Our media uses the forms and conventions of real media products and we have applied the same genres and techniques in our product. These include intertitles, editing, narration, sound, special effects and casting. We have made specific use of an eerie isolated setting and the suggestion of an unsolved mystery to increase suspense and excitement .
We have been influenced by methods and conventions used in some of the horror trailers that we have viewed and researched, and have applied some of those techniques which we think work most effectively in horror/thriller films. Some conventions we have not followed, and some we have chosen to adapt by adding a twist of our own.
Most horror trailers use intertitles. This helps explain the narrative better, and also allows the viewer's own imagination to increase the tension in a trailer. Our intertitles seek to suggest an unspeakable past horror, and also aim to set the context of the story so that the narrative becomes clearer. We wanted to present our intertitles in the most effective way by making them evoke something sinister and chilling and unexplained. To do this we used three intertitles, keeping each one as brief as possible.. The first one tells, in just 10 words, of a tragic past event and when and where it happened. The passage of some 30 years adds to the atmosphere of mystery and strangeness. The second intertitle, "A mother and her three children burnt to death in their sleep" is a disturbing statement intended to shock and to build up a feeling of foreboding, and then the final intertitle. "The father was never found", hints that something chilling and menacing from the past may threaten the safety of the two friends and their dog enjoying a walk in the lonely countryside. .
The trailer 'Tormented' is similar in that it has only a few intertitles throughout with just a few words for each one so they are quickly absorbed. The precise words are not obvious in the trailer but are subliminally read by the audience.
In our trailer, to add to the s atmosphere of mystery and bygone times we created the intertitles in photoshop, using an old parchment-style background. The font we chose for this was the same as the title of our horror trailer. We wanted a consistent theme as many trailers keep the same font throughout.
Our approach towards editing our trailer was to follow a similar style to other horror trailers. We discovered that in a typical horror trailer most of the clips are invariably extremely short, and are usually contrasted with other clips that are slow and tense in order to build apprehension and suspense. For example in the trailer 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' there are a few seconds of black faded in clips of the film combined with the sound effects of a heart beat. We felt this part of the trailer was really effective and wanted to usea similar technique in our trailer. We also noticed that most of the shots were from a moving camera. This develops in the viewer a feeling of anxiety and agitation, which is heightened because the clips are so quick that the audience has no opportunity to see detail or to understand fully what is happening.
We selected a few varied clips and placed them together adding the black fade in and fade out and also the sounds of a heart beat. To add even more of an eerie effect we put some of the clips in slow motion. A very popular convention used in horror trailer editing are the transitions between each clip. These can be very subtle and are not usually noticed by an audience. For example we used additive dissolve as our first transition. This represents time going by but also merges the clips more effectively and smoothly into each other. Another type of editing technique we used was to alter the effects on the actual clips. Some of our trailer was filmed on a sunny day, potentially creating a happy, warm and bright atmosphere which is not what we wanted in a horror trailer. So we changed the effects such as contrast, brightness and saturation, and added a slight blue tint on some of the clips to give a cold, gloomy appearance.
One technique which we considered particularly successful was to play the clips backwards. This is very effective atmospheric as it does not distort the image but instead reverses it and creates a sense of disorientation and strangeness . A good example of this is the light bulb at 1:05 of our trailer. We filmed the light bulb as we pushed it to make it swing back and forth until it became still again. Once loaded onto the adobe programme we reversed it so that the light bulb appears to be swinging by itself. Reversing the clip also reverses the sound which makes it sound supernatural and spectral. We slowed down the pace of this clip for a scarier, suspense building effect. We also changed the contrast and brightness to produce the dark room/ bright light effect. In the trailer 'Tormented' there are lots of examples of this method, where the pace is either speeded up or slowed down; this is a widely-used effect especially in horror films as it has a big impact on building tension in the audience.
Sound is of the utmost importance in a film trailer. Without effective use of sound it is difficult to convey suspense, fear and apprehension to the audience, especially in a horror trailer. The use of sound helps to build tension, and music is a very powerful tool in setting the mood. Similarly the use of sound effects such as high-pitched screaming or sounds of pain, or doors slamming, or babies crying, will make the audience feel uncomfortable, fearful and anxious.
'Paranormal Activity' uses many sound effects for impact as throughout the film the "demon" is never shown. This is sa technique that has developed over time in the horror genre. It uses the audience's imagination to conjure a horror greater than anything that can be shown on the screen. This plays on our natural human fears and anxieties concerning what we do not see, but can only imagine. The only thing that the audience can actually see is the reactions of the characters so what they hear is very important. This trailer was inspiring as watching it made us feel uneasy and fearful just through the sounds.
We wanted to portray this in our trailer by using unusual horrifying sound effects and spine-chilling music. We downloaded the music from those horror films which we felt had the scariest sound effects and the music most appropriate for our trailer. These were from the films 'Silent Hill', 'The Texas Chainsaw Masacre' and 'Haunting in Connecticut'. We then extracted the best parts from these sound tracks and placed them in the most appropriate places in our trailer.
'The Texas Chainsaw Masacre' trailer has diegetic sound while a variety of clips are being shown to the sound of a heart beat. For example we hear it said that "they're all dead", and "we've got to call the cops"; these words help build the story line but also make the audience feel uncomfortable and afraid.
In our trailer, we wanted also to introduce a dialogue which would help clarify the narrative of our film so we recorded our voices separately in a music studio adding effects such as echo to bring out the haunted atmosphere.
Sound becomes far more effective in a trailer when there is no distracting image shown, as it allows the attention of the audience to be focused entirely on what they are hearing. In 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' there is a section where all we see is a black screen but we hear the sound of a girl running, gasping as she is out of breath, and the sound of a door slamming. After this all becomes silent for a couple of seconds, then on to the screen flashes an extremely bright fast clip followed by a succession of other rapid clips with loud noises of a chainsaw and screaming. The most potent part of these few seconds of the trailer was the black screen with sound effects then darkness and silence. This is an extremely effective way to create and sustain a tense moment. The audience will be held in suspense by the blank screen, frightened and apprehensive,waiting to find out what happens next. Then , suddenly they are gripped by the sudden shock of light and noise as the screen bursts into violent action and loud, terrifying sounds. We have tried to portray this in our trailer by creating the short narrative at the beginning to set the scene followed by the use of a black screenand then had the sound of a door opening and a menacing male voice speaking. It is from that point on that all the terror and drama starts to break out.
The beginning of the trailer shows two girls walking through a field and then along a riverside walk through a wood, chatting about an old mansion. During the filming there was the noise of a loud weir close by which drowned out the dialogue, so we recorded the same script in the studio and dubbed it over the clip in place of the original voices This was after adding effects to the girls' voices which gave us the opportunity to add a strange eerie quality to the scene as well as to describe the narrative more clearly through the girls' conversation.
The cast for a horror film is very important as it can be a big factor in drawing a certain type of audience come to see the film. Every horror film/trailer I have studied has had certain stereotypes cast in them. For example the hero, villain/killer, air head, nerd, young vulnerable female etc. In typical horror films there are often attractive people who will either meet a terrible death, often through their own abnormal behaviour or recklessness, or who will be courageous and smart enough to stay alive. We did not want to follow this common convention in our trailer as it does not reflect normal behaviour. We wanted to depict normal everyday people who would use reasonable judgement and intuition to make normal sensible decisions. An example of the abnormal behaviour so often found in horror films can be seen in the trailer 'Silent Hill' where a child talks about a place where bad things happen, and then the child's mother promptly decides to drive there, i.e. to a place where no normal person would go. I think this is unrealistic behaviour and I did not want the events in our trailer to follow a similar pattern. The main actors cast in our horror film are two girls who are friends. They are in their teens and are both brunette and of vaguely similar appearance in the way that friends often are. They are reasonably attractive and smart, but there is nothing exceptional or striking about them. I did not want them to be wearing revealing clothes as this would look inappropriate for a country walk, especially against the background of dark clouds and circling rooks shown at the beginning of the trailer. I decided on subtle colours for their clothes, nothing extravagant or unusual, just a top and jeans. One is wearing a black t-shirt and jeans and the other is wearing a white t-shirt and jeans Our trailer therefore shows two normal girls out for a walk with their dog. We wanted the audience to identify with them, and to care about what might happen to them. This is vital because if we can make the audience empathise with the girls then all the emotions of shock, horror, fear and foreboding essential to an effective horror film will be much more intense. This approach is a basic convention of costume used in many horror films. For example in 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' the girl is just wearing a vest top and jeans, which indicates to the audience that she is a normal young person just like them, but also accentuates her vulnerability.
This element of female vulnerability has erotic overtones. In virtually all horror films there seems to be at least one incident of revealing skin, no doubt to cater to the audience's prurient interest in seeing the "hot girl" being chased and losing clothing. We decided to include a mild example of this approach in our trailer, so we ripped one of the tops in different places to show some skin and we chose a dark coloured bra underneath the white top to show through.
We do not have any male characters in our trailer as we wanted the two girls to seem as vulnerable as possible to fit with the storyline. In the trailer we just recorded the sound of a man's voice, sometimes demonstrating rage and at others a dreadful affection. Although he is clearly the evil presence which threatens the girls' safety he isnever seen. This is for the reasons mentioned above, i.e. because we wanted to leave his age and appearance to the imagination of the audience, knowing that they will visualise someone or something far more frightening than we could ever portray.
The setting of our trailer is in an isolated rural setting. This is a popular convention used for the obvious reason that in an isolated area there is no one around to come to the aid of the victim, thus increasing the danger she is in and her terror and loneliness. We used the house where I live with my family as the main set for our filming. It is a large early Georgian house with wings and a huge flag-stoned basement part of which pre-dates the main house by several centuries . There are secret passages and corridors under the house and garden, and a mysterious cavern and deep well, all of which are very eerie and very appropriate to our genre. We also used a grave yard near the house as one of our locations, where a girl is seen placing a flower on a grave. This links with our story line but does not need to be fully explained in our trailer. It is one of our 'mystery' shots but indicates sadness and loss and bereavement, all of which fits well with our story of the tragic and horrific event which occurred so many years ago.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The aim of my teaser trailer and ancillary texts is to draw in my targeted audience, to create a compelling interest and fascination in the story of what happens to the girls, and to launch my horror film. I believe I have achieved this in my final product and texts.
Here is my magazine front cover. I created this using Serif Page Plus Starter Edition. This is a free programme with only a limited use of tools so was rather challenging to use.To capture photographs suitable for a horror poster, we borrowed a high-tech camera and used it in the same locations we used to film our trailer. This particular photograph was taken downwards through a grate into a cellar underneath the ground. It shows two girls screaming desperately for help. To begin with I edited the photograph using Adobe Photoshop Elements. As there were two girls in the original photograph I altered the picture from landscape to portrait. I also noticed that the girl looking directly into the camera was more striking as she seems to be screaming directly at the reader. Originally the picture was very bright with warm colours. This made it look more like a make-up advert than a horror cover. So to change this I turned down the saturation, turned up the contrast and added a slight blue tint which made the picture darker and gave it a colder appearance. As this was the cover of a magazine I did not want to edit it to the same extent as my horror posters because I wanted the cover to remain attractive and appealing to the reader. For the same reason, I did not want to do anyting in the edit which would make the girl on the cover to look unappealing or gruesomely covered in blood.
I researched the movie magazine 'Empire' before starting to create my own. This gave me a great deal of inspiration in the design of my magazine and I followed the key themes of 'Empire' Magazine including its house style and layout.
To begin with I created my masthead. I wanted the colour to be red as this is both striking and a suitable colour to represent a horror theme. My magazine was not intended to focus specifically on horror.,However this months edition was running a special story on horror and I wanted my film 'Captured' to be the main review as it was named "Scariest horror film of the year". I wanted to follow the style of 'Empire's' masthead as it was bold and stood out. I experimented with a few fonts on dafont.com but decided to choose a simple bold font on serif called 'Folio XBd BT'. I felt this did not stand out too much but seemed to fit nicely as a masthead. I named the magazine 'Channel' as it specialises in programmes and films. The tag line is "Tune into Channel for the biggest movie gossip". I use the word 'tune' as I imagine tuning a television into a channel. I wanted my magazine to be mainly about film and programme reviews but also to include an element of gossip as this would appeal to my chosen audience for my film.
I then chose three main colours for my cover., These are yellow, white and the same red used for the masthead. All three colours stood out and caught my eye as strong individual colours, and I also thought they complement each other well.
In order to make the layout of the magazine cover similar to 'Empire's' layout I inserted text around my main picture. I used the font 'Arial Narrow' for all the text on the cover occasionally using the font 'Aharoni' for the bolder cover lines. I like how magazine covers use straplines and skylines, packing more information onto the cover. I feel this adds more information that will attract the reader and tempt them to read further and to purchase my magazine. I included both these techniques on my magazine cover for this reason.
I made the word 'CAPTURED' the largest font on the page as it is the title of my horror film. I wanted it to be the most eye catching part of the cover, after looking at the picture of the girl.
Here are the two film posters I made using Adobe Photoshop Elements. I wanted them both to be in portrait orientation as most horror posters are. A portrait view also seems more eye catching and appropriate for the horror genre. These photographs were again taken using a high-tech digital camera. We set the scenes and used the cellar of the same Georgian house where the filming was done. As with the magazine cover I edited these photos to make them look colder and darker by changing the brightness and contrast and turning down the saturation. I also used specific tools to darken parts of the background. I chose these two photos as I think they best suit the title 'Captured', especially the picture of the girl in chains looking up to the light. I chose the tagline "Say Goodbye To The Outside World" as I feel this is the best tagline to portray the ultimate terror of being abducted - the fear that you may disappear forever and never be seen again,, It is the phrase that fits most appropriately with the title of the film, and also suggests thatthe girl in chains may be being commanded to say good bye to the outside world,.I researched many other horror posters and was struck by how much information can be put at the bottom of the poster. This includes details of the cast, directors, make-up artists etc. I created a similar section at the bottom of my posters including this type of information. I then added details of the production companies and a copyright label to replicate similar movie posters.
I would distribute our film in a the same way that Paranormal Activity was distributed. The film would be released in specific large selected cinemas in which the film is likely to receive good box office receipts. These locations would ideally be in most cities and towns in the UK. After this, audiences would have to order the film via the film,s website.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
We researched the main audience for the horror genre of films and discovered it is both male and female between the ages of 15-25 . We decided to target this market and our film is designed to be best suited to that age group.
The main aim of our trailer was to make the audience feel anxious and scared. We asked a few people to view our trailer to hear the feedback. Most of the feedback was positive as the main response was that the trailer made them feel frightened, and wanting to know more about the story.
The most effective parts, according to our friends, were the faster clips that we worked on the most. This was pleasing news. We were told that the images we used and the variety of locations were effective as there was so much to look at in such a short piece of film. We were also told that the use of camera angles and shots were effective. This is something we focused on a great deal as many horror trailers use a huge variety of angles. This distorts the view and appearance of the shots making them harder to concentrate on. This can produce feelings of fear and disorientation as the brain attempts to focus on an image and to understand what it is.
The use of sound effects and music was picked up by every viewer, giving positive comments. It was our aim to fill the trailer with many and varied sound effects in order to create the maximum response in our audience but without causing unnecessary distortion or distracting from the storyline . We believe we succeeded in this aim. We used many different sound tracks of music from existing horror trailers and combined them into one another using the fading tool. This kept up the pace of the trailer and developed the tension and helped achieve the climaxes when needed.
We did have some negative feedback about the opening clips of our trailer. We wanted to build a narrative so felt we needed lots of clips at the beginning. By doing this we created jump cuts which were not necessary. We were told the beginning part of the trailer seemed too much like the beginning of a horror film as we used too many clips with too many transitions. We took this feedback into account and deleted the unnecessary clips, only leaving a few. Immediately we saw a large improvement.
I also made a poll of titles for our film. I liked the name 'Capture' but was not sure whether to have 'Capture', or 'Captured', as the title. I discovered through the poll that 'Captured' was the most popular, and this was our final choice.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
To create the main trailer we used the programme Adobe Premier Pro CS4. I had never used this programme before so had to build my knowledge and understanding throughout this process. I picked it up relatively quickly and learned how to download film and edit it. To begin with, we learnt that cutting the clips down was the most important thing to do as we had so much film. The most important part of a horror trailer is the last minute or so as this is usually the most exciting, dramatic and tension-building part of the trailer showing all the gruesome clips, and sometimes offering a final solution to the mystery. We wanted to create this section at the outset so we could build the trailer up to the final climax. This programme allowed us to cut these clips down, edit the appearance and duration and add sound effects/music.
Another software program I used to create the posters of my horror trailer was Photoshop. I felt having access to this was very beneficial as it is one of the most developed forms of new technology. With Photoshop I could edit my photographs to make them look suitably chilling and eerie in my ancillary texts. I also found I could replicate techniques used by real horror posters such as the professional-looking text, the film reel effect and the billing block.
I used blogger in the construction, research, planning and evaluation of my task. I found it very useful as it allows me to save my work at any point, to stop it from getting lost. I can download pictures and videos easily, and also add presentations and creative programmes including a television demonstration of stills taken from our filming. I can also create polls and change the design, making the appearance more attractive. I found this website much more productive than attempting to plan my construction, research and evaluation on paper. Also the continuous access to the internet was very useful as it enabled me to research other videos and research material quickly and easily.
Another very useful new technology in producing the trailer was YouTube. I used this in the research stages by studying other trailers, make-up techniques and film distribution information. Some of the make-up techniques appeared unrealistic and in some cases a little ridiculous. We did not want to use this kind of extreme approach and instead used mud and dark eye shadow to create the effect of mud and dirt. We also used a small amount of fake blood to suggest that one of the girls had been subjected to some brutality, this was very subtle and looked very realistic.
I used Serif Page Plus Starter to create my movie magazine as I find this program easy to use despite its limited tools. I used the same program to create my music magazine last year and found it promising. I did not have Photoshop at the time of making the magazine cover, so I made use of the software that was available.
Another very useful source of material on the internet was dafont.com. This site gives access to hundreds of different fonts. We used a chosen font from this website for the title and intertitles of our trailer.
Overall there is no question that using these new technologies has been of great benefit to us and we will certainly continue to use them in the future. This has been a very interesting and enjoyable project, and a perfect way to enable us develop our understanding of these media products and our ability to use the tools and technologies to create them.
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