New Film [Untitled]

Due to problems with scheduling of the filming, the actors that were supposed to appear in my short film are now unable to. Therefore I have had to completely change the story and the genre of my short film.

I believe that it would be a smart idea to go with the horror genre as opposed the Black Comedy I had planned previously. This is because comedy (and especially a blend of comedy and drama) can be very hard to pull off without skilled actors. My previous short film was going to be a dialogue based black comedy which would have required precise comedic timing and expression; furthermore, due to the film being mainly two characters sat in a car together, the whole film depended entirely on the ability of the actors.

This is why I believe it is a much smarter idea to move forward with the horror genre as, in the past, it has proved that horror can be achieved with a very small cast and a very small budget. For example, Paranormal activity was made with a $15,000 budget, but managed to make a gross profit of $107,917,283.

Since films like ‘The Blair Witch Project’ have proved that horror can be achieved with a very small budget and a very small cast of characters; and since small, independent films like this have proved to be highly profitable as they have such a small budget, it has created a phenomenon with horror films constantly being released and making millions in profit.

However, while I chose the horror genre because it has proved to be ‘easy’ in the past, with certain tactics that can be used to create simple scares out of the audience, I will not be fully basing my film of of these types of horror films. I have chosen to base my films of Horror films such as ‘The Witch’, ‘The Badabook’ and ‘It Follows’. I have chosen these three films because they do not follow the conventional stereotypes of most horror films that rely on jump scares to provoke a reaction out of the audience; because most jump scares are not actually ‘scary’. I believe that these jump scares aren’t necessarily scary because 9 times out of 10, the audience tends to laugh afterwards in a moment of relief, whereas films like ‘It Follows’ and ‘The Witch’ isn’t necessarily a film where the viewer gets a moment of relief as the film creates a constant sense of tension for the viewer without relieving that with a jump scare to take all of the actual pressure out of the situation.

This is why I have chosen to have my film create a constant feel of tension for the viewer without relying on multiple jump scares. However, due to the fact that my film will only be around the 5 minute mark, I believe that it would be best to include 1 or 2 ‘big’ scares to provoke a reaction out of the audience as long, tension-building films such as ‘It Follows’ are able to do so because of their run time (1 hour 40 minutes), but a short film would not be able to create and maintain the same atmosphere as well as a feature length film.