Genresearch

                                                 Horror vs Thriller: Similarities and Differences

The horror genre is about building feelings of fear or dread, while the thriller genre is about creating thrills. Obviously. 

Horror more often than not is in close relation with supernatural topics such as death, creatures, the afterlife, witchcraft, and much more. Some say that the main difference between the horror and thriller genre is the inclusion of these supernatural elements.

On the other hand, the thriller's most important element is suspense. Since suspense can be applied to many situations, the thriller genre has many, MANY, sub-genres. Political thrillers, romantic thrillers, spy thrillers, legal thrillers, and so many more.

The confusion between the two is very understandable, as one genre's elements may overlap or be used in the other. For example, a thriller may have scary sequences or deal with seemingly supernatural events, or a horror movie may deal with real-life occurrences in a heightened or more frightening way.

One very clear example of this possible confusion is 10 Cloverfield Lane. While a large majority of the movie seems to be a thriller dealing with events that could actually happen, the ending portion of the movie goes into full horror by using supernatural elements and showing what the real threat actually is.

Hopefully, this post outlines what is and isn't each of these genres, and I will be able to look back at this post as a guideline for what I should be doing.

Some articles that helped me with this post:

https://nofilmschool.com/difference-between-horror-and-thriller

https://industrialscripts.com/thriller-vs-horror/

https://newdawnfilm.com/the-difference-between-a-thriller-and-a-horror-film/

Blog Slog

 I'm having a very hard time thinking about what I should be posting here. I haven't ever done a project that requires every step of the process to be shown. At least it sort of helps me not procrastinate. If not for this blog I probably would've tried to do the entire project in the final week, or most likely the last 3 days.

Anyways, I'm still trying to think of some better and more detailed ideas about my opening, and the story I want to tell. I think starting to storyboard some shots and scenes will help me visualize some things I may not be able to put into writing to explain to someone else. I may be a bit (more like a lot) behind on my blog posts, but I'll keep trying to work hard. 

That's all for now, goodbye annoying/helpful blog.

Good ideas come at strange times

Never mind what I said in my last blog post. I've thought of a better idea for my opening that can still incorporate some of those elements that would be present in the video game opening while being completely different. Instead of the video game idea, I focused more on the imagination or dream idea.

In very simple terms, the protagonist of the story will wake up from their bed, go downstairs, and do a few other things before going back to bed. However, they will be stalked by a mysterious figure during all this. The mysterious figure will break something or make something fall over, alerting the protagonist. The figure will then come for the protagonist just as they wake up. It will seem as if it was all a dream. In the final segment, that broken/fallen object will be seen, showing that it was all real. So what happened between the attack and the morning when everything seemed perfectly fine? 

Well, that won't be shown in the opening so I don't have to worry about that too much.

That's all I have for now, I need to work on more details and more info about the character(s).

Now Choose

 After considering the ideas I laid out in previous post, I've decided on my idea of part of my opening being a video game, and then cutting to the real world. This would allow for my opening to include more than one genre. The contrast between what is happening in the game and what is actually happening could also lend itself to a comedic moment or a lighter tone towards the end of my opening.

What I have to do now is decide on what should be happening during the video game segment, and how it would relate to the overall plot, even beyond what is shown in my opening. I want to make sure that this segment is important to the story, and isn't just thrown into my opening for no reason. I will continue to research my genre and will hopefully get a general plot for my opening done soon.

Inspiration

One of the ideas I had going into this project is that I wanted to have part of my opening be a completely different genre than the rest of it. I wasn't sure how I wanted to actually incorporate it into a scene, so I thought about other movies that might've done it before. With that came 2 similar but different openings.

The openings for Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3.

Toy Story 2 begins with a sci-fi action sequence revolving around Buzz Lightyear, which is revealed to just be a video game being played by Rex.

This could be one way I can do my idea, but I'm still not sure if I should do it this way because the sequence has to be long enough to fool the audience that it is actually happening, and I'm not sure that my opening would be long enough to do that.

Another way to do it could be like in Toy Story 3, where the large action sequence at the start of the movie is actually just Andy's imagination. 

This is another idea I am considering, but I think my choice will be affected by the character I want in my opening, and if their imagination is important to the plot at all because if not, this sequence might feel like a waste of time.

These are just some scenes that inspired me, and I wanted to share them here.

Toy Story 3 Opening:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFbioZJX3C0

Toy Story 2 Opening:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODa0AufitVY

Portfolio Project

 Hello! It's Sebastian once again.

Starting today I will be beginning my portfolio project. Throughout the following weeks, I will be posting various updates about the project to this blog. I will attempt to show my planning process, as well as my production process later on.

I already have a few ideas for what I want to do with this project, but I will need to find ways to change those ideas to fit together with each other. I am excited to take on this project and hopeful that I will be able to realize my ideas into actual footage.

Music Marketing Blog Post #2: Wrap Up

 We began our brainstorming by listening to our chosen song a few times and discussing a few ideas for our music video. A majority of the first minute and a half of our song does not have any vocals, so we realized we had a lot of space in the part of the song to be very creative and free from the lyrics. We copied some of the guidelines from Canvas to have some idea about what we're supposed to be brainstorming. We began to write down a few ideas about the band, but these were changed as we continued with the project.

Next, we completed the Music Marketing Research Chart. This chart helped us find similar bands to the one we were creating and take inspiration from how they market themselves. We made case studies about Marilyn Manson, Iggy Pop, Turnstile, and Korn. The song we chose for our band, Aloof, is originally from Korn, so that was the easiest case study to choose.

Lastly, we are now working on our music video and presentation. We decided to focus specifically on our lead singer, Ben Stone. We wrote down most of our information on the slides, and only need to add some images that we are creating, such as album covers or merchandise.

Above is an in-progress slide showing various different ideas for a band logo, which can be used in various marketing materials.

In the slide above we more throughout described the concept of the album, and created song titles for the rest of the album.

This is the point when I made my first blog post.

After this point, we added lots of new images and art to our slides, since the slides mostly only had text at that point.

Here are some examples of what we added:

Title Slide

Album Cover

Merchandise

A Social Media Post

From this project, I learned many new things. This project really showed me how important communication is, and how much good communication can improve productivity and overall output. If we hadn't communicated as often, it would've likely been harder to plan when we were going to film our video, or by what day or time we would finish our slides. I enjoyed this project because I learned about a genre of music that I normally don't listen to, but has connections to lots of music that I DO listen to. The most important lesson I learned from this project is how crucial planning can be.