As we gathered that most people believe a female should be the main character in a horror opening we settled that the main subject shall be female, however, she will be the antagonist rather than the protagonist. This challenges the typical gender stereotypes as normally the villain is seen to be a powerful, intelligent male in place of a feeble, reserved female. On the other hand, this data may be biased as the majority of people who filled out the questionnaire are female.
Although comedy was voted the most favourite horror subgenre, we decided not to produce a mock horror as we would like to stick to the code and conventions of horror, however we could partner with leading organisations that produce this popular subgenre - influencing the audience to watch and have a positive judgement about the film as these well-known organisations have distributed amazing Oscar films in the past. We could also produce projects involving comedy in the future. Our opening is going to be paranormal/psychological, so it is interesting to see that these two subgenres are the second and third most favourite ones to watch.
From this data, we have decided that non-diegetic music will be subtle and eerie, gradually building up for suspense, but sound effects will be dramatic and sudden to represent tension. A participant responded saying "I enjoy how fake it is". We are going to challenge this by presenting normality for the character in our opening to reveal how some aspects of horror can occur in real life - this will make our opening much more terrifying.
We are going to reveal as little as possible of the storyline, but also develop it by foreshadowing through the use of objects. The opening may commence with a backstory but this will not be in great detail for a mystery to remain. Nobody likes a spoiler!
The most terrifying locations chosen were the abandoned building and the woods, however we decided not to film in these areas as there are low levels of lighting which could make filming difficult, and also because of health and safety reasons - as being in a building of a derelict structure holds risks of it collapsing while we are inside. Additionally, a forest is a very wide land so we could lose a teammate which isn’t practical if they have a main role in filming.
The five characters were: the ditzy friend who won’t make it, the wise elder, the diehard survivalist, the adorable nerd/crowd favourite, and the resourceful heroine survivalist. The most popular was the ditzy friend, so we thought of making our antagonist a bemused character that is unaware of what she is doing, as if she has encountered an out-of-body experience, adding to the psychological aroma.
The three main objects voted on are the hedge clippers, sledgehammer, and knife. Although hedge clippers and sledgehammers aren't available to us in time, we will make the feature of a knife very dominant in our mise en scene, to possibly foreshadow a part of the storyline, but also to stick to the codes and conventions of horror with this iconography.
A large segment of the participants voted that the opening of a horror film should have 3-4 characters. This is the case in many horror films so we will consider different ways in which we can include a couple of characters without decreasing the frequency of the main subjects being in the frame.
From the majority of the participants choosing £5-£10, I can infer that they expect the film to be of a fair quality, so we know that our audience will be satisfied with our opening even though we aren't producing it with very high tech equipment. Most of the people who participated in the questionnaire are 15-17, which explains why the dominant price was £5-£10 - people of this age don't have extravagant amounts of money to spend so they look for cheap pleasure and entertainment. In contrast, some would pay whatever the price just for some entertainment as they favour the genre.
It was quite interesting to see what ideas people had that would appeal to their tastes, and some of these ideas and thoughts helped build our narrative and make it stronger. A participant says they would like to see something 'unique' - this is difficult as most storylines have been used and the repetition of plots throughout the history of horror has helped to distinguish certain characteristics that this genre should have, however, we have brainstormed in great amounts and have assembled an intricate narrative that hopefully has not been repeated too many times. Another participant referred to ghosts and monsters as 'cheese stuff' and insisted that they not be included in the film as a whole. This suggestion is challenging to act on as ghosts and monsters are part of the genre's iconography, yet we will not be displaying this in our opening as we feel this would give too much of the plot away and limit the suspense of an opening. A comment was made about having a black character survive in the horror film overall, which is fascinating as horror movies are typically whitewashed, an unavoidable truth nonetheless. This is because of slavery that occurred within the era the genre was constructed. Images of slavery were depicted in horror through the killing off of black characters, in reference to a slave master torturing and ending a slave's life. Unfortunately, this trait is consistent with horror but has developed in modern horrors. We have decided to stick with the traditional trait in the aspect that one of our main subjects will be mixed race - supporting both the post-modern and precedent horror genre. 'Halloween' is an iconic horror film, which we have made intertextual reference to as we have conceived a cold-blooded killer trapped in a form of isolation - the mind.
