Our Film Concept

By Molly and Harry

The Main Idea

Our chosen genre is Horror/ Thriller

The main storyline would be a group of friends experiencing paranormal phenomena while making a film of their lives because they have a new camera.

The concept is simple but proven to be effective as the hand-held method is more realistic.

Inspiration

The Blair Witch Project

We liked the idea of ‘Found Footage’ in The Blair Witch Project, and intend on using the concept in our trailer.

Paranormal Activity

Grave Encounters

This has a similar style to the one we want to create- with a hand-held camera and the actors being a group of friends.

Paranormal Activity 2

The ‘Paranormal Activity’ Series is our main inspiration, with a similar storyline, similar camera methods and the same effects added during editing.

Target Audience

Our target audience would consist of males and females between the ages of 15 and 21.

We aim to make the classification a ’15’

This seems to be the average rating for a film of this genre.

Style of Characters

All of the films in our inspiration use unknown actors to play the parts of average, everyday people (making the film appear more believable. This is what we plan to do.

Also, all of the camera operators in our inspirations have been in the film themselves, as they have had a ‘hand-held’ camera, again making the story more believable and having a higher impact on the audience.

Location

We plan to shoot most of our trailer in an average suburban house, much like these:

Other locations could include:

In a car

In the lounge

In the kitchen

Sound and Lighting

We will shoot our trailer indoors, so lighting will be an issue for us. We want to evoke a scary and realistic atmosphere without rendering our audience unable to see. We plan to film during the day in as much light as possible and add filters to create the desired effect during editing.

In terms of sound, we are considering using music, and will add sound effects non-diegetically, while keeping as much of the diegetic sound to dialogue. Non-diegetic sounds will include low ‘boom’ sounds and possibly short high-pitched sounds to startle the audience.

Ancillary TaskWe have decided to make a film poster and a magazine front cover.

We will take our inspiration from The Blair Witch Project for the film poster, as we like the simple but effective composition used.

In terms of the magazine cover, we take inspiration from genre-specific magazines such as “Scream” and “Fangoria”, as well as the generic film magazines such as ‘Total Film’.

We intend on creating our own magazine name, ideas of which include ‘Reel Talk’ and ‘Film Preview’.