Happy Halloween!! It’s the most wonderful time of the year isn’t it? The air cools, the leaves change colors and somehow, every year, October turns into a 
“good vs evil” bout between the ones that scare and the ones that BE scared! haha I personally love to be scared and in my mind have always thought a good scare is just as good if not better than a good laugh. I’ve always thought it was just as difficult to scare someone as it was to make them laugh. To physically take someone watching something on screen and alter their state of well-being and make them feel the anxiety of being in danger or fright or panic? It’s not easy and of course the film industry has learned that a mask isn’t going to “cut” it (sorry for the pun) but with careful movement of the camera, different angles, the lighting, sound effects, music, then finally the mask may bring it all together to give that one scare. It’s an art and extremely difficult to do well. I had the fortunate opportunity to present my short film at the museum my senior year of college. I had an audience of maybe 30 people and at the end of it I got to talk about it. I spent weeks making this 10min film with some friends that shared my passion. They loved the idea of creating as did I and we looked forward to seeing the end result on the big screen, or with me, the DVD player! 
The film was about children and negative influences in their life and what would make a child want to kill. A very dark thought I know, but the process in making it was in so many pieces that the only time it felt dark or morbid was when you watched it in its entirety. I did my best at 21 and no money to incorporate all the hollywood tricks of getting my audience to buy in to my creation. The music, the dialogue, the effects and finally my big finish. It did help to put people in a big dark room with the film on the big screen. I waited for it, and waited… it was at the end that I would get to the feel the satisfaction of my audience buying in to my work… even if it was for a split second! I loved every split second of it!
CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO MY CLASS PROJECT, 10min. my professor knew I was short on time and couldn’t complete the film so he said for me to come up with movie trailers instead, I got an A.
CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO VIDEO SHORT 2: I signed up to help deliver a spooky message for a gentlemen that wanted to rattle the youtube community about the practice of Satanism, he wanted it vague, creepy and to cause some buzz. I tried to incorporate music and sound with little sound effects to create an eerie feeling that left you…. curious at the end. that was the idea anyway. The sounds I used and manipulated were drum beats and children playing at a playground.
Next time you get a chance, watch some old horror movies from the 50s and 60s like Hammer Horror films, listen to the sound track and how amazing a job they do pulling you in to the film. It’s great watching Peter Cushing as Van Helsing fighting Christopher Lee as Dracula. The effects are minimal, they convince the audience with quick camera cuts and lighting effects, no computers. You can start in the 50s and work your way up through the present and from 2000 on, you might get a couple good horror films but they are few and far between. I’m not sure when we lost interest in the CGI monster or ghost?? oh wait, I think it’s because we were never interested in what a computer could do. Here is a list of “must see” horror films, I like the list mostly… it’s obviously opinion but if you like to be scared and can appreciate a good horror film, then check it out! (by the way, if you can find the original version of “Cannibal Holocaust” out there, let me know! it’s outlawed just about everywhere in the world now) Make sure you turn off the lights, turn it up a little more and get lost in the film.
