Some Needed Research

    So, one of the biggest issues that we have been having that has been increasingly slowing our planning has been how we can accommodate the aspects of the horror genre that we want along with the intended introduction of our antagonist in only 2 minutes. This has been something that we had somewhat thought about earlier in the process, but now it is something that we must face head on in order to move forward anymore.
    The first thing we felt we needed to accomplish was an introduction of the main antagonist, since this is a major part of the satirical element of our film opening. We feel that the main antagonist needed to have a sense of craziness, or obsessiveness, but the only way we could show this would be to show the emotions of the characters and really get the audience involved in the character in the short period of time. A film that has similar intentions with expressing the obsession of social media use, "Ingrid Goes West," uses a variety of methods to express this. The use of actual social media on screen, paired with voiceover of what the social media reads in the voice of the poster is used to express the fact that this media almost resonates in the main character's mind, creating that obsessive feeling/vibe on the main character. Other methods the film uses are close-up and extreme close-up shots of the character, not only creating a connection between the character and the screens, but also showing the viewer the extremity of her obsession and even just allowing the audience to peer into that obsessiveness. According to mediacollege.com, close up shots not only express the emotions of the character, but they also allow the viewer to "be drawn into the subject's personal space  and shares their feelings." We feel that this is something that will be extremely useful to use, especially in introducing the character to the audience and specifically the vibe that we are going for, and there is no better way to do that then by getting the audience "involved" in what the character is thinking and feeling.

(Elements of "Ingrid Goes West" from YouTube)

    The second element that we feel we need to include in our opening is the suspense, a strong characteristic of many horror movies. Most people know what is to be included in horror movies to create suspense, summarized here, but the biggest thing is how we can apply this information to our intro. in the short time provided, it will be hard to create many of the step by step processes that are characteristics to creating suspense, but we feel that we can use certain elements that may not require as much time. According to davidhohl.com, lighting, events, sounds, and music are all elements that can be used to build dread, a key aspect of the suspense in horror films. We believe we can take advantage of these elements to work in our favor, specifically because they can all be controlled by us  in the production process and some even manipulated or added on after filming, allowing us to play with it until we find what feels right. Another aspect that is important according to the article in horror film suspense is isolation of the character, which is also something that we can do in the limited time we have. By creating this isolation feeling, we can then further create the feeling of dread and eliminate possibility of escape for the character in the later part of our scene. Hopefully we will be able to execute well enough so that everything works out, but for the time being we have a basis to start from and work off of, along with precedents that we can use to see how certain aspects can be portrayed to the audience.


Close Up (CU). (n.d.). Retrieved March 10, 2018, from http://www.mediacollege.com/video/shots/closeup.html

Spicer, M. (Director). (2017). Ingrid Goes West [Motion picture].

(n.d.). Retrieved March 11, 2018, from http://davidhohl.com/tag/suspense-in-horror/