Horror Remakes:
For this exercise, you should use a basic camera and a tripod with no specialized equipment. You can borrow these items from the circulation desk at Davis but will need to reserve them to be sure that they’re available. Here’s the link to the reservation form. I look forward to seeing students act out the parts, but we’re not looking for perfect performances. If there’s dialog in your scene, feel free to speak it, but don’t worry about sound quality. We’re focused on the building of visuals.
Keep a record of your collective efforts, successes, and failures to reproduce or modify your scene, so that you can let the class know what you learned in the process. Have fun with the effort, but take it seriously, or you won’t get any sense of what goes into stringing together a coherent shot sequence. You also won’t appreciate fully the scene you’re imitating. Perfect imitation could be one goal of this work, but more important is the effort to understand what you’re trying to reproduce and the understanding gained through that effort.
The main point is that you should put some time and effort into producing your one or two minutes of video. In class, you should also be able to speak and answer questions intelligently about what made the project a challenge, the decisions you made in the project, and where you think you succeeded in your efforts.
There are several basic guides to student film making online. The links below address most of the vocabulary and techniques you should need for this brief exercise.
http://www.thewildclassroom.com/wildfilmschool/gettingstarted/camerashots.html
http://www.vox.com/a/best-horror-movies-scary-scenes
If you need help with editing software, you should be able to get it in the media lab at the library from a digital media intern. Someone is there most of the day, but I’d suggest trying to confirm a time. Don’t expect these people to do the work for you, but they should be able to help you out with Imovie, Final Cut, or some other editing software. There are also many tutorials online. I think the best of these are at lynda.com. You won’t need to be anything like an expert in the software to make it work for a project like this.
Here are some basic matters to consider:
1) How is the shot framed? Is it a “wide” shot? A “medium” shot, a “close up,” etc? How is it composed? What is in the frame and what is excluded? How long is the shot? Try to imitate the timing of the piece you’re working with.
2) What is the angle of sight? From where is the shot taken? Over the shoulder of a character? From an omniscient position? Etc. Were you able to reproduce this? Why or why not?
3) Are you able to approximate the lighting and shadow where they are conspicuous factors? Make an effort, though this may be difficult. The lighting is obviously more conspicuously important in some of these scenes than it is in others.
4) How is the sequence of shots edited and put together? Can you duplicate this? Where was it easy and where was it difficult or impossible and why?
5) Again, while you are trying to reproduce some version of the scene in question, what’s most important is to understand what went into the original and what went into your effort to repeat it. You should have meaningful things to say and discuss in class about the work you’re producing. The point isn’t perfection as much as it is to engage in creative problem solving and gain some filmic insight.
6) If your group prefers to work with another clip, that’s fine, but you need to get my approval. Your choice shouldn’t rely on elaborate special effects and should minimize dialog, forcing you to think about the visual.
Here are links to scenes matched with groups:
Group 1
From Single White Female. Ignore the extras in the background and concentrate on the two main characters. (Only the first 50 seconds, before the cut to the apartment)
Group 2 :
Helen awaits while Nosferatu climbs the stairs (1:22:57-1:24:00)
Group 3 :
From The Shining. Beginning to 1:55 in the clip.
link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lQ_MjU4QHw
Group 4 : Paranormal Activity 3 Living Room/Kitchen (first 65 seconds of clip)
Group 5 :
From Halloween. Laurie walks home with a friend from school. From 27 seconds (after one friend walks away) to 1:35 (“Poor Laurie. Scared another one away.”)