Horror films

THRILLER ideas:

Things that scare:

• Suspense, something that is unclear and you do not really know what happens.
• Mystery & paranormal activities  
• Alternate reality
• General things like: clowns, dolls, old women (witches), monsters, zombies, ghosts etc.
• Isolation

For example: the book; house of leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski!        

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gyug0q9eyqw

The unknown things that do not make sense and cannot be explained frighten us.

Once I found this website, still I cannot get it out of my mind!    http://blackriverhouse.com /

Filmmusic & Sound

Sound and music are really important to create an atmosphere and to make the audience feel something special without even showing them anything. Bass sounds and music that you can hardly hear are often used in horrorfilms. But also scary music, or very exeptional music. For example in Shining. Mostly used in the background, so that the audience does not really notice that there is music. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFVyAjj3Bs0&feature=related

First works with camera and editing

  

First of all we had to get to know how all the different camera adjustments work and how to arrange the positions and alignment. We were given a storyboard and tried to do some filming, but our fist trying weren't really successful. But that wasn't unexpected. We were supposed to shoot the scene with different angels and perspectives, but we were not sure how to do it, so every time we had to change the camera angle we moved the camera and did the shoot again, with the result that the dialogue sounded very cut off all the time and it looked very unnatural and unrealistic. You have to shoot the whole thing first to have a fluent dialogue and then shoot the whole thing again from a different angle and every time you change the perspective you have to make your actors do the same thing again and again, in order to secure a realist impression of a fluent dialogue.  
But for the second time we tried it, it worked a lot better. We got some 'actors; and filmed a lot of useful materials. This time we made our actors do the dialogue from the beginning to the end a couple of times and each time we changed the position they had to do the same thing again. But our final result was quite successful compared to the very first time we shot this scene. In the end everything looked natural and sense able. After we had shot our dialogues we had some time to try some new experimental shots out. It gave us the possibility to try some new things out and experiment. While you are in the process of shooting you get inspired and you get more ideas how to add some interesting shots in.   
After that we started editing our shots and cut them together, so that the sequences fit together with the sound and dialogue bits, we started to understand how filming really works and that it is important to have more than only 2 variations of a certain shot because they may not fit together in the end and you suddenly realize that you a different shoot which fits with your sequences from before. Also the way that the dialogue works is really important in order to make the scene look realistic.

Photoshop

There are five main things you should know and use if you are working with photoshop.
These are called the Famous five.


Famous Five

1. Levels
 - establishment of the deepness and light
 -establishment of thr midrage contrast
 -execution of colour correction
 -change the tonal values range of the photograph

2.Crop
 -you can cut your picture out and even stretch it

3.Sharpen
 -The amount slider controls the overall strengh of the sharping effects
  |radius -smaller - more detailed
  |Threholds - brightnesschange - sharpen

4.Hue\Saturation
 -you can change the intensity of the colours and work with individual colours in the dropmenu as well.
-manual white balance
-preparation for printing

5.Imagesize
 -fits the photograph into different sizes and can transform them as well.

These five topics are necessary and very useful for a good and successful work with photoshop.

About me :)

Hi, my name is Leyla (mj) and I am originally from Germany.  I live with my parents and my dog ( + canary ) in a village near Cologne.

I am a very creative human, I love music, going to concerts or even writing my own songs, I love design and fashion, and I am a fan of modern art, but also photography, old and modern ones.   When I am bored I use to go into the town and taking pictures of the city. I love to observe my environment, watching the people.

Despite from that I adore the theatre. We have some good productions in Cologne at the moment. The theatre gives me a feeling of a huge comfortable couch! It’s like a great living room for me. J      My favorite drama is : “ die Schmutzigen ,die Hässlichen und die Gemeinen!“  -   What basically means: the dirty ones, the ugly ones and the mean ones.

I like cinema as well, but if I had to choose between theatre and cinema, I would choose theatre because I think that theatre is more intensive and closer to the audience!

But anyway, my favourite movies are : science of sleep, night on earth and Frühlingserwachen.

I have an addiction for horror films as well. My favourite horror films are: rec. , The Haunting in Connecticut , Shining and 1408.

I find it’s really interesting to see what makes the audience afraid and why. I am not one of these people who are afraid when they are watching  horror movies , to me it’s more like a society study.