Character development

Creating our cast!

We took our time making sure that the characters we were including would be relevant and serve a purpose in the film.

Detective- 

    When coming up with our protagonist we knew we wanted it to be someone essential to the film, who's actions had the ability to heavily influence their surroundings. At first, we thought to make Amber the lead but since she would ultimately die, we needed someone that was able to provide a resolution to the film.

    When it came to naming this particular persona, we choose to keep them nameless to add mystery to his character. This person goes by "Detective J" and that is the only letter of his name given to the public. He values his privacy above all else and believes everyone is out to get him. We thought it would be very fitting to have the person responsible for solving the case of the disappearances be a mysterious individual himself. 

    He always appears serious and even when things are intended to be silly, he is the type of person to take everything literally. Apart from that, he has an impeccable work ethic and once he begins a new project it becomes very hard to persuade him to not put a pause on his everyday life. Because of this people often describe him as selfless but almost cold because he is incapable of showing compassion which is why most people use him as a last resort since most agree it is not enjoyable to work with him.

    An essential part of our character, Detective J, is that he is only ever seen in professional attire. This includes his signature trench coat and his hat as well as his cork board since it acts like and escaped for him. All of these things happen because he is very OCD and needs everything to be organized in a way unique to him.

Amber-

    Amber is named after amber alerts and is meant to symbolize innocence and purity since most victims in these alerts are young children or oblivious teenagers. When alive she is a bubbly persona surrounded by people who love her. Her death is what causes the town to go into utter chaos because she was such a sweet kind girl. 

    She was a freshman high school student, barely 15, she participated in every club and was friends with absolutely everyone. She loved helping others and seeing them smile so she spent every afternoon volunteering at the senior center.

Benjamin-

    Benjamin moved from England just last year. He is super behind on everything so him parents are forcing him to volunteer at the senior center for service hours. He lived in the same neighborhood as Amber and therefore was asked to go drop off some papers at her house. He was always very lazy and rebellious, but he had a strong sense of intuition and therefore felt like he had to go.

    When he arrived, he heard loud commotion coming from inside the house his curious nature causes him to further investigate, which is when he, unknowingly, makes himself the monster's next target.

Film Idea

 Summary of our Film

    After weeks of discussion we finally came up with a concrete idea of what our movie plot would be. The most important element which would be emphasized throughout would be a cork board, belonging to the protagonist a detective. We plan to use this board to jump into different scenes relating to disappearances. Our goal is, to have the opening scene, the jumps from the board to the missing people, to serve as a foreshadowing of the whole film.

    The general concept of our film is people abruptly disappearing in unnatural ways. People, such as the detective, set out to find the cause of the piling missing reports only to discover a monster is behind it all. This monster is ultimately revealed at the end of the film alongside the discovery of the corpses of the missing people. 

    As previously stated, we will have a detective be our protagonist. He would be introduced to the film towards the end of the opening scene when the shot will become zoomed out and turn into an over the shoulder shot of someone clearly pensive.

    The movie would begin with the chaos of a search party frantically searching for a young girl which is quickly followed by the disappearance of a young boy, except this time the audience gets to see him go missing. The majority of the film would take place at night outside with the exception of the detectives office which would have been brightly lit. Throughout the course of the film the detective embarks on numerous adventures and faces countless travesties in hopes of finally catching the culprit. Which in the final seconds of the movie would be shown as well as the extent of harm the creature managed to cause without repercussion. 

Storyboard for the film opening

Storyboard

    

    After quickly establishing our ideas, me and my partner, begun working on the storyboard. We first took note of the required credits and made sure we left space for them. From there, we begun drawing and writing what shot would be used or what would be happening within each scene. Hopefully no one is overwhelmed by my gorgeous art. We wanted our project to kind of foreshadow what would happen in "the rest" of the film and also clearly convey who the main protagonist will be.

1st Group meeting reflection

 Group Meeting 1

    We are finally at week three of our film opening project and all our ideas are finally being finalized and with the help of this meeting, edited. When we got to class, we quickly got situated with our groups. Within my group I had only ever spoken to one other person before and it was always brief, so I was really excited to hear their input on my ideas. I also really liked that only one other person was doing the horror/thriller genre because that meant I got a chance to hear different perspectives and outlooks to the same task.

    I really liked that all group members shared their URLs with each other because first we got to know a little more about what each person was thinking. Specifically, I was asked some questions about what "horror" movie basic characteristics I would be included and was offered some feedback on how to incorporate these elements. My group's idea is to create a horror/thriller movie based on amber alert, specifically the disappearances not the kidnapping. I was sharing with the group how we want to have a supernatural force that is behind all of the missing people, but we weren't sure how to achieve that. Some people though, cleverly, suggested that I, rather than show this supernatural force, just make it be heard.

    I fell in love with this idea and the second the meeting ended I ran to discuss with my partner exactly what I had in mind. We completely agreed that that was perfect for the ominous character we are trying to make of this "monster".

    Overall, everyone really liked my idea and they thought we had come up with a pretty original concept so I didn't really receive any critique but I did however gain ample resources thanks to my group. Everyone had used one or two of these sites and it was really helpful to know that if I needed anything related to their uses I would be okay.

    I'm most glad that I finally decided on a font for my credit sequence. I was really struggling with that and I shared my concern with the group members and one of them had a really cool app where you could type out styles and it suggests font types so that's how I landed on "Felt Tip". The app is called Adobefonts and if you have access to Adobe, I highly suggest getting it because it was super helpful and made my vision a reality.

Todorov's Narrative Theory of Equilibrium

Disequilibrium

    Me and my partner plan to Integrate this theory into our project by causing disequilibrium before the climax. This theory states that the production must cause an 'initial disruption' to a protagonist's life, it also involves an acknowledgement of this disruption and an attempt to combat this.

    We aim to achieve this by immediately causing a disturbance amongst specific characters by, making them go 'missing', and showing how these activities negatively affect our protagonist from the get-go. "AMBER" would be one of those films where a series of events unfold but the audience is too far into the timeline so immediately after the opening scene everything backtracks.

If we created an entire film, it would follow these guidelines, like most productions do. This is because following similar patterns allows audiences to easily follow along without losing focus on the film and creates a concrete baseline.

View. “Todorov Theories and Short Film Analysis.” Caitlin French A2 Media , 10 July 2017, caitlina2media.wordpress.com/2017/07/10/todorov-theories-and-short-film-analysis/. Accessed 17 Feb. 2025.

Scores in Horror Films

Scores and their effects in Horror Films

When I started the genre research I took notice of the effect scores, or the music made specifically for the film, has on mood and interpretation of the horror films. I realized that their primary use in this specific genre is to forewarn the audience and creates suspense. This started surfacing when I began researching film openings and that is why I took such interest to them.

Jaws (1975)

In the case of Jaws, the score composed by John Williams is used exclusively to indicate the shark will make an appearance.  The song appears to grow louder and louder as the suspense intensifies within the scene further emphasizing that something critical is about to occur. When analyzing the use of the score within the film I realized how having the same instrumental music play every time Spielberg wanted to cause his audience that nervous on edge feeling makes it the immediate response when the music begins since it is so iconic to its scenes. Obviously with my partner we only aim to produce an opening but having background music to intensify suspense is something I have learned is essential. This is because otherwise there are some scenes that look almost lacking without this component.

 

Psycho (1960)

In the case of Psycho, producer Bernard Herrmann wrote the score of the film with the same intention as Williams, to warn audiences that something was about to happen. This movie efficiently uses this soundtrack to make seemingly normal scenes appear frightening from an outsider perspective. Often times creating the viewers to become frustrated with the movie characters since these songs make is so obvious that whatever force of nature is roaming around is nearing the scene. 

Overall, with this newfound knowledge on scores and the impact music makes to set the tone for a scene I might be inclined to attempt to compose something for my piece. I do know that if me and my partner decide to incorporate music it will be 100% instrumental since that seems to be a common theme withing the horror genre.

Wikipedia Contributors. “Jaws (Soundtrack).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 8 Jan. 2025.

“The 13 Scariest Horror Film Soundtracks Ever Written.” Classic FM, 30 Oct. 2024, www.classicfm.com/discover-music/periods-genres/film-tv/scariest-horror-soundtracks-music-scores/.

Film Opening Project Schedule!

TIMELINE

Thanks to the previous projects we've done in this class the importance of creating a plan seems to be an important part of building the foundation to your project. Scheduling is necessary because it will help me stay on track as well as not forget about any elements of the planning period.

Week 1 (1/29-2/2)

• Identify how I'm going to utilize what I've learned and applying it to my production
• Begin researching genres of interest and taking note of elements, I like

Week 2 (2/3-2/9)

• Research horror film opening, take note of the elements
• Research horror films opening credits and the characteristics
• Research the purpose of scores in horror
• Elaborate on basic research

Week 3 (2/10-2/16)

• Storyboard 
• Brainstorm Mise-en-scene elements
• Reflect on project idea
• Begin and finalize script

Week 4 (2/17-2/23)

• Develop characters, identify main character
• Discuss costuming, and lighting
• Start discussing what sound elements we want to use and if we want to compose a score
• Start filming

Week 5 (2/24-3/2)

Begin creating and gathering supplies needed for our film

Decide what lighting techniques we will use in each scene

Film a behind the scenes blog

Set aside all foley and other audios we plan to use

Week 6 (3/3-3/9)

• Finish up filming
• Determine if we want to redo anything
• Edit!

Week 7 (3/10-3/16) and Week 8 (3/17-3/25)

• Complete all CCR