Friday 7 May 2010

teaser trailer test screening - rough cut

teaser trailer test screening

Today we showed the rough cut of our teaser trailer, without the soundtrack, and receiver honest, objective, and constructive feedback of how to improve it. The overall comments were positive, our main strengths were the use of costume, having the conventions of a horror movie, good use of title sequences, and well framed shots.

However there are improvements that need to be made, the main one being that it is too much like  an opening sequence rather than a teaser trailer. Therefore we need to shorten some shots, and take more risks with the editing. Also another criticism was that the titles were not clear enough to read, we might need to slow down the timing add some special affects. The final improvement is to have different ranges of shot.

We are going to take this criticism on board and try to edit our trailer to make it less like an opening sequence. We will do this by cutting the shots shorter and maybe adding more titles to break up the sequences.

magazine research


magzine research



We purchased this magazine due to its 'Horror Genre' specific articles in this issue. These included actors and actresses who have been type casted for horrors aswell as horror stories, and instructions on how to produce your own horror film for under £45. The images included were inspiring and the articles were extremelly helpful.

film poster analysis


film poster analysis

After finishing our trailer and analyzing a film magazine cover we also had to analyze a film poster. i decided that i would use the poster from the film that i did my marketing campaign on earlier in the blog. when looking at film posters its important to remember that posters are another way of advertising the film so the context of the poster should be eye catching and make you want to go and see the film which means that they will want to use major images that will make you think 'i want to see that'. they are another way for 'selling' the film. the title is in a relatively large font which is easy to read and you can straight away see the name of the film. quite a lot of posters usually have the title at the top of the poster but i like this one in particular as the image is the main focus and the text is underlining the image at the bottom quarter of the poster. on the poster on the right it is more of a teaser poster as the date of release is not actually on it , it just says 'coming soon' but on the poster on the left it tells us the date of release which was May the 29th. in the teaser poster the 'villain' of the film is not seen we just see the main character who is the victim having monster like hands round her. in the second poster which was released after the villain has been exposed to the public and this is the first time we see her. on the teaser  poster the tag-line of the film is shown which gives the audience an idea of what the film is about. the billing block on the teaser poster is in a colour which doesn't stand out too much against the fire and camouflages into the background of the poster. the colour in both posters are very vibrant and using red as the main colour can outline danger and give the audience an idea that the film contains danger.


magazine cover analysis


magazine cover analysis

As part of our trailer we have to make an analysis of a film cover. i found it really hard to find one which had relevance to our trailer but in the end i found these empire one.  i chose to look at the second magazine cover because it had the most relevant features when comparing it to our trailer.
I like this magazine cover as i feel its like the man is coming out of the magazine. I also like the way the eyes are so dark compared to his white face and his lips look like they are bleeding so i think that element looks quite effective to when you compare it to his pasty white face.
The title of the film that it is advertising is right below the title of the magazine. this means that as soon as the customer looks at the title of the magazine they will read the line direct below it that shows the film title, and then below that title is the tag-line for the film which can draw the customer to want to see the film by having a catchy tag-line.
above the magazine title it tells us that there are two magazine covers to collect. the second one is above the one i choose to look at with batman on the front of it. i don't feel this has as much in common as the other one but i noticed he has a mask on his face which could be the same as the way josh wears a mask on his face to be the clown in our trailer.
i like the way the text is surrounded by a green outline which looks like its glowing and its the same on the batman cover as the text is surrounded by a blue outline and i feel that this is very effective on both the covers.
both of the images on the covers are very close up which shows its importance of the character's in the film.
The two different images on the magazine covers are like a juxtaposition where they contrast against each other. the villain and the hero.
Both the magazines still have the barcode, price, and date its released which are the normal features on any magazine but on these magazines you can hardly notice them as they focus it more on the characters, the film title and the title of the whole magazine

rehearsal schedule


rehearsal schedule

We were planning to film in half term but everyone was busy on the different days and we could not work around this.

we started filming on tuesday the 3rd of november during our media lesson. people present were the actresses Evie and Zoe and the three members from the media group - kate, josh and charlotte. the shots we captured in this session were all based in the prop room

we then filmed the last shots on the 5th of november after college when it got dark. people present were Evie and the three members of the media group again. the shots captured in this session were a couple in the prop room and the rest in the priory park.

to help make the trailer look more realistic we had to make sure Evie was wearing the same clothes on both days of filming. this helped with the continuity of the trailer.


sound research


Non-Diegetic sound: from looking at clown horror films the typical trend included typical circus high pitched music, voice overs, screaming, footsteps

Diegetic sound: all of the films that we used to look at different sounds all included these sounds; , heavy breathing,shouting,




our filming sessions


Overall our filming sessions went really well and we captured all the shots we needed, although we had to change some, it still worked really effectively and matched up with the genre we chose to base our trailer on. we could only do this in two sessions as we had to have our rough copy in on friday.

The first session we had was in the props room in p09 in college. this was with our new actresses Evie and Zoe. We got a good range of shots which we could use for the start of the film to set the mood. this was when we first get to see the clown behind the clothes rack.

The second session was on thursday 5th november after college at 4:15pm. in this session we had to get a last couple of shots in the props room that we didn't have time for in the first session. we then moved on to the priory park where we had to capture the main parts of the clown stalking Evie.