So at this point in time, I’ve finally decided to use mostly found footage for my second screen project, having only one subject as the “protagonist”. As previously mentioned, I wanted to incorporate the idea of “ghosts” as well. I decided to depict this idea by making the “ghost” look exactly like the main subject herself. Below is one of the shots.
(Disclaimer: this is still a rough draft)
This was made possible by combining two clips together. First, I found the “perfect” clip in mind of an empty hall with flickering lights (see below).
But I felt that it still needed that little oomph to make it even scarier. You know how in horror movies something would give you a jump scare after the screen went black? Well, that was exactly what I wanted to create—without the actual jump scare of course. So I split the clip to let it cut to black and then reveal this “ghost”. For the “ghost” itself, I found this shot of the subject bending down in a seemingly “non-horror” fashion (see below).
But after tweaking things here and there during the editing process, it’s now officially a “ghost”! For this, I basically masked the shape of the woman (see below).
Then, I colour graded it as per my previous blog post. I also decreased the opacity from 100% to 30% and increased the mask feather to 50% (see below).
And finally, with the addition of a flickering light sound effect, this sequence is finally complete! So, I decided to choose this footage, because there’s just something about it that had the potential to be “scary”, at least in my opinion. Then, I remembered that it was probably because it looked somewhat similar to one of the ghosts in The Haunting of Hill House (see below).
image from Google Images
She is known as the ‘bent-neck lady’ in the series, and also looks exactly like one of the characters (see below).
image from Google Images
So I basically tried to make the same thing, where the “ghost” and the subject of the film are actually the exact same person.
Reference List:
RGB Parade, ‘Light Flicker in Corridor’, Videvo, <https://www.videvo.net/video/light-flicker-in-corridor/457888/>
Shuraev, Y., Pexels, <https://www.pexels.com/video/fashion-village-garden-countryside-8889746/>
