Tuesday, 3 December 2013

Possessed Jump At Camera Practical

A common technique to scare and cause a reaction from the audience of a film of the horror genre is a sudden appearance on camera of a possessed individual accompanied by loud and very abrupt sound which can be both diegetic and non-diegetic. A sudden and very quick appearance is designed to scare the audience but without showing too much of the identity of the character. 

Before trying to create my own abrupt appearance, I researched existing examples of an abrupt appearance in an existing film. One of the clips I extracted is from the official trailer for the 2012 horror film Sinister. I used the iMovie to shorten the trailer to produce the clip I was focusing on. Below is the clip I looked at during my research.


After looking at existing clips from horror films, I made my own clip. I used a Nikon D7000 mounted on a shelf in my bedroom to film the clip. Below is the raw clip with no editing.


I took the raw, original clip and uploaded it to the movie editing program iMovie where I applied some effects and sound to make the clip more scary and authentic. I used the non-diegetic sound from the Sinister trailer to accompany the visuals as well as applying a visual effect on the program which makes the clip seem old and more eerie. Below is the final clip with editing.



I think my example of a sudden appearance is effective due to the reactions of those who I have shown it to. After completeing this task, I realise how important the use of non-diegetic sound is in order for the appearance to be as effective as possible and succeed in scaring the audience. Although I knew this to be the case before making my own example, I mostly realised that non-diegetic sound is important when I saw the reactions of people when they were shown the clips above, one with and one without sound.

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