Influences on Production

This was a huge influence for our production of our film ideas as this gave us the initial intentions of having our antagonist present within our opening scene rather than having something paranormal. Scream involves the antagonist who is crazed about horror films, so they decided to make their own one, where they were the killer. This antagonist intrigued us to have a similar antagonist within our opening two minutes, however we need to ensure there is not to much in the opening scene. Using the phone to gain connection to the protagonist, their victim, would scare the audience as this can easily happen them; this is very effective, which is why instead of using a prop we thought we would use someone house to ensure the audience would relate to this happening to them. Also, having the antagonist unknown creates the whole enigma on who is this and why are they doing it? This is why we used a mask within our costume so the identity of the antagonist would be undetectable, which would leave the audience asking themselves one question 'Who is this?'

Friday the 13th was another influence to our production as, again, this film involves an antagonist which is the frightening element of this film. In contrast to 'Scream' film, this film is set in the woods mainly whereas 'Scream' is located usually in the victim's home and neighbourhood. These two influences inspired us to try and ensure that both of these locations are within our opening two minutes as having the woods would symbolise where root of the problems began, for example, the stalking, and involving the house location would make the audience relate to the scene as they could imagine this happening to them as many people have a fear of being home alone and thinking someone is in the house. The antagonist was also wearing a mask, which reinforced us on using a mask for our antagonist, as our we would not want to give too much away but we don't want to disengage with the audience as there is little fear to scare the audience.

 

Paranormal Activity was our first influence to producing our opening two minutes as this is one of my best horror films as there was always something scary in nearly every scene. The use of paranormal ensured the audience was scared as, generally, people are scared of paranormal as no one, presently can prove that is does not exist, so they begin to believe that this could occur to them. However this was our first influence, we began to think how we could achieve professional looking paranormal effects, which seemed impossible without special equipment such as pulling ropes and fishing lines which are usually used within these kind of paranormal films. Although we could not add this to our opening two minutes, this film inspired us to produce a horror film for our opening two minutes.

 

Another influence was 'The Cabin in the Woods' as the genre is similar to ours, which is a horror. This film, was set in the woods, which again reinforced the idea of setting our establishing scene within a wood. Instead of having frightening events occurring in the wood, like 'The Cabin in the Woods', we would build tension, such as someone looking and stalking our protagonist through the wood.