghostly.

Location: My Bedroom

- We decided to use my bedroom as the setting for the doll scenes. My bedroom was a good setting as we wanted a room that would almost portray a room within a dolls house. My room is stereotypically 'girly', and as we wanted to portray the image of the dolls sitting in their doll house we thought it would be a good idea to place the doll sat on the bed, this way the audience are able to see straight away that this is a bedroom and one of the rooms within the house. Using this location wasn't an expense for any of us as it was in my house. The realism of a suburban house juxtaposed with the natural forrest location helped the audience to identify the panic and horror amongst the villagers i.e with the use of the images of the victims hung about the village and the terror the dolls are to plan, with the slow clockwork movements of them.

                                                           Prop: Images of Victims       

- We decided to take photographs of 'victims' of the dolls and place them in various places of the forest. We decided to make the images look old and battered so we ripped, scratched, tea stained and rubbed them in dirt. This whole process was inexpensive to us as we were able to take the photographs at college, using the college's equipment, and destroying them and placing them in the forest cost us no money at all either. We found that this was a really good way of getting the idea of what the dolls had been doing to their victims across, by destroying the pictures it helped to show how the victims of the dolls were being destroyed too - also, this helped them to look aged helping to show the long period of time the murders in the village had be going on.

                                                                Prop: Wish Dolls

- We used the wish dolls for the scene when someone is playing with the dolls house, the idea of using wish dolls helps to add an eery effect as usually wish dolls are used to take nightmares away from children at night, the fact that these dolls are being played with and pushed down the stairs and almost tormented furthers the evilness of the dolls and adds a creepy feel to our production. The wish dolls were Kaya's and as she had them in her house it cost us no expense to use them. Whilst 'dolls'  are commonly used within supernatural horrors, when researching we didn't find any supernatural horrors that used 'wish dolls' - as aren't commonly used in supernatural horrors this aspect of our production challenges the conventions of supernatural horrors.

Prop: Dolls House

- Arguably one of the most important props within our whole production was the dolls house, it fits in perfectly with our dolls theme. As Kaya already owned a dolls house this was a massive benefit for our production, it really helped to tie the whole theme together - this was also not cost affective to our production. The dolls house was empty, it wasn't furnished and didn't have any colour to it apart from the wooden background. This helped to give our final production a really eery feel to it, unlike a usual happy dolls house that is used and played with - this one is completely empty, giving it an a 'abandoned' feel to it. 

 Dolls Costume:

- We wanted our costumes to clearly represent the doll theme, however with a twist - the use of the black, dark colour of the costume is not stereotypical to a 'cheery' doll, this furthered our horror theme and made it clear to the audience that the dolls were evil. We wanted to get a classic doll styled corset, luckily the one we used for our production was exactly what we had in mind, the dark black contrasting with the white polka dots are almost clown like, perhaps reminding viewers of films like Stephen King's IT. The tutu we used wasn't a classic styled tutu - it was slightly distorted and the ruffles weren't well coordinated, this furthered our horror theme, pushing the idea that the dolls weren't regular dolls forward.

Makeup:

- We wanted to make the contrast between the two dolls obvious, we decided that makeup was the best way to show the difference in the pair. For one doll, we decided to use brightly coloured makeup, as a more 'classic' doll look, we used bright red lipstick, neon pink eyeshadow and large fake eyelashes - however this was juxtaposed with an extremely pale 'ghostly' looking skin colour, we decided to use a very pale foundation this helped to further our horror theme. The second doll was an extremely obvious representation of horror - we used extremely dark makeup, black eyeshadow, black lipstick, large fake eyelashes and pale foundation. It could be said that this makeup makes this doll more fearful, however the use of makeup within our production was intended to show a contrast between the pair evoking more fear. 

MKF production logo - Dolls Domain

Logo Explanation:

- We decided to chose 'MKF Productions' as our logo title as it is all of our first name initials put together, a simple way to get our recognition towards our production.

- We liked the image of an eagle with a film role for the wings as this represents us as team the best. The strong eagle who has the knowledge and ability to conquer anything and the film role wings tying in with our passion for media. 

Creating Process:

- We decided to create our logo on www.freelogoservices.com. The process of creating our logo was simple, on the website there were various different logo options which were all customisable by changing the fonts, colours etc.

- This is what the editing of our logo process looked like on www.freelogoservices.com 
- We wanted to keep the logo as 'classic' looking as possible, we gathered inspiration from logos of production companies such as Disney's 'Touch Stone', as we think that our production company would feature the same style of films as Touch Stone:

- Touch Stone's logo style keeps everything very simplistic and classic, using darkened, neutral colours. This was our main inspiration when creating our logo.
- Touch Stone's capital lettering inspired the 'MKF' part in larger capital letters with 'productions' in a slightly smaller font.
- For our font choice we picked 'Helvetica'. We decided to pick this font because it is one of the most popular typefaces in the world, using such a common and popular font we decided would reach out to our consumers, as stated we believe our consumers are likely to be of 'The Mainstream' bracket thus meaning they are likely to reach out with popular and common fonts.

Dolls Domain - Film Synoposis

Our Synopsis:
-"We are introduced to the small village of Boven in the countryside of England, a village that inhabits members whom have gained acquaintance for many, many years, through many, many generations. A quiet, peaceful, tranquil town... Or so you would think.
When Lucy (Kaya Dalton), a kind student from London, decides to take a trip to Boven for a reunion with her long lost cousins, things just do not seem to add up. Friendly, welcoming members of the society begin to disappear, one by one. Frantically Lucy tries to search for an answer, who is doing this to Boven and what do they want?
It could be Lucy's detective-like work that gets her into a seriously dangerous and life threatening situation. When faced with death - Lucy finally comes face to face with the Human Dolls of Boven. Was it fate that brought Lucy her, or perhaps a very convenient coincidence? Leaving us all questioning who are these dolls, what exactly do they want with Lucy?"

Explanation:
- As a group we came up with this synopsis, upon researching other film synopsis' of a similar genre to ours, such as The Woman in Black (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596365/synopsis). Researching this synopsis helped us to only include information that we thought was totally vital and interesting too the audience, whilst also outlining the plot, an almost 'who done it' style of synopsis, we found that many supernatural horror synopsis's have a 'who done it' element to their synopsis's and therefore we gathered inspiration from those.
- We wanted to set our film in the isolated setting of a village to evoke fear within our consumers - typically villages have a low count of police, ambulance and other emergency services. We intended for the lack of these vital services and the terror that is caused by the dolls to create tension and a sense of hopelessness for the lives of the villagers and Lucy.
- We decided to use a lot of rhetorical questions within the synopsis, again, to keep the audience questioning and guessing  - thus creating mystery and the fear of the unknown.

Main Task Evaluation / Audience Questions and Audience:

Draft Plan for Main Task Evaluation:


Main Evaluation:

•       In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
With the use of 'scary' or 'creepy' women and children as the main protagonist, we know this from the research we did as a group of The Woman in Black, Dead Silence and Annabelle, and the inspiration we got from them.

•       How does your media product represent particular social groups?
- teenages, mainstream

•       What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
- bbc film woman in black, independent 

•       Who would be the audience for your media product?
main stream, teen, female 

•       How did you attract/address your audience?
social media, focus group, 

•       What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
- photographs, filming, premier editing 

•       Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Audience:

How do we identify Audiences?

-'GEARS'

- Gender - Etnicity - Age - Region, Nationality - Socio-Economic group.

- For our production our 'audience' would be mostly females as they are likely to relate to the 'doll' aspect of the production, perhaps reminding them of their childhood. It would be for people aged 15 and up because of the horror themes surrounding it, perhaps it wouldn't be suitable for younger viewers. No particular region or nationality, or socio-economic group - these factors are irrelevant to our production as they are not featured.

Hypodermic Needle Model:

- Audiences are passive

- easily led, influenced & manipulated 

- Media consumption influences the attitudes and behaviour of audiences, sometimes called 'magic bullet' theory linked to propaganda & advertising.

- Behaviourist models of human behaviour.

Uses & Gratification Model:

- Audiences are active in choosing media for their own 'gratification'

- Links to Maslow's Hierarchy of needs

- Developed by Blumler & Katz

- Main reasons for using media:

- Personal identity: to define who we are 

- Information

- Entertainment: includes escape

- Social Interaction: Helps us to socialise with like minded people 

Traditional Segmentation Model:

- I don't think that there is a particular class for our genre, we intend to create our production for those who are fans of horror, not based on their class. However, I think that in order to consume our film our audience need to be able to purchase the rights to watch our film (e.g cinema, DVD, Blu-Ray etc) making the class of our audience for those at perhaps C1. Yet, Our main protagonist is going to be acted by a girl aged 17, the music we are to be using is childlike and perhaps these factors would reach out to the E class. I think that our production would be suitable for those between E-C1.

Young & Rubicam 4 Cs Model:

Cross Cultural Consumer Characterisation Model:

- A more useful audience segment ion model than the tradition ABC1 categorisation, it acknowledges the global nature of media audiences and devices audiences into 7 types of consumer.

4 Main Categories are: (MARS)

- Mainstreamers - Aspirers - Reformers - Succeeders

- Other categories to be added to this are (era) Explorer Resigned Struggler

It takes the following as consumer motivations: Security, Control, Status, Individuality, Freedom, Survival & Escape.

In my opinion, I think that our production would be most suited to 'The Mainstream' cultural consumer of Young & Rubicam. My reasons for suggesting this are because our horror audience suit the characteristics of "people who live in the world of the domestic and the everyday. a daily routine is fundamental to the way they live their lives. Their life chooses are 'we' rather than 'me'" - supernatural horrors have become more popular in the 2000's (e.g insidious) therefore, with this growing popularity the Mainstream audiences may follow the crowd and the supernatural horror hype. 

Other Audience Segmentations:

Dolls Domain - First Cut Evaluation

    

In our first cut of our film opening dolls domain we put all the ideas and planning that we had created previously into action, helping us create our fist cut. We came up with the idea of having our title and subtitles written on a chalkboard, in creepy, almost childlike handwriting. The use of the chalkboards helped to give a 'victorian' effect which was suggested to us from our focus group, and the childlike handwriting added to our horror genre. I filmed these scenes holding the camera 'hand held', this added to the creepy effect we were aiming for. 

We wanted to stay true to our 'doll' theme, and decided that heavy horror style music (e.g with screams or harsh noises) would distract the audience. Instead we decided to add a mixture of different creepy sounds with space in-between each one to create tension, as shown in the image above. We added a music box tune (long green bar), this music was great at being soft and subtle yet building tension and atmosphere as the audience were always aware of it ringing in the background. We added over it Kaya's narration but in whispers, we broke these up and added them over the music box tune at random times (small broken green bars), when I was recording Kaya's narration, we decided to try out lots of different tones in her voice, one being a whisper, this one worked the best and added a really creepy effect to our production. Throughout we have several other short noises such as a childs outburst of laughter, and the winding up of a music box.

We decided that the best way to get the idea of the dolls being having the same, evil persona's yet with slightly different apearances was to use the same actor, but slightly alter each the makeup, hair and dress for 'each person'.  We wanted one doll to have a classic doll look, we dressed our actor in a spotted corset and black tutu, with bright red lips, blushed cheeks and big eyelashes we also tied her hair up in bunches. This worked to get a classic creepy doll look across, whilst also being creepy. For our second doll we decided to have a slightly darker look, this helped to further the idea of the dolls being evil and not innocent at all. For this doll we put dark lipstick and eye makeup on our actor, with a black dress with white collar and hair off of her face. This really helped to make the dolls as a pair seem really creepy yet totally distinctive as they have their own looks. We decided the best way for them to seem creepy was to keep their eyeliner dead on the camera, this way the audience feels like the dolls are almost looking at them.

We didn't want to just rely solely on the dolls appearance to make our production creepy however, we thought that to further this was to have the dolls doing classic doll like movements, when editing fern made these movements coordinate with the music really adding to the scary effect we wanted by building atmosphere and potentially making the audience jump. For example, we used close up shots of the dolls eyes closing when the music slows, yet opening fastly when the music speeds up and we also did different shots like the dolls waving at the camera etc - this made the audience feel as though the dolls had a sort of interaction with them.

Towards the end of our film opening we decided to include a slow pan shot of the dolls house, as it reaches the top of the house it slowly zooms towards a window into complete darkness, this will conclude with a screaming sound. This aspect will add mystery and keep the audience guessing as to what is in the dolls house, the use of the scream at the end will keep the audience frightened and help them to assume that whatever is in there isn't good. The fact that this whole clip was shot under very low lighting helps to add to this mystery, whilst also making it eery and creepy.

Dolls Domain - Shot Examples

In order to get the perfect shot for one of our film opening scenes, we decided to test out each shot in different ways and try to get the images we were filming from different angles to change the lighting. From previous work where certain clips had been out of focus or the lighting hadn't been perfect we knew it was best to try a verity of different ideas a pick the best ones. In the scene we were shooting we wanted to get short clips of photos we had taken and destroyed by ripping, scratching and covering them in mud in order to create a scary, worn effect on them. Here are the examples we have to choose from:

- We decided in the end to choose the image of the victim hanging by the tree as this shot was the most perfected one, the lighting and focus were both good for this shot.
- I think that the downfall of the other types of shot were the fact that we tried to shoot them in a 'hand held' style, we thought that this would create an atmospheric tension to the shots however, it was very difficult to get them in shot as the sun was very bright that day meaning my shadow kept getting in the way of the image we were trying to film. For the images in the tree we used a tripod and found that this worked a lot better.
- It is important to try out several different shots in different when creating a film opening because, much like these shots, things like natural lighting/lack of a tripod in shots can completely make the shots unusable 

Dolls Domain - Shot List

Our Original Shot List:

1. Fade in double shot of dolls.
(chalkboard credit)
2. Jump shot to dolls house
3. zoom to a hand playing with toys.
(Chalkboard credit)
4. Jump shot to single shot- close up of doll 1.
(chalkboard credit)
5. Jump shot to hand playing with tea cups
(chalkboard credit)
6. Jump shot to single shot close up of doll 2.
(Chalkboard credit)
7. Jump shot to doll house
8. close up of dolls toys- dead.
(Chalkboard credit)
9. Quick jump shot to extreme close up of dolls eyes.
(Chalkboard title)
10. Fade in to Forrest shot.
11. Hand held shot of back of someone running.
12. Floor level shot of someones feet running.
13. Close up of quick head turn.
14. Pull zoom shot from tree to feet.
15. Fade to black.

- It is important for our cast and production to have a shot list at bay in order to keep the production running smoothly, if there were to be any confusions on set as to what to do next, the planning process of including a shot list helps to clear this up.
- Shot lists are crucial in making sure that the filming process runs smoothly and is well organised.
- When it does come to the filming process, the use of a shot list will make everything much more straightforward and insure that everything will go to plan - acting almost as a guide for us. This will be beneficial as it will save us time, everything will be pre planned and set out in order. Time is important for us as if shots need to be refilmed etc, the use of the shot list ensures that we will be able to do so, to make sure that we are getting every shot to its full potential.

Our Updated Shot List:

 However when we came to editing the media product, it became too repetitive, therefore we decided to change it around to fit better. This meant, instead of having two clips the clipboard credit, two clips the chalkboard credit and so forth. Furthermore, we decided to cut out the running in the Forrest scene of the easing into the actual story-line. Our reason behind this was because after we had filmed the forest scenes and edited them together, it didn't form a horror genre film, it made it appear more action genre- not what we wanted to create. Therefore we just decided to scrap the whole idea and extend the creepy doll idea for the whole opening. This also meant we would have to rearrange the order because we didn't have that many credits to fill the gaps after every two clips.  This was much better because it meant we could build up that tension and atmosphere much easier. Below is the updated version of the shot list.


This was taken from Fern Disney's Blog as she was responsible for the editing process.

Dolls Domain - Script

Our Script:
- "No-one knows why they came here, what they want. We know what they do. No one knows how, but they don't leave- they won't leave.
Do they want vengeance, why are we finding corpse after corpse, victim after victim? A new death, a new day, nothing with stop them."
- "why are they here? what do they want" - Repeated
- "Leave, leave, leave, leave, leave, please leave" - Repeated

Explanation: - We plan for the majority of our film opening to be acted without any characters speaking, instead we decided that in order to create tension and keep the audience scared having our script constantly whispered over 'music box' styled music. This will not only add to our doll and supernatural theme, it will also keep the audience guessing as to what the dolls have done, and what they want. 
- It is important for us to include a form of narration over the production in order to keep the audience slightly informed as to what is going on. Although we do intend for our film opening to have a "who done it" style to it, the narration will help to unpuzzle some of the plot - thus keeping the audience interested and on edge with our production.

Dolls Domain - Film Schedule

Our Film Schedule:
1st - Using the location of my house, we will be filming all the different shots of the dolls.

2nd- Next, we will be filming the shots of the actual dolls house, we will also film hands playing with some dolls in the house too.

3rd - We will be shooting in the forest, we will be shooting the clips of the 'victim pictures' amongst the forest, and some scenes of Kaya running.

4th - We will then be shooting again in the forest, we will be filming the shots of someone playing with the tea cups.

5th - The last step of our film schedule we will be record the narration that will play over the production. We will record this in the studio at our college.

Film schedule Explanation:
- We imagine it could take over 2 weeks to film our whole production, it is logical to get the shots at my house done first as i live furthest away from the college and therefore getting this step out of the way first means that we can get the more local shots done sooner. As the shots at my house are to be the only ones that actually feature the dolls it is important that we get those done as soon as possible too. 
- The forest is extremely local to our college therefore filming at these locations second make sense as we will spend our filming lessons in media walking to and from the forest to film when is necessary.
- Recording the narration makes sense to be the last step as the editing process can proceed without narration, it will just be laid over the top of our production.
- It is important to use a film schedule when creating a film opening because without one it would cause confusion and chaos amongst cast members. This will set an order for our production to clear up any confusion and help us to manage our time more wisely by keeping everything set in stone.