Nightmare on Elm Street Poster

Nightmare on Elm Street Poster, a photo by Chris Demetriou on Flickr.

The Human Centipede poster

The Human Centipede poster, a photo by Chris Demetriou on Flickr.

The Eye poster

The Eye poster, a photo by Chris Demetriou on Flickr.

My Pitch for a Horror Movie

My original idea for a horror movie was to feature a group of college friends going on a night out. The night would go a complete success with everyone having the time of their lives. as the night draws to a close, the last methods of cheap transport stops and the nightlife begins to die down, the friends all try to find a place to stay. They stumble across a very old building and in their drunken states, decide to go and take a look. After establishing that there was not a soul on the grounds, they all agree that it would be the perfect place to stay. As they settle in, they begin to hear noises and start to see shadows of things lurking in the dark and one by one, the friends get killed leaving the final girl. The final girl becomes so emotionally unstable that she kills anything that may be inside the grounds, eventually being killed by the supernatural being that had taken her friends lives.

Research Of Target Audience

As a group, we decided to produce a questionnaire to give to people who fit the stereotypical age group for horror films (around 15 - 25). With the results that we gathered; we were hoping to get some qualitative and quantitative data back. This would provide us with the information about what attracts people to the horror genre. Our questionnaire was not very successful in the fact that we did not regain many answers but with the answers we did recieve, we were able to loosely base our trailer on what our target audience wanted to see.

The Differences Between a Teaser Trailer and a Main Theatrical Trailer

One of the main notable differences between a teaser trailer and a main theatrical trailer is the length. Teaser trailers tend to range from 50 seconds till 1 minute 30 whereas full trailers tend to range from 1 minute 30 up till 3 minutes. Also in a teaser, not much is revealed about the film which it is promoting and usually uses footage that wont appear in the film. There wont be much of a storyline to follow, If any at all, and they do tend to be more scary as they can use any old shots to create their finished product. A full trailer will include scenes from the film and will have a storyline which you can begin to follow. Full trailers will feature a lot of shots from the film's rough, or even final cut and will give you a better idea of how the film will turn out

What Have You Learnt From Your Audience Feedback?

The main target audience for horror films is usually young boys/adults aged 13-27 and also young couples of a similar age. As our media class is compiled of only 17-18 year old students (mainly boys) we thought it would be the best place to hold our 'Test Screening' of our trailer to gain positive and negative feedback about what is good and what we can improve.


After the class watched our trailer, the teacher went around each person and asked them for one good thing they had to say about the trailer and also something to be improved. To start with, there were many different issues that we tried to either correct or hide before the screening and by doing this, the feedback results that came back were not that dis-similar. The negative feedback we received were things that could be corrected without re-shooting any video for example parts of the soundtrack and the inter-titles. The inter-titles were either deemed to 'Sci-fi like' or 'Professional Looking' which were both posotive and negative comments and with regards to the sound, there were things such as wispers and other small noises which were hard to hear so these were picked up on. Another key point which was raised in the feedback was the amount of green in the trailer. The class all agreed that it was very 'Sci-fi like' and that a different colour such as red or orange would have worked better as they are strongly related to the horror genre.

How Effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

For most major films, the distributor makes something called a 'Promotion Package'. This package is a collective group of adverts to make the film a big success including: Magazine Articles, Posters, Billboard Advertisments, Television/Cinema Adverts and even screening their adverts at the start of Cinema Films. 

A movie trailer is very important in promoting a film but it is not the key factor. A magazine cover page/article in one of the leading film magazines will get a film noticed, especially by your target audience. Also producing a poster will increase the number of people who notice the film. This poster can be placed up and around cinemas and can also be blown and printed on cardboard to stand up tall as a cinemas 'next biggest film'.

For the promotion package to be a success, the three media texts (Trailer, Poster and Magazine Cover) need to link together in terms of styling and content. "The Necklace" teaser trailer contains a fair amount of green which is quite distinctive to horror films so I tried to incorperate this into my other media texts. After experimenting with the colour green, I came to the conclusion that focusing on the same colour across all of my media texts would be too much. This gave me the idea of using the main antagonist to link the poster and magazine cover and the colour green to link to my trailer and magazine cover.

The images that I have used in my magazine cover and poster are fairly low key and they do show most of the main antagonist. With the woman in the trailer looking dead and quite creepy and the woman in the poster and magazine cover looking normal and sane; This gives the viewer a chance to see the character as a normal person casually wearing her necklace like any other piece of jewlery. The facial expression also helps to justify the horror genre as she is very sinister looking. If I had used other editing techniques such as enhancing the brightness and the colours then the film could have been interpreted as a different genre e.g. a comedy or romance.

My trailer doesn't have any production values such as big named stars or well-known directors so I have not included any names in the titles of the trailer, poster and magazine cover. I came to this conclusion after taking into account my target audience and the fact that they will not know the actors/actresess and directors. To make up for the lack of production values, I have included big named films and events on the magazine cover such as "The Oscars" and I have also included "movie ratings" from top magazines and newspapers on my poster and this will help to sell the magazines as lots of people will want to hear about these new films with their famous stars.

Comparisons Between Existing Horror Trailers and My Goup Trailer

Comparisons Between Existing Horror Trailers and My Goup Trailer, a photo by Chris Demetriou on Flickr.

The images on the Left are from existing horror trailers that I have found and the images on the right are from our own produced horror trailer.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research,planning and evaluation stages?

Different Media Products Used a photo by Chris Demetriou on Flickr.

Here is a link to a Flikr photo which I have posted. It contains notes on the different media products used in my Media coursework.

The Necklace Teaser Trailer

Here is the completed trailer called 'The Necklace'.

Magazine Cover

The Necklace Poster

Horror Trailer Idea

The idea that was brought up by the group is that there is a supernatural necklace belonging to a dead girl. The girl does not want the necklace to be removed from the room which is situated in as this was her death place. the main protagonist is a female (final girl) who gets lost and stumbles across the place. her and her friends male + female find an open room and goes into the room to look for help, stumbling across the necklace and taking it. on their way out of this location, they wander into different rooms to see if they can find anything else of some value and one by one; everyone gets killed apart from the final girl.

Mood Board

This is my mood board. It tells me what kind of horror film i would like to try and replicate/produce.

Three Horror Movies

Saw 3D



     Me and Rhys decided to watch the trailer for Saw 3D to investigate the use of basic trailer conventions within the horror genre. One of these conventions is that the production values of any film are indicated, and this film is clearly playing on the '3D' experience throughout the trailer. Around half of the entire trailer is footage of a cinema audience with film-related things happening to them, either from the screen or from their seats. This is signifying to the audience that watching this film in 3D will make you feel like you are actually there, part of Jigsaw's wicked game. Another convention is that the voice over and any dialogue will help create an image of the build up to an event, but never gives away the end, instead building the audience up and leaving them in complete suspense eager to see the ending. The voice-over artist in this is the 'villain' character 'Jigsaw' almost asking the audience to play the game with him, challenging them to beat his sinister tasks along with the characters in the film.

Quarantine Trailer



     Also a trailer from the horror genre; Quarantine positions the audience in the eyes of a cameraman, filming the events of an infected zombie uprising, whilst using very different conventions. Any trailer must indicate what genre the film is, and Quarantine does this by showing the audience multiple scenes of violence, deformed/ill looking civilians and scenes of widespread panic. All relevant to the horror genre. The name of the movie must also be included in the trailer; Quarantine flashes up at the end with an odd green glow giving a very out-of-this-world effect.


Sixth Sense Trailer



     This trailer for Sixth Sense uses very similar conventions to Saw 3D in that the dialogue tells a story without giving the ending away and leaving the audience in suspense. Also there are some production values here as Bruce Willis plays one of the starring roles.

There are some basic conventions of the Horror genre that these films all seem to fit in some shape or form.
Violence/Gore is one convention which Saw 3D definitely fulfills, opting for a no holds-barred gore-fest filled with decapitations, amputations and other extremely violent moments which really aren't for the squeamish. Also, the camerawork is typical of a horror film as there are lots of canted shots and general disorientation. Quarantine is also a violent film, whilst not focusing on methods of torture it is still filled with violence and gore but at times when the audience aren't expecting it making for a very jumpy and scary film. The Sixth Sense however is not a violent film, but gore is present. Some of the spirits wandering around are visibly injured in extreme ways (e.g. young boy with shotgun wound to the head) fulfilling the convention also.

Narrative Theory

In class we studied the famous film "The Shining" and then talked about different theorists to see if we could relate their theories to the film.

PROPP

Propp says that every story has a similar set of characters which all fit in to a certian group of character functions.

Character Functions in The Shining
1. The Villain - Jack/The Hotel
2. The Hero - Danny, Wendy, Dick
3. The Donor - Jack
4. The helper (aids hero) - Dick
5. The Princess + Father - Wendy (No Father in Film)
6. The Dispatcher - Danny
7. The False Hero - Dick

Todorov

He states that all stories start with an equilibrium where any opposite forces are balanced. This equilibrium is then disrupted by an event or action which then leads to other things happening.

Levi-Strauss

He looked at Narrative Structure in the form of Binary Oppositions which means there are sets of opposite things like good/evil, past/present and the norm/the un-norm. For example in The Shining, they live in a built up area surrounded by people and move to a secluded hotel with noone around.

Bordwell and Tompson

They never really had a complete narrative Theory but they came up with ideas as to how it could be done

The Return Of The Repressed

The return of the repressed is a theory that Sigmund Freud came up with to explain the existance of neurotic symptoms. This means that thoughts can be kept in your conscience and can sometimes go un-noticed. These thoughts then can reappear not only in your mind but also in your behaviour. For example, when you are born you have all of the attention as you are the new born child and you get used to this treatement but 2 years later you mother is pregnant again and when the new baby is born, all of the attention from your family switches from you to the new born child. You become angry but with your parents able to notice, you hold back the  thoughts. The anger then could come back in your attempt to "love the child to death".

Here is the trailer for the film Mirrors. I chose this film as it uses a variety of different editing effects and camera work to make the film more intense for example the people looking back at you through the mirrors. From my knowlage, this is done by recording to separate videos with the camera in the exact same position and then crop the videos and stick the two together to create the effect of twins doing diferent things.