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Researching Horror
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Planning "AGORA"
- Evaluation
OVERALL PREMISE – Our protagonist is in a committed relationship, but keeps this secret due to homophobic people in his life. This has had a harsh effect on his mental health. He is blackmailed by an unknown person, who seemingly threatens to out his sexuality if he doesn't follow their instructions. Over the course of the movie the instructions become more and more violent and sadistic, forcing the protagonist to kill people. The final person the protagonist has to kill is his boyfriend. The twist of the movie is that our protagonist is schizophrenic, with one of his personalities being a manifestation of his abusive father, and he was the blackmailer the entire time.
TRAILER CONTENTS – Opening scenes establish the relationship of the lead character, followed by the boyfriend leaving for a night shift at work. The protagonist receives a message (email, phone call, text message?) stating "WE KNOW WHO YOU REALLY ARE". Alongside incriminating photos that show the relationship. The message then shows "FOLLOW OUR INSTRUCTIONS TO KEEP THIS BETWEEN US".
A montage of shots shows various murder scenes, including someone being poisoned and choking to death, hanging someone, throat slitting, torture etc. over this there is contrapuntal music, perhaps classical, maybe spoken word? This montage also includes more surreal shots including our protagonist, alluding to the schizophrenia. These could include self mutilation, talking into a mirror, talking to the camera, reversed audio, and other unexplained surreal scenes.
The pace and violence of the montage would increase, culminating in a slow paced shot from a distance of the protagonist shooting someone in the head in the middle of a field. The film title then appears on top of the shot.
Stylistically the shots and imagery is designed to be "post-modern" in that it is often extreme and disorienting, for an audience that wants to feel challenged by their media.
SETS/COSTUMES/PROPS – For the most part costumes are very simple, maybe work wear. The murder scenes would be best in various unpleasant locations, dirty bathrooms, seemingly abandoned buildings, outdoor spaces,forests etc. The props would include a noose, knives, pills, blood, guns etc. The closing scene takes places in the open space of a field, it would be more atmospheric/tense if it were raining with a dark or grey clouded sky. The costumes for this scene would be the protagonist in a heavy jacket, (the victim is bloodied in a suit blindfolded?). The obvious prop is a handgun.
LIGHTING - The majority of the lighting will be realistic and fit the scenes, for example interior night shots will be artificially lit, while some of the more gruesome scenes may be lit in a more unrealistic way, such as spotlighting a pitch black room or coloured lighting.
mise-en-scene examples
lighting examples
Inspirations from other media
Hallucination Imagery
We wanted to include surreal and random hallucination imagery similar to the clips here. These clips include Bricolage, the idea of mixing various styles, genres and filming techniques together into a string of footage, which is the structure and content we want in our own trailer.
Blackmail Imagery
The concept of blackmail came from the Black Mirror episode "Shut Up And Dance" where in the main character is blackmailed online and forced to commit criminal activities to entertain a hacking group.
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Violence/Torture Imagery
The violence we want in the trailer needs to be varied in genre type, combining elements of psychological horror, slasher and crime drama styled violence. To add to the postmodern, weird look of the film, we want the gore to be deliberately tacky or unrealistic in places, and very extreme or over the top visually.
music ideasWe want the music to be of a weird style that is slightly contrapuntal to the imagery of the trailer, but still adding to the violent/disturbing tone of the film.
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TESTING TRAILER TITLES
When looking into trailer ideas, we tested the structure of how the titles would appear through the progress of the trailer.