Film Trailer

Wednesday 14 April 2010

Evaluation


Our trailer follows the conventions of other horror/thriller film trailers due to the fact that it contains fast-paced editing, quick straight cuts, fading to black, violent scenes, screaming, and it builds up tension and suspense. This generic convention can also be seen in trailers like ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ (2010) and ‘Sin City’ (2005).
Our cultural experiences lead us to assume and expect that the murderer will be male; and our trailer does not contradict this stereotype. The murderer in our film is male, and the females are the victims who appear vulnerable and easy targets, which also follow the conventions of a horror/thriller. Films in the past gave men the resourceful and lead roles, whilst women were just the love interests and helpers. For example in films like ‘Superman’ (1978) and ‘Die Hard’ (1988) who have the reliable and heroic males as the main characters. Maggie Humm, author of ‘Feminism and Film’, (1997) still believes that these representations haven’t changed. This is supported by the opening few sentences in her book that says:
“Film… often and anxiously envisions women stereotypically as ‘good’ mothers or ‘bad’ hysterical careerists. [In the past, and] today, every Hollywood woman is someone else’s Other.”
This is mostly true in our film as we have the female officer who is just the helper of the male. However it does challenge this theory when the psychiatrist figures out who the murderer is. She is then killed which follows the conventions that females rarely turns out as the hero. It is very difficult to find an exception but ‘Charlie’s Angels’, ‘Lara Croft’, ‘Kill Bill’, and ‘Silence of the Lambs’ come to mind where strong women can be seen as heroic. However, it is still the case that they very often being controlled by a man or must be pleasing to the eye, which brings me to the Gaze theory which states that the females are only there for males to look at.
I would say that the structure of our film does not follow Todorov’s theory that all films have the same structure of equilibrium, disequilibrium, equilibrium. This is because although it starts off with the equilibrium which is disturbed creating disequilibrium when people are murdered. However, it does not end with everything being all fine so the resolution is unexpected.
Our film follows the theory of Vladimir Propp, who said that each film have certain characters.


The combination of my main product (trailer) and ancillary texts (poster and magazine) is effective because they share a style and colour scheme which connotes horror/thriller. For example the main colour scheme is black and red and the poster shows one of the main characters from the trailer.
Each member of my group designed a film poster and a magazine front cover. Therefore, we all chose different fonts for the film title. The group then made the decision to use Dan’s poster as the final promotional poster. We chose Dan’s because we felt that it best represented the style, plot and target audience for our film.



We realised real film posters and trailers would contain the same typography on all the different media products so that it can become associated with the film, allowing the audience to recognise it.


To create our media trailer, we used ‘Adobe Premier Elements 1.0’. It was easy to use but the only downside was that it crashed occasionally. To overcome this problem we rendered and saved the trailer constantly.


Once we had finished our trailer, we showed it to some people within our target audience and found that the trailer successfully appealed to them. We interviewed people both male and female aged 16-25, as well as asking the opinions of some older people to see if our film would attract a wider target audience, as opposed to just a niche one.


The feedback that we received was very good and encouraging. When asked whether they got to the cinema often most of them replied that they only go once or twice a year and only when they cannot wait for the film to come out on DVD. The reason for this is because, as students, they cannot afford it. However, all the interviewees said that they would go to watch this film at the cinema after watching the trailer and looking at the poster.


The audience guessed that the genre of the film was thriller and, surprisingly, they also suspected that there would be some sort of psychological aspect as well. The clips of the main character sleeping, suggested this. This supports the fact that our film follows the conventions of the specific genres because the audience was able to distinguish the correct genre of our film from the trailer. How? Because they will recognize the typical conventions associated with the thriller genre like fast-paced editing and tense music.


One suggestion for improvement that we got was to have less clips of running. I have to say that I agree with this because I think the long running scene breaks it up a bit and you rarely see a full running scene on a trailer. Maybe if we broke it up a little by having different shots in between? If our trailer were to be broadcasted, then I would definitely change the running scene.


We also showed our poster, trailer and magazine cover to the audience to see whether they thought they worked well together. They all agreed that they did, because the same font was used in the trailer as n the poster. Also the main character from the trailer was featured on the front of the poster.


As for my magazine cover, the immediate response was that it would appeal to them, a young audience because it looked aesthetically pleasing with the different typefaces, fun layout and the picture of the ‘young new director’. However, when asked about the cover lines and whether they would be interested in reading the stories mentioned on the cover, they commented that only a limited amount of people would know that Helenswood was a school, so would not understand it. This is true but I am going to argue that it will possibly make them want to look inside to find out what ‘Helenswood’ is… But this was a fair point to have been made by my, very honest, target audience.


To record our feedback, we used a video camera to tape the audience responses. I think this is a way more effective way than a questionnaire of recording the response because it means you get a longer answer and you get their immediate opinion because on paper they have time to think about their response. I think filming the response gets you a much more accurate reply.


To conclude, I am very pleased with the feedback that we received from our target audience about our trailer, poster and magazine cover. From the responses, I believe that if our film were to be made, it would be a very successful mainstream thriller film and would appeal to a wide audience. Maybe one day a famous director would feel the same…

Tuesday 23 March 2010

Our Final Trailer

We have uploaded our film trailer onto www.youtube.com the url is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vil90DPkUHA

Feedback

Here is the feedback from my target audience:




Thursday 18 March 2010

Interview Questions

I have started thinking about some questions that I will ask as feedback from my target audience for my trailer, film and magazine cover. My main target audience are young male and female aged 17-25ish who enjoy the genre of thriller. Since the target audience is people around my age, I will be able to ask some of my friends to give their opinions.

Introduction- to establish my audience
  1. Age?
  2. Favourite genre?
  3. How often do you go to the cinema?

Trailer
  1. Can you summarise the plot form the trailer?
  2. Would you go see it in the cinema? why? why not?
  3. What is your favourite part in the trailer? why?
  4. Is there any improvements you would suggest?
  5. Does it work as a trailer?
  6. What do you think of the CU's, different shots in the trailer?

Poster

  1. What genre do you think it is?
  2. Does it make you wanna go and see the film?
  3. Who do you think is the target audience for this film?

Magazines

  1. Would you buy this magazine?
  2. Would you want to read about the coverlines?
  3. Would you pay this much for this magazine?
  4. Is the image effective?
  5. What do you think of the layout, colours, design?

Overall Questions

  1. What is your overall opinion?
  2. What do you think is the best one of the three?
  3. Do they work together?

More Editing

Weeks later, and we have finally almost finished editing our one minute trailer. I had no idea it would take this long. We've been taking like an hour to add about a couple of seconds on each time! Now I understand how it takes years to make a film!!
Anyway, all we still need to do is add the credits and a voiceover.
So far, I think it is really good but that's just my opinion, so we are going to have to get some feedback from young people aged 15+, since that is the target audience, to get some valid unbiased opinions.

Wednesday 10 February 2010

Editing

Lisa and I started editing once we had (finally and with much difficulty due to not having all the neccessary cables) uploaded the film footage.
We used Adobe Premiere to edit.
We just started putting together different shots, however, we found it difficult to do without the soundtrack because we didn't know which shots to use and when to use them.
We realised how much the sound affects the editing and how important sound is in the trailer to build up tension and make it more exciting by having the clips fit with the sound.

Thursday 4 February 2010

Filming Update

Earlier in the blog I wrote about our initial filming at the fire station and the action shots that we filmed. Since then we have filmed a lot more shots trying to vary the angles and content.
After watching the trailer, Nightmare on Elm Street, it gave us a few ideas of what we could film etc.
Below are the notes we made before going out to the filming location, we wrote the clips that we had already previously filmed in green and the clips we still need to film in red...

Scene in tower
- Running up ladder
- LS of tower (kicking and screaming)
Police
- Exit door
- Angry desk rawr
- Looking through window at tower
- Some chase scene footage
- Drawer clip, with gun and photo
- Boy looking through door

Murderer
- woods: jump out at jade
- sunset
- hair / barbed wire
- hair stuff
- jade in rain (stalker)

Thunderstorm
Dr. Avril
- canted angle shot
- sounds “do you know what started this” etc

NEED TO FILM:
CU of Police man Allen Spencer (Daniel Sloan) sleeping
Police walking (shadow)

More sleeping shots – waking up, messed up bed, someone having a troubled nights sleep, person shouting ‘wake up’.

Voice over – ‘Once Upon A Time’, ‘Sweet Dreams’ - credits
Book – turning pages, on fire


More hair scenes – nice playing with hair, running in slow motion (different angles), contrast with horrible ripping and pulling hair.
Grabbing hair from behind (filmed from the side)
More chase scenes – remember to use different angles (such as perspective)
CCTV shot
Running away – broken shots
Torch/car lights
Leaves being blown (fan?)

I found it very useful to have noted down exactly what we needed to film because it meant we could complete all the filming in about an hour, which was essential since it was starting to get too dark to film.
We had arranged with our actress, Emily Silsby, to meet at the location so that we could film the required shots and it turned out to be a successful filming session. We managed to get a variety of different shots with different angles, which would really add some interest into our trailer, i believe.

Wednesday 3 February 2010

Music


For our trailer, we decided on using a track by Fellsilent called Immerse. Dan, a valued member of our production team, suggested the track and we all agreed it would be suitable. It has a slow start, which would be good for our equilibrium section and then it gets louder and quicker which would be good for the action scenes. We plan only to use the start of the track before the screaming starts as this would not go with our trailer. As our trailer is only a minute long and the intro to the song is about that length, it should work. We also thought of having some bits in silent to add tension, so it shouldn’t be a problem.
Dan emailed the band to ask for their permission to use their song in our media trailer. We got the consent from them to use it which was fantastic.
Music = Sorted :D

Nightmare on Elm Street Trailer


The other day, I watched the trailer for 'Nightmare on Elm Street'. I thought it was an effective horror genre trailer with lots of quick shots, kinda like how I picture our trailer to be like. So, I thought i'd break it down to see exactly what shots are used in this trailer to try and get some inspiration etc.
Below are my notes on most of the clips shown in the trailer. It may not make sense to you but it took me ages ( and even longer to type it up on here again) but I know what I mean even if you don't... also take a look at the trailer and you might understand this break down better. If it still doesn't make sense, just skip to the analysis bit at the end... it's guaranteed to make sense!
Oh and I have put the clips that we could possibly remake in our trailer in purple.

1. Establishment shot- factory, warehouse, blue, misty, rubbish on the floor, broken windows, deserted, smoke.
2. Action- running, chase scene, looking back, long shot.
3. midshot of runner- fast, flat out, see emotion.
4. Long shot, show car's near, head lights.
5. Runner looking back, light on face, slow motion.
6. Shouting, tension.
7. Fire, action, suspense, makes audience ask why?, explosion.
8. Black out.
9. Producer name- red, red splats, blood?
10. Girls skipping, slow motion, all in white dresses, pure, innocent, relevance?
11. Black out, fade in, bedroom, looks like snow, woman, voiceover, blackout.
12. Shot from behind, following woman walking down a corridor, low light, shadowed.
13. Close up, frightened, panicked, helpless, sharing, afraid.
14. Pipes, long shot, man with light behind, sillhouette, blackout.
15. Cue music, pan across to road sign 'Elm'- reference to the title.
16. Creepy rhyme in the background :S
17. Empty road, night, street lights, fade transition to shot of house- shadowy, empty?
18. black then lots of candles, what?
19. two people walking on the left, right is dark, caustious.
20. iron hand scraping against side, sparks, woman ahead, fade to black.
21. shock, woman wakes up, black.
22. two creepy girls behind bars looking out.
23. Naked, wet, cold man, blue colours.
24. Hand coming out of bath water, woman asleep.
25. Quick flashes of black, woman wakes.
26. Man, dark, saying something 'don't fall asleep'.
27. Woman in car, trying to stay awake, what is she doing?
28. Really quick shot of sillhouette.
29. Sillhouette of woman.
30. Panning in on the funeral, crying, little girl again.
31. Man looking at fire.
32. Shadowy figure on stairs.
33. Screaming on floor.
34. Party, swimming pool, zoom out, slow motion in water.
35. Deserted, destroyed school, tables, light streaming in through, woman at desk- childhood?
36. Claw coming down on the back of man.
37. Fade into warehouse, big, min light.
38. Scared expressions from the man.
39. Attack from behind.
40. Iron claw.
41. Running away- broken shots, black in between, like blinking...
42.Spitting out water.
43. Claw.
44.Close up of eye.
45. Running, looking back, torch.
46. car.
47. Scream.
48. Putting hands up, shot from below.
49. Jump through glass roof, filmed from above.
50. Shaking in bed, nightmare.
51. Claw.
52. Man trying to help woman, shot from above.
53. Sillhouette.
54. Wake up!- shouting.
55. Floating up.
56. Black
57. Scream while still blackout.
58. Very quick shots of woman, law, sillhouette.
59. Title, voiceover.
60. Woman, scared, claw, "you have nothing to worry about, this won't hurt one little bit", scream, see face of man with claw for the first time (not just the sillhouette), shocking, black, filmed from below, inferior, scary.
61. text- "don't fall asleep", date.

Analysis bit at the end (for those who can't make sense of the above... and for those who can)

Having broken down the entire trailer of Nightmare on Elm Street, pausing on each and every clip to see what's going on and noting down effective elements, I have noticed a lot that I would not otherwise have noticed by simply watching the trailer. I never realised how much thought is put into these trailers. I always thought a few clips from the film are thrown together but looking more closely I have noticed that everything relates and some things are consistant throughout the trailer. For example, Fire is shown throughout- explosion at the start and the candles. The iron claw makes many appearances. Young girls are shown- skipping, at the funeral, behind the bars. Sillhouettes- there are plenty. Water- swimming pool, wet cold man, spitting out water. I think this repetition is very effective because it gives the viewer an idea of what is going to feature in the film.
On many occasions thoughout this 2min 8 sec long trailer, where audiences are left to ponder about it, and I was left to wonder what the relevance something had to the film and why they bothered putting it in the trailer for example the young girls skipping. It makes the audience want to go and watch the film, which is what a successful trailer should do!
This trailer also adopts a variety of different angles with a variety of quick shots, which I must say are very effective as they make the trailer fexciting!
The trailer effectively builds up tension with it's dramatic pauses and fast paced editing. Especially at the end. From the shots 41 to 56, the shots are extremely short, making it super fast paced. There is then a blackout and a slight pause to build up tension and suspense, and then a few extremely extremely quick shots to finish. It's kind of like a rollercoaster when you get to the top of a massive drop and you brace yourself for the drop. If you were to just go straight down, it doesn't leave much time to build up tension. That is why I think this trailer is effective in using the change in pace to build up tension.
We should remember all this when editing to make sure we show just enough to intrigue the audience. Also to watch the pace of the trailer to build up tension. Regular black outs are also quite effective because it keeps retricting the view of the audience and it helps to speed things up and keep the shots snappy. OK i'm done :)

Thursday 28 January 2010

My Magazineeee


Here is my final magazine.
I decided to feature Dan as the director of my film on the cover, inspired by the magazine that I analysed.
I am quite pleased with the result of this. I think it looks brilliant, superb, impressive and exciting :D
I used five different typefaces because it is something an actual 'Sight and Sound' magazine would have.
The image is featured and stands out against the plain background. Dan looks casual and friendly and he is looking straight into the camera, which I think is effective because it makes the reader want to know more about him.
I used a colour scheme of red and black/grey colours. I think this is effective because relates to the film genre, horror. I like the burst of colour (the red) because it makes the writing stand out more and the fact that it is used throughout the cover, ties the image nicely together.
I tried to make the text on the cover interesting and intrigueing, to make the reader want to buy the magazine to read the stories inside.
It is quite risky to have an unknown director on the front cover of a magazine because some people will not buy it if they don't recognise the person on the front. I think this image works though because, with the text, it comes across as if it is going to be an inspirational article about this new director, and everyone loves a good inspiring story. Also, loyal consumers of the magazine would still buy this magazine because they will enjoy previous issues and will trust that Sight and Sound will not feature this director if he wasn't worth knowing about. Therefore, it will really promote Dan as a director in the world of film. Thus, in turn, promoting our film as well! :)

Tuesday 5 January 2010

Sight & Sound

A bit about Sight & Sound...
"Sight & Sound is the international film magazine that offers a unique insight into the very best of film culture." - Sight and Sound website (http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/subscribe/)

"Sight & Sound is a British monthly film magazine (costing ££4.50) published by the British Film Institute (BFI). Sight & Sound was first published in 1932 and in 1934 management of the magazine was handed to the nascent BFI, which still publishes the magazine today." - Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sight_&_Sound)

"Sight & Sound has a more highbrow reputation than other film magazines. It says it reviews all film releases each month, including those with a narrow art house release, as opposed to the more mainstream focus of its competitors." -Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sight_&_Sound)

The magazine we have chosen to recreate with our film featured on the front, is Sight and Sound. I believe this is a good magazine to use as it features a variety of films and directors as opposed to just big blockbuster and well-known films and directors. In other words, there is a possibility that our film could actually be featured in this magazine.
I like the use of the variety of different, fun typefaces because it makes it appeal to a wide audience, both young and old.

The different typefaces are effective because it reflects the work of Quentin Blake, an illustrator who illustrates Roald Dahls' books, which relates to the text.

I like the hand written feel to it because it makes it more informal and personal.

The features noted on the cover suggests that the target audience of this magazine will be people, both male and female, interested in the world of media. Film directors are mentioned on the front, e.g. Wes Anderson, which mainly film fans would recognise.
I find the colours used in this image are quite wintery and the background is quite dull. The consistency of the yellow strip at the top with the title, barcode and price is effective because the loyal audience will start to recognise it.
The image used is simple and quite boring. It is just a mid shot of the upper body. However, film-enthusiasts will recognise this director and will purchase the magazine to read about him. In my magazine cover, I will use a simple image of my group member to pose as the director. My magazine cover will be similar to this and will thus look as if it could be a real issue.