The Screaming Head Video

Make your own Screaming Head video for your Halloween party, haunted house, or trick-or-treat setup.

Once it's finished, you can use it on a PC monitor tucked into some decorations on your front porch, or hidden in a hallway to greet your party guests, or projected on a wall for a big dose of Halloween charm.

Here's a short (kinda creepy) video I made so you can see what I mean. I describe everything I did in the page below.

Click To Play

The steps for the Screaming Head Video:

Planning: Scary heads, big screamers
Location: Make it dark
Lighting: Flashlights or candles
Filming:
Steady or not
Move in close
Get that scream
Editing:
See what you made
Fix that scream
Layers, anyone?
Showing: It's scare time!

1. Planning Your Screaming Head Video

A screaming head is one of the most basic frighteners there is, and a video takes the hard work out of it. You’d wear yourself out screaming at the top of your lungs every time a kid or another party guest showed up at your door, but with this little project, you only have to scream once!

You can also use the scariest looking head you can find, then combine it during the editing process with the best scream available. You might be surprised at people’s screaming abilities, so ask around. My mild-mannered wife once demonstrated her “primal scream” for me, and I thought my head was going to explode, right before I went permanently deaf. (I eventually recovered.)

For the head: anybody can look scary with the right makeup or the right lighting, but if you have naturally scary-looking friends or family members, recruit them. For extra spookiness, try wild and crazy makeup -- smudgy black or gray rings around the eyes, streaks along the cheeks, messed-up and ratted hair, etc.

You could get one of those monster make-up kits, or just get some charcoal or ashes and let your creative juices flow. (Ashes in the hair are very effective, if you victim…er, model, is willing.) You can also do the fake blood thing, although that can be a little over the top.

In my Screaming Head video: I didn't use any makeup at all -- just lighting -- although I'm a pretty scary-looking guy at times, especially when my hair isn't combed. And I did my own screaming. In fact, I didn't even scream very loudly, because it was at night after some of the kids had gone to sleep. But I used Audacity (more on that below) to add oomph to my little screams.

2. Screaming Head Video Location

For your "studio," you’ll want it very dark, so use the basement, garage, a large closet, or just the night (avoiding streetlights) for your filming. Either use a dark backdrop (cloth or paper), large enough to cover whatever is behind the head you're filming, or cut a hole in a large piece of black poster paper, so your model can stick his/her face through the hole and just isolate the face for that floating-head look.

If you go with a black backdrop, either choose a black turtleneck (the floating head effect) or clothes to match the look of your model, whether it’s decomposing zombie or wicked witch or whatever.

In my video: I was in a dark bathroom, with a dark blue blanket hung up over a closet door as my backdrop. Make sure the backdrop is big enough to fill the video screen, and that it isn't too close behind you. (Mine was about 3 feet behind.) I also had on a black turtleneck shirt, but given the way I ended up filming, it didn't make much difference.

3. Screaming Head Video Lighting

For this Halloween idea, shine light from beneath the face for the best effect. Try a flashlight pointed up at the chin, or a candle or two.

In my video: I used two different flashlights: a regular one (uses 2 D batteries), and a wind-up one that uses LED's. The first one had a stronger, yellower light; the second one was dimmer and bluer. I combined both approaches in the editing: I thought it looked scarier than either one by itself. I also moved the light around as I screamed.

4. Filming Screaming Head Your Video

It’s better to take too much film than too little, so experiment with several of these techniques, and see which ones give you shivers.

Steady or Not
You can either put your camera on a tripod, or hand-hold it to give it some deliberate shake. The camera can be level with the models face, or pointing up from below for a creepier point of view. (Just make sure the light source isn’t in the frame.)

Move in Close
For framing, you have lots of options to try. The first is the basic full-face shot, with a little space above and below the head and the eyes about 1/3 of the way down. Or move in for an extreme close-up, from forehead to chin. (This will also probably distort the face -- that could be good.) You can try getting closer, with just the mouth, or even just from the nose up (the eyes have to “scream”for this -- a little head shaking wouldn’t hurt, either). Don’t be afraid to try angles, with the head jutting in from a corner, or even turn the camera upside down. Weirder is better, right?

In my video: Since I was my own film crew, I put the camera on a tripod and rotated the viewing screen so I could see myself. Then I just moved my head around, moving in and out for the framing I wanted, tilting my head, etc.

Get That Scream
It’s easiest to do the sound and the video of the screaming head video at the same time, but it’s not too hard to put them together afterwards, as long as the picture and the sound match up. If you’re doing them separately, just try to get them the same length. If they’re not perfect, they can be tweaked during the editing.

Whatever you do, your camcorder’s built-in mic is probably the best sound recording option, unless you have some special recording equipment.

While you’re recording, you could try doing some creepy laughs, moans, choking gurgles, or whatever seems scary at the time. You may look at it later and think it sounds lame or goofy, but that’s what delete is for.

You can also search around the internet for pre-recorded screams and moans. (Look for .wav files.) There are tons of free sound files. A lot of them aren’t very good, though, so you can probably do better recording your own.

If you get a really loud scream (your goal here), don’t get the mic too close or you’ll get distortion – basically, just ugly fuzzy sound -- kind of frightening in its own way, but probably not what you want. After you make the recording, play it back to make sure it sounds OK. And record it a few times, just to be safe.

In my video: As I said above, I didn't scream very loudly, but I did it a bunch of times. My total filming time was less than 3 minutes. The screams weren't very impressive, but Audacity fixed that. (See more below.)

5. Editing Your Screaming Head Video

Editing is where you put it all together and create your masterpiece. Very often, you'll modify your original idea a little (or a lot), once you see the footage that you have to work with, since it won't have turned out like you expected. But that's OK -- it happens to everybody. See What You Did
After you have taken your screaming head video, get it onto your computer and into your editing program. This isn't a tutorial about video capture, so I'm assuming you've got that part covered.

For my video: I have a Panasonic PV-GS180 camcorder, which I hook up to my Windows XP computer via a firewire cable. My editing program is Sony Vegas Movie Studio -- very powerful for the price, quite intuitive, and no more expensive than other entry-level editing programs (around $100). Once my video clip was captured, I just dragged the clip onto the timeline to review it.

Fix That Scream
Once you’ve laid down some sound, you can use Audacity (free audio editing software) to add echo, reverb and even make the pitch higher or lower (or both!).

For my video: I listened to my wimpy little screams (as I said above, my kids were sleeping, and I didn't want to wake them), and they weren't very impressive. So I loaded them into Audacity and started playing around.
I picked out my favorite scream, then duplicated it several times. On each duplication, I tried a different effect. The effects I used, in various combinations, included boosting the volume, changing the pitch (one copy about four notes higher, another 4 notes lower), adding echo, and adding reverb (called "Gverb" in Audacity).
Then I lined them all up and shifted them slightly so they didn't all start and end at the same time. When I was happy with the creepiness factor, I exported the scream as an .mp3 file and loaded it back into Sony Vegas.

Layers, Anyone?
You may find that a single head screaming isn't as cool as a bunch of heads in semi-transparent layers, one on top of the other. That's what I did.

For my video: In Sony Vegas, it's easy to create multiple video and audio layers, so I overlapped the best scenes from my video clip and made 3 video layers. I also made 3 separate audio layers, and combined my newly-mixed .mp3 with the original audio from the clip. The top layers were semi-transparent so you could see some of the layers beneath.
Besides the transparency, each video layer got a different effect, including adding "noise" (the colored speckles) and glow, and changing the brightness and contrast. The various parts were faded in and out to get the look I wanted, and I sped up or slowed down some of the scenes. The audio layers also got modified: faster, slower, louder, softer, and, in some cases, reversed. (Audio going backwards is always spooky.)
I then added the titles at the front and the back, with a little movement, glow, blur, etc. to match the mood. In the end, it's only 30 seconds long, but I think it does the trick.

6. Showing Your Screaming Head Video

To use this Halloween idea, you would probably show it with on a computer monitor, on a TV hooked up to a DVD player, or with a PC projector. And, of course, you would want some decent speakers. Where you use it depends on what you're planning.

Haunted House
You could have the monitor or TV hidden in a corner or along a hallway, especially around a corner. It could be playing continuously, or if you can operate it manually (or automatically?), have the screen black until the "guest" is right up close to it. You could disguise the screen with a picture frame, plants, fake cobwebs, or by putting it in a box or chest. You could also put it behind a door, like a closet or cabinet (with a big "Do Not Open" sign on it, to make sure they open it).

If you have a projector, the screaming head video can be shown lots of ways -- on a blank wall (when least expected, for the fear factor again), or on a large, gauzy curtain (with a little fan on the curtain to make it flutter), or even on the outside of the building as a kind of advertisement.

Halloween Party
Many of the Haunted House ideas could work for a party as well, especially if you set something up at the entrance, to give the guests a little jolt as they join the party.

Trick-or-treaters
Again, adapt the haunted house ideas to your front porch, garage, or wherever you lure the little trick-or-treaters. A sign could indicate that the candy is in a cabinet that (also?) holds the monitor with the screaming head video. Or tuck it in some decorations at the side of the front door, or even on the inside of a window next to your front door, ready to play as soon as the kiddies appear.

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The Screaming Head Video will add a real punch to your Halloween party or haunted house, or just scare the pants off your trick-or-treat visitors. Try it!

Like the Screaming Head Video? Check out the Scary Pumpkin Video!

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