This document provides a summary of secondary research conducted for a media coursework project, including summaries and analysis of the short films Vincent, Frankenweenie, and Mater and the Ghostlight. Key points taken from the research include using changes in music to represent different personalities in the project film, incorporating the title into the story, and employing different color schemes and lighting to contrast two worlds or personalities. Dialogue is found to often be more visual than spoken in the referenced films.

1. Secondary Research In this power point is all the secondary research I conducted for my A2 media coursework. it consists of many screen shots from the short filmsVincentFrankenweenieMater and the GhostlightOne man band

2. Vincent! Vincent is a short stop-motion film made by Tim Burton in 1982. It lasts a total of 6 minutes and so is round about the right length to be researching for my own film. The film has a very dark mysterious feel about it and this is the kind of atmosphere I would like to achieve for my own film. The target audience for this film is much like the target audience for my own and therefore it will be very effective for me to thoroughly research this film and pick up as many tips as possible from it.

3. Dialogue The only dialogue in this short film is a Non-Diegetic voice over in the form of a narration conducted by Vincent Price. The narration is also in the form as a poem. Vincent Malloy is seven years old; He’s always polite and does what he’s told. For a boy his age he’s considerate and nice, but he wants to be just like Vincent Price. He doesn’t mind living with his sister, dog and cat, though he’d rather share a home with spiders and bats. There he could reflect on the horrors he’s invented, and wander dark hallways alone and tormented. Vincent is nice when his aunt comes to see him, but imagines dipping her in wax for his wax museum. This introduction works very well because it gives the audience a basic idea of what the movie will be about, without revealing to much about the story. From this introduction it is clear that this boy has duel personalities and that the duel personalities are going to be the focus of the story, just like in my short film. The introduction also informs us that one of his personalities is a sweet seven year old boy and the other is a very dark kind of person who enjoys being alone and thinking about evil things and making dark creatures, basically everything that we, as an audience, associate with evil. The voice of the narrator, Vincent Price, is a legendary horror movie actor and so if this film was watched by older generation the sound of the narration its self would set a very accurate mood for the movie. While Vincent backed slowly against the wall. The room started to sway, to shiver and creak. His horrid insanity had reached its peak. He saw Abacrombie his zombie slave, and heard his wife call from beyond the grave. She spoke from her coffin, and made ghoulish demands. While through cracking walls reached skeleton hands. Every horror in his life that had crept through his dreams, Swept his mad laugh to terrified screams. To escape the madness, he reached for the door, so he and his horrible zombie dog, but fell limp and lifeless down on the floor. His voice was soft and very slow, as he quoted The Raven from Edgar Allen Poe, “And my soul from out that shadow floating on the floor, Shall be lifted –Nevermore!” The last part of the narration is very much darker than the first. It explains how Vincent is reaching the climax of his insanity about thinking he is Vincent Price. It explains that he can see all the bad things about his life, a lot of these things we heard about earlier on in the film, and so in a way it acts as a kind of review, reminding the audience of what Vincent has gone through and what he has seen during the course of the movie. So even without actually seeing any of the movie it is very clear that Vincent has gone on a journey and is now a much darker and more bizarre person. At the very end of the narration a quote from Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Raven’ is used. Edgar Allen Poe is also very famous for writing horror novels and so this coupled with the fact the narration is by Vincent Price all add the horror element of the movie and make the character of Vincent much darker.

4. Music The music for this short film changes throughout of the course of the movie. The music changes as the mood of the movie gets darker, more depressing and ‘’creepy’’. This gave me the idea to change the music through out the course of my film, however instead of the music changing through out the course of the film I thought (considering my plot) that it would be more effective for the two different personalities of the girl to have their own individual sound motif, and therefore the that sound, Non diegetic and Diegetic both, is played during my short film will change back and forth depending on which personality the girl possess at the time. For the ‘Good’ personality the music will be very happy, bouncy and create a very light mood for the character. The ‘Evil’ personality on the other hand, I imagine the Non-diegetic music being very eerie and creepy and for the diegetic music I think that heavy metal or rock music would probably be the best suited. I made these decisions because this is the classic kind of music you hear when such personalities appear.

5. Colour/Lighting This short movie is filmed in black and white, which really adds to the feel of the film and creates a very accurate mood for the movie. However when I thought about colour schemes in regards to my film, I didn’t think that black and white would work very effectively and therefore I decided to conduct further research into different colour schemes and how well they work. During this research I came across the feature length film ‘The Corpse Bride’ in which different colour schemes are used very effectively to create two different worlds. I decided to go in this direction for my film, using two different colour schemes for the two different personalities. As you can see one of the pictures is much les colourful than the other. This picture is still not in black and whiter however, there is still colour it is just not very bright and there is not that much of it This picture is much more colourful and almost everything in the picture has a different colour. All of all of these different colours seem to create a light happy feeling to the scene.

6. Screen shots I chose this shot because I would like, in my film, to include the title in a shot like this instead of just having a title screen. I would like to do it like this because I think it is much more interesting when the title is incorporated into the story. This shot I chose because I like the way it represents Vincent’s good side. It is a very light shot and he is holding his cat and seems very content and happy. This is how I would like my characters good side to be. This shot shows Vincent’s darkest side. He is surrounded by all the things he made when ‘Evil’ and it is a very dark shot with not much light. I will take of these things into account when making my film. For the darker side there will not be as much light and she will have things the lighter side would never consider having.

7. Frankenweenie! Frankenweenie is a short film made by Tim Burton in 1984. It was filmed in black and white and lasts around 29 minutes and therefore is too long for me to base the timing of my film on this. However it has a similar genre to my film and therefore I think to research it would be useful. The target audience may also be very similar to mine. This film also has a darker side that isn’t really horror just ‘creepy’ and so I will research how this was done and use the same methods in my filming.

8. Dialogue The dialogue in the short movie is much like the dialogue in any other. It isn’t unique in any way. However, something I noticed when watching this film is that a large majority of all the information is visual rather than in the form of sound. In other words all of the key moments in the film are shown to us rather than a character talking about what is happening. Perhaps the prime example of this is when Victor brings Sparky back to life, this is the defining moment in the movie and yet there is no dialogue what so ever to explain what is happening we can just see the process playing out on screen. Also the dialogue in the movie tends to be much more conversational than informative.

9. Music A majority of the story of Frankenweenie is told using music. There isn’t as much dialogue as you would expect, even for a short film the spaces where you would expect dialogue to be there is in fact music of all different kinds which show, I think, the emotions of the characters on screen much more than any dialogue ever could. Not only does the music do an excellent job of portraying the emotions on screen but there is also a lot of sound effects that all add to the mood of the movie. For example when Victor is digging up Sparky’s body, and when he is bringing Sparky back to life there is a lot of lightening. As an audience we always associate lightening with fear and evil and of course digging up a grave is a very bad thing to do and so the lightening works very well in creating an atmosphere. I will take this into account when filming. Although I don’t think lightening would work with my story I will try and think of some other sound affect that portrays a certain feeling and use this in my film to further contrast the girls two different personalities.

10. Colour/Lighting This film is in black and white and so not much can be said about the colours in the movie. However, the lighting in this film is used very well. The film starts of very light, showing happiness and a family that are very close and content. The film becomes much greyer when Sparky dies however it is still not very dark, it still however shows a drop in the happiness of the family. When Sparky is brought back to life it once again becomes lighter like he has brought the happiness back with him. When Sparky begins doing things to scare the neighbours it get very dark, and continues to get darker until the climax of the movie which is at the miniature golf course. The movie however ends on a high note. When they bring Sparky back to life for the final time all of the cars lights come on and shine directly onto Sparky, showing finally, that he is the light and happiness associated with this film.

11. Screen shots I like this shot because it is unique. Instead of starting the main story straight away we have a brief introductory story, in this case in the form of a home movie, in which one of the main characters, Sparky, is introduced. The home movie also works very well at establishing Victor and Sparky’s relationship at the very start of the film. Again I like this shot because of how original it is, it shows the creativeness of Tim Burton and this is what I would like to aim for in my film, to add an element that makes it interesting and a little bizarre but still doesn't become stilly or difficult to understand as in this shot it is still very clear what is happening in this scene. This is one of the final shots in the movie and I think it works very affectively because there are a lot of visible lights and from this the audience is given hope that not all is lost for Sparky and it builds up very well to the climax of the movie when Sparky comes back to life again. I will take note of this for my film. I like the idea of creating the mood of the ending a few shots before by using different lighting.

12. Mater and the Ghostlight! Mater and the Ghost Light is a short film (animation) directed by John Lasseter in 2006. It lasts a total of 7 minutes and there fore is fairly ideal for me to use as research. Unfortunately it has a different kind of target audience to my film, however, this short film has a horror element and is still very suitable for children, this is what I will be focusing on in my research because even though I would like my movie to have a horror element I don’t really want it to be scary

13. Dialogue In this short it is not so much what is said but how it is said. Because in this short one of the characters it telling a ghost story the tone of his voice changes. His voice is usually very light happy and quite quick, however when he tells the ghost story his voice becomes much deeper and slower. I will take this in to account in my movie. As the girl has to different personalities for her ‘Darker’ personality her voice will be (not drastically) lower and slower and the ‘Lighter’ personalitie’s voice will be happy light and slightly quicker. I hope that by doing this it will help the audience further differentiate between the two different personalities.

14. Music A majority of this short film doesn’t have any music at all. This is probably done to create a lot of tension, and silence makes us, as an audience, very tense and so it work very well. When there is music it is very dramatic. This music is when Mater is being chased by the Ghost Light and so the music is a perfect combination of ‘chase’ and ‘horror’ this will help with the music on my film as I will need to make sure that nothing is done to the extremes of it my start to look ‘cheesy’.

15. Colour/Lighting The short film is very colourful to start with (first 2 screen shots on next page) and although it is dark there are colourful lights everywhere to lighten the mood. However when the Sheriff finishes telling his ghost story all of these lights go out and it becomes very dark and there is no longer any colour and the mood changes almost instantly into one of danger and isolation. This shows me how useful colour can be and so for my film I think I will need to come up with 2 very different colour schemes for the two very different personalities.

16. Screen shots This is a very good example of an establishing shot. It shows the audience where this movie is going to be set and what kind of place it is, quite and remote. I would like to use a combination of this along with the start of ‘Frankenweenie’ (home movie) at the start of my movie because then in just the few opening shots I will have created the kind of uniqueness I want for my film, plus I will have given the audience and idea of the setting. I chose this shot because it is a perfect example of 2 things. The first is colour, it shows how effective colour can be in a shot and how much it can change the feel and mood of a scene. The second is it shows very well how much you can reveal about a character in just one shot as long as these shot are done correctly. I will try and use both of these techniques when filming. This shot shows a very good group shot. Group shots are very effective at showing how people (or cars in this case) interact with each other. This will be very help full in my film as the entire point of it is to show how a girl with split personalities interacts with people in different ways and because of this I think that there will be quite a few group shots used in my short movie.

17. One Man Band! One Man Band is a short film (animation) directed by John Lasseter in 2006. It lasts a total of 4 minutes and there fore is perfect for me to use as research. The target audience in much like the one for ‘Mater and the Ghost Light’ However it is very interesting in many other way and therefore I will use it for my research.

18. Dialogue There is no dialogue at all in this movie. Then entire story is told via the music and images. I will take note of some on the things they do to make it understandable because there are a lot of moments in my movie that would be better told by music and images rather than dialogue.

19. Music This story is told completely through the music and the music is then entire point of the film, and therefore is a very good film to research the effects of music. The music all the way through the film is diegetic which it very strange for a film but it works well. Personally I don’t think all of the music on my movie being diegetic would work and so I think the best thing to do is to use a combination of them both. And so in my movie I will use a combination of diegetic and non-diegetic to create two different moods for the two different personalities.

20. Colour/Lighting The lighting in this films isn’t really anything special and doesn’t really change through out the course of the movie. However the colour in the movie is used to distinguish between the three different characters that appear in the film. The first musician we see is in red, the second musician is wearing green and the little girl is wearing blue. I may use this technique in my movie. For example each of the two personalities will have a favourite colour and this colour will be used as yet another way to differentiate.

21. Screen shots This is another good example of an establishing shot. It shows not only the character and his surroundings but it also shows is isolation straight away. A good establishing shot is a very effective way of setting up a mood at the very start of the movie. This shot I chose because it shows a lot of originality. And although I want my film to be original I don’t this kind of originality would work very well because it is much more comical than anything else and this is not what I want. This is a good example of a high angle shot and it shows many different things. It shows all of the characters, how the interact, and it shows there surroundings and for this reason a high angle shot may be a good thing for me to use in my movie.