Horror/Comedy Short Film

We were tasked with creating a film using the same footage for a movie in two different genres - horror and comedy. This was a very interesting task as these genres juxtapose in many different ways.

Horror films are intended to evoke fear and scare people, and play on the cultural norms of what is generally considered to be 'creepy' and make your skin crawl. Specifically motifs such as possessed people (The Conjuring for example), vampires, ghosts, Satanists, haunted houses, decay, death and mysterious old people with a secret are just some general things that are generally accepted to be frightening. It is also widely associated with goth culture.

Comedy films, on the other hand, are intended to make people howl with laughter, and play on different cultural norms of what is considered to be funny, such as slapstick (You've Been Framed type stuff) like people tripping and falling or walking into glass doors or could be things like witty banter/remarks, sarcasm (e.g. Tim scowls, 'Boris is a brilliant prime minister isn't he? Partying away with all these covid restrictions...') exaggeration (e.g. 'Feels like the Tories have been letting Britain down forever!' Tim mutters.) and people cursing (sometimes). These are just some of the many things that make comedy what it is.

Above is my collection of footage used for the project. Although it may not look like much, the total size of this folder is 1GB and 57 videos, for two different films edited in different ways. This includes all the retakes too. It was the same footage but I had to adapt it to completely different genres; so I tried to make the most of everything we got. At the beginning I added a title screen using a random, seemingly useless piece of footage of the green emergency light.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/c3a0a6_89a7a04761f54c4c9790c33e963b800d/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Film Production

Footage/Video

In this horror film I tried to put together the footage in an eerie, slightly more spaced out sort of way to evoke a real sense of tension and shock. In retrospect I think I could have spaced out the film a bit more just to let the tension build before the jumpscare, especially leading up to the unexplained appearance of the ghost. You may not have noticed but throughout the horror film there were just parts where the screen just went black, like in a traditional horror film to add suspense.

Another thing I thought which didn't work so well was the lighting - when I rendered some of the footage we took and put together, it came out rather bright and overexposed which I wasn't too happy with, as it took away from the fear element in this movie. When I was arranging the footage I actually realised how these jumpscares would look in classic horror films by famed directors; for example when there was the transition of the main character (me) into the ghost in the lift, I could easily imagine something like a thunderclap and flash of light before the ghost appears.

Sound/Audio

Horror and fear is very much influenced by what you don't know is going to happen, so I decided to use a lot of varied as well unexpected audio tracks rather than the typical violin screech, like in Kubrick's 'The Shining'. That famous high pitched sharp violin sound was so effective in that film it's been used in so many old horror films, so much that it's become cliche, in my opinion.

Instead I decided to use more electronic sounds to create this sense of fear. I like how discordant and disturbed they sound in the film, and they are quite freaky. Especially in the beginning, I actually layer a range of different sounds, from some familiar ones like the dark rumble to sounds like the reversed steel drum (which you probably would not have guessed) heard at 0:13 with the synth suspense and cinematic rumble. The cinematic rumble itself is an interesting sound as it is used in so many films, in so many ways. I used it in my film before and after tension/jumpscare moments to give a sense of atmosphere, as well as throughout the film.

Towards the end I used a bigger variety of electronic/synth sounds which were very discordant and had a lot of screeching too which was powerful and shocking towards the end of the film when you realise that the main character (me) isn't actually running away from the ghost; he IS the ghost.