Deconstruction: Actors in Possession Horror Films

Deconstruction: Actors in Possession Horror Films

We need to research actors in other well-known possession horror films to ensure that our film opening contains convincing characters. My main focus was on the possessed girl as the other actor in our film opening will become possessed and therefore have normal personalities and looks. I researched The Possession.

The Possession

There is a little girl in The Possession. She subverts to the common media images of young children in horror films as she is normal and has no abnormal dress or make-up throughout most of the film. She becomes possessed so she is not in the same role as the young character we will have in our film opening. 

The actor is about 11 or 12, our actor will be older than this so we need to facilitate for the age difference to ensure that the costume we use suits the age of the actor and isn't an exact replica of the costume and make-up in The Possession.

Costume:

The only conforming costume of The Possession is the costume above.

• The young actor is put in a white dress. This dress is fitted and only slightly dirty. We could use this type of dress for the character in our film opening although we are only planning for the shoulder and face of the character to be in shot.
• This dress is long and have long sleeves. This is different to the majority of other possession horror films, as usually the dress is a nightdress. We need to decide the costume for the girl as we are only planning to have her shoulder in shot.

Make-up:

 
The make-up used for the make-up in The Possession is easy to recreate.

• She has white contacts which as a group we already own
• Her face is slightly pale -  easily recreated with white face paint
• Her mouth is filled with blood, which we could do with edible fake blood, a effect we were planning to use. We could use this in the section of fast editing to avoid the effect looking too fake.

The face the actor is making is not edited and made by the actor. This means that we can try to recreate the same look without needing any expertise in special effects.

Hair:

The hair of the actor in The Possession is natural.

• She has long dark hair, although not as dark as the common convention in horror films. Our actor has lighter hair than the actor in The Possession, but as we can take inspiration from this film we know that it will not look too out of place or ruin the genre.
• Her hair covers part of her face, this is to increase tension and create suspense. It also allows the creators to keep the make-up appearance of the girls face secret for longer or until the end of the film. We won't have the whole of the possessed girls face on display during any part of our film opening.
• Her hair is less dirty and messy than other films, a look we could use in our film opening. I think that a more messy look would be better as it would look more out of control - a reflection of the personality of the young girl we are planning to have.

Evaluation:

• Due to the length of The Possession the girl character is shown more times throughout. As we are only doing a film opening we can utilise the length of time to only show short clips of the girl, creating a good cinematic effect.
•  There is no large cost for this character/actor as the make-up used is simple, and we do not need multiple outfits due to only showing the shoulder of the girl in our film opening.