The Killer's Written Diary Investigation

After creating our story board, I realised that we would have to rethink our diary idea taking the initial idea of it being a story book that the killer keeps and puts photos into, changing it into an actual written diary.

To make this written diary, I got a plain lined note book at the pound store.

 I wanted to make the pages look older and more used, so I coloured them with tea staining. This also made them look wrinkled and used, which is what we want.

To the front cover, I thought that it would be an idea to make it look as if it is skin, and the killer has made this diary out of his victims skin. I covered the the original cover in tissue paper mache in layers, sewing the sides to make it look like the killer put the diary together himself. I used tissue with a texture to make it look realistically like dried skin. Once it had dried, I painted the textured cover in skin coloured tones.


I then decided to experiment with the writing type within the diary. I thought that it would be a good idea to make it look like the killer uses blood to write with, instead of ink, so I got a red ink, and started to write a few pages of possible entries that the killer would have written, putting myself in his shoes. Below shows the result of this investigation:



The only problem with these entries is that on camera, the "blood" looks too pink to look realistically like blood. This being a problem however, I liked the rough, hard to read writing that I felt that the killer would have, showing clearly where he was feeling passionate and emotional about what he was writing, having it in large, scratchy typography with droplets littering the page, adding the effect of making it look more realistic, old fashioned and creepy.

From this first trial, I decided to develop the design of it further, making the outside look more realistically like skin, and the blood ink look more like blood, deepening the colour.

I started off with deepening the colouring of the tea stain on the pages, making the whole book look tea stained in irregular shapes and tones.

I then slightly adjusted the colour of the covering to make it look more leathery and dried. Covering the outside in liquid latex was an idea to make it look look more like skin. Peeling sections back and creating texture and blistering. Below shows the result of this effect on the outside of the book:

     This shows the front of the book cover                                  This shows the back of the book cover

The next step in making this look better was to deepen the colour of the "blood" writing.

To do this, I mixed the red ink with some black ink, using a quill to write the entries. As you can see from the photos to the left and right, this time, the product was much better, and on camera, it looks more realistically like blood.

Now that this is finished, we can use this prop in our film opening. It will be used as the killers diary and will appear within the opening when the killer writes another entry about the murder he has just undertaken. The final product is shown below:

Target Audience of our Film Opening

Before we start officially filming, I just wanted to do a short blog post, officially stating who our target audience will be for our film opening.

Discussing it with my group, we decided, through deconstructions of age ratings and other research, that our film opening would be classed as a "15"- related to the intensity of gore shown through the extract that we will be making. The specification of a film rated 15 is shown below with comments made of how they relate to our film opening idea:

Any of the following may be included:

• strong violence - there will be a lot of this
• frequent strong language 
• portrayals of sexual activity - prostitution will be a subject within the film opening
• strong verbal references to sex
• sexual nudity
• brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence
• discriminatory language or behaviour
• drug taking

The target audience, related to genre preference, will be those who like slasher films and are not bothered by blood and gore.

This, being classified, will help us in the process of creating the storyboards and when editing, making sure the product that we produce is acceptable within the requirements of this type of target audience.

Deconstruction: Production Companies

Deconstruction of the production companies used by popular horror/slasher films:

~ At the beginning of most films, there will be information about the production company or companies, whether it be the name or a logo. That is why it is extremely important that we remember to include aspects of a production company in our two minute film opening. 

~ When talking about our ideas for our film opening as a group, we seemed to prefer having the chosen production company at the very beginning and then go into the film, rather than showing a little section, then the company and then carrying on with the film. We feel as if putting a break in the action would lessen the impact of the slasher features and would make the opening less effective.

~ I looked at the responses to our last question on the survey, to see what films the public thought were the most successful and then looked up the production companies to find out what makes them so popular.

Saw:

~ One of the most well known slasher movies of all time, the production companies of Saw were Evolution Entertainment, Saw Productions Inc. and Twisted Pictures. 

~ Evolution Entertainment is an American independent entertainment management and film production company which was founded in 1998. The Saw franchise is the most successful set of films they have produced, even though they only produced the first three. Due to the success of Saw in 2004, they made a distribution deal with Lionsgate and the formation of Twisted Pictures. Twisted Pictures then went on to produce six Saw sequels (and also Texas Chainsaw 3D)

~ Below is the animation which appears at the beginning of the film.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre:

~ Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) has a number of production companies that it was associated with, New Line Cinema, Focus Features, Radar Pictures, Platinum Dunes, Next Entertainment, Chainsaw Productions LLS and Wonder Works Films.

~ New Line Film Productions (often referred to as New Line Cinema) is an American film studio, specialising in theatrical productions, marketing and home video, it was founded in 1967. Originally it was a subsidary of Turner Broadcasting, then Time Warner in 1996 and is now merged with the sister studio Warner Bros.

~ This is the intro for 'New Line Cinema' which appears at the start of all New Line Cinema releases.

~ Focus Featues is the art house films division of NBCUniversal and is considered both a producer and distributor for its own films and a distributor for foreign films. It is also a subsidary of Universal Pictures.

~ This is the intro for Focus Features, which is the second main production company.

 



 

 

 

Practical Investigation of Content in Killer's Diary

I was trying to find some pictures of foetuses, especially ones from folklore such as devil or animal foetuses. Unfortunately, I was not able to find much however I came across sketchings from Leonardo Da Vinci of foetuses and pregnancy women.









 Looking at Da Vinci's work, it would be interesting if our killer was to draw pictures of pregnant women and their foetuses because this would emphasize his obsession and fascination with foetuses and pregnancies. The audience will see him as mysterious and obsessive but also memorable.
Here, I have taken pictures of what the killer's diary might look like with the pictures in and words circled in red pen - red = blood, danger, lust, and (ironically for this) love.

 Here, there is a sketch of a dead woman with a small devil on top of her, looking at us smugly. This devil could represent the killer and his love of killing innocent women. The words "no more moaning, no more crying" have been circled which could be interpreted as the woman after being killed.

 Here, one of Da Vinci's foetus sketches have been scrunched up so to represent the killer's carelessness of state; he is only focused on killing, not making things look neat. "Assaulted", "damaged" and "fractured" have been circled which could indirectly tell the audience about what happened and of the victim's injuries.

 The words "That man's a killer", "killing" and "unemotional" are circled which are words very appropriate to the killer; he loves killing, knows he is a killer and is unemotional, and almost seems proud of it.

 Here, there is a painting of a baby cannibal, looking possessed and scary, and this would be like the killer's 'idol'/role model. The killer does not eat the foetuses as in the picture, but he does still kill them (and enjoy it). "Pain", "murderer" and "kill" have been circled and, as mentioned, it tells the audience that he acknowledges what he is and what he does, and deems it acceptable.

 There is a picture of a devil foetus with horns, a spiked tail and spiked wings. The picture being in black and white makes it seem older and more traditional - like folklore. "Sick with fear", "Crazy mad" and "trembling" have been circled, "sick with fear" and "trembling" are circled to describe the victim and "crazy mad" the killer. This gives the audience hints of what both the victim and killer are like when he murders them.

 Here, the words "bent my head and sniffed", "had been shot when sleeping in bed", "killed" and "dead" have been circled. "Killed" "dead" "had been shot when sleeping in bed" describe the victim, but they will not be shot, they will either strangled, hit over the head, or bled to death. I circled those words just to ndicate to the audience of his obsession with death. We thought the killer could have a habit of sniffing his victims, this is a common feature to horror films - Don't Let Him In, the killer drools and in Batman, the Joker licks his lips.

 Here, there is a picture of a radiating pregnant woman and her stomach and foetus are hard to make out. This picture represents how the killer is engrossed by pregnant women and their unborn babies. "Struggle", "violence", "death" and the words above ^ are circled and if we used a close up shot, this is what the diary will look like.

 Da Vinci's sketches have been placed inside the book and "afraid", "evil men", "power", "darkness", "scream" and "limp" have been circled. These are all words used to descibe the killer (evil men, power, darkness) and the victim(scream, afraid, limp). These are horror and slasher conventions and stereotypes of what a killer and victim are like.

 Here, there is a drawing of fairies around a cot and a baby who has a devil face. The fairy picture represents how many care for babies, however, for our project is it the opposite - the killer is killing them before they are even born. The devil baby ties in with the fairy picture - he believes foetuses should be killed because they are devilish.

This is what the book will look like, there will be pictures and sketches coming out to, again, emphasizes his carelessness - he has thrown them into the book as accounts and self-reflections to keep record of.

 Overall, for our final project, we will make the killer's diary look messy with random words circled describing the killer, victims, and the murders. For the opening, these words can be focused on to show the audience of the killer's obsession; obsessive killer's being a slasher convention in order to frighten the audience more. 

Deconstruction of Insects, Maggots & Invertebrates in Films

In Squirm, the town's ground is infested with thousands of flesh eating worms because the electrical wires fell onto the ground which brought them to the surface. A mid shot is used to show us that the worms have claimed another victim; his stomach is half eaten by the worms. If we were to use worms in our project, it could be for the victim's bodies and how the killer has left them for so long that worms have burrowed into their skin.

In Drag Me To Hell, the old woman is following this girl and when the girl wakes up, the woman jumps on top of her and vomits maggots. Vomiting maggots is very unexpected and this frightens the audience, and makes the light-hearted feel sick. Low key lighting is used to highlight how it is in the middle of the night. An over the shoulder shot is used to make the audience feel involved and that they are there with the characters.

In Don't Let Him In, the killer killed a man while they were fishing then filled his mouth with the maggots they were using to catch fish. An extreme close up of his mouth is used to highlight these maggots and the blood on his face. Also, the extreme close up focuses our attention to his chapped pale blue skin because his body was left out in the cold weather.

In Candyman, the 'Candyman' was killed by his girlfriend's father by being stung to death by bees. He comes back as an urban legend when his name is chanted 5 times. When he opens his mouth, bees come flying out, and opening his coat, his abdomen has been eaten away by the bees. For our final project we would not include a 'spirit' of a victim as that is more supernatural, however, the idea of bees (or other forms of insects, invertebrates etc) eating away at a victim would be good as decaying & gruesome bodies is a slasher convention.

Overall, for our final project, we could include maggots as they are the most squeamish of invertebrates and, as we are doing a slasher, we would want our audience to feel that way. Putting them in the dead victim's mouth, as in Don't Let Him In, Candyman, and Drag Me To Hell, is the most disgusting so we could do that, or we could put them on the victim’s skin. This would also frighten the audience because the maggots could burrow in the skin which could harm the victim (if alive).

Planing the Deaths Scenes AND Evaluation of Death Scene Trial

After the death scene trial, I realised that I, along with my group, have a few extra things that we need to plan and decide before we make the official shots and clips that might go in our film opening.

First of all, we needed to decide how the the victims would be killed. The aspects that we have taken from the idea of the victim being pregnant, I have put into a list, shown below, of how he could kill his victims:

• while the foetus is being carved out of their torso, leading to them bleeding to death
• by being strangled
• by beheading them
• by strangling them with the umbilical cord

Some of these ideas link to previous research that we have all done. The foetus being taken out of the torso links to the deconstruction of Creep and how the killer carved out the foetus' of the women that he victimised and the beheading idea links to the Shordtch location research where we saw a model head placed on a spike portrayed on top of a wall.

Se7en

Another aspect that we had to decide is when the killer would take these photos of his murders. I decided to look at a film that uses the idea of the killer taking pictures of his victims too, and ended up deconstructing Se7en.
When looking at the Se7en, I saw that the killer took a series of photos of one of his victims that he tied to a bed for just over a year, taking photos after set periods of time to see the victims deterioration through the year. A few screen grabs are shown below:

To the left shows the first photo taken of the man at the beginning of the year looking normal.

To the right shows the photo taken of the man near the end of the year that he was tied up looking as if he is decaying while still alive- a rather grotesque look.

This idea, although a good one, wouldn't really fit with out theme of killing, but taking the idea of the before and after stages of his victims, having a photo of his victims in their day to day lives- "stalker photos"- and a photo of his victims as they have died on his torture table.

Special FX

After taking this into account, I decided that it would be best, for our film opening, if we just got our killer to take photos of his victims after they have been killed, having the idea of the "stalker photos" within the theoretical "rest of the movie" that we will not be making.

When these photographs would be taken is closely linked to where they will be taken. As a group, we decided that the killer would take the photo after his victim is dead- lying on his "torture table".

Taking all of the research and planning that I have completed into account, I decided to do a special effects makeup investigation into the way the victims would be displayed:

First of all, I made an umbilical cord. One that we could use to "strangle" the victims of the killer.

 To make this, I used scrunched up tissue paper, PVA glue, acrylic paint that was watered down and cling film to add the shiny, slim on the cord.

Once I had made this, i then used my neck as a model, and added bruising, with my bruising wheel, to show the special effects makeup that I would use on our victims to symbolise strangulation via the umbilical cord.


I also made a prosthetic stomach out of paper mache, nose and scar wax, the bruise wheel and fake blood.

Step by step, I covered a balloon in paper mache with two layers. This would give enough strength for the stomach to stay rounded.

I then popped the balloon and cut the excess paper mache from the bottom, creating a neat edge.
I turned up the sides of the edges so that it would be easier to apply to the stomach.

After drawing where I would cut the fake stomach so that it looked as if it had been torn open, I made the fake wound, peeling the material back.

 Next, I  added cotton wool to the inside of the peeled back "skin" to show the muscle and tissue that would be there, along with the insides of the stomach. This was to symbolise the organs and tissues within the carved out stomach. I then painted them with red, brown and yellow tones to create a flesh effect.

Adding the fake blood was the last effect. I was originally planning on applying this prosthetic to myself, but I found that it was way too difficult to do it to myself, worrying about all of the dripping blood and getting everything stuck down properly at the angle that I was in.

The finished piece is quite good, and I think that if we use this effect in our film opening, it would be a success.

I then just experimented with cuts and bruises on different parts of my body that we could add to show the struggle before the victim got on the torture table.

To the left shows a graze  using thick "scab" blood and the bruise wheel to add colour and obviously bruising.

This investigation has allowed me to test out my ideas and also get more of a plan together, collating and developing them to get an appropriate representation of the slasher genre within this very important aspect of mise en scene that will play a large part within the film opening.

Practical Investigation: Survey Results

Survey Results:

~ We managed to achieve our target of 70 responses on our survey which gives us a good perspective of what the public would expect from a slasher film opening. When planning our film opening, we already had a good idea in mind of what the theme would be and we hoped that the public response would agree with what we hoped to do.

1) What gender do you think our villain should be?

~ Around 65% of the responses thought our villain should be male, this is good for us and with the particular idea we have in mind, it means our character will be more effective. Predominantly in slasher films, the villain is male however when you look at the more general horror films, the difference between male and female is more equal as you can have creepy child villains for example.

2) What age do you think our villain should be?

~ For these question, we weren't definitely sure what age range we wanted for our villain so it was interesting to see that the majority thought he should be 16 - 30. In a way, it could be hard to get an older male friend or relative to get involved unless you hired an actor and so in this case it should be easier to find someone to act in our opening who is around the same age as us. Although for one of our ideas, we would need a specific body type which again would make finding someone who is ideal very hard, although if we alter our idea slightly, it can broaden the range of people who would be able to do it.

3) Do you think that the idea of the villain having a diary or journal to record their murders would be effective?

~ 93% of the public thought the idea of our villain using a diary could be effective if portrayed in the right way and as our main original idea heavily featured a diary, it was good to see that the public agreed. We have already started work on our diary and by featuring it in our opening, it will give an insight into the villain's personality and into his personal life. With this idea though, it's more of a side feature so if it turns out that it doesn't turn out as effective as we hope, then we can easily cut out the scenes of a diary and it shouldn't alter the storyline too much.

4) Do you like the idea of the villain keeping a souvenir from each of their murders as a trophy, such as a part of the body?

~ Similarly to the previous one, this idea was also an extra feature as it isn't necessary to the storyline. With this and the diary idea, we were trying to look at the villain's den from a mise en scene angle as we need props and things to put into the area to make it more realistic. An idea that one of us had was to put the fetus's from the pregnant teenage girls he has killed into jars, if we decided to go along with the teenage pregnancy idea. It was interesting to see that 95% thought this could be effectice if we played it correctly.

 5) How would you rather the villain be shown?

~ This question was asked to find out how we should portray our villain as a lot of films only reveal the villain at the end whereas some focus on the villain all the way through. We weren't sure if we wanted our villain to be the focus of the plot but then decided that it would be better if the film consisted of him murdering multiple girls, rather than from the angle of one of the girls, which would eventually end in only her murder. As we thought, only 4% thought that they should remain anonymous, and the majority of the rest prefered the idea that only parts of their body are shown at a time. I liked this idea as well as we can use a lot of close up and extreme close up camera angles during the opening, to emphasise certain features of his body, for example, his lips if we decide to have him whistling.

6) What obsession do you think our villain should have?

~ This response wasn't actually what we wanted, as our main idea involved him having an obsession with teenage pregnancy and murdering all underage girls who got pregnant. As over half liked the idea of revenge, we going to listen to them, but incorporate our own ideas into it, keeping the idea of killing the pregnant teenagers but making his motive for doing it that he wants to get revenge on them. We could also take it a step further and say that his mother gave birth to him while she was a teenager and how he has never forgiven her for that. As Prostitution was the next popular idea, we could also bring that in and maybe have some of the girls that he kills working as prostitutes and thats how they become pregnant, however we want our opening to remain relatively simple so if we could explain that without taking up too much time, then that could be effective.

7) Do you think we should include a death scene in our opening?

~ I was slightly disappointed with this, as I was hoping they would choose to make it more gory so we could make full use of Annie's special effects expertise but if the public thinks it would be better to make it more suggestive, then we could tone it down a little bit. As we have changed our idea slightly, we might not be including a violent death scene as such, and maybe having more torture involved rather than a quick and bloody death.

8) If we did include a death scene, where do you think it should take place?

~ This response was quite mixed, so I think it could be effective and successful whichever one we choose, this means we can choose which one will be easier for us to film in. However since asking this question, we have changed our idea and might not be having a death scene at all. Although we are taking this question into consideration when choosing the location for a possible chase scene between the villain and the victim, this would be at the beginning of the opening. At the moment, we are thinking of having the victim running through the woods, with different camera angles including a Point of View angle from the villain.

9) During the film opening, what sound would you prefer to hear?

~ We weren't sure what sound we wanted to have during the opening, although we knew that a lot of dialogue can make it seem less professional if we use friends or family compared to actual actors. As the results were tied between just human sounds and a combination, I think it would be better to go with mostly human sounds but include other noises at the same time. For example, we had the idea of our villain whistling a certain tune or song which could be an innocent song that's almost relevant to what he's doing but in a weird twisted meaning. If we go with the idea of a chase scene through a wooded area, then an example of this would be 'Teddy Bears Picnic' as it is simple nursery rhyme but paired with the footage on the screen, can turn creepy almost instantly.

10) Out of the following, which would you say are the best slasher/horror films? (Choose two)

~ I wasn't surprised by this as I assumed that Saw and Texas Chainsaw Massacre would be the most well-known and therefore the most successful, showing that we should include aspects of those films compared to the others. In Texas Chainsaw Massacre, obviously the victim's weapon is quite important and also the fact that he wears the skin of the people he has killed. I feel like our idea of cutting into the girls with maybe a certain type of knife and the idea of souvenirs is quite similar to this and hopefully should be as effective. In Saw, Jigsaw never does any murdering himself, he creates ingenious traps which the majority of people fail and therefore die, I'm not sure how we could include features of Saw into our opening, but maybe the fact that our villain only kills certain types of people who have done wrong (in his eyes) could be effective.