Evaluation

In our trailer we wanted to make sure that we not only met the typical conventions of a horror trailer, but also challenged them so that our film was set apart from all the other horror films out there. For our film we wanted to put in some different camera shots to make it look more interesting, so we decided that our first shot of the main character would be a point of view shot. We did this so that it instantly gives an impression that there is someone watching her and the story is introduced. We wanted there to still be some mystery in the story making people want to see more. We wanted her to look like a normal girl leaving her family home so her clothes are quite plain, suggesting her normality. The story is about how she must escape from the horror of her stalker. Although there are many horror films about women being stalked but we wanted to put our own spin on the story so that it isn’t like all the others.

 

This second shot is from a little later in the trailer, when the villain of the film tries to distract our heroine. We shot this from the back of the car because we wanted to show the brake lights coming on suddenly showing that she is stopping. The red stands out emphasising this strange event.

 

This third grab is when our main character is discovering that the villain has been watching her for a long time. I feel that this meets the typical aspects of a horror movie because usually the victim is captured and unable to escape until the end. We wanted to use a dark red room for this shot to give the feel of death and terror, as red can be seen as associated with these feelings. We wanted to use a high angle shot for this because then we could get the best effect of her reaction and also it makes her look smaller and more vulnerable. This shot is when the music is at its highest level to make sure that these are the most obviously dramatic parts of the film.

 

This shot is from the montage of parts from the film, this is when our character has escaped from the villain and is trying to find help. We wanted to have a montage in our trailer to set aside our trailer from the rest. These shots of the film switch from our female character running to other parts of the film. We thought this was quite effective because it makes the pace faster and the tension heighten, which was our initial intention.

 

This next shot is not only the last shot in our film but this is the shot that inspired our poster as we thought that we needed a shot to show the horror that our main character was feeling. I like this end shot because the villain looks very creepy and the audience know that something bad is going to come from it and as it is the last shot it makes the audience want to know what will happen after this last shot.

 

We wanted to have these in our film so that it was the best that it could be and as professional as possible. We also created a logo for our Production Company like many of the other companies such as ‘Universal’ or ‘Warner Bros’.

 

 

As well as these, we wanted to make sure that our tag line was included in the trailer to give the audience an idea of what the storyline might include.

 




I think that together our trailer and poster and magazine cover work well because of the way that we have presented them. We wanted them to connect to our trailer as much as possible. We filmed our trailer in the dark, so we definitely wanted our magazine cover and poster to be dark and mysterious, like the atmosphere in our trailer.

We looked into many different film posters from the horror genre to get particular ideas of what we might want ours to look like. After researching posters such as 'The Skeleton Key' and 'Scream' we decided that we wanted to use a picture similar to one in our trailer. This photo is a close up of our main character with her had covering her mouth as if she were trying not to scream, this is very similar to the 'Scream' poster which we thought was very well made. As the picture takes up most of the space of the poster, there are not any particular colours that dominate the poster. However, we have used black and red in it to make it seem more dark and dangerous. We have put our tag line 'when it comes to living there are no short cuts' in red to foreshadow the horror and even death in the trailer.

We also used red and black for the main colours in our magazine cover. Again, we wanted these colours to foreshadow what might happen in the film. For this, we used screen grabs from our actual trailer to make sure the photos connected to our film. We used two separate pictures from the film, one of our main characters in red to keep to the red and black theme. We used a picture of our second main character in the background to give the illusion that he might be watching her giving a hint of what the film is about. The font that we used in our film is cracked to give the feel that there will be destruction within the film.

The music we originally used was from the song ‘Russian Roulette’ by Rihanna but unfortunately we were unable to use this as it was copyright so we created our own music, we wanted it to be eerie and strange to make sure that the atmosphere was right for the genre of the film.

When asking what people thought of our film we wanted to get as much information as possible from a range of people to make sure that our trailer looked as professional as possible. We asked our classmates and parents and siblings to watch our film, we also asked our subject teacher to watch it to get the full amount of feedback that we could. The feedback that we got from people was mostly positive, the general answers were that people were interested in the storyline of the trailer and felt that they would be encouraged to see the whole film if it were really being made. Our subject teacher said that filming it at night was a good idea and that it made the ambience of the film darker.

One of the negative points that we were told about was the music that we had to change because of the copyright. Also, the camera we used was not up to the standards of more modern cameras so unfortunately the film looked a little grainy, however when watching it we thought that it would be better if we added an effect to the film, this made it look less amateur.

Throughout our project we have used many different technologies to make our trailer and music and all the important parts of the project. Firstly we have used ‘Blogger’ to put all of our work and research together in one place and also to show our trailer, poster and magazine cover together. This was really useful because it helped us show all our information in a professional way.

When had made our film we used ‘i-movie’ to upload it and to edit our film to make it look frightening and to put all our clips together to make an effective trailer. We added a dark effect so that it looked scarier for the audience.

We also used ‘Garageband’ to create our music for the trailer so that the atmosphere is emphasised at the right moments.

When researching our genre and other films that inspired our story we used ‘Google’ to get the most information about the genre and films. We also looked on the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/15 website and looked at the certificates and looked at the requirements of what should be in a film to see what certificate our film should be. As well as this when looking at horror trailers we used ‘Youtube’ to find out what sort of film we wanted to make and to look at the interesting shots that we could use.

http://www.youtube.com/

If I were to do this project again I think that I would have chosen a different genre to make as I think it would have set us apart from all the other groups and it might have been a little easier to make and relate to. However, if I were to change something about this project I think we could have been a little more creative with our storyline and also we could have made our film seem a little more professional. But overall, I am very happy with our finished trailer and all that we have done in the project. 

Our Final Trailer

This is our final trailer. We have changed the music after getting the feedback from some of our audience members. We are very pleased with the way this turned out and hope that it looks as good and professional as we wanted it to. 

Trailer Feedback

We created two questionnaires that we asked people to fill out, one for before they watched the trailer and one for after. We wanted to make sure that we asked a range of people of different ages to make sure that we get a lot of information to help us. 
From the information we received from the questionnaire people filled out before the trailer, we found that most people thoughts were that a good horror trailer should have a believable and interesting story. People also said that the camera work was quite important as camera shots make the film seem more real. 


As well as this feedback, we gained feedback from the same people but this time it was after they had watched our trailer. We were given some very positive feedback. People said that the storyline was intriguing and made them want to go and watch the rest of the film. As well as this, they thought that the dark and mysterious atmosphere of the forest was very effective for the film. 
One of the most important feedback points that we were given was the issue of the music. In our draft of our trailer we used parts of the song 'Russian Roulette' by Rihanna. We discovered that we weren't able to use this music as it was not available for us. So our main factor of change is the music for our final trailer to be as good as it can be. 

Trailer

This is a draft of our trailer. We were very happy with how it turned out, however our next step is to get feedback of the trailer to find out if there is anything drastic that we need to change. We will ask a range of people to watch the trailer and fill out the questionnaires that we have made to give us the best idea of the alterations that we might need. Once we have the feedback, we will make the changes and the final touch ups and post the final trailer on to our blogs, we will then evaluate the whole of the project and how we thought this went overall.

Our Poster

This is the final draft of our poster. We were very pleased with this poster as we think that it looked very professional compared to all of the other film posters we have researched. 
We took some inspiration from different posters by having just one of the main characters, but we think that this was effective as it doesn't give much away about the film, but it leaves you wondering why she is like this and what her is expression is. We decided to put a tag line into the film as well because we thought that this would give the audience something to think about when saw it. 
Like in our magazine cover, we used the colour black as we thought this best represented the mood of the film and also it gives the audience some idea of what genre the film is. We also used red, the denotation of this colour is that it is an effective colour against the black, but the connotation could be that it represents the death and blood that might be to come in the film. 
We have also added the main features of a film poster to make sure it lives up to professional posters standards, such as release date, website for the film and names and production details. 

Our Magazine Cover

After doing lots of research on other film magazine covers, we wanted to create one that lived up to the same sort of standard as the ones in the shops. We wanted to make sure that our photo contained at least one, if not both, of the main characters and that it linked well with the genre and type of trailer that we have created. We took the photo from parts of our trailer to create our magazine as we wanted to make the magazine look as professional as possible and we felt that collating these photos really worked for the mood of the trailer. As the colour of the photo is predominantly black, we wanted to keep the rest of the cover black so that the photo did not look out of place. 
The only thing that I would liked to have changed would be the colours, I would have preferred to have the colours match the type of season that it is. We have made sure that it has all the typical features of a magazine cover, such as the price, date and issue number, a bar code and obviously the name of the magazine. 
To make the magazine look as good as possible, we added some information about up and coming films this year and also interviews that might go ahead about the films being released.

Representation

Within our trailer, there are quite a few events that we needed to portray in a way that our target audience would understand. The genre of our film is horror and we wanted to use interesting camera shots, music, mise en scene etc. to portray this in the best way possible.

When thinking about the characters' costumes, we wanted to make our main female character, Helena, seem like she is a normal, older, teenage girl. We decided that she would be dressed in a plain dress and white coat. The denotation of her clothing is that she is simple; however, the connotations of this might be that a white coat indicates she has a lot of money. This is a part of a theory that came from Roland Barthes. He said that ‘denotation’ was the literal or obvious meaning of an image, where as a ‘connotation’ are the ways that we interpret a film or text. Our interpretations also depend on our lifestyles, for example, age, gender, ethnicity, class etc. Continuing to think about this theory, we thought about how the audience would respond to our male character, Eddie. Although the audience does not see a lot of him in the trailer, we made sure he was wearing dark clothes and had his hood up most of the time, so not to see much of his face. The denotation of this could be that he just likes dark clothing and having his hood up, however, the connotation would be that he is a thug and very mysterious.

When we thought about the setting of our trailer we wanted somewhere that would create tension and atmosphere for our film. We chose to film on a road near the forest, giving us the trees to make the mood dark and eerie. To the audience it looks just like a normal road, however, the connotations of this road could be that it is dangerous for a girl to driving down at night, and that this is the place where our story is at its highest peak of tension.

Within our film, we tried to use a variation of camera shots to create suspense. When in the forest, we used a long shot of the car to show the sudden impact of brake lights. This was to give the audience that initial feeling that something is going to happen to the car/girl.

We also wanted to use a montage within our trailer to show the events within the film. This contains two shots of Helena running to show the terror she is experiencing. We also used a close up shot of Helena in a red room, the semiotic of this is that she is in danger and it is connected with the thought of blood and threat.