Potential storyline 2

This is my second idea for a horror film. This film will be called "Did You See Him?" It will be more of a paranormal horror film about a shadow figure that leads people to commit suicide in different ways.

It will more of a psychological 'jumpy' horror film, however with gruesome deaths. The shadow figure appears in reflections of the people before they die. All the deaths of the individuals will be linked back to ancestrial family links, with the shadow figure believed to be a demon that an enemy family made a deal with. The demon comes back to haunt all ancesters, including the main characters who will be a couple with one child. They try to uncover the mystery before it is too late.

Mrs D

Well done Jack. Your Research is detailed. You must use some more ICT and be more creative to improve.

Target Audience Research 2

Target audience research

The table on the left shows gross profit and ticket sales of the most popular horror films in 2012. This shows me what sort of horror films people like and what kind of horror genres (slasher, paranormal, psychological, etc) are the most succesful world wide. This table shows me that paranormal films are very popular in the horror market according to ticket sales from the target audience.

Potential storyline 1

 

 

This is my first idea for a film trailer. My idea for a film is called Bearhunt. It will be about a group of four individuals living near the woods up by Broadmoor Hospital. Upon hering that someone had escaped, they go out to try and catch the person, thinking they will be easy to get. However the person who escapes is in fact a very intelligent, psychotic killer wearing a bear mask.

 

I plan for my killer in the film to use weapons such as sledgehammers and axes, as well as bear related items such as a bear trap. He wont be the typical violent killer, he will be more of a clever hunter (like predator) who takes out the victims one by one in order to separate the group.

 

 

The group will be a mix of differing personalities and genders. The group will consist of one girl and three boys. The girl and one of the boys will be the ones who arent keen on the idea of finding this person and get pressured into doing it. Then both of the other guys will be confident in doing it, one more so than the other.

 

The story will start with the whole idea of the group finding out the someone has escaped and setting out to find the escapee. Then they will be in the forest and start seeing horrible incidents, for example blood stained police hats, limbs, etc. Then they will start being picked off one by one until one is left, which will leave the story with a strange twist at the end involving the killer and the last victim.

Ring trailer analysis

The 'Ring trailer' uses differing techniques to get a dark mood across to viewers. For example the majority of the trailer is in a dark lit areas or uses dark lighting. This is because it reflects a dark gothic mood across to viewers to make them become scared and are fearing the story without having scary scenes on screen.

Furthermore the ring trailer uses small clips of sounds from the film which at times do not match the action on the screen. These clips of sounds are usually screams and shouts. They keep viewers on edge as it is constant shocks and suprises of suddon loud noises. These act like jump scares on screen as they aim to make the audience jump.

It also uses fast takes at the end of the trailer, viewers cannot fully decifer what is going on on screen. These are used as seeing as the viewers cannot see what is going on it creates confusion with the viewers making them want to watch the film to find out what happens in the end. This is also used as the fast takes represent the panic and worry of the characters as there are mroe and more screams suggesting whatever is happening is terrify and the fat takes represent speeding up heart beats that the charactersmay be experiencing. The audience can relate to this as their heart rates are probably speeding up too.

Skills Audit

This is a list of all the programs ive learnt to used and research techniques ive learnt.

 

Laura Mulvey's ideas on representation

Main narrative theory points

Below are examples of different media theorists points on narrative theory.

For example the theorist Todorov came up with the theory of equilbrium, disequilbrium, recognition, and restoration. Equilbrium when everything is calm and normal. Disequilbrium is when the calm atmosphere is disturbed by a force. Recognition is when people realize there is a problem going on. Finally Restoration is when there is a new state of equilibrium and all is back to normal. A good example of this is the film Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

There is also the theorist Barthes who came up with a theory of the plot in films. Firstly Establishment of plot or theme. Then its followed by the development of the problem, an enigma, an increase in tension. Then the final part is when the film comes the resolution of the plot. A good example of this in a film is Inception.

Another theorist is Propp who gave his theory on character profiles for different characters in films.

 

    The villain — struggles against the hero.
    The donor — prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object.
    The (magical) helper — helps the hero in the quest.
    The princess and her father — gives the task to the hero,identifies the false hero, marries the hero, often sought for during the narrative.
   The dispatcher — character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off.
   The hero or victim/seeker hero — reacts to the donor, weds the princess.
   [False hero] — takes credit for the hero’s actions or tries to marry the princess.

A good example of characters in these prfiles is Shrek, with with characters such as Shrek (The Hero), Fiona (The Princess), and Donkey (The Helper).

Claude Levi Strauss was a theorist who gave his ideas about the narrative amount of all stories operated. He came up with Binary Opposites e.g. good vs. evil, black vs. white, rich vs. poor etc. An example is Of Mice and Men which has many differing examples of white vs black, rich vs poor, and able vs disable.

 

Summary of the film industry in 2013

This is my research of the film industry in 2013. It includes the box office stats for film in the UK and a mind map showing my key facts from the research I did. 

Overall this info has shown the importance for trailers has gone up as years go by as more and more films are being released meaning it is more important than ever to try and compete with rivals and make sure your film is the most popular release within your target market.

Review of 'The Ring' trailer

There are many examples of Propp's ideas of narrative theory in our trailer for 'The Ring.' For example, there is a Villain, who is the girl on the TV tapes who does most of the killing and scary scenes. There is also an example of the hero who is the blonde woman in the trailer who is the one trying to solve the whole mystery of the video tape. There is also a man in the trailer who is the helper, helping the women (hero) on her main quest.

 

Other parts of Propp's narrative theory is seen in the trailer as well. The main character has to go through 'The Ordeal.' This is were she must face up to her fear and confront the enemy, who may be more powerful than her. In this case, she must face up to the girl in the tape and confront her in order to find out the truth and solve the horrible situation she is in.

 

Todorov's ideas of narrative theory are also clear in this trailer as it goes through the examples of his five key stages. Firstly, a point of stable equilibrium, where everything is satisfied, calm and normal. Then this stability is disrupted by some kind of force, which creates a state of disequilibrium, for example the tape being discovered. Then there is recognition that a disruption has taken place, when people start watching the tape and dying. then there is restoration of a new statet  of equilibrium. It ends with a change a equilibrium as the women, along with others, try to defeat the girl in the tape and solve the mystery.

Function of a trailer

Below is my mind map i created using the website text2mindmap.com , it explains the function of a trailer in brief points.

Mrs D

A good start Jack. You have got some excellent detail and I particularly like your ideas around the use of music in your analysis. Get some more technology and posts up soon.

Mood board

This is my mood board featuring many of my inspirations behind my horror trailer construction.

This is my prezi for my analysis of the horror film trailer "You're Next."

List of technical skills learnt over AS

• effectiveness of fast takes
• more camera angle techniques, like high and low shot angles
• how to trim final cut pro clips
• exporting and importing on final cut pro
• using sound on final cut pro
• screen writing techniques
• making precise cuts on clips using final cut pro
• the importance of effective images on posters
• the importance of gripping text on a posters
• using writing on trailers and how effective it is
• how to use locations effectively in replecating trailers
• how to use cuts for bloopers videos to make them ordered
• how to analyse trailers for good techniques and effects
• how to use lighting in order to create a dark and creepy film atmosphere
• how to use short gripping sentence effectively on trailers
• using eary sounds for dark trailer atmospheres

Reflection of AS

The link above is a copy of the ring trailer our group did in the summer. there are many strengths and weakenesses to the trailer.

A strength of this trailer is the sound syncing up with the video. The sound effects sync up with the images/videos on screen. This is good as it makes the trailer look a lot more of a high quality as it looks like the actors are saying what is being played on the sound, this means it can relate more to the original trailer as it looks like more of a copy of the original.

Another strength of this trailer was that the props and general mise en scene was very good. the clothing of characters was very wel linked to the actual trailer and similarities are clearly seen between the real trailer and our remake. This helped us recreate the trailer to its fullest potential as we looked to make as near to the actual trailer as possible.

However a weakness of our trailer was lighting. It was hard to get the correct lighting for certain scenes in the trailer meaning that some settings look a lot lighter than they should be. this had a knock on effect as the whole darkness and sinister atmosphere of some scenes was lost due to the setting being bright.

Furthermore another weakness of our trailer was that one shot was repeated more than once. The shot of the sky was used about three times. This took away some relation of our trailer to the actual ring trailer as we repeated a shot which isnt done in the real ring trailer. This meant that there were certain areas of the trailer the we couldnt fully copy.

Overall ive learnt a lot about using the camera in genral for differengt shot purposes. However mostly I learnt about using 'final cut pro' on the macs. I learnt about importing and exporting both clips and sounds, how to cut and/or trim clips, and inserting text on clips. I also learnt about formats of saving the trailer and how to embed into onto our blog for viewing.