Project Proposal

PROJECT PROPOSAL BLOG ENTRY

Hello everyone, it is me Sherjil, back with another blog! Now that I have finished most of my research, I am excited to begin planning my project. The production planning may be a hard element for a big undertaking. I will, of course, receive assistance with a partner I will be working with to process this production planning. Today we will present my AICE Media Studies project proposal where I will discuss how the planning process will look throughout the whole journey documentation of production blog planning.

Genre Choice / Inspiration

To start off, the decision me and Isaac came up with was to do a horror-thriller film opening for our brief. We chose to do horror-thriller because it is more flexible to manage since all it takes is to build suspense through atmosphere, not just action. This genre gives us advanced opportunities to show our skills with lighting, sound, pacing, editing, and camera work. These elements are all I have seen from analyzing two horror film openings such as The Conjuring and Insidious. These two film openings gave me inspiration on how I can utilize certain props, such as including a “creepy doll” like the movie The Conjuring, where they included a doll that was placed in a dark hallway to bring the characters to feel more scared and afraid of what will happen next. This can be all proposed by building our character development by creating mystery, fear, and tension in many different settings and still make it realistic to help engage the audience with building horror suspense. I can also add my inspiration would lead towards FNAF considering how the movie has more thriller props with animal electronics and chainsaws that kills people. The antagonist for the movie will be a great inspiration considering of how mysterious and evil he was. 

Target Audience / Setting

For our story, we want the film opening to appeal to a wide range of viewers, but our main target is to appeal to an audience that are teenagers and young adults (15–25). This age group was based upon my research, which stated that this age group is likely to watch horror-thriller content through streaming services and social media. This can generally allow our audience to enjoy suspense, mystery, and intense emotional reactions. Our audience will attract all genders, since we are trying to make our horror-thriller opening accessible across different groups and to bring a story that is relatable rather than targeted to only one type of viewer. The film will take place at the same time as The Conjuring during the 2010s, where we will present an establishing shot in a creepy house where everything feels mysterious and quiet, dark, and cluttered to build suspense that something is there and to build up that thriller momentum for our film opening. The location will most likely be in the United States, since the dialogue will consist of English; because of this, we will target English-speaking viewers.

Character Types / Mise-en-Scène

In terms of character types, our opening will include clear horror-thriller roles such as a protagonist who the audience will follow through and empathize with, and an antagonist who will bring a threat source of fear and danger. We will make the protagonist a regular person who is clueless in a certain area and trying to figure out a place, and there will be a threat involved where he will try to find where it is coming from. The way we will apply this is by utilizing mise-en-scène elements I have researched such as non-diegetic sounds like creepy laughs and disoriented sounds, and sounds of things shaking; this will bring atmosphere for the audience to see what will happen next for the jump scare.

Social Issues / Representation

For social issues and representation, we want to avoid stereotypes that are very common in horror films, for example characters acting unrealistic just to make the plot work. Instead, we will aim to represent characters who have agency and make decisions based on their current threat to make our film opening feel more natural. We do not want to make a film opening that is very typical in our genre where there is a protagonist who wanders and a threat comes to get them with jump scares. We want to build more into a creative aspect where we apply more visuals and tactics that we will express for my film opening. We will utilize props and characters that will match more in depth of a horrifying thriller movie. Depending on our final concept, we may explore themes that involve more fear, personal safety, trust vs. isolation, or paranoia. These elements are all common in designing a horror-thriller film. We want our opening to raise questions for the audience rather than giving everything away, so our suspense feels more impactful.

Hardware / Software / Skills to Improve

For hardware, we will plan to either use a phone camera or a school camera. This will depend on what we will have access to, along with a tripod to keep the camera stable. We will use the color schemes we learned from color theory, emphasizing more into LED lights to create a color that matches analogous lighting and shadows, since horror-thrillers are known to rely on darkness and limited visibility. For sound, we may use a phone microphone if needed, but if possible, For software, we plan to edit using IMOVIE  because it allows more advanced editing techniques such as layering audio, controlling pacing of scenes, adding effects, and doing basic color correction. I am going to watch more YouTube videos on how to navigate the tools for adjusting sound and adding certain effects or text in the editing software. This is due to the lack of our team’s knowledge for film editing on Imovie.  We will progress through watching and improving our skills for the project to design horror.

Planning / Next Steps

Although we have conducted an intensive amount of research, we still have several steps to prepare before production. Over the next couple of weeks, we plan to write a script, finalize our characters, plan our locations, and create a storyboard/shot list, as well as a schedule to stay organized to meet certain deadlines. As we develop the script, we will build our characters more clearly through behaviors, personalities, and reactions under fear, which will help us make a decision on how to use camera angles, sound, lighting, and pacing to communicate the horror-thriller genre quickly in the opening, while also adding subtle visual clues such as props, lighting shifts, or color accents to suggest danger without revealing the threat too early. Before filming the final version, we will complete practice exercises of low-key lighting at different brightness levels we learned from the color theory concept, recording sound effects such as footsteps, breathing, doors, and ambient noise to make the scene feel realistic, editing the same sequence with slow vs. fast pacing to see what builds tension best, and deciding what color would fit the best for certain scenes.  Overall, I am excited to begin planning and production with my partner. Although this project may be challenging, this will help us apply our research and the whole concept purpose of Media Studies to start a strong film technique to hook the audience from the start.

For now we will be signing off!

See you guys in the next blog when we plan out our scipt!