Assignment 26 – Individual Pitch

By Jamie Charters

Horror Subgenre • The horror subgenre I am choosing to base my idea around is the

home invasion. This is because these are the type if films I find most scary and are most interesting to watch. They contain horror and lead to many tense moments, that keep you thrilled and scared.

Film Examples

The strangers shows a young couple being stalked and hunted by 3 strangers who eventually kill them

You’re next shows a family being stalked and killed in their own home

Hangman is about another family being stalked and killed by a man who comes in at night

Panic room is about a single mother and her son who go into a panic room to escape to villains but the they notice and end up trying to break into the panic room

The aggressive scale is about a family who move into a new home and are being hunted by men. They retaliate and try to escape

Conventions • Most of these horror films, contain men with masks to cover their

identity and to make it more enigmatic and frightening. However, in some cases such as The Purge and The Strangers has woman as killers.• Most of the killers commit their crimes with knifes rather than guns,

because knifes have connotations of violence and death. • Most of the violence takes place at night time, in the victims home

rather than a rented place.• All of the victims try to ring for help but help does not arrive in time

and when it does it does not work.

Synopsis of Idea• The victim is carrying out daily activities at night, such as talking to their friends on snapchat or face time

• They hear noises and start to look around the house

• They look at cctv and see a man walking around in their house

• They run to hide and call emergency services

• Voice over of emergency services is used to create tension and victim starts giving details whilst in a scared/crying state

• Villain comes into hiding spot of victim but fails to find anything so leaves the house

• As he leaves, the victims phone line cuts off and the emergency services call back, resulting in the villain to hear the ringtone and to continue looking for them

• The victim is hiding in a closet or under the bed, when the villain comes in and is trying to be silent

• The villain looks under the bed/in the closet and finds the victim

• The victim is trying to fight the villain, but fails to

• The victim is stabbed multiple times and is killed

How am I meeting conventions?• I have made sure the villain is using a knife to kill rather than a gun,

because a gun is more associated with crime thriller movies, whereas a knife is more related to slasher type horror movies.• The emergency services fail to rescue the victim, but instead end up

getting them killed• The scene takes place at night, and the victim tries to hide in

traditional hiding spots, such as under the bed or in the closet.• The villain is going to be masked to hide his identity and to create

enigmas, as to who he is and why he has targeted that specific victim

How we will be original and unique • Most other opening sequences in the past have not used the home

invasion subgenre • We will be using a house, somewhere which is easy to film• We can also make fake blood to emphasise the horror of the film, as

most home invasion films you don’t actually see the wounded body of the victim

Narrative Enigmas• The main narrative enigmas is to who the villain is. The villain will be

masked so his identity will be hidden. This means that the audience don’t get to see the victims reaction if they find out who he is, e.g. they could find out the killer is the victims cousin seeking revenge etc.• The audience also don’t know why to victim has been targeted.

Therefore the audience as made to think if it has something to do with their body appearance, promiscuousness or just a randomly selected person.

Targets• A good target to achieve would be to have excellent mise-en-scene. This

could come from using a lot of fake blood for stabbing wounds, and making the setting believable to realistic.• We also want to make sure we use a range of camera shots to emphasise

the fear in the victim, but showing where about the victim is hiding and where the villain is. This would make the scene very tense, which would make it an effective opening sequence.• We also want to make the acting believable which might be hard, since we

are all boys, but if the acting is good then this might help our opening sequence more professional and realistic.

Inspiration• My main inspirational clip was from the movie ‘The Call’ which is

about a young girl getting kidnapped. The opening sequence showed a girl getting murdered, and had me hooked and frightened. The opening sequence of this film was very tense, and managed to scare me and my friends, hence why I thought it was so effective and came up with a similar idea.