Test shot Edited

Test Shot: Example of Trailer

Above is a video that I edited featuring a variety of different shots filmed with my phone camera that we intend to use for our horror movie teaser trailer. I decided to record this to see what angles would work for the trailer. There were many other shots I had filmed but I only used the angles that I thought worked the best. This helped me to finalize the storyboard, as I was initially confused as to how to place the camera shots/angles.

Test Shot

This was my first shot i had ever tried out. Basically we were in class looking at how shots are taken from different angles to show the same thing but what is happening in the shot is fake. When taking this I had to explain to the actors that the slap is not meant to be real, but i will make a clapping sound with my hands to make it more realistic.

Film Certificate - BBFC

The British Board of Film Certificates is a non-governmental organisation, which is funded by the film industry, and is responsible for the national classification of UK films. The BBFC would rate films, video games, and video/DVD releases based on what is suitable to a certain audience. Subjects that are most commonly considered when deciding on the age rating includes the violent content, the language used, the sexual content, and drug use. The certificates issued by the BBFC are as followed:

U (Universal)  -  All ages, nothing unsuitable for children over 4

PG (Parental Guidance)  -  All ages, some scenes may be unsuitable for under 8s

12  -  This is only for home media since 2002. Can include infrequent drugs, infrequent use of strong language, brief nudity, discreet sexual activity, and moderate violence.

12A  -  This rating is only used for cinema releases and was introduced in 2002. Under 12s are allowed permitted if accompanied with an adult over 18, and tends to contain themes of discrimination, soft drugs, mild swear words, and moderate violence/sexual references.

15  -  Can contain adult themes, hard drugs, strong language, moderate-strong violence/sex references, and mild non-detailed sex activity.

18  -  Hard drugs are generally allowed, and strong violence/sex references along with strong sexual activity is also allowed. Scenes of strong real sex may be permitted if justified by the context.

R18 (Restricted 18)  -  Only showed at licensed cinemas or sex shops. More cuts are demanded in this category than any other category  as it contains stronger sexual and violent scenes.

Our age rating...

We have decided to give our film trailer an 18 certificate, as the trailer will feature scenes of violent nature and hard drug use. Horror movies tend to have the 15 or 18 certificates because of this content, and so we are following this common conventions with our chosen certificate.

The Storyboard for Our Trailer

Treatment

Treatment

We have chosen a working title which we think will suit for the film. The title is ‘Red Ink.’ However we did have other names that we thought could work, therefore there may be a change of the working title during the production and post production of the trailer.

We have also decided on a production team name. The production team name is ‘SLAM Productions.’ ‘SLAM’ acronyms the first letter of our names. When we came up with the name, we all liked it and chose to stick with it.

The format of our teaser trailer will be on film as well as a video. We have decided to do two formats because we would like to make our trailer available on video-streaming websites, such as YouTube.

Our teaser trailer was originally of the slasher genre, but we later found that the story of drawings coming to life is more of a supernatural genre, and so we decided to combine these two sub genres to create a hybrid.

The length of our teaser trailer should be a maximum of roughly 40 seconds. This is a convention that we are following.

The film is about a boy who has a hobby of drawing and this always takes place in a dark room under a spot light. The pictures that he draws seems to come alive and into action. That is what the story is basically about but within our trailer, the boy is going to be sitting in his desk drawing a picture. There will be pictures on the walls that have been previously drawn. He is then drawing a picture, which comes to life. The room becomes empty and a girl walks into the scene. She walks to the table and she picks up the drawing that was left on the table. The drawing is of the girl herself, getting attacked. This comes to life where someone appears from behind her, grabbing her, about to attack her then the scene cuts.

So far, we noticed that people between the ages of 17-24 like slasher horror films and can be proven through our audience research. Therefore we have chosen our target audience to be for the ages of 17-24. We will be finalising this for definite after evaluating on our results of our audience research and receiving more information on why this would be our target audience.

Props that will be used include:

- Costumes
- Killer – Blacked out wearing a hoddie/cape
- Boy – Dark casual clothes/normal looking
- Girl – tank top, jeans; attractive appearance
- Props
- Table – wooden
- Lamp
- Paper
- Knife
- Chair – wooden
- Make up – Blood, cuts
Examples of the props that we will me using have been explained on our blog. This is Just a rough idea of what we will be using. 

Audience Research by Paper

Audience Research

Gender: Male

Age: 23

Interests: Sports, gaming, music, films, social networking.

1.      Do you like horror?

-          Yes.

2.      What horror genre scares you the most?

-          Psychological.

3.      How often do you watch horror films?

-          Once in a while.

4.      What is your favourite horror film?

-          Paranormal Activity.

5.      What would scare you in a horror film?

-          Nothing.

6.      Do you prefer the “unknown” attacking or do you prefer seeing the gore?

-          The gore!

7.      How would you define the horror genre?

-          The blood, killing, terror and violence.

8.      Do you think the music used in horror is more effective or less effective than the actual horrific scenes?

-          Music definitely plays a big part, if there was no music you wouldn’t be able to get into the film and the horror genre would seem pointless.

9.      How would you create a “scary” atmosphere in a horror teaser trailer?

-          Low lighting, creepy music or something like a sudden movement/ action that would startle the viewer.

10.  Do you think horror teaser trailers are scarier than the actual film?

-          Not really, the real horror begins in the film. If the teaser trailer was scarier, it would be giving too much away.



For my audience research, I used a common method of pen and paper. I chose to use this method as I prefer to write down my questions/ answers and then be able to edit them on the paper because I may delete or forget questions I wanted to ask I used Microsoft Word.

Audience Research by Blackberry Messenger

For my audience research I used an instant messenger application called ‘BlackBerry Messenger’ to ask people questions. I used ‘Blackberry Messenger’ as it was my job to cover this application as different members of my team cover other instant message applications and different social networking websites such as ‘MSN Messenger’ and ‘Facebook’. I asked one person a female mainly to get her views on horror films and trailers. After finishing my questionnaire I was able to come to the conclusion that this female in particular likes the genre horror, but the amount of times see watches a horror film is low it came to the figure of once a month, the female feared killings the most in the a horror film. The female also had a good insight into the film and the different aspects of a teaser trailer that attract the audience such as sound, how a scary atmosphere is created. From this research I found that this female likes horror, she may represent some of the females but not all as not a valid as all females are different, some females are terrified of horror and some females enjoy it

Audience Research 2

Audience Research by Facbook

For my audience research i used a social networking site called 'FaceBook' to ask people question. I decided to use 'FaceBook' because the other members of my team were using BlackBerry Messenger and MSN so i thought it was a good idea to also use a different electronic way of doing my audience research. I asked two different people. I purposely asked a male and a female to get a females aspect of horror and a males aspect of horror, then to compare my results.

After collecting my results it was seen that the male watched horror films more than the female. he watches horror films at least once a week where as the female watches it one every 3months. However they did both like horror. When i asked the question "What would scare you in a horror film?" The Male said he explained what will scare him in detailed, where as he female just said unexpected events and wasn't really sure. This shows that the male is more into horror and is ready to watch any horror which will scare him enough for him to believe that it will happen to him in real life. Also when i asked the question "Do you prefer the 'unknown' attacking or do you prefer seeing the gore?" Both answered differently. The male would have prefered the gore where as the female would prefer to see the unknown. This tells me that the female does have fear for horror films and the male is scared but at the same time like to see the horror and to get scared by it. From my research I have found out that males do prefer to see the horror, bloody and scarier side of the film even though its scary, but females are scared of horror film and would prefer a film to have more of an unknown part to the film which will be less scary for them.  

Meeting 3

Ways that we carried out our audience research

I (Lysette) used facebook to do my audience research where i asked two people, one male and on female. Facebook allows you to send messages people two people instantly for free and to view peoples profiles, but you have to be friends in able to use this.

Ali Used MSN Messenger to carry out his audience research. MSN is quite similar to Facebook chat because you can chat instantly to one another and can do group conversations on this for free.

Moyo used Blackberry messenger to carry out his research which is also quite similar facebook and MSN because you can message one another instantly. However the BBM service is only available on the Blackberry phone an to use the service a type of payment has to be done.

Shanice carried out her audience research by asking and writing down the research on paper. We thought that this would be a good idea as it is a totally different way of carrying out research. 

Textual Analysis of a Film Trailer

The Movie trailer that I will be analysing is Insidious which lasts for 1.51 seconds. I will be looking at the camera angles that were used, Editing, Sound and Mise-en-Scene.

The trailer starts with a shot of the working title of the film, which has low key lighting with the name of the title written in black font and the background with red. The background looks like clouds but just in red. This could connote evil and horror.

It then has an editing of dissolving into a shot of the title of the film. This has a black background with the writing in white. At this point there is non-diegetic sound. The sound sounds like either a heart beat or footsteps. This already builds up tension for the audience.



The first main shot is of a man sitting in a chair. This is a medium close up shit. This would tell the audience that this may be the main character of this film. The costume of this man is that he is wearing an ordinary shirt with a t-shirt inside.

 It then shows this, (below)

This may draw audiences attention especially those who have watched the films Paranormal Activity and Saw. Again the background is black which may be connoting evil and horror.







There is then a tracking shot of a house which may mean this is the house of the family. At this point the non-diegetic sound of the beat is still going on.

Then there are quick shots showing a normal family during their everyday life. During these shots diegetic sound is used.

The shots then go onto showing shots of unusual things taking place.

A low angle sot is then used to shows the mother stopping toy chair which seems to be swinging by its self.

The camera then tilts up to show the mothers face.


At this point there is non-diegetic sound which builds up tension and at the same time the shot below is being shown which is of a shadow of a woman wearing a veil.

There is then a worms eye view showing the upper floor of the house. This will obviously mean that there is something happening up stairs.

It then goes onto showing the room of their son. There is a crabbing shot used to show the whole room where there is a weirdly formed body shape of someone standing in the corner of the room. When that figure comes into the shot, non-diegetic sound is used which builds up tension.

There is then an extreme close up of the a door handle which is trying to be opened and the handle keeps going up and down. Diegetic sound is being used here of the sound of the handle trying to be opened which is also an hard sound effect and at the shame time the characters are shouting in this shot.





There is then a two shot, which shows what has happened at this moment, which looks like the room that their son was lying in had been turned upside down and on the bed sheet there is a hand print of a hand which is blood stained.






There is then another extreme close up of a women’s eye which shows here looking up around the ceiling on the house.


Quick shots are used showing un usual things happening and between each shot the title of the film appears. This again builds tension for the audience.


There is then a tracking (dollying) shot of a corridor which uses low key lighting. Again non-diegetic sound is being used.

At the very end of the trailer it goes completely quite then this appears (below) which scares the audience. It seems to be of a woman running towards the camera and looking straight towards the lenses. The lady looks pale with white hair.



LYSETTE BAAFI