practical feedback :)

Yesterday we had a class showing of our pratical which gave us a chance to get some feedback, both from the teachers and from the class.
For our trailer we had possitvie feedback, students said that they liked the make up we used, they liked the mise en scene and they also liked the fast paced editing in the second half of the film. One student said that they didn't like one particular shot of a hand as they thought it would look better closer. The teachers also said that they liked our editing and they thought the mise en scene created in the first half of the trailer works really well.
For our poster we had alot of positive feedback, students said that they liked our background as it suited our horror genre and they said that our image is very striking and caught their attention. Teachers said that they liked our tagline as it was catchy; 'clawing it's way to a cinema near you'.
Our magazine cover had mixed reactions as our image is quite big and 'in your face' students thought that with the text it looked too busy and that the text was too spread over the cover, they also said that it would look better on a black background rather then a white one so we have changed it to a black background with white writing, we think that this looks better as the white makes the image stand out and makes the red on her face stand out aswell.

Class feedback on magazine cover.

Looking at the magazine our class said that the text on the magazine is too orange and the different reds do not blend well together. they suggested that we have a black background with a white title. Or a more dull background rather than plain white.

FINISHED FILM MAGAZINE!

This is our finished film magazine, we had finished the main part of the magazine, as in the mast head, and all the other text parts of the magazine. However we didnt know whether to use a colour image, or to use a black and white one. So we asked 8 people for their views on witch one should be chosen. They all agreed that the colour version was alot better.
I have uploaded both versions, the colour version being the final copy, and the black and white one to show the development. We created our magazine on photoshop. We used an image of one of the charachters from our actual trailer from one of the pictures we took on the day that we shot our footage as the actors where still wearing the special effects make-up, which played a large part in all of our work as it is the main thing that shocks and interests the audience. It also links our main task to our anciliry tasks. We went for the colour scheme of reds and blacks as they are strong bold colours. We used this colour scheme not only because it is a strong colour that stands out, but also from our research we found that film magazines always had strong, bold colours that stand out and typography that gave a sterdy strong look. We also thought the red colour scheme went well with the make-up special effects as the blood is picked out by the contrast to the white of the background. This makes the image really striking and stand out very well. For the masthead we decided we needed a bold font in a dark colour that would stand out on a shelf and look professional. We didnt have much luck finding a suitable font on photoshop, so we looked on myfont.com to search for a more suitable one. We found many but the one we used particularly stood out to us as it had a cracked sort of effect round the outside and stood out as a "statement" font. We thought it really worked as a masthead. We decided on the masthead being black, and thats the only black we would use on it so it stands out even more. We looked to other film magazines to look at the sort of things that are presented on the front cover of magazines, so we added the month and year of the magazine, a tagline, a price, and a barcode. These are the things that would appear on the magazine monthly, without fail. The rest of the text is linked to the current issue. For example the biggest feature is the new relese, which happens to be our film "Carnage". We also feature the name of the actress, and competitions and other things linked to the genre, for example" best horrors..".

update :)

It is our deadline on Friday and we our very nearly finished, we have finsihed our first draft for our magazine and we have finished our first draft for our poster, we just need to finish the music on our trailer and we have finished! :D

Claude Levi-Strauss’s Theory and applying it the horror genre

Levi-Strauss argued narrative has two main characteristics which are:

1) It’s made of units that are put together according to certain rules.
2) These units form relations with each other, based on opposites, which provide the basis of the structure.

This theory is known as binary opposition. These opposites are mainly in conflict in the narrative and that was where the crisis of the narrative lay.

Below we have made a list of some of the opposites within the genre of horror:

Good-Evil
Victim-Killer
Danger-Safety
Imprisoned-Freedom
Fear-Relief
Life-Death
Insanity-Sanity

todorov :)

Todorov talked about narrative in relation to media. He said that in every film they is an equilibrium to start with, then a desruption which then leads to the new equilibruim. This apply's to our trailer also, you see that the equilibruim is the serial killer making plans, then the disruption is him taking and possbily killing the girls and then the new equilibrum would be the consequences of the serial killers actions, maybe being arrested.

Vladimir Propp’s Theory: Application to Scream (1997, Wes Craven)

Vladimir Propp suggested that there is a series of actions that can be identified in narratives. They are normally connected with a hidden fairytale or myth narratives. We have applied the theory to "scream".

Preparation
Casey is killed at the very beginning of the film. This takes the audience straight into the action, however there is preparation when Casey talks to her killer on the phone. It could also be preparing the audience for the deaths that will soon come in the film.

Complication
The killer attempts to kill the main character Sidney. She receives a phone call and is then chased up the stairs of her house by the killer. The killer is unsuccessful but Sidney is now aware that somebody is trying to kill her. She thinks it is her boyfriend, Billy, so police question him.

Transference
Billy, who is one of the killers, is found to be innocent and is released. Stu invites Sidney to a party and she goes. Sidney does no know that Stu is one of the killers and this is his plan to get her to a location where they can successfully kill her.

Struggle
The killer supposedly kills Billy and proceeds to chase Sidney. She has narrow escapes including climbing out of a window. She escapes the killer again outside the house by going back inside. And finally the truth is revealed.

Return
Sidney and Gale manages to kill both of the killers. Sidney then releases her father who has been held hostage. She is now out of danger and her father has been returned to her.

Recognition
In the final scene, Gale is reporting the story on her news channel. Everyone will now know the identity of the killers and what actually happened.

Poster edits.

We used picasa to manipulate and edit the images to see which effects look the best to fit our specific genre. From looking at these effects we decided to keep our final draft the same and without these effects; because we felt that they were too dark and didn't quite have the disorted effect that we wanted.

DEADLINE APPROACHING!

This is the last week we have on our pratical coursework to make it the best we possibly can. We have finished the majority of our main task which is the trailer for our horror film, we just need to finalise what sound track we need to use and add that, however we have found many that are useable, so we will upload these and comment on their suitiblity for the trailer. We have finished our film poster which we are very proud of. We have acheived exactly what we wanted to from thr initial idea through to completion of the poster- we have also recieved quite good feedback from peers and other teachers which has all been positive. We are currently in the process of finshing our film magazine.

magazine fonts

We have been lookingt at different type of fonts on a website called myfonts.com and have found many different fonts that we could use for our magazine. Here are some examples of what we want. We are going to ask different people about them and decide which one we will use.

magazine cover :)

Now we have just about finished our main task and we have finished our poster we are going to start on the magazine cover which is our thrid ancillary task. For research we have used the website, myfonts.com, to research some different fonts we liked. Here are some of the ones we have shortlisted, with some people's opinions on each one.

Film magazine covers.

Looking at film magazine covers we have found we can see that they vary in colour schemes and have large bold text on the cover.

Practicle- review

After looking at our film clip we have thought that we need to film a little extra to for better quality clips. we also thought that we need to rethink about the text on the footage. We are still looking for copy right free music to go with our trailer.

pratical update :)

We have nearly finished our main task of our film trailer and for the past few weeks we have been editing our film, adding transitions and text to try and create the best trailer we can, we have since decided that we want to change the opening text as we feel that it doesn't catch the audiences attention enough. We also need to add a soundtrack to our trailer and we have done two drafts for our poster task.

Practical Update...its been a while ;)

We uploaded all of our footage and started looking at the significant parts that we wanted to keep, and the bits that didnt work quite well. We found that as our film is a horror and we filmed some of it in the dark, that some of it vame out quite dark and wont really be useable.
However, we looked at our storyboard and decided that the parts we need for the first section of our trailer (the slow bit), for example,the part where the murderer is sitting at the desk making the death letter, is all okay as it was filmed in the light. We have started editing the beggining part, but all we need to do is add the parts of text. We are still needing to film some footage for the "second" faster part of our trailer

Serial Killer Research

We decided for our coursework to do a teaser trailer for a horror film, our other tasks are to create a magazine cover and a film poster. We then started our research.
This lesson we decied that the main character in our trailer needs a profile so it explains why he has started killing people. We started researching serial killers and found that there are 3 types of serial killers. "organised" "disorganised" and "mixed". They also have sexual desires and some have religious cults. We looked at Myra Hindly And Ian Brady and found they become murders for their own sexual gratification. The motives of serial killers are generally placed into four categories "visionary", "mission-oriented", "hedonistic" and "power/control. We also looked up Ed Gein who was a murderer from america who also was a grave robber. He was the inspiration for many non fictional films characters such as Jame Gumb from silence of the lambs and leather face from texus chainsaw masacre.

Initial research for our film poster :)

The "Saw" collection of films is similar to the one in which we are producing, so we stared looking at film posters from these films and the sort of images they include, and the typography and the different information needed for the poster in order to advertise the film successfully.
These posters all follow a similar style, and all look similar to each other in some way. The posters give a connotation that the film is going to be scary and gory. They effectivly convey this by the colour scheme, and the imagery used. For example, decapitated body parts, "tools" covered in blood, and disturbing faces.
The arrangement of the images is done quite cleverly. The "disturbing" images are put into real life situations. For example the "tools" are displayed on a dinner plate, next to some cutlery, and the tools are also covered in blood. This is horrific to look at as it gives such a sinister effect, as the different things could easily symbolise different objects. The fact that the tools are on a plate could symbolise and give the connotation of canibalism, and the blood on the tools could symbolise some sort of sauce or gravy.

make-up for our trailer :)

On Wednesday we went to our locaation in Leicester which was a cellar in the bottom of the restaurant and filmed our short trailer, it went really well! Everyone turned up on time and so did our actors and we were depending on them heavily! Our make-up artist also showed up on time and she did our actors make up, re creating bruises and cuts and burns to add effect to our trailer. We also did mutiple shots of what we were filming so that we can decide what the lighting is like and how good it looks, we also took some pictures that we can possibly use for our magazine and our poster aswell. Overall we were there for about 6 hours so hopefully we have filmed all that needs filming!


Here our some pictures of the looks the make up artist created.

pitch :)

Today in media we showed our pitch to the class, it was 17 slides long but was very detailed and we covered all aspects about our trailer, film and magazine with posstive feedback from the class amd the teacher saying that out work is promising and we begin filming in out location next wednesday with our make-up artist! :)

trailer research :)

We decided on producing a horror that was going to shock an audience, we chose to do this through mise en scene; the chracrters, the costumes, the lighting and the location etc.
Our starting point was to research trailers from horror films and to see what conventions they have in common with each other.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyZMrmVECJI&feature=related
This is a teaser trailer from the film 'Saw 4'. This is a very good example of the conventions that horror films use. It is produced by Twisted Pictures which is widely recognised for producing the Saw Series. In this clip we like the idea of the serial killer watching them, like he is an organised killer. We can see this from the mise en scene as there is a clock in the room, counting down to something he obviously has planned for them. We also took some inspiration from this clip, the part where you see a mid shot of the newspaper articles on the walls, like he is revelling in the fact his murders are being talked about, we also liked the way this was flimed, with single mid shots flashed across the screen to demonstrate how much he is being talked about. The next few shots are then establashing shots of the location, showing the audience that there are yet again, people trapped in a room. Then you see Jigsaw, the director is able to do this as the audience already know who the killer is as they have probably watched the first 3, and so have wanted to watch Saw 4 to find out what happens, hence using a shot of Jigsaw, drawing previous audiences in.You then see various shots of what looks like toture, we also like this idea as it doesn't give too much away about whats going to happen and it is a tease, which is exactly what we want to produce, a teaser trailer. The next thing you see is white background with black writing on, introducing the date when the film will be released, and some added location shots at the end, with Jigsaw and also some very gory shots to shock the audience into wanting to go and see the film.

serial killer research :)

We reasearched into different serial killers that the serial killer in our film could be based on. We decided that we could use the serial killer Ed Gein, as he fitted the profile, he was known as 'The Butcher of Plainfield'.Our serial killer is going to be based on him, this is so our film can have a more realistic feel to it. We will do this by using makeshift newspaper cuttings and sticking them on a wall, to make it almost look like a shrine. This may be hard for us to recreate though as Ed Gein, was not listed as a serial killer. He was a grave robber, necrophilia, cannabilism, sadism and death fetishism. He used his victims flesh to sew up lamp shades and couches. He inspired films like 'Psycho', 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' and 'Silence of the Lambs'.

pitch feedback :)

Today we started on our powerpoint to pitch our idea to our class, i also researched some film review magazines. Our powerpoint is designed to give the members of our class a good idea of what our trailer is about and our magazine cover. Over the coming weeks we will adapt our powerpoint and update everyone on our progress.

Twisted Pictures/Institutions

Twisted pictures is a production company, mainly specialising in the horror genre. They are most famous for the "Saw" series.

On the heels of the successful opening of "SAW," and the recent announcement of a planned sequel, Twisted Pictures, the genre production label of Evolution Management, will finance and produce nine more films to be distributed by Lions Gate Films (NYSE and TSX: LGF), it was jointly announced today by Lions Gate Films� President of Acquisitions, Television and Co-Productions, Peter Block and President of Production, Mike Paseornek and Twisted Pictures� Oren Koules, Mark Burg and Gregg Hoffman. All of the films will be in the horror/thriller genres.

"We are thrilled to be able to finance and produce cutting edge, story driven genre films and know we have the proven marketing and distribution expertise of Lions Gate behind us," said Burg, Koules, and Hoffman. "There isn�t another distribution company in the business who better understands how to reach out to the vast audience of genre fans who want to see the uncompromising style of film we are committed to making."

"Twisted Pictures� firm commitment to producing fresh, exciting films in the lucrative horror/thriller genre is as strong as Lions Gate�s is to marketing and distributing them," said Block. "Following the terrific experience we have had on Twisted Pictures� first film �Saw�, we are looking forward to

teaming up with them on their forthcoming projects, which are sure to be equally provocative and innovative."

For the upcoming projects under the agreement, Twisted Pictures is strictly looking for writers, directors or writer/directors with existing scripts, and is also open to working with outside producers with a willingness to work within the existing budget parameters.

The deal was negotiated for Lions Gate by Block, Jason Constantine, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions and Wendy Jaffe, Vice President of Business and Legal Affairs and by Peter Schlessel and Steve Monas on behalf of Twisted Pictures, who will also serve as executive producer on each of the films.

inspiration - rihanna disturbia

This video is a very good interpretation of the editing we want for our trailer, the effcts are lots of shots cut closley together and this is the effect we are going to try and achieve for our trailer!

Research film posters

I have been looking into different horror posters and i have came across early ones from the 1950'sThis is a film poster for Dr jekyll and Mr. Hyde and from this I can see that the posters do not really have any sort of scary gore but have cartoons to show that its a horror. Where as later on in the 1970's the posters become me graphic and supernatural as seen on this poster.
This poster is from 1998 and has also developed from the comic like theme on the Dr jekyll and Mr hyde to this life like supernatural.
Then in 2004 the saw poster, it shows more disturbing pictures and blood.
Looking at these posters i have found that through the years they have developed into more graphic and gorey images to shock audieneces.
From this research i think we should have one image on the poster showing bloody hands to fit with the more up to date horror film posters.

Make-up Carnage

Here are some of the make-up shots we got while on the filming day. We wanted the actresses to look like they have been tortured and look distresssed for the filming, we also wanted the make-up to match the mise en scene and the setting to fit with the generic conventions of a horror.

TEAM! :)

editing our film :)

Today we uploaded our film onto the Mac but some of the footage came out too dark so now we are having to refilm anything that's too dark. We are faced with a slight problem though as a member of our team have left so we are now a group of 3 and we cannot use the same location as we did before, so we are improvising instead and thinking about using someone's garage.

SAW 6!!

This morning at the bus stop,I noticed that the film "Saw 6" is soon to be released. I decided to do some research in the new film,its trailer and its new website,to see if we could get any new ideas from this.


I went on the Saw VI website as, as technology improves, more people use the internet as a main source to find out about film releases. So the websites have to be of a very high quality, and sell the film to its full potential. When I went on the website there where lots of references to "free" things. Such as free widgets, and free applications for Iphone. This would be an example of synergy marketing, as Iphone and Warner Bros would have worked together to promote both of their items.
There is also references to social networking sites such as facebook, twitter and the less popular myspace. This would also indicate the target audience age. For example 15-23 year olds are more likley to use social networking sites as they communicate with friends whilst at college/university. This shows that films such as "Saw" would appeal to this range of people

marketing our project :)

First off, starting with our film trailer we have thought about places where our film trailer would be advertised, we thought about the television, cinema and the internet and for our poster and magazine we thought about bus stops, side of buses, magazines, billboards, websites and radio. We have also hugely considered viral marketing as this is how most film institutions make there money now so we have thought about psoting a trailer on the website YouTube and also having adverts and sneak preview trailers on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
We discussed the certificate for our film and initially we all agreed on 18 but we know that the gore may appeal to younger viewers and they may try and download the film illegally so we decided on a certifcate of 15 so that we would not be breaking any marketing laws.
Our target audience for our film are both male and female, but mostly male as the gore may not appeal to women as much as men, age wise youngest being 15 and oldest being about 25 as a more mature audience may not be drawn in by the gore, also our audience will not be upper class as they are a more sophisticated audicence but it may appeal to middle and lower class audiences and particulary lower class audiences as they may have experienced some sort of violence in there lives and so can relate to the storyline in the film. Also, our audience will be the lowest of socio-economic status such as students and the underclass.
The signifiers in our film are the characters as they relate to the audience as they are the same age and the fact that anyone is suseptible to vulnerability and for people who are adrenalin junkies and enjoy adrenalin rushes and this is shown through our mise en scene with the flashing images in our trailer.
Young and Rubicam talked about the label marketing theory where specific types of people watched different films, the target audiences they described did not fit into our film trailer as we have a very specific audience of young people who are possibly working but are probably students.

MARKETING OUR PROJECT. CARNAGE.

How are we going to market our project?

impact of japanese horror :)

Japanese horror is also known as 'J-Horror', it tends to focus on pyschological horror and tension building., very much involving ghosts and poltergeists. The stories are often based on folk stories and worked into modern day films.
The first succesful Japanese horror film was 'The Ring', although this story has exsisted in Japan for a very long time. The film is about portraying the image of yurei, which are Japanese ghosts who are bound to the physical world through strong emotions which do not allow them to pass on, depending on the emotion, they are bound to a particular ghost. They are all very traditional and follow a particular set of rules. Thye are generall female, although some are male, they wear traditional white robes and long, unkempt black hair just like Samara from 'The Ring'.
Influence from J-Horror has been very apparent in some recent American films such as 'The Ring, The Grudge, Grudge 2, Ring 2, Pulse, One Missed Call, and coming up The Grudge 3 and The Ring 3'.
Many of the Japenese directors have gone on to make the remakes and recently, South Korea produced a remake of 'The Ring' film called 'The Ring Virus'.

Research Blair witch project

Blair witch project is about an american horror film. The narrative is presented as a documentary filmed by three young student film makers. They hike into the Black Hills of Burkittsville to film about a local legend known as the blair witch and go missing. The audience is told that the three were never found but their video and sound equipment was discovered a year later. The recoverd footage is shown as the film the the viewer is watching it.


They started filming on october 1997 and lasted for 8 days. The directors rationed food for the cast causing one of the actors to suffer from eczema outbreaks as the filming was being done. Many of the people who live in Burkittsville were intereviewed and have claimed that the blair witch is real although the story is fictitious.


The film was released 1999 at sundance film festival. The Artisan studio did months of campaigning for the film to be released on the internet to make it seem like it was a real event. due to this way of distributing the footage was positivly recieved by critics and went on to $248 million world wide. The film is one of the first films to be marketed on the interent.

Why do film trailers exist?

Film trailers are advertisements for films that are soon to be exhibited at the cinema. The term of "trailer" came from the fact that the trailer used to be played at the end of a film, however they found that people didnt stick around to watch them. So they where moved to before the film started, but kept the name of a "trailer".
More recently trailers have grown online, and 10 billion videos are being watched annually.
The purpose of a trailer is to attract an audience to a film, and parts are pulled from the film that appear to be the "best parts" of the film, but are chosen carefully enough not to spoil the film. Trailers have to acheieve this in less than two and a half minutes.

What is viral marketing?

"Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence"

A marketing technique that is used to increase brand awareness, to acheive mainly product sales.
It can be done in the forms of;
video clips, interactive online gaming,ebooks, brandable software,images and even text massages.

Viral Marketing must have these 6 elements to be powerful and effective;

1.Gives away products or services
2.Provides for effortless transfer to others
3.Scales easily from small to very large
4.Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5.Utilizes existing communication networks
6.Takes advantage of others' resources

A good example of early viral marketing is the hotmail email messaging service. That cleverly used the word "Free"

"As Hotmail was a free email service provider it could control, to a certain extent, the format of all outbound messages that each Hotmail account holder sent. It was this fact that led them to come up with a viral marketing campaign that has yet to beaten and saw their traffic skyrocket and eventually lead to Microsoft buying the company as a result of their exponential growth.

So what did they do? Simple. To the footer of each outgoing email they attached a signature file that read:

"To get your FREE email account goto www.hotmail.com".

As more and more people received emails from existing Hotmail account holders so the word spread about their free email service and the rest, as they say, is history."

"FREE" is the most powerful word in a marketers vocab. They "give away" valuble products or services to attract attention to their product.
It practises "delayed gratification" which basically means they do not profit immidiatley but they generate "free" interest because they know the profit will soon profit.
It is called "viral marketing" because like a virus, it is designed to develop and spread very quickly, and cause big impact.
It works well on the internet because internet is instant communication and is so easy an inexpensive. Digital format also makes copying so simple.

Horror Target Audience

I found these graphs and statistics on a Film Networking site. The source was by someone called Roy Morgan at National Metro, and was published in 2008.
The First one outlines the different sexes and the amount of each that are more likely to watch a horror film, and the second outlines the age ranges that are most likley to watch a horror film.

The top graph shows the male and female amount of people on average that watch horror films. The blue area indicates the male amount, and pink, female. The larger amount is males, this could be that men like to watch films that pump adrenaline to make them feel masculine.

The other graph shows the age ranges. It shows that the largest amount is of the "teenage" catorgary. This could be due to the adrenaline rush that youngsters want to feel. Such as going on a big ride at a theme park.

Setting

We have decided to shoot our trailer in a cellar beneath The Boot Room Eaterie, Mill Stone Lane, Leicester. When we first looked at the setting we took some pictures to include in our planning.

This is a photo of the cellar stairs, they are narrow and steep creating a isolated, ominous atmosphere.

We took other photos in the cellar of the more worn out looking parts to go with our genre of horror.


These photos show the main areas of the filming we did.

When filming we had to think about the different lighting for the different shots as we didnt want any of the filming to be too dark or too bright.

Here is a photo of the lift we used as part of the trailer. We felt that it fitted well with the characters and mise en scene for the trailer. We used this for the murderers way of bringing his victims in.

We need to start editing our film soon, and create some music to go with it.

Research Marketing Law

We have been looking at marketing law in our research and have found a number of websites including http://www.marketinglaw.co.uk/ and http://www.cim.co.uk/ where they show you all information about the laws and information about marketing. The websites also provides checklists and documents containing all of what we need to know about advertiseing our trailer. There are restrictions to our advertisment. Advertising Restrictions are used to include the laws, regulations and codes of practice that industries are governed and controlled by. This includes food labelling, tobacco advertising, gambleing, protection of some members of society like children, alcohol advertising and misleading advertisments. From this it is telling us that we need to be careful about what we put on our advertisment. We will be looking further into the marketing laws and its requierments.

Soundtrack,

Iv just been listning to some music and sound effects on soundcloud that might be useful in our trailer. Ideally we would like the music/sound effects to create tension, keeping to quite a slow pace to beggin with but then get gradually heavier and faster and louder as the trailers pace speeds up.
Just a thought :)

heavy death by marilynmansonrocks

Peace :) x

Pitch For Teaser Trailer

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Pitch For Teaser Trailer

View more presentations from onetrickpony18.

Research, Trailer Analysis

This trailer opens with the setting, which is typical of horror genre. It appears to be derelict and shut off from everything. It appears to be a barn sort of area with a lack of exits as there seems to be tiny windows which are situated high up, and a lack of doors. There are then flashes of disturbing footage which again-questions the audience and makes them wonder. There is then the generic use of text which aims to set the scene, but not give away a story. This is embedded within flashes of video, which work along side the text. We see the victim and various ways in which the victim is to be tortured. The editing in this clip is again, very fast and the imagery can only be seen for a second or two. The camera shots used are mainly, at the beggining, an establishing shot which sets the scene and establishes where the film is going to be set. There is then useage of mainly mid shots, usually to show characters, then closeups of ways in which they are to be tortured but also to capture facial expression, and at some points there are even extreme closeups to show distress. Which also makes the audience not feel at ease.

From watching and analysing these particular clips, we came to the conclusion that we would also like to produce a horror trailer based on torture and serial killers. To further our knowolege, we decided to do some research into different types of killers, their motives and why they decide to kill. We also decided to research real killers, and how they killed their victims and why. We also decided to research into a specific type of murder - torture murder. We where also through this introduced to somthing called "Horror Porn" which is quite a new term for the genre of horror which focuses on torture, mutilation and murder - often with women as the victims.

Location/Setting/Mise-en-scene

Location/Setting

Whilst researching we started to think about location and setting for our trailer. Films of this genre are usually based in somewhere hidden away from the "outside world" and almost seem unrealisitic. Settings are often based somewhere very quiet, where no one "normal" would be able to discover what was happening. Another feature of setting is that it is also quite dirty and old, or old fashioned. Which would also mean that the place is un cared for, but also hasnt been given any sort of attention by again, "Normal people".

We decided that it might be effective to film our trailer in a cellar. We liked the idea of having this opportunity firstly for practicality - we where not going to be disturbed by anyone, and being underground is reasonably quiet, so the sound effects we will use, or the voices we might need to be able to hear will sound quite clear on camera. However a concern we had was that, being down in the cellar, the lighting is quite poor. We decided we wanted to have a dim effect to add to the "mystery" and for tension purposes but we dont want the lighting to be too dark as we still need to be able to see sufficiently what is happening in the shot. We decided to meet up and go to the location. Which is located in Leicester city centre under the resturaunt,The Boot Room. We looked around the cellar to look for certain rooms that might be of use to us, and assesed the lighting of certain rooms. We also took some still shots to look at how the locations pick up on the camera and what effects they give.

Research, Murderers.

Killers Motives

Murderers can have many motives for killing, Some do it for the thrill and the feel of power. Others it can stem way back to when they where a child and were neglected or abused as children.It may be a way to extract revenge even. Or it may just be to do with many mental problems. After doing some research into WHY people murder we found that there where three kinds of murderers.

Some people will just kill the once and then turn themselves in, live with their sin or actually kill themselves. This usually means the murder was an accident which is known as manslaughter.Or the person would have committed the crime and realised it was wrong. Even though killing is wrong, the mind of this person is morally right and the person is therefore classed as being more "normal". However other types of murderers such as serial killers have a different perspective. Serial killers intend to kill large amounts of people untill they are eventually caught, this could go on for weeks, months or years. They often have problems with "the outsude world" and the public in general. Their motives are based on phsycological gratification, and sexual element is often involved. The murders committed usually have somthing in common with each other. The serial killer is often labelled as a physcopath, and they usually lack empathy and guilt and often act impulsivly. They do not conform to socal, moral and legal normalities.

We decided that we would like to feature a serial killer that bases murders on having them organised, this is known as being an Organised/Non social offender. This is considered to be the worst type as it has been extremely thought through and planned to tiny details. These types of murderers are usually very intellegent. They plan their murders methodically, abuse and torture the victim in one place and then dispose of the body in another. They would often use mind tricks to lure people in and try to gain their sympathy. For example, Ted Bundy would wear a cast on his arm and ask women to help him to his car, then he would knock them unconscious with a metal bar. Others would target prostitutes, whom are more likely to go with a stranger. They have high control and often have a high understanding of forensics to be able to cover their tracks. They are often influenced by other acts in the media, and see thier own murders as "works of art".

Drawing from this research in relation to our own work, we decided that by giving "the murderer" charachter a profile of being an organised serial killer it would give a scarier errier feel. We had ideas that we want to convey that the murderer had thought long and hard about who he was going to murder and how he was going to do it. We decided that by trying to get this through in the short time of a trailer, we could show flashing imagery of other murderers that this particular murderer could find "inspirational", linking in with the research that murderers are often inspired by others. We also had ideas about how we could show that the murderer was very organised. We decided that fitting in with the fast flashes of imegery we could show pitures of the victims, but also things such as buildings of relevance, floor plans, newspaper cuttings and various weapons. As the editing would be very quick, the audience would not really get a full vision of this as such, just a slight glimpse.

Research, Trailer Analysis

THIS HAS ONLY JUST BEEN POSTED DUE TO MOVEMENT OF BLOGS


We firstly decided to look into some trailers of the same genre that we want to create. Our starting point was to look at the trailer for one of the "Saw" Films, distributed by "Twisted Pictures" that specialises in producing horror films.





This is the teaser trailer for one of the "Saw" films, the actual film is "Saw IV". Teaser trailers are generally quite short but show a reasonable amount of insight as to what the film is going to be about, the characters included, and the main sort of storyline, however they never give too much away, but show enough to leave the audience wanting more. In this particular trailer, it opens with the names of the production companies, which include, Lionsgate and Twisted Pictures, which are famous for producing films in the genre of horror. There is then quick flashes of text which questions the audience. Inbetween the flashes of text there is footage which works alongside the text. The ending line of text sums up the qustions made previously, in this case the text ends by saying "You are wrong". Which then makes the audience feel anticipation. Somthing we like and find interesting about this trailer is the use of very fast editing, creating a collage of disturbing imagery which includes visions of blood, pain, chains and torture.The fast editing also doesnt really let the audience see exactly what is happening, which in a way makes it even more gruesome, as the imagination is a powerful and can build on what is already there. Somthing else that adds to the effect of this trailer is the lack of bright colour. This gives the connotations of death and evil things occuring.The main colour pallet is made up of dark,dull colours,and looks quite saturated. The pace is then slowed down to reveal the image of a man on what appears to be an operating table. He looks lifeless and reasonably scary, but the focus on him brings the audience to believe he is a main character. The trailer then ends with the title of the film. This way the title is the last thing that will stay in the audiences mind. There is then a shot of "white noise" which gives the effect that the person who is watching, that their television has been taken over, which then makes them feel in danger. The trailer finally ends with information such as the release date and relevant websites and names.

Initial Ideas

THIS WAS AT THE BEGGINING OF OUR RESEARCH, HOWEVER THE SCHOOL DECIDED TO SWITCH BLOGS, THIS IS WHY IT HAS ONLY JUST BEEN POSTED


Research and Inspiration
Introduction

Breif/Initial Ideas

We where given a wide veriety of breifs, however as a group of 4 we decided to produce a promotional package for a new film which includes the main task of producing a teaser trailer, but also creating the front cover for a film magazine and a promotional poster for our new film. From previous work duiring AS I feel that having some experience working with video and print will enable us to build on our skills we already have and learn from mistakes to create some high quality peices of work. As for being in quite a big group, I feel that if we manage our time properly and work to deadlines we can seperate out the three tasks so we can make a very good end result.

As a group we had a discussion about which way we wished to take the breif and what we could do with it to make it a success. We all had similar interest in producing a new horror film. We have all seen similiar horror films and understand the conventions used in them, and understand that there are two main types of horror, either horrors with a phsycological or gory slant to them. We where more attracted to the gory side as we felt we could possibly create somthing quite life-like if we did sufficient research. However we liked the idea of having an underlying slight phsycological story to our film to make it more interesting than just a typical murder film which has been seen a lot of times before. We wanted to create somthing new that has a twist to it. We also liked the idea of making our trailer shocking, disturbing and twisted, which gets attention from an audience and makes them feel uneasy.


As we had decided on producing a horror that was to disturb and shock an audeince, with an underlying twist we decided to start looking for inspiration of other media products such as film trailers of the same genre, Music videos which capture the same feeling we wish to create in the way of editing and creepy visuals, and reasearch into the sort of real life characters and settings in which disturbing events could take place to help us create visions of characters, mise en scene,storylines,colour schemes,sound and finally editing.

Filming Tommorow! Prop List/Filming Schedule!

We are filming tommorow so this is the last chance to finalise everything and make sure we are ready for tommorow so no time is wasted.
Iv just been speaking to the artistic makeup lady who is meeting us at the venue (The Boot Room) at 10, so we need to be there early because we will be wasting her time aswell if we are late.
We also need to take into consideration how long the makeup is going to take. When I asked Rebecca she said 2 and a half hours maximum.
The actors that are involved know what time to be in Leicester, and we also have some shopping to do for last minute props (e.g the clothes that the "victims" are going to be wearing to make them all "equal" in terms of mise-en-scene and charachter representation). We then need to make these outfits look "destressed" to make the victims look like that have effectivley been rotting away for some time.
We need to make sure we have our story board with us to make sure we follow the plan that we have made to ensure that everything goes to plan. We also need to make sure that we shoot more footage than we actually need, and if we think of additional things that may look effective, we also will need to make a note of this to add to a new revised storyboard.


Props/Costume List
-We've asked the girls playing the victims to wear clothes that they didnt mind getting scruffy, or that where already scruffy. We also asked the girls to bring plain clothing, this is so the clothing isnt a focal point, but the artistic makeup (wounds) will be of interest to the audience. The "Plain clothing" consists of black leggins, and a black vest top. Then we are going to buy some cheap mens t shirts in white, and rip them and make them look dirty and possibly splatter blood on them.
-Jack (Murderer) is bringing two costumes. This is so we can see which looks better.One is a scruffy outfit, with blood on it (see pictures), and the other will be a smart suit. We also have a labcoat for the "Doctor" effect.
-The Murder weapons, tools etc
-Large torches incase of lighting problems
-Pictures of the floor plans, pictures of the victims (Clutter for the notice board/Desk)
-Fake Blood
-Maggits (which we will not take into the venue due to it being a resturaunt. Health and Safety etc.etc).
-Latex Gloves
-The "Death letter"/Newspaper cuttings
-Tweezers


Seee you tommorow guys, Peace outt :) x

Soundtrack Idea

Iv just been looking on "SoundCloud" as we need to start thinking about the music/soundtrack for our trailer. Iv just been messing around typing in a few words like "Murder" and "Tension". Iv saved about 3 to favourates, but there is one called "The soul eaters". Its quite good, its abit Radiohead(ish), really eerie, and the lyrics are so infitting with our genre/idea.
Royal Brown - The Soul Eaters (KFSFK murder mix) by KFSFK