Film Research - Cross Genre films

Many films are now often classed as a mixture of different genres, and the one i shall focus on is the cross between horror and thriller.

Both genres contain many similar characteristics, such as attempting to create a tense atmosphere and a sense of suspense, and also that there is a bad event about to occur. however they differ slightly in the sense that horror focus a lot more usually on the blood and actual death that commonly occurs in the films. This is illustrated well in the clip below from the 2007 film 'Disturbia'.




In this extract, the director focuses more on the suspense building with the people moving about the house, and less on actual killings, the death of the police officer in particular is a very minor part.

FIlm Planning - Day for NIght Filters/editing

When researching possibilities for lighting the set, I discovered that there were ways of filming during daytime and creating a 'night time' effect. This was either done using a special blue filter on the camera itself, or by editing the footage in software such as Final Cut Pro.

Upon researching the filters I discovered that they were extremely effective, but also incredibly expensive and very out of budget for this film. Therefore I decided to use Final Cut Pro to add colours to the footage and make it look like it was shot at twilight or after dark. There were tutorial videos on the Internet to show newcomers to Final Cut how to get the effects for a night time look.

Videos like the one above were helpful for editing the light balance in videos to create the night time effect.

Film Planning - Working as a team

I have decided to make this film a joint project between myself and another classmate, Harry Baker. I have chosen to work with Harry due to his strengths in English, so as a creative outlet when it comes to writing a script/storyboard for the film. I have also worked with him on a film project once before at GCSE, where we worked well together on a stop-motion animation film.