Process for creating the trailer

Process for creating the trailer THE 13th KILLING

When deciding on what our trailer should be on me and Kellie discussed what genre we wanted it to be, we looked at many different genres such as Romance, Comedy, Horror and Action. Eventually we agreed on doing a Horror trailer as we felt more confident in this area and we understand more on this genre and what aspects should be included in the trailer. We compared horror trailers to see what makes them different and unique, from watching all these trailers we picked up on things that we thought would be effective and achievable. At first we wrote down notes on the characters, setting and any ideas that we had, we then created an Animatic that was based on our notes. Once we had created the Animatic we looked into what we wanted to keep and what could be changed, this helped us decide on the characters and a brief synopsis for the trailer. Kellie looked into make-up ideas that would be appropriate for a horror genre and would look effective.

It ranged from:
Eye Make-up designs Scars on the face maybe from something clawing her

Zombie make-up

• The next planning idea we created was a mood board on Prezi consisting on different horrors such as Scream and Nightmare On Elm Street. We talked about the plot, the unique selling point, we also talked about the killer and how the Mise-en-scene creates the character. The Prezi goes from old films like the original 1984 version of Nightmare On Elm Street, to almost present time with Smiley released in 2012, from this mood board we could see how horrors have improved over the years and that these killers are well known in the media for the way they look mostly a recognisable face even if they wear a mask. This is because the media's aim in a horror is to intrigue the audience with the killer, by making them look evil, scary and sometimes even there weapon of choice can intrigue the audience to watch the film. We looked into specific aspects such as the Intertitles and what they reveal, they are mainly related to the killer for example an Intertitle in the trailer for Smiley is 'Evil Wears A Smile' this corresponds to the title and what the character looks like as he has a smile that looks like it has been cut with a knife.

http://prezi.com/bfvvwgto4n_5/mood-board/

• We created another Prezi with more ideas on it that we discussed after analysing the other horrors, they were only briefly explained as we still weren't sure what we exactly wanted to include in the trailer.

http://prezi.com/zbxpezu0xalo/trailer-mood-board/

• After discussing more ideas, we made another attempt at an animatic. In this animatic we incorporated some ideas that we had seen from our research such as our mood board and idea's page, we looked into horrors such as the Thing, the strangers and Smiley. The trailer for Smiley inspired our weapon as they used the knife effectively and it was also an inspiration for our killer as we wanted him to look creepy with unique facial characteristics. The poster for THE THING gave us the idea of a normal setting that is portrayed as something that the audience should fear, the lighting bolt on the poster influenced the way in which our killer will appear on screen. In our animatic we didn't want the killer to be seen straight away which is why we included him near the end, this was to build up tension for the audience and i think when we create the final teaser trailer this will become an effective killer as the audience anticipate there arrival on screen. We also made it so that you can't see the killer's face properly therefore it leaves some enigma's for the audience as they wonder what the killer actually looks like. We analysed our animatic afterwards and found things that we could improve, adding extra techniques and thinking more in depth about the pace of the trailer. We created a prop list which was very simple consisting of three items; a Knife, fake blood and alcohol.

• We came up with the title for our film in the early stages, this was interesting as we began coming up with ideas as to what we could include, we knew that it had to be different to other horrors and people would wonder who the 13th Killing is and how will they die. We looked into the type of font we wanted and what looked like it belonged in a horror, we were set on using a knife as the weapon since we saw Smiley. We came up with a production schedule to help us plan the trailer, we tried to stick to this as much as possible although some things got completed quicker than other parts.

• We researched soundtracks that we could use, we had to find non-copy write music, we picked a few from a load and then narrowed it down to 3 which in our final trailer we managed to incorporate all of them as they all fitted with our footage. Me and Kellie looked into possible actors and took photo's, at this point we had decided on a list of character we wanted to include. We analysed costumes for our Killer looking into famous movie killers such as Freddie Kreuger, Scream and so on. These characters are mainly focused on there facial features, which is when we realised that the what they wear is not the eye catching feature, it's the weapon they possess and what there face looks like. Killers like Hannibal Lector wears a white shirt with blood stains on this shows he is the killer, although the audience are intrigued because it represents that he has killed someone they are mainly focused on the mask he wears. We then looked into costumes for our other characters and came up with the idea that they could be dressed as normal teens, they didn't need to have a distinct outfit to make them stand out.

• We created a film treatment, took some photo's of the location where we hoped to film, looked into making a splatter gun filled with fake blood that the actor could use and fake blood would appear on there clothes. When we first chose to do a horror we automatically wanted to use Twisted Pictures as the institution as we knew they were known for mainly do the horror genre and have produced great films. We created a run through on paper with shot by shot, we wrote down what type of shot and the length the shot will last. Me and Kellie in a lesson made a Storyboard for our trailer, including added scenes and all the information on shot type, the music etc.

• We made a final Animatic for our trailer which at the time we were set on the idea, however when it got close to filming we had problems with actors making the days and the weather made it difficult to do some of the shots. In the end we filmed at school, using our friends who had time to act in the trailer, at our point of filming it was snowing so we worked with snow and used the fake blood and a knife to create our final trailer. The shots worked well with the snow and we filmed some shots in places where there was no snow, as it was a trailer it didn't have to be all in one place. We used the giant puddle we found to our advantage and had a friend run through it giving the effect of the grey blurry vision. The knife we poured fake blood on it and slit my throat, we darkened the footage to make this more effective, so that it looked like the blood was not fake.

Our planning was inspirational to how some of our shots came out, we still included the idea that you couldn't see the killer's face properly leaving it as an enigma for the audience. We added deaths to the trailer as when we watched our animatic we decided that because it is a horror it needed to have a death, we included a shot where Shelly was crawling away. This was to leave an enigma for the audience, will she survive?