Final title cards

Claire and I have developed our final title cards. We have also chosen the our production company title card/ scene as well. We felt that the title card in a film can have a big impact on the audience and from our research of similar media products we found that if the title cards are interesting and loo professional it makes the trailer look even better.

Like in the video, these title card will not be shown together and will have shots in-between them we have used a slow moving transition across the screen as when the text was still it didn't loom quite so effective. We have also used fades to come in and out of the title cards to give continuity. All the title cards have a red background and have white text, these two colour contrast well as whit stands out on red and they also contrast each other in meaning too. Red usually connotes evil and danger, whereas white connotes innocence and purity.

We do have a couple of changes to make to the final title card as we have changed some of the cast and where we are sourcing our music.

Potential music for trailer

Claire is very skilled on Garageand being a music student so she has manipulated the music a little so that it suited our trailer a little bit more. We felt that before it was a little bit to 'metal' like. Therefore we have cut out the guitar parts and drumming parts.

This is the unsigned music website that we got our music from:
http://dig.ccmixter.org/free_music?dig-lic=safe&dig-query=horror\

The composer of this track said that anyone could use but we asked permission anyway and he said that it would be fine to use it in our trailer.

This is the final music:
<iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/124127448&color=e60d0d"></iframe>

Trailer video

Claire and I have created a the video with the clues on, these clues are set by Davina and are shown to Amelia on her computer. Even though the clues are all shown together in the video, they will be seperate in the trailer.

Script

Narrative

This is all the types of narrative and narrative theories we have studied and how they link to our trailer.

Clothing

We have organised what the actors are going to wear which represents there character the best. We have decided on the general type of clothes they should wear however we know that they may not be able to wear the exact thing so there may be a few changes in the actual trailer.

Animatic

This is the storyboard anamatice for our film trailer. We have decided that it may vary it slightly to make up the time for the trailer.

Shooting Schedule

Synopsis change

Over the past couple of weeks Claire and I have had many problems, most of these have been based around lack of time to do planning and finding actors that are free when we are. We have decided to change the plot as we feel that it wasn't strong enough for us to make a fast paced thriller trailer.

We have decided to keep key elements the same but change some to the thread of the story. I have attached a presentation of our new synopsis.

Setting photos

This is the path we are going to use for some the assassin shots. We thought it looked quite long and spooky and especially when its a little bit darker. Where all the tree's slope over it looks quite menacing and intimidating.



The stairs will be used for the scenes when the assassin is going to find Amelia. It uses leading lines to draw the eye up the stairs to the top. If we shot it more of a low angle it will make the stairs look longer and the top of them seem much more distant and high.



The front window can be used for when the assassin comes to the house, it can show him from both sides of this window and when your in the living room it feels very open to whoever is outside.

Film poster image ideas

News reporter

Setting Soundcloud

Flat plan of poster

Flat plan for magazine

Cast

Emily Smith- cast as Davina Wilson

Jenny Stokell-cast as Amelia Sheppard 

 

Casting characters

We have decided on a cast for our main characters. We have chosen them on how well they fit the character profiles and their acting ability as we feel these are the two most important things.

We have cast Jenny Stokell as Amelia as she fits the physical description and we know she will be able to act out this role well as she has been in our previous trailers (GCSE and practice trailer). She has an innocent appearance, she is also very intelligent which can relate to Amelia's intelligence. We know she will be reliable and be willing to come back if we have to re-film.

Although she doesn't quite fit the physical description we have decided to cast Emily Smith as Davina. She is a good actor as she is a performing arts student and is also reliable and will always perform to her best. She was in our practice trailer and even though she was a background character she performed well. She also has red hair so this could connote the danger, evil and blood from Davina.

We have cast our teacher, Ms Travers, as the news reporter. Again, she has been in one of our previous trailers and took the role seriously. As she is a teacher she dresses smart in business wear which is the type of outfit you would expect and news reporter to wear. As she is our media teacher we know she will take the role seriously as she wants to help us, we also know she will be dependable.

We are currently casting the assassin as we haven't found anyone who fit the character profile or is available for filming.

Assassin

Amelia Shepperd

Davina Wilson

News report

Claire has produced two news stories about Davina's background, this lets the audience know what happened without actually having to explain it in the trailer.

These pictures will only be shown very quickly and briefly though just so that the audience has time to look at the headline of the article. These will be shown at the start of the trialer.

Text ideas for the trailer

As neither me or Claire are particularly confident with the text and fonts in iMovie we thought we'd experiment with a few ways of having the text.
We found that we would definitely have to cut down the length that the fonts are on the screen as 4 seconds seemed far to long especially for a fast paced teaser trailer.

I also think that we would need to experiment with different backgrounds and refer back to the deconstructions and the backgrounds they use. We also found that the text that filled the page look more effective than the text at the bottom of the page.

However I didn't think that any of the effects were particularly what we want so we need to change them a bit or find different ways of doing the effects.

Character profiles

Me and Claire have developed 5 main characters which have vital parts in the trailer. On top of this we are also going to need some actors for smaller roles however these roles are only very brief and short roles therefore these characters don't have profile.

We are currently organising actors to play these roles as we realise the importance of getting together good actors as this makes a lot of difference to the trailer.

GCSE Trailer analysis

Me and my partner Claire made a trailer in 2011 for a Horror film called the 'Ghost walk'



Looking back at this trailer now I see so many faults and things we could of changed and I also know the importance of a strong planning and research to produce a good trailer.

When making this trailer we had very little planning before we went and filmed, we had a very weak script and storyboard so a lot was improvised and I think this showed in the trailer. I know know that all this needs to be strong when going to film. We also used our friends as actors, not all of them were comfortable in front of camera and this came across. We also gave very little thought to costume of all the characters.

The range of shots we used were also all very similar and were mainly extreme long shots which was not conventional to horror movies at all. Our filming was also very unsteady and and the pans and tilts were wobbly and didn't flow very well.

However, from doing this trailer as well it has given us more experience and better knowledge of how to film a good trailer. I would rather have made mistakes then and be able to learn from them so we know how to make it better now.

Deconstruction of Little White Lies film magazine

Synopsis

Me and Claire have written our synopsis for our film; we are going to pick out main parts of the synopsis to use in the trialer. However we don't want to tell the whole story as it needs the have an enigma but needs to tell enough for the story to make sense.

Audience research survey

Deconstruction of Empire film magazine

British film

Deconstruction of The Box film trailer

v

Deconstruction of The Box film poster

Proposal

Soundscape

Deconstruction of 28 Days Later film poster

Teaser trailer remake

When we were first given this project we wanted to do something a bit different to everyone else and wanted to try and do a 'Teen Musical'. We remade the School of Rock (2003) trailer to see weather this was the genre we wanted to do and how easy it would be to make this kind of trailer.



The first problem we came across was that we couldn't find any adults that had the time or wanted to come and act in our trailer, so we had to use our friends to play the character. We also found that some of them didn't want to spend ages helping us so we had only a few hours to film the whole thing and meant we also had to cut out a lot of it to fit it all in.

Another problem we had was that we couldn't gather enough people together at the same time as everyone had certain commitments so our class looked very sparse and unrealistic. The last problem we had was that some of them weren't comfortable with acting in front of a lot of people so it looked quite unrealistic for this reason as well.

Overall we decided that we maybe setting ourselves up to fail by choosing this genre as if we had this many problems for the practise, the final trailer could end quite badly. Therefore we decided to change which genre we would like to do. This is the end result of our teaser trailer



I'm glad we made the teaser trailer as it highlighted the problems and showed that it would have been a bad idea to have done this genre.

Psychological Horror codes and conventions

These are some of the conventions Claire (my partner working on the film with me) and I came up with abut Psychological Horror trailers.

• The characters often experience flashbacks and premonitions this gives a sense of time distortion and can give the audiences more to think about making the story have more depth. For example 28 days later
• Low key lighting is also most commonly used as it things seem more scary in the dark, they also cause shadows and a higher contrast between light and dark.
• A backlight is also something that is sued very often as it creates a silhouette. This allows us to see the villain without revealing their identity creating an enigma (Roland Barthes).
• Masks are often used as this can hide the villains identity and can make them look more scary. It can make the faces look un-human which adds to the fear. For example these are used The Strangers.
• Handheld camera's are also often used in horror films as it adds a sense of reality to the situation and makes the characters look more vulnerable
• Mirrors are also used a lot as it gives a sense of fright, the character can see there's someone behind them but theirs nothing they can do. It also allows the audience to see things that characters may not.
• Non-diegetic sound is used a lot as this can accentuate certain aspects of a scene and make it seem more scary. They can also use music to build up tension and add more effect to a scene to make it seem more scary.
• Rhythmic editing is used as they can speed up the editing to make it seem quicker and makes the scene feel more intense. Then when the editing slows down again the audience automatically relaxes, which is then when the worst bit comes.
• The use of close up shots are very popular as we can see their facial expressions and makes us feel closer to the character. Establishing shots are also used a lot as this can give the audience a sense of where they are.

Reaserch of the BBFC

Mood board

 

This is my moodboard, I have including pictures that I think represent the horror genre. I have noticed while creating the mood board many conventions such as close ups of faces and establishing shots showing where it is set. Having researched into the horror genre and added pictures which I think represent it best, it has given me a lot of influence for my trailer and the type of shots/ settings that need to be included.

I noticed that handheld cameras and nightvision/ green is used alot, another thing I noticed where that mirrors and windows were also quite commonly used in a lot of the film posters.

Codes and conventions Wordle

We have decided to do a psychological horror/ thriller horror trailer for out coursework. These are some of the typical codes and conventions you would expect to see in a trailer for the genre of film were doing.

Teaser trailer

For our A2 coursework we are going to be producing a teaser trailer. A teaser trailer is part of the marketing campaign for a film, they are used to 'tease' the audience and to create a hype for the film. They create an enigma and mystery about the film that makes the audience want to go and see it.

They are a variation of a film trailer and are used to tell the audience that the film is coming rather than telling the story like in the theatrical trailer. The teaser trailers are usually made and released while the film is still being filmed or edited.

They usually contain little or no dialogue, are a montage of scenes from the film and last 1:30-1:45 minutes. Another one of their conventions is that the don't give a specific release date like the theatrical trailer but a general time e.g. 'This Summer'. 

This is an example of a teaser trailer and a theatrical trailer.

This is the teaser trailer for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

This is the theatrical trailer for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Gantt Planning Chart

This is a chart planning how I am going to use my time to make sure I meet all my deadlines. I am going to try and stick to this as much as possible to use my time effectively.