Pitch

PITCH

WORKING TITLE: Mandy

GENRE: Horror Short film.

DURATION: Ideally 5 minutes or just a bit over five minutes.

BUDGET: Low

WHERE WOULD IT BE SHOWN: Either online on YouTube or Art house cinemas (as it is low budget, independently produced and a short film, it has a niche audience)

DEMOGRAPHIC FOCUS/TARGET AUDIENCE: 15 – 30 year olds. Typically, a young audience as they tend to be the ideal audience for horror films.

SECONDARY AUDIENCE: Professionals or beginners within the film industry, with knowledge/experience of short films.

LOGLINE: The anniversary of an ancient, haunted dolls ‘end’ has a dark twisted turn when she comes back in human form, with malevolence in her heart.

PITCH/PLOT:

For my narrative, my main idea is to create a supernatural horror based on a real life 'doll' coming back for revenge. How I would create and demonstrate this narrative is by having two main characters, one being a middle aged woman (the victim) and the other being a doll reformed into a young girl. The middle aged woman will be in her car driving and occasionally texting what appears to be her significant other when she suddenly puts it at a halt due to a strange young girl dancing in the middle of the street and repeatedly singing a creepy 'la la' song. Eventually after tense moments of silence and the girl stopping to stare at the women in the car, she will run off the road skipping and smiling away like nothing happened. This would act as the start of the build up to the climax of the short film and I also believe this will work well in an attempt to creep out the audience as the girl's behaviour is clearly not normal. As the narrative carries on, it will soon be revealed that the ‘young girl’ is not actually a young girl but a notorious doll named Mandy who has come back in human form. When the woman comes home strange things start to happen before she is eventually confronted by Mandy.

PRIMARY/SECONDARY RESEARCH:

I researched real life haunted dolls so I could have a background story/true story to base my piece on. The background story I found was most suitable was a doll called Mandy. Mandy was a notorious doll in 20th century who basically got the title of a ‘haunted doll’ after these reports: “visitors reported hearing tiny footsteps in the room where the doll is kept, and claim that their cameras malfunction when they try to photograph her. Some have even said their purses; lunches or other personal articles get moved around the building when they visit her display. Strangest of all, according to museum staff, other dolls kept in the same glass case as Mandy have been knocked over or damaged.”

So I based my short film based on that, with Mandy basically returning but within a human form, with the area she originally came now being for suburban homes – the current residents being completely unaware of the history. So the night my film is set is the anniversary of Mandy’s notorious end, and she’s come back for revenge. Throughout the short film I will give hints of the background story from creating fake newspaper articles regarding Mandy (or maybe even trying to relocate old ones that actually existed!) from text messages that will come from her husband. I will also put a short ‘background information’ regarding Mandy in the beginning (this being a common convention of horror films), for example: “In the 20th century a famous doll named…”

CHARACTER BREAKDOWN/CHARACTERIZATION: I will have two main characters and that is the woman (who will be Mandy’s victim) and Mandy herself in human form.

MISE-EN-SCENE/VISUAL MOTIFS:

Protagonist – Regular costume of just an everyday casual outfit. This to represent her and the situation as ordinary, this linking to short films as most take on the idea of a normal everyday situation with a twist.

Antagonist – Porcelain doll costume and mask, fake blood on doll which will increase as the short film goes on.

Lighting and setting – Low-key lighting, set in the night-time and in suburban area.

Visual Motifs: Will feature the biblical cross and possibly bible to link up to religious references within horror films, used to create a false sense of security.

RATIONALE: I chose this idea because I felt like although it would be a challenge (due to the complex and detailed narrative) I wanted to try and achieve this. Also, after a successful film opening I did in AS, I felt that I had more skills now so I could do an even better piece.

CONSTRAINTS AND CONTINGENCY: One problem that may occur is finding a correct, suitable doll outfit and makeup and another problem will be filming in the middle of the street at night as it may make neighbours feel uncomfortable, therefore, to fix this I will alert my neighbours that I am doing a school project beforehand.

SIMILAR FILMS: ‘The Boy’ ‘Annabelle’.

Lighting Plan

When it comes to the lighting techniques, I am going to try and feature the majority of the lighting techniques in my 'Lighting Research and Examples' slide-share, this is because they all follow major horror conventions, this ultimately helping me increase the fear factor within my final media piece and thus making my short film very effective.

After looking at my lightning research, I have decided to round it down to two lightning features that I will definitely feature. Down below I have listed down the lightning that I will definitely feature within my short film and why:

Low key lighting - I feel that I need to feature this because not only is it a main and key convention of horror but also because the mood would just not be set right if high key lighting is featured. Although there are some horror films that have been effective with high key lighting, I feel for the message and story I was trying to get across it would not be effective in high key lighting. I feel if I was to feature high key lighting it would not achieve the same effect as the 'fear of the dark/unknown' concept could not be achieved. To add on to that, my antagonist only makes an appearance when in the dark, they play a big emphasis on the darkness, therefore low key lighting needs to be featured. A good example of low key lighting being used in an effective way is in the horror short film featured below, what I also find effective about this is that there is also a blue tint in the short film.

Shadows - I feel that shadows are extremely effective within horror films as they are an amazing way to depict an evil entity or most likely the antagonist, it also is very effective in building up suspense because although the audience can see the possible threat it is not fully revealed. This works well as a red herring. 

Lighting Research and examples

Lighting research from magrethxx

Target Audience Research Questions

Question 1 and 2:  Evidently I created this question in order to have a clear understanding of the age group/range that would most likely be watching my short film and also to see if the age group/range would match target audience conventions of horror films (the target audience for horrors typically being young people from aged 15 - 30).  Furthermore, I wanted to see if it would also link with the target audience convention that most people who watch horror films are males, due to males stereo typically being more 'thrill/action seekers'. Seeing the results from this information would ultimately help me in not only deciding what rating my short film should be (whether it should be an 15 or 18) but also see if the previous research I did concerning the target audience actually applied to real life.

Question 3: I specifically put in question three for similar reasons as stated above, but this time linking up to the target audience conventions of short films. One major stereotype concerning the target audience of them is that the main people who watch are either those interested in joining the film industry or are already in the film industry. 

Question 4 and 5 : I generated question 3 so I could get an insight on what made people love and favor that particular short films and horror films. This would help me in finally in knowing what attracts my target audience to this particular genre, using their feedback and comments into my own piece of work. If a specific thing is mentioned within this question I will try put aspects of it into my own work.

Question 6: I created this question because I wanted to know if my audience preferred a short film which featured and demonstrated an entire narrative or refereed the more conventional short film which included a cliff hanger at the end (so not all but enough information is revealed). This would help me in deciding what type of story-line and what type of events would occur within my film.

Question 7: Now within this question I highlighted what I believe are the most important things to focus on within a film (any genre) and the 4 things which make a film what it is basically. Within this question, the people answering would rank what they believe is the most important out of each of these 4 individually. This would help me into deciding what I should focus and concentrate more within my opening (so if mise-en-scene was ranked number one I would focus most on mise-en-scene as my audience believes that is the most important) 

Question 8: This question would just give me a more deeper insight as to why my audience believe this is the most important feature within the opening sequence. 

Treatment

Treatment

OUTLINE: DISCLAIMER: MY INITIAL IDEA HAS CHANGED. THIS SHOULD BE MY FINAL IDEA.

For my narrative, my main idea is to create a supernatural horror based on a real life 'doll' coming back for revenge. How I would create and demonstrate this narrative is by having two main characters, one being a middle aged woman (the victim) and the other being a doll reformed into a young girl. The middle aged woman will be in her car driving and occasionally texting what appears to be her significant other when she suddenly puts it at a halt due to an a strange young girl dancing in the middle of the street and repeatedly singing a creepy 'la la' song. Eventually after tense moments of silence and the girl stopping to stare at the women in the car, she will run off the road skipping and smiling away like nothing happened. This would act as the start of the build up to the climax of the short film and I also believe this will work well in an attempt to creep out the audience as the girl's behaviour is clearly not normal. As the narrative carries on, it will soon be revealed that the ‘young girl’ is not actually a young girl but a notorious doll named Mandy who has come back in human form. When the woman comes home strange things start to happen before she is eventually confronted by Mandy.

PRIMARY/SECONDARY RESEARCH:
I researched real life haunted dolls so I could have a background story/true story to base my piece on. The background story I found was most suitable was a doll called Mandy. Mandy was a notorious doll in 20th century who basically got the title of a ‘haunted doll’ after these reports: “visitors reported hearing tiny footsteps in the room where the doll is kept, and claim that their cameras malfunction when they try to photograph her. Some have even said their purses, lunches or other personal articles get moved around the building when they visit her display. Strangest of all, according to museum staff, other dolls kept in the same glass case as Mandy have been knocked over or damaged.”

So I based my short film based on that, with Mandy basically returning but within a human form, with the area she originally came now being for suburban homes – the current residents being completely unaware of the history. So the night my film is set is the anniversary of Mandy’s notorious end, and she’s come back for revenge. Throughout the short film I will give hints of the background story from creating fake newspaper articles regarding Mandy (or maybe even trying to relocate old ones that actually existed!) from text messages that will come from her husband. I will also put a short ‘background information’ regarding Mandy in the beginning (this being a common convention of horror films), for example : “In the 20th century a famous doll named…”

Ideas mind map

Types of horrors (sub-genres)

Types of horrors (sub-genre) from magrethxx

So what type of genre will my work be? : My horror film is going to be a psychological supernatural horror, I have decided to choose these sub-genre's because when looking at the actual context of my short film, it features both theme of the supernatural through my antagonist being a paranormal being and the psychological theme coming from the fact that the antagonist play's with the victim's mind and uses mind games/twists to delude and manipulate them.