How to make a scary Halloween video

Halloween is a fun time. It is time for some scary music , delicious food and good horror movies .

It is hard to ignore the horror part of Halloween though some may decide to celebrate it in a delightful or hilarious way. If creating a Halloween movie with scary sound effects is in your mind, then we have simplified your process. In this article, we are going to share a brief guide about how to make a scary Halloween video in detail.

In this article, you’ll learn:

• Part 1: Preparations before Recording Halloween Videos
• Part 2: Tips for Recording & Shooting Halloween Videos
• Part 3: Halloween Videos Editing Software Choosing
• Part 4: Tips for Editing Halloween Videos
• Part 5: How to Edit Halloween Videos and Make it Fun [Free Halloween Video Effects Included]

Latest: Free Halloween Video Effects from Filmora

Do you want to win a GoPro Hero 8 on Halloween, let's spin your lucky wheel to have fun. Good Luck!

If you’ve already installed Filmora9, you can get some free video effect packs for free on Filmstocks effects store.

Besides the video effect pack listed above, you’ll find more video & audio effects for Halloween.

Halloween video & audio effects Packs in Filmstocks effects store

Part 1: Halloween Video Making Preparation

It is used to radically modify and advance the quality of the whole video. A good video, whether it is corporate, music, marketing or anything, needs to pass through 3 stages:

• Pre Production
• Production
• Post production

The primary stage of the editing is pre production. Without a good cameraman, your entire shot can get ruined and without a good director, you scenes can get messed up. And it is the editor that manages all the scenes to help you create a masterpiece. To make your video professionally sound, you need to give proper attention towards all these factors as they play a major role. To create an excellent video, you need to have an intelligent script, experienced cameraman, good audio work and seasoned directing skills.

1.Come Up with a Great Idea & Choose a Halloween Theme

Before you decide to make a scary movie for Halloween, it is important for you to come up with a great Halloween video idea and choose a good theme. What a title for an article is what a theme for a video.

Do you want to color your face or want to make your eyes bleed? Do you want to zip open your face or want to look like a zombie? You can find some inspiration from the Internet, or take the help of some tutorials that can help you reach to a decision.

Various video themes are ready for you. For example, person lost, zombie hunting, bloody cooking, pumpkin monster, vampire house and so on. You can find more if you have a prank heart like me.

2. Think about Your audience

Centralize your audience is the key to be successful. If you only show it with adults, it should be scary-to-death. What if kids? You may need to add some funny or cute stuff inside.

3.Have a Unique Story

Horror movies are famous because of their villians, their roles, character and set up. Therefore, to make a good horror movie, you need to come up with a good script with has horror and follows a structured approach. You must start your movie with a great opening. Because to grab the interest of the audience, it needs to have a good beginning. Set-up remains another factor, which affect the overallquality of the movie. Hence, think of atrocious places- some old creepy house, woods, cabin or abandoned houses.

4.Prepare video scripts

Preparing scripts will cost much time. According to the themes, here are my scripts for your reference.

Person lost: a man, running to a wood, losts in minutes with a screaming and the sky is getting darker and darker then lighting shows a scary face in a flash.

Zombie hunting: in the middle night, someone tapped quickly on the door. Open the door, a bloody friend fells to your arms and said “Zombie is hunting this city, just run”. After several minutes, this friend becomes a real zombie want to eat all your families.

Bloody cooking: a group of students heard some noisy when sleeping in camp. Then go out to find a worn-out house with some yummy foods. They enjoyed it with surprise taste. Suddenly, one student finds the other is eating some bloody guts. Disgusting and scary thing happens. All foods become bloody human body.

Pumpkin monster: Sitting in the yard and enjoy the moon-night. Father is curving and making a Halloween pumpkin beside. After a screech, father is felling into bloody poor. You look back found this pumpkin monster with evil face. Laughing and chasing after you.

Vampire house: Lights is twinkling, the table is full of skulls. Spider web is almost everywhere. What you can hear is the desirable voice – Feed me your brain.

Actually I just open my mind a little, you can follow the scripts to more complicate story.

5.Recruit Right Cast

To let your message get displayed correctly, it is imperative for you to recruit the right cast. Always cast those who have good experience in acting and are not afraid of working for long hours. Horror movies are known for their inconceivable acting skills, therefore recruit the right cast that can take the entire film on their shoulders.

Part 2: Shooting Tips for Creating a Horror Movie

As you are creating a horror film, therefore, your focus should always be on knowing what scares the people most. A good horror movie creates a sense of dread and leaves with some unforgettable dreadful memories.

While shooting, you should focus on adding suspense to your film. It could be using a camera at different angles, ominous lightning, ticking sound and loud scary noises. You need to shoot and deliver scenes in a powerful way that takes away the breath of the viewers.

A good horror movie always increases the heart rate of the viewers. Therefore, bring the idea that has something unexpected. You can use a variety of shots that are effective and powerful in story telling.

The Halloween Special tutorial below shows how to shoot and use the Chroma keying feature in Filmora9 to create the demon Tree Lord. Hope that will give you some inspiration.

If you are planning to work with blood, you should know the physics of how blood flows and works. This is important for you to adopt a rightful science to set the mood of the film. Though working with blood is a messy task and you may require taking various shots to get the perfect shot. But it is the hard work that pays at the end.

You could also practice beforehand how to work with blood and how to use and control the movement of blood. You can take several test shots to ensure it is working the right way.

People have seen various horror movies and to make your movie stand out of the others, you need to create a shock. You need to be more innovative with your script and more thoughtful about your scenes to give it an outstanding touch.

Part 3: Choosing Right Video Editing Software for Halloween Video Editing

Video editing is one the vital components of the professional video production. An easy to use yet professional video editing can help you create a masterpiece and win over the interest and attention of the viewers. Here, we recommend you to try Wondershare Filmora9.

With Filmora9, you could edit Halloween video with scary background music, horror sound effects, Halloween special effects etc. Apart from the scary pumpkin breaking screen effects, Sadako ghost effects, and the skeleton breaking screen effects, you can download more from Filmstocks.

To achieve perfect flows in the video editing process is through cuts. It is itself not difficult, but you need to be little careful. Filmora allows you to trim and cut videos frame by frame. To make your video run perfect, you need to cut shots at the perfect time.

Sound editing can improve the overall quality of your video. You can adjust sound levels, replace sound track or synchronize audio clips to make them look more intended and coherent. Right video editing is about blending images and sound in a way that the viewer feels emotionally connected and sometimes there in the film while watching.

Related: How to Make and Use a Green Screen

Part 4: Tips for Halloween Video Editing You Should Know

Here are some tips and tricks tha you should pay attention to in editing Halloween videos.

1. Add Transitions Between Different Scenes Properly

Some basic rules when editing Halloween videos. The shot scenes can be classified with depth and width.

Don’t use transition between different scenes if you want to show the Hollywood movie style. Try to swift different scenes with different depth and width to make it more real. Use slow motion when you want to focus something. Spend more time when you want to show the whole picture to audience.

2. Apply Video Effects and Sound Effects

The biggest feature of Halloween videos lays in sound effects and visual effects .

There are free horrible sound effects can be found online. Haunted graveyard, door open, woman scream, vampire howl, monster roar and so on. Check more free Halloween sound effects here.

Some special effects for Halloween can be found in some powerful video editors, which provide Halloween themes, just like Filmora9 video editor.

As per different themes, the effects can be different. A hunted night can be combined with lighting, pale face, worn-out house, bloody street and so on. A vampire story can be decorated with human bones, bloody juicy, fang and even the idol pictures from The Vampire Dairies. A witched video can put some flying broom, witch hat and cloak.

3. Use Creative Green Screen Compositing and Video Overlay for Imagination

Sometimes you may need some special effects like green-screen, when you want to replace the background to some special scenes like battlefield with dead body around.

Or you want PIP function (multi-screen effects) to show different spooky scenes at the same screen. Then a powerful with above effects and easy-to-use video editor is what you need.

Part 5: How to Edit Halloween Video& Apply Visual Effects in Filmora9

In this part, I'll show you the detailed info about how to edit Halloween videos step by step. First, download and install Wondershare Filmora9 first to get started. (Note: the free trial version will leave a watermark)

1. Launch Filmora9 and Import Halloween Media Files

Launch Filmora9 video editor, and then connect the camcorder or your phone to PC and then import all video files and photos to Wondershare Filmora9 directly. Check the horrible short movies for kids in my PC as follow.

After importing the video footage and music tracks to Filmora9, you need now drag and drop and place them in order in timeline.

2. Preview and Cut out Unwanted Parts

Preview the video and click “Pause” button under the preview window with the “Split” scissors to split the video into parts.

Choose the part you want to delete and then click the “Delete” button

If your footage has several different scenes, you can also split and delete unwanted part with Auto Scene Detection feature in Filmora9

3. Add Horrible Sound Effects to Video

To make a good Halloween video, you can add background music or sound effects from the built-in Audio Library or download some cool sound effects from Filmstocks. Besides, you can also change the pitch or the speed to change the voice in video.

Downloaded voices of Halloween from Filmstocks Library (THRILLING)

You can even use voiceover to record anything you want, which will insert to the video file automatically. Therefore you can only click the “Record Voiceover” button after you set up the start point.

Actually for most of horriable movies, those basic functions are good enough. However, if you want to edit your normal videos to spooky ones with special effects, you may use the following functions.

4. Add Cool Halloween Video Effects

Filmora9 features some cool video effects for creating crispy Halloween video. In the video tutorial below, we’ve selected 5 filters which will be perfect for Halloween video, including Sutro, Chromatic aberration, Delay Grab, VCR Distortion, and Baltan.

These filters are all built-in Filmora9, you can search in Filmora9 and find them with ease.

5. Save & Share

Above are the basic workflow for editing a Halloween video in Filmora9. Now, it’s time to save and publish this Halloween video.

Generally speaking, you would like to share it online directly. Then you can click YouTube, Facebook or Vimeo options. You can also save it to your PC or devices. What’s more, it supports to burn to DVD directly. By the way, you can save the video project in case you want to reopen and reedit it.

Conclusion

Making a horror video is not easy; it should be scary enough to match the theme of Halloween. You need to know the proper process and put some extra efforts to make the creepiest one.

All its elements like script, music, genre and protagonists should be focused for having the best scary effects. By keeping in mind your audience, you can write the script and add the effects. For instance, whether they will be children, adults or old people, as every group will be scared of different things.

No need to worry if you are not creative much to write the script, you can get it done by someone. But be aware of the musical effects and the actors. Music is the most prominent factor that adds the most to the scariness of the video.

Music can make the non-horror video a horror one, then think how scary your Halloween video can be, if both scary script and scary music are combined together.