Prezi analysing our trailer with a list of Key Words

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Prezi (Above)

 

We created another summary analysing how effective our trailer was according to key words linking to audience theory. We thought that this would be useful because it enabled us to see how our trailer connects with other trailers that are released in cinemas with a similar genre, and whether it follows these conventions.

The main focus of our Prezi was understanding how our trailer followed the conventions of connotation and denotation, where you see something and visualise something different. This was effective because we could talk briefly about what we were trying to make our audience feel and how they should respond with certain props and costumes.

Process of creating the poster

We started by analysing trailers and looking into the features that create a poster such as the taglines, the title, main image, colours and the unique selling point.

Once understanding how to analyse each feature we started looking into what horror posters include, how they portray there film to the audience, for example through the use of colours or the main image. We looked into the horror posters that we found inspirational from trailers, so we analysed the Thing and other relevant horrors like Sinister, Possession and The Strangers. We noted down all the common features that they included things like dark/dull colours nothing happy or bright, this is to correspond with either a dark force or the evil killer. If they used happy colours such as yellow the poster would not have the same effect on audience members they would not be intrigued into watching a horror that seems happy. The main image fills the page and this is usually the unique selling point that intrigues the audience because it shows suggestive death or something creepy for example the Possession shows a hand coming out of the girls mouth this makes the audience want to see the film as they can already tell that it is going to be scary and creepy. Other horror posters like Cabin in the Woods, represent a place revealing to the audience that the film will be revolved around this area and bad things will occur.


After looking into horror posters we picked out the main aspects and tried to create an image in our head of what we could have on our poster. I analysed some posters with there trailers to see if i could spot the main image in any part of the trailer or something that linked the two together. For a film to be successful all the advertising products have to link to each other, showing signs of the genre and bits that will appear. If the poster fails to link to the film it therefore does not intrigue the audience as they will be confused after watching the trailer. The poster needs to reveal information about the film to tell the audience something about it otherwise they would have to work it out from the picture. The tagline has to be effective as this reveals the information to the audience if the tagline is not detailed or intriguing then people ignore it and they might not watch the film. During our research we found that many people are intrigued into watching horrors if the poster says it's based on a true story this is because it suddenly becomes more scary as you know it's happened before and it's not just been created.

We waited until we had finished the trailer before creating the poster this is because we screen grabbed some of the footage to create the poster. We looked through the trailer and found parts that we thought would interest audience members and show part of the film, without giving too much away. We screen grabbed too parts and blended them together in the poster, we placed the screen grabs on Microsoft Publisher as this was easier to crop them and change the colour. We placed one screen grab on top of the other and changed the contrast so that they fitted together. During this process we came up with the layout design, we created a tagline there and then by watching the trailer. We went for a more personal tagline then one that referred to our film, we reached to intrigue the audience by saying 'This could be you'. We copied the font for the title and placed it on the poster, along with the names of some of the actors that appeared in it. Next me and Kellie transferred it onto Photoshop so we could save it as a Jpeg, we then uploaded it to our blog. We took the images from the footage we had from the snow shots, this was to create the unique selling point that part of our film occurs in the snow, this is because many horrors happen at dark and dingy places so no one expects to see a horror in the snow.

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?

Propps Narrative theory

Propp is known for his theory of narrative, he studied old folk tales where he identified 8 characters that were repeated within every tale. His theory states that every narrative to a film includes these 8 roles.

These 8 character roles are:

1) The Villain (s) - Known as the bad people whose aim is to kill the hero by capturing the female lead (Damsel in Distress)
2) The Hero - Saves the Damsel and normally beats the villain
3) A Damsel in distress - Normally the target for the villains, needs rescuing by the hero
4) False hero - Takes credit for the hero's actions, could go after the Damsel in Distress
5) The Helper - Assists the hero at some point in the plot
6) The Donor - Prepares the hero for the quest, gives them something
7) The Dispatcher - Character who sends the hero on the adventure
8) Victim (s) - the characters who could get kidnapped, or killed depending on the genre

Trailers don't show all these characters as this leaves enigma's for the audience. In our trailer we include more of the victims being killed and running away as it's a horror. We left the killer/villain a mystery for the audience to figure out, we don't reveal any of the helpers that assist the hero because we also decided that we didn't want to give too much away. Propp's theory has allowed us to analyse media personalities through these characters and apply them to films, exploring whether each film uses these characters in similar ways or whether they create their own unique atmosphere to the film.

A2 trailer compared to AS opening two minutes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfdxL20I4JI

 

Opening Two Minutes

 

http://www.youtube.com/embed/1oFGHvd7NMo"

 

Trailer

 

These are the two outcomes that I have made over the course of two years, and there is changes that I have made and improved which show similarities but have been made to a better standard and context. Both my opening two minutes and my trailer are horror themed, which means that easy comparisons can be made and how I have broadened my experimentation in filming.

 

The titles that I used for my opening two minutes compared to last year were more relative to the horror genre, the year beforehand I underlined the title which didn't look as effective as if I had left it plain like this year. I had also found that making the title fit the whole screen seemed to be ineffective because it smothered the viewer to look as opposed to a smaller title which was placed directly in the middle like I did this year, this was effective because the audience then focus more easily and it appears more realistic to the horror genre. What I kept the same between the two was the colours that are the same for the horror genre, white titles on black to leave them unemotional and distant. The fonts were also bold and plain which is similar to most other titles in horror posters, opening two minutes and trailers that I have analysed over the two years.

 



The shots were more varied in my opening two minutes but not as effective as this years, the shots were too wide last year so there was no connection with the character. For the trailer, sometimes we didn't want the connection to the characters but it was relevant to the plot. This was unintentional in my opening two minutes, and it didn't have the desired effect I wanted. Working with a number of different actors this year was effective because then the sole focus wasn't on this one character, making it feel more mysterious to the viewer and leaving them further on edge because you couldn't see the surroundings.

I had used the same setting this year as I had last year, this was useful to me because I understood what effects I could create in the area and how I could use them to my advantage. For the trailer this was created in the snow instead, which added literally a cold effect to the environment the characters were within. We used close up shots of the snow to show footprints that made our audience feel as if the killer was on the loose, something I couldn't do in the weather conditions for my opening two minutes. Also compared to last years, this was all filmed in the fields, because the audience couldn't tell the different between some shots in one area to another, the camera didn't pan far enough out to see.

 

Sound has dramatically improved compared to last year. For the opening two minutes I had recorded the wind from outside and put this on a loop throughout the trailer because I didn't understand how to use the sound system. Working with a partner this year was helpful because I was able to get an understanding of the knowledge Jasmine knew and work into music to complete the overall effect of our trailer, using different music for certain paced areas of our trailer. Once I understood how to use it, I dragged the music over each other so you could hear no glitches to when one tune finished and another started. Out of all the improvements I have made compared to last year, this was definitely the most important.

We used a website called http://freeplaymusic.com/ to get non copyrighted music that we could use for our trailer, all of the songs that we though would be most effective we included in a spider diagram used on Mindjet. Out of all of these different music choices we included three for the different paces, saving the music into my documents so that they could be opened on Adobe Premier Elements 10.

 

I included an institution title that I hadn't included at all last year, which made this more effective to be believable to our audience. I had done this by saving the institution video to my documents off YouTube so that it could then be included at the beginning. I didn't understand how to do this last year, but over the A2 project I have learnt how to do this well and therefore my final outcome had been more professional.

 

Overall I think that working with a partner helped me to be able to understand new websites and technology with music and websites, but my knowledge of the area helped me to understand what shots would make this most effective. I have improved massively since last year and it is clearly seen through the elements above.

Evaluation Activity 3 - Audiance Feedback

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoW4_3Z36W8

 

This was the audiance feedback we recieved for our trailer from the rest of the students in our class, this proved useful because it enabled us to get an insight into what it was that the audiance found most interesting and what could be improved to make our trailer better suited for the genre and create the atmosphere we wanted to create. Our target audiance was of the same age group as the people who analysed (18+), this was beneficial to us because we could get an honest view of what they thought our trailer was like and how it could be improved. They gave positives and negatives which would be taken into account and could be improved further in our trailer, thus making it more interesting to our target audiance.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujRSWzsWVro 

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZYqz1Vz85Y 

 

- These are the feedbacks which we gave for the other groups for thier trailers so we could get an audiance feedback for ourselves. It proved useful because we could get a further understanding of how we could improve our trailer and the elements within it, whilst comparing to other trailers enabled us to see what we could improve and what we should keep the same in order to make our trailer the highest quality.

 

The questions that were asked were answered in our video for our auidnace feedback (top), and are summed up below:

 

1) Have they adhered to the conventions of the genre?

 

This question was asking our audiance whether this trailer adhered to the conventions of a typical horror trailer. Our audiances replied that this does, because of the use of editing and a number of different camera shots which shows a number of deaths from killers and people running around similar to most horror films. This is what we were hoping to achieve in our film, and to see that this has been recognised by our audiance shows that this has been successful.
The point that was recognised most successfully was the way we used the blood on the knife to show that our characters neck had been slit. It was commented that it was very effective at indicating the horror genre and it stays with the audiance until the end. By knowing this we could have shown more of the blood and gore within our trailer to make it more effective to our audiances, using different shots to capture the violence that the audiance want to see more of.
Overall i think the genre had been indicated well to our audiance. We found that the characters set the overall mood of the genre by what our audiance had picked out, running and screaming and gore was the main indications which couldn't be recognised without these elements. This shows how our choice of character and age group completed the overall mood, connecting our chosen audiance age group to our characters. 

 

2) What did you think was effective about camera composition and what could have been improved on?

 

 Our audiance recognised how camera shots had been used to highlight most of the gore and characters within our trailer, which they thought was good because of violence which we were trying to show. I think that to improve these shots we shoulod have taken a number of other shots with a difference, they way the knife was slashed or how it stood out on the camera. I think that this would have improved our trailer because we had to use the same shots multiple times to achieve the fast paced movements we wanted to create.
A comment that was made by our audiances to improve our trailer was the amount of camera shots which could have been used. This was a good indication to spot because i think that we overused the close up shots and other angles may have made our trailer more interesting to watch. This would have been good for shots such as the knife slash. If filmed from a lower angle, this would have appeared more threatening to the audiance as they would be seen as an inferior person to the character who is killing. If there could be improvements, it would be this that we would take into consideration.
 

 

3) What do you think was effective about the editing and use of titles and what could have been improved on?

 

 Our audiance commented that the use of editing was effective because it made it appear dark and mysterious, what we were hoping to achieve. We had the idea of using dull colours such as blacks, greys and whites to show the lack of emotion and darkness in the killings. The fact that our audiance was able to recognise this as the reason how the trailer was atmospheric shows that we used our editing processes on Adobe Premier Elements 10 effectively. It was also commented that these effects worked well because of the amount of different camera shots which cut back and forth from running to killing. This could have been experimented more in terms of organisation and effectiveness but our audiance says that it works well, this must mean that the indiation of seperate scenes wasn't misinterpreted with our clips.
Our titles continued to make our clip more atmopheric to the audiance, using sentences such as 'Your never alone' made them feel on edge and eager to know what happens next. This shows that our development from our storyboards and animatics had payed off in achieveing the atmosphere we wanted to create, and it made appropriate gaps between one piece of action to another.

 

4) What do you think about the narrative structure of the trailer?

 

 The audiance say that they can clearly see that it was a bunch of people on the loose that the killer is trying to get to, which again conforms to the horror genre. Because it is a trailer, we don't understand at this point why they are going after them, this leaves the audiance on edge and wanting to know further what happens in the actual film. But they can also clearly see that they all eventually die, which leaves them questioning why is this happening and what is going to happen at the end of the film?

 

5) Do you think that this trailer was conventional?

 

 The audiance respond that this trailer is conventional because of the choice of institution that we used at the very beginning, twisted pictures, only used in horror films. If an institution such as Universal had been used the indication of horror may not have been fully recognised, which is why our audiance immediatly understand what they are going to be witnessing.
They also recognised that our choice of music helps the pace of our trailer take place, starting slowly then rising upwards only to get slower again. We wanted this in our trailer because we thought that it would leave the audiance tense as to what was going to happen next, slowing down when the dead body is seen once and for all at the end.
The titles such as 'Death' make this conventional as well because that is all you think about in a horror genre, by following this cliche the audiance know that they are going to see the gore they want to see.

 

Overall the trailer has been well recieved with only few changes that need to be made to make this to a higher quality. It fulfilled the conventions of a typical horror genre, but the main consideration if our trailer was to be improved was that the variety of camera shots was minimal. To further improve our trailer, this would need to have been included.

Evaluation Targets

Well done Kellie - excellent work so far. To be aiming towards a high band three or even band four you need to be much more analytical. Explain what you actaully did in the editing process using some technical terminology. You need to include some audience feedback and also a director's commentary. Revisit your screen grabs and try to analyse the mise-en-scene and your use of camera shots and angles. Explore exactly how your three pieces compliment each other. Well done.