Hello!
Recently we have come up as a group, to plan a shooting schedule for when we are going to shoot our scenes for the horror trailer. On the whole this was a tricky thing to do as sometimes our lessons in other subjects would clash with when we wanted to film and sometimes there were just days that one of us was free and the other was not. However, getting this all out of the way, we were able to make a shooting schedule for the times where two or more of us was available to film.
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I believe that creating a shooting schedule would help us to be more organised as we will know where to film and what props to bring if any are needed. Our locations are quite easy to get to so minimal time would be needed to transport ourselves and the characters to the chosen locations. Most of our scenes need to be filmed at night or when the sky is dark hence why there are late times shown on the shooting schedule.
Hello!
Whilst making our trailers we have to bare in mind what theories our narrative relates to and why we chose these theories in particular. On the whole, I knew from the beginning what kind of theories that I wanted the trailer to consist of.
Final Girl Theory
Within our trailer we used the final girl theory because this theory occurs in most horror films and we still wanted to follow main conventions used within horror films.The final girl theory is evident in slasher film and specifically refers to the last woman or girl alive to confront the killer, ostensibly the one left to tell the story. Like the title suggests, this theory is used near the end of the film when the girl is trying to run away from the villain and usually defeats the villain. The characters involves in this scene is Sammie and Angela in which Sammie is the final girl. In conclusion to this scene within our narrative, Sammie stabs Angela when she is weakened however it is up to the viewers to decided whether this actually kills Angela or not.
The Monstrous Feminine
When we were constructing our storyboard it became evident to see that our main character (villain) came under the theory of a Monstrous Feminine. The villain in our narrative is Angela and her personality and character within the narrative comes underneath the monstrous feminine theory. She starts out being a nice, innocent religious girl who then becomes possessed by the Devil and turns into an angry, vicious killing-machine who kills people on the basis of how they’ve lived their lives. This narrative reminded us of the film ‘Carrie’ where this transformation from innocent to evil is present too however we were careful to make Angela not too similar to Carrie as we still wanted to be different from typical horror films. Hence, we decided to not give her any magical powers so that she still had elements of being human. Even though Angela is deemed as evil, it is not her fault that she is killing people as we have to remember that she is being possessed into doing those immoral acts.
Hello!
Recently we amalgamated our ideas and constructed a storyboard for the basis of our horror trailer. This was a good experience as we were able to listen to each other's ideas and come up with final pictures and descriptions. We then placed our storyboard in order for our trailer and put on a presentation on easy viewing.
What have I learnt?
I have learnt that constructing a storyboard is hard work because you don't want the trailer to look as if it is a short story rather than it being a horror trailer. Also, colours are important because they help the audience to recognise what kind of genre the trailer will be. Picking out the most important and interesting parts from our narrative was hard too as we had to judge which ones would make the trailer seem more intriguing and would drive the audience into actually watching the film.
Overview
Today I've been researching new films that are set to premiere next year and I stumbled across "The Woman In Black" directed by James Watkins and is adaptation of Susan Hill's novel.
A widowed lawyer travels to a secluded village on an important assignment, and encounters a vengeful ghost with mysterious motives. After losing his beloved wife, Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) was nearly consumed by grief. When an important client of Arthur's dies, he pulls himself out of mourning to settle the man's affairs. But in this town, everyone has a secret. Something horrible once happened here, and it seems that the locals are determined to ensure Arthur never finds out what it was. Now the more time Arthur spends in his client's crumbling estate, the more aware he becomes of a presence that isn't quite human. In this house dwells a woman's ghost. In life she lost something precious, and now in death she'll do whatever it takes to get it back. Until she does, anyone who dares enter this house is doomed
Based on the classic ghost story, The Woman In Black tells the tale of Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe), a lawyer who is forced to leave his young son and travel to a remote village to attend to the affairs of the recently deceased owner of Eel Marsh House. Working alone in the old mansion, Kipps begins to uncover the town's tragic and tortured secrets
Here is the trailer for this film and considering that I am "pants" when it comes to horror films, this one intrigued me and I really would like to see it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
I think I like this film because the narrative is really interesting and out of the blue. For example, I know it is a ghost story but their interpretation of a ghost story is amazing because it's not the standard haunting but it affects everyone within the village. I would recommend everyone to see this film when it comes out and I would definitely use some conventions within this film such as the extreme close up on the little girl's shoes and the close-ups on the main character's facial expressions.
Overview
Recently I have been doing my own research into what makes the setting of a place scary and horror-like. With this research, I aim to apply my findings into my horror trailer to make it as horrific as possible and one that fits the horror genre.
Here is a short clip I found on YouTube consisting of three classic horror locations. I believe this was beneficial for me to see because it made me realise what locations would be the most effective within horror trailers or films in general and what would scare the audience the most.
As a group, we decided on three main horror locations in which this is:
A church
A house
Outside (streets)
Other minor locations will include:
A subway
A bathroom
A traditional horror house would look something like this:
However, if we were to ever get a house like this then it would not fit in with our narrative as although it would have some scary aspects for examples trees and bushes it needs to look normal as the main characters has not become possessed yet. A normal house would symbolise that there are normal citizens living inside and would convince the audience that nothing will bad will happen in which we want the audience to feel like this.
Parks are not ususally used within horror trailers, the main location would usually be a forest. Since a forest around the area we live in is unlikely we decided to get a park instead and film the scenes at night.
A park like this would be amazing to film in at night because it would have a "horror feel" to it, as if the person wondering through the park would not be able to escape. The runway would make it as if the character is running to nowhere and would give the illusion that the character is in a forest. Additionally, it would be a great space to film zombie like scenes so it's as if the character has turned away from society and has now had to go into hiding. I believe as a group we would aim in getting a location like this one, hopefully around the surrey borough.
A typical horror bathroom (not including a bath) would look something like this:
However, since the bathroom is within a church we would need the bathroom to look more authentic, old and less scary. Even though this is a brilliant example of what a bathroom should look like I believe it's too over the top as we would not want to connote that deaths have been taken place in the bathroom but only that it is a scary place for someone to be by themselves at night.
Hello!
Carrying on from the Deep Learning Day, I decided that it would be more beneficial to you to actually see footage from that day and what locations we went too. So for your viewing pleasure, here are some clips from the day and our actual trailer, I hope you enjoy.
Recently, I have had a Deep Learning Day in which the whole day was Media related. The activities that took place within the DLD day was for the benefit of all groups and to see what skills, as as team, that we needed to improve on.
We were given the task to either make a parody of a horror movie or to film clips from our trailers so we decided that we were going to film clips from our trailers because this would give us a better insight in what we would need to do in order to make the trailer successful and additionally heighten our camera skills. Working on clips of our trailer would have also helped us to realise what scenes within the trailer were possible and which scenes would take longer than others.
The first lesson of our DLD, we spent looking over our storyboard, wondering what scenes should go where and if we needed to add any more shots. After we were happy with the order of the trailer we then cut the pictures up and scanned them into the computer. This lesson was helpful because it gave us more time to evaluate our narrative and on the whole our trailer. Additionally it was helpful because we were then able to see what parts of the trailer did not seem to go well and it made us come togethere more as group as we were able to share our opinions whilst respecting the opinions of others.
[Picture of Lewis (one of my team members) sorting out the storyboard. Picture taken by Namibia McLean]
Short Horror Film [The presentation that our teacher showed us whilst talking and giving us tips in using cameras and talked about film itself.] The second lesson we had a master class with one our of teachers, exploring how to use a camera and a tripod properly. He also answered our questions when it came to what shots would be the most effective within horror trailers and he looked over our storyboards to see if we could actually film the scenes. This masterclass was helpful because now I am more familiar with the camera and camera settings and can easily locate if I needed to zoom in or zoom out, colour balance etc. Since I have used a tripod before, it was surprising to find out new information from it as I deemed I knew everything there was to the tripod. It was helpful to find out new ways to elongate the tripod because this would help my team with filming in tricky places.
From the third lesson till lunch we started filming clips from our horror trailer I found this more difficult than it thought. One of the problems that we had to face is that the locations were very far apart from one another and because we didn't have a lot of time to film and get the scenes back to convert it was very hard trying to fit everything in. Although, it was a great experience as we were able to see what shots we would have to change as they did not work when filmed and that was useful because on the whole I just want our trailer to be successful. We shot in four main locations we shot within the college, outside a church and in a park. Here are some pictures and clips of where we shot:
We felt that the park scene was perfect in setting a horror trailer because of the way the sky looked and how abandoned the setting was. For the main trailer, we do plan to film in a house like we orginially planned not within a college as we would have more time to film and a house would be more horror based setting than a college.
From lessons 5-6 we had to edit the footage we had and make it into a trailer. This was the most stressful part for me because I realised that we had many problems. For example, we realised that we did not have enough good footage to have a 30 seconds trailer in which this meant that footage would have to be reused and we also realised that it would have been better to edit on a PC rather than a MAC computer. This is because everytime we were getting somewhere with editing our trailer the MAC would crash resulting in us having to start the whole thing again. This even occured when we saved every four minutes in which we couldn't get the rest of the trailer back. We decided in the end to just go to a PC and this was much less stressful as I could edit the trailer without the risk of the trailer being lost. Here is our finished trailer:
The music we used definitely made our horror trailer scarier and I was very happy with this result. On the whole I wish we had filmed more scenes, especially in places that looked more like a horror setting because I realised some of the locations we used just looked too normal and we needed to have a scare factor. If I was to do the project again then I would definitely make sure I have enough footage to last us for when we edit, to make sure that the props don't show when we are filming and to also film in horror like places.
Hello everyone! I study A2 Media and I've set up this blog to provide evidence (to show I have done the tasks asked of me) and to show all of you every step of the making of my trailer, my poster and my magazine. Enjoy!
