Trailer Review: 30 Days Of Night

The trailer begins with intertitles and a slow montage building up tension. The intertitles introduce the audience to the narrative of the film, but the scenes being shown are the characters going about their day to day life. The trailer then picks up, parallel music is introduced in combination with a short quick montage of clips to introduce the vampires and a small amount of gore into the trailer. Once some gore is shown, the trailer uses a collision cut back to a slow montage, where tension begins to build again, through clever shots revealing vampires lurking in the village, and the character’s speech telling the narrative instead of intertitles. A scene is shown where a woman is alone by herself in the middle of the city, isolated from everybody else and calling out for help. Contrapuntal music kicks in along with a quick montage of gore and vampire attacks, creating a panic stricken feel to the trailer. The trailer finishes on a scene of a woman screaming whilst being bitten by a vampire, which then cuts to a title screen with the name of the film. Overall I think that the trailer works very well, as it is almost entirely set in low key lighting, giving the trailer a very dark and gloomy feel. There is plenty of gore, and the quick montages are done very well, giving off a strong sense of panic in the village. 

Focus Group

My Magazine Cover with Flikr Analysis

finalmagazine, a photo by joedormer on Flickr.

Sinister Poster Flickr Analysis

sinister poster, a photo by joedormer on Flickr.

My Film Poster with Flikr Analysis

'Keith' Poster, a photo by joedormer on Flickr.

"Keith": Final Cut

Trailer Review: Cloverfield (2008)

The trailer for Cloverfield is a ‘scene’ trailer. It begins with a party happening; everything appears to be running smoothly with the characters completely oblivious to what is to come. Every shot is filmed with a handheld camera, which gives a realistic feel to scenes. Once the lights go out in the room that the party is being held, the lighting changes to low key lighting, indicating a change in the mood of the film, with panic being spread throughout the characters. Once the characters are outside, the handheld camera looks around, and sees a huge ball of fire coming from the top of a group of buildings, causing major panic in everybody. As people start to run, the shots become quicker cut into a fast montage, creating a tense, panic-stricken feel, and enables the viewer to connect with the character’s emotions. The trailer finishes with the head of the Statue of Liberty flying towards the group of people, an iconic symbol of America being destroyed, which is put into the film to cause a reaction from American viewers. The trailer ends on a cliff-hanger, as the trailer doesn’t show what causes the explosions, or what happens to the characters after this scene, which entices the viewer to go and watch the full film. The ending titles of the trailer have a distorted effect added to them, which goes with the feel of a handheld camera. The handheld camera gives a realistic feel to the trailer, as the shots are from somebodies point of view, giving the viewer more of a sense that they are actually there, resulting in them feeling the character’s emotions and getting more involved in the film.

Trailer Review: Wolf Creek (2005) (Red band)

The trailer begins showing lots of teenagers at a party, giving off the impression that they lead a happy, carefree life. The next shot is an establishing shot of where the rest of the film takes place; it shows a vast, desert like area surrounded by hills with the only sign of life being a car in the centre. We then learn that the people in the car are three of the teenagers shown in the opening scene of the trailer. Inter-titles then appear, explaining the narrative of the film, explaining that the ‘journey of a lifetime’ which the teenagers are on, may take an unexpected turn for the worse. The car which the teenagers are in then breaks down, introducing the feeling of isolation into the trailer. The next scene shows the trio finding a lorry, with a man approaching them out of the lorry. This scene has low key lighting, giving the scene a sinister sense and shows the nervous emotions of the teenagers. The trailer then shows the man in the lorry sat down with the teenagers, having a chat, seeming that he has made them feel welcome and he has given them a place to stay overnight due to the teenager’s car breaking down. When asked what he does with his time by the teenagers, the man replies ‘I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you’. This triggers a nervous response from the teenagers, and sends the trailer into a darker mood, acting as the turning point of the trailer, from safety to the teenagers being scared for their lives. The trailer then uses a quick montage, gore and parallel music to create a tense and panic stricken mood for the rest of the trailer. The trailer finishes with the three teenagers and the man from the lorry around a fire, laughing, seeming to be happy, this is contrapuntal to the rest of the trailer, and confuses the viewer instead of having a jump at the end of the trailer like a typical horror trailer. 

Trailer Review (class)

Keith: Rough Cut

Trailer Review: Dawn of the Dead (2004)

The trailer starts with a slow montage of clips, edited slowly paced to build up tension. The trailer then shows a point of view shot of a zombie child, approaching her mother’s bedroom. This shot is very slow and has parallel music alongside it, to build tension up, making the audience anticipate that something eventful is about the happen. As soon as the child attacks, the trailer changes to a quick montage through collision cutting, which reflects the panic and terror that the characters are feeling. After this sequence is over, the Universal and Strike title scenes appear, sending the trailer back into a slow montage, once again through collision cutting. The rest of the trailer sets a narrative for the rest of the film, through the use of inter-titles and voice-overs. The scenes in the trailer are in chronological order which works well to understand the narrative of the film. Parallel music throughout the trailer helps to enhance the character’s emotions. The trailer also shows body horror in small sections, as well as iconic images related to the film including the zombie baby scene. These images help create rememberable points about the trailer. Overall, I think the trailer works well in presenting the narrative and overall feel of the film, however for me it doesn’t fit into the horror genre enough.

Evaluation: Part 4

In our focus group screening, many positives were highlighted along with a lot of constructive criticism. A part of the trailer that many people enjoyed was the end shot, as it wasn’t a typical jump at the end, but still created suspense due to the slow long scene, accompanied with the suspense of not knowing who was behind the mask that Keith took off the person’s face. The blood dripping onto the snow was also frequently praised, as people said the contrast between the deep red blood and bright white snow worked well and was something that would make the trailer rememberable. Many people also enjoyed the music, as the gradual build up of pace in it increased the suspense of the trailer gradually throughout the trailer. The black and white effects on the flashbacks were also something that people enjoyed, as they said it created a clear division between the main scene and the flashback. The Intertitles were also mentioned as being a good feature by many people as it helped build the narrative of the film. A common criticism of our trailer was that the narrative wasn’t clear enough throughout; the role of the man having a heart attack was highlighted as being too unclear. Another criticism that was mentioned was the lack of gore in the trailer even though it is a ‘Red-Band’. The choice of ending to the trailer was also criticised by some people, commenting that it would’ve been more fitting to have a jump scare rather than a tense slow shot. Overall I agree with these comments, especially the comment about the lack of gore. I realised that more gore would have defined the intended horror genre of the film better, and with the snow being available, I could have utilised this and done more shots with blood on the snow. Another criticism that I agree with is the lack of narrative in the trailer. More Intertitles would have been beneficial, just to give more of a background to Keith and establish his role in the film more. Our trailer got on average a score of 6.5/10 from the rest of the class, which I am not entirely happy with, although I can see the reasoning behind the scores.

We made a few last minute changes to our trailer after the feedback we received. We originally had the scene with the man spitting out blood as the ending scene of our trailer, but we decided that the mask reveal scene would be more effective. Another change that we made was adding a production screen to the end of the trailer, which advertised links to social media websites relating to the film. We originally didn’t have this due to an oversight. We made the changes in Adobe Premiere Pro, and went back to the original project file to make adjustments. I do believe that they helped, because before the adjustments our trailer has less of a trailer like feel, and with the adjustments our trailer gained more generic features of a film trailer.

Overall, I am very pleased with the overall outcome of our film trailer. Due to research and previously known knowledge of the horror genre, we were able to pinpoint key things to put into our trailer to make it appeal to the target audience. We done this by making the main character be outside of the CDI, yet the overall theme of the film was something that people could relate to as it is in a realistic scenario. We made the character like this as it is typical of the characteristic of character’s in horror films, and we wanted to go with generic conventions instead of challenging them, as we knew that this would attract audiences. My favourite aspects of the trailer are Keith’s motives for killing his victims, and the setting of the main scene of the trailer. I like Keith’s motives as they are something that I can relate to and convey my emotions in to, I have a strong hatred of domestic abuse towards women, so creating a character who gives justice to people who abuse women is something I found I could construct easily. I disagree strongly with misogyny, so by being having the opportunity to make a character who shares emotions with me makes the character easy to relate to. I like the setting of the main scene of the trailer because it is in an ordinary, setting (a garden), yet with the snow and the low key lighting shots, the setting is transformed into a realistic, yet sinister setting. The realistic setting is something that I enjoy in a horror film, as it brings the film, a lot closer to home, and gives the audience the idea that the events of the film actually could occur in day to day life.

Evaluation: Part 3

To research existing trailers, I used a combination of YouTube and IMDB. YouTube was a very good website to research trailers, as it is fast and easy to find the trailer that I was looking for, as well as recommending similar trailers to the one that I was currently viewing. Videos on YouTube could also be paused if I wished to examine a certain scene. A negative about YouTube is that there is almost no other background information given about the film on most videos. IMDB was also used to research existing trailers. IMBD is useful as it gives all details about the film you’re researching, as well as all versions of a trailer listed, so comparisons between a green-band and a red-band trailer for the same film are easy to acquire. I used this feature to compare the red and green-band trailers for the film ‘Sinister’. IMBD also provides freeze-frames of scenes in a film, so the opportunity to
use one of these to analyse is readily available. I used blogger to present all of my work. I found that blogger worked very well, as it has simple procedures to make a new post, and posts are easily edited which I found out to be a very useful feature. It is also easy to organise posts on blogger, with the use of labels which can be used to separate posts into more specific groups. A negative of blogger is that I found it to be complicated editing the design of your blog, as it requires some knowledge of HTML code which I do not have.

To create my magazine cover and my poster I used Adobe Photoshop. On my magazine cover, I made part of the main character’s head cover some of the masthead. To do this, I used the ‘magic wand’ tool to cut the part of the image out that I wanted and place it where I wanted to. I used a stroke and a drop shadow on the text on the Film Poster which I made in Photoshop, which made the text stand out from the background more. On the main image on my poster I lowered the brightness, to enhance the gloomy mood of the poster. To create my movie trailer I used Adobe Premiere Pro. To create the effect of a flashback in my trailer, I edited the clips to be black and white. I did this by going onto the Effects menu, then Adjust, Procamp, and then changing the saturation to 0%. I also added fade to black cuts by using the pen tool to fade the opacity either from 0% to 100% or 100% to 0% to create a fade in or fade out. To make the text in the titles zoom in I key framed the enlargement of the text to give it a smooth zoom in effect.

I used Flikr to present my magazine cover and movie poster, as Flikr is a very good way to present images. Flikr allows the addition of notes onto the image, which when hovered over a certain part of an image; a note appears explaining about what is it linked to. Flikr can also be linked with Blogger, allowing posts on Flikr to easily be posted to Blogger too. Blogger is easy to sort my evaluation work with as the use of labels allows my work to be presented and filtered with ease. I also used YouTube to present my focus group evaluation on, as YouTube is an easy to use website for displaying video footage, and offers a feature to embed a video into Blogger posts, which makes it easy to display my work on YouTube on Blogger. I also posted a survey on my blog, allowing people to vote on my film trailer, which gave me an indication to other people’s responses to the film, which is important in evaluation. 

Evaluation: Part 2

When making my poster, I included lots of aspects that horror film posters usually contain. I used a scratch and grain texture over the original images used in my poster, to give it a worn feel and add depth to the picture. I felt that the textures that I added made the poster have the same kind of look at the poster for the film ‘Sinister’. Another key aspect I included in my poster was the names and company symbols at the bottom of the poster. This gives the poster the authentic movie poster look, as it is a feature that is on almost every movie poster. Of the symbols on the bottom of the poster, I have also included the rating for the film, which is 18. I have included this as it is not only a typical feature of a film poster, but also a legal requirement for films to have an age rating. Another feature that I have included in my poster is having a tag line. I have included this as not only is it a key aspect of a film poster, but it is something that the audience can remember the film by easily. An example of this that works well is the ‘Have you seen him?’ tagline for the film ‘Sinister’. The tag line gives a small insight to the film, as well as creating a memorable aspect to the poster. The mood of the poster is dark and gloomy, which I have deliberately achieved by lowering the brightness of the main image, not using bright colours, and through the
use of textures. I have chosen to use this mood for the poster as it is a recurring theme for horror film posters, so before a person reads anything on the poster, they can identify that it is a horror film poster by just the colour scheme used.  

A key aspect that I included in my magazine cover was having a main image of a character looking directly at the potential readers, drawing their attention in. This is a common theme for magazine covers, and one that I learnt about through analysing the front cover of many ‘Empire’ magazines. The purpose of the image is to make eye contact with people in the attempt to get them to take interest in the magazine. Another key aspect that I included in my magazine cover is having a barcode, price and date on it. Since I was replicating a magazine cover for ‘Empire’ magazine, to fit the house style of the magazine, I had to put these in the same place as they are on every issue. My magazine cover has many headings on it, one main one and many sub headings. These are key aspects of any magazine cover, as they tell the reader what is inside the magazine. This is a typical feature of almost all magazine covers with the rare occasion of something such as a special edition of a magazine, where the sub headings may be lost, but the main heading is still almost always present. The purpose of the main heading is to stand out above the others headings, which I have achieved by using a more striking font at a larger size than the other headings, as well as putting the heading in a central position on the page as opposed to the sides where the sub headings are. A key aspect that I have also included in my magazine cover is a masthead, which for my magazine is the ‘Empire’ masthead. As ‘Empire’ is a well established magazine, the masthead is open to have imaged overlapping it slightly, as regular readers of the magazine will be able to tell that it is an ‘Empire’ magazine due to the house style. The masthead is in the same place on every issue of ‘Empire’ to enforce the house style, and is a feature that I have included on my magazine cover.

My poster and magazine cover are both related to my trailer and I have achieved this by giving some features continuity throughout the pieces. One aspect that I have kept the same is the text, as this is easily recognisable text that audiences can easily relate back to. I learnt this feature from the ‘Saw’ film series. I also used the same tag line throughout all pieces, to give the audience something to remember the pieces by. Both the magazine and the poster both have a gloomy feel to them, which is intended to make it obvious to the audience that it is a horror film. The trailer, poster and magazine cover are all intended to be shown to mainstream horror fans, which is why I have chosen to make a magazine cover for ‘Empire’ magazine, which is typically a mainstream film magazine.

Evaluation: Part 1

When creating my horror film trailer, I made it contain many features of a typical horror film trailer. I focused the trailer on being similar to a 70’s horror film, such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, instead of doing a horror in the style of a more modern trend, such as Paranormal Activity. I found that sticking to an already defined genre was a wise thing to do, as audience would already have a rough idea of what to expect from the trailer before even watching it. This relates to Thomas Schatz’ ‘Hollywood Genres’ theory, how he believes that the genre of a film can sell it, as well as helping film makers to know what features to add to their film in order for it to achieve the genre that they wish. I agree with this, as when making my trailer, I constructed a list of features that I should include in the trailer to make achieve a gory horror feel. I found that using close-ups in my trailer helped establish emotion in the trailer, which is key in understanding a character in a trailer. I also used parallel music in my trailer, as I felt that this helped build a tense feel for the trailer, and achieve what I wanted it to within the short time that I had available in the trailer. I made the main character, Keith, in my trailer a sadistic character, as I felt that this was key in a horror film, as it helps to build the killer’s dominance over their victims. Quick montages were used towards the end of my trailer as this gave the trailer a chaotic feel, and gave the audience that the characters were scared and panicking. I used the stereotype of a typical ‘Psycho killer’ as I feel that in a trailer, it is important to establish the character as soon as possible, so by making it obvious who the villain is in the trailer, I achieved this.

My horror trailer was made to fit the generic conventions of a typical film trailer, as I found that doing it this way would make it work, as there is no need to challenge generic conventions in this area. For example, I used a production screen at the beginning of the trailer, as well as a red band banner which imitates a typical film trailer. For the trailer I decided to do a mix between a highlights and a scene trailer, with one scene being the main focus of the trailer, but with flashbacks during the trailer showing highlights of the film, as well as giving the viewer some idea of the storyline of the film. I found that doing a mix worked well as I could add storyline to the trailer as the trailer for Cloverfield does, but still add fast past highlights into the trailer as the trailer for Final Destination 5 does. As for the pace of the trailer, I made the trailer have a slow build up and then be quicker cut toward the end, as most trailers do. My trailer also used text and inter-titles. I found that in film trailer inter-titles help establish the storyline, so I thought that it would be a good feature to include them in my trailer. I also included a the title of the film at the end of my trailer, which is typical of a film trailer. I done this as it is the last thing that the viewer sees, so they remember the name of the film.

An auteur that I studied was Alfred Hitchcock. I decided that it would be beneficial to have a Hitchcock related influence in my trailer, as Hitchcock used to put his personal feelings into his films, such as his affection for blonde women. I decided to put my hatred of abuse towards women to use in my trailer, and decided to base the theme of my trailer around this. I also decided to use small aspects of gore in my trailer, which once again replicates a Hitchcock style. If I featured too much gore, I feel that the viewer would get desensitised from it, but too little gore would make the trailer stray too far away from being a horror film.