Props evaluation

Before we made the opening scene we did many tests for different props that we could use, which ones looked the most effective and would be easiest to make quickly when we started filming.
 

At the killer's 'workbench', we had two or three of the knives that I created in my first prop creation experiments. That was when I tested fake blood on different hammers and knives. All three of them looked effective and could be used for different purposes. For example, the small serrated knife was placed next to Lucy, so that 1. it looked like it was used for the cut on her stomach, and 2. it was the best to cut rope with. The other knives were spattered with fake blood and placed on the bench for more effect.

The main weapon was the hammer. This was the most effective looking weapon for our horror film because its wooden handle and rusting metal end looked like a real weapon, and when blood was put on it, it blended nicely with the rust to look like dried blood (therefore used more).
 

Other props we used included the hanging body bag which was great because not only was it very graphic, but it was very easy to make and to hang. Kelsey walks into it at one point to emphasise that it's there and that it's a killer's lair, and she also hides behind it, so it served well for a few purposes. Another prop was the heart in the jar. Although it isn't seen very much, it's still gory and graphic enough to show the genre of the film.
 

Overall I think that we were successful with the props we used and created as they served many purposes in the scene, and made it look as much like a horror film as possible.

Mise-en-Scene of Hannibal (TV Series)

Please note that the following content may disturb or sicken others due to the violence of the scenes:

The TV show Hannibal, based off of the events of Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal is a TV show that ended, but was on Sky Atlantic and stared Mads McKenzie as Hannibal Lecter, and had beautiful visuals, beautiful, yet haunting with how disturbing the scenes were. What can you expect about a show about psychopaths and sociopath killers, and one being a cannibal? The TV show had great mise-en-scene and below I have chosen three of the best ones to choose from. The scenes are both horrific, and horrifically beautiful, and Will Graham is a detective who has to analyse the scene to find out how they died, and who did it, and it is pure genius in how the crew set up the mise-en-scene of the scene so that the characters do not miss anything, which means we do not miss anything too. We deconstruct the scene as the character Will does, and we cannot help but see how gorgeous yet disgusting and unsettling the visuals are with their artistic ways. 

The first scene that I have chosen to deconstruct is the killer who creates "angels" as his victims. Already you can see what I meant by horrifying yet beautiful, how they are posed and how the scenes are done. They are chilling, yet to the killer it is art. In the scene you can see the effort put into it by the team who build the scenes, how the back is opened up and held up like angel wings with the skin and muscle of their back, propped with strings, and their hands tied together to look as if they are praying, and this scene shows the great mise-en-scene that keeps us focused on the scene, and is great for films because it is something that you will not forget for a while.

 The next seen has great mise-en-scene with even more disturbing scenes of the human totem pole, which is made up of many naked and mutilated corpses, held together with string and wire and each body positioned on top of one another to create this totem pole of dead bodies.

This one, probably the most disturbing for the fact that this man had a cello forced down his throat, and a man used his vocal cords to play the cello on a theater stage. You can see his skin, open wind pipe and the muscle under neath the skin, serious detail to the remarkable art which is practical effects.

The detail of the scenes which go into the series of 'Hannibal' is wonderful, and something our group should be inspired to do to make sure there is always something in the frame that the audience can pause and notice and try to think of what it is in the scene, and what importance it does play. 

Mise-en-Scene of Saw

Mise-En-Scene in Saw

Saw is set in mainly just one room with two men and a corpse on the floor. The scene is set from the very beginning and there is tons of Mise-en-Scene within just one frame. 

The room that the characters are in is an underground room that is dimly lit. The lighting plays a large role in the mise-en-scene of the film, because it helps establish that this film is not light hearted because it is not well-lit and is very claustrophobic with there being a small room and little freedom inside. The room perfectly shows the fear as there are two men in either corner of the room, and they are chained to rusty pipes by their ankles, and in the middle is a dead man who has shot himself in the head with a  revolver that he holds in one hand and a cassette tape in the middle, decorating the floor in his blood from his brain. 

The room has dirty tiles on the walls and floor, showing that the room is abandoned since it has not been cleaned, or repaired. As the artificial lighting used on the ceiling is dangling, and some bulbs are broken. The floor is also covered in cold blood of a bald man in the center, and there is rot on the floor and walls where it has not been in use for a long time. This makes an effective room for a killer's hideout, because it shows how all the grime caused by the failure to clean is a good trait for the killer's personality, how they keep it looking abandoned and run down and may even be a metaphor for their own behavior on how they are rotten inside or that they do not care for clean and nice things as long as there is something to satisfy their demented blood lust.

Some tiles in the room are broken, and there is a sink that is clearly broken, as well as out of place pipes that just hang from the walls and are covered in rust, as well as the grimy look on the sliding door that is inactive. Even the chain around their ankles is full of detail, with it being strapped to their ankle tightly and another sturdy object nearby so that they cannot move too far like they are prisoners or victims in someone's disturbing game. Some walls have even crumbled like they've been hit with a bulldozer, and urinals are yellow and dusty. It is unclear hat this room used to be, since there is toilets and smashed ones, as well as urinals but also some rusted bath tubs that are still full of water. 

Their body language perfectly shows how one would be in this situation, as one of the two men shake his chain and try and break the pipe he is chained too, this is what most people would do as they are scared and confused, and don't want to be trapped in a room, especially with a stranger and a corpse in the center. 

The mise-en-scene of this scene is very effective on creating a mystery to put the characters in and engage the audience, because both the audience and the characters are confused as to what is happening, and this effect using just the scene that they have with the props in it make it a very effective looking scene with many clues as to how they got there or where they actually are or where the exit is. 

Mise-en-Scene of Evil Dead 2

Mise-en-Scene of the Film 'Evil Dead 2'

Evil Dead 2 stars Bruce Campbell as Ash Williams, and the film is directed by Sam Raimi. There is a scene in this film called the 'Evil Dead 2 Deer Scene' or 'Ash Goes Crazy - Evil Dead 2'. This scene is filled with Mise-en-Scene.

Within the series of shots is a deer's head as a trophy, mounted on a wall. This prop uses practical effects as it moves around by its neck, and is rather chilling with horrifying roar of laughter. The shots cut to different objects, all laughing to and mimicking it with movement, for instance books closing and opening like lips, and a lamp moving back and forwards. The lighting in this shot is artificial, as the map light is not show on the character' shadow, and is shown from above instead of on the shelf where the lamp is.

In this scene you can see all the props moving, and Ash joins them in laughing. His costume is noticeably torn and ripped where he had encountered some dangerous events prior to this scene. He has a blue collared shirt that is torn and ripped, and he is also missing a hand. This shows us his costume, and the prop he holds is a shotgun in his only hand. His facial expression in this scene is a beady eyed and wide grin as he begins to laugh maniacally with the objects that seem alive. His body expression is a cheerful dance as he bobs up and down with his arms out, showing how he has lost his mind as if it were any one sane in this scene they would certainly be too scared to join in and most likely try to run away.

Every prop present in this scene apart from the shotgun is moving on its own and laughing, and they are all in focus of the scene.

At the end of the scene, he screams in distress as he struggles to fight for his sanity, and you cans see the makeup on his face which is a lot of blood on him. His skin is sweaty and covered in dirt where he had been in situations prior to this scene, and it sticks with continuity by showing this, as well as the bordered up door. The attention to detail in this scene makes it more effective, as everything is interactive in this scene and nothing is left to be questioned.

The effects used are all practical, and most likely have little to no CGI input and the space around the actor is huge to show his desperation for company and his alone-ness.

The setting is a cabin in the night that is in the middle of the woods, we can see this clearly from the wooden room obviously being too small to be a house, and the darkness outside and the tree branches that can be slightly seen through the bordered up windows and doors as well as the deer showing that this is like a hunting ground. 

Heart in a Jar

Heart in a Jar

Our genre is slasher/horror so in our opening scene we need to explicitly show the genre through mise-en-scene. In our opening we will have a killers 'lair', so I thought that having a heart in a jar would show the genre quite explicitly.

I bought a sheep heart from the butchers and put it in some pickling vinegar. The heart is quite small but the jar makes it look bigger which is good. In the pictures the heart is clearly visible in the clear liquid, but now, after a few days of it being in the jar, the vinegar has turned a yellow/brown colour and it looks much more gruesome than before which means it will look even more disgusting by the time we film our scene.

  

 

 

Having body parts in the 'killer's lair' will definitely conform to the conventions of slasher films as it is an explicit prop that will immediately inform the audience of the genre, which is the aim.

Killer journal

Killers journal

For my practical task I decided to create a 'killers journal' inspired by the 1995 film 'Se7en' where in the opening credits the film shows detailed shots of some sort journal, clearly showing the obsession of the killer through the pages as they go into extreme detail. With Se7en the killer is interested in the seven deadly sins and this is shown through the amount of writing on the page (in the picture below shows a title Greed, linking with the seven deadly sins and with a whole page written about it with dedication)

I thought making a book like this would be useful for our own media project as it would show the extreme obsession of the killer whether it would be used in an opening scene of credits. It would also fit in with the genre Thriller and Slasher, which we are interested in doing.

What I did:

Unlike Se7en i wanted the journal to look old and worn down, to make it look like it has been an obsession for years and looks more rough, fitting in with a slasher environment for our film idea. I used tea to darken the pages, putting tea bags in a container before soaking the pages in them.

Once soaked I transferred it to the cooker before heating it up, drying it and hardening the pages. To give it a more old and ancient looking and as if the pages have been used a lot, I crumbled up the pages after heating them before straightening it out again, creating this look:

(I did this with a numerous amount of pages. enough pages to create a book from it)

To create a cover I used a cardboard outline to give it a hard feel, before gluing a tea covered paper onto to fit in with the old theme of the book

As well as this, to make it look even more ancient, I wanted to darken the ages as if they had been singed or burnt. I did this with a black felt tip pen and colored the edges in making them look as if they had worn away

After finishing the look of the overall look of the note book, I needed to fill the pages in. Wanting to fit in with the idea of obsession and religion, however still focusing on the idea of Slasher being our overall genre I began drawing an outline of a human body onto the pages before getting a red felt tip pen, as blood, and writing word's such as 'Hell' to feature a religious theme. The red felt tip pen didn't look realistic so I used red and brown eye shadow and swiped it over the red pen to make it look more realistic as if it was dried blood. To include the religious theme even further i copied out parts of the bible, especially quotes about devil worshiping and the sin of it, in black inky pen, writing messily over the outline of the body.

As well as this, I decided to draw the Killer's weapon of a dagger onto the page. Showing the genre of Slasher again and the violence of it. Again I copied out bible quotations onto this page as well

My finished product:

Overall I thought the idea of the killer journal was effective in giving an insight into the killers mind, giving us the idea to do our film opening/credits as a hybrid genre of psychological slasher. It was quite an easy task to create the booklet together, however was difficult in coming up with ideas of what to put onto the pages. The blood I put onto the page didn't look realistic enough and if I were to do it again I would put more thought into it, perhaps by making it look darker or using more red pen. 

Practical task - bloody weapons

For the practical task, it was my job to do tests of mise-en-scene. This meant creating props that could be used in our film opening that link to our genre - slasher horror. Immediately I thought of a lot of bloody weapons, for example sharp objects and hammers.

I went to the kitchen and found two knives, one large and one small, and then I went to the garage and found different hammers that I could use, a small saw, a chisel and a pair of clear goggles. These were all effective as props because they were easy to make look like weapons.

I used a tube of fake blood and squeezed small amounts of it onto a piece of kitchen roll and just dabbed it multiple time on the props. This made them look very bloody and gory, which was perfect for them. I also dabbed small amounts on the handles to give a splattered effect so it looked more realistic. To begin with, I also tested out techniques that I could make from the kitchen roll by dabbing and swiping it across the paper that I was doing it on.

I used three different hammers so it would give me more of a choice to see which would look the most realistic. The orange and silver-headed hammer looked like it was well used, however the blood didn't show up against the orange. The black and yellow hammer was large so it looked the most violent, but the head was too dark for the blood to show up again. The last hammer was the best, as the wooden handle and silver head looked quite old-fashioned, the blood showed up the best and looked splattered, and also there were a lot of brown dots of rust on the metal so it looked like dried blood - like it hadn't been washed. I therefore thought this was the best hammer if we were to use one.

 

The pair of goggles and plastic gloves were mainly extras that I found that I thought could be effective as the goggles are sometimes used in slasher films so no blood splatters into the eye when the villain is doing their 'work'. The gloves were also good because they reflect what a butcher may wear so their hands don't get bloody, and the villain's 'evidence' could be disposed of easily.

These are some other techniques that I tried to make it more gory and realistic. I discovered that the blood I used didn't photograph well, as it was too light on the pictures. After I took all the pictures I got some red food colouring and mixed a small amount with the fake blood. This looked a lot more real and photographed better, so I'll be using it in the future.

Advantages:

• blood was realistic
• it was easy to make the effects - not a lot of blood was needed for the entire thing
• it was fast

Disadvantages

• on photos / cameras, the blood shows up too bright and doesn't look the right colour
• it was quite thick so I had to add food colouring to make it thinner (this also made it the right colour)