Lighting Your Horror Film



    The first thing that separates the men from the boys in the film making world is good lighting. Learning the basics of what is called 3 point lighting should be the first step you learn if you want to become a good film maker. The 3 point lighting rule is one that you will break from time to time and when shooting a horror movie you will break this rule on purpose more often than in your standard drama or comedy film.

    I say that you will break it because you will want deeper shadows or a character lit from only one angle to achieve a certain type of effect. But you will need to learn the rules before you will want to break them. Let us begin with a fun little basic tutorial on the 3 point lighting set up.


    Okay while shooting your no budget horror film you will want to know the basics of good horror film lighting. Just keep one rule in mind here, that is the things that you don’t see are more important in a horror movie than the things that you do see. Some times you can not afford the best effect or creatures and that is what shadows and darkness is for.   Think of movies like The Descent and Alien and The Grudge. Darkness and shadow is as important as light in these films. Learn to control the light and you may someday be able to rule the darkness.


    Okay we have come to the end of another post. Remember to tell a friend about this Blog, leave a comment and to stumble us on Stumbleupon or add us to your Google plus.

    At the end of each future post I am going to try to add a trailer for a lost or hard to find horror movie. I think that all of us love the idea of seeing a really good horror movie as much as becoming a horror filmmaker. Here is the trailer for the legendary Cannibal Holocaust. This first of the found footage movies was band for many years for a reason. It is brutal to living things.

Try Practical FX

                Practical FX Part 1

    CGI rules the world of film making these days, but with the exception of the big boys, Spielberg and Lucas and Cameron, most of these CGI effects suck.

    On your low to micro budget horror film you will not be able to compete with the big boys so why not go old school. Practical effects are usually more convincing than computer generated ones at our budget level.

    CGI bullet wounds just don’t rock as well as Squibs. Part of this is due to the fact that the actors can feel it when they go off and react to them. Squibs are not for every scene, but when the hero or villain have been shot it is a great moment on the set and for the audience watching to see something that looks like actual blood flowing from an actual gaping wound.


    Gaping wound, doesn’t that sound cool?

    Part of the reason we are doing this is because we love the blood and the gust and brain matter dripping from the walls and rusty objects. We love it when the bodies hit the floor and those bodies just look better when they are dripping red rather than having the red stuff added using a software program.

    Ask yourself this, which effects did you like better. The ones in the John Carpenter version of The Thing or the rebooted prequel? Consider this that every single effect in Carpenter's version were practical FX, no CGI. Could you find many or any scenes in that film that could have been improved by CGI?


    Sometimes less is more. Because they could do so much on the new version they ended up doing too much. Let’s go back to the future and use only CGI when it is called for.

          You may disagree and that is okay. Make your movie your way because at the end of the day you will own it. It is your baby and bring it into the world the best way that you see fit.

    Okay remember to stumble us on Stumbleupon, tell a friend about this Blog and check out our advertisers
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    Good luck, see you guys soon.

Writing You Horror Movie

    Horror Filmmaking Your Script

    This is a lesson I have taught before on my screenwriting blog and I am going to teach it here. I hope that some of you will get this one simple point that should rule the plots that you select for your scripts.

    I will believe anything once.

    Your audience will believe anything once.

    The world will believe anything once.

    If you are writing a comedy this rule does not apply, but if you are trying to be serious follow this rule no matter what else you may do.

    I will believe that the ghost of dead pirates have come back to claim revenge of the town responsible for their deaths. The Fog. (The original)

    I will believe that a man escaped after many years locked away in a mental institution and headed back home with the sole purpose of killing the last member of his family, his sister. Halloween.

    I will believe that a band of cave explorers have found themselves trapped in a cave that is inhabited by carnivorous human like creatures. The Descent.

    Take any good horror movie, Jaws, Alien, The Exorcist, Saw, The Thing, The Ring, The Blair Witch Project, The Grudge. They will all have one thing in common and that is that they are at their core about one thing.

    Pick a bad horror film and I promise you that 95 percent of them ask you to believe more than one thing. Watch scifi channel and the mega shark lobster spider BS that they put on the air every week and you will quickly get my point.

    Find one subject and stick to it, even if you get bored. A bored audience is better than a pissed off audience.

    “But I got lots of ideas.”You say.

    Good, then make lots of different movies.

    The one script writing rule you must follow to create a good Horror Film is pick a subject and stick to it. I do not care if it is a killer bunny rabbit or a possessed block of ice, stick to that plot line to the end.
Killer bunny rabbit trailer alert:

Hey people still watch this movie. It still comes on cable a few times a year. It is a stupid plot, but they stuck to it and did you get a look at that cast?  

    Final advice on writing. Read as many scripts as you can and write every day. Like weight training you do it ever single day until it becomes a habit. Even if you are writing notes write something every day. I almost forgot one more thing. Do not confuse horror with suspense. In  a horror film something is chasing you, in suspense you are chasing something. Disturbia is suspense the lead is chasing answers to his suspicions. While Fright Night is horror. The plots are close, but Charlie is being chased for most of the film by the neighbor who knows that Charlie knows that he is a vampire.

    Good luck and remember to stumble us on stumbleupon and tell a friend about this blog.