Setting

The setting for our film trailer will be in an isolated location surrounded by wild trees, creating an eery atmosphere. The green will be luscious and vibrant contrasting with the action taking place, which in one scene the protagonist will run down a woodland alleyway like this as she's being chased.

This picture will possibly be featured in the film connoting a cross road in the protagonists life, as it will be edited with another direction arrow. The other side of the wooden fence is another narrow pathway, no lighting through out which means that filming would have to take place at dusk and edited into night scenes as we don't have to technological appliances such as large lights to film scenes.

Shots like this will be used through out the trailer as the identity of the stalker is kept as a mystery. The lighting behind the person creates the outline.

Focused analysis; The Orphan trailer

Focused analysis of The Orphan trailer:

Location: The movie was filmed in Toronto, Canada the original setting was supposed to be in Fall but while filming a record amount of snow fell, changing the setting. The snow gave the story line an edge to it as the purity and angelic style of the snow contradicts the dark and deadly story.

Throughout the trailer the colours are bright due to the snow there are a few dark scenes at night which are typical of horror films, where the disequilbrium are most commonly present. The house that the film was filmed in is large and spacey, if it was a cosy little cottage the effect wouldn't be the same you can loose yourself in such a large house.

Each location of the setting, the orphanage and the school are brightly decorated with white making them look bright and airy which contradicts again with the story.

The setting changes as soon as the audience connect the fact that Esther is not a normal child as she kicks and screams in a toilet cubicle that is lit to look very cold.

After this scene the trailers pace increases with snapshots of a variety of places, there are ways the crew try to darken some scenes such as the play area choosing one thats very dark, contrasting with the snow. To the point of 1:38 where the pace slows down creating tension in the audience.

Characters: There are a few protagonists in this film, Esther, Kate and then the rest of her family which are not prominent but are important.

Esther comes across as an innocent girl, dressed in pretty clothes the audience empathise, 'isn't she pretty/cute' however some may say the first shot of her creates an eeriness to her as she's not socialising with the other girls but instead several floors above them in a room all on her own. She's well spoken and neatly dressed throughout the trailer always wearing ribbons but always dressed differently to the other children, she's odd. Through out the trailer her dark side becomes apparent.

Kate is portrayed as a loving woman adopting a child, this theme is carried through out the trailer which emphasizes that this is a normal family not deserving anything bad to happen to them. This idea of innocence is carried onto the other characters such as the little girl Max and the boy Daniel.

Sound/ Music; Non diagetic music playing behind the diagetic speech is peaceful and soothing music the family are finally starting to piece their lives together however there's always calm before the storm. The music stops once a class mate takes the mick out of Esthers outfit, instead of different music picking up the non diagetic sounds turn to a type of wind hollowing sound to then a deep toned heartbeat in a slow rhythm. These two then mix together to have a stronger background noise as the pace of the editing speeds up. The pace slows down once again building before building up once more this is so tension is built in the hearts of the audience.

The diagetic sound creates a link between the mum and Esther they both have common ground of being different. The clip when the class mate takes a dig at Esthers outfit is the key point when the action starts to build. Esthers scream is key to the audience to demonstrate that she is not normal, the narrative style of the Nun starts the audiences question into why Esther is different what type of trouble has found her? Kate's enquiry into the little girls past makes you question how much don't you know about the girl that has been adopted. Through out the trailer it is clear that the mum knows something is wrong while the dad is still oblivious to what is staring him in the face we can tell this by the line: "There must be some explanation."

Focused Analysis

Horror films are typically dark with selected lighting used, the darkness represents the unknown where danger lurks striking fear into the hearts of the characters and the audience. Tension can be created with the use of streams of light from the distance gradually making its way toward the screen. Quick flashes of light are used, innocence can be portrayed by softly lighting a characters face. 

What a character is wearing can help identify which genre you are watching. For example if most of the characters were male and in army gear, you would say you were watching an army/war film. In horror films the main costume design doesn't vary much from say a comedy, however throughout the film the costumes may become torn, covered in blood or dirt trying to escape from a murderer, identifying the film as a horror. On the other hand the murderer can be dressed in obvious attire related to horror such as dark clothing, a mask/large hood or cap to hide their identity.

Props can give a genre away relatively easily however you have to be careful not to break the verisimilitude by having an object that doesn't fit with the genre. Props in horror films are typically weapons such as knives and guns, used by the perpetrator but also used as protection by the characters.
The position of objects and characters in a frame can portray different meanings, for instance if you had a character peering round a door in the distance in the left hand corner and the rest of the frame is of the room they are peering into connotes the meaning of anxiousness hoping the room is safe to enter. However if we had that same character standing in the middle of the room their legs shoulder width apart and arms on their hips suggests they are comfortable in their surroundings.

Horror films are typically set in an isolated area with little escape routes such as roads. For example 'The Shining' was set in a large hotel (which makes the characters feel inadequete in comparison) in the middle of no where, we know this via the opening sequence of a long car journey with far long shots and establishing shots. Any location connotes the sense of helplessness, which engross the audience. Many locations even some in towns or cities they have a sense of abandoness to them such as 'Silent Hill'. Other settings horror movies are sometimes filmed at are woodland areas the trees obstructing the path during chase scene adds suspense.

Mood Board

 

This collection of images shows typical colours and images provided by Horror movies.  

Target Audience

The target audience for our film/trailer are both genders certificated a 15. Both genders will be attracted to this film its a thriller/horror film and would be wrong to single out as one particular sex is interested in them. Girls will like this film as the protagonist is a girl, the ending is unclear in the trailer therefore girls will like to know if the woman survives as a hero. The guys might like the idea of the chase as the trailer makes it clear that a chase sequence happens.

9 Grid; Jeepers Creepers

9 Grid Jeepers Creeper2

9 Grid; I spit on your grave

9 Grid i Spit on Ur Grave2

Grid of 9; Dont Be Afraid of the Dark

Coursework options

Coursework options this year was a choice between a music video or a teaser film trailer.

Myself and my group partner decided upon the film trailer, however we did touch on the idea of creating a music video, but we concluded that every idea music videos touch on would be hard to execute well, these include random videos that don't follow the lyrics of the song such as Marilynn Manson; sweet dreams, a club scene such as, flo rida; club can't handle me, a story telling video such as .........., in concert videos such as Guns 'n' Roses; Paradise City. The easiest video to make for our chosen genre of rock would be a random video or to follow the lyrics. In this case we had to choose a song easy to follow the story-line.

Therefore we concluded that a film trailer would be a better choice as you can create your own plot, choose what's said and seen. The genre we decided to make was a horror/thriller film. Because I feel it will be fun to create from the story board to the editing. The problem of lighting can be minimized as it will be filmed at night, following conventions of many horrors. (more about this later in the coursework.)

Last year we were not given a choice of what we had to create, which was a magazine front cover, contents page and a double page spread. Similarly this year you could create a music video, along with this a cover for its release as part of a digipak and a magazine advertisement for the digipak. Or you could create a teaser film trailer, a film magazine front cover featuring the film and a poster for the film.

Research

To dive straight into the coursework this year we were given a few starter tasks these tasks got us used to planning and the equipment.

The first task was to take commission photos these photos were of; someone looking through a window or round a door, someone entering through a door and someone walking up the stairs. We were given some time to come up with these shots, brought them back to class where we analyzed every groups attempts and then told to go onto flickr and look up staircases, these images showed you how to take more interesting photographs. This task helped understand different angles that work well with different shots. We had a second attempt to create more artistic photos with the commission shots.

Shot one: walking up stairs with both hands on the rail; Then the use of the stairs crossing each other creates a sense of entrapment as you can't see a way out.



Another commission photo was peering through a window
 or door;
            
  
  The second shot is clear the expression is serious and the bars across the window resemble prison bars.

This shot is good but the second shot is more dramatic.

Once thinking outside the box for angles and lighting etc, we headed onto the second task this consisted of filming. We had to film a short clip from a film, we were not told what film this was.

We were given a piece of paper with a grid on, this grid displayed in one column a description of what should be in the shot, in the second, what type of shot it would be, in the third, how long the shot should be and the last column was where abouts the shot should be. For example the first shot was of the top of a building at a high angle shot for 3 seconds outside school.

We filmed each of these shots three times to gather lots of film to edit as too much is better than too little, plus any bloopers can be re filmed and cut out.

Once all of this was filmed, we went back to the classroom to upload and edit the footage on Adobe Premier Pro.

Things i learnt;

I'm a fan of photography and like taking photos so generally I take lighting, angle and background into consideration when taking pictures, so I didn't learn anything major from taking these. However my partner and I, moved one step further than we were supposed to

and took the more artistic photos straight after the commission shots.

Things I learnt whilst filming:

Once I had read through the grid we got onto filming I worked in a group of 3, we discussed who would be acting, filming and directing. We came to the conclusion that those who were confident in acting took on the actors roles where as I preferred not being seen on camera so did a bit of the filming however shots that only required one person the other took over the filming so we all got a taste of each requirement. Whilst filming I discovered that the tripod was too tightly done up and made loud sounds when turning the handle so many takes have to be scrapped or muted. This added more to the task of editing.

The filming process wasn't difficult especially as I had used these cameras several times before I knew how they worked so we ran through it a couple of times before filming with each of us chipping in on the directing, like all videos we had some bloopers which were cut after.

The learning process with this task began once we got back to the classroom. After attaching the leads and opening Adobe Premier Pro I learnt how to upload the video by going onto capture and recorded whilst the camera was plugged in and switched on, without touching it, it recorded all the footage. Once the footage was on the mac, it took a few trial and errors to find out how to cut and move clips. This meant that each mistake could be cut out. To cut clips into pieces i used the razor tool, clicked on where I wanted to start cutting a clip out and where I wanted the clip to end, went to delete it then moved the clips up to each other so the footage ran smoothly without it going black and then the next clip starting. Once I got the hang of it cutting and moving the clips ran smoothly, to make it easier at parts I maximized the view of the clips to cut more precisely. I learnt how to mute certain clips of video and how to play non diagetic sound over it.

A third research task we were set was to create a storyboard. We were given 12 post-stick size pieces of paper with various images drawn on them such as a close up image of a hand switching off a light switch, a long shot image of two people in a corridor etc. We worked in groups of 3 and had to re arrange them into a story of our choice as long as it made logical sense and flowed for example it couldn't go from a close up of someone's face through a door to a close up of someone's feet going up the stairs as it doesn't keep continuity. Once we had agreed on an order we took a camera and set out to capture these shots. We used an actor and one of person in our group in these photos. The process was quick however our camera memory was full so had to return to the class to copy them onto the hard drive and then continue.

To access our photos we've learnt to go onto; Finder, Network, My network, Shared resources, connect as guest. Once connected we could access our groups photos. To put them into a documented story board we opened the storyboard on shared resources and saved it to our own hard drive or USB drive first. To add the first image onto the storyboard I went to; insert, picture, from file then where ever the picture was saved to, to move the image into the boxes we right clicked and formatted the picture to in front of text.

Theories

For the coursework we can produce a music video or a movie trailer. We went through a couple of theories to see how and why certain aspects are done.

The movie industry is dominated by males, this maybe why some aspects are created as they are, for example women in films do not tend to be the protagonist character but instead are seen as objects that work against the development of a story-line freezes the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation, women are seen as both erotic objects for characters within the screen story and an erotic object for spectators within the auditorium. An example of this is in the Pierce Brosnan James Bond film when the pace of the film slows dramatically when Hale Berry walks out of the sea onto the beach, the camera focusses on her in the centre of the screen.

This extract also strengthens the theory of Scopophilia, from Greek "love of looking", is deriving pleasure from looking. This is can be demonstrated at looking at a nice figure.

Tsvetan Todorov - Equilibrium.

Todorov said that all stories start in a state of equilibrium (normal life), then disrupted by an event, setting in a motion chain of events. Problems are solved so that order can be restored. 

Claude Levi- Strauss - Binary opposites. 

Levi- Strauss was not interested in the order of events in a narrative but in fact binary opposites present in them. Binary opposite are sets of opposite values which reveal the structure of media texts. These are deeper arrangements of themes. Most common opposites in texts are good Vs. evil, male Vs. female. 

Studies have been performed by psychologists, such as Bandura and Walters, Bobo doll experiment, this demonstrated that young children imitate behaviour seen by adults in the same situation on film. This experiment demonstrated that media has a strong influence on behaviour, not just violence but small events witnessed by either film, TV, or newspapers stick in peoples' minds such as phrases', these popular phrases can then be re used in different contexts, this is intertextuality.