19/09/2016
How to create a Horror movie
Fear is the most important factor in creating a great horror story. Getting someone to fear what you have created is not the hardest part in making the movie, making the fear surprising is the most important element.
Some surprises come at the end of a long suspense. The best scenario consists where there is a twist and someone is waiting for something to happen but when it comes it is completely unexpected. If things are constantly popping out in order to scare or surprise, the viewer will eventually grow wise to the act and find it less appealing.
Camera shots and Angles
Birds eyes/High eye
These kinds of shots are used in horrors and thrillers to make the figure or object that is being looked down on seem completely powerless or vulnerable
Close up
This is the shot that shows the most emotion from the characters. It is also used to capture detail in an important scene.
Low angles
They emphasize just how scary or intimidating the scene
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My Role
In my Group my role was to do most of the Backgrounds, the Script, the logo and some Animation
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
23/09/16
Case Studies
Until Dawn
While it's not uncommon for horror games, Until dawn features its known for is there jump scares. This works especially well if you're playing with headphone on or the sound turned up, also they use the proper play environment, as you make your way through the empty cabin and caves, almost anything can cause a jump scare
You make your own choices
At the very beginning of Until Dawn. You're tasked with making choices. the game asks you a series of question about your horror preferences. What scares you, what you dislike, etc. Your answer to these question determine how the game evolves
Outlast
Environment
Outlast is based in a remote psychiatric hospital situated deep in the mountains of a Lake county, in Colorado. The environment is a important convention for horror movies because it sets the mood and scene for the game
Incapable of combat
Outlast is a horror were the main character Miles Upshur, is incapable of combat, normally the main character can fight back against the enemy, which usually gives the gamer some confidants that they won't die because they can defend them self however in Outlast the main character can't fight back all he can do it run and hide which gives the game a very intense feeling
Grave Encounters
Grave Encounters is a 2011 Canadian supernatural horror film, shot found footage style. The footage follows the crew of a paranormal reality television program who lock themselves in a haunted psychiatric hospital in search of evidence of paranormal activity as they shoot what ends up becoming their final episode.
Grave encounters is a film I’ve seen a few times and did enjoy it. It’s a good film to watch if you into evil entities and paranormal activity. I personally love paranormal horrors and in my opinion this is a good standard. Although it uses most typical horror clichés especially when it comes to having “ghosts” in this film, but some of the scenes are actually quite unexpected and they do use a few new ideas to give you that sense of being scared. They also use these new ideas to make sure that the whole film isn’t typical. Although in a lot of the scary parts of the film you do sort of get what’s about to happen, just by the surroundings in that part of the film.
So for instance the bath tub scene, where one member of the group who has gone mad due to being in the hospital and who went missing and came back wearing a robe making him seem like he has been checked in to the hospital, he was standing over a bath full of blood, and another member of the group had went towards him to try and move him away from the bath so they could move on. But with it being obvious, the member who tried to save the other, was pulled into the bath, even though the others tipped the bath over to get him out, he had disappeared, so only blood came out of the bath.
(00:49 – 01:04)
In my opinion although the horror is this film is very cliché, there are parts that do get you and make you scared. And that you don’t see coming.
Grave Encounters 2
Grave Encounters 2 is a 2012 Canadian-American horror film, directed by John Poliquin, written by The Vicious Brothers and the sequel to the 2011 film Grave Encounters. It is shot in found footage style like its predecessor and follows a group of devoted fans who break into the same psychiatric hospital to investigate whether the events of the previous film actually happened, quickly becoming the targets of the hospital's malevolent entities. The film was released on iTunes on October 2, 2012 and received a limited theatrical release on October 12, 2012. Grave Encounters 2 became a commercial success, but was a critical failure.
Bibliography:
- John Poliquin. (2012). Grave Encounters 2. Available: http://www.newvideo.com/new-video-digital/grave-encounters-2/. Last accessed 23/09/16.
- Fearsome Horror. (2016). Grave Encounters ~ All Jump-scares.Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfLieKcyBcs. Last accessed 30th Sep 2016.
- Sony Pictures . "http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/deliverusfromevil/"Sony Pictures . Sony Pictures , 2014. Web. 07 Oct 2016.
- Fandom . "http://until-dawn.wikia.com/wiki/File:Until_Dawn_Cover.jpg" Fandom . Fandom , June 6 2016. Web. 7 Oct 2016.
- Chris Burns. (2014). Outlast PS4 Review. Available: http://www.slashgear.com/outlast-ps4-review-05315798/. Last accessed Feb 5, 2014.
14/10/2016
Brainstorming
Here is an image of my team deciding what we want our characters to be called. It was important for us to brainstorm because we got to hear each other ides and feedback instead of just going with one person plan, we all decided to on doing a classic Ouija board hour animation
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
17/10/2016
Our Logo
Every company needs a logo and a name so our company decided to go with "Demonic Productions"
I didn't want to go with the normal approach of making the Logo and the name of the company relatable for example having a demon in the logo because our name is "Demonic Productions". I made this first having a grey background. I used a grey gradient because it would give the Logo more life to it, I used the ellipse tool to create the circles next I used warp text to bend the text in the logo lastly I found an image of the galaxy and combined the logo and the image of the galaxy to get my final product for the logo.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3/11/2016
Poster
Heres the poster for our animation. I used the same techniques as my logo to create this poster. I added a lot of dark colours and blood to give my poster that horror theme
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
19/10/2016
Concept Art
In today's lesson we worked on our character designs. We wanted our demon to be devilish, we wanted him to be slightly weird, so for the few seconds he's shown on the screen it would scare you. We used the demon character from the movie Pan as a references for drawing our character with similar traits.
For the family we wanted to have a generic family. We added Lucy (Ben's girlfriend) into the family because we wanted to put a twist in the plot were the typical beautiful blond hair , blue eyes and stylish young girl would betray the family and side with the demon.
The only problem we had was we didn't draw different views of our characters.
Next time I think we shouldn't just draw the front view, we should draw our characters from all point of views.
For the family we wanted to have a generic family. We added Lucy (Ben's girlfriend) into the family because we wanted to put a twist in the plot were the typical beautiful blond hair , blue eyes and stylish young girl would betray the family and side with the demon.
The only problem we had was we didn't draw different views of our characters.
Next time I think we shouldn't just draw the front view, we should draw our characters from all point of views.
-------------------------------------------------------------
19/10/2016
The Story
In today's lesson I had to convert the outline story Melanie created into a script. I had a bit of difficulty with converting it into a script because of how it was laid out. I started writting up the script wrong, so we all deiced to stay back after college to correct it. The script however when we came to the end product, was to long and unachievable. I think for our next project we should reduce the amount of dialog
Here is my groups story. It is laid out from Scene one to scene seven- To read this you will need to read from left to right. We converted this into a script and storyboard
Storyboard
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
21/10/2016
The Script
Copy and paste this link into your URL bar to read my group script
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5PPU_7mp-5fWkVjUDJwUHN1R00/view?usp=sharing
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE PRODUCTION
My main job for my group was to do the backgrounds and props
24/10/2016
Copy and paste this link into your URL bar to read my group script
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5PPU_7mp-5fWkVjUDJwUHN1R00/view?usp=sharing
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE PRODUCTION
My main job for my group was to do the backgrounds and props
24/10/2016
Gradients
I wanted to use gradients in my animation because I wanted to give my props more life and the backgrounds more of a 3D effect instead of looking like a flat image. Gradients are best used when they are providing depth to the image or in most instances they are bring used to show a light source.
25/10/2016
Today I'm starting the development on creating our animation backgrounds and props
For Ben's bedroom I wanted him to have a normal boys bedroom, very plain and simple. For this back background I used the line tool to draw out all the props and I used the Paint bucket and gradient tool to colour in everything. I used the gradients to show the light source on the table however I went overboard with the orange pillow and I deiced to remove it from the background. I also used the gradient tool on the window because I liked the way how it made the lines standout which gave the window a glazed look.
Ben's Bed room
This Living room scene is one of the most important scenes in the animation because its where most of the murders are happening, so I wanted to go all out with the gradient and give the background a lot of texture. But yet again I went overboard with the gradient tool and gave the mini rug a gradient which wasn't needed, I could of just gave it black strokes to give it more of a 3D effect.
Living room
Here's the full view of the Living room scene. I added a hallway where our characters can walk in and out of. A mirror for when the demon takes over Lucy and where the dad will place the dead bodies of the grandma and his eldest son. I think I could of done this scene better, especially my drawing of television, just to save time, I could of created on that was more modern and add more elements into the background.
The Living room full view
The second living room scene is where the whole family is before all the supernatural activity occurs. This is my least favourite scene because it feels so plain to me , I wanted the fire in the fire place to show movement just to give this scene more life to it. However I couldn't figure out how to animate it because of my lack of experience with Adobe animate.
The Second Living room
26/11/2016
Final character designs
Today I wanted to start our animation, however Melanie only drew the front view of the characters, this meant that Charles and I had to draw all the different views of the characters, before we could start our animation.
Starting the Animation
27/10/2016
Today I'm starting our animation, I decided to start with the Ouija board scene. For the Ouija board I mostly relied on the Classic tween tool. Classic tweening is an animation technique that brings A to B, if I put a circle in the top left and add a couple of frames and move the circle to the bottom right and add a classic tween to it, the circle will move from the top left to the bottom right. This technique saved me a lot of time because I didn't have redraw the circle moving every frame.
I drew the board on abode animate however I did the text on Photoshop because I didn't know how to arc the text. This caused problems, for example if you look at the background in "Ben's Bedroom" you can see a white box on the Ouija board and because of that when I tried to colour in the Ouija board, every time I used the bucket fill tool, it wouldn't fill in the area around the text because I did it on Photoshop, next time I will probably just do the whole design on Photoshop.
Ouija board
Video
28/10/2016
Today I started animating the bed room scene because the first scene is always one of the most important things to animate. I wanted to get it out of the way. I changed the background a bit in this scene, I removed the orange pillows, I changed the door and drew it so it appeared to be open. In this animation I had to stop being lazy and I had to do frame by frame animation because when I tried to classic tween Ben throwing the Ouija board on the floor his arms were going all over the screen.When Ben is throwing the Ouija board onto the floor you can see that the Ouija board is in front of him
( look at the timeline) which was a problem when the Ouija board came off the table. It should of land behind him not in front of him. I solved this problem by creating another layer for the Ouija board and putting it under Ben's layer, so that it would land behind him. I also couldn't classic tween the mum opening the door, so I had to draw the door opening frame by frame. It was pretty easy I just had to distorted the door each time which made it smaller and smaller each frame. I should do more frame by frame animation because it doesn't take as long as it sounds.
Today I started animating the bed room scene because the first scene is always one of the most important things to animate. I wanted to get it out of the way. I changed the background a bit in this scene, I removed the orange pillows, I changed the door and drew it so it appeared to be open. In this animation I had to stop being lazy and I had to do frame by frame animation because when I tried to classic tween Ben throwing the Ouija board on the floor his arms were going all over the screen.When Ben is throwing the Ouija board onto the floor you can see that the Ouija board is in front of him
( look at the timeline) which was a problem when the Ouija board came off the table. It should of land behind him not in front of him. I solved this problem by creating another layer for the Ouija board and putting it under Ben's layer, so that it would land behind him. I also couldn't classic tween the mum opening the door, so I had to draw the door opening frame by frame. It was pretty easy I just had to distorted the door each time which made it smaller and smaller each frame. I should do more frame by frame animation because it doesn't take as long as it sounds.
Bedroom
The purple box with the pointing arrow is Classic tweening
The frames with the black dots next to each other are frame by frame aniamtion
The frames with the black dots next to each other are frame by frame aniamtion
Video
30/10/2016
I wasn't happy with this animation because my Team and I knew we didn't have much time left until the final deadline so we deiced to rush most of the remaining scenes. I rushed Eric and Grandma deaths scenes by giving them very lackluster deaths. This is the scene when the demon takes over the grandma and kills Eric and the Grandma which is a good plot twist in it self, but was ruined by rushed animation. Next time my team and I need to improve our time management skills so we can finish these important scenes
I wasn't happy with this animation because my Team and I knew we didn't have much time left until the final deadline so we deiced to rush most of the remaining scenes. I rushed Eric and Grandma deaths scenes by giving them very lackluster deaths. This is the scene when the demon takes over the grandma and kills Eric and the Grandma which is a good plot twist in it self, but was ruined by rushed animation. Next time my team and I need to improve our time management skills so we can finish these important scenes
The second living room
The video
31/10/2016
This scene was the easiest animation out of all of them and was very effective to the story line
This scene was the easiest animation out of all of them and was very effective to the story line
TV
1/11/2016
This animation was also easy to do, I decided to add this scene into our animation because I knew we weren't going to finish in time. I wanted to add scenes which would give the characters more character development and I felt that the dad looking at his mum and son's blood on his hands would give him some character depth.
Dead
24/10/2016
I added in this animation of a lamp into some of the scenes because I wanted to add some more elements into our animation, however little they are.
2/11/2016
Final product
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4/11/2016
Evaluation
This Unit 2 Project had its ups and downs especially during the first couple of weeks of the project, which was caused because of a lack of communication. If our group communicated more during the start of the project I think our group would of had more than enough time to complete our horror animation. However we isolated ourselves from each other and wasted 3 weeks doing research work while other groups were starting their productions. If we could do this again I think we should be more strategic on what we want to do and set deadlines.
During this project I have improved some of my animation skills like my classic tween skills which I mostly relied on because of how time effective it was, however I wish I learnt how to animate people walking or people moving their bodies just so I could add more depth to our animation which it lacked.
The biggest problem I think our team had was with the sounds. None of us were familiar with the software Adobe Audition and Premiere, once we finished our animations that were ready to go to premiere we shortly found out that our animation were to short for the dialogs. This really hit our production hard since Audio is 50% of what makes an animation good, you just can't rely on visuals alone.
This Unit 2 Project had its ups and downs especially during the first couple of weeks of the project, which was caused because of a lack of communication. If our group communicated more during the start of the project I think our group would of had more than enough time to complete our horror animation. However we isolated ourselves from each other and wasted 3 weeks doing research work while other groups were starting their productions. If we could do this again I think we should be more strategic on what we want to do and set deadlines.
During this project I have improved some of my animation skills like my classic tween skills which I mostly relied on because of how time effective it was, however I wish I learnt how to animate people walking or people moving their bodies just so I could add more depth to our animation which it lacked.
The biggest problem I think our team had was with the sounds. None of us were familiar with the software Adobe Audition and Premiere, once we finished our animations that were ready to go to premiere we shortly found out that our animation were to short for the dialogs. This really hit our production hard since Audio is 50% of what makes an animation good, you just can't rely on visuals alone.
We got feedback on our Animation from our peers in our class and a majority of the "What didn't you like" feedback was the same. It was that we had no sound or dialog and the grandma killing scene. I totally agree with them having no sound or dialog killed our animation, we knew what was happening because we created the animation but the audience didn't have a clue and we shouldn't of rushed the grandma scene because it just looks like a load nonsense going on which was unexplainable.
In the future we should use our research time to look up how to use the softwares we didn't know how to use properly and learn to control our time management.
In the future we should use our research time to look up how to use the softwares we didn't know how to use properly and learn to control our time management.
This group production work has helped me with my confidence tremendously, I used to be the type of person who would sit in the background and just get my part of the work done and say nothing more to my group however during this project I had to take charge and help members of my group with their work, especially if it wasn't at a presentational standard.
No comments:
Post a Comment