The genre my
group chose to do was the horror/psychological thriller genre. Our trailer I
think has a lot of conventional horror themes throughout, like the fast paced
editing and the quiet, eerie music. One of the trailers our group got ideas
from was the ‘Blair Witch Project’ which I think is shown in our trailer with
the documentary style filming that we used, like the very first shot in our
trailer. The fast paced editing shots of the woods and the quick shot of ‘Mary’
hanging also is similar to the type shots and editing seen in the ‘Blair Witch
Project.’ We kept our trailer quite dark to follow the code and conventions of
other physiological/horror trailers, and also tried to use the diegetic sound
of silence, and the non-diegetic eerie music to form the soundtrack for our
trailer. The setting of our film trailer is again very conventional as we decided
to use a dark forest again linking with the ‘Blair Witch Project.’ One of the
unconventional aspects of our film trailer is that our main characters are both
female, going against Mulvey’s ‘male gaze’ theory. One of our female characters
is the antagonist within our trailer. And the other is the protagonist in the
trailer, which again is unconventional as the lead heroic roles in horror films
are usually male.
- This is the wood used in the 'Blair Witch Project.' Our group wanted to use a setting like this, which I think we achieved as we made our forest look very dark and isolated.
Our
group thought our audience would consume our film trailer in the cinema before
the viewing of a film they had paid to see. Advertising our trailer before a
film of the same genre would be a very logical idea because films of the same
genre usually have the same kind of target audience.
An audience could also
consume our film trailer by watching it on their TV, or online on sights like
YouTube. If our trailer was shown on TV then it would be shown to a wider range of audience. The trailer been shown on YouTube would also allow people to share it across the globe with social sights like Facebook.
I
believe that our film trailer is very successful. From our audience feedback we
learnt that viewers could understand the trailer and get a basic understanding
of the storyline, and most of our audience said they would go and see the film.
The code of enigma of our trailer is ‘is Mary killing the four friends?’ and
that is what we as a group wanted the audience to think, and we learnt from the
feedback that they thought that Mary was killing them because she was bullied
in the past, which is exactly what we wanted.
We
have used lots of generic codes and conventions in our trailer by using the
stereotypical setting for a psychological/horror film which are a dark forest.
Other conventions we have used are things such as the slow to fast paced
editing, which makes the trailer build up to its climax. Although we conformed
to a lot of stereotypical codes and conventions we also went against them by
using female characters as the hero and villain. The quiet eerie soundtrack is another conventional aspect of our trailer as it helps build suspense within our trailer.
Our trailer also conforms to Todorov's theory of narrative structure. Our trailer starts slowly at the 'state of equilibrium' but builds up and changes into a faster second half of the trailer, with much faster fast paced editing.
Our main characters are not completely represented as the main characters in our trailer which goes against most conventional film trailers. We wanted to make our trailer quite confusing as we wanted the psychological aspect to be shown throughout the trailer. At the beginning of the trailer we show a close up of the four friends to try and make the audience connect with them.
The key themes in the
trailer are death, isolation and the unknown.
- Death is the main theme as it
surrounds one of the main character as she has already killed herself and now seems to
be killing others. Images of death, or images linked with death are shown throughout the trailer with images such as nooses and someone's legs hanging outside a tent. We deliberately didn't show any close ups of people dead/dieing because we didn't want to give to much away.
- The four kids going into the forest and losing phone signal
shows that they are isolated. The mise-on-scene of the forest links with their isolation as it surrounds them and it seems like their is no way out. In our audience feedback, someone suggested we didn't have shots of the light coming through the trees as it shows that there is an end to the woods, and kind of ruins the isolated feel.
- The hand held camera shots of characters running from something that the audience
can’t see makes the audience think what are they actually running/scared
of. The audience can assume that they are running from Mary but never actually see in the trailer.
I
feel that the fast paced editing within our trailer is the strongest part, as
the shots work well with the sound and build up which creates suspense. The
soundtrack is quite broken up with parts that are completely silent. I feel the
silence works well and also the eerie music work well together. The hardest
part of the trailer was trying to get Mrs. Kynch involved as an extra character
that the audience don’t quite get if she is either good or bad.
I
think that my poster promotes the film well, as it shows the setting in the
background of the picture, and shows the iconic image of the noose, and covers
Mary’s face so that they can’t see her clearly. My poster makes the audience ask who is the girl, and what is she doing with the noose, as it is unclear whether she is about to hang herself, or preparing the noose for someone else. It also includes the tag line
‘Will you come out alive?’ which asks the audience directly getting them
involved, and it includes the release date of the film so that the audience know when
they can go and see the film.
The film magazine I produced is different as it lets the audience
meet the character playing Mary so that they can get to know the actress
playing the character more. The image I used is Katie, the actress playing Mary with the noose, but smiling making herself look happy, inviting the audience to meet her, and read the article.
I feel that all three texts work together well, as
they all promote the film differently but all include the iconic imagery of the noose and also include Mary, one of the main
character of the film. The trailer would be the most important part for the promotion of the film trailer as it shows the audience some of the plot, and gives them a taster to what the film would actually be like. The poster is then something that could catch someone's eye if they were walking by, where they could then go online to view the actual trailer. The magazine then offers more as an inside look, and can promote the film to already readers of the magazine, and to an audience who have seen the poster or trailer of the film and what to see more.
The technology I used throughout this process were the internet, a digital camera, Adobe Indesign, Paintshop pro, Photoshop and Blogger.
Throughout the early process I used the internet for research of different types of film trailers and posters. I watched different trailers for films of the same genres to see the codes and conventions of their trailers to use in my own trailer to make mine as successful and possible.
The digital camera was then used to take photos for our groups animatic. We developed story boards of our plot synopsis and created an animatic, which we then moved on from and improved to create our final trailer. I also used the camera to take photos for my poster and magazine.
The video camera was used to film all of the shots needed within our film trailer.
Adobe Indesign, Paintshop pro and photoshop were then all used within the making of my magazine and poster. Adobe Indesign allowed me to layer my magazine and poster and help me create a professional looking magazine and poster.
Finally Blogger was used to track all of my work throughout this process, and allowed me to post anything I felt would help or inspire me for my A2 projcet.
I am very pleased with the finished product as a whole, and I am very proud of our finished piece. I think the trailer itself is very professional. The trailer includes a varied amount of camera shots (close ups, worm eye, medium shots, long shots, zooms, pans, angled shots, tilted shots and point of view shots) which altogether complete our trailer. The effects used (blurs, sharp cuts, ghosting and flashes) which help add effect to Mary and help let the shots go into each other a lot smoother. The soundtrack is made of many different pieces of non-diegetic sounds (sharp build ups, piano, strings and other instruments.) We also had the non diegetic sound of a nursery rhyme sung which was taken well by the audience feedback as it adds the ghostly effect. The diegetic sound used are the rustling of tress and speech throughout the trailer.
Within
the trailer we identified the target audience of 15-25 both male and female by
using both male and female characters, aged around 17-18. During our focus group presentation we had positive feedback from the selected audience. We had two adults ages 24 and 25 and eight teenagers aged 17-18 who were both male and female. Some of the feedback we had were comments like it was 'professional,' 'generally scary' and 'brilliant.' We handed out a questionnaire and people rated it from 8 to 10 out of 10.
