Preliminary Task Video

Main Task Brief

The main task was to create a 2 minute opening to a film. We had to choose a genre for the film that we were comfortable with. I have chosen to use a hybrid horror comedy genre as this is the one i feel comfortable doing and the one i have the most ideas for. I will be working with two other people, Leslie Hinsley and Connor Cronin. We have chosen to call our film 'How to train a zombie' as it fits our ideas and it contains both comedic moments and quite scary ones. I have researched the horror comedy genre so we can get some good ideas for openings and a few ideas.

Research: Dead snow opening

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIA39IYhM6I

The opening of dead snow is an establishing shot of the mountains at night; this sets the scene for the opening. There is light hearted contrapuntal music being played over the top; this gives the opening a comedic approach. The song is called Hall of the Mountain King by Edward Grieg. There are cuts to show the forest is deserted and dark; this gives the sense of horror and loneliness. There is a cut to a person running through the forest from the unknown; this gives the audience a feel of excitement and fear for the person. Two dark figures then run past the camera to give the effect of them chasing after the person. This creates tension and keeps the audience guessing who is chasing the person. The non-diegetic music begins to get louder at this point to create tension throughout the chase scene. There are also fast paced cuts to create tension and excitemnt within the scene. The music is then drawn to a halt when the person stops to look behind them to see if they’ve got away from the people who are chasing them. The silence and the puffing of her breathe is created to show how frightened the person is and how alone they are. There is a slow tracking zoom of the persons face to show there worried expression and that they are out of breathe as they have been running. It then cuts to a point of view shot of the person looking through the dark forest to see if the people are still chasing them. This creates tension as the silence and the zoom of the camera makes a jumpy part of the film destined to happen. A zombie then jumps out on the person with a loud roar which may scare some viewers and make them jump. The person then starts running away again and the chase scene continues. The contrapuntal non- diegetic music starts again even louder. The music then creates tension as it is louder so it makes the scene more thrilling. It then cuts to a hand held shot of who is chasing the person from behind; this scares viewers as they can see about 4 figures chasing the person getting closer towards them. The editing gets faster to show panic and horror within the scenes.