Evaluation Question 4...

Evaluation Question 3...

Evaluation Question 1...

Evaluation Question 2...

Final Product ( PRESUMED DEAD )...

Fonts...

After finishing the majority of our editing for our teaser trailer, we looked over it to see if there were any little things that we could change to make it that bit more professional. One thing that stood out as something wihhc we could improve was the text that comes up during the fast paced half of the trailer. While we were happy with the wording of the phrases, the font of the words was what didn't look right. We looked back over some of the teaser trailers we'd looked at in the earlier research stages, and saw that in both the teaser trailers for 'Inception' and 'The Strangers', the text which was included in the teaser trailers was completely capital letters. This made the text look a bit more bold and important to the nature of the trailer. We tried changing our text to all capital letters and felt that it improved the overall look of our trailer. We had thought to put the first letter of each word in capital, but realised that this looked strange and not fitting for a horror teaser trailer. We've now changed all of the text in our teaser trailer to completely capital letters, both to give our teaser a more authentic look, and also to follow some of the conventions of teaser trailers we had researched. This is what the text in our teaser trailer looked like before and after we altered it.

Music For Our Teaser...

This video shows the pieces of music we chose not to use in our final teaser trailer. The piece of music we did choose is on our final piece video...

Montage Shots...

Having already thought of some of the shots we wanted to include in the fast paced half of our teaser trailer, we thought of some more to do later on, and also decided on a few more we could do while we were filming, shots that just came to mind as we were shooting the rest of our trailer. The shots we ended up having in the montage were...

• a extreme close up shot of the womans eyes, closed at first, then suddenly opening. We've used this shot as the opening shot to our montage, with our fast paced music starting as the womans eyes open.


• a shot of the man and the villain on the floor, with the villain holding the knife and the man holding his wrist, trying to stop him from stabbing him.


• a shot of a hand picking up a knife. This shot can be interpreted in multiple ways, as the audience aren't sure who the hand belongs to, whether its the villain picking up the knife, or one of the couple picking it up in an attempt to fend off the man that's broken into their house.


• a close up shot of the woman, looking around tentatively as though she is worried that the villain is somewhere near, and then a gloved hand (meant to be that of the villain) grabs the woman by her face and pills her back. You dont actually see any more than the hand of the villain, keeping a sense of mystery around the character.


• a long shot of the woman hiding behind a wall, looking panicked. It is noticeable that there is blood on the hand of the woman, leaving the audience questioning whose blood it is. In the background, we see the lower body of a man we assume to be the villain, entering the room, holdiing the knife in his hand, he turns to walk in the direction of the woman. This shot is split into two, with the first part being shown quite early in the montage, and the other half being shown at the end of the trailer, after the title of the film is shown. The shot ends before it is revealed whether or not the villain finds the woman, leaving the trailer on a bit of cliffhanger ending, giving the audience further incentive to go and see the film when its released.


• A tracking shot of the villain from behind, showing him walking slowly through a hallway. The man then jumps out from a room branching off from the hallway, and tackles the villain to the ground. This is the only real sign the audience sees that the couple are fighting back against the villain.


• a shot of the flames of a stove, flaring up to show bright blue flames, standing out on a dark background as the lights are off. This shot's real purpose was to cut up the rest of the shots, and also the flames add a further sense of panic to the teaser.

Todorov's Theory of Narrative...

After learning aboutTzvetzan Todorov's argument, that all basic narratives work through a series of five stages, we looked at our teaser trailer and looked to see if we could match up the five parts of the Bulgarians theory to our film, 'Presumed Dead'. The 5 stages are...

• A State of Equilibrium


• A Disruption of the state of equilibrium through an action


• A recognition of the disruption


• An attempt to repair the disruption


• A return to a new equilibrium

As we oursevles are not entirely sure on how our film will end, we looked to see if the 5 stages were represented in our teaser trailer. We believe that in our teaser trailer we identify the first 4 of the stages. The original state of equilibrium is seen in the first flashback, where the couple are unpacking. The second and third stages are introduced at the same time, as the disruption of the equilibrium originally takes place with the sound of something smashing upstairs, swiftly follwed by the recognition of the disruption, as the couple both hear, and look in the direction that the smashing noise came from. The recognition is preperly shown by the woman whispering 'He's here...', leaving to no doubt that she is aware that there is a man in the house, and that the 'equilibrium' has been disrupted. The first shot where stage 2 is confirmed is the shot of the villain on top of the man, attempting to choke him. Stage 2 then continues through the fast montage of shots. The attempt to repair the disruption is seen in the shot where the man takes down the villain from behind, but that is the only obvious shot of the couple attempting to take on the villain. The fifth and final stage is left unanswered, as the trailer doesn't show any shots which confirm a return to an equilibrium. Although the last shot of the man clenching his fist does leave the door open for the equilibrium to be restored, as up until that point the shots of the two bodies on the floor suggests that the villain has won and that they are dead.

Magazine Feedback...

Finished Magazine Cover...

Magazine Cover Progression...

Film Magazine Cover...

For the second of our ancillary tasks, we needed to create the front cover of a film magazine which would promote the release of the film in our teaser trailer. We had an idea relatively early on over what the picture on the cover would show. We wanted to the cover to be primarily black and white, with bits of red which we hoped would stand out well on the otherwise colourless picture. What we wanted to create for the cover was picture of the girl in the film, with a completely blank face, and her eyes closed, with crosses over her eyes, symbolising that she is dead. To further imply that the girl is dead, we wanted for there to be a small trail of blood running down her face, starting at her eye. Rather than creating our own fictional film magazine, we chose to create the cover to look like an edition of the well known magazine, Total Film. This was mainly because we thought that nothing we could come up with would like as professional and authentic as using an already existing magazine brand. We started off by just taking the picture, and then with the help of photoshop, we created the effect of having the entire picture black and white, with the exception of the trail of blood which stayed red. Then we placed over the picture the logo of Total Film magazine. We decided against having lots of writing involving the film on the cover, and instead just having the title of the film, along with a line underneath to give people something to urge them to buy the magazine. This was something that seemed to be common on film magazine covers, being used on the covers promoting Star Trek, and Terminator Salvation. We put the title of the film in red font, to coincide with the red blood on the black and white face. The other use of red on the cover was on the 'I' of the title of the magazine, as we found when looking at existing covers of magazines, like the one promoting Inception, the title of the magazine was altered slightly, to relate to the film which the cover was promoting. We chose to play on this, by including a single red letter, to carry on the trend of a mainly black and white cover, with bits of red to both make the cover stand out, and to give the audience a hint to the type of film PRESUMED DEAD would be, as the colour red almost always gives the impression of blood.
These pictures show the progress of our magazine cover, from the original picture, to the final product.

Finished Poster...

From the four pictures we had to choose from, this is the one we felt was the most effective, mainly because of the interesting angle and also that the death tag and hand were closer to the camera than in any other shot. To improve the picture we had, we changed the position of the actors names to along the top of the poster, which is where we found most posters put the names of the actors in the film. We also made the font red, to coincide with the black,white and red theme we had running through our ancillary products. The final change we made was adding in a slogan. From looking at existing film posters in the research stages, we found that alot of film posters included a small slogan which described the film in a nutshell. We chose for our slogan, 'nothings certain...not even death'. We liked this slogan as it linked directly to the title of the film, as there is no certainty that the characters are dead, it can only be 'presumed'. Also it would add further mystery to the cliffhanger ending we have in our teaser trailer, making viewers even more eager to see the film when its released as they feel they can't assume anything with the film, not even that a hand with a death tag attached belongs to a dead body.

Film Poster Possibilities...

To have a wider option available to us, we took photos from a few different angles, to make film posters out of so we could look and decide which we felt was the best, and would therefore be used as our film poster, after making one of the posters, we found when trying out different effects that greyscale looked much more effective, especially with the contrast between the shadow and the light. These posters we made can be seen above...

Photo Storyboards...

'Presumed Dead' Storyboards...

We want to take actual photographs for our storyboards for our new idea, but when initially creating the basic structure to our teaser trailer, we thought it was important to have rough sketches of what shots we wanted to film, and in what order, and any other minor details which we thought we might forget if we didnt put them down on paper. At the moment we aren't sure of the exact shots we're going to include in our fast paced montage at the end of the trailer, but we had some specific ideas of shots we wanted to fit in, so we drew and explained all of the shots we have come up with so far, but plan to add to them in the future...

storyboards continued...

Film Magazine Covers...

For our film magazine cover, our plan is to portray the face of a dead body. We're going to get a picture of the woman of the couple in our teaser trailer, partly because we've planned to use the mans hand in the film poster, so wanted to use both memebers of the couple in our ancillary tasks. Also, in general women are stereotypically depicted as more vulnerable than men. Our plan is to have crosses drawn over the womans eyes to emphasise the idea that she is dead, similar to how people are shown in cartoons when they are dead or defeated, an example being when a pokemon is defeated in the cartoon show, its eyes turn in to spirals. We are also going to put blood on her face as though it is dripping down from her eye, as seeing red will instantly make a person think of blood, which coincides with conventions of the horror genre, which is well known for its use of blood.

Film Posters...

For the film poster that would go with our teaser trailer. We wanted to continue the theme of putting emphasis on the fact that the victims are thought to be dead, but turn out not to be, as the conclusion of the teaser trailer, and the title of the film will do. We came up with the idea of having a hand, laying limp on a silver surface, with a tag attached to the wrist. Our hope with this is to give the impression that its the hand of a dead body, with the silver surface being a slab in a mortuary that a dead body would be placed on, and the tag being a death tag for the bodies identification. Instead of putting a persons details on the death tag, we're going to have the title of the film and the release date, to ensure that it is clear to people that the poster is advertising a film. The shot will be a close up/extreme close up, in order to take none of the focus away from what is believed to be a dead hand. The tag will be an equally focused on, if not the main focus of the poster, as that is what really puts across the message that this hand belongs to a 'dead' body, and it also has the important information about the film. I drew a sketch of what we hope the final version of our film poster will look like...

Film Magazine Cover Research...

Film magazine covers need to be bold and stand out, as they are always going to be compared to the other magazines out at that time, and being the only thing a person will see when choosing which to buy, it is essential that the front cover is as appealing as it can be. Most films which are advertised on magazine covers, show a picture of the/one of the main characters, as they are usually the face that will remind people of the film. In all three covers i've looked at here, the main character is the only person on the cover, and looking at the camera, to make a connection with readers. The text on the front cover is also something that is made to stand out, as people wont just buy a magazine on the cover, the articles inside are what make people spend their money. On the cover for sherlock holmes, the title and subtitle for the film take up the entire bottom half of the page, as that is the focus of the magazine, and therefore the part which the magazine wants peoples eyes to be drawn to first. A common feature of a film magazine cover is to have a short phrase underneath or above the title of the film. For the Star Trek cover, the phrase 'The boldest and coolest film of 2009' is used to really sell the film, to anyone who is new to the film, and has yet to choose to go and watch it. Films with an existing reputation are able to rely less on attracting readers with words, like the Harry Potter cover. The title of the cover film is in a list of a number of films, and while it is the only one written in bold, it doesn't stand out in the same way my other two examples do. This is something which Empire magazine can afford to do however, as by the 6th film, Harry Potter is a film franchise with millions of fans already, and simply by showing the face of Harry (daniel radcliffe), anyone who is a fan of harry potter will recognise it and want to know what about harry potter is written inside.

Film Poster Research...

I've already looked at some posters from my previous research, but i wanted to take a closer look at some of the conventions of movie posters. Just from looking at a film poster you can almost always correctly guess what genre it is, just by its use of colour and pictures. The poster for drag me to hell is a typical horror poster. The picture depicts a girl screaming, being pulled down by the arm of what looks like a zombie or something, and the flames add to the scary nature of the picture. Also the dark,dull colour of the picture in the background emphasises the genre of the film as being serious. This is contrasted in the poster for Up. The poster is made up almost entirley of bright colours, those mainly coming from the balloons on the house, but also the clear sky in the background. As well as this, the little boy (Russell) is clearly smiling, suggesting the film is of a happy nature, the complete opposite of the poster for Drag Me To Hell. The poster for burn after reading puts its main focus on the famous names starring in the film. With just a plain white background, all eyes go directly to the pictures of the people in the film, who are all well known actors, like George Clooney and Brad Pitt. Films like this, with big names filling the cast, have the option to use that as the main selling point for the film. Films like Up, which is an animated film, dont have the option to sell the film by who is in it, as you dont see them in the film anyway, you only hear them. The film itself is formed around the concept of the house that gets lifted off the ground by lots and lots of balloons. When a film has an iconic, memorable scene, such as this, it is often used to advertise the film in all types of media, be it trailer or poster, as the majority of people who went to see Up, knew it to be the film with all the balloons carrying a house. Up also has the luxury of a very well known production company making it in Disney PIXAR, which is also put on the poster to attract any people who are fans of PIXAR, but haven't heard or seen of Up yet, knowing its a disney film will instantly gain the film audiences. Another common convention of film posters is to have a slogan, representing the story of the film, on the poster along with the title. For films like Drag Me To Hell, a couple of short sentences have been used to swiftly describe the character seen on the poster, but on the poster for Burn After Reading, a short slogan has been used to give people whose first recognition of the film is this poster, a small taste of what the film is about, it also often relates to the genre of the film.

Locations and Props...

We listed what room, and what props we would need for each of the shots we had put into our storyboards...

Filming our Teaser...

Our plan is to hopefully get all of the shots we need in one day, as everything we are filming takes place in the same location. If we cant get everything done in one day, we may have to arrange another day for filming, to get everything done.

Target Audience Research Conclusions...

We wanted to ask people form our target audience questions with the main aim of having their answers influence the way we went about creating our horror teaser trailer.

• Everyone we asked said they would want a horror teaser trailer to scare them, as without being able to scare its audience, no film can truly be considered a horror. To try and take into account this response, we hope that we can scare people in the way that paranormal activity scares audiences, in that it makes people fear that a similar event could happen to them. Teaser trailers themselves tend not to make audiences jump, as it is just a foundation for attracting people to go and watch the film, so what we want to do is to make our teaser trailer scary in terms of making them think that this is something which could happen to them.
• A mixture of pace was something that our target audience felt was important in a good teaser trailer, as the contrast between slow paced and fast paced keeps the audiences interest. This was something we had initially wanted to do, but the feedback we recieved confirmed in our minds that we wanted to mix both slow and fast paced shots to make viewers hearts race, and intrigue them.
• Flashbacks were something that everyone we asked liked, as they felt it gave them more information about the background of the film, and also helps explain some of the confusing aspects of a film. Using flashbacks is something we definately want to do in our teaser trailer, to add an interesting aspect to the trailer.
• Our target audience told us that they prefer a teaser trailer to only show a little bit of footage of the film, as it means that less is given away. We respect this view and in some ways agree with it, but we feel that we want to use a good amount of footage, just to give the audience a chance to get a feeling for what the film is about, and hopefully want to go and see it. To try and meet in the middle on what the target audience told us and our personal wants, we know that we dont want to give away anything to do with the ending of the film, so that the conclusion of the story is kept a secret.
• There was mixed response to the usage of cliffhangers, some saying theyt didnt like not knowing all the facts, and some saying they liked being able to decide what for themselves what they think has happened. We want our trailer to have cliffhanger ending, mainly to give viewers that extra push to go and watch the film, as cliffhangers often leave audiences dyeing to know more.

New Target Audience Research...

Certificate...

Choosing a certificate for out film was made quite easy as we chose who our target audience would be first. By choosing to target the film at 16-24 year olds, we left ourselves with only one realistic option. However, this is just one of a number of reasons why we chose to make 'Presumed Dead' certificate 15. Taking in to account existing horror films, every film we looked at, both in teaser trailer research, horror trailer conventions research, and in the work we had done on our parody idea, was certificte 15.

• The Strangers
• The Ring
• Paranormal Activity
• Drag Me To Hell
• Mirrors
• One Missed Call

All of these films share the same genre as the film our teaser trailer will advertise, and some like Drag Me To Hell and The Ring involve scenes of a much more disturbing nature than anything we plan to include in our teaser trailer, or anything that our film would include in general, therefore meaing that only in a lack of good judgement would we choose to give 'Presumed Dead' a certificate any higher than 15, and as we'd previously agreed that aiming at a younger audience (12 and under) would be unwise, the only certificate we're left with is 15. Rating the film a 15 means that anyone within the age group of our target audience will be able to watch the film in the cinema, and also shows to anyone else thinking of watching the film, that any pre-conceptions of the film being unbelievably scary and gory simply based on the genre are untrue.

Target Audience...

Despite changing our idea for our teaser trailer, we didn't think that we needed to change our original target audience. We originally chose to target 16-24 year olds, for the main reason that our entire film was based around mocking horror films, and while not intentionally aiming to scare people with the film, the characters themselves were based on characters from real horror films, so to target the film at a younger audience would of been unwise and unrealistic. This is one of the reasons we chose to aim at the same target audience, as by changing to do an actual horror film, this was even further reasoning to avoid targeting the film at young people. We've chosen to aim mainly at the 16-24 year olds not only because of the genre of the film, but most importantly for the fact that they are the most frequent cinema go-ers. While there is no reason why our film would not appeal to an older audience, for the film to be as commercially successful as it can be, it needs to meet the criteria of a film that young adults would want to go and watch in the cinema. This age group are generally more interested in watching horror films at the cinema than any other age group, as the excitement of seeing who will be more scared by a film is something that 16-24 year olds get caught up in more than anyone else. The purpose of choosing a target audience is to focus your attention further in one particular direction, which we hope to do, while still trying to make 'Presumed Dead' a film that appeals to an older generation, as well as the young adults the film will aim to attract.

Film Title...

We came up with our new film idea before thinking about anything else, so we could work everything else around the storyline we had created. This meant when going on to think about possible titles for our film, we already had a basic outline of our teaser trailer, which we wanted to have a direct link to the name we agreed on. We brainstormed for a bit, shouting out any titles that came into our heads, and decided on a few which we thought were good, but more importantly suitable to the plot we'd decided on. The titles we came up with were...

• Awakened
  
• Easy Targets
  
• Chosen Targets
  
• Presumed Dead
  
• Breaking and Entering
• Intrusion
  

As we had already lost valuable time on our previous idea, we gave people an overview of our film, and then asked them to choose which title they thought best fit our film. The title which turned out to be the most popular was 'Presumed Dead', which we also thought was one of the better titles we'd come up with. It focuses on the fact that the bodies we assume to be dead for the maority of the teaser, turn out to still be alive. This is what we hope will be the lasting memory in the minds of people who watch it, as it puts questions into the audiences head, questions which can only be answered by going to watch the film. The title presumed dead emphasising this selling point, making it a great match for our teaser trailer.

New Plot...

After our decision to change our entire project, we had to completely start from scratch, thinking up an entirely new concept. Doing a horror trailer was something that we decided upon quite quickly, as we felt we needed to move quickly after losing time with our initial idea, and horror was the genre we both felt the most confident in doing, as it worked to the strengths we had gained in AS. The idea for our new teaser trailer is about a couple, who have their house broken into, with the film following the couple as they try to survive, and escape whoever it is that is after them. For the teaser trailer, its going to start out showing a person leaving the house, and closing the door behind them (this person turning out to be the villain). The camera then shows a room which has been completely trashed, and continues to reveal that there are two bodies, on the floor, not moving. This will lead into a flashback of what is actually only a few hours earlier, of the couple unpacking and hearing a noise upstairs. This shot will lead into a fast paced montage of clips, showing the couples attempts at getting away from the person who has broken into their house. To make the audience interested, it will hear the woman whispering, 'he's here', implying that they know who has broken in, and almost as if they've been waiting for the day when he would find them. This will hint further to why the couple are unpacking, as though they've just moved in, suggesting they may have had to move to get away from this person. The trailer will end with a shot of the one of the bodies which looks to be dead at the beginning of the trailer, making a sudden movement, such as grabbing onto something, or clenching a fist, to show that they are infact still alive, leaving the door open for the audience to want answers to a number of questions...

• whats happened in the last couple of hours?
• are both of them still alive?
  
• how did they survive?
• will the villain get away?
• what will happen next?

Horror Trailers Analysis...

After looking at some trailers which were aimed specifically at the horror genre, it gave me an insight into some of the common qualities of a horror trailer. Firstly, from all the the trailers and teaser trailers I saw for the horror genre, all could be grouped in to one of two categories. Some, like 'The Strangers' teaser trailer have little to no dialogue, leaving the storytelling part of the trailer to the music and the images shown. The other type of trailer, an example of which being 'Mirrors', depend more heavily on the use of dialogue, as the basic concept of the film is described in the teaser, with the images and sounds being less important to the story, and focus more on displaying to the audience that it is a scary film. In the trailer for 'Drage Me To Hell', the entire plot of the film, minus the may it ends, is given away in the trailer. This is something that horror trailer can afford to do more so than any other genre, as the makings of a good horror film dont depend to highly on a good story. The prospect of being scared is the main incentive for people to go and watch a film, so knowing the story before watching the film doesn't affect a films appeal very much. An aspect of horror trailers that is depicted in the trailers for 'Drag Me To Hell' and 'One Missed Call', is the focus on a single character. In both films, the entire trailer revolvesw around a single main character, and follows their story more so than anyone else, with other characters being almost completely shoved into the background. This is something that most horror films do, the only other alternative is for their to be a group of main characters. Films such as The Ring and Scream, have a single main character, and it is usually the case that that character is the only one to survive until the end. The difference between that and a horror film that has multiple main characters is that you can expect some of them to die in the film, as the foundation of a good horror film usually begins with a high death count. Even in films with numerous main characters, there is generally one who is focused on slightly more than the rest. such as Final Destination, where there is one character who is shown more than the rest, but there is a cast of main characters in the film.

Horror Trailers...

Change of Plan...

Despite not wanting all the work we had done to go to waste, we weren't happy with the progress we had made in filming our parody teaser trailer. While we were really excited about our idea initially, after filming most of our footage and beginning to edit, we realised that what we had wasn't very professional looking. Our idea turned out to be better on paper than it was on the screen, and when we asked our teacher to take a look at it, she agreed that what we had wasn't good enough to get us the grade we were hoping for. We didn't think we would be able to make the parody good enough, without re-filming almost everything we had done. So after discussing with our teachers what our best option would be, we came to the decision to start again with a new idea. Our new plan is to do the teaser trailer for a horror, as when brainstorming horror seemed to be the genre which we both had some basic ideas for.