BlackBox TV Horror Shorts

BlackBox TV is a production company that specializes in free horror shorts on their YouTube channel. Whether you're in need of some inspiration for your own script or you simply want to watch some cool shorts, check these out.

Film Psychology : Set Design of the Shining

For those of you in Studio Production, pay attention to this video! Two different friends had recommended this video to me this week. I was only able to watch it last night. Wow!
Collative Learning is a site run by film enthusiast Rob Ager. He has a list of films that he dissects, academically, to reveal the messages and plot devises in famous films of the past century. If you are interested in film critism and theory, I highly recommend his videos. While the site is rudimentary, his writing and critique is fascinating. - Eve.

Web Recommendation: Marble Hornets

If you are a fan of suspense and horror, then you should check out Marble Hornets Channel on YouTube. Watch the video below:

Director's Reel: Darren Bousman

Did I tell you guys that I love the internet? Well, sometimes. The internet and I have a love/hate relationship.
The reason I love the internet today is because I came across a gem of a page: the blog of horror film director, Darren Bousman.
Click on this link for Darren's blog http://www.darrenlynnbousman.com/ Darren is most noted for directing three Saw films and Repo: The Genetic Opera. This blog serves as the director's personal soap box for the outside world, posting both personal and professional information. For those of you interested in directing, I would encourage you to seek out pages like this to get a sense of how other people practice their craft, deal with professional road blocks, and view the world. You may have a variety of opinions about this type of work, but I think it's good to explore and get a sense of what other people are doing. - Eve.

It's all about the characters

In the spirit of Halloween, I will be discussing horror films, alot.
As some of you know, this is my favorite genre. However, these days I am overwhelmingly disappointed when the market is over saturated with torture-porn (Hostle, Saw series) and badly made remakes (Texas Chainsaw Remake, Friday the 13th Remake). I could go into an entire masters dissertation about how the horror genre is inheriting a bad name, but that is for another post.
I wanted to address an even more pressing issue, character. Complex, human characters are being lost in the overtly shallow world that populates horror filmmaking. The reason that characters like Frankenstein, Dracula, and Freddy Kruger (yes I am comparing Freddy with Dracula) are facinating is because they had interesting, cripling back stories. These monsters originated from a human existence and were tragically overcome by their emotional faults. When we (the audience) discover their dark secret, a part of us sympathizes with them which makes their character endearing (this is why some of us cheer Darth Vader). Without this back story, our emotions do not resonate with the film and it is forgotten as soon as we leave the theater.
This is a serious problem in student horror films. Bad writers tend toward the horror genre because it is easy to put an axe murderer on screen to hack up attractive women only to have him killed, innocently by the virgin protagonist. Amateur writers often oversee the reason people love horror films is because they are dealing with serious, complex, tragic human issues that manifest themselves phantasmagoricaly.
Students: If you are interested in the horror genre, do your homework before committing to a story. Remember, well written characters will separate your film from the flood of forgotten films.
The video clip is an example of what I am talking about. Please enjoy this behind the scenes vignette for the AMC Series The Walking Dead: Based on the comic by Robert Kirtzman.

If you like this post, please read up on my post regarding Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan. Click HERE.