•What makes a good film, that we should portray in the teaser?
•A strong, thoughtful plot. Some of the best films are movies that make you think and related back to real situation in society- Rick Altman.
•A good mystery; not knowing the answer adds the most tension.
•Characters we can care about.
•Music; the music has to set the mood perfectly.
•A antagonist that is vicious is more ways than one.
These targets enabled us to create a conventional, supernatural, horror movie.
How does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The three horror movies: Scream, Insidious and Carrie- were heavy influence, in structuring the teaser trailers, because they contained the conventional elements a horror movie portrays on the screen. Through the use of the classic opening- long angle shot of the house or hall (illustrated where it all was going to take place.) The classic codes and conventions of a horror movie: containing the elements of haunted house and isolated setting, were used in the teaser trailer; isolated setting was created by illustrating victim character being violated, chased and tortured by the masked villain. Other than the villain the victim was the only character being conveyed on the screen.
Research and planning:
The research plan that I did in class helped us understand the structure and codes and conventions of a horror teaser trailer. The elements of the teaser trailers that we have used, to fit our teaser trailer to a conventional teaser trailer:
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The phone was one of the props that we used, the footage that we filmed of the character calling for help is an intertextual of the famous thriller film Taken. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CyBtdLshMU&feature=related However in contrast to Taken, for our victim it was a one way dialougue, we did this to enforce the isolated theme, in order to connote that its main genre is horror.
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| Over the shoulder shots also create tension as the audience know something which the character is unaware of, with the victims life being threatened. Conventionally the villain has the weapon, but we changed up the roles to illustrate that the victim is aware of the danger. |
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Lipstick was used to create a blood effect on the mirror, connoting victims life being under threat.
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In many conventional movies when illustrating evil spirit they set the time to 3am to illustrate the awakening of evil spirit. We changed the clock to 3 am, as our movie is about illuminate and evil, and since 3am is believed to be in the biblical terms in 3:00 to 4:00 is when Jesus died in the cross, it turns out that's when the negativity of evil began to grow, moreover it is an intertextual the horror movie The Exorcism of Emily rose- illustrated on the link. However due to re-filming we had take off the symbolic 3am footage, because we changed the illuminati theme to a conventional a horror with the sub genre of supernatural and haunted house.
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The props used within in the trailer are identical to that of a real horror film, for example through out the trailer we had the villain wear a mask- using the unknown to trigger fear from the audience.
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Fake knifes were used within trailer teaser, as they were classically used to directly connote danger.
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Information from –
The survey was crucial part of our research which enabled us to confirm that horror/slasher movies genre were popular among teenagers, so we emphasised key elements e.g. close ups and sound increasing to match conflicting emotions of character, to create tension and build up to climax. We focused on these features to satisfy the target audience's expectations of a horror/slasher movie.
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| Moreover we used youtube to upload our Teaser Trailer- Masked Oppression and Feedback/focus group. Youtube enhanced our creativity using technology because it enabes us to expose our teaser trailer to a bigger audience at no price. |
Shots and angles used:
· Medium shot: used in beginning to create sense of balance.
· Wide shot & High Angle- victim gets swallowed up by setting, start of disruption, creates sense of being watched.
· Close up- concentrates on villain’s face, to make audience feel uncomfortable.
· Low Angle- the added height of the object creates fear and insecurity in the viewer, who is psychologically dominated by the villain on the screen.
· Extreme Close-Up- used for dramatic effect when victim dragged out from under bed, this causes audience to fear for victims life.
· Match cut: establish a strong continuity of action and linking the two shots of villain jumping over staircase to landing, emphasis strength of villain in contrast to victim, increases fear for victim on behalf of audience.
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I've learned from the audience feedback that sound is very crucial in creating a storyline, more than the narrative. Many of the people within the focus group complimented the sound that we created, stating that the thudding sounds being expressed when revealing the villain was important because it created fear. which is what we want to project because our film is a horror film with many other sub genres of haunted house, supernatural, psychological and thriller film, and through sound these genres have been illustrated in our film. We viewed the teaser trailer to teens and young adults, as they are our target audience, which is why their feedback was crucial. Moreover they understood the plot, however they did mention that the lighting when outdoor was poor quality, however that was something that we could not have prevented as the flash on the phone was not strong enough to project strong lighting and we couldn’t get access to professional light. For next time if we had more time to film our film, we would have more varying footages and effects to intensify the chase clips, by increasing the pace when exposing the villain and adding more thudding sounds affects.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Feedback back on auxiliary text:
Audience aged 16-17, really liked the colours used: red, white and black. They could tell by the cover, when I asked them what kind of movie does the colours and image illustrate, they guessed a horror movie genre. They picked this up through the colours and through the body language of the actor on the front cover. They also noticed how I used other horror movies such as paranormal activity to support the horror movie theme and capture audiences attention; especially by basing the published date the day before Halloween enforced the horror movie theme. When I asked them if they would buy the magazine, some said yes because it was a well structured magazine and others said they don’t really buy movie magazines unless they liked the actor, however because of the competition to win 6 tickets to Thorpe park, they all agreed that they would definitely buy it to enter the competition.
Audience aged 16-17, really liked the colours used: red, white and black. They could tell by the cover, when I asked them what kind of movie does the colours and image illustrate, they guessed a horror movie genre. They picked this up through the colours and through the body language of the actor on the front cover. They also noticed how I used other horror movies such as paranormal activity to support the horror movie theme and capture audiences attention; especially by basing the published date the day before Halloween enforced the horror movie theme. When I asked them if they would buy the magazine, some said yes because it was a well structured magazine and others said they don’t really buy movie magazines unless they liked the actor, however because of the competition to win 6 tickets to Thorpe park, they all agreed that they would definitely buy it to enter the competition.
With the poster they said they could tell the genre, being a horror movie by the picture, denoting a girl looking scared with the villain, threatening to kill her. They also like d the sub title- ‘DON’T SLEEP, DON’T THINK, JUST RUN!’ because they said it adds a psychological element to the movie. Although one thing I think we could have improved with our poster is to make it look more polished.
TEASER TRAILER:
TEASER TRAILER:
FOCUS GROUP:
