Research and planning: storyline to my trailer:

Characters

The little girl named Rebecca will be played by my next door neighbour (friend of my little brother) called Reanne.

The small boy named Joe will be played by my little brother William.

The brother of Joe who pushes him down the cellar named Thomas will be played by a friend called Mark.

Thomas's friend named Robert will be played by another friend of mine called Pedro.

The parent who abuses Rebecca at the start will be played by me.

Summary
The little girl that I intend to use in my trailer is someone who lived hundreds of years ago and was badly treated by her parents; they tortured her and left her to die down in their cellar. A hundred years later (today) the house is owned by a peaceful family who don’t know anything about the death of the little girl. There are three: a ten year old boy, his older brother and his friend who one day they were playing down in the cellar and made a prank on the ten year old boy and left him there. He hears a voice calling him saying: “I’m coming” all of a sudden the lights switch off by its self. The lights keep flickering on and off until he spots a strange person with long dark hair, as the lights keep switching on and off this person (the dead girl) gets closer and closer. The camera switches to the older brother and hears screaming coming from downstairs. The older brother goes to check it out and sees a hand trying to grab on to a step from the stairs, but he ends up running away with his friend with fear (this would be the start of the trailer).  

The older brother leaves the door open letting the villain escape, but he doesn’t know that she has. What he also doesn’t know is that she’s after him and his friend, why? Because they reminded her of the evil parents she had even though they played a trick on the ten year old boy. The reason why I added the scene from Halloween is because I want to re-create the same shot with the scene that would follow after the first one, this time at my friend’s house.  In one shot from inside the house (in the living room) I will have the camera at a high angle shot showing the old brother watching T.V, beside him is the door to come into the living room, the lights will turn off by them self and he will turn them back on. In the background he will hear a weird giggling noise. The little girl will appear from the entrance to the living room.

The genre for my horror trailer is supernatural with psychological horror, the reason for this is because I will have lights switching on and off by themselves and doors opening a closing, also because the villain will be shown to develop a feeling of unease by exploiting human fears of the abnormal. This is just a brief idea that I will follow on how my trailer is going to be like. The trailer will be longer than this brief explanation, I was also thinking to have the villain sing the song: Twinkle, twinkle little star, but in an off tone so it starts normally then near the end the high pitched voice will fall deeper.  

This is the opening to Halloween (1978 from Youtube) where its filmed in one shot and this how I want to film one part of my trailer so that it shows everything from the villan's perspective (it makes the audience feel like they are in the shot). When the villan puts the mask on, instead of having the mask I will have hair over the camera but not blocking the view of the audience, just so that they know; "this is the villan who we are following". Another part that i will add is when the villan picks up a knife but instead of showing the knife I will show the wrinkled and cut hands of my villan as it brings it closer to the face (Camera) once again to indicate that we are following the villan. I'm not going to film for an intire 5 minutes of my trailer like this opening, I'm only going to take some ideas from this opening and use it in my trailer that will be suitable.

       this is a image of the little girl from The Ring, it is the sort of scary character that I indend to use in my trailer: a weird person who can mess with peoples minds and someone who can moves things withought doing anything.


 I also intend to give my character a very evil look with the eyes being something that stand out alot. The eyes from the A2 media studies trailer "Exposure" is a good example to use.


(These two images were taken from google)

this is like a checklist just to give a brief idea on what my trailer will be like.

To create a horror trailer:

Start of with what your horror trailer is going to be about.                                        

My horror trailer is going to be a scary kid who can mess with peoples minds.

Use movie makers (windows movie makers) or any other ones you know.                                       

Movie makers and adobe after effect and audacity is what I will use.

      

      Research horror trailers by looking at other horror trailers and see how they are made.          

     I have researched horror trailers, the two that gave me a lot of ideas were: the opening to Halloween (1978) and The Ring.

Make sure you make it non linear (doesn’t tell the story)

      By using some ideas from the two trailers I can make it mysterious

Make the setting of the horror clear in the trailer.

There are a couple of places where I think the setting will work well; one of them is down my cellar.

Be sure you don’t have to use writing to explain what is happening in the trailer.

It will all be explained in every shot

Make sure you increase or decrease the suspension in the trailer and be able to make it become interesting.

To make sure I keep my audience interested my trailer will get straight into the action.

Near the ending of the trailer, make it become as scary as you can! (make people jump, e.g. something popping out)

This shouldn’t be a problem as I hope to make my character as scary as possible!

 Tips

      

 Don’t get too attached with the idea of using the baddies all time. Be able to show who the   victims or heroes are.




I took this information from Google.

Settings and Themes research

Setting

-          Small communities or isolated places. Urban enviroments, dark streets and narrow alleyways. Large cities or run down ghost towns. Anything that connotes isolation or being alone.

-          Often sometimes places with “dark” history, like abandoned houses, hotels and insane asylums.

-          Locations for any good horror genre film could be: lakes, roads, highways, countryside, barns, farms, dark woods etc.

          Technical Codes

-         Camerawork is very expressive and not natural high and low angles can connote fear and nightmares.

-         Disturbing sounds are very important in a horror movie. Ambient diegetic sounds like footsteps and non-diegetic sounds (like a heartbeat).

-         Types of shots used like ECU on a certain victim’s face can help the audience identification with horror and fear, and also to exclude any threats (if we can’t see it, then its more terrifying).

-         Editing can create unsettling tension and suspense. If the editing hasn’t been placed up in a while then you know that something very bad is about to jump out and scare you.

          Themes

-          Good versus Evil

-          Depression

-          Religion

-          Childhood issues

-          Revenge

-          Supernatural

-          Beyond death

-          Science gone bad

-          Zombie apocalypse

-         

-          Nightmares

-          Madness

-          Insanity

-          Lust

-          “Self-consciousness”

-          Envy

-          Suicide

I also found this information on slideshare, this is the link to the page - http://www.slideshare.net/marine18/horror-genre-conventions

Research on the background of trailers

Trailer Research

Horror Genre and Conventions

-          Arose from gothic tradition in literuature dating from the 18^th and 19^th centuries: tales of terror and often repressed sexuality in historical setting of “dark, brooding menace”.

-          Described at the time as romantic literature, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula are the most enduring.

The Postmodern Horror film (1983 onwards)

-          Starting with the ‘Evil Dead’, horror films became incresingly self-referential leading to ‘Scream’. Then remakes (The haunting, Psycho, The house on haunted hill).

-          With teaser trailers there is the time limit convention of a teaser trailer normally being very short, around 30-60 seconds long. In this time it will have shown you a basic outline of what the new film is about. It may include text to ask you questions which may relate to what the film is about, or just take your thoughts away from what the film could really be about.

-          The American gothic tradition derives from the work of Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. lovecraft. Roger Corman made several films in the 1960’s beased on Poe’s novels.

     I found this information on Slideshare: the horror genre an overview.
     This is the link to the page - http://www.slideshare.net/jontowlson/the-horror-genre-an-overview

Choosing a genre

from watching those last two trailers I began to think of ideas on which type of genre to choose but I seem to have more ideas that would suit the horror instead of any other also because there is a variety of horror types to choose from. Luckely from the last trailer the person left a link where they did their effects from which is (Adobe after effects and audicity).

As I now know what genre I am doing I started to reaserch the horror genre and I found another two really good trailers which gave a lot of ideas:

This is an AS horror trailer which is called "Delusion"

Even though this is an AS trailer it is a perfect example of something that I am thinking of doing. The way the characters faces change from a zombie type and back to normal suggests someone is dulesional which is what the name of it is but its audience would straight away understand what is going on in the trailer.the way it shows shots from a cctv camera's perspective of the woman screaming and acting strange gives it a similar look to paranormal activity and the exorcist. The trailer works so well, it would deffinately spook a lot of audiences even at the end when we have a close-up of the girl/zombie face.

This trailer is called "Exposure"

I love the whole concept of this teaser trailer, the make up and the close-ups of the actor and the fast paced shots makes it very intense and scary, all the flashings goes well with the darkness. the part where the person is behind bars gives a better view of the face as the camera zooms up to it, and the extreme close-up of the eyes is a great shot showing how scary the actor is.

From watching these two clips it has given me a lot of ideas for creating my trailer.

Researching movie trailers

I decided to do a movie trailer for my coursework and before starting anything I done research on movie trailers, first I went to the Get Ahead.OCR website to watch some examples of what other students did for their trailer and how they targeted their audience. I then visited YOUTUBE and found other trailers which some caught my attention:

This is the work from a media student from last year who created "The Remainders"

What I liked about this trailer was the way all shots ran smooth and the different camera shots from different angles which worked very well together giving a mysterious feel to the trailer with the quick adrenaline music in the background.

This is another trailer that caught my eye called "Wrong Decision"

The genre for this trailer is horror which is what I am considering on chosing. What I really like about this trailer is the effects used throught the trailer, also the way they did a news report makes it very professional, and the shot of the person grabbing the grass is quite spooky as it seems like he or she is getting dragged back.