PRODUCTION COMPANY RESEARCH
A production company are responsable for producing the movie and making the final product that is given to the distribution company to handle advertising it and releasing it to the public.
Twisted Pictures is one of the many production companies who are responsible for such movies as all Saw films known to man, Dead Silence and Chain Letter. Twisted Pictures' production company video almost follows a basic story line for a horror movie. They use a very dark, brooding colour scheme which gives the viewer a clear indication that the production company focuses on horror films. When the text fades in we notice an immediate contrast between the text and the background as the colour of the text is white. This personifies a battle between heroes and villains, a war between the darkness and the light, or in this case a killer and his victims. Immediately after the text fades in, we witness barbed wire unravelling and then wrapping around the text. The barbed wire can be represented as the killer in a horror movie, and that each text is the vulnerable victim. The sound of the spines scraping against each other and the bending of metal gives us the image of maybe prison bars closing in front of the victim, blocking their only escape. Suddenly a large, sharpened pole impales the spot in between the two words and begins to twist the barbed wire, tightening it's grip on the text. This can be seen as the part of a horror movie where the killer now has the upper hand on other characters. Finally, a flash of white light, accompanied by the sound of thunder, wipes off the barbed wire from the text, leaving the pole and some of the remains of the wire still attached onto it. This gives the image of the end of a horror movie, where the main character and some friends make a plan to stop the killer, which plays out exactly to plan. The pole with some barbed wire still on it represents that the killer might not have been stopped at all.
Ghost house pictures immediately shows its audience that it is a production company for horror films by its sound track alone, it initially starts with silence broken only by an ambient wind sound effect this is put to a premature end when the door slams shut and introduces a creepy, high pitch singing. This also portrays the message of horror and we tried to capture it in our edit with the slow paced piano music much like the slow paced singing. The colour scheme of the clip also plays a key part in its aesthetic appearance, it is full of dull browns and blacks. This dark dingy message that it is sending the the audience is often used in horror films and related to being trapped, a feeling that strikes fear in to people. We also used dark dull colours in our production company video in order to capture the same effect. Although it has only one scene the mise en scene of the video tells us a lot. The door slamming shut is again a resemblance to being trapped and unsafe as well as the skull which is an image used to portray fear or death both of which are related heavily in horror. Finally the text used in the title is very simple for two reasons, the first to make sure it is legible when only shown in a short space of time and the second a simple type face is often used in horror productions. We used this in our video but had it on the screen for longer in order for it to be more understandable.
Blumhouse productions focus very heavily of sound and mise en scene to pass the message of horror on to the viewers. The sound builds very quickly through the clip and consists of layers of sounds that are often linked with horror, the two most noticeable are the child's voice and the mechanical sounding child's toy which give the video a very creepy feel. As well as this they have tried to cram in every iconic thing from horror films like the floating chairs, the small seemingly innocent girl in white to the single swinging light bulb which inspired us to do the same in our production company video with the swinging bulb. Just like most horror production companies the logos text is very simple and clear in the edit. For Blumhouse productions they used a very simplistic type face and the only thing standing out from the other companies is the crooked arm protruding from the E which gives the whole text and uneasy undertone.
By George Percy and Joe Pratt-Flynn
By George Percy and Joe Pratt-Flynn