Our film product uses and develops the conventions of a real horror, with a stereotypical plot in which a group of teens get lost in a remote environment and are killed off one by one. In order to appeal to a wide range of audiences, we like to think that we have taken a classic approach.
In the beginning stages of our research we watched a wide range of film trailers analysing each one and looking at their purpose and conventions. As we could not come to an agreement on which genre to choose, we decided to do further research on action, comedy and horror trailers analyzing each one as a group to see which conventions we could use and develop in our own production.
From watching the comedy trailer we knew although it was very successful in making us want to watch the film with it’s hilarious lines and green light actors, it would be an incredibly difficult genre to reproduce. It relied on clever, witty scripting, as well as what seemed to be large cast and would take a lot of organizing of are friends, each of which we would have to rely on completely if we wanted them around whilst filming. Our next genre to analyze was horror. As the first scene looked inexpensive to produce as it did not use CGI. This made us begin to think it would be a good genre to choose, we found that it would be easier to create an effective horror, rather than a comedy as it’s editing and music worked well together to create tension. Although we were very keen on making a horror, we still looked at the action trailer. Even though it looked very visually impressive, it obviously had a large budget, using large amounts of CGI. We decided it would not be practical to create an action film trailer as our funds were limited to our own pocket’s, we came to a unanimous vote that we would create a horror film trailer.
After deciding to create a horror we again began to analyze trailers, to find key factors horror trailers include for example; mise-en-scene, lighting, camera angles, location and costume. “The Blair Witch Project” was one of the most helpful trailers we analyzed as it was also produced on a low budget.We knew how important it would be to research our target audience and how age certificate would affect its contents. From are research of horror films we’ve found that it’s extremely rare to have a horror with lower than a certificate 15. As we did not want to limit our audience demographic too much we decided that it we be best to aim for a certificate 15 appealing to groups of young teenagers as well as university students and young adults. Coinciding with this was the fact that 18 certificate horror films often included a large amount of violence and gore, as we would not be able to portray such images effectively and realistically also meant it would be more suitable for us to stay with in the classification guidelines for a fifteen, this meant we could still use mild language and violent images. To be sure of these guidelines we used the BBFC’s web site (http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines). Without the use of violence and gore we knew we had to focus on creating tension through lighting, props and music.
Understanding how important audience profiling is to the production promotion distribution of any film, we looked deeply at audience classifications and theories. On a broader scale we looked at what an audience profile contains, for example their demographics, their socio-demographics (social groupings), psychographics (attitudes and values) and audience theories. To get a good idea of these aspects within our target audience we created a questionnaire for them to fill out. We found it hard to apply national forms of media classification for example the ‘NRS social grades’ and ‘ACORN’ systems as they go into too much financial detail however theories like media 2.0 and the Reception theory helped us think about how our audience would recieve our trailer and how we can promote it. For example as members of our age group and knowing many within it we know that are prime places for advertising would be social networking sites like ‘facebook’ http://www.facebook.com/ and ‘twitter’ http://twitter.com/ as well as music channels such as ‘MTV’ http://www.mtv.co.uk/videos?gclid=CN-71MmIsKgCFQUKfAodK2uTcg or mainstream channels like ‘E4’ http://www.e4.com/.
After researching and deciding on the plot for our film and it’s trailer, we began designing a storyboard. This showed the main stages that are trailer would go through, alongside this we wrote a vague idea of what was happening or any scripting, props and most importantly the camera angles, as we wanted to make sure we’d used a wide range of shots. This helped are organization throughout are development and filming. We then went on to create an animatic; a photo sequence of our storyboard, which helps us too see how effective the shots are or which ones don’t work particularly well. Unfortunately, after shooting our animatic and first scenes, we were not happy with some of the shot’s, I believe this is because we rushed our initial storyboard in excitement and anticipation of filming. After looking over are first footage we sat down and thought more carefully about the stages in our trailer, what we could create realistically, with better camera angels and scarier shots. From then on we had a lot of group discussion throughout the planning and production phases, it helped us to develop ideas together, hopefully resulting in a stronger film trailer..
In our first scenes we use stereotypes of reckless teens to quickly introduce our characters and re-enforce their roles in the film. We also used various other cliché’s that link in with our title and plot. The opening scene of a text uses a standard phone with a text saying ‘U up 4 dat rave 2nite in da woodz’ we deliberately did not use a blackberry or I phone as it could bring connotations of higher classes, business men or money, which is not the case for most teens, and we wanted are audience to be able to relate to characters, in order to create empathy and tension. We used what we thought to be ‘chavvy’ ‘text lingo’ to maintain the class and social group of our characters whilst quickly introducing the basis of our plot to interest viewers.
Secondly you can see the setting of a small village in the afternoon this introduces the sense of a calm the exsposition phase of our narrative, crating a sense of security to contrast with the later scenes of a dark forest. Whilst the teens pack the car in the safety of their home surroundings we hoped slamming of doors and emphasis on the situation may give the audience suspicions about the car weather it would crash or mabe breakdown. This could be known as dramatic irony (when the audience knows something the characters don't) adding to the tension. Throughout the exposition phase of our narrative we also thought, about how mise-en-scene could be effectively used to establish plot and characters.
Choosing a Volks Wagen Polo, as it’s seen to be a typical teen car, when filming the group driving off in the car we wanted to show the loud revving of an engine as they race off, as teenagers are also often slandered for their dangerous driving and reckless behaviour on the road, particularly the kind that listen to drum and base and participate in illegal raves. However, we were unable to film this in a cul-de-sac as it could be dangerous and disturbing for residence around, to overcome this we shot the car swerving round a corner towards a woods without any indication to reinforce the stereotype. This also shows them turning off the main road into a forest bringing in a sense of isolation and helplessness. You may also notice here that the music starts off diagetic, as the car being loaded and the of doors, we feel this also adds to the feeling of reckless teenagers but then fading into it’s calm music, links us back to the atmosphere of normality and equilibrium. When turning round the corner the soundtrack is then introduced this culd also insinuate the beginning of problems, the car music an also be heard over the top of the music, again showing the careless and recklessness. In regards to lighting we can also see the sun going a trasition between security to insecurity of the nighttime forsest.
Following on from the representation of our teen characters through mise-en-scene we were also aware how costume would affect the audience perception. To show their lack of interest in fashion but need for labels we put each male character in ‘Adidas’ and ‘Henelys’ hoody’s, paired with scruffy baggy jeans we thought these gave the impression that each character had teenage materialistic values but did not care how they were presented, overall we wanted to create a thuggish look, so we also put one of the characters in a flat peak cap. As girls are often more concerned with their appearances, we put our female character in a slightly more fashionable look of high black leather boots and a black leather jacket with a grey jumper scarf and leggings, we still wanted her to look slightly hard but in an edgy way. As we used ‘The Blair Witch Project’ a film about a group of teenagers spending days trying to uncover a scary old wives tale on camera in their local forest, as one of the basis of film and it’s trailer we also realised that it would be important to show that our characters are not equipped to be in the forest at night and to reinforce their vulnerable situation, rather than putting our characters wellington boots and coats.
Another stereotypical situation is when we put our female and one of our male characters in, is when their car breaks down, we thought this would seem a realistic situation for an ‘X” registration car being approximately ten eleven to twelve years old. As you would expect we have are male character looking under the bonnet, knowing what to do and our female character with her back turned with a pissed of stance an expression, completely un-helpful and un interested, and as tensions rise between characters they become more vulnerable, this is reinforced by the music gradually increasing in speed. In contrast to the sexist stereotype we have one of our male characters as the first to die and are female character leading in the first scene, he is not shown in this scene as the characters green hoodie would effect he change in mood we were trying to create with darker clothing.Other stereotypical aspect of our filming we picked up from is the use of a hand held camera technique, whilst one of our characters is running through the forest, are idea was to make the audience unsure who the character could be chasing or be being chased by. At this point the music in our trailer is at its climax, we used the bass of the rave music they should be listening to ad to the confusion and disorientation, combined with camera angle high up, creating scary dark looming branches, this also insure the shot was not to dark. We also used shots including mist which creates a mystery that anything could happened is a good source of eerie lighting, and panning shots showing the surroundings, for example the shot of water gives a feeling of isolation. Again drawing from are trailer research we use a technique from ‘The Blair Witch Project’ of a hand held camera in many shots which the audience would find it easier to relate to and feel more scared.
When researching film posters, the staple features we came across were that were that they all include a title, distributor and production company manes an age certificate and are presented in a portrait layout. We also found that the stereotypical conventions of a horror genre poster are catchy taglines, scary fonts and not always a clear image, maybe a hidden face or weapon, to add a sense of mystery, often hidden by a mask of fog or darkness.
We used a mixture of these aspects in both our poster designs, hoping they would end in a more successful result. To our first poster we applied two pictures layered, we changed the transparency levels so that one shows through less, and combining the isolated images of the lake with the slightly less visible axe gives us a sense of mystery and a slightly ghostly effect, relating to the genre we are trying to advertise. As the photo and the weapon are both taken from our trailer they can give the audience an idea of either setting or what the film is about, but still without giving too much away about the plot. With our second poster we had a complete play around with different techniques, we tried to create another mysterious image, distorting the exposure shadows and temperature meant we came up with a dark background and sharp kind of colored outline of our original image of a car. Sticking to the conventions of darkness, hidden images, and mystery I believe this second design worked very well, the outline suggests that a car plays a large role in the plot and the coloured outline added to the playfull, reckless of raves, a link to the title ‘The Last Rave”.
Although we have used many aspects in keeping with the typical poster and horror genre format, we decided to make a simple alteration in the orientation of our poster to make it stand out. Instead of setting our poster out n the stereotypical portrait layout we took a landscape approach, we thought this may draw in more attention from the potential customer, seeing a different style of poster may make them think of this film as individual, different, better than other horrors they may have seen before.
We used audience feedback through many development stages of are trailer, magazine cover and poster, to help us get the best results. With our poster we handed our questionnaires about posters they’d already seen and then from their feedback created our own posters. Asking them to fill out another questionnaire on our final poster ideas helped us to decide on the best one. We also asked a similar selection of people about our magazine cover in order to get the relevant feedback. In the development phase of our trailer we also asked a few members of our class if it made sense and weather they had enough time to read the text, this meant we could make sure the are music would fit the length of our clips.
We used digital technologies in all of the stages of our project. For the planning and research phases we used Youtube http://www.youtube.com/ to look at existing film trailers, IMDb http://www.imdb.com/ to get an idea of what movies sold and what sort didn't, Google http://www.google.co.uk/ to see existing film posters and the Total Film http://www.totalfilm.com/ website to look at magazine covers.
In our fist stages of research we relied on the internet to do our research using websites like IMDB and Utube to watch and research various trailers. In our planning stages for example when creating our animatic we used a Sony A 330 which is a digital SLR camera, as well as the Mac software iphoto to edit our shots, as originally they were not dark enough and lacked in creating the eerie, horror images we wanted. We then used the website; slideshare to upload our animatic on after putting the sequence together on power point.
In the construction stages of our trailer we started using more technical equipment for example a Canon DC310 camcorder through filming, at first we found it hard to attach the camera to it’s tripod but eventually manged to fix it to create a still shot. We uploaded and edit our footage on I movie I found this software easy to use as I had crated a film opening sequence using it in my as year. On the other hand we struggle trying to create the music for our trailer using the software logic, so change to garage bad unanimously deciding it was easier and more effective to use, I attached our music to a slidshare document before fitting it to our trailer.
Through the creation and design of our poster and magazine cover we used the programme Paint Shop Pro one of the members of our team was already frillier with this as he uses it in one of his other subjects, which meant form his teaching and experience we could learn how to use it combining our thought on to produce the best outcome. We used photo from our trailer to create our posers as we thought this would link them together nicely.
Finally, we used the website blogger.com to upload all our research, planning and development on as posts, this has evolved into a detailed site containing our coursework. It was usefull in that there was no need to email are work back an forth from school and members of our team could pick up bits they may have missed in lessons, it’s also helped me to keep organized being able to see any stages I may have missed or should go over in more detail.
If I were to go back and do this project again there would be a couple of things I would do to improve. For example I would mention in the evaluation process, how during our evaluation I noticed how some of the text from our trailer has not been taken off it’s bold setting, resulting in a more friendly look. I would of also mentioned that due to the fact we created two story boards are editing process was a lot shorter. I believe our trailer would have looked a lot more professional if we had used a high definition camcorder, some of our darker clips looked grainy due to the lack of light. I was very proud with the outcome of our poster, as the only improvements I would of made were making it a higher resolution and getting more of the axe in the image.
Lastly I am still dubious about the fact we still have a clip with swearing in our trailer, as it could limit the audiences and amount of air-time our trailer could get. However, I am aware of the fact this is mild language, and the term ‘bloody’ frequently in the ‘Harry Potter’ films, which are marketed at 12A If it came to it at the stage of classifying our film and trailer. I would mute this shot, so the trailer would be accessible to all audiences.
