Better yet, how do you transmit that fear to an audience?

The good news is most audiences are attending a movie hoping to enjoy it. They’re already in your corner; you start out with an advantage. They’ve paid for their tickets or their rental, and they want to enjoy a couple of hours with your film. It’s up to you to keep them, though.

Fear is a tricky subject to bring to the screen, and often require intense collaboration from the screenwriter, the director, the cast, and sometimes receive a little bit of help from lighting and sound. These tricks—say, ominous thumping music playing in the background and a harsh filter on the lighting for a particularly adrenaline-charged scene—assist the actors and director in transmitting the intended feeling to the people watching the film.

When everything goes right, the movie does its job and can scare people; when even one thing goes wrong, it can do anything from throwing off the overall effect to utterly wrecking the shot. The problem here is that while fear itself is universal—everyone’s afraid at one time or another—what actually makes people afraid varies wildly.

Again, they’re already in your corner. The person at an Aliens screening is waiting to be terrified by the drooling extraterrestrial. They’d much rather jump than leave shaking their heads, muttering, “Not so scary.” It’s up to the filmmaker to make that fear as accessible to his audience as possible. That means tapping into some of the universal things that most people shrink away from, whether they admit it or not:

Darkness – humans are hardwired to be wary of the dark; thousands of years ago, nocturnal predators lurked just outside the range of fires. We become jumpier once night falls, and most of us can’t help but peer into corners when the lights go out, wondering what’s hiding there. Filmmakers can’t make their scenes too dark, but enhancing the shadows and toning down the lights can leave audiences wondering what’s just out of the characters’ sight.

Sound – We touched on this a little bit in our sound series. Soft background noises can build dread, particularly if they’re just generally discernible—growls and hissing might alert us to potential predators, while muttering and whispers tell us there might be something supernatural (or at least psychotic) afoot.

Darkness and sound can build the scene—but what about the rest? Stay tuned…

With dialogue comes the all-important tone, or the way you deliver a line. It can change the meaning of almost everything; much subtext is delivered with tone. Consider a character being questioned about her next-door neighbor’s disappearance. The detective is hassling her, asking pointed questions about their relationship and where she was the night he vanished. Her only response is “I don’t know.”

But how does she deliver it, and how does her tone influence the line? Consider the following:

“I don’t know!” – Anger and irritation here; she wants to be left alone. The cop’s questions are getting to her.

“I don’t know!” – Delivered shrilly, this might be closer to hysteria than anger. This might also indicate she’s not telling the entire truth, and is coming close to cracking.

“I don’t know…” – Delivered in a whisper as she looks out the window, this might well suggest she’s thinking of him as she speaks.

Tone has its place in just about any art form, though film has a distinct edge over, say, novels, in that actors can utilize tone as they need to. You can usually tell when someone is being sarcastic onscreen (or angry, or seductive, or sorrowful, and so on). Novelists, sometimes unable to properly convey tone through dialogue alone, will sometimes add a little “tone tag” to their work: “I don’t KNOW!” she barked.

Tone is a powerful ally of subtext, and the two often go hand in hand together. It’s the harsh words delivered in a soft voice—and it can break down further than that. Is it a man dressing down his son while trying to reassure him that he’ll always love him? Or is it a villain whispering his dark plans into the heroine’s ear?

You can bury a lot of information in a character’s tone, from hidden pains to longings to barely-concealed outrage. Tone can reveal feelings and intentions that even the character’s face might not completely convey. It’s a powerful tool, and should be used to its fullest potential.

Listening to characters talking—to each other, to themselves, to their pet rooster—is the easiest way to convey information, plot development, and humor. You can pull off all of the above without fancy camerawork, CGI, or the need for stunt doubles. Dialogue—along with sound effects and soundtrack—sets the stage for our ears, completing the audible scenery that we take in without even thinking.

Properly crafted dialogue is an essential component, as it helps bridge the gap between movie and viewer, but using it to convey setting requires a careful hand and some restraint. It fills in the gaps between what we see on the screen and what we need to know to better understand the plot or the characters. Characters idly discussing a murder at a bar may foreshadow the grim mystery that will unravel for our protagonist, or murmured concerns about a child’s grades will indicate not all is well in a family home.

Dialogue can help set the scene and tell us more about a movie’s universe. For example, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s explanation of the Force as “an energy field…it surrounds us, penetrates us, binds us together.” His simple description gave A New Hope—up until then a sci-fi film—a mystical element.

Dialogue’s greatest use, however, is its ability to tell us about characters, whether it’s used directly (a character introducing himself: “My name is Frank”) or indirectly (characters telling us Frank should be avoided: “Frank murdered a guy and got away with it”). Dialogue fills in the blank spots and delivers tidbits that might otherwise never come to light.

Look at Merle Dixon from AMC’s The Walking Dead. He spits out virtually every line (unless he’s grumbling menacingly), and within his first few sentences, we can deduce that not only is he a Southerner and a racist, he’s also possibly off his rocker or high as a kite. Merle only appears in three episodes thus far, but one of his most memorable turns is when he appears via hallucination to his younger brother, Daryl:

“All them years I spent trying to make a man of you…look at you…you’re a joke is what you are…you’re redneck trash, they’re laughing at you behind your back.” Merle continues his string of insults, seemingly voicing insecurities Daryl keeps carefully hidden: “Ain’t nobody ever gonna care about you except me, little brother, ain’t nobody ever will.”

In just a few lines of dialogue, we learn more about Daryl’s life than the man himself has revealed in ten episodes.

Check back next time for a chat about dialogue’s evil twin—tone.

Music has long been an important part of human culture, but in the last century or so, we’ve managed to actually commit it to a recording, playing it back for all to hear. It’s become an important part of the movie-going experience, and when used in conjunction with spoken dialogue (or lack thereof) and sound effects, it helps the movie surround and occasionally engulf a viewer.

By the twenty-first century, most movie-going humans have been programmed to associate certain audio cues with specific meanings. Whether it’s something built into us or just the result of a hundred years of going to the movies, we often associate harps with love, drums with battles, and the occasional guitar riff with a mean action sequence. Movie soundtracks build on these expectations, fleshing out a particular scene or setting with a melody meant to signify a particular character or event.

A far-reaching example is “The Imperial March,” first heard in 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back. Bombastic and commanding, the March represented then-ultimate bad guy, Darth Vader; thirty years later, the song is so well-known, it’s often used to announce a bad guy has walked onstage. It’s most often used in comedies, but once those first few chords strike up, the moviegoing audience instantly knows the character it’s associated with is bad, bad news.

The March did its job—part of a soundtrack’s duty is to clue us in to what’s happening in a scene without dialogue. Slow, mournful violins are still associated with sad scenes—which happens often enough that “playing the world’s smallest violin” has become a synonym for whining—as are short, distinct pauses in music. The best soundtracks are the ones that speak for themselves; you can listen to music from a particularly sad scene in a movie, and even without the imagery and dialogue, you know nothing good is happening here. Likewise, a quickened pace and low, distinct drumbeats might indicate a shadowy pursuer, while a lone piano, played slowly in a low key, has become synonymous with something creepy and otherworldly. Meanwhile, the tinkling melody from an old music box can be at once romantic and sinister, setting the stage for a complex, unpredictable character.

Stay tuned for a look at the third part of the aural troika: dialogue.

We’re not just talking movie soundtracks, although those often have a stirring effect on the viewer. We’re talking about sound effects—the noises that surround characters, often lending color and information to and about their locations. Strip out a movie’s sound and you deprive it of one of its most important characteristics—though viewers may not immediately realize it. They’ll know something is missing, but won’t exactly be sure what that something is.

Consider the typical suspense film. Yes, the protagonist is creeping steadily down a darkened hallway, which is usually a definite no-no in these types of movies. Every creak of the floorboards could give him away; the audience holds its collective breath when far-off footsteps echo down the corridor, or a rusty hinge on a door squeaks. Something whistles down the hallway. Is it the killer, or is just the wind?

Some sounds are simply ingrained into the human psyche. A loud, honking siren will tell us to be on high alert—the hull’s been breached, or there’s a fire. A flat, steady beep in a hospital setting indicates someone is flatlining. A door slamming suggests the preceding conversation didn’t go well. Occasionally a filmmaker may add a rapid heartbeat or breathing to indicate the character is running, hiding, or functioning on adrenaline.

Removing all these background sounds effectively strips a setting of much of its character. Imagine a scene with two characters hiding in a darkened room. They’re whispering furtively to one another, but that’s all you hear. Well-placed sound effects might cue the audience in to what the weather’s like outside, if the person they’re whispering about is lurking nearby, and even how old the building is by the amount of creaking, squeaking, and general groans the structure makes.

Visuals may be the heart of a movie, but the sound effects may be its soul.

Let me give you an example of something we had to figure out for “The Kult”. In one particular scene we need to scan past a nightstand and see several bottles of pills. Shaun’s book never covers what type of meds the character could be taking. So you just do a little research and find out what meds will work for the character and then the fun begins.

Now, for the most part, you want to keep real pharmaceuticals off of the set. So that leaves creating your own. There are several companies that manufacture pill bottles and you can get them very cheap. (.50 – 1.00 US) So you get a couple. Then, with just about any graphics program (Corel, Photoshop,etc) you can make a label. Usually the 2”x4” shipping labels from Avery are just the trick. Then you need to fill your pill bottle. I recommend Smarties, Tic-Tacs, Pez, or Dentyne Mints. You can usually use any small candy and no one will ever know. But that also depends on how good your label is. In these pictures I labeled the bottles for the character that requires them.

When the movie comes out drop us a line and let us know what you think.

So here are the links to the new photo galleries. We hope you all enjoy them. Lots of blood, sweat, and tears are going into the making of this movie — both real blood, and lots and lots of fake blood.

Behind the Scenes – Day 14

Press Release

For immediate release

Contact: Dan Flud – contact@gharialproductions.com

Horror Film The Kult to Begin Principal Photography in September

San Diego-based Gharial Productions announced today that upcoming horror film The Kult will begin principal photography on September 27, 2010 in San Diego and Riverside Counties under the direction of Producer Dan Flud.

The screenplay, written by Danielle Kaheaku and based off the novel by U.K. author Shaun Jeffrey, weaves a terrifying story of a hunt for a serial killer. Acting out of misguided loyalty to his friends, Detective Prosper Snow is goaded into helping them perform a copycat killing. But when the real killer comes after him, it’s not only his life on the line, but his family’s too. If he goes to his colleagues for help, he risks being arrested for murder. If he doesn’t, he risks being killed.

The film stars Joe Soro, an unknown to the Hollywood movie scene, as Detective Prosper Snow. His casting carries on Gharial’s history of casting fresh faces.

With the principal cast announced and a final script in the actors’ hands, the production team is wrapping up pre-production and preparing to begin principal photography. While most of the film will be shot on location in San Diego and Riverside Counties, certain scenes require the use of a soundstage, and they will be shot in Arizona.

“I’m really looking forward to working on this film. Everyone involved has, so far, made this one of the smoothest productions I’ve ever worked on,” says Director and Producer Dan Flud. “I also think the cast is amazing and they’re going to turn a few heads.”

Both the cast and crew are eager for filming to begin. According to them, “September can’t come soon enough.”

Visit www.thekultmovie.com and www.gharialproductions.com for more information.