Location Research

We have chosen this location for our opening scene. Our plot of the main character walking home from school innocent as to what is about to happen. We chose a forest location as it is a stereotypical convention convention of a horror, building tension and suspense for the audience in a chilling and spooky area where there the victim will be far off from any civilisation or help. This location also limits the area the focus of the audience has to be on, making the film easier to follow and the framing not being too cramped or busy. The path is just straight, so the direction helps increase the tension because the audience won’t know what’s round the corner.

The pathway is situated off of a main road in an open area, this will help the audiences expectation of what will happen to be limited. The forest looks incredibly ominous, old and spooky, this links into our plot, increasing the scare factor and tension we wish to achieve. Because we will be filming during the winter scene, the trees will have no leaves, leaving the branches bare which makes them look more eerie and intimidating.
Overall i personally believe that this location will be successful when filming our opening scene.

Our film certificate: "15"

We decided that the certificate for our film should be a '15'. Even though it is a horror, we do not plan for it to be as strong as the '18' requirements. Our films themes that we plan to include into our opening are not suitable for anyone under the age of 15 such as: strong language, violence and possibly drug taking or references to sex. Because of this we do not plan to make our film a lower certificate than '15'. Not all of the themes of a '15' will be incorporated into our opening scene, as it would give to much away and would crowd the opening scene. We decided not to make it an '18' because we wont be including strong blood and gore, sexual scenes or discriminatory language/behavior. We also want to maximise our audience and by making the certificate of the film a '15', it will mean that we gain as many viewers as possible.

Certificate Research: BBFC

In many countries, feature films must undergo a vigorous film classification process before they can be released. In the UK, the British Board of Film Classification does the job. Throughout the years since the BBFC has been introduced, there have been many different rating classifications, and the current selection follow a number of strict guidelines.

Certificate Research: "18"

18 (suitable for 18 years and over)

Films rated 18 are for adults. No-one under the age of 18 is allowed to see an 18 film at the cinema or buy an 18 rated video. 18 rated films are definitely and obviously not suitable for children. 18 certificate films are for adults and can contain strong themes in the film such as:

• very strong violence
• frequent strong language (e.g. 'f***') 
• strong portrayals of sexual activity
• scenes of sexual violence
• strong horror
• strong blood and gore
• real sex (in some circumstances)
• discriminatory language and behaviour

Certificate Research: "15"

15 (suitable for 15 years and over)

No-one under the age of 15 is allowed to see a 15 film at the cinema or buy a 15 rated video. 15 rated films won't be suitable for children under 15 years of age. Any of the following themes are most likely to be seen in a film with a 15 certificate:

• strong violence
• frequent strong language (e.g. 'f***').
• portrayals of sexual activity
• strong verbal references to sex
• sexual nudity
• brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence
• discriminatory language or behaviour
• drug taking

Certificate Research: "12" and "12A"

12 and 12A (suitable for 12 years and over)

Films classified '12A' and '12' contain material that is not appropriate for children aged under 12. No one younger than 12 may see a '12A' film in a cinema unless accompanied by an adult. The '12' is just a simpler system for retailers. It means they can't sell or rent the item unless the customer is over the age of 12.

Certificate Research: "PG"

PG (Parental Guidance)

PG stands for Parental Guidance. This means a film is suitable for general viewing, but some scenes may be unsuitable for young children. A PG film should not upset a child aged around eight or older. Parents should decide whether the content may upset younger, or more sensitive, children.

Certificate Research: "U"

U (Universal)

 ‘U’ films are made to be suitable and appropriate for audiences aged four years and over. ‘U’ films should be set within a positive moral framework and should offer reassure viewers to any violence, threat or horror. However, as it is a lower category it is impossible to predict what might upset a particular child.

Soundtrack Research

We wanted to find some inspiration before deciding our soundtrack, so looked at other famous horror soundtracks to hopefully give us an insight at what sound we do and don't like.

The first soundtrack we looked at was The Conjuring, the music used was extremely dramatic and loud and build up a lot of suspense, making me especially, feel uncomfortable and scared even though I knew nothing was going to happen. The increasing volume of the instruments Is something we want to incorporate as it builds suspense and makes the audience tense as well as filling them with thrill and excitement. a negative on this soundtrack is that it only has one movement which is the dramatic music increasing then decreasing. For our soundtrack we are looking for several movements to build suspense slowly but then gets dramatic when reaching the climax of our scene.

The next soundtrack we look at was Insidious, this soundtrack captured the theme of eeriness and also a creepy feel, especially the almost repeated screams in the background. Insidious' soundtrack is more like the sound we wanted to use in our opening scene compared to The Conjuring, which moves straight into dramatic music. Despite it being closer to the themes of our opening, it lacks the loud dramatic music that The Conjuring has, as we aimed to use a more louder suspenseful sound towards the end of our opening scene. Hopefully if we can find a non-copyright track that incorporates both themes of dramatic effect, like The Conjuring, as well as eerie and creepy effects, like Insidious, then our search will be very successful!

When looking at different non-copyright websites for the non-diegetic sound (soundtrack) for our opening scene, we came across and very useful, simple and easy website called Imcompetech. This website provided a very simple process to finding the most effective music we can. First it gives options to the type of Genre you are looking for, and so out of the choices given we obviously chose Horror. Next to the options of the genre, it gave options for the Feel of the music you aimed to find. From the options you could pick as many as you wanted to match the theme you wanted to achieve. We chose: Dark, Eerie, Unnerving, Mysterious and Suspenseful. After we chose both our genre and feel, the search gave us hundreds of differents soundtracks that were amazing and really captured the theme of a horror genre we wanted to show through our opening scene; if we could, we would have incorporated all of them but evidently we could only really chose a few. The soundtrack we believed we could use the most was called, Evening of Chaos. The track includes a semi-beautiful and flawed piano melody, which contrasts with industrial percussion. This piece has three distinct movements and I personally think this will help develop the themes and ideas of our opening.
After looking around even more we chose a few more soundtracks and are planning to use different sections of each sound in order to increase and decrease tension, as together they all create a perfect soundtracks for our opening scene. As a result the soundtracks we chose were, Evening of Chaos, Reign Supreme and Spider Eyes.